6322 I Fight with a LISTENER! X Space

0:00Good evening, good evening. I hope you're doing well, 6th of March, 20th, 26th, and we are talking Friday night live with Stefan Molenu. I hope you're doing well. Hope you're having a lovely day. Hope you can have a great weekend. And with philosophy, you always can. Let's dive straight into callers. You can of course call on X. I want to thank Jay Dyer for having me on the Alex Jones show today, my first foray back into TV land. So to speak in, oh, probably six years or maybe more. So he's a great guy. And if you are a donor, you can get the show at freedomain.locals.com. If you're a subscriber and actually have some openings next week for call in shows. If you want to do a public or a private call in show, just go to freedomain.com slash call, freedomain.com slash call. I'm begging you, I'm begging you if you've got a big decision coming up in your life that has moral implications.

1:02Call in, call in, we can anonymize your voice. Don't stay on names and places. There's no unmasking here as has happened before in other situations. So freedomain.com slash call. All right, Jeff, if you wanted to unmute, I'm happy to get your questions or comments. And you can type your questions in wherever you like, through the various social media platforms, and all that. Jeff. Yes, thank you. Good evening, and thank you for hosting this as always. For the benefit of home-to-home listeners who may have missed some of your recent broadcasts, I was wondering if you care to share any thoughts about the continuing forever war over there in the far distant sandy lands and whatever else you care to share. And thank you again for all you've done through the years and the impact you've had on millions. Well, I appreciate that.

2:03Thank you for the question I did talk about it on the Alex Jones show today. And you know, to be honest, sorry, that's an annoying thing to say. Like when I say, when I don't say to be honest, am I just lying about everything? I don't think so. I don't think so, man. But to be more concise and perhaps to lift a little bit of the kimono, so to speak, I got out of politics in 2020. And I got out of politics, just before I was de-platformed, I got out of politics because I could see which way the wind was blowing. I could see which way the wind was blowing, which way things were going to go. Firstly, I think Trump put up a good fight. You know, it's easy if you're not in the ring

3:06to blame the people facing the blows. But I think Trump put up a pretty good fight. I think he went in with good intentions, but there's a machine in the world that disassembles integrity, right? We have a try to be in a situation where you are facing a temptation and you try to stand for what is right. The betrayal, the turnabout, the viciousness, the undermining, the sland, the lies, the insults, the gossip mongering, the tea spreading, the reputational attacks and destruction. There is a lot of media out there that trains people to lower their heads, square their shoulders, link arms and charge to overcome and undermine and disassemble anyone

4:09who stands up to a corrupt system with an attempt at integrity. This is all the way back to, I guess, when I was 15 or so when I read the fountainhead and I'm like, yeah, there's something really kind of true in that. In the business world, I really tried to stand up for that, which was right and good and to push back against some of the lies. I mean, I get there's a certain amount of fake until you make it, but there's also stuff that is not acconscionable. And you could just see people get into these, like a fail-anx of Roman legionnaires with their shields and a tortoise shell all around them. People just lock in, they lock down. And they all unite to attack. And I don't know if you've ever had this. I've seen this a bunch of times in my life that you have a relatively stable group, relatively positive group, relatively enthusiastic and decent, not necessarily morally great, but decent, decent group. And then like a stucanoid, like a whistle, like a speer.

5:13In comes a bad person, a crazy person, a person who takes a lot of offense, a person who they're called split. You divide somebody who comes in and is able to easily divide people into two groups and then just a split and undermine make enemies and so on. And I don't know what it is. I've seen this in just about every community. I've seen this in the paternity communities. I've seen this in atheist communities. I've seen it in Christian communities. I've seen it in philosophical communities. I saw it when I used to run a message board many years ago in the early days of free domain back when the radio supercab was at the end. That crazy people come in and everyone follows their lead. It's the pie-piper thing. I've seen it over and over and over again. To the point where, you know, it's kind of tough to join any kind of groups because what happens is you have a group.

6:16It's getting along well. One crazy person comes in and it's just everyone turns into these bowling pins. It just gets shattered and smashed and so on. I mean, I remember way back in the day, this would be probably around 2008, almost 20 years ago now. I was running a message board on the free domain radio website. And a professional troll came in. I found this out much later through other sources and professional troll came in and started talking about hookers and blow. Hookers and blow. And was just needling and provoking and so on. And the whole, I mean, I did a pretty valiant effort to keep and eventually we conquered and so on, but it was like months of struggle and battle and escalation and so on. So Trump did stand against the machine, the machine of war and so on. But I think largely through the influence, probably of Ivanka,

7:19there wasn't good to last, you know, it's hard as a father to say no to a child that you loved. And I think that a lot of that went down that way. So as soon as I sort of the family alignments and so on, I'm like, yeah, it's not gonna, it's not gonna work out. It's not gonna, it's not gonna work out. And also, I mean, not to neck in my usual way, one website over.com, when like 95, 98% of my listeners couldn't bother go to one site over to sort of maintain or give me support or during my transition, right, from a public figure playing stadiums too. An obscure jazz figure playing, I don't know, tea rooms or something like that. That crazy people come around and groups from individuals to families, families less so because families generally the level of insanity stays the same in families.

8:20But groups as a whole, and if you've got stories about this, you know, please of course, let me know. But groups as a whole, they don't seem to have a defense against crazy people coming in. And my whole life, my whole life has been kind of pointing out that crazy people are coming in and everyone ignoring me and then siding with the crazy person and surfing me out. I'll say it again, because maybe you've had the same experience. And if you haven't, I think it's probably because you haven't done enough. But my whole life, it feels like I have groups that I'm part of that seem okay, not perfect, obviously nobody perfect, but okay, pretty good. And then some crazy person comes in and the whole group just goes nuts, explodes, polarizes, attacks

9:23and it seems that I have not, I mean, the remaining friends and family, yes, that I have, which is great. But in groups that I've known in the past, you know, crazy person comes in, everyone just gets plowed under, everybody just lines up, everybody, you know, we don't have a way yet. And you know, maybe there's a way down the road, philosophy, peaceful parenting, whatever it's going to be. But we don't seem to have a way to deal with the crazy people who disassemble groups as a whole. I mean, in the old, it was a very sort of loose coalition of skeptics about the media and about mainstream politics, the sort of the dissident outlaws of say 2015, 2016 and so on. The crazy people attacked and everyone scattered.

10:24Somebody has asked me, Steph, during your de-platform, did you ever get invited to other people's shows? Peter Schiff, yes. I think I had a show with Dave Smith. I think that was it. No, I didn't get invited down to other people's shows during the de-platform. For sure. Let's talk about ground troops in Iran. Yeah, so Iran, of course, one of the three or four times the size of Iraq, Iraq is much flatter. Iran is incredibly mountainous. And it's a much higher IQ population as a whole. And there's kind of, I'm sorry, I know that we have more callers that get you in just a second, but as a whole, there's kind of a cycle which goes from hedonism to incredible religious or moral strictness, from hedonism to this kind of strictness.

11:27And if you look at Iran, you'll see these videos or images of Iran back in the 60s and 70s. And it's all the girls in the university, in the girls who are in long slacks and so on. And then there's this sort of tragedy or sorrow that the Islamic Revolution took over. I think it was 79 and then clamped down, stripped down, but there is this kind of cycle. And the cycle goes something like this. And I'll keep this brief and I get you a callers in a sec. And so the cycle goes something like this. There's a certain amount of a freedom, a religious freedom and in particular, economic freedom, property rights and so on, which characterised to run in the early to middle part of the 20th century, when you get wealth, you get economic inequality, when you get economic inequality, you get politicians who come along and say, we're gonna take from the rich and we're gonna give to you.

12:28And it take from the wealthy, we're gonna give to you. And the sort of strictness and productivity that came out of the relative economic freedom dissolves into this class-based resentful, greed grab of the wealthy. And then the government succeeds in that because the government dangling free stuff in front of a population is a lure that never fails in the long run. There's a funny video. It's a two black guys that are imitating fish and one black guy grabs the fish hook so to speak and then gets yanked out of the water. And then the other one looks over for a long time, then the hook comes back down. He just grabs it too and that's people with free stuff from the government. The government will print money, the bank government will tax people, you know, like there's a hundred people in California who pay like a 40% of the tax, right?

13:28Everybody wants to attach to the wealthy and use the state to drain them of resources. And from there, you get a horrifying kind of hedonism because free money detaches and dissociates us from reality. And then we feel our humanity slipping away. I feel that. I feel that very strongly, it's not an argument, and I'm just telling you what I feel. I think there's a reason for it. I feel that very strongly that when the government prints and borrows and hands out money like candy, people's humanity dissolves. We become like animals. Like rabbits don't plant their food. They just mow down on every piece of vegetation. They can get a hold off until their ass as a young sky would buy an owl or something. They just, ah, ah, ah, ah, right? So when people get free stuff, we lose our moralities.

14:29They were saying on the Alex Jones show today, morality requires scarcity. And when money and resources are perceived as pretty much infinite, then you end up without morality. And without morality, we lose our humanity. We are moral animals. We are, I mean, Aristotle referred to us as the rational animal, which is true, but Kroza pretty reasonable in their own experiment as well. But we are rational animals. And we are moral animals most foundationally, because morality is the one thing that separates us from the rest of the animals, particularly abstract conceptual language-based morality universals. And so we have wealth that comes out of the strictness of moral property rights. Governments dissolve those property rights to buy the population. And then humanity goes out of focus,

15:31like a fast forward of middle age when your eyes get kind of blurry, right? Just goes out of focus. And people freak out foundationally. They freak out about all of this easy free stuff dissolving their humanity. And people lose love, because when you get free stuff from the government, you don't have to have any morals. And when you don't have any morals, it can't be loved and you can't love. You can't love each other. You can't love your children. You're just a greedy parasite off the body politic. And people feel their humanity slipping away. And their love and their self-respect, their souls, right? What is the story that the devil offers you things of free and then takes your soul when the government offers you things of free and then takes your soul. You lose your humanity when you are in possession of free stuff. There's always this kind of cliche. The son of the king is incredibly cruel. Like you've seen this, like I was watching Night of the Seven Kingdoms the other day.

16:32And it's so predictable. The blondest guy is always the meanest guy. The blondest guy is always the meanest guy. The blondest guy is always the meanest guy. You have a inblade runner, Malfoy in Harry Potter, this guy. Just the, but it's always the son of the king, and particularly the eldest son of the king, is an absolute a-hole. And that's because he's inherited all of this wealth and power he can earn it himself and that destroys his humanity. Humanity, morality based on scarcity. Without scarcity, you can't have morality. Without morality, you can't have love. Love is our responsive virtue of a virtuous. So then people feel their humanity going out of focus. They feel their souls leaving their body. And then when very strict religious people come along, they seize it at it, right? They seize at it. Desperate, we must have religious strictness. It's the only way to contain our soul from leaving our body, which is why the free market

17:34with the government, free market, leads to hedonistic welfare state, leads to tyranny. Every single time. All right, let us get to our callers, Mina. If you would like to unmute, I would be happy to hear your thoughts. Going once, going twice. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, sir, go ahead. Hi, good evening. Yeah, keeping on the topic of Iran, I couldn't help but notice that they are kind of using the strategy from your book, The Future. Not to spoil it for anybody, but in the novel, The Future, there is a scene in which there's a conflict between one society and the other. And the one society, instead of doing a full-on boots on the ground strategy, they just target the other society's leaders.

18:34And I think that's what they did with Iran in this case. And I saw just on X just now, the person that they picked to replace comedy, which who I think is his son was also just killed. I don't know if that's confirmed or not. But it seems like they, I don't know. My question is, do you think that's still a winning strategy and or how is it going for them? Or and how does it feel to see a little bit of what you wrote? Like happening. Yeah, I mean, there certainly have been some offshoots of the work that I've done over the years that I've mostly kept to myself. Maybe this is one of them, maybe not. But I am very happy that a war-mongering leader gets killed. And I'm not talking about Khomeini because the question, and it is a big question, which is, did Khomeini want to attack the West?

19:36Was he imminently going to attack the West? It doesn't seem to be. Now they say, well, he was two weeks from nuclear weapons and so on, and I've sort of said before that I don't. I don't believe that because the last people who made predictions that turned out to be false, nothing ever happened to them, right? It would be like if you had an oncologist at a hospital and the oncologist kept telling people without cancer, they maybe they had a tumor, but it was benign, and he said, oh, it's cancerous, you've got to go through all this expensive treatment, and it turned out they never had cancer. But he kept getting paid and promoted and kept going on TV. Then you wouldn't expect anything to change because he's not suffering any negative consequences for what he's doing, clearly he wants the money from diagnosing people falsely with cancer. And if he never gets punished and he only gets praised and he continues to get his paycheck and is continued to be welcomed in society even though then you wouldn't expect to go.

20:37You wouldn't want to go to that hospital because that guy is going to still continue. So there have been a number of times, of course, when people have made claims, I did shows on this back of the day aside use weapons of chemical weapons. On his own people, you know, this kind of stuff. And of course the golf of Tonkin incident that was fabricated to start Vietnam and then of course the weapons of mass destruction lie about Iraq. And nothing happens. Well, does anybody ever get dragged in front of a court? Does anybody ever get thrown in jail? Does anybody ever get executed for causing deaths of hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands or even more of people? I know. So maybe you have to wait for a generation to go past every time. So it's not believable. But if there is a leader that is fomenting war then taking out the leader is the best chance you have to not have the war.

21:40I mean, this is the old Hitler argument, right? Let Hitler was fomenting a war. And if people had taken out Hitler, I mean, it's a whole Tom Cruise movie about this, I think. But if people had taken out Hitler, I think everybody would have been better off as far as that goes. If people had taken out Lenin, then, you know, it's entirely possible that 70 million Russians wouldn't have died. When you look at sort of the great man theory of history, if somebody had taken out Napoleon, then a whole bunch of, well, a whole bunch of countries wouldn't have had their legal systems revamped and put it this nicely as possible. So, yeah, targeting a leader. The big question, of course, is what's remaining about to attack the United States? The answer to that, of course, is no. Now, of course, China gets a significant portion of its oil through the straight of Hamus. Maybe they want to close that to harm China. Maybe it has something to do with expansionism from Israel. Maybe it has something to do with, you know,

22:44any other number of things. Maybe it's an old grudge. But I suppose one of the questions that I would ask if I was in America's shoes is, why do they keep chanting death to America? I mean, it's an important question. I mean, you could argue that Switzerland is a pretty free country. They're not chanting death to Switzerland. They're not chanting death to New Zealand. Why America? And I think the answer, of course, is that America has an imperial power with 800 plus military bases overseas. That is at least in the eyes of many Muslims besmirching the Holy Land in Saudi Arabia in particular with troop presence and so on. And, of course, the invasion of Iraq. You know, I think people were looking to America once the invasion of Iraq was proven to have been mounted under false pretenses. They were looking for the American government or the American society to take a strong action

23:47against those who had fermented this war. And you can argue, of course, Afghanistan, as well, they went to Afghanistan because of bin Laden, but they'd already turned over. They already turned over. They said, well, turn over bin Laden, but you've got to give us some proof that he did 9.11 and, right, for whatever reason, they went in 12 of trillions of dollars and to protect the bachi boys. So the world, as a whole, was looking to America to say, okay, so, and the coalition of the willing, it wasn't just America. When it was found out or when it was discovered, which was not an instantaneous process, but it also didn't take years and years, when it was found out that the invasion of Iraq was entirely under false pretenses. The question is, are you sorry? Right, are you sorry? If someone accidentally shoots your dog,

24:49they think it's a prowler or something, and it's a, it's in your property, but they think, and they say, oh, I thought your dog was dangerous. I shot your dog and so on. And it turns out that they were wrong. Don't they owe you some recompense? I think they do. Right, and so on. Now, if they keep shooting your pets, saying, oh, no, I thought this pet was dangerous. Oh, no, no, I thought this pet was dangerous. Oh, and they just keep shooting your pets. At one point, are they just sociopathic pet killers? I myself, when people do wrongs and the greater the wrong, the greater the requirement, I look for three things, when people do wrong. Number one, an apology. Number two, restitution. And number three, a commitment by which is not going to happen again. Invasion of Iraq was one of the great wrongs of the 21st century. Great evils of the 21st century was an apology. Nope, was the restitution. Nope. Was the restitution.

25:49Nope. Was there any mechanisms put in place by which it wasn't going to happen again? Nope. And here's the dangerous thing. Here's the dangerous thing, and I'll get to the other callers and to say, so the dangerous thing, of course, is that if we look at a country like North Korea, we know it's a dictatorship. So when the North Korean leader does something that's wrong, bad, immoral, or whatever, we don't blame the citizens, because they're just, you know, North Korea is the biggest open air slave camp in the world. So we know that the average citizen in North Korea is not responsible for his leader's actions, because he's just a slave. He's a prisoner, he's chattel. But in a democracy or a public or whether it's voting, the actions of the leaders are directly associated with the choice of the citizens, actions of the leaders. And so if the perception is, and the propaganda is, that the government reflects the will of the people,

26:51then the population is perceived to be legitimate targets because they approve of what the leader is doing. North Korean leader goes down and everyone's cheering, and we all know that they're cheering because otherwise they go into an internment camp at best, right? But if everyone is voluntarily cheering terrible actions by the leaders and there's voting and so on, and people tune in voluntarily to the media, like in North Korea, you have to watch the state media and cheer it, I assume. But if people are just cheering and so on, then how does that look from the outside, right? You know, if your neighbor shoots your dog and his wife comes over, it's like, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry, he's losing his eyesight, he's losing his mind, please accept this gift basket, and let's go get you a new dog, I'm so sorry, right? But if every time your neighbor shoots your dog, his wife and his kids are all cheering, don't you get mad at them too? Right, so it's a big, big and different deal. So I hope that makes sense, thank you for the question,

27:53and let us get to Brendan, Brendan. If you want to unmute, I'm all ears. Oh, is that for me? Cut all right, what do you did there? All right. Hey, so Stefan, I just want to say I'm a big fan. I years ago, I used to watch all your single mother videos. You did those awesome, and you were big help lots in relationships. I just got a question, like, so we're talking about Iran right now. Do you think with like Iran getting liberated, more freedom, essentially going on there? Do you think there will be a huge uprising in like single motherhood? And do you think like, I mean, with America right now, United States, there's like millions of women essentially

28:55doing like only fans and like prostitution is huge right now? Do you think there will be a huge uprising in that? And just like with the overall how women feel about men, like divorces initiated 70, 70, 80% by women, and you think we will see a huge uprising in that. I'm just wondering what your thoughts are on that. And I just want to say thank you for everything you've done all over the years. You're awesome. Well, thank you. And I remember, I think it was 2019. Actually, no, it was 2019. I did a documentary in Hong Kong called Hong Kong Fight for Freedom, which you should check out. Still very relevant at freedomain.com slash documentary. It's free. And I was interviewed on television in Hong Kong. And I was saying, you know, one of the problems with the West is we're not selling our lifestyles anymore. We're not selling, you know, peace, reason, freedom, philosophy, evidence, property rights, and so on, limited government. We are a very decadent society. And I was sort of talking about earlier in the show,

29:57just how free money dissolves our humanity because it removes the restrictions that we need to provoke morality. And what would liberation, let's, you know, put on our fantasy helmets and let's say, what would liberation look like for Iraq? Let's say America gets its way, right? What would liberation look like for Iraq? Well, it means hyperfeminism, female supremacy. It means Western family courts that eviscerate men. It means more anti-white racism and the Iranians are traditionally Caucasians. Been a couple of thousand years since they escaped Siberia and went to slightly warmer climes. What else did they get? Do they get indoctrination? Do they get creepy sacshead in schools? Do they get the liberation of females from all restraints? See, women evolved in a time where bad decisions destroyed their lives and there was no particular support system. So a woman, in all these women say,

30:59oh, I didn't know he was a liar. I didn't know he was a bad guy like I posted the other day that 70% of men in prison have girlfriends outside of prison waiting for them, like what's your excuse? And when the free money starts flowing, then women lose all self-restraint in that way. And women have evolved to be restrained by the consequences of childbirth, which is sort of a natural consequence, right? We have a ridiculously long gestation period and a ridiculously long development period, right? The first year of life is often called the fourth trimester because we're so useless. If you've ever been on a farm and you've seen that chickens can run coming out of the egg and horses can run within a day or two, but human beings take, like we can walk, tottering at about a year and we can run at about two to three years. So we have crazy slow to develop

31:59because that, which is more complex, takes longer to develop. And so there were natural consequences and so women being restrained in their sexual choices, romantic choices by natural consequences. When those natural consequences are removed, it's like a balloon that's held underwater, just pops up and goes to the sky. Let's say a helium balloon held up underwater to keep the continuity of the analogy. And so women were restrained by nature and by, quote, patriarchy and so on, when all of that is removed and women no longer face negative consequences for bad reproductive decisions, but instead are rewarded in ways that can scarcely be conceived of. It's $100,000 worth of free benefits or the equivalent of $100,000 worth of salary, free benefits to women who have children outside the home, turning children from liabilities into assets has completely inverted female sexuality.

