Stefan Molyneux
  • last year
Sunday Morning Live 8 December 2024

In this episode of Sunday Morning Live, I tackle a listener's dilemma about engaging with a social group where a member holds pro-war views on the Ukraine conflict. We discuss the dangers of binary thinking and the importance of reasoned dialogue. I advocate for examining beliefs critically instead of exclusion and explore the complexities of war narratives.

The conversation also touches on public misconceptions around healthcare and the COVID-19 pandemic, emphasizing systemic issues over individual blame. I urge listeners to embrace moral responsibility and foster understanding in politically charged discussions, highlighting the value of compassion and curiosity.

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Transcript
00:00:00Good, good, good morning everybody, 8th of December, 2024.
00:00:04It is time for Sunday Morning Live, and welcome to the Church of Reason.
00:00:10We'll get straight into your questions and comments, of course.
00:00:14Support for the show is gratefully, deeply, and humbly appreciated at freedomain.com
00:00:17slash donate, or of course you can tip on the apps here, which makes my nipples hard.
00:00:22I'm sure you'd love to see that as a reason I go shoulder down with the camera, right?
00:00:27All right.
00:00:28Let's say somebody hit me.
00:00:30Steph, I recently became part of a social group, which I very much enjoy, but in the
00:00:34group is also a guy who is openly anti-Trump, pro-lockdown, pro-vax, pro-Ukraine, etc.
00:00:42Yesterday he brought up how he participated in a fundraiser to buy weapons for Ukraine,
00:00:46which led to a heated discussion between me and him.
00:00:48Although he was visibly angry, he was not aggressive towards me.
00:00:51He was using arguments, even though they were bad, and a bit of sophistry.
00:00:56Later, he told me that he didn't want any hostility between us because of, quote, different
00:01:01opinions.
00:01:03I respect him for trying to debate and not just spewing the typical NPC stuff, but I
00:01:07still don't feel comfortable having him in my life.
00:01:11The problem is that I want to continue to be part of the group.
00:01:14Other people in the group seem to be avoidant of these controversial topics.
00:01:17Should I try to get this guy ostracized from the group, or should I just, quote, give up
00:01:20and leave the group myself?
00:01:26So binary thinking is trauma.
00:01:31Well, I only have X or Y.
00:01:41So that is, when you have no control, you are given binary options, right?
00:01:48Your parents, teachers, right, you're given binary options.
00:01:51When you become an adult, right, you have the 360 view, 360, it's a bowl of opportunities,
00:01:59right?
00:02:00Folks in the road are what they're imposed by authority.
00:02:02So the moment that you think of yourself having binary options, recognize that you're in a
00:02:07state of trauma, you're in a state of powerlessness.
00:02:10Well, all I can do is X or Y, and the way that you get over or oppose that trauma response
00:02:18is to say, hey, I got a blank slate on which to write anything.
00:02:23I'm not going to go with these artificial dualities, right?
00:02:29So let's play this out as a group.
00:02:31Let's play this out as a group.
00:02:33So you're in a social group.
00:02:34There's some guy who is, I hate to say this, but spewing, he's spewing, but he's spewing
00:02:41pro-violence, pro-war sentiments, right?
00:02:44He wants people slaughtered, and he's, in fact, raising money to get people slaughtered,
00:02:54right?
00:02:55I mean, you understand that in this war between Ukraine and Russia, old men are being conscripted,
00:03:05which means enslaved and worse than slavery, right?
00:03:08And young men, very young men, right?
00:03:12And 600,000 Ukrainian men left the country rather than fight.
00:03:17And of course, if people were not enthusiastically supporting the war, then the two parties would
00:03:26have to negotiate for some resolution, right?
00:03:32So it's not just different opinions.
00:03:38Different opinions is, you know, what's the best band that came out in the 1960s?
00:03:44Those are different opinions.
00:03:45Who's a better actor, right?
00:03:48I like navy blue.
00:03:50Pale blue is chilly, cold, and the color of a sociopath.
00:03:53Well, that's actually not an opinion.
00:03:55That's actually just a basic metaphysical fact.
00:03:58So it's not just difference of opinions.
00:04:03Difference of opinions are when nobody gets slaughtered, right?
00:04:12So it's not just a difference of opinion.
00:04:16So let's play this out.
00:04:18Let's pretend, let's pretend that we are post-trauma and we have this challenge of a social group
00:04:31with an aggressive NPC in it that makes it unpleasant.
00:04:37So rather than saying, I either get him kicked out or I leave the group, what are other potential
00:04:44options?
00:04:49What are other potential options to solve this problem?
00:04:55I don't like the idea of just bailing on a group because there's this kind of person
00:05:01in it.
00:05:04What other options could there be?
00:05:06All right, let me just make sure.
00:05:10Oh, some Dave says, finished listening to your novel, The Future, for a second time.
00:05:15Painfully good performance and writing.
00:05:18So many emotions and brutal honesty.
00:05:20Yeah, that is a great, that's a great book.
00:05:25So, yeah, what are the other, what are the other options?
00:05:37All right, try reasoning with him, that's an option.
00:05:46Counter the NPC talking points with the truth and see how everyone reacts.
00:05:51Talk to the other people, ask them why he is there, choose not to hang out if he shows
00:05:54up, find a different group, don't engage with him, or allow him to talk loudly and
00:05:58just watch what others react to and how.
00:06:02Ask him if he would pay to have his neighbors fight each other to the death while people
00:06:05across the street all profit off death and destruction.
00:06:09Go interact with others in the group, bring it into the personal rather than debate him
00:06:13on politics.
00:06:14Try to explore more why he thinks the way he does.
00:06:24So these are all options.
00:06:29These are all options.
00:06:32Another option would be to take the people that you find the most pleasant and positive
00:06:37and reasonable in the group and start a new group.
00:06:44The other thing, and this would be to try to ostracize him, what you would do, again
00:06:50I'm not saying what you should do, but what you could do, is you could provoke him.
00:06:57And I don't mean just pointlessly needle him, but say, if you believe in the war, you can
00:07:03go fight.
00:07:05Ukraine is perfectly willing to accept soldiers from overseas, or anyone, and train them.
00:07:12So why not go fight?
00:07:14If this is something you really believe in.
00:07:17I would say something like, you don't want to be like this Mark Zuckerberg hypocrisy
00:07:21machine, which is like, well, you should reduce your carbon while I sail around in a 300 foot
00:07:28multi hundred million dollar mega yacht.
00:07:32So you just don't, I'm sorry, I'm not sure why you're here.
00:07:36Why are you here?
00:07:37There's a war going on.
00:07:39You want to fight?
00:07:40Go fight.
00:07:41Why are you talking to me?
00:07:44There's a war there.
00:07:45They're eager to have you come and fight.
00:07:48It's cheap to fly over.
00:07:50They'll train you.
00:07:51They will put you in.
00:07:53They'll put you on the lines.
00:07:56Why aren't you going to fight?
00:07:58Well, I can do more good.
00:08:01Oh, so the war is good if other people die, but you wouldn't want to risk yourself.
00:08:06Well that's kind of pathetic, isn't it?
00:08:12So what you do is, and you do this calmly, and I've done this multiple times over the
00:08:17course of my life with somebody who has absolutely hypocritical and dickish vanity opinions.
00:08:25It's just signaling, virtue signaling, right?
00:08:27So he says, well, I can do more good here than there.
00:08:32It's like, how do you know?
00:08:35How do you know?
00:08:36So why don't you go, why wouldn't you go and fight?
00:08:39I don't understand.
00:08:45It's like you're saying it's really good to return people's stolen property and then you
00:08:48just keep hanging on to all this property you steal.
00:08:50Like it's bizarre to me.
00:08:51I don't understand.
00:08:56I can do more good here than there.
00:08:58That's not your decision to make.
00:08:59Go fly over.
00:09:00Offer yourself up as a soldier.
00:09:03And if they say, no, no, we prefer for you to stay back, okay, then you can say that,
00:09:06but you're just making that up at the moment.
00:09:08You haven't consulted with the actual people you're claiming to defend.
00:09:14So just be relentless and patient and calm and reasonable and say, I don't understand.
00:09:22Why are you telling me?
00:09:23If you think this war is just right and virtuous and good, go do it.
00:09:31And if he's too old, say, well, I'm sure you have sons.
00:09:34Have you convinced your sons to go over?
00:09:35Have you convinced your nephews, if they're of age, to go over?
00:09:38Like, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't understand why you're talking about it.
00:09:42I mean, it's very easy.
00:09:43You understand.
00:09:44It's very easy to talk about war when you've got no skin in the game.
00:09:46It's very easy to praise war when you face no danger.
00:09:55And I don't, I don't in particular have respect for people who praise war and relentlessly
00:10:01avoid fighting.
00:10:02I mean, I don't have any particular respect for people who fight, who praise war, other
00:10:07than sort of pure immediate defensive wars, who praise war and fight.
00:10:12That's bad enough.
00:10:13But to praise war and not fight is, is really sad.
00:10:17It's really, like, and if he doesn't have sons, okay, if you had sons, would you be
00:10:21convinced of them to go and fight?
00:10:22Well, we do more good here.
00:10:23It's like, okay, so then you are in a situation where you are enabling other people to die
00:10:30and praising other people dying, but not going to fight yourself, right?
00:10:36And then you turn to the group and you say, okay, hands up if you would go with this guy
00:10:39to go fight.
00:10:40I mean, hands up, would you go with this guy to go fight in Ukraine where you're going
00:10:45to get disassembled by some flamethrower spitting sky drone, right?
00:10:50I mean, have you seen the videos of the men begging for their lives prior to being carved
00:10:56up by some horrendous human disassembling weaponry?
00:11:04And then I would ask him, do a little studying, right?
00:11:08Do a little studying beforehand, right?
00:11:12I mean, I've got videos on Ukraine going back to 2013, I think.
00:11:16So you would just do some studying, right?
00:11:18And you would spend an hour or two studying the history of the region and studying the
00:11:22history of Ukraine and its relations to Russia and so on.
00:11:30And you would go and say, okay, like I respect that you have strong opinions about this and
00:11:37I'm willing to be educated, so you support this war, tell me a little bit about the history
00:11:42of the war, right?
00:11:43And he's going to say, well, Russia just invaded Ukraine completely unprovoked, right?
00:11:53And then I would say, okay, so obviously that's for people who are pro-Ukraine and pro-the
00:11:58war on the Ukrainian side, that's what they would believe, right?
00:12:05But obviously there are two sides to a war, like there are two sides to every conflict,
00:12:10right?
00:12:12So obviously in this world are there just perfectly virtuous people fighting perfectly
00:12:16evil people and there's no moral gray or complexity, right?
00:12:23I mean, Ukraine has shut down a bunch of churches and Ukraine has suspended elections and so
00:12:28on, right?
00:12:33So I would ask him about the history and say, well, what is Russia's perspective on the
00:12:39war, right?
00:12:40Which is not to say that you agree with it, but you surely would understand it.
00:12:43You wouldn't just want to hear one side of a conflict, right?
00:12:48That would not be fair, right?
00:12:50So what is Russia's argument as to why the war happened?
00:12:53And he probably doesn't know, right?
00:12:59Or what were the events that were happening prior to the war that Russia was bothered
00:13:05and upset about, right?
00:13:11And one of the things that Russia was upset about, of course, was the fact that, was it
00:13:1592, 93, they said that we're not going to go at all eastward.
00:13:19Russia said, okay, Germany can reunify, but you can't send NATO eastward because Europeans
00:13:24keep invading Russia's.
00:13:25And I would say, okay, how many times has Europe invaded Russia over the past 500 years?
00:13:31A European country, how many times have they invaded Russia over the last 500 years?
00:13:36He wouldn't know.
00:13:37Okay.
00:13:38So what was bothering Russia?
00:13:41Did the West break any of its promises to Russia in terms of NATO going eastward?
00:13:48And would you accept, say, if you live in America, would you accept Communist China
00:13:55putting rockets on the Mexican border that could eliminate targets in the US before any
00:14:04chance of a response, right?
00:14:08Would you support an invasion of Mexico, at least some areas of Mexico, if a genuinely
00:14:15hostile power that had repeatedly invaded America in the past, which I think has only
00:14:19been Canada, more of 1812, right?
00:14:23So you would just ask him these basic questions to sort of probe his knowledge of the conflict
00:14:27as a whole.
00:14:28Now, please understand, I'm not justifying either Russia or Ukraine.
00:14:33I'm saying that there are two sides to the story, right?
00:14:38There are two sides to the story, and it's important to understand both sides.
00:14:41Doesn't mean to agree with both sides, right?
00:14:43I mean, to take a sort of silly example, if you're a marital counselor, like a marriage
00:14:47counselor, then you would listen to both sides.
00:14:50You wouldn't just say, oh, well, the wife is totally right, or the husband is totally
00:14:53right.
00:14:54So you would simply ask him about his general knowledge of the situation, and you would
00:15:05have the answers, right?
00:15:10So if you would say, okay, how many times has Russia been invaded by a European power
00:15:16over the last, say, 200 years?
00:15:18And it would be a couple, I mean, obviously Hitler and Napoleon, right, other things.
00:15:22So oh, Japan invaded Alaska during World War II.
00:15:31Oh, thank you.
00:15:32I didn't know that.
00:15:33Okay, so you would simply ask him these questions and say, look, this is a very important thing.
00:15:37Obviously, you're very much more knowledgeable than I am, right?
00:15:41So honestly, read Socrates, or read Plato describing Socrates, right?
00:15:47Because Socrates, as you know, was told by the Oracle of Delphi that he was the wisest
00:15:52man alive, and Socrates said, well, that can't be true because I know virtually nothing.
00:15:56So he went around to, but also the Oracle can't lie and is all-knowing.
00:16:00So I have a contradiction.
00:16:01I don't believe I'm the wisest guy because I don't know anything.
00:16:03The Oracle says I'm the wisest guy.
00:16:05The Oracle can't lie.
00:16:06So in order to resolve this problem in my mind, what I'm going to do is I'm going to
00:16:10go around to all of the people who claim to be wise, and I'm going to ask them how
00:16:13they know what they know and what the facts are, and this is where Socratic reasoning
00:16:17comes from, right?
00:16:19So if somebody says, well, look, I'm an expert on this war, and I support this war, okay,
00:16:26great.
00:16:27You know, educate me.
00:16:29Have the answers, right?
00:16:33Educate me.
00:16:34Educate me because for me, just me personally, this is me as Steph.
00:16:39If somebody justifies violence, they better fucking know what they're talking about, or
00:16:45they're a total sociopath.
00:16:46In my view, if somebody's justifying hundreds of thousands of people being slaughtered,
00:16:53they better know what the fuck they're talking about, or they're just a total sociopath.
00:16:56Now, so I would just say, okay, well, tell me more.
00:16:59Like you've obviously studied this a lot, and I would like to, I don't want to be wrong
00:17:04about this thing.
00:17:06What is Russia's side?
00:17:07Well, I'm not going to view their side as like, well, wait, hang on.
00:17:10How can you support one side in a conflict having no idea what the other side is, right?
00:17:19And then you would ask him if a hostile power put missiles that could take out US targets
00:17:24in one or two minutes with no chance to respond from the US.
00:17:27If a hostile power put those rockets, like what happened with Cuba, right, and the Cuban
00:17:31missile crisis, if a hostile power put right on the border of America, would you consider
00:17:37that threatening?
00:17:38Especially if that hostile power had invaded a bunch of times, not Ukraine specifically,
00:17:42but sort of Western powers.
00:17:45So I mean, would you ask that Zelensky wanted to end the war or prevent the war at the beginning,
00:17:50but British, somebody flew out from England and prevented it, and then Kamala Harris flew
00:17:55out, right?
00:17:59So you would just do a whole bunch of research and say, you know, I'm really sorry the way
00:18:03we left things last.
00:18:04I mean, obviously I got kind of heated, and I'm sure that you would prefer for there to
00:18:09be no war, so just sort of help me understand this conflict, right?
00:18:15Help me understand this conflict, right?
00:18:17So you know, what's Ukraine's side?
00:18:20Well, Ukraine, this is, you know, Slava Ukraine, right, innocent, just sitting there minding
00:18:26its own business, and evil Putin invaded for no reason.
00:18:29Okay, so that's one side.
00:18:31Now, I would then say, you're aware that there's a lot of propaganda in war, right?
00:18:37There is a lot, I mean, war is essentially propaganda, right?
00:18:41Doesn't mean that everything about a war is false, but it means that we should be skeptical
00:18:44about things we hear, particularly about a war in progress.
00:18:49So what is Russia's side, which is not to agree with Russia's side, maybe they are totally
00:18:56evil or whatever, right?
00:18:57But what is Russia's side?
00:19:00And you can do this in a sort of calm and patient way, and if it's like, oh, Russia's
00:19:05just totally in the wrong, it's like, eh, but we already accepted.
00:19:09Like you know that there's a lot of propaganda about wars in the past, right?
00:19:12Like you know that the Vietnam War was started on the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which didn't
00:19:15happen, and there was some falsehoods about Korea, and so on, right?
00:19:19So you know, we know that in the past there's been a lot of propaganda, the idea that there's
00:19:26no propaganda now is really not very believable.
00:19:30That 100% of the propaganda is on Russia's side, and Ukraine is just telling the entire
00:19:35truth and all this kind of stuff, right?
00:19:37So I would just ask him a bunch of questions, and I don't think it would take very long,
00:19:45I don't think it would take very long to figure out that he had no fucking clue what he was
00:19:51talking about.
00:19:52He had no clue what he was talking about.
00:20:03And once, and again, you can kind of be calm and patient about this stuff, not that I always
00:20:08achieve it, but in general you can, and you can say, okay, so if I understand this correctly,
00:20:15you are very much for, you know, the mass slaughter of innocents, right, just the average,
00:20:23you know, 18-year-old kid or 20-year-old kid who's kind of grabbed off the street, given
00:20:27bad training and thrown into a war that he doesn't want to be in, right?
00:20:32Because you understand, people are being enslaved to go to this war, it's not a volunteer war,
00:20:36it's not a volunteer, it's all conscription on both sides.
00:20:39So people have a gun to their head saying, shoot your, right?
00:20:44And we're just in Eastern Ukraine, the Donbass region, they're ethnically Russian, anyway,
00:20:48it's just all of this sort of stuff, right?
00:20:49So I would say the justification for the mass slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people,
00:21:02you should be deeply knowledgeable about that, right?
00:21:04You can't just listen to propaganda, right?
00:21:06And does it bother you, I would say, does it bother you that there's kind of essential
00:21:11things that you don't know, which, you know, we're not all omniscient or whatever, right?
00:21:14But does it bother you that there are essential things that you don't know about this conflict,
00:21:17but you support it anyway?
00:21:19Does that seem wise to you, to support the mass slaughter of hundreds of thousands of
00:21:25people without having a full and well-rounded view of what's happening?
00:21:30Now, if he is humbled and he says, you know what, I obviously have been making some assumptions,
00:21:36right?
00:21:37Now, he's very unlikely to do that in public, and in particular if there are females around,
00:21:40right?
00:21:41He's unlikely to admit significant fault or any fault, really, when there are women around.
00:21:49So I would say if he responds like, yes, that's a good point, I didn't really think of that,
00:21:56I guess I need to do more studying, well, that's good, then the problem is solved, right?
00:22:00If he says, no, you're just a stooge of Putin, and it's like, okay, but whether I'm a stooge
00:22:06of Putin or not, I'm not, obviously, but it still wouldn't erase the fact that you really
00:22:11don't know much about the conflict.
00:22:12You don't know much about the history of the region, obviously you don't speak Ukrainian,
00:22:15you don't speak Russian, and there's a lot of propaganda floating around.
00:22:19I don't know, I mean, I would say, and this is me, honestly, I don't know the entirety
00:22:24of the truth about all of this conflict, but I know that I don't know, and you think that
00:22:31you know, and you think you know enough to send weapons, to send weapons.
00:22:40In other words, you could volunteer to go and fight, you could volunteer to go and fight,
00:22:47but you don't, whereas you support other people being dragged out of their beds at gunpoint
00:22:54and forced to fight, oof, right, oof, that is not great.
00:23:04Dave and William and ThinkClearly, I really, really do appreciate that.
00:23:11So you can turn it into a demonstration of critical thinking, of reasoning, of curiosity,
00:23:18of, I don't know, I mean, look, if anyone's going to know the true causes of this conflict,
00:23:25it's going to come out in 50 years when someone leaks documents.
00:23:35So, now, if this guy, and likelihood is he'll just escalate, blow up, and get aggressive, right?
00:23:43Now, the calmer you are, and the more aggressive he becomes, the more likely people are to
00:23:51not want to have him come back, right?
00:23:55The more likely people are to not want to have him come back.
00:24:03So, can you really reason with brainwashed people?
00:24:09The point of public debates is not the debate, partner, it's the audience, right?
00:24:15You understand?
00:24:16The purpose of having this conversation with this guy is not to change his mind, but to
00:24:24change the minds of the audience.
00:24:27The audience is what matters in a debate, because he wants to still be part of this group.
00:24:35If he shows that he's reasonable, and the other guy is a bit of a bloodthirsty psychopath,
00:24:40who is really volatile and aggressive, see, the people who are pro-war simply through
00:24:49propaganda are masking a sociopathic bloodlust that they have a sadistic desire to watch
00:24:54people get killed.
00:24:55Now, they'll cloak it in all of this sort of nonsense, right?
00:24:59But that's really what's going on.
00:25:00And again, I'm not saying there's never, I mean, self-defense, perfect justification
00:25:04for the use of force, and so on, so I get all of that.
00:25:06But you know, the people who just swallow propaganda and repeat it, they're just covering
00:25:10up.
00:25:11And now, what happens is, as you peel the layers of justifications off, the rage at
00:25:17the bottom bubbles up, comes to the surface, and attacks, right?
00:25:23Because his own vicious cruelty becomes apparent to him and to others, and he will react with
00:25:34extreme levels of aggression.
00:25:36And then, of course, you have a choice that is presented.
00:25:46Now, people don't like this choice.
00:25:48People don't want to have to choose, right?
00:25:51Most people.
00:25:52But what happens is, this guy is most likely to blow up, most likely to storm out, most
00:25:55likely, because you're getting him close to his own sadism, which means you're getting
00:25:59him close to his own trauma, so he's just going to, right?
00:26:03And his conscience, right?
00:26:04If he's been for years and years promoting a war he doesn't know much about, then his
00:26:11conscience is going to rise up, right?
00:26:12In other words, you're an agent of the devil, in a sense, and of the angels.
00:26:16You're an agent of the devil.
00:26:18You are presenting the bill to his conscience.
00:26:21I mean, this is my whole business plan, is I present the bill to the conscience.
00:26:29Because people appeasing and acquiescing and nodding, they are withholding the bill from
00:26:35the conscience.
00:26:36So, this guy has a lot of blood on his hands, right?
00:26:39And he doesn't see it.
00:26:40He thinks he's got these white gloves of purity on, and you're pulling the gloves off and
00:26:44saying, look, it's blood, bone, gristle.
00:26:50You monster, right?
00:26:51And he sees it, and he's going to freak out.
00:26:53So then, what happens is the corruption in his soul, so to speak, his corruption will
00:27:00become apparent to others.
00:27:02And then what you've done is you've given a clear choice to this social group.
00:27:05Now, if the social group turns on you, get the fuck out, because they will eat you alive.
00:27:11They're cannibals, right?
00:27:12If the social group turns upon you for questioning someone with a bloodthirsty lust for war,
00:27:19if they turn on you, then it means that they like the sociopath, and then I'm saving your
00:27:24ass by getting you out.
00:27:31If they're troubled by him and don't want him back in the group, then it's probably
00:27:36a group worth being part of.
00:27:40But you want to find this out now, not later or not some other time.
00:27:47Because the group is the group evil, right?
00:27:52Is the group evil?
00:28:00Is the group evil?
00:28:06You got to find that out.
00:28:07But in order to find that out, you have to expose the evil in their midst, right?
00:28:12So they didn't see it because this guy was pro-war, but that's fairly advanced for a
00:28:16lot of normies.
00:28:18But if you point out that he's pro-war with no particular knowledge, then it's not because
00:28:24he understands the conflict that he's for this war.
00:28:28You would reveal that he's for this war because he's sadistic, because he likes watching death.
00:28:38He likes watching murder.
00:28:39He probably wacks off to drone videos of troops on both sides being disassembled.
00:28:48So they didn't see it because he's pro-war, but by revealing his ignorance of the war,
00:28:53you will reveal his true motives for the war, which are, I assume, sadistic and cruel.
00:29:01So then it's a clear choice for them.
00:29:02Okay, so you've got one guy who's willing to be instructed and curious and reasonable
00:29:05and so on.
00:29:06And then you've got another guy who wants to see hundreds of thousands of people killed
00:29:10and doesn't even have really the first clue about what's going on.
00:29:18So you're giving them a clear choice, right?
00:29:20The clearer the choice, the greater the morals.
00:29:23The clearer the choice, the greater the moral revelation, