This lecture by Stefan Molyneux explores perspectives on mental health, parenting, and societal implications. He discusses the impact of mental illness diagnoses on understanding psychology, the complexities of parenting in an irrational society, and critiques societal norms and the philosophical depth of religious texts. Molyneux examines the influence of social media on travel choices and shares insights on government responses to crises like COVID-19. The lecture concludes with reflections on personal relationships and the importance of addressing misconceptions for meaningful connections.
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LearningTranscript
00:00All right, how are you doing everybody? Sven Melanie from Free Domain. Let's get to your
00:04questions. Does the modern way of understanding the mind, primarily through mental illness
00:09diagnosis, obscure the deeper nature of the psyche? I'm not sure what you mean primarily
00:14through the mental illness diagnosis. I did a show many years ago, a three-part series on
00:22mental health. It is very tough in the world to figure out what is healthy mentally. I mean,
00:32this is an old quote, it is no mark of mental health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick
00:36society. It's really tough to figure out what is healthy. You know, many years ago, probably about
00:4417 or 18 years ago, I wrote on a Free Domain forum that I did not believe there were any
00:51truly, truly great or good parents in the world. And of this course, a ruckus and a firestorm
00:59and so on. And I was saying that because there was not the theory of peaceful parenting and
01:05so on. In the same way, like, were there any really good doctors until the invention of
01:09modern medicine? I mean, absent the perverse incentives that exist now, until, I mean,
01:16I really was until the late 19th, early 20th century, you were actually better off not going
01:21to see a doctor. You had a greater chance of survival if you didn't see the doctor. You
01:26know, when there were leeches and humors and magical spells and all kinds of bizarre snake
01:31venom potions and so on. So, were there any really good doctors before there was a scientific
01:35theory and practice of, I don't know, germ theory, antibiotics? I mean, it took forever for
01:41surgeons to even realize that it might be a pretty good idea at some point to actually wash their
01:45hands before operating on people. In fact, the guy who first came up with that idea was
01:51harassed, considered insane, thrown into an asylum, and eventually was beaten to death by
01:57an orderly there. Now, of course, it's accepted that he was totally right, he'll scrub your
02:00hands. So, until there was a genuinely, you know, first principles valid, non-aggression
02:07principle, healthy theory of parenting, for me it was tough to imagine that there were any
02:14really good parents. I mean, this is not to say that there weren't good parents in the same way
02:18that I'm sure there were doctors who, you know, maybe they had some sort of OCD and they'd wash
02:23their hands, but there was accidentally good, right? It was not consistently good. Consistency
02:29is the key to excellence, right? I mean, a blind man could hit a hole in one if he played golf every
02:33day, but it's consistency that's key. And without the right theory, it's really tough to be,
02:39it's really impossible to be consistent. I mean, you could think the world is flat and you could
02:46sail across a sea, be blown off course, and get to your destination, but you wouldn't be able to
02:50reproduce it because you didn't have the right theory, didn't have the sphere of earth, the
02:55sextant, and so on, right? So, yeah, I remember that, and I would have put myself in that category
03:02as well back in the day before I really developed the theory of peaceful parenting and real-time
03:08relationships and so on. And now, I mean, here's the tough thing too, right? So now, is it great
03:13parenting to raise your children to be truly rational and then, you know, they've got to go out and make
03:21their way in a kind of crazy world? I think it will be possible to be genuinely good parents when
03:31the world becomes, well, quite a bit more sane because, you know, raise your children peacefully,
03:36raise your children reasonably, they've got to go out and try and find a way to get by in a world
03:40that's very much anti-rational a lot of times. So, it's not an easy answer. But certainly, the writing
03:49of peaceful parenting, well, I mean, that sort of developed the theory over time, but the writing of
03:53the book in particular, I think has really helped with that. At least now, you can be a consistently
03:57good parent if you follow those principles. But in terms of being a good parent, both not just in
04:06course, but in the effect on your children's lives, I mean, I think it's going to have to wait for a lot
04:10more people to become peaceful parents in order for that to be something which we can say.
04:17So, sorry, that was just a bit of a minor aside. I think it's related, but it's a bit of a minor aside
04:22based upon something that I saw that was, I remember, yeah, I remember being brought up as a
04:28criticism quite a bit in the book. He doesn't believe there are any good parents out there. It's
04:32like, no, there are good parents out there, but they're good parents by their own upbringing, by
04:39their nature, by their personality types, and again, still not significantly consistent.
04:47So, it's tough to know what is healthy. I mean, the healthier you are in the world,
04:52the more conflict you have with the crazies out there. So, what is it to be mentally healthy?
