Stefan Molyneux
  • last year
In this episode, we explore a listener's emotional dilemma regarding paternity and reconnecting with a child, emphasizing the complexities and consequences involved. We also touch on parenting challenges, emphasizing communication and understanding individual needs. Reflecting on parental influence, we discuss behavioral issues and the importance of authenticity amidst societal pressures. The conversation delves into seeking truth, societal norms, and the transformative power of introspection, urging listeners to consider the delicate balance between personal well-being and societal influences.

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Transcript
00:00:00All right, hey everybody, Stefan Molyneux, Free Domain, freedomain.com, to help out the show, really would appreciate your support, and we've got a bunch of questions, not sure how many I will get through today of these questions, but they are very, very deep, so we'll take some time.
00:00:19Hi Stef, I need to reach out to you because of a very complicated situation I find myself in. First and foremost, there are almost no complicated situations in life, just want to tell you that straight up front.
00:00:33There are almost no complicated situations in life. There are temptations to avoid principles, and those temptations to betray our principles, to betray virtue and honesty and integrity, we call those complicated, but that's just a matter of, yes, we're susceptible to temptation, all of us, and then we say, and one of the ways that temptation gets us is it says, ooh, ooh, this situation is so complicated, so difficult, it's so complicated.
00:01:01No, no, situations are almost never complicated. It's just a matter of whether you stick to principles or not. Should I have told the truth about controversial topics when I was on top of the world? Oh, it's complicated, you've got to not talk about this, but you've got to balance things with that. It's like, no, it's just you're tempted to lie, so you call it complicated.
00:01:21Should you cheat on your wife? Well, it's complicated. We don't have much affection, and there's this other woman, and she could be better, but it's like, no, it's not complicated. So when people say the situation is complicated, what I hear, and I'm not saying this is 100% of the time, but I'm telling you 99 plus percent of the time, when they say something's complicated, they're saying that they're trying to baffle, gab, or confuse, or gaslight themselves into breaking principle, and they use the magic word complication.
00:01:50To do that, it's complicated. No, it's not. It's not complicated. You just don't like where integrity is going to lead you, which I understand. I don't like where integrity has led me sometimes, but it's always worth it in the long run.
00:02:04So, he says, around nine years ago, as a selfish, careless young man, I met a woman who introduced me to heroin, and in a hedonistic haze, I foolishly got her pregnant. Needless to say, it was a turbulent relationship, and we broke up promptly, after which I never touched heroin again.
00:02:18I maintained that I wanted contact with my child, however. Sorry, however, one day she called me and told me that the child wasn't mine, and that she'd been cheating with a mutual friend. I could hear him in the background of the call, both of them laughing. I was unconvinced that this was true, so I continued to fight for a paternity test involving lawyers in the process.
00:02:35The day of the birth came, and I showed up to the hospital, but she refused to let me see the child. Shortly after this, I bumped into them on the local high street, and very politely pleaded with my ex to let me hold the child, which she then allowed. This appeared to go amicably, but soon after, I was confronted at work by my ex's older brother, who demanded, or basically insisted, that she had accused me of grabbing the stroller and aggressively picking up the child without permission.
00:03:04Obviously outraged, I denied this vehemently, and I suppose the brother believed me, because that was the last I heard of it. I will add that while we were together, she had also made dubious accusations against the father of her older child. Yes, she was a single mother, I know, after noticing some small bruises on the chest of the older child. This went as far as involving child services, but led to no result as far as I'm aware.
00:03:25At around the time of the false accusation against me, I met the woman who would become my current partner and mother of my now one-year-old child. This was the first time I found a virtuous, sane, stable, caring woman I never really felt I had a chance to start my life over. In light of the chaos that my ex had brought to my life on the day the paternity test arrived at my door, I made the decision to walk away.
00:03:46Against my lawyer's wishes, but to the relief of friends and family, I stopped pursuing counting. Around the time my partner fell pregnant, I received a letter from child services notifying me that my ex had requested child support payments from me. This forced me to undergo a paternity test, and it was confirmed that the child is indeed mine.
00:04:07Outraged at the goal of my ex, and in fear of the chaos she could bring to my new life, I blocked and ignored all of her messages and attempts to have me involved. I continued to try to put the child out of my mind as I had, but this became harder with the confirmation of my paternity. Fast forward a year to the current day, and I am struggling with my conscience. As I fall deeper in love with my one-year-old daughter, I am haunted by the idea that I abandoned a child just like her.
00:04:33I have had conversations with my partner about reaching out, but we are terrified of the damage my ex and her false accusations could do.
00:04:42Last night, after listening to an episode of your show, I finally allowed myself to really look at the photos of the child I had abandoned. Interesting. Maybe it's in my head, but she looks so sad.
00:05:00My heart is aching to reach out to that little girl, but I can't expose my family to the danger of my ex. I have considered using a contact center to meet her, but they only allow that service for six months after which the parents must make arrangements between themselves.
00:05:19I worry it would be even more damaging to have contact and for it to stop than to have no contact at all until the child is of age to see me herself. But if she is suffering, how can I let that continue? I really don't know what to do. My partner will support whatever my decision is, but she is understandably terrified to allow my dangerous ex into our life.
00:05:39In fact, I refuse to have her involved at all, but I don't know if that's realistic. I think this means the partner. So, that's really sad. It's really sad. It's really sad now. Of course, you got involved with a drug addict single mother, and nothing but tragedy can result from such a situation, and it is, of course, difficult for the child that you created with the single mother.
00:06:06Now, the dangers, of course, of having unprotected sex are legion, and this would be one of the examples. Now, when I said it's not that complicated, well, it's not. It's not that complicated. You want it to be complicated because you want to avoid principles.
00:06:25So, the principle is what is best for the child you have custody of. I mean, this is your child. You have a one-year-old daughter. What is best for the child you have custody of? Not what is best for the child that you had no influence or impact on over the course of her life. I don't know how old she is. Did you say, what was it, nine years ago, right?
00:06:47So, you have a child who has been raised by, yeah, nine years ago. You have a child who's been raised by what sounds like a pretty terrible single mother, whether she's still on drugs or not, I don't know, but you have a child who's nine, and change, I suppose, who's nine and some amount.
00:07:08You've had no interactions with that child, and you have no legal authority over that child, and that child's personality is almost certainly largely set, right? I mean, personality usually is fairly set as far as I understand it. It's just my amateur opinion, of course, but personality is largely set by about the age of five or so, and this girl is almost twice that.
00:07:38What I'm confused about is how you repeatedly talk about the child you abandoned because you were told explicitly that the child was not yours. When you asked to have some contact with the child, you had some potentially dangerous older brother sicced upon you with lies about what you did, and you grabbed her violent or something like that.
00:08:00So, you were told, I think on more than one occasion, that the child was not yours, and when you tried to have any contact with the child, a potentially dangerous man was sent over to potentially do dangerous and violent things to your person.