33:00Now female sexuality can follow the tingle offer, fiscal cliff rather than restraining gritting your teeth and settling down with a guy who's going to be a good father and a good provider. They don't need any of that. So they're liberated to go after the sexy, dangerous bad boys or to put it another way. The kind of restraint that evolved in northern cold climates has been eliminated by the welfare state, which turns northern cold climate people into the environment of tropical people who tend to be a little bit more impulsive and more violent. So, yeah, all of this restraint has been gone and what happens when Iran is, quote, liberated, even if that were possible. Like even, even, let's just go out on a limb here, say that was possible and what's going to happen? Well, they're going to get endless childhood in doctoration, they're going to get creepy sex practices, drag queen story hour, they're going to get a communist indoctrination, they're going to get a DEI,

34:01which destroys meritocracy, they're going to get endless lectures on racism and white privilege. And they're also probably going to get mass immigration, which is going to completely rewrite their entire society. What do we in the West have to offer for the continuity of Iran? They're going to get a central bank, they're going to get money printing, and they're going to end up with entire government-funded groups of people, entirely hostile to their way of life and culture. And I'm talking about the sort of the pre-Islamic culture. Because you remember, like most of the Middle East used to be Christian, right? This is really, it's important. I did a whole show on this, the truth about the crusades, FDRpodcasts.com, FDRpodcast.com. And the countries, you could just go through the whole list, right? You can go through the whole list of all the countries that used to be Christian and have since become Islamic.

35:02And that process has been entirely lost and forgotten a history for really obvious reasons. So yeah, what is going to happen, I had a somewhat viral tweet the other day, there was this woman in a really tight mini skirt and so on, dancing, doing the Trump dance to YSEA. And I said, you know, can women find some balance between stripper and burka? I mean, I think that would be not the worst thing in the world, but because women evolved to have restraints imposed upon them by nature and society, when both nature and society, when those restrictions are lifted, then women have monetized their sexuality. And the welfare state and having children is another form of monetizing your sexuality, right? You have sex, you have kids, and then the government pays you to not work and you can make a fortune. Honestly, you can make the equivalent of a middling engineer salary just by pumping out some wee badant.

36:02So the monetizing of sexuality occurs when fiscal and social and consequential restraints are released. And then, of course, you end up as is in the case in America with 10% of women aged 18 to 24 being on only fans, which is a statistic that will absolutely blow the minds of future people. And then the question is, well, where, well, of course, and a lot of the money from it, only fans flow as well, you know. So what kind of money is being spent on only fans or websites like it? I don't know for sure. I don't know if there's any way to know for sure. But what I will say is, yeah, Iran will get casino stuff but they're trying to be similes. Yeah, maybe. I mean, that's certainly like, who looks at the West and says that's who I want to be? Who looks what countries look at the West and say, boy, they've got it going on. They've got a great system now.

37:03So I have a general theory, which I can't prove, but I strongly suspect. My theory is that most of the money flowing into only fans comes out of non-earned money. Because I can't imagine that people will take a lot of their hard earned money and dump it into only fans. My guess is that the money that goes into only fans comes from un-earned money, whether it's criminal or inherited or whether it's welfare state money or student loans or student grants or something like, it's not directly earned money. Because otherwise, when you directly earn the money, you have to turn it over. There's a calculation that goes on in your head. It doesn't really seem to be happening with the people who are currently spending money on only fans, which you shouldn't do, of course. All right, is there anything else that you wanted to mention or ask? Well, I just wanted to say with the liberation, how do we make, has this happens?

38:06How do we make the women not hate the men and how do we make it so divorced, doesn't happen so much, so frequently, right? That's happening in the United States. It's a pandemic of women hating men. How do we make sure that that doesn't happen in all these countries that are about to be liberated while specifically talking about Iran area and Iraq there? Well, you can't stop it as long as there's a government. Because when you have a government that can print its own money, it buys votes. Now, in order to buy votes, people have to want to sell their votes. And so the best way to create a group of people who want to sell their votes is to keep women single. Because women who are single receive far more benefits in government than they ever pay in taxes. In fact, I think most women who are single are not really contributing much to the government at all because a lot of their jobs are HR made up jobs, a lot of their jobs are quota, DEI jobs, and so on.

39:10And of course, when a society pays women excessively, then they don't have children, right? This is sort of a study that's not too too old, which has pointed out that when you give a man a race, he's more likely to fund more children. If you give a woman a race, she is less likely to have and fund more children. So moving money from men to women is part of a general depopulation of the intelligent program. And as long as governments can give women money for free, then the governments and the media and those who want political power have an endless incentive to turn women against men. Because women are always gonna need security and protection. They yearn for it, like children hunger for the minds as the meme goes. So women yearn for security and protection and you get more security and protection from the government in a way than you can, than you will with a man. So a man will give you money and protection,

40:11but you actually have to run a household race as kids, hopefully do some community work, be a helpmate and be helpful. The government will just give you money and free housing and food stamps and all of that. The government will give you $100,000 worth of free resources and I did that presentation like 10 or 15 years ago, it's probably way higher than that now, but let's say $150,000. The government will give you all of that and all you have to do is jump into a booth once every two or four years and check next to the most leftist candidate you can find and you get all of that free stuff. So women who are married and particularly with kids either happier and be, they want more the government and lower taxes. So unfortunately, as long as you have governments and fear currency, the governments will always, always try to turn women against men. I mean, it happened back in ancient Rome as I'm sure, you know that the girl boss meme and they don't need no stinking man and men are stupid, let's throw rocks at them

41:13and so on and kill all men, hashtag kill all men. That's inevitable. Governments will always do that because single women vote for bigger government. All right, I think I've answered his questions. Let us move on. We have quite the queue. All right. Do do do. All right, Australia and Australia and talk. I think we've talked before. What's on your mind, my dingleberry? Good evening, yes. I am your huckleberry then, Mr. Moan. Oh, in fact, if you were thrown down the gauntlet sir, I will meet you in Main Street at the front of the saloon as we will engage. Mr. Moan, Stefan, I caught you a couple of evenings ago actually. There was one particular speaker that came up that I love the interaction between you both. It was a battle of minds. I do believe he was your intellectual equal. I think you went by a hitch slap or something like that, but it was a brilliant back and forth

42:15will you really explore how people come to communism, my commons would be horrible for people going forward, how people would don't have much, want to then come and murder people who have things in the future because they have scribed them blame or their lack of material possessions in their life, et cetera. So I appreciated that award view, I guess, but to be honest, Stefan, to be honest, and I love that you started that, mate. You're talking about the crazy people that used to come into some of your spaces or whatever it may have been. And then you were talking about how they immediately launched into dire tribes. And then they quickly found a support from your listening audience who seemingly were easily swayed by crazy. Well, sorry, not all, they would split people, right? So they would, as some people would be half and half, let's say half of the people would say, but the crazy person, the other people would oppose and then the battle would rage, if that makes sense. Yes, yes, it does. So it was my observation then based on that

43:16and recalling a few instances where it happened in your spaces, but in other people. So it's almost a cultural norm at this point, I think. That when crazy is introduced into a peaceful place, that crazy quickly finds a home and unlocks the crazy in others that were hoping that crazy would arrive at some point in time. And I was wondering if you can sort of break that down, how some people are subdued from their, I guess, peaceful behavior, and they can quickly become enthralled in the riot, Stefan. What is about us that put impulse control, which is normally not lacking, quickly becomes lacking in those moments? Yeah, so I think sometimes of the Inuit, I don't remember the word, but there's an Inuit word that indicates the kind of man who fakes an injury so he doesn't have to go hunting

44:17and then when all of the men go hunting, he tries to seduce their wives. And what they do with that kind of person is they put that person on an iceberg and send him off onto the ocean. And if he tries to come back, they kill him. So they ostracize him in a very foundational way. And the only two solutions to very deranged disturbed people in society is ostracism or violence, right? Now, violence has been diminished in some ways for the right and in some ways for the wrong. And so in the past, there was a standard, certainly among the upper classes, which my family came from, at least on my father's side. My mother's side was more intellectual elite. My father's side was intellectual plus landed

45:18gently elite, I'd formally have an Esquire at the end of my name. So in the past, of course, you know that if you insulted another man that he would wipe you across the face with a glove and there was jewels, there were jewels. Now, what was the point of jewels? The point of jewels was to keep people polite. Jewels, not jewels, jewels. I should pronounce that better, D-U-E-L-S. And so if you insulted a man's honor, if you called him a liar, if you called him a cheat, if you accused him of cheating at cards or something like that, then you had insulted his honor and you would have to answer for it. And this sort of lasted until the mid 19th century. These jewels, particularly among the upper class, the other thing, like if you talk trash, you'd get punched in the face. Now, I understand the free speech considerations. I understand the UPB considerations and so on. But now, if someone comes along and insults you, they don't get popped. Right? I mean, when I was a kid, if you ran your mouth,

46:21you'd get a knuckle sandwich. Somebody would punch you in the face. If you ran your mouth and you called someone's mother a terrible word or whatever it is, then they would intimidate you. And there was a certain amount of, keep your wife's mouth, keep my, sorry, keep your wife's mouth out of my filthy ear. Keep your wife's name out of your filthy mouth. That's sort of right, the Chris Rock thing. And I get it's kind of animalistic and all of that, but there was a culture that insults had consequences so people learned to be kind of civil. Now, this was violence, not a big fan of the violence thing, but there was also ostracism. This is the scarlet letter, idea from Nathaniel Hawthorn. Are you really advocating for forces theory to shut people up? That's so girly. Oh my gosh, I wish I could email you with tampon, bro.

47:21That is so girly. Are you really, haha? Just said, I understand all the implications. I'm not a fan of the violence, I'm simply, so this, are you really blah, blah, blah, blah, blah? Oh, you know what, I can't even imitate it. My boobs will grow and my balls will shrink. So you're gonna have to go work out so you don't ask people these shocked Pikachu faces of are you really? So the violence thing, yes, not a great answer, but it does keep people polite. The other, it's ostracism though, right? So ostracism is if people run their mouths, you stop dealing with them as kids, right? So, I mean, when I was a kid, I had this, I had this glorious childhood in many ways. I was just at the tail end of the baby boom. The demographic dangers hadn't landed in England, they landed and I sort of realized this later on just as I was believing that my mother was saving me

48:21from immigrant gangs. I was a pretty boy. So I had all of this glorious energy where we had no money, we had a lot of play space and we had a lot of kids. So we would all play together and had to be in force rules without an empire, without the rules giver, right? Because right now, kids don't have that free play as much. And it's really bad. Now you go to Chuck E. Cheese, you go to an arcade, you play online games where the rules are all enforced by others. And we would spend sometimes half the game playing and half the game figuring out the rules and how to enforce them and so on. And if someone, if some kid was a cheat, right? They would, you'd tag them and they'd say, you didn't touch me, man, you only touched my shirt. When they wouldn't be tagged, then we would just tell them, well, that's a bit much, that's not on.

49:23And if they kept doing it, we just would stop inviting them. We'd just say, and it would become like a game and it would become actually kind of a fun part of the game is, you know, let's say there's a kid named Bob who didn't play by the rules, then we'd figure out how we could exclude Bob, right? Don't tell Bob, we're not gonna play here, we're gonna play over there, don't tell Bob. And you know, Bob might get the message and Bob might not get the message, but the message would be clear either way, right? And so we did, yeah, there are still playgrounds for sure and if you've been around kids, you know, that half the time they've been playing, they've been arguing about the rules and that's actually very healthy. That's a very, very healthy and positive thing. And so, our ostracism was important, but then all of these hallmark movie, came along, they turned my stomach, I get hairballs of sole excrement when I think of these things. And all of these hallmark movies came along, which was, you know, some kid, he's a nice kid, but they're all these mean kids and these mean girls and these mean bullies and nobody comes to his birthday party

50:26and he's not invited to anyone else's a birthday party and he's really a sad and it's really tragic and how awful and it was all just, you know, this tear jerking, heart stomping stuff and all of the bullies were just super mean and all of the little kids were just, all of the bully kids were super nice and it's like, nah, sometimes the bullied kids are just a-holes of the first order. You know, creepy, weird, they are, you know, looking up girls skirts, they are doing weird stuff in the bathroom, they are showing their penises like that can be just weird kids who get bullied for that and all of that, right? I hear you, I hear you so- So, Stephanie, if I may just- We don't have ostracism anymore. I'm so sorry, you had something that you were saying? I guess, I think that's the key word and you brought it up. Thank you, Stefan, ostracism. So, you know, it does to ostracism. So it's my view and it's for ostracism has been used

51:29as a weapon which is wielded against individuals to keep them subjugated or compliant with social norms or are dictated by the state, but like a better term. And so therefore, in regards to that ostracism, Stefan, is a better for the man to not attach himself to the group. You're mentioning groups earlier on and happy people just go along because they don't want to be ostracized. So it's a better for the man to not attach himself to the group and instead retain his own independence are not independent from participation in group dynamics, but rather are, and most importantly, retaining his independence of thought. Because people upon himself ostracized not necessarily by their actions but by their thoughts, Stefan. And is that where the danger truly lies? Well, let's unpack it a little bit more. So, ostracism has positive and negative effects, right? So you can ostracize people for not believing

52:29in your local superstition, but you can also ostracize women was a big thing. Ostracizing women who had affairs. Ostracizing women who left their families. Ostracizing men who left their families. Ostracizing or beating up men who seduced women with false promises of commitment and then took off ostracizing women who had children out of wedlock or who had sex before marriage. That didn't lead to marriage, right? There's this nonsense on like a 98% of women were virgins on their wedding night. It's like, oh, they weren't. No, they were. I mean, a third of, this is my truth about the Wild West presentation. A third of women who got married in the Wild West were pregnant at the time. But let's see if it leads to marriage. That's sort of okay, but pregnancy that didn't lead to marriage. So yeah, there was a bunch of ostracism that was helpful and positive. Now, ostracism can be used for good or ill. That's not particularly relevant. I'm sorry to say what is or isn't. Let me sort of make the case very briefly.

53:31So the problem is if you're not allowed to ostracize, then that is a violation of the non-aggression principle. If you are forced, right? Freedom of association is important. Force association is a violation of freedom of association, right? If you were told as a business, 10% of your workforce has to be red-headed people, or we're gonna sue you for $100 million, then you have to hire red-headed people. That is a violation of freedom of association. If in a free society, let's say, a bunch of simoleons come over and start setting up fake leering centers, learning centers, and people aren't forced to pay them, then what happens? Well, not much because they set up these learning centers and nobody wants to pay for these learning centers, so they stop and they go home. People come into your country, can they sign up for free health? Can they get free health care? Can they get free benefits? Can they use all the roads?

54:32Can they participate in all the benefits of the social contract without actually following the social contract? Well, sure, but that's only because modern Western societies absolutely violate freedom of association. For most of us, that begins in childhood. That begins in kindergarten, it begins in school, where you don't have freedom of association. You have to go to the same damn school, where the same, I guess in my high school, there were like 1200 kids or so. When I was in boarding school, there were 500 kids with jam together with no particular freedom of association. Now, you can say my parents or my father in particular chose the school, yes, that's true, but certainly for public schools, no freedom of association. It's entirely forced association. These are not people that you would choose in general to spend time with, but you have to spend time with them because you have to go to school, your parents have to pay for it, and everyone has to be there. And so in general, ostracism is not subject to the laws of market efficiency. If you ostracize too much, nobody wants to be part of your group.

55:32If you don't ostracize enough, people don't want to be part of your group. And no, cancel culture is not ostracism, just so you know, cancel culture is not ostracism. A cancel culture is political and economic and it's based upon political power. So it is not a case of ostracism. Sorry, go ahead. I was hoping you'd go there because whilst you were saying that step on what came to mind for myself was the gay wedding cake controversy wherein there was a humble baker inside the United States who was swept up into a contrived controversy and they were shamed and they were expected to be ostracized because the business owner did to express the freedom of association. And explain to potential customer that if they wish for this gay wedding cake to be made, perhaps they'd go to a different store because the owner of this store had a belief system which potentially precluded them from wishing to make this cake as an artistic expression. If they're fundamentalist Christians,

56:33they're not going to celebrate a gay wedding. Okay, and also one other thing, taking you back. Oh, hang on, hang on, sorry. Did you, I don't want to go past the baker's thing because it is important. It wasn't just, I mean, they were sued if I remember rightly. They had to pay huge amounts of money in legal fees. So what didn't happen, which is to me quite important, what didn't happen was people didn't go to gay bakers and ask them to bake cakes for a fundamentalist Christian wedding. It's number one. Number two, I'm pretty sure nobody went to any Muslim bakers and asked them to bake cakes for gay weddings, right? So it's not, it was just targeting Christians and it wasn't doing the reverse and it wasn't targeting groups that people might be a little bit more anxious about. So that was pretty, pretty ratchet, of course. Of course, a gay baker doesn't have to bake a cake for a fundamentalist Christian ceremony if he doesn't agree with it. And of course, a Christian does not have to bake a cake

57:34for a gay people whose lifestyle he disapproves of. Of course, I mean, to me, this is so obvious, but of course, the left is aiming to get the votes of the gay community, which they quite regularly do. And this was a way of signaling, I guess, some sort of solidarity or something like that. Yes, and they, of course, naturally, then did not want the shoe to be placed on the other foot, which is why you didn't see people of different faiths going in and demanding the same thing from people they knew would be opposed to doing it. Yeah. And just didn't roll that way. Step on the other one and start. And thank you for your time, mate. I'll wrap it up now. But you're talking about how you had almost saved yourself some grief and exposure to all different types of people when you took a bit of a hiatus from politics as it were. And in a sense, you missed the messing Trump era and the Biden mystery era or whatever was taking place there. But now you're back thrown into it.

58:36Well, sorry, just to be over to be accurate, I didn't miss the Trump era because the Trump era was over. Me almost over like 2020 is when I dropped politics. So I did most of the Trump era, but sorry, go ahead. Yeah, but what you were doing, I think you were trying to talk about you saved yourself some exposure to all of the crazy people. So there was the whole orange dam bed and naturally knowing, of course, yeah, you were there and looking and breathing during the Trump era and actually aware of the day going on, but not necessarily participant in all the arguments and day-to-day because what the Australian government determined step-on-mind was persona non-gratitude in gentleman. He's thoughts were appreciated by the establishment, which was quite unfortunate step-on, but I'm glad you're back, mate. Well, I mean, genuine criminals can come into Australia but not rational philosophers. I mean, the government is wretched. I could go into it like about that. Maybe at a different time by all means. But I think what you did is you escaped the exposure

59:36to a lot of psychosis by not being participant during that because a lot of the crazy people found a happy place during that time step-on. And I know that because people were previously quiet and then had to fire because they became involved and thinking they could espouse all its things in a workplace and make all these demands, which weren't actually required in our day-to-day activities and they wish to bring politics into a place where politics did not belong. Hmm. Did you have a question? I mean, that's an interesting comment, but did you have a question? Oh, well, I guess it was all reading into you were mentioning earlier. Who are these people? Are they bad people? Are they crazy people? I think you said some could be libertarian, they could be atheists, they could be Christian, they could be from any denomination. And I think you even said they could be philosophical as well. So it affects everyone across the board and I think you're wrapped up by saying it's a side-pipe principle. But I want to get through this step on.

1:00:37I want to impress upon people, you know, it's up to us and there's hope and we can make it through. Ideas are bulletproof and we're quite happy to involve ourselves in the battle arena of those ideas. And I think that's what you have somehow entertained in people as well, it's pretty much what you've done over many years. You've awoken that in people, that sense of curiosity and then further explanations are required because things have gone astray. We've got to get things back on track. So I'll leave it there with you mate. All the best to you, Stefan Mauder. Thank you. I appreciate that. It was a pleasure to hear from you. And Nathan, if you want to let me know what's on your mind, I'm happy to hear your thoughts. Nate, the great unburdened yourself. Hello, sorry about that. I was just listening and then, are you cutting things off at the end of the hour?

1:01:39No, no, we can go a little longer, sure. I mean, I did three shifts today. I did a three and a half hour call in this morning. I did Alex Jones this afternoon. This is evening. So it won't be a super long show, but I'm certainly happy to entertain your questions or thoughts. Okay. Well, so I first heard about you. I think through Jordan Peterson, maybe, but you know, just true Jordan Peterson. I don't think he ever mentioned. I don't think he ever solid his pure lips with my name, but we did do some shows together back of the day. Okay, maybe not. Maybe not. I don't think he said one thin syllable about my de-platforming. Okay. Maybe I could be mistaken. All I remember is that I believe I remember somebody talking about, you know, the controversy and book and stuff like that and so. But just to say that I haven't gone very deep into understanding your philosophy

1:02:44or where you're coming from or anything. I just watched some of the video where you explain what you believe, which was helpful. So, but anyway, by the way, just getting to know you more, I was wanting to ask you, what do you think about Socrates? What do I think about Socrates? Do you want to narrow that down at all? I mean, I don't mind taking a wide swing, but I don't want to swing it a miss. I can. Well, so this may be too specific, but I was wondering also, have you heard of third wave, like a third wave Platonism? No. I thought you were going to say Feminism, yes, but third wave Platonism, no. Let me give you a minute or two on Socrates and then we'll talk about third wave Platonism. Okay. So Socrates was a play dumb troll. Right? So you know the story that he went to the Oracle of Delphi and said, who's the wisest man?

1:03:44And the Oracle at Delphi, who could not lie, said, you Socrates of the wisest man? And he said, well, that can't be true, because I know nothing. I know virtually nothing. So he went to around to examine everyone and Socrates was smart enough to know that most people are totally bullshiting. Most people, I mean, you go around the world, right? And people are talking about stuff. And I try to be hesitant about this kind of stuff as well. How can the chat support you, Mr. Molenu? Thank you. Socrates is free to main.com slash donate to help out the show, share shows, share books, in particular, peaceful parenting. If you can share that, both the English and the Spanish language version, I would really appreciate that. The book is free. So Socrates knew that the sophists were lying. And this is true for most people. Like this is kind of joke about how, oh, the US is is waging war against Iran. Now everybody wakes up and they're an expert on the Middle East. Right? Which I'm not. Actually, I have some expertise when it comes to moral philosophy and history, but I'm skisly an expert on the Middle East.

1:04:47So there's this sort of joke that most people, oh, they wake up, they read for, they go to a chat GPT for an hour or two and now they're an expert on the Middle East. And most people are so full of shite, their eyes are brown. I mean, they're just saying stuff. They don't know stuff. They don't believe stuff. Like my whole life, I was like, oh, I'm really, I'm really interested in Iran. Iran is a really great writer. She's really, although I'm re reading the fountain head now, it is a little long-winded. But anyway, maybe it's just because I'm older, don't have as much time to waste on endless exposition. But people would say, oh, Iran, she's so this, she's so that. And then you'd ask them some questions, right? To become an expert in anything and ask people stuff is to just realize how incredibly shallow and unthinking most people are about just about everything. They don't know. They just guess, you know, oh, there's a social contract. Oh, what's a social contract? How is it a force where did it come from? Did you agree? They don't know. They don't have no idea. Oh, well, we need the government for X, Y and Z. It's like, oh, has the government, has it ever been provided without the government? I mean, I think Europe's saying, well, we need the government

1:05:47to protect ourselves from invaders. Well, they might not, in fact, believe that, or too much longer. And I wish that they'd listened to voluntaryists like me decades ago and they would have been disabused of those notions. So most people are just making stuff up and they're lying about stuff. And I'm not talking to the stuff they're specialists in, like a doctor knows about the health and the lawyer knows about the law. But just in general, most people don't think for themselves. They just study stuff and they just regurgitate stuff. And so, Socrates rolling around Greece, cross examining everyone, he said, no, no, no. It's just because the article said that I was wise and I'm faced with this paradox that I don't know anything. But the article says that I'm the wisest and then after he does this for a certain amount of time, he's like, oh, I now know what the article meant. And the article meant that I am the wisest, because I know that I know nothing. Now, that's kind of a troll thing. It's a nihilistic thing. It's like a Nietzschean thing. To tear things down without building something new

1:06:47is very cruel and destructive. So I basically believe that Socrates hated his current society. And those of us who think have to ride this knife edge of wanting to help the world and just loathe it get. I don't think I'm alone in that. I want to help the world kind of load the world as well. It is a really tough thing. I feel like a surgeon who has the Hippocratic oath and his worst enemy, like the guy who strangled his wife to death comes in and the surgeon needs to save his life. And the surgeon is like, I hate this guy. But I'm kind of on a bound to save him because of my doctors oath and stuff like that, right? And I think most people who tell the truth and are curious and want to be good in this world have a love-hate relationship with the world. We love the world that could be. At least I got to write about that in the future.

1:07:47My novel, The Future. But we love the world that could be and we love individual bits within the world. But most of the world is just effing horrible. Most of the world is effing horrible and most people are effing liars. Just a fact. I mean, I've been around the block a long time. I've been doing philosophy for 45 years. Most people are full of shite and bullshite. And they're just liars and they're fakers and they're virtue-signalers and they're manipulators and so on, right? And... So, Socrates was obviously brilliant. I understood all of that. But he had to kind of play dumb. Oh, I just want to examine you so that I know how much you know so that I can find out why the Oracle that can't lie has called me the wisest of all. He knew that everyone was full of shite. He knew that. But he had to have this cover story. He was just fulfilling the Oracle and so on. And the reason, and I did a whole series on this,

1:08:47a six-part series on the trial and death of Socrates almost 20 years ago, you can get again after your podcast.com that Socrates at the end of his life, again, according to Plato, I think it was accurate because Plato wrote this at time when people really remembered what happened with Socrates and if he had been completely wrong, it seems unlikely that he would have gotten away with it. But Socrates was offered the option to flee Athens. And he said, no, no, no, I'm not going to flee Athens because I grew up under the protection of the laws of Athens. I have celebrated my entire life in Athens. I have lived in the culture of Athens and the courts have protected me from bad people. And so I'm not going to turn against the laws at the end of my life. This would be like turning against the father who has saved you from a terrible fate. Now, he says most people are complete liars,

1:09:49but you should obey the government. He said, most people are faking knowledge and are incredibly volatile and angry when their vanity is punctured, but you should obey the law. So I think that Socrates was an incredible troll and I think that Socrates faked not knowing things. I personally think he kind of lied about the whole Oracle at Delphi thing because he was wise enough to know that the gods weren't going to do that to him. I think he created a wonderful fairy tale about just trying to please the Oracle and I think that he cursed the world by telling everyone you have to obey the government. You have to obey the state, you have to obey the laws. The laws which were killing him. So I think he never got particularly angry and I think that was a problem. I don't trust people who can't get angry. I do not trust people who can't get angry because they're outraged in their anger

1:10:49and their frustration and their hostility is going to come out somewhere. It's going to come out somewhere and people who can't express anger just become manipulative as hell. People were angry at me over the course of my rise to fame in the 20 teens and they did not express anger to me directly. But the people of the powers to be didn't call me up and say, well, you're wrong about this and you're wrong about that. I had an open forum. I'm happy to debate anytime people come along. In fact, people who disagree with me, I put them right up first as I've done before a number of times. So... When people are angry at you but they can't express their anger directly, it comes out in subversive, manipulative, undermining horrible ways. And if you anger a passive-aggressive philosopher,

1:11:51he will curse you for 50 generations by promoting that which is immoral under the guise of virtue. If you provoke a philosopher, and it's been hard to avoid the trap of Socrates for me to put myself obviously in somewhat illustrious company, but it's been hard to avoid that curse, which is the world shows you its ass until you can't stand the smell and then begs you to save it. If you've ever been wronged by someone who then asks you to save them, some guy who's just completely trash-talked you and insulted you and tried to get your girlfriend to break up with you, and then he's in desperate need of help in some way. It's kind of tough, right? I'm not a Christian that way. So with Socrates, the world treated him like absolute crap. He was put to death by the government and then his final curse to humanity was,

1:12:52oh no, you really should obey the government and that is his curse, and that's because he couldn't express his anger and contempt directly. Now, I'm sorry about that. Lengthy one, if you want to tell me about Can you hear me? Yes. Okay, I don't know if that's the best way to take it. Are you curious about it? Sorry, curious about what? About Third Way Platonism. I just asked you to tell me about it. What do you mean am I curious about it? Okay, sorry. Okay, sorry. Yeah, so I wrote a paper and where I kind of briefly introduced it. So it's about five sentences. Could I just read that? Yeah. Okay, so there is an anthology by Francis Goggen's all-asset titled The Third Way. The book takes many different angles on Plato from different authors, but largely in a general framework of the overarching historical interpretation of Plato

1:13:55is taking two tracks. Plato was making a case for a systematic set of doctrines. He was positively asserting. And secondly, Plato was not making any assertions for rather was skeptically undermining all doctrines on an open-ended pursuit. The Third Way being advocated here by Gonzales Anthology is plural, but centers around an extremely sophisticated dynamic interpretation of Plato that avoids all these myopic views. I go through some of these different ways that the writers in this anthology were looking at Plato differently, but basically it's sort of intentionally occupying the in-between or like a dialectic between different ways. Okay, brother, brother.

1:14:55Brother, sorry to interrupt. What are you doing to me? I'm sorry. Seriously, this is a general audience show, right? Yes. You haven't defined a single term that anybody can follow. So help me understand what you think you're trying to communicate because you mean we have a general audience, you haven't defined a plateenism, right? And you haven't defined... I mean, there was a sentence in there that struck me as kind of a softest sentence. Like, oh, we want to reject this myopic view of blah, blah, blah. Right? So... Yeah. Why do you not think... Do you not think that philosophy should begin with a definition of terms or an explanation of what you're talking about, especially if you have a lay audience? Well, I agree that that would be helpful. Let me do it. Chatchy PT says, Stefan, you're very right too, correct me.

1:15:55Well, I'm just... If you want to communicate effectively, people have to know what the hell you're talking about, right? Yeah, let me do that. So basically, let me try to put it in layman's terms. Basically, the scholarship around Plato, it seems for a long time was taking one of two tracks. Either Plato was laying out a strict set of beliefs and doctrines or he was just a skeptic that was saying, you shouldn't believe anything. Is that simple enough? Okay. So, I don't know how you could, and just for those who care, and it's a good presentation, I've got a four-hour presentation on Plato on my website, freedomain.com. So, I'm not sure how people could say that Plato wasn't advocating for anything when he was talking about the realm of forms and its relationship to concept formation. Like, so Plato said,

1:16:55before we're born, like, how do we know what a... How do we know what this cup is, man? How do we know it's a cup and it's a mug and so on? Now, Aristotle would say, well, we know it's a cup because it's a conveyance for liquid to the mouth and blah, blah, blah. But it handles, so it's not too... If it's hot or whatever. So, that would be a Aristotle's argument. You see something repeatedly used and you understand what it's for, and it's also fashion for that purpose and so on. Whereas Plato would say, well, the reason you know it's a cup is before you were born, you were floating around in the world, the perfect forms, and you beheld, the celestial perfect cup. And every time you see a cup, you have a vague memory of that celestial perfect cup which allows you to know what a cup is. So, I don't know that Plato wasn't advocating for a positive knowledge when he said that he understood where concepts came from. Yeah, well, so just to be clear, I'm not saying that the, you know, the academic literature on Plato...

1:17:55No, not that. Some of the... I'm just saying, I don't know how you can... I don't know how even academics could make that, but okay, so either he was advocating knowledge or he was a radical skeptic in the realm of Socrates, and what's the third way? So the third way is saying like it's... So there's multiple third ways is to not just one third way, but in general, the third way is saying, well, he's not really doing that or that, he's doing something else, and people have different opinions about what that something else is, but in general, it has to do with like, that he's using dialogue not just as an ornamentation to his presentation, but that the dialogical form was part of his philosophy that he was trying to present. I don't know if that... Okay, so yes, he uses dialogues as have a lot of philosophers,

1:18:57including I and Rand, I suppose, and so to continue. Yeah, so, well, I mean, I was wondering if you were familiar with that or what, you know, kind of like, your general stance on Socrates, which we got a lot, you know, from your explanation earlier. But can I ask you sort of another question that has more to do with what you were saying? Sure. Yeah, so I actually... So I've been... So I'm probably chief among the bullshitters first off, but I have been reading through the dialogues, probably about halfway through, and unfortunately, before I even really started reading the dialogues, I had kind of already fallen in love with Socrates, and so I've sort of like, pivoted my entire... I was like a...

1:19:58probably you could say a fundamental excursion, and so I've sort of moved away from that, and I've sort of like focused my life on following After Socrates. Okay, and I appreciate that. So just before you get to your question, what is the biggest moral issue that mankind faces that we can do the most about? What is the biggest moral issue that mankind faces that we can do the most about? As individuals. Because I mean, you want to... you study philosophy in order to do good in the world, right? Yeah. Okay, so what is the biggest moral issue? How long have you been studying philosophy for? And it's great that you are, so I'm just... No, and that's not that negative, I'm just curious. Yeah. So how long have you been studying philosophy for? I don't know if I can answer that. I mean... Like, just roughly... I'm not talking down to the nanosecond. Well, I mean, I've never... I haven't ever formally studied philosophy. No, no, I didn't ask formally.

1:20:58I didn't just... Yeah. Don't over-complicate the question. Okay. How long have you been studying philosophy? Probably since I was a child. To some degree. Yeah. But, I mean, but I've only... Okay. Go ahead. Bro. Bro. Bro. Go ahead. You're a little lacking in empathy. I'm sorry. I'm not saying in general, I'm just saying in this conversation, right? Yeah. So if you say to me, Steph, I've been studying philosophy since I was a child. Does that tell me how long you've been studying philosophy for? No. Why not? Uh... I guess because you don't know how old I am. Well, I don't know what you mean by child, right? Could be anywhere for me. I started thinking about philosophy when I was five, two at 17, I picked up a book, so that's a 12-year span. I don't know how old you are now. So this is what I mean by empathy. I'm trying to... I'm asking you... And you don't have to answer, right? But this vagueness...

1:21:58So when I ask you... How long have you been interested in philosophy? And you say, well, my answer is that I've been... I've studied it since I was a child. Or I've been interested in it since I was a child. If you don't know that that doesn't answer my question, it means that you have trouble putting yourself into somebody else's mindset, right? Because logically, it makes sense that you're not answering the question. If I ask you how long you've been interested in philosophy, and you say, oh, since I was a child, when I don't know what you mean by that, and I also don't know how old you are, so that could be anywhere from one to 30 years. Mm-hmm. Or more, right? And you think you're... So it's funny because for me, you know, I said... If I said, as I did just now, right? I'm 59. I got into philosophy when I was 15, so that's 44 years. So I've been... If somebody said, how long have you been studying philosophy, I'd say, well, I got into it 15, 59 now, 44 years, right? That's my answer.

1:23:00But you don't answer the question. And neither do you say, I'm not going to answer the question, you just do a kind of funky dance that waits time. And that's what I'm curious about. Do you aware that you're not answering the question? Mm-hmm. I don't mean this in a big critical way, I'm just curious. Well, it was an intentional. I want to have a good conversation with you, but... Oh, my gosh, you're still not answering the question. I asked... Well, I asked, well, you were aware that you weren't answering my question. And you said, well, it's not intentional, but... But I was like, that's still not answering... Can you just answer a question, please? Okay, just give me a moment. Give me a moment. If I'm speaking, I'll be more able to answer it. Okay. So I think that I have always been interested in philosophy as far as I can remember. But my intense interest in Socrates started about two to three years ago, probably closer to two years ago.

1:24:01But I was interested in philosophy before that, but, you know, I couldn't give you... I can't give you a definite timeframe, because, I mean, like, I've been reading the dialogues in the last year, but, you know, in terms of, like, actually studying philosophy, probably only in the last two years, is what I would say. Okay, so you've been interested in philosophy for how long? Since I was a child. So, you know... You're trying to give me an aneurysm, bro. I'm 38, so... Okay, thank you. I don't know what to say. Thank you. Okay. So was it around... So was it 30 years, something like that? 20 years, 18, eight? What are we talking about? Uh... Yeah, I'd say 30 years is fair. Thank you. Maybe... Yeah. Okay, sorry. If you're interested in philosophy, you should be out by answering a question,

1:25:01like that. If you can't even answer how long you've been interested in philosophy, how am I going to take you seriously about more complicated topics, like law and justice and virtue? It sounds like you didn't like my answer, but I'm giving you the best answer I can. Uh... What? The fuck does that mean? I didn't like your answer. What do you mean? Do you think I didn't like when you said 30 years and two years of Socrates? What do you mean? I didn't express any dislike of that. What did I not... Okay, let me ask you this. What did I not like? I don't know. Um... I was happy with the answer I gave you. You were not... Okay. When you say... I've been in... I say, how long have you been studying philosophy or how long have you been interested in philosophy? And you say, since I was a child, do you think that's a good answer that explains things to me? I think that the answer that is best will come from our dialogue,

1:26:03not a single statement that I can make. Do you not answer my question? If I ask you, how long have you been interested in philosophy and you say, since I was a child, does that answer my question? Yes. It does not. Okay. Because I don't know how old you are, and I don't know what you mean by childhood, which is anywhere from five to eighteen, let's say. Okay. Well, no don't. You're okay me like I'm being some pedant here. Well, I don't know, maybe you are, but I'm always ready to give you a more precise answer if you ask. But did you know that you weren't giving me a precise answer? That's my question. I didn't know that you wanted a more precise answer than that. Okay. I'm happy to dig in. I'm happy to dig in. I'm happy to dig in. Okay. Let's dig the fuck in. Okay. Okay. It could be that you are 19 and got into philosophy when you were 17,

1:27:06or it could be that you're 18 and got into philosophy when you were 17, right? So that's one year, right? Is that fair? Like logically, that could be the case, right? Yeah. Because 17, you're technically a child, 18, you're an adult. So it could be anywhere from six to 12 months, right? Sorry. I don't know what it means. Do you agree logically? You like Socrates, right? So I'm giving you Socratic reasoning here. You're on the receiving end of Socratic reasoning. Yeah. Do you understand that if you are 18 and you say I've been into philosophy since I was a child, it could be six to 12 months, right? I'm sorry. You're saying, if I was 18 and I said I've been into philosophy since I was a child. Yeah. Then it could be six to 12 months, because you were technically a child legally at 17, but you're an adult at 18, right? Okay. Sorry. Do you understand that that could be six to 12 months?

1:28:08Yes. Okay. Fantastic. Now, let's say that you are 65 years old. Okay. And let's say you started getting interested in philosophy and thinking about it when you were five. Okay. Right? Mm-hmm. So that's 60 years. Okay. So if I ask you how long have you been interested in philosophy and your answer is somewhere between six to 12 months and 60 years, is that a precise answer? No. Thank you. That's all I'm saying. That's my entire point. I agree. I agree. It's an imprecise. Well, it's completely vague. And did you, my question is, did you know that it was imprecise to the point of uselessness? No. I don't think it's useless. No. Completely useless.

1:29:08Well, there's a whole other set of measurements that I could make on your life, which I would call very imprecise without getting to know you. I have no idea what that means. Do you think that some way, hang on, do you think that an answer, if somebody's asking you how long you have lived in the country you live in, and you say, well, it's somewhere between six months and 60 years, you could understand that that would be not a helpful answer. No. I mean, it depends on the conversation. It definitely depends on the conversation. Why? Well, because I think we're trying to get, we're talking about philosophy, but we're also getting to know each other. I said that was, I mean, interest was I was asking you a question to understand you better.

1:30:12And then you're asking me a question, so good, so I assume you're trying to get to know me as well. So we ask questions to understand each other better, right? Yes. Okay. Now, if I give you completely vague answers, are you getting to know me better? Yes. Well, you're getting to know that I'm giving you vague answers, but you're not getting to know any details about my life, right? Yes, but I'm also learning things directionally. I mean, if I asked the question of you and you said, well, jeez, I started learning philosophy when I was a small child, I would know that you have been learning philosophy for a long time. Okay. You've just lied. You've just lied. Sorry. You just lied to move the goalposts and you need to have more honor in your conversations with people. Okay. Well, what did you just lie about or what goalpost did you just move?

1:31:12Help me know. Well, you said since I was a child and now you've just changed it to small child, which is a very different thing. I don't think it's that different, but we can know it is a different thing. I can know it is. Well, let me change it to a very different thing. Stop being a stop being a softest. A small child is a small child able to drive a car. Okay. Okay. Here's a small child able to drive a car. Okay. Let me take a step back. Okay. If you're going to answer the question, great. If you're not going to answer the question, I will move on because you don't have to answer the question, but I'm not going to be treated rudely because you're not answering the question. Well, hold on. Am I treating you rudely now? Absolutely. It is very rude to ignore people's questions and talk about what you want to talk about. You can certainly say to me, Steph, I'm not going to answer your question, but you can't just ignore my question. So when I'm saying, when you say there's not much of a difference or there's not a real

1:32:13difference between a small child and a child, you're saying there's no difference between three and 17. No, I agree with you that there is a difference. Fantastic. So when I, when you said, let me say something. No, no. So when you, when I said, I don't think this is what I was interested in. I'm the one who was, when I, when I, when I, when I, when I, you're not, you're, go ahead. Well, I do not, I do not get the sense that you are modeling Socrates, and I know that's what you're trying to do, but this is, this is not how Socrates acted towards people, by the way. Well, what did I say? In the, in the, so what did I say? So what did I say? Hang on. In the several dialogues. Hang on, hang on, hang on. You're making a big accusation there. What did I say was missing in Socrates? What did you say was missing in Socrates? I'm not sure. So you really want even listening, which is also kind of rude.

1:33:14Like if you ask me a question and I provide an answer and you don't even listen, that's kind of rude. Yeah. That's right, Joe. So I said, what was missing in Socrates was anger. Now you're being manipulative and you are lying. I'm also getting angry by the way that you're acting towards me. Good. I am. I am. And I'll break you out of this fog. That would be very helpful. I'm okay with you being angry too, but I don't understand you being angry because I didn't tell you the exact number of years that I've been interested in philosophy. See? Now you're lying again. Now you're lying again. And you're being manipulative again because I did not ask for the exact number of years, but you didn't give a range between six months and 60 fucking years is not the exact number of years. Like if you said, if you said, if you said, I've been interested in philosophy for 20 years and then later you said, Oh, you know what? It's 21 years. I wouldn't have cared. So I did not ask you for an exact number. It's just it can't be as vague as since I was a child when I don't even know how old you are.

1:34:14And that's why I'm trying to get you to understand that if you want to be an effective communicator, I am a very effective communicator, whether you like it or not. I've got almost a quarter century on you. I have 45 years experience in philosophy and you're 38 and you started at eight. So you got 30 years. I've been very successful in the communication of philosophy. I'm an incredibly good listener, which is why people call up all the time for my feedback. So I have a lot of expertise and I'm trying to help you. Now if you don't want the help, that's fine. If you don't want the help of somebody who knows what they're doing, that's fine. I don't have to help you. But if you refuse to submit to any kind of rational cross examination or any improvement in your communication, that's fine. And you can continue to be a bad communicator and you don't have to take the coaching. I do not refuse and I appreciate you calling out the inaccuracy, but it was not my intention. But you know what?

1:35:15The road to hell is paid with good intentions. What an earth. Listen, so this is intention is feminine coded bullshit, frankly. Is intention objective? Can I judge your intention in any objective fashion? Yes. How? So if you say something that is false or you move the goalposts in your own favor, right? And I point that out. And then you say that wasn't my intention. Is that a rational rebuttal? No, it's not. So when you, when you start claiming intention, you are claiming something that is completely outside the realm of philosophy. I am an empiricist, as you know, I can only judge by what you do. I didn't know that. Sorry. I didn't know that. No, I didn't know that. And how would I know that? I told you I don't barely know anything about you. Okay. That's perfectly fine.

1:36:15Even if we throw aside the empiricism aspect of things, can I directly philosophically evaluate your claim of intention? Is intention something that can be proven objectively? Not everything we talk about can be proven objectively. You're again, you're just prevaricating and lying or or or or. No, is that not true? No, no, no, because I'm asking you, I'm asking you a specific question. I say, can you? I'm not in a sophist. If I disagree with you. Absolutely. Absolutely. And you can take the coaching or not. I don't care. This is not for you at this point. This is for the audience. So when I say can intention be proven objectively? And you say, well, not everything can be proven objectively. That's sophistry. I'm not talking about everything. Of course, not everything can be proven objectively. That's everybody understands that who's over the age of three. So when I say can intention be proven objectively? And you say, well, not everything can be proven objectively. That's sophistry.

1:37:16Is you're not answering the question? just putting in an on-sequator that's liningly obvious and irrelevant to the conversation. I'm not asking whether everything could be. I'm asking specifically. Can intention, can your intentions be proven objectively? Can I ask you a quick question? Can your answer my question, and then I'll answer your questions. Can your intention be proven objectively? I think that I answered that in a negative already. Okay, so your intention cannot be established objectively. So why would you bring it into a rational debate about what you've actually said? Just because things aren't objective doesn't mean they're not relevant. And to be quite frank with you, I don't even really subscribe to the idea of absolute, of anything fitting absolutely in the category of objective

1:38:20or subjective. So, but I understand what you mean. I'm not trying to wriggle out of anything. I just, okay, so I'll make a point and then you can ask me your question and I appreciate that. So when I've already said to you that you are being a softest and you are sometimes lying and you are sometimes moving the goalposts such as when you changed child to small child, and I know that seems nitpicky, but it's very important because accuracy is very important. If I already say I am not trusting your debate process and then you say no, no, no, you should trust me about my intentions. Am I likely to trust you? If I don't trust you already, and when the things that you've said you have changed and I don't trust you on that, am I likely to trust you about something that cannot be verified at all like your intentions? So intentions are maybe something that's important if you're in a situation of trust. If you're not in a situation of trust, in other words, if you've done something

1:39:22to undermine the trust of another person, then claiming intentions won't help because the person I don't trust you at the moment in terms of honesty and directness because you won't even answer a question. Or if you do, you move the goalposts. So claiming this, and this is just part of empathy of understanding where I'm coming from, which is I don't trust your communication at the moment. I don't trust your honesty and your integrity. So then claiming intentions doesn't help because intentions are fine. If you and I had been friends for 30 years and you were very honest and direct and then you claimed an intention thing, okay, well, you've I trust you. You're an honest and direct person. But in our conversation, you have moved the goalposts and I think lied a couple of times. And I'm not saying you're some evil guy. I'm just saying that's what I've experienced. So if you're already in a situation where somebody else doesn't trust you, then claiming no, trust me, my intentions are good, just won't work. Anyway, so just wanted to mention that, but go ahead and ask your question. Okay. Well, my question on when you're talking about the intention, or do you think that

1:40:28because intentions are not objective that they're not that they're not relevant at all to a discussion? I'm not sure I understand the question. So you're saying that like so I motion towards my intentions that I was not intending to be deceptive. I was not intending to be vague. I assumed, you know, for example, that you're as a, you know, what seems to me a very intelligent person would understand as sounding adult that if I said that I have been interested in philosophy since a child, that you would naturally understand that like 60 was out of the realm of possibility that, you know, how would I know that 60 is out of the realm? I don't know how old you are. Okay. I'm sorry. You're right. So I was wrong to say that. What I mean is that the lower

1:41:36side, like 10 years, maybe even 20 years is out of the realm of possibility, but it's somewhere in the realm of, you know, 30 to 40 years or something like that. Sorry. Why would, why would, let's say that you were 15 when you got interested in it and you've been studying it for 10 years, you'd be 25, why would that be outside the realm of possibility? Yeah, I just had no idea that you would be so interested in this, in this precision of number of years. I've been, so you're being, I can't stand this office tree, man, it's repulsive. I'm not asking for precision. I'm just asking for something between six months and 60 fucking years. Okay. And that's not a wild obsession with precision. If I said, and I literally said, I don't, it's not down to the nanosecond, just roughly 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, you said, since I was a child, right? And when, when given the chance, did I, did I not clear that up fairly succinctly? I mean, no, not at all.

1:42:37Probably took five or 10 minutes to get an answer out of a pretty simple question. Now, let me ask you this. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. No, listen, this is important. Stephen, I am sorry. Okay, I am not trying to deceive you. I am not trying to be a quote, quote, softness. How do you know? Sorry, hang on, hang on, hang on. How do you know? Well, no, I mean, you're, like, I led with the, no, no, no, no, no, no. I asked you a question. Stop ignoring my questions. It's really rude. What was my question? How do I know that? How do I know that I'm not your, how do you know what you're, how do you know what your intentions are? Oh, that's a good question. How do you know all of the buried depths of your intentions and your history and your trauma and how do you know all of your intentions? I mean, intentions are very complicated things. My intentions in conversations, my intentions with philosophy, my intentions in the world, my intentions with morality, my,

1:43:40these are all very layered, complicated things. I was just talking about my love, hate, relationship with the world. So it's complicated, right? So how do you know exactly what your intentions are? Um, I think that it is true that I definitely do not know exactly what my intentions are. And especially in a conversation like this, I'm very liable to make a mistake in terms of introspecting on my own intentions while I'm having an intense conversation. But generally speaking, I understand what it is I'm wanting to do. Okay, sorry. But in this conversation, yeah. And I think it's a very honest and I appreciate that. In this conversation, you know, it's a bit of a heated conversation and we're kind of wrangling and wrestling, which is fine. We're not made of glass, right? So in this conversation, you can't state with certainty all of your intentions, right? I can't either by the by,

1:44:41which is why I trend not to claim intentions because for me to figure out what my intentions are, I used to sit in a dark room for 20 minutes and figure out all the layers that are going on, right? And so in this conversation, you don't know as neither would I, all of your intentions, right? Yeah, I would agree with that. Okay. So then when you say to me, it wasn't my intention to do something, I just know that's not true. Well, actually, I'm not sure how you know that. Because you just admitted you can't know all of your intentions. Yes, you can know that I don't know, but you can't know that I was false. What? You made a knowledge claim that you 100% did not have any intentions to be a office or anything like that or to mislead or to even though all of your all of your misstatements were in your favor and against mine. That's not an accident and that's a pattern. So that means that there's an unconscious desire to be right at the expense of integrity and honesty. So if you say, Steph, I made a claim that I know that I don't have any intention

1:45:43in this of trying to win dishonorably. And then you say, well, I can't know all of my intentions. Well, I know that. I know you can't know all of your intentions. Because if you are fully aware of your intentions, then you would say to me, Steph, I have an odd desire to not answer this question. And I, you know, when you try to pin me down, I feel myself getting hostile or tense, like that would be to have self-knowledge and to know your intentions. So when you say to me, I had no intention to to move the goalposts. I had no intention for falsehood. Well, first of all, you'd be the only person in the history of the world who never had any intention to win a debate or an argument and perhaps to because we all have that urge to sneak a little and to try and win, especially in a public debate. So when you say to me, Steph, I had no intention of being false or moving the goalposts or anything like that or anything like that, I just know that that's not true because I have done a lot of therapy. I understand the complexities of motivations. Actually, I never said that. You never said one? No, I never said that I had no

1:46:46intention of being false or no. No, what I said was I had no intention of being imprecise about how long I've been interested in philosophy. And I am paying attention enough to notice that you said I was definitely wrong about my intention. No, my intention, but that I was wrong about my intention, which you cannot know. Oh, I know. No, I absolutely know. I do. I do. So, okay, how can you know that? Okay, that's a fair question and that's a very philosophical question, but I appreciate. So, your argument is that you had no intention of being imprecise about how long you've been interested in philosophy, right? Well, I think I'm just not trying to catch you. I'm just going to make sure that I'm repeating about what you said to me accurately. Yeah, and I'm recognizing when you say that, that I'm meaning a lot more than the actual words I'm saying. So, sorry. But I also know that if I try to

1:47:51say, well, but I meant this, then it's going to be, I don't want to move the goalposts. So, yes, I will accept that that is what I said. Okay, so you said, Steph, I had no intention of being imprecise about how long I've been interested in philosophy, right? Yeah, something like, okay. Now, imprecise is a softest word itself because you weren't answering the question. You were saying, it's in the mortal lifespan minus five years. Yeah, we assume that nobody can really get interested in philosophy both at the age of five, right? So, if I say, for how long have you been interested in philosophy and you say, it's any length of the human lifespan minus five years, that's not imprecise. That's just not answering the question. Well, no, but I think it is answering the question. I do. No, but this is the thing, it's like,

1:48:52because I had no idea that you wanted something more than that. Like that is something that is saying, well, it's like, you know what I'm saying? I'm not trying to be a jerk here. Oh, this is great. I'm not trying to be a jerk here. I'm seriously like, okay, you just do it a bit now at this point. No, I'm not. No, it's, I mean, like, my, my 90 more detail than the entire human lifespan minus five years. Thank you. That's great. Well, you've been interested in philosophy for a long time as well. Like, so, you know, that's great. No, listen, you had me going, you had me going. Oh, that's great. Oh, my God, that's great. You know, that was performance art of the highest degree, man. Good for you. Well, good for you. That's, you know, well done, man. You've got to get some sort of

1:49:56acting degree for that. No, I wouldn't be interested in that. But I think you'd want something more precise than anywhere 90 to 95 years. Why, why does it? Okay, like, if I said a long time, like, that's good enough to, right? Like, yeah, absolutely. Why is it, why is it that important that you know a certain, like, range, like, good stuff being a little bit pedantic on this point? Good stuff. That's great. But I do understand that you're modeling Socrates, but I think he cared about other stuff besides this. Like, come on. You're not trying any more with credibility. No, I am. I mean, what made Socrates? Listen, Socrates never claimed to be an expert of measurement, even though he was very interested in measurement. What he claimed to be was an expert in aeros. Well, people care about, and this is not something to really care about. I don't think. Yeah, that's great. That's great. I mean, is there something you don't actually ask me questions,

1:50:56like, but still have a good discussion. Are you? Yes, of course. Okay. Well, we're not. I mean, why do you care? Why do you care so much about this one? Oh, that's great. I'm sorry if I got trolled. I thought that way. I mean, obviously, I wasn't expecting to reach this Weasel bag, but hopefully that was helpful to other people. So my general point in asking him how long he'd been interested in philosophy was something like this. And, you know, that was that was the good. That was a good workout. And I appreciate it. Yeah. That's great. Why would you want any more detail than a human lifespan minus five years? So my question basically was, like, he was interested in all this esoteric stuff that he wasn't going to define. And since the purpose of philosophy is to do good in the world, to be moral and to promote morality and virtue in the world, then if you've been interested in philosophy for just a couple of years, right? If he said, Oh, you know, I've just been into it to two years, I would

1:51:59have taken one approach to it, right? If somebody's just been interested in philosophy for two years, then I would say to that person, you know, gently, you know, with all sympathy and and respect and honor to say, you know, the purpose in the long run is to and maybe not that long, because we kind of need people out there promoting virtue. If it be new to philosophy, like if he said, I just started getting into it two years ago, then I'd say, you know, good for you. You know, the goal is to be able to do good things in the world over time and guide him in that direction. Now he's been interested in philosophy for 30 years. And it doesn't sound like he's done any particular good in the world. And so it would be a different approach. If somebody is new to philosophy, then you gently guide them towards the purpose of philosophy. If somebody's been doing philosophy for 30 years and they still don't know how to define their terms and they still don't know the purpose of philosophy is virtue and they haven't taken on evil forces and people in the world and promoted

1:53:01virtue, then that would be a different matter because then they're more likely to be avoidant and kind of pompous about things. All right. Oh, Ratchet, thank you very much. Let me just get to, sorry, to just a man, I'm going to finish up here. I don't think we can improve that. Last thing here, let me just go to your, could you put that on your resume? I have experienced between six months, six months to 60 years. Can you imagine? You get a sentence from a judge and you say, how long am I going to be in prison? He says, somewhere between six months and 60 years or could be 80. I mean, if the guy's 95, he got into it at 15, could be 90, could be 80 years, right? No, that's, yeah, that is funny. That is funny. And I tried not to judge people by their voices. I thought he was younger than the, I think he said 38 or something like that. It's a troll. You know, I don't know. I don't know. To me, he seems like a reactionary personality

1:54:07talking is not his strength. Simple questions he can yes or no. Yeah. So it is to do with empathy. So if somebody asks me a relatively simple question, right? How long have you been into philosophy? I will try to give them an answer, right? I was just on, again, the Alex Jones show today asking complex questions, try to give good answers. And so if somebody doesn't have basic empathy, in other words, if they can't answer a simple question, right? And this is a, if somebody says, I'm an expert in internal medicine, right? I'm an expert in internal medicine, right? And you say, can you point to my belly button and they won't point to your belly button? What would that mean? Right, I'm an expert in the human body. Okay, where's my nose? I'm not going to answer that. Right? So if you want to have credibility with very complex questions, you need to have

1:55:11competence with very simple questions. It's simple question like how long have you been into philosophy? It's a simple question. I'm not asking for nanoseconds just roughly, right? So if somebody won't answer simple questions, do you trust them with complex questions? And of course, the answer is, no, of course you wouldn't trust them with complex questions if they can't even answer a simple question. So if you want to have credibility, you need to be able to answer simple questions and all of that. Staff always fights with his guests recently, mostly the guests are right. See, this is exactly what I was talking about, that in a good community, we have a good community here, someone comes in who's kind of a troll and then somebody sides with the troll so that to split the community, right? This is exactly what I was talking about and all of that. Staff is a hothead, removed, beanie, yeah, yeah. Staff can't talk in the common parlance and vernacular. That's not true at all, of course, blah, blah, blah. He treats everything like a deposition in court, right? Yeah, so this is just he's somebody coming in and trying to sow

1:56:15divisions and all of that in the in the community. And this is what I was sort of talking about. I'm pretty good at spotting this stuff. By now, okay? In my religions, intentions is all I have. Well, you see, God can read your intentions. God can read your intentions because God is all knowing. I cannot. If you are hungry and my intention was to feed you, I could objectively prove it by feeding you, yes? Yeah? Yeah, although that may not be your only intention, maybe you are a mother who sabotages her son by overfeeding him so that he doesn't leave her, right? Do-do boy, oh boy, this guy is a gamma. Hey, let's not insult the gammas. Could you be accidentally subconsciously softest? I do not define it that way. I think I think you can be, yeah, for sure. Callers have been making me rip my hair out for the last several shows. Well, I know we had some great callers tonight. And even that last caller was great too.

1:57:16Ba-ba-ba-bom. Somebody says, I am a nihilist. This, my conscious self, is and selfish, okay, bad grammar, and so on, right? Philosophy is doing good in the Nietzsche meaning of good. Machiavelli was selling good. He was more in the success business. Yeah, but Machiavelli, in essence, is the art of succeeding in coercive environments. That's not the same as philosophy. All right. Well, thanks everybody for a great show this evening. I really do appreciate all the callers. Very instructive, very enjoyable. And I really did appreciate the workout. It's good cardio, good cardio for the soul. freedemand.com slash donate to help out the show. Don't forget I got some openings next week for freedemand.com slash call. Treat yourself to a call in man. It's free. Treat yourself to a call in their just great. And you know, if you've listened to a bunch of callers and found them helpful, contribute to the community and the history of the world. It's going to be great. Socratic dialogues are

1:58:19a lot of what I do and shopped at freedemand.com for the merch freedemand.com slash books and peacefulparenting.com. Lots of love everyone. Bye.