04:59That's tough. I mean, we all have to, I mean, I wouldn't say we, I certainly have to make my
05:02compromises, and it's tough. So, the deeper nature of the psyche, the psyche yearns for truth
05:14and survival. Now, this human nature, right deep down, there's our poles. These are our poles. These
05:20are what we're working with. We are fighting for survival, and we are fighting for truth. Now, we
05:27cannot survive without the truth, right? If we think we can fly, or we think that breathing air feeds our
05:34bodies, we can't survive without the truth. But too much truth also threatens our survival. I mean,
05:43the majority of people in the left in America are, you know, pretty comfortable with violence as a
05:50political tool. So, we can't survive without the truth. But if we have too much truth, that also
05:59threatens our survival. So, it's a bad and tough combo. It's a real balancing act. And, you know,
06:07I could see, I guess, you know, half a decade ago, I could see that political violence coming down the
06:12pipe, which is why, you know, I'll reason with people, but I don't, I'm not a violence guy and
06:18oppose it. Of course, right? All right. So, I mean, this is the challenge we all face. We need to be
06:25accepted into society to some degree in order to survive and reproduce, right? Social animals. We
06:30need to interact with others. We need to find someone to have our kids, raise our kids with, and so on,
06:34right? So, this is the challenge we face. How much truth can we survive? And, of course,
06:42surrendering the truth, backing away from the truth, choking back the truth, silencing the truth.
06:47Well, that's humiliating, isn't it? Violence is there to humiliate truth-tellers. Violence is there
06:54to provoke a sense of cowardice among those who want to tell the truth. So, that's, that's a
07:03navigation. That's a balancing act. Everybody has to choose their own levels as far as that goes.
07:10And, and to, this is a line from my novel, Just Poor, and not at Bob says to Mary, the truth is not a
07:19sword to be drawn at all costs. In the face of violence, a silence can be wise. It's not, it's not
07:28humiliating, to me, it's not humiliating to stay silent in the face of a violence, especially if
07:35you have a family, right? So, that's, the moral horror is on those who are violent, not those who
07:44avoid certain topics. It's just a fact, right? All right, let's see here. Tell me if the Bible was
07:51the work of one particular philosopher, would anyone even allow that person into a philosophical
07:55debate with real philosophers? But the Bible is not the work of a philosopher. The Bible is a document
08:02of theological moral, moralism. The Bible is a work of theological moralism. The Bible is not
08:11a philosophical document. So, the Bible is, religious texts as a whole, is how we get morality
08:21prior to UPB. And society needs morality. And if the way to get morality is with stories and
08:32fables and gods and punishments and heaven and hell and examples, that's fine. I mean, I learned
08:39a lot about integrity from reading The Fountainhead, which I sort of go back to about once every
08:4510 years or so. So, you can learn a lot about morality from stories. So, saying that the Bible
08:54needs to be evaluated according to philosophical rigor is invalid. Have you ever thought about
08:59returning to your roots in the theater? Do you mean writing for the theater? No. I do not
09:07consider that to be a valid option. I mean, I was not a bad playwright. I wrote about 30 plays
09:13when I was younger. And I did produce one, which actually did quite well. And I enjoyed the process.
09:24I thought it was fun and interesting and creative and enjoyable. Actually, believe it or not, I wrote
09:29a Greek tragedy for a man who had the most amazing, lifelike, life-sized puppets. It was a retelling
09:40of a Greek fable for this life-sized puppet guy. It was amazing. Really, really cool. And he produced
09:48that. And that also did quite well. So, the theater, there is no exploration of the human condition
09:58in the theater anymore. It just isn't there. It's all just pushing an agenda and programming
10:06the population and giving people their comfortable false egalitarian fables. And it's not about
10:13a genuine exploration of the human condition and the challenges and complexities and so on. It is
10:19all, you know, I mean, for me at least, it's all just low IQ propaganda, repetition reinforcement
10:25stuff. So, no, not for me. And I have, I have, I think, too many of my own useful words to mouth
10:33others, to star in other people's works or to have a role in other people's works. So, I don't think it
10:41would be particular. And for me, it's a matter of differentiation and focus. So, for instance,
10:50does the world need another actor or does the world need philosophy? You know, it's funny because,
10:56you know, you can switch on any streaming service. It's pretty wild, right? You can switch on just
11:02about any streaming service or, I guess, people still watch TV or whatever, right? And there are
11:07thousands and thousands and thousands of actors all out there doing pretty good jobs, doing pretty
11:13good jobs as a whole. And you don't see a lot of bad acting on TV. You don't see a lot of bad acting
11:21in movies. Even Andy McDowell is getting better. God help her. But there's just a lot of people who
11:28are good at that stuff out there doing their thing. I mean, I'm not going to kid myself and think I'm
11:34some sort of Marlon Brando or Al Pacino or Jack Nicholson or whatever. And that's not my
11:38level of talent is, of course, nowhere close to anything like that. So, I mean, I could be a
11:45decent and probably memorable actor. Not famous, not, you know, maybe relatively well-known, but not
11:52famous, famous, right? But there's lots of people out there who are doing that and they're doing a good
11:57job and the world does not need another middling actor. So, no. Somebody says, so what was the real
12:04purpose of the COVID-19 agenda 2020 to 2022? Or do you still think it is not an agenda and actually
12:12it's being undersold as you came out and warned at the outset? Not an agenda. So, this is all just
12:19my particular thoughts. Of course, I don't have any empirical proof. I'm sure all of the empirical
12:24proof is long gone, you know, towed away like the Twin Towers and exorcised from the material realm.
12:33But I think that, my personal opinion, it escaped from the lab and the governments generally welcome
12:45disasters because it gives them more power. I think that the media makes money from fear-mongering,
12:51so they pumped up the fear about it. And because people got afraid, they then demanded
13:00a solution. And because they demanded a solution, colossal amounts of government money went towards
13:07the mRNA vaccine technology. And then people were easy to turn against each other and hospitals were
13:16easy to incentivize. And all this kind of stuff went down. I don't, for me, maybe there'll be proof
13:23at some point down the road. I don't think so, but of course I could be wrong. But for me, I don't think
13:28it was some big agenda. I think something big happens and then everyone just grabs whatever cash is rolling
13:36by. Right? That is, I think, what happens. It's sort of like if a Brinks truck full of $100 bills crashes
13:46in some neighborhood, everyone's just going to grab their money and run off. Oh, you see this when
13:51the police are on strike or there's some sort of social dislocation, then what happens is people just
13:58run into stores and grab big screen TVs. And so I think when there's a kind of rip in the normal
14:04sort of fabric and process and physics of the world, I think if you look at everybody's particular
14:11incentives, right? I mean, this thing gets loose, in my view. I came from the lab. This thing gets
14:19loose. And China, of course, has an incentive to say it came from the wet market or the pangolins or
14:28whatever. That's what China has because they don't want to say we were working on this stuff.
14:31America doesn't want to say that it had anything to do with funding it. France doesn't want to have
14:36anything to say to do with saying we helped build the lab or like, so everybody just kind of covers
14:40and shuts things up. That's just people protecting their own self-interest. So what happens then is
14:50the media gets a hold of it and they love pumping up fear. People respond to fear. They glue to their
14:56TV. They glue to their websites. And of course, you know, the people on the left as a whole,
15:01if you talk about shutting down travel from China, they'll just say racist. It's just a knee-jerk
15:06reaction to any ethnic thing. It's just racist. And so then people are freaking out. They're panicking.
15:14And you know, there's a certain number of sadistic people who enjoy panicking others.
15:18I myself, I'd have to sort of review. I was nervous. I was nervous because I pretty much
15:28accepted from the very beginning that it came from a biolab, right? So because in my view,
15:34and I did a whole video called The Case Against China, that it came from the lab. So for me,
15:40I didn't know what the long-term effects of this would be. And I never wanted governments to do
15:48anything, of course. But for me, I was like, yeah, I'm going to give this a couple, I'm going
15:52to give this a week or two and see, because I'm dealing with an unknown. So, I mean, I was very
15:58much, I mean, I did a whole video against the lockdowns from the very beginning. It can do far
16:02more harm than good, which was pretty easy to predict. So, and I was also curious, I was curious
16:09to see if any borders would be closed. I was quite curious about that, looking back. And when the
16:18borders weren't closed, well, then I became a little less nervous about things. So, I think it got loose.
16:28I think people couldn't, countries couldn't close borders because of cries of racism. I think that
16:35the media pumped up the dangers. I think China definitely ceded media with, you know, people
16:41falling over, that kind of stuff. The estimates that came out of the, I think it was a British
16:47think tank, I can't remember the name, the estimates were just wild. You know, I mean, they're just wild
16:53in terms of fatalities and deaths and so on. And then, of course, hospitals said, we need
16:58more money to deal with these things, to deal with COVID patients. So, the government offered
17:02them more money to deal with COVID patients. And then, everybody seemed to get classified quite
17:07a bit as a COVID patient and so on. And because people were so panicked and there was so much
17:14money in the emergency use authorization aspect, then that was very much fast-tracked and so on.
17:22And because people were so scared and they viewed the COVID vaccine as the only way to get back to any
17:30kind of normalcy, they turned on people who were hesitant or skeptical. And so, I don't view it as a
17:35big, you know, big giant hand moving all these chess pieces all over the place. I don't view it that
17:41way. What I view it as is a whole series of kind of dominoes that fall and people just grabbing
17:48opportunities to make a lot of money and have a lot of power when they can. And again, I could be
17:56wrong about all of this, just that that's sort of the way that I have viewed it as a whole. I'll view
18:01it. All right. Is Christian moral teaching incomplete? The New Testament barely emphasizes
18:08devotion to kin and instead focuses on love for self and non-kin neighbors. Either Christ presumes
18:14Gentiles by instinct, prioritize family, flawed assumption, or being raised in Jewish tradition
18:19is a necessary prerequisite for a full ethical framework. So, is Christianity fit for modern
18:24Gentiles? That's a very interesting question. Let's see here. So, non-kin neighbors, when a belief
18:33system is starting out, then it has to focus on people who aren't part of that belief system yet.
18:40Now, one of the reasons why emerging belief systems don't focus hugely on family is because
18:49either your family is already with you or they're not coming on the journey, right? Let's say a young
18:55man converts to Christianity around the time of Jesus. Either he's going to convince his family
19:01or his family is going to reject his conversion. But there's not a huge amount of the proselytizing
19:08can do in that situation. So, you kind of do want to focus on strangers, people who are further
19:15away. That's your best chance to gain new converts. So, I just view that as kind of necessary for the
19:24emergence or spread of a belief system, if that makes sense. Now, so, and of course, it did work
19:33very well. What are some of your favorite movies and why? Love the movie Room with a View. That's my
19:40favorite movie. It is beautiful. It's civilized. It's wise. It's deep. And I have a real affinity for
19:49late 19th century, early 20th century art. Because that, to me, was a time slice of true, deep,
19:57powerful human potential before, I mean, the infinite slaughterhouse of the 20th century
20:04destroyed all of that. It's, I mean, you can see on X sometimes sort of videos of, oh, here's a
20:11Paris 1908. And you see these people. I mean, I know it's a time slice and they're not going to
20:17the bad sections of town. I get all of that. But there was an optimism, a wealth, a civility,
20:23and a beauty to the, in the English, the Edwardian era, I think. But yeah, late 19th, early 20th
20:32century was a really beautiful time in many ways. And I'm drawn to a lot of the art from
20:37that. In the same way that I'm also drawn to the art that, the Russian art of the 1870s
20:45onward, especially novels. Amazing. I mean, to compare what Turgenev or Dostoevsky or, you
20:56know, I mean, to compare these writers, Pushkin, to compare these writers and then the society
21:02they describe, to compare those to what they described to what was going on under communism
21:10is deeply shocking. It's deeply shocking. Tolstoy and so on, right? I mean, so how life
21:19was prior to the hellscape of communism is really something. And of course, you know, they had
21:26the liberation of the serfs and so on, so it wasn't exactly paradise before. But the rule
21:32of law and relative civility and so on, social enforcement of rules rather than dictatorial
21:38enforcement of rules. Amazing. Powerful stuff. Powerful stuff. I don't know. There was a really
21:45good Spanish language version of Crime and Punishment called Sin Compassione. I've actually
21:51looked it up, but it's only available, I think, in the original Spanish. I don't think there
21:54are even subtitles. It was really the best adaptation of Crime and Punishment that I've
21:58ever seen. What else? Movies? I mean, for fun stuff. I mean, I enjoyed the Star Wars movies,
22:05especially the second one. Empire Strikes Back was a fun movie. Terminator 2 was a fun
22:09movie and, you know, had some little bit of philosophical gems in it, right? With the
22:13kids saying, you can't just go on killing people. Why? You know, that kind of stuff, right?
22:17Interesting questions. And I was, you know, when I was going through a bout of insomnia in
22:22my late 20s, I went to see, early 30s maybe, I went to go and see the movie Fight Club and
22:29to that hit. I mean, it's a pretty gross and repulsive movie in many ways, but it really
22:34did hit the core. And I just remember that, you know, we're a generation of men raised
22:38by women. I'm not sure another woman is the solution to a problem. So I just think that
22:41was a great line. To even have that mentioned in a movie is incredible. Movies. I did rewatch
22:49The Godfather not too long ago. And I mean, I mean, Brando anchors that performance in
22:56a truly fantastic way. So, and why? I mean, I find, I find a lot of movies and I don't
23:03really watch that many movies anymore. I don't mean to sound elitist or anything like that.
23:07I'd like to. I like movies, but it's just hard to find anything that's not gross. It's
23:12either like pure candy. Like it's either just complete fluff, like Marvel nonsense.
23:18Or it's just, you know, dark, wretched and incomprehensible. Or grim beyond words, right?
23:24The substance, that kind of stuff. Just repulsive. All right. Have you ever watched episodes of
23:30the UK show Super Nanny? I stumbled upon one tonight that horrified me. The old me would
23:36have applauded the approach. Since becoming so intimate with peaceful parenting, my heart
23:40broke for the little girl who was at the center of the episode. I saw myself in her and not
23:44one adult was asking why she was so angry, hostile, and in distress. It was all about
23:50controlling her behavior. Sickening. Thank you for writing about such an important book.
23:54Oh, thank you for writing such an important book. That's peacefulparenting.com. It changed
23:57my life. Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah, I used to watch some Super Nannies because
24:02I was curious what the state of sort of contemporary parenting approaches were or child management
24:08approaches were. And she did do some work from time to time that seemed kind of deep. But I think
24:13with Super Nanny, she was in general, she was being bungied into families that were in serious
24:21crisis. Like you've got kids injuring each other and bullying other kids at school and potential
24:26violence. And so I think that when you get into that kind of extreme situation, people need to see
24:34results pretty quickly. Like you need to find a way to do behavior modification so that the kids
24:40aren't getting injured. Like the kids were like seriously in danger sometimes. So I think that
24:46that's more, you're looking for more of a sort of diet and exercise approach. But I think for Super
24:52Nanny, it was more like, that's just the ER. I see emergency room, right? She's just got to get in
24:57there and fix things, right? So I mean, I'm with you. But that long-term psychological stuff, you know,
25:04one of the things that kind of red-pilled me on psychology to some degree was, oh, this is going
25:12a ways back. Let me just look this up and see if I can get this time right. It was called the Dr.
25:18Phil family. And yeah, yeah, that's probably just going to give his family. But there was
25:27a family, the father was a doctor, messed up kids and so on. And they followed this family
25:34for quite a long time. And it did not appear that things got better at all. So I just seem
25:44to be unable to help. Now, of course, you don't want to blame the good doctor necessarily for
25:50patients who don't necessarily follow his instructions, but it can be not great. Now,
25:56I mean, there have been people, you hear them at the call-in shows, they've listened to my show for
26:00a while and aren't necessarily, you know, pursuing a life of philosophical excellence and so on, right?
26:07All right. Somebody says, no question for you. Hope everything is going well. Been a while since I
26:11saw you on YouTube. Yeah, true. Keep the conversation alive. Thank you very much. You can
26:15go to freedomain.com and you can find out all the places where I still publish. Is it freedomain.com
26:25slash links? I should know this. Freedomain.com. I think it's called links. Let me just double check
26:31here. Or am I going to 404? No. Sorry. Freedomain.com. Connect. There we go. Freedomain.com
26:39slash connect. My apologies. Links might be a bit generic. Yeah, so freedomain.com
26:44slash connect. All right. Would you ever go on Timcast IRL? You were the first person I found
26:51out about the Rona in 2019 and I watched YouTube censor the crap out of you right off the platform,
26:56but you are 100% right about all of it. Oh. I mean, I appreciate that. I obviously don't think I was
27:01100% right about all of it, but I think I did pretty well. I don't, I mean, I don't think so. I mean,
27:06if, and I don't think Tim does any of this kind of stuff, but it was about parenting or that kind
27:13of stuff. I think that would be interesting. I think he became a father recently, but I don't,
27:19I just think we're moving in very different areas and arenas and circles at the moment. So,
27:24all right. How can Western civilization ever truly return to a place of prosperity with all of the
27:30harm done? With all of the wheels freely spinning towards ruin, what do we have left? Well, there
27:36is only struggling forward. There is no going back. All right. There is no going back. All we can do
27:42is put forward the best arguments, the best principles, the best ideas, the best reasoning
27:48and evidence, and the world makes its choice. For me, at least, I'm trying to put as much good
27:55information out there in the world so that people can make good choices as best they can.
28:01All I can do is be as honest as reasonably I can and don't, don't take the weight of the world on
28:09your shoulders. You don't have any control over that. You only have control over your own actions
28:13and what integrity and virtue you contribute to the world. How does one maintain motivation and a
28:18positive momentum? I think that, in general, your satisfaction in life as you age is measured
28:27and directly proportional to the amount of good that you've done. And the amount of good that you
28:32can do is quite conditional. If you do too much good, there's too much blowback. So, it's like
28:40fencing. You know, sometimes you advance, sometimes you retreat, and so on. What do you think of Israel
28:46bombing the crap out of Palestine? No, it's a terribly tragic situation. It's a terribly tragic
28:51situation. And until, and I said this on a live stream, until the world becomes more philosophical,
28:59these kinds of conflicts are simply going to escalate as a whole. I mean, you don't see
29:05mathematicians or physicists bombing each other because they have an objective methodology for
29:12resolving their disputes. The recent evidence, scientific method, whatever you want to call it,
29:16right? Mathematical processes and procedures. So, it's, it's, it's, it's from sort of preventive
29:25moral philosophy. It is beyond the realm, these kinds of, this kind of savagery and violence.
29:32It's, it's not within the realm of preventive moral philosophy. Preventive moral philosophy is
29:39you're going to have to start focusing on reason and universality and UPB and things like that,
29:45and then these situations can be hopefully resolved over time. But it's, it's very, very sad all
29:52around. Is Trump a cult leader? No, he's a political leader. Why do you sell your supporters NFTs in which
30:00you're depicted as a Caesar-like historical figure? I think it was my old producer who came up with that
30:05image. And I just thought it was kind of funny because I'm not a political leader. I'm not a military
30:12leader, and I'm not a historical leader. So, it just seemed kind of funny. But I'm, I'm glad that this is
30:17your big moral issue. All right. It's a long question, but a good one. Dear Steph, I was recently browsing
30:24through my Instagram feed, and I noticed a college girl from my college posted an Instagram story of
30:32a planned flight to Morocco. Naturally, I thought, what the heck? Anyhow, Steph, my question is, how do we
30:38tell modern women that going on a trip to some third world country is, to say the least, a terrible
30:41idea? Steph, it seems young women in the West are naive and stupid enough to think every country is
30:46just like the West. Go to Morocco. Okay. Go to South Africa. Catch some waves. Visit the Taj Mahal.
30:50Blah, blah, blah. Okay. Of course, I jest, but the issue still remains. Why do so many young white
30:55women, well, it's not just white women in the West, think about going to a third world country for
30:59adventure, find a vacation? More importantly, how to convince young Western women to go into third world
31:04countries is a terribly dumb and awful idea. Of course, they're not visiting active war zones
31:08like Afghanistan or Sudan, so there's a chance they may come back without anything bad happening.
31:12Ah, let's see here. An insane risk to take? I don't know that it's insane. You stay in the major areas
31:17and have a tour guide and so on. Might not be so bad. Sorry, I missed the last part of that question.
31:24I asked a woman out in college, and she rejected me. No big deal. But now she's going on a trip to Morocco,
31:28and there's nothing I can do to stop her because I'm not her dad, and I'm not in contact with her.
31:32I already watched her adventure through Thailand on Instagram where she posed with monkeys and made
31:36weird faces and comments about the local cuisine and public transport. Luckily, she made it out of
31:41Thailand, but a group of young Australian women also went to Southeast Asia, Laos, and returned home
31:45deceased after their drinks were poisoned in a nightclub. I mean, of course, bad things happen to
31:53women in just about every country, and some countries are more risky than others, but it's not.
31:58I don't think it's as bad or as dangerous as you think that it is.
32:02One of the things that's sort of happening with Instagram culture is just the provocation
32:11of envy is very key. Very key. The provocation of envy and, oh, it's so cool, or I wish you
32:16were there, and so on. You know, what always blew my mind, and I guess still does, is I probably
32:22have more of an answer to it now, but what blows my mind is how do you pay for this stuff? How do you
32:31pay? I have flights and travel and so on. Now, maybe they're just, you know, you could say they're
32:36just sleeping around or dating around or something like that, maybe, but I don't know. How do you pay
32:41for all this stuff? I was way too broke to do that kind of travel when I was a kid. I didn't really get
32:45much travel in until I got into the business world, and then I traveled on the business time,
32:49which was a lot of fun. But I think the real danger is that when people don't live for the
32:58experience, they live for the exposure, right? People don't travel to see things. They travel
33:03to post about things, right? I mean, it's like the people who are at a concert, and they're just
33:08filming the concert. It's like, you know there's going to be concert footage, probably, or everyone else
33:11is filming it. You don't need to film it. But what they're doing is they're not experiencing
33:15the moment. They're recording the moment for social clout, which is not, it's easy for a fairly
33:22old fogey to complain about this. I get all of that. And I have entire sections of my life
33:27with like no photographs whatsoever. But I think people are getting dopamine from envy, not from
33:35connection. And I think in particular, that's the case for women. Hi, Steph. When you first got
33:42together with your now wife, did people in your life notice how happy you two were together and
33:47make passive-aggressive and outright mean comments about how you were too attached to one another?
33:51I ask because my wife and I have experienced this. We both love spending time with one another,
33:55and given the choice, we would always prefer to do things together instead of individually or with
33:59other people. Some people who we do not associate with, but who we still hear about slash from, say
34:06hurtful things like we are codependent and that it's unhealthy to enjoy each other's company so
34:10much. They will frame it like we are in an unhealthy relationship because we lack independence and need
34:16each other too much. In reality, we just love each other and are delighted to spend time together.
34:20Do you think that normies just say things like this to avoid confronting their own lack of emotional
34:24connection with their partner? Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah, for sure. It's funny, like when I
34:29met my wife, the ripple effect, and I really only noticed this looking back, but when I met my wife,
34:35the ripple effect of our connection was like a tsunami just spread outwards, and the people were,
34:44I mean, very disturbed, unsettled, bothered. It did have a big ripple effect, and there certainly was
34:54some negativity. I don't think we ever got direct insults, but maybe one or two. But yeah, you know,
35:04when the real light of love lands on people, it throws everyone else's world into darkness, and they
35:09don't like that. All right. Free domain. As a 50-something-year-old man, I understand that
35:16unsolicited advice is not always regarded as welcome by younger people. That said, if you see someone about
35:22to make a major decision, how do you provide input without overstepping? Recently, my nephew was
35:26talking about joining the military. Like many veterans my age, and with my experience, I don't
35:30encourage young people to join. Moral reservations aside, of which after my experience in the service,
35:35I now understand there are many, my nephew is unsuitable for the military environment. And of
35:39course, I don't want him to throw his life away in the next forever war. Many of my friends died for
35:44nothing, some of them right in front of me. I'm sorry to hear that. What's the best approach to
35:48initiate such a conversation without being perceived as unsupportive? His parents have
35:52already tried to discourage this without success. My sister, his mother, asked me to talk to him.
35:58Well, you're trying to sell, right? You're trying to sell. Good for you, right? We're all trying to
36:03sell. So, the way that you sell is to ask, why do you want to join the military? How do you see your
36:12life without it? How do you imagine the military is going to be? What do you hope to gain out of it?
36:16And so on, right? And if I were in your shoes, I would spend five to ten hours asking questions.
36:26So that, obviously, you can understand what are the motivations or the driving factors behind his
36:32decision. So, if you go into a conversation trying to discourage someone, they're just going to push
36:37back against you. I mean, I'm sure you've heard a bunch of my call-in shows. What I do is I'm,
36:42you know, like a two-hour call-in show. Sometimes the first hour to hour and a half is just me
36:47asking questions, trying to understand the situation, trying to understand the environment,
36:50the motivations, the background, the backdrop, and all that kind of stuff. So, just ask. You're
36:55not trying to talk about joining the military. You just want to understand his thinking. And,
37:02you know, you don't have to lie. You say, look, I have some skepticism, but that's,
37:05I mean, I'm certainly open to being convinced that it's the right choice for you. And you will,
37:12as you sort of circle around and drill down, you will get to some kind of core.
37:16You will get to some kind of core which is driving his decision. I don't know what that's
37:21going to be. That's why I like doing call-in shows. I still don't often know what it's going
37:25to be for people. But you are going to get to some kind of core that is driving his decision.
37:30And the important thing is not for you to see that core, right? We ask people questions
37:38so that they find out about themselves. The important thing is not for you to see that core.
37:45The important thing, of course, sorry to be repetitive, the important thing is for him to
37:49see the core of why he wants to join the core. See, I worked that in. All right. Steph, why do you
37:55praise Elon Musk so much, even mentioning that he is of significant moral purpose and intent?
38:01Well, he is such a terrible father slash ex-husband. I don't want to diminish his success and
38:06achievements in the public and business sphere. But you're one of the only people who usually
38:10point out those inconsistencies and hypocrisies in public figures, but not with him. Yeah,
38:15well, I mean, the bro is trying to save Western civilization. And honestly, the acquisition
38:23and dismantling of censorship, acquisition of X and the dismantling of censorship on X
38:29is one of the most significant events in free speech history. And, you know, I mean, he wants
38:38to, he wants to go into planetary because he's concerned about the survivability of life on Earth.
38:44And, you know, I mean, he obviously knows a lot more about space than I do. So I'm not going to argue
38:49with the guy. I mean, yeah, he's, I mean, yeah, I don't think he's a great father. He's certainly not
38:53a great husband. And I was not a big fan of him. What was he calling some guy a pedo got sued? And I
38:58don't know. It was just bad, just bad all around. But I praise him for the morals that he does
39:07achieve, which are huge. Right? And those are considerable. That's right. Yeah. Elon Musk was
39:16involved in a defamation lawsuit. Yeah. Over a tweet where Musk called him a pedo guy. So I don't
39:23think that's something to joke about. But again, it's not, not a huge deal. So yeah, he is of
39:31significant moral purpose and intent. And I think that there were a lot of people, was it, who was
39:37it I saw? I saw, was it Charlie Kirk or something was saying that when Biden was in power, and I
39:42think Mike Senevich talked about this as well, that when, when Biden was in power, that they were
39:48nervous about getting visits from alphabet agencies, right? And now that's all, all gone. And, you know,
39:55did Elon Musk have something to do with getting Trump in? You know, it seems to be, it seems he
39:59certainly poured a lot of money into it. So some, yeah, I mean, he is of significant moral
40:05purpose and intent. If I had the choice, if I had the choice, as far as sort of the West
40:10and, and civilization goes, if I had the choice for Elon Musk to be a good father, or to have
40:18liberated free speech on Twitter, what would I choose? Well, I'm sorry for his kids, but I would
40:22choose all of that, right? I would choose the free speech on Twitter. All right. Well, what is
40:28spirituality and does it have value? Ah, you can have to rephrase that. It's too vague.
40:34Andrew Wilson has a question. He asks women, what are some duties that women have in society?
40:39They usually have no answer. In a state of society, do people have duties? Duties? I don't
40:46think so. There are no unchosen positive requirements. There are, there are no unchosen
40:53positive obligations. So you don't have a duty by reason of existing, right? You don't
41:00have to give to the poor. You don't have to help the needy. You don't have to give medicine
41:05to the sick. You don't have to. Now, if you sign a contract, then you are, but that's a
41:11chosen positive obligation, right? I send you an iPad and we have a contract. You send me
41:15500 bucks or whatever, right? So then you have a chosen positive obligation. You sign a contract
41:20with a cell phone company. You pay a certain amount of money every month. So there are
41:23chosen positive obligations, but there are no unchosen positive obligations for the simple
41:29reason that that can't be universalized, right? If I say to you, I did this video many years
41:35ago called the social contract defined and destroyed in 60 seconds or less. And if there
41:39are unchosen positive obligations, right? You, hey man, you got to give me $10,000. Well,
41:45then you can just say to me, well, you got to give me $10,000, blah, blah, blah, right?
41:48So, they all just cancel each other out. Unchosen positive obligations cannot be universalized.
41:54They're not UPP compliant. So, no, you don't have unchosen positive obligations. Now, with regards
42:04to women as a whole, I would say that women, as the same with men, women have the obligation
42:15to not initiate the use of force and to respect property rights. Two sides of the same coin,
42:22right? Women have the obligation to not initiate the use of force and to respect property rights,
42:29which is the same moral big obligations that men would have. Women don't have an obligation
42:33to have children. It's an unchosen positive obligation. And it would be interesting, you know,
42:41and maybe I'll do this as an exercise one day, which I think would be very interesting. Tell me
42:46what you think. But I would be interested to imagine what would a marriage contract look like
42:54in the absence of the state? Because the state is highly biased when it comes to
43:00women and family courts and divorce law and things like that. The state is highly biased
43:07for a couple of reasons. One, women outvote men, live longer. Therefore, you have to appeal to
43:13women to stay in power. Number two, there's just a general white knighting that happens between
43:18politicians and women. Politicians often power for men and do that side. And the other thing too is
43:24that if women don't get sufficient money from men, then the women end up on welfare, which is bad for
43:31the government. The government coffers and so on, they'd rather spend money on other things.
43:34So, it would be very interesting to see or to imagine what it would be like. What would a free
43:42market marriage contract look like? It would have to be balanced, right? It would have to be balanced
43:47to the point where women would not feel that having children was an undue risk. They can end up
43:53sleeping under a bridge with their children. But at the same time, you don't want women to be
43:58incentivized to leave and break up the families, right? So, those are the challenges. And it'd be
44:06interesting to see. It would be a tight balance. And maybe it would all be pre-nups and so on,
44:13but there would be sort of things, standard templates for pre-nups and things like that.
44:17But I think that would be interesting to see. And then, of course, the women would have the obligations
44:22to maintain their contracts. So, as far as what the duties are of women, you know, it's always a
44:33big question, which is what Roman is talking about in a novel, The Future, which you should
44:38definitely check out, freedomain.com slash books. But in my novel, The Future, Roman is basically
44:44saying success is failure. When women, through capitalism, automation, and so on, when women
44:53gain enough money to travel and have fun and have cool jobs and, you know, nice office work and so on,
45:02I mean, we can talk about, you know, perverse incentives and so on, and old age pensions and
45:07free healthcare and all of that. But do women want to have kids? Do men want to have kids?
45:13It's the more entertaining and engaging life and society gets as a whole. Do people actually
45:22want to have children? I wanted kids. I've worked in a daycare. I love kids. But I didn't really
45:31focus on it hugely in my 20s. And of course, you know, right now, there is a kind of depopulation
45:38agenda that's going on. And so women are, you know, the bad role models and go to university,
45:45start your career, have kids later, delay, delay, delay. That's pretty, pretty tragic. I think that
45:50would be a free society would be much more pro-natalist. So I think that might solve some
45:55of it. But in the absence of religion, and in the presence or really the omnipotence of hedonism
46:04that characterizes the modern world, do women want children? Do men want children? I don't know,
46:11man. It's hard to make the case, because it does seem to be a pretty universal phenomenon. You know,
46:16people say, well, it's access to higher education and so on. For women, I get all of that. But I don't
46:21know, it's just that. I don't know that it's just that. I think people are having a tough time.
46:26So particularly, I think more intelligent people having a tough time trying to figure out why to
46:31have kids. So anyway, I hope that helps. I really do appreciate everyone's support and care and
46:38attention in this conversation. Thank you so much. Freedomain.com slash donate if you find these
46:42Q&As helpful. And of course, I've got more to go. But I will get to those another time. And lots of
46:49love from up here, freedomain.com slash donate. Or you can go to fdrurl.com slash locals to sign
46:54up for a subscription, which is also enormously helpful, helpful and very much needed. I really
47:01do appreciate that. Lots of love, my friends. Take care. Bye.