00:08:19So, I don't understand, and it's actually mildly annoying to me that you would say, oh, the child I abandoned, right? I mean, could you have gone for a paternity test in the past? Yeah, I mean, you were going to, and then you didn't.
00:08:35Because a paternity test, I suppose, would have had you go through the courts, maybe you try and get semi-custody, and then your life is entwined with the single mom, a drug user, and so on, who'd been raising your child, and so on. So, I don't really get the abandoned thing, and it's honestly kind of precious, and it's kind of self-traumatic.
00:08:59You know, the child I abandoned. Well, look, you made, obviously, a terrible mistake, and a completely obvious terrible mistake. Like, this wasn't even like, wow, she seemed really nice for a couple of years, and then she just suddenly changed. I mean, she's a single mother, heroin user, and you got involved.
00:09:14Trying to figure out why that all happened is probably pretty important in terms of going forward with the life that you're going to have. But you didn't really choose that child. You didn't really choose to not have that child anywhere in your life. Those decisions were all made for you. I mean, to some degree, again, you avoided the paternity test, but you were told by the woman that the child was not yours, and then you were threatened when you tried to have any contact.
00:09:38So, you know, you did take some reasonable steps to try and take responsibility there. Now, you have a child who is one year old with a woman that you love, and you, of course, have influence and personality-shaping abilities with your child.
00:09:59So, you have a child that's with a sane, healthy, wonderful woman, and then, as it turns out, you had a child nine years ago with a woman such as you described. Your responsibility is to your child. Now, you were told this child wasn't yours. You were threatened when you tried to have any contact. That's, you know, not great, of course, on anyone's part, but your responsibility is to the child that you have now.
00:10:29That's who your responsibility is. So, what you have to ask is, what is best for your daughter now, your one-year-old daughter? What is best for your one-year-old daughter? Is it best to invite a crazy, predatory, aggressive, dangerous, accusation-spewing, potentially still into drugs, single mom into your life? What does that do to your daughter? What does that do to your wife? What does that do to you?
00:10:57Now, of course, what you can say, and I understand what you're saying, is you can say, well, no, but look at all of the good I might be able to do for the nine-year-old. You know, if I have the nine-year-old in my life, I can do all of this wonderful, good stuff. I can turn her childhood around. I can make her happy. No, you can't. I don't think. At least, I wouldn't understand how you could, and if I get anything wrong, of course, please feel free to let me know.
00:11:22So, I'm not doing a call-in because I know you didn't want to talk in detail about this. So, how can you do any good for the nine-year-old? Again, I'm happy to hear how this could happen. I can't see how it could happen, but I'm certainly happy to hear about it, but how can you do any good? You can't tell the truth, can you?
00:11:41Can you say to the nine-year-old girl what you have said to me? Well, you can't. You can't tell her that truth. Can you imagine telling her what her mother is really like and why you weren't in her life and what happened? They told her people laughing, saying, you're not the father, the violence, the threats from the man, the older brother. So, you can't tell the truth because, of course, we all know, we both know what happens if you tell the truth.
00:12:10If you go to this little girl who's going to have questions about why you weren't in her life and you say, oh, honey, this is why I wasn't in your life because this is what your mother did and this is who your mother is. Well, you know that as a new person in her life, you're not going to have much loyalty from her relative to her mother and whoever is floating around her life at the moment.
00:12:34So, you say, you tell the daughter, the nine-year-old, in some way or to some degree, you tell her what you told me, age appropriate and all, and what's going to happen? Well, she's going to run to her mother and, of course, her mother, even if she doesn't run to her mother and tell the mother what you said, the mother is going to get it out of her.
00:12:56People who are terrible are very prickly about their reputations, of course, for obvious reasons. So, if you spend some time with your nine-year-old daughter, I don't really see that you are much different from a sperm donor at this point, but if you spend time with your nine-year-old daughter, I just mean in terms of parenting, you have about as much relationship with the nine-year-old as a sperm donor would.
00:13:24You spend time with a nine-year-old, the nine-year-old is going to go back to her mother and her mother is going to be all over prying every little piece of information out of her daughter about what you said as humanly possible, right? So, what does that mean? What does that mean?
00:13:38Well, what that means is that the mother is going to find out everything you said to her daughter and her mother, again, people who are terrible are incredibly prickly about their reputations. So, of course, the mother is going to completely lose her mind and come out all guns blazing on you.
00:14:02Or you lie to your daughter, right? So, if you go and tell the truth to your daughter, then you're going to have a very aggressive and obviously deeply unstable woman who's going to be attacking you from every direction that you can conceive of and some you can't even think of. Or you tell your nine-year-old daughter lies.
00:14:24Well, you know, there were misunderstandings and I wasn't ready, like all the things that just aren't true. In which case, you're saying, gee, I really hope that I can help a child by lying to her. Well, I don't really think that's going to be very helpful or very productive. So, I can't for the life of me and, you know, again, I'm just an amateur and this is just my thoughts, I could be wrong about all of this, but I can't for the life of me imagine how it's possible to help the nine-year-old.
00:14:50We say, oh, well, maybe I'll give her some money. Okay, well, if you give her some money and the mother's still an addict and it doesn't sound like she's had a change of heart, I mean, let's say that the mother is no longer an addict, right? Well, what does that mean?
00:15:05Well, it means that she's gone through some sort of counseling, she's gone through some sort of, I assume, she's gone through some sort of 12-step program or some sort of addiction cessation program and what that would mean, of course, is that she would have gone through the process of apologizing or making restitution to the people she'd lied to and wronged over the course of her addiction.
00:15:29So, I think we can assume, based upon all available evidence, that the mother of the nine-year-old girl has not gone through any particular staggering levels of self-growth, wisdom or knowledge or taking ownership or responsibility because she's still aggressive and she, I guess, tried to get child support from you and rather than take responsibility for herself.
00:15:52So, let's say you do give the mom some money, the mother of the nine-year-old. Well, what does that mean? She's probably still an addict of some kind or another, which means that the money is going to be used to fuel the addiction, which is going to be bad for your nine-year-old daughter.
00:16:09So, I can't for the life of me figure out what on earth the plan is here. I mean, it sounds like you have a problem with guilt and shame because you're talking yourself into, well, I abandoned this child, which isn't really what happened, and you're just trying to do some self-punitive thing.
00:16:26But your relationship and your responsibility is to your one-year-old daughter because that's where you can have the greatest effect and the greatest positivity. Anything which, I mean, we could make the case, I suppose, in a theoretical sense.
00:16:42We could make the case that, let's say that you get involved with your nine-year-old daughter and you can add 50% to her happiness while only taking away 25% of the happiness of your one-year-old daughter. I mean, let's just say, I mean, I know that this sounds silly, but honestly, this is how these kinds of calculations are reasonably made.
00:17:02So, if you do say, well, if I get involved with a nine-year-old, I can make her life 50% happier, whereas having the crazy ex around is only going to make my one-year-old 25% less happy. So, lookie-la, we have a 25% net increase in happiness. This is probably something that is going on, right? This is probably something that's going on.
00:17:26But, in order to increase the happiness of the nine-year-old, you have to lie and you have to misrepresent who you are, falsify the facts of why you weren't around, falsify everything about what happened with the mother of the nine-year-old, and therefore, as a massive liar, you are considering that this is going to do a lot of good.
00:17:50To lie to a child about the very reason for their existence and all the reasons to why you weren't involved with that child's life is somehow going to do that child a whole whack load of good. Well, I don't believe that that's true. I don't think that lying to children helps them become healthier and happier, and in a situation where you can't tell the truth, don't lie.
00:18:12And since you can't tell the truth to the child because she'll run to the mom and the mom will blow up at you and you won't get to see your daughter again, you won't get to see the nine-year-old again probably, but the one-year-old will be made miserable by the endless attacks from the ex, I don't see that there's any positive.
00:18:27You know, I've got to tell you, man, it's just a basic fact of life. Some shit we just have to live with. In my view, you've got to limit yourself to some things, so perusing the pictures of your daughter and how sad she is and so on, it's just not a good idea.
00:18:49I mean, you could go every morning, right? Every morning you could wake up and you could spend an hour, just go with me on this, and I'm not trying to put your nine-year-old daughter in the same category, but just sort of understand what I'm saying here. You could go every morning, you could wake up and you could spend an hour watching videos of men being blown up, decapitated, delimbed, shredded, destroyed, wounded, crying out in agony in war.
00:19:16Or, you know, whatever, industrial accidents, but war generally tends to be the most horrifying of these things. You could spend an hour every morning exposing yourself to that level of horror and would that make your day a whole lot less pleasant? Yes. Would that make your day and your heart a whole lot less available to your daughter's heart, your one-year-old daughter's heart? Yes.
00:19:38Would you be able to change anything about the wars going on around the world based on perusing the horrors of people being destroyed by, you know, these weird freaking C4-laden drones and so on, right? You would not. So, but it's a fact, right? It's true. Okay, and it's one thing to say I'm going to expose myself to terrible material so that I can make things better. Okay, I understand that.
00:20:07You know, if you're some multi-zillionaire or some very rich guy and you see a bunch of starving people, that tears your heart and you can go and send a whole bunch of food to the whole bunch of starving people. Sure, okay, I understand, but if you can't do anything about it, you have to limit your exposure to horror. Otherwise, horror leads to paralysis. You follow? You're then paralyzed as a human being.
00:20:30Exposure to horror only has value if we can do something to fix it, right? Exposure to horror only has value if we can do something to fix it. Otherwise, it is only and forever self-abuse to peruse the endless shredding of human limbs for the victims of war without being able to do anything about that war or stop it. It's just self-abuse.
00:21:00And sometimes we have to look at all available options and we just have to be strict with ourselves. And being strict with ourselves also means limiting what we expose ourselves to. Limiting what we expose ourselves to.
00:21:16So, in my view, you have to figure out whether there's any good that you can bring to the nine-year-old's life. Well, I don't think it's money, and money would just stimulate probably more aggression from your ex if you give money because now it's a way of it working.
00:21:33Because your ex is coming at you with aggression and obviously lying, right? I mean, I assume she's lying, right? So, if she goes to a lawyer and says to the lawyer, I want to go after this guy for child support. He's the father of my child. And the lawyer says, well, why hasn't he paid child support?
00:21:55And if your ex were to say to that lawyer, oh, I told him in no uncertain terms that he wasn't the father and then when he wanted to have anything to do with the child, I told my brother and my brother threatened him. Well, what would the lawyer say? Well, again, I don't know the law, but I'm sure the lawyer, if the lawyer has ethics, would have some issues and say, well, you know, that's why he hasn't been paying child support.
00:22:18He hasn't been paying child support because you told him it wasn't his child and then when he wanted to have anything to do with the child, he ended up getting threatened by your brother. So, that's why he hasn't paid child support. Now, whether that means you're legally liable, what do I know? Again, I'm no lawyer, but I assume that I guess the paternity test means that you are liable, but that would be the reason why you hadn't paid.
00:22:42And of course, that wasn't referenced. It wasn't referenced to say, the letter you got, I assume. It wasn't referenced to say, listen, I told you that you weren't the father. You ended up being threatened by my brother because I lied to my brother about what happened, at least according to what you say, and I don't have any other data to work with, so I'll go with that as true. So, that would be a little tricky.
00:23:04So, we can assume that she's not had any big reform because she hasn't apologized, right? I did you real wrong. I told you you weren't the father. When you might have been the father, I went with some other guy. Maybe he was more wealthy or whatever and that didn't work out, but she doesn't apologize to you and she hasn't said, you know, I've told your daughter everything that happened, so I don't need you to lie about anything, right?
00:23:26So, we assume that she hasn't had some big change of heart because you would know about that, but she's still, you know, manipulative and aggressive and all of that terrible stuff. So, what good can you do? If you tell her the truth, you're almost certainly, in my view, obviously my opinion, you're almost certainly going to get attacked, perhaps relentlessly, and not be able to see your daughter anyway, so what's the point?
00:23:46You would have to lie about everything regarding your choices and your decisions, right? So, your nine-year-old daughter says, why weren't you in my life? If you tell her the truth, you either get attacked if you lie, then you're lying to her about why she exists, you're lying to her about how much you cared about her, you're lying to her about your nature and your personhood, and how can you have a close relationship to anyone if you're lying about just about everything?
00:24:16So, I don't know. There's massive sympathies to everyone, but yeah, your focus is, I don't think there's much good you can do, in my humble opinion, for the nine-year-old, and again, I'm certainly happy to be corrected if there's more information you can let me know, but I don't see how that's going to work out well at all, and your primary responsibility is to your one-year-old daughter, because you have custody, right?
00:24:42You're her parent, you have a good relationship with the mother of your daughter, your one-year-old, and you are in love, you love her, and you're the mother and the daughter, and you're doing great parenting and all of that, so you have control over those variables, and you don't have any control over any other variables. So, that's my thought.
00:25:04Peaceful parenting question. Today, my six-year-old blew up at me after picking her up at school. She often asks to go to the park. Sometimes we go, most times we don't. I do, pretty much, every day, go with her five-year-old younger sister, who's still in half-day preschool, just two and a half hours per day.
00:25:28Today, her older sister asked to go, heard a no, and screamed at me for the about 13-minute ride home, kicking my seat all the way. Not able to listen to questions or comments. Tomorrow, for sure, we have an appointment. What is so different about today that it's so important? We should talk about this in the mornings before afternoon pickup so we can make a plan, etc.
00:25:50My daughter kept up the tantrum the whole way home, including the last four minutes, as I called my wife to listen in and be prepared for the whirlwind coming home. My daughter has injured my hearing before with her screams from the backseat. We get home. She keeps it up a bit, being defiant and hostile, but with most of the distractions of home available to her now. I did a good job of being calm throughout. It bothers me that she's six years old and has very little ability to regulate her emotions.
00:26:18Her younger sister is far, far more advanced, and she is with her ability to regulate and empathize. Younger sister is also far more literate, with an attention span for much more sophisticated books than her older sister. I've done a really fantastic job in that department. Older sister is an absolute slave to her own whim and seems to suffer greatly because of it. I do a decent job of being conscientious, empathetic, wanting to understand. I really wish my wife had these skills.
00:26:46I say, tell me more. What do you mean? What is different about this time than other times? What do you need to be happy? I'm mindful not to shout, not to intimidate, not to respond out of anger. When maybe I need to be a little less inquisitive, give direction, tell her that's how it's going to be, except that I think earnest curiosity without anger is the way.
00:27:06But my child won't engage. She doesn't seem to have the skill for it, when it's anything contentious, and she most always flees those conversations, escapes into conversations and play with her sister, ignoring her father and sometimes mother. Mother also never heard a criticism she thought was justified, and I'm seeing this manifest in my older daughter. I wish my wife were more present with the kids.
00:27:29Her about 13 hours of phone screen time is, quote, for work, or I'm only listening to my shows, so it doesn't count as screen time. I feel like after my daughter's screaming stops and she calms down, I'm forced to live in an unreality where I have to ignore the fact that you screamed at me for the past 15 minutes. I should just observe you, ignoring questions and comments from your dad as you play with your sister, and my wife stays mostly silent.
00:27:56I feel really unsupported by my wife in the discipline department, and I'm not even really shooting for discipline, just conversation. You have to use your words, and I'm thinking about it hours later. I don't want to ignore that you screamed at me for 15 minutes. What were you thinking about? What should I do when the child is unwilling to engage?
00:28:13She literally plugs her ears when I try to have earnest conversations about, hey, what can we do differently to avoid an afternoon like this one? Should I let it go, allow her to ignore me, and just get pulled into play with her sister? I feel like I'm in a bad cop, no cop situation with my absentee co-parent. Honey, he's talking to his wife, pretending to talk to his wife. Honey, are you willing to put your phone away from 7 to 9 every night? And the answer is not no, the answer is anger.
00:28:38So, boy, that's a very tough, very sad situation, and it also bothers me enormously, for reasons I will get into here.
00:28:50So, you have a favorite, and favorites, a kid is a favorite, right? She says, oh, the young is so much more sophisticated, and I've really done fantastic at getting into more sophisticated books, blah, blah, blah. Okay, so maybe the younger sister, you know, there's an average of eight IQ points differences between siblings, right? So, it's not uncommon to have a smarter sibling and a less smart sibling, and it's nothing right or wrong or good or bad about it. It's just a sort of fact of nature, but you have a preference.
00:29:16So, when you say the younger sister is far, far more advanced than she is, okay, well, maybe she is, right? Maybe she's just got some particular knack or something like that, or maybe she's smarter and understands the consequences, or maybe she's bouncing off the somewhat excitable older sister and her personality to some degree, a reaction to that.
00:29:38But, yeah, the older sister is an absolute slave to her own whims. Okay, what do you mean she's an absolute slave? She's a six-year-old kid. You're the parent. You can't just write off her personality in this way at all. I mean, it's a terrible thing to say about your own child, because what you've done is you've distanced yourself from your eldest daughter, and you're kind of condemning her.
00:30:04Okay, so if she is an absolute slave to her own emotions, let's say that's true. Okay, well, then there's nothing you can do, right? Why would you get upset, right? We don't get upset at our children's eye color, do we, or how tall they end up being. We certainly don't blame them for that, because that's just genetics.
00:30:21So, if your daughter is just this way, is an absolute slave, then you wouldn't be upset. So, you can't write her off in this kind of way with these absolute kinds of statements and also be upset with her. That's a real contradiction.
00:30:36The oldest daughter is in school, I assume, six, seven hours a day. The youngest daughter, two and a half hours a day. So, the eldest daughter looks at the youngest daughter and says, well, you get way more time with the parents and so on, and she's probably jealous and envious, probably having a pretty bad time at school.
00:30:53So, why is your six-year-old in school if this is the kind of behavior that gets produced from her being in school? This sort of rage and, right, do you know what she's going through at school? Do you know if she's being bullied? Do you know if she's seeing bullies? Do you know if any of this sort of stuff is occurring? There's nothing here about her school experience, but that seems pretty important, right?
00:31:15Now, I also think, frankly, you know, with all due respect, I think you're playing dumb in this message. I think you're far smarter than this, right? So, this sort of teeth-gritting empathy, well, tell me what's so different, right? So, you give me some of these examples, right? Tell me more. What do you mean? What is different about this time than other times? What do you need to be happy?
00:31:37So, if you ask a six-year-old who's going through a temper tantrum, what do you need to be happy? That's not good. I'm pretty certain about that. That's not good. As a parent, you should know what she needs to be happy.
00:31:52So, and if she's going through some kind of meltdown, saying, well, what do you need to be happy is saying to her, well, you know what you need to be happy. You're just having a meltdown rather than say it. Okay. So, if she knows what she needs to be happy, why wouldn't she tell you? And, of course, she already did tell you what she needs to be happy, which is to go to the park.
00:32:12Right? Maybe she wanted to go to the park so she could have some time with you to tell you what happened at school. Maybe she's having really bad dreams or she's not getting along with her mother and she wants to talk to you about it. It's not about the park, man. It's not about going to the park. There's something else. What do you need to be happy? It's your job as a parent to know what your six-year-old needs to be happy because she can't vocalize it herself, but it's kind of insulting because you're throwing up your hands and saying, well, I have no way as your parent of knowing what's going to make you happy.
00:32:38But if you, at the age of 35 or 40 or however old you are, have no idea what makes the child you raised happy, how's she supposed to know? Right? That's kind of rude, right? That's kind of rude. It's like me asking my child to pass a tool to me when I don't even know what the tool is. Just pass me the tool that I need. Well, what's the name of the tool? I don't know. Well, just tell me what you need to be happy.
00:32:59You're saying to the kid also, you're so out of control and so deranged and so crazy that there's no way I can possibly know what's going to make you happy. I just throw up, give up my hands. I can't manage your emotions and therefore, what, you're supposed to be able to? No. A tantrum a lot of time is panic at pretend parental helplessness.
00:33:23Well, I don't know. Kid panics because like, well, my father has no idea how to deal with me. So how on earth am I supposed to know how to deal with myself? And there's all of these funny things because you drop these little things in here, like these little breadcrumbs, right? So you're talking about your daughter and then you say, gee, I really wish my wife had these skills.
00:33:48Right. So you say, I do a decent job of being conscientious, empathetic, wanting to understand. And I really wish my wife had these skills. Right. Okay. Well, why doesn't your wife have these skills? And the reason I say you're playing dumb and, you know, again, I apologize if I'm wrong and I apologize for being blunt if it doesn't help, but I'm just going to tell you what I think.
00:34:06The reason I think you're playing dumb is you try to make suggestions to your wife and your wife blows up in anger. You say, come on, 13 hours or more a day on the phone is insane. Right. I mean, that's totally wrong when you've got kids. Right. Especially with the youngest being home, being away at school or in school for two and a half hours, maybe a bit of commute back and forth. I'm sure. But no, that's, that's terrible. Right. It's absolutely terrible.
00:34:29So, so your eldest daughter sees you trying to, or hears you trying to have some kind of conversation, and maybe you don't have them all in front of your kid, but probably happens from time to time, some kind of conversation with your wife. Right. Your six year old sees you trying to have some kind of reasonable conversation with her mother. And, and what happens? Well, her mother gets angry and nothing gets fixed. Her mother gets angry and nothing gets fixed.
00:34:57So you're trying to model all of this. I don't know. It's kind of half passive, aggressive, quote, conscientious, sympathetic and empathetic behavior. But you married a woman who doesn't do that. And you know, of course, you know, right, that daughters imprint on their mothers and they should. And that's exactly how everything is supposed to roll out in terms of their life. Daughters imprint on their mothers. Why?
00:35:22Because your daughter is going to grow up to want to be like her mother, because her mother is the person you chose to have children with. So her genes say, Oh, okay. So this is the most attractive female around my mother. And this is the person who's had children. So this is the romantically and sexually successful female. So I have to be like her so that I can attract a man to reproduce with. Right.
00:35:44So you choose your daughters and you choose your sons when you choose your spouse. When you choose who you have children with, you are choosing, I mean, obviously half the genetics of your children and you're choosing who they go to imprint with. So I'm a little baffled as to why you think your daughter is so incomprehensible that your daughter doesn't reason with you when your wife, their mother doesn't reason with you. Do you see what I'm saying?
00:36:11I don't genuinely don't understand what's confusing about this. You know, her mother only speaks fluent Japanese to her at home. I have no idea where she's getting this Japanese from. It's like, what are you talking about? You know exactly where she's getting this Japanese from. You married a woman who is inattentive to her children and who is aggressive. You say her mother never accepts any criticism.
00:36:36So you married a woman who's a phone addict, a dissociation addict, unable to be criticized or corrected or reasoned with, who blows up in anger when you even say something like maybe no phones from 7 to 9 p.m., which is outside of work hours. So it can only be what some shows she's listening to. Give me a break. Right. So I'm trying to figure out what's not blindingly obvious here. And this is why I say I think you're playing dumb. Right.
00:37:02Your mother, sorry, maybe your mother too. The mother of your six-year-old has tantrums. Your six-year-old has tantrums. The mother of your six-year-old doesn't listen. Your six-year-old plugs her ears. Your wife responds to any criticism or coaching with aggression and temper. Oh look, your six-year-old responds to any criticism or coaching with aggression and temper.
00:37:32So I'm like shaking my head here trying to figure out, because look, as I said before, and I always say, I put listeners to this show in the top 1% of intelligence. What that means is that you're not dumb. You get that from me 100%. So you're not dumb. So then why are you playing dumb? You know exactly where this behavior is coming from. It's coming from the mother.
00:37:54Now you can say it's bad to respond with anger when you don't get what you want. But if you married a woman who responds with anger when she doesn't get what she wants, what are you talking about? You just look bizarre to your children. Like you married mom. You love mom. You had children with mom. So if I act like mom, how can that possibly be bad?
00:38:21You see what I'm saying? When mom doesn't get what she wants or when she gets something she doesn't want, like criticism or maybe put the phone away 7 to 9 p.m., she responds with anger. You love mom. You dated mom. You got engaged to mom. You got married to mom. You had children with mom. So how on earth can you tell me that when I act like mom, that's bad? I can't hear what you're saying over who you've made children with.
00:38:45This isn't even subtle. This isn't some big tenuous connection like, oh, I had a dream about the Great Depression. What does that mean? It's like, so your eldest daughter is acting like your wife. Well, of course she is.
00:39:07You said mother also never heard a criticism she thought was justified. And I'm seeing this manifest in my older daughter. I wish my wife was more present with the kids. Her about 13 hours of phone screen time is for work or I'm only listening to my shows.
00:39:21So your wife reacts with anger whenever there's any negative feedback or she doesn't get what she wants. And so does your daughter do. So I'm not sure what you're talking about. You've already made the connection. This is why I think you're playing dumb.
00:39:38Now, maybe you're playing dumb because you're like, okay, well, if I accept that my wife doesn't accept criticism and that that's going to imprint itself on my daughters, what do I do? Well, I don't know. I can't tell you what to do. I can only tell you what I think is true and make the case for it. I can't tell you what to do. I can only tell you what I think is true and make the case for it. Not like some personal opinion thing, but the evidence I think is all over your letter.
00:40:00And what do you do? Does your wife think she has a problem with her temper? Is she willing to go to anger management? Is she willing to say, gee, you know, maybe my bad temper or my ill temper or my volatility is transferring to my eldest daughter to the point where she's screaming at my husband for 15 minutes straight. Like, maybe that's bad. Maybe we want to break that cycle. Now, if your wife doesn't admit she has a problem, then she's not going to change. Like 100%. 100%.
00:40:28Right? So, you think of an athlete who has won the gold medal at the Olympics for the last five Olympics straight, right? He's won the gold medal, summer and winter Olympics, I say, right? So, it's only 10 years, not 20. Okay, so, you've got an athlete who's won gold medal, last five Olympics, and you say, I think you should do the opposite of whatever you're doing in your training.
00:40:54The athlete would say, I won't, in fact, do the opposite of what I'm doing in my training, because my training has resulted in me winning a gold medal, being the greatest athlete in the world in my field of sport for the last five Olympics. I can't do any better. So, I'm not doing the opposite of my training.
00:41:16So, this is why. Whereas, of course, if you have an athlete who loses every time, and you say, you got to switch up your training, you got to change your training, if the athlete wants to win, he'd have to say, or she'd have to say, well, yeah, I mean, obviously, I need to do something different because I keep losing. Right? So, does your wife think that she does anything wrong? Now, if she doesn't think she does anything wrong, you won't be able to change her. Like, give it up. Like, don't even try, don't even think about it, don't torture yourself with it. It's not going to happen.
00:41:46You might as well stand in front of a house and say, oh, man, I wish I had built this 10 feet further back from the road. Oh, man. I mean, you can't move your house 10 feet further back from the road. It is what it is. And it won't change. If your wife won't accept criticism, she's not going to change. And then you're just going to have to accept that your children are going to imprint upon the woman you chose to be their mother. Of course they are. Of course they are.
00:42:15I mean, my daughter imprints on my wife. My wife imprinted on her mother. I imprinted on my father. And, right, so, I mean, even though my father was mostly absent, almost completely absent, I imprinted at least on that absence. So, yes, you chose the nature of your children when you choose the mother who births them.
00:42:39So, I'm a little confused as to why your six-year-old getting angry is such a terrible bad thing, while your wife getting angry, which I assume happened long before you married her and long before you decided to have children with her, your wife getting angry apparently is totally fine.
00:42:58But, you see, your daughter getting angry is really terrible and has to be changed. I'm sorry, how dare you? How dare you choose an angry mother for your children and then complain that your daughters have problems with temper? I don't, I literally, I mean, honestly, this is like you writing to me saying, well, I moved my whole family to Japan. I put my kids in Japanese immersion school. We only speak Japanese at home. I'm outraged that they learn Japanese.
00:43:23Like, I don't, sorry, I don't understand it. So, I'm happy to hear more, but that's the thing. All right.
00:43:28Hi, Steph, any tips on journaling? I've been journaling for 13 months based on the following three assumptions.
00:43:33God knows what I'm going to journal. God records every word. God creates all thoughts. I think that God is the control center of the human body, the throne room of the human body, that is.
00:43:45So, I really can't speak to that, those assumptions, but I will tell you this, that there is ancestral and evolutionary knowledge in your mind that is constantly struggling against the mendacious banality of the present.
00:44:01That your ancestors died, most of them being unable to speak the truth. You have a greater capacity to speak the truth than all of your ancestors combined did, and they're screaming out for you to redeem the shame of their silence by speaking your mind.
00:44:15So, in my journaling, I'm like, I want to tap into knowledge so far outside my consciousness, you call it God, I may call it something else, but I'm going to assume that I have all of the answers I need within me, and all I need to do is shut up and listen.
00:44:30And when I opened that doorway, opened that portal, so to speak, and said, oh, knowledge of mine, what are the answers to my life's problems?
00:44:40I got absolute, certain, unequivocal, impatient, why the hell did it take you so long to even ask, knowledge coming out of my mind.
00:44:51Unconscious, deep down, whatever, the lizard brain, whatever you want to call it. All of the part of my brain that actually processes reality rather than socially preferable fantasy.
00:45:01I mean, modern society is little more than a shared psychosis of ultimate distraction, and to concentrate, to know, to learn, to connect with that which is true, requires that you be willing to be schooled by the ancient elements of your own personality.
00:45:16There are things within us infinitely older than we are. Honestly. Absolutely. Do you think the DNA all just came created with you? No, the DNA will go back billions and billions of years.
00:45:28There are things within us infinitely older than we are. This is not mystical. This is not mystical at all.
00:45:34I mean, do you know how your eye works? I barely do, but it works.
00:45:39Do you know how and why you have the dreams you have? Nope, but you do.
00:45:44Do you know how your spleen works? Nope, but it knows what to do.
00:45:48There's knowledge and power and depth and truth within us far older than we are.
00:45:53Now, I'm not talking about a soul, but the soul is an analogy for wisdom we inherit from eternity.
00:46:01And we are the very tip of a snowflake's arm on the top of a giant glacier that goes down half a mile into the ocean, like our individual lives.
00:46:11You did not design your brain. You did not design your heart, your lungs, your nervous system, which, if unraveled, travels thousands of miles, it seems.
00:46:18You don't figure out the dreams that are trying to instruct you. There's so much going on within you that is far older than you.
00:46:26You know, I barely know where my bladder is, right? But it does its thing and empties out the waste water or collects the waste water.
00:46:36So there is knowledge and wisdom within us far deeper and older than we are.
00:46:43There's a reality processing center in our mind that we're required to survive that is utterly at odds with the lives we are half compelled to tell in the world.
00:46:53Right, there's pattern recognition that occurs about danger that we're constantly told is mere prejudice and bigotry and so on.
00:47:00There's all of this reality processing that occurs that has to be continually buried by hatred, attacks, propaganda, falsehoods and denigration.
00:47:14So it's really all about saying, if I was in a safe space to tell the truth, no matter what, what would I say?
00:47:25And society has always been dangerous to truth because society, in terms of the hierarchy and the power structures, survives almost entirely on lies, particularly moral falsehoods.
00:47:39So telling the truth, the truth is egalitarian. The truth sets you free, but it often gets crucified in the process, or at least the truth teller.
00:47:49So to me, it was just about saying, OK, what if what I think I know is all open to question?
00:47:58And what if all of the answers are within me? Right. So Socrates, of course, went traveling all over the ancient world, querying all the sophists and finding out that they didn't really know what they claimed they knew.
00:48:09So he was of the humility to say, maybe everything I know is wrong. But then he thought that the answers were outside and the answers are within.
00:48:20Because if you go outside and ask people, well, most people lie most of the time and they don't even know they're lying.
00:48:28Right. Most people lie most of the time and they don't even know they're lying.
00:48:31They have this sweet innocence of giant baited fishhook swallowing propaganda regurgitation.
00:48:38So if you go outside of yourself for answers, you will encounter sophistry.
00:48:45And of course, if you claim to need answers, people will give you answers that benefit them, not which benefit the truth and or you.
00:48:53You go to the political powers and you say, what is virtue?
00:48:58They say virtue is obedience to the law. Right. Which we define. Right.
00:49:03And so when you go to most power structures and you ask, what is virtue? They'll tell you everything that benefits them at your expense. Right.
00:49:12Whereas if you say, well, the truth of the world is within me, which means I've survived long enough to formulate this question, which means reality processing has occurred continually within me.
00:49:24And therefore, all I need to do is focus on that reality processing.
00:49:28So it's really just a matter of opening up the portal called I could be entirely full of crap, which is really the beginning of wisdom.
00:49:36You know, that's obviously a paraphrase of Socrates, but it's just about opening the portal and saying, OK, well, what if everything I've been told is a lie?
00:49:43And what if the things I tell myself is a lie? Where's the truth? Well, you don't have to go outside yourself.
00:49:48You go inside yourself to reality processing and just kneel before the ancient wisdom within you, which is why you're here and receive the truth in all humility.
00:49:58That's the best way to journal, in my humble opinion. All right.
00:50:02Let's do one more. One more.
00:50:04In your History of Philosophers and Wrestling with the Dead series, much to the gravekeeper's chagrin, I imagine, do you see an overarching theme in their arguments eventually?
00:50:18Rainbowing towards UPB and peaceful parenting, similar to how parenting practices have improved over the ages, referencing Lloyd DeMoss and psychohistory, or perhaps each of their arguments lurk like gargoyles of the dead, ends of flying buttresses to support the state.
00:50:37Lovely language, by the way. I really wanted to compliment you on that. That's some scintillating syllables to string together.
00:50:44I don't think parenting is better. I don't think parenting is better. I think that parenting has gone from principled violence to amoral appeasement.
00:50:59So, children were beaten and absolute moral lessons were pounded into them through violence. The violence, of course, I vehemently disapprove of and disagree with. However, the absolute moral lessons are a treasure to be praised and worshipped, really.
00:51:17Now, parents quote reason with their children, but provide them no absolute moral lessons. Which is worse? Well, given that mental health problems have been rising, is amoral appeasement worse than aggressive absolutism in terms of parenting?
00:51:39Well, it would seem, based upon the data, depression is way up, anxiety is way up, drug use is way up, both legal and illegal, and it's all pretty terrible. Conformity is way up, sexual dysfunction is way up, fetishes are way up. I mean, unhappiness as a whole is increasing, particularly among the women.
00:52:07So, we have amoral appeasement rather than absolutist aggression. And absolutist aggression seems to have protected children from the moral and relativistic decay of happiness that's characterized by amoral appeasement.
00:52:24Obviously, both are wrong and both are bad, but statistically it seems that the amoral appeasement is worse. So, the number of lies being told to children these days in education appears higher than ever before.
00:52:46The number of lies being told to children in modern, quote, education is higher than when I was a child, and much higher, and much more foundational.
00:53:00I was taught objective right and wrong, good and evil. I don't mean philosophically objective, but absolute right and wrong, good and evil. I mean, yes, there was hypocrisies and there was aggression and so on, but I was taught that, and that appears to be more survivable than amoral appeasement, which follows manipulation, followed by manipulation and humiliation and all that kind of stuff.
00:53:23So, I'm going to leave the rest of your question because I'm answering it as I go through the History of Philosophers, and in particular, the Wrestling with the Dead series.
00:53:33All right, so let's do one more. Okay, why are so many people, it seems like the majority, embarrassed of their age?
00:53:39A people in their 30s and 40s I work with are clearly uncomfortable with their age. I guess you'd say a number of people or some people. The majority of people are uncomfortable with their age. This is odd to me as I respect their expertise, which comes with the age in the industry I'm in.
00:53:55They have good careers and many of them families as well. I would think people would grow more confident as they age since they become more accomplished and gain more life experience. So, tyranny and totalitarianism always relies on the cult of youth, always, always, always relies on the cult of youth.
00:54:12You can think of the Hitler Youth, you can think of the Red Guards, you can think of the struggle sessions that the young boys and girls would inflict on their teachers in the Cultural Revolution. This also occurred, of course, in Russia under communism.
00:54:29And you can think of the youth brigades of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and so on. So, tyranny always relies upon youth. Now, why is that? Well, tyranny is certainty and error, and the aggression, the violence is because of the errors.
00:54:52So, those who are the most aggressive in the pushing of their belief systems are those who have the fewest rational answers and whose ideas and arguments contradict themselves enormously. So, when you're young and you haven't had to try to test your ideas out there in the world, you can be absolutely certain and absolutely, totally freaking wrong as well.
00:55:19This is the old sort of thing about like, well, taxes are the price we pay, but then you actually have to go out and pay taxes, you may have a different view. When you are on the receiving end of state power, it's pretty easy to be pro-state power. When you're on the paying end, you may have some particular doubts.
00:55:37So, as you age, you try to put your belief systems into practice, and then you find that they don't really work. So, in order to grow totalitarianism, you need to have youth worship, because the youth can violently enact ideologies untempered by any practical experience.
00:56:04Which is why, you know, the people who want to pursue totalitarianism so often want to lower the voting age and so on, right? So, you have to create a cult of the youth in order to push totalitarianism, because people, at least in the past, it doesn't really seem to be happening anymore for various reasons.
00:56:20But people in the past, you know, this is an old statement, I think it was of Churchill, somebody who's not a socialist at the age of 20 has no heart. Somebody who's not a conservative at the age of 40 has no head, right? So, people naturally age into a kind of conservatism.
00:56:38Again, so many people are shielded from actual reality by debt and regulations and government work and so on, that it's not really happening as much anymore. But people generally age into a kind of wisdom. So, when you're young, you think that there's a perfect solution to any particular problem, because you don't actually have to enact it, right?
00:57:00So, you say, oh, well, you know, we've got some rich people over here, we've got some poor people there, we'll use the power of the state to take the money from the rich people and give it to the poor people, and it's going to be fine, and it's going to be perfect, right? And that's what you think, that's what you believe.
00:57:12Now, what happens, though, of course, is that if you actually try to enact these things, or you track how these things are enacted, you realize that there are a massive amount of problems, some of which become pretty quickly intractable, right? I mean, the whole purpose of the welfare state was to eliminate poverty, and poverty is now higher than it was when the welfare state started.
00:57:34If you count, of course, I mean, in some ways, in an absolute sense, in that you've had sometimes three or four generations where nobody's had a job, but they've lost all of those skills. But if you count unfunded liabilities and national debts, we have far more poor people now than we did at the beginning of the welfare state.
00:57:51I mean, as I've said before, poverty was declining by 1% a year every year after the end of the Second World War, and then it stopped declining when you got the welfare state in, right? So, to everybody who's inexperienced, everybody who's inexperienced has a solution to a problem that they're absolutely certain anyone who opposes it is immoral, and they're absolutely wrong.
00:58:17Because they can live in the world of theory. They can live in the world of theory. I mean, how many people try to be actors, and they're certain they can be great actors, and then they go out into the world, and they try to get parts, and they don't get hired, right?
00:58:32So, young people are very aggressive with their solutions and very absolutist, and they find it incomprehensible that there can be huge problems with that which they view as perfect because they haven't had to implement anything.
00:58:51So, if you want to expand the power of the state, you go to young people with an obvious, quote, solution, you indoctrinate them, and then you tell them that anybody who questions or opposes this solution is immoral, is evil, is a reactionary, is a counter-revolutionary, is a bourgeois, right?
00:59:13And then, because young people are both certain and wrong, they are then aggressive, and you point their aggression towards anyone who opposes this viewpoint, and you're a way to the racist in expanding state power. And, of course, this happens a zillion ways, right? How do they promote this youth culture?
00:59:31Well, of course, young people are prettier than old people, right? So, you focus on looks, right? You make everything shallow, right? This was sort of the 80s thing with all of the pretty boys, right? The Billy Idols, the Spandau Ballet, the, who else, Adam Ant, and all of the pretty boys, the Duran Duran.
00:59:51So, you make physical beauty the standard by which people are to be judged, and the young win, of course, in that regard. You make athleticism, you make enthusiasm, you make great hair, whatever you're doing, you make youth the standard. Not wisdom, not truth, not virtue, not accomplishment, not achievement, not a big family, but young, pretty people, and that appeals to the shallow, mammal sense of what has value, right?
01:00:16Fertility markers, and so on, right? The Belinda Carlisle, and the Bangles, and the Go-Go's, and the, gosh, because it's the 70s. I mean, you didn't really have to be much of a pretty boy to be, let me kill Mr., you didn't have to be much of a pretty boy to be a big rock act. I mean, some of the ugliest bands, Rush, I'm looking at you, were enormously successful based upon their talents.
01:00:40But the 80s, and of course, I understand there was MTV and all of that. Suddenly, you had to be really good looking, and that's part of the youth culture. So, when you see an old person who has doubt because he's lived through a lot and realized that there aren't solutions, there are only trade-offs, right? There aren't solutions in big sort of social context problems. There aren't solutions, there are only trade-offs.
01:01:03You get some benefits, some minuses, and it all should be underpinned by moral absolutism.
01:01:09So, some older person who has doubt, because the stories used to be all about young people are very enthusiastic, and the older, wiser people are the ones who flourish.
01:01:22I'm thinking about the Arms of the Man by George Bernard Shaw, where there's this soldier, and the young girls are all, they want a dashing soldier who fights and flourishes his sword and runs up the hill on a white horse and is a great guy, and he's like, no, I'm a mercenary, I just try and survive and do my best and get by and do my job.
01:01:43And he's the guy who's actually survived, right? And there used to be all these World War I movies where the most enthusiastic guy just went and got shredded, the guy who was wise and held back did a lot better, sort of Gallipoli was one of these, but you could read about all of this sort of stuff all over the place.
01:01:58So, the eager and enthusiastic young people got mown down, and the wiser people who held back and were more cautious were the ones who survived.
01:02:05And, of course, you would see in the rise of the novel, Moll Flanders and other kinds of work, where the young, headstrong youths would be absolutely certain of their course of action and would be counseled to be restrained and cautious by the older people, and the older people would turn out to be right, and it's just a way of training the younger people to respect the older people.
01:02:32Now, of course, you've had this, everyone who's older is a racist, everyone who's older is a bigot, everyone who's older is terrible and hidebound and reactionary, and you do that so that you cut off the young people from the cautious wisdom of people with actual experience in the world, people who've actually tried to do things in the world.
01:02:53And realize the limitations of action, the limitations of pure compassion, the limitations of the fantasy that there's benefits without costs, right?
01:03:03And so, you have, I mean, The Simpsons was sort of a big part of this, I guess, starting in the, what was it, the 90s? But Matt Groening's Life in Hell comic, which came out before that, was saying that the young people are cool, and the old people are stupid.
01:03:21Young people are cool, and wise, and hip, and know what's going on, and the old people are reactionary, and stupid, and foolish, and ridiculous, right?
01:03:29You know, shut up, boomer is another kind of thing, although, of course, the boomers do have their own troubles, because one of the things that happened with the boomers was the boomers were cut off from the wisdom of their ancestors.
01:03:39This was a, this is not even my theory, like, this is very much a psyop in the 60s of pushing, you know, sex and drugs, and rock and roll, and anyone who, you know, the 50s were a time of really, you know, stuck up, and really horrible repression, and conformity.
01:03:59And the man in the gray flannel suit, and Jack Lemmon, and an advertising agency just wanted to rip off his tie, and be free, and paint Mount Rushmore with the flesh of his nipples, like all this kind of, you know, be free, and self-expressed in love, and make love not war.
01:04:15And so, it was, the boomers were characterized, really, when they were indoctrinated, particularly in college, but even earlier than that, and certainly through the mainstream media, Easy Rider and stuff, and Five Easy Pieces was, I think, the 70s, but it's the same kind of idea.
01:04:31That all the wisdom of your ancestors was just prejudice and bigotry.
01:04:35Your ancestors were some terrible people who stole the land, and raped the natives, and so on.
01:04:41And so, you, the boomers were cut off from all the wisdom of their ancestors, and therefore grew up shallow and hedonistic, and therefore their children had no respect for them at all, right?
01:04:53So, there's this battle, right?
01:04:55So, there was a meme posted in an older person's channel, which said, whenever they say, okay, boomer, you say, okay, renter, right?
01:05:04So, people get mad at the boomers, but the boomers, with themselves, through specific and very clear psychological operation, were cut off from the wisdom of their own ancestors, and encouraged to pursue hedonism, because their ancestors were wrong about everything, right?
01:05:19And all of the instincts that have been developed over thousands of years were told to be prejudicial, and false, and wrong, and so on.
01:05:26Like, why would you wait to get married to have sex, and why don't you just have sex with multiple partners, and take drugs?
01:05:33It's not a way of damaging your brain, but it's a path to enlightenment, and working is for suckers.
01:05:40So, this all was around destroying the chain that sort of carefully guarded flame passed from generation to generation.
01:05:50In the 50s, it really hit hard, right?
01:05:53And cut the boomers off, and therefore the boomers are adrift, and they're selfish, and all of that.
01:05:58But that's because they have no wisdom, and they have remained young, right, in mind.
01:06:03And not in a good way, not like youthful, but immature.
01:06:07They remained immature, because that's the whole side, that's the whole point.
01:06:12So, why are people embarrassed about getting older?
01:06:15Because they were raised with the idea that age is prejudice, and the certainty of youth should never be opposed.
01:06:22And you see this, again, there's a zillion movies you can think of where the young people are wise, and the parents are foolish, right?
01:06:29So, you think of Mean Girls, right?
01:06:31Like, I'm a fun mom, I'm a cool mom, and Parent Trap, the parents are kind of foolish.
01:06:35And it's like everywhere, all over the place, all the time.
01:06:38This is true of Malcolm in the Middle.
01:06:39Malcolm was a genius, and his parents were goofy and foolish, and had nothing of value to offer him.
01:06:45And, of course, it appeals to the vanity of young people to imagine that their parents are foolish,
01:06:49and they are in possession of God's wisdom and grace simply by being young and unable to shave.
01:06:54So, yeah, we've got shame the old, the older foolish, the older prejudicial, the older stupid, the older bigoted, the older terrible.
01:07:04And it's a way of making sure that ancestral wisdom developed with incredible harshness and pain over thousands and thousands of years,
01:07:13that that is all cut off.
01:07:15And you keep people in a state of eternal adolescence by keeping them away from the wisdom of their ancestors.
01:07:22And now, of course, it's not that everything our ancestors had to say was wise,
01:07:26but to just abandon it all in the space of about 10 years, 1955 to 1965,
01:07:33by simply rejecting it all without really wondering about its source.
01:07:38But, of course, the wisdom of the ancestors was to do with how do we deal with limitations, right?
01:07:45How do we deal with limitations?
01:07:48But when you can create and print money at will, and borrow money pretty much ad infinitum,
01:07:53then there are no more limitations.
01:07:55And therefore, all of the wisdom that was developed to deal with limitations looks ridiculous and foolish, right?
01:08:01When you can have a welfare state, when you can have birth control pills,
01:08:04or when you are not responsible for the products of your own sexuality,
01:08:07what on earth would the need or absolute requirement for sexual restraint be at all?
01:08:12You can just run to the government and get antibiotics,
01:08:14and you could run to the welfare state to pay for your kids if the dad's not around and all of that,
01:08:19and you don't have to pay more taxes for it because it's all done on debt and money printing.
01:08:22So I think that's pretty foundational as to why, as people age,
01:08:27they often feel embarrassed because they're now entering into the category where the young will attack them.
01:08:33And people get nervous, right?
01:08:35When the young are encouraged to be certain and wrong, it's extremely dangerous to society
01:08:40because the young are the bigoted ones because they don't understand the nuance of trade-offs
01:08:45and that there aren't solutions, there are only trade-offs.
01:08:49All right, I hope this helps.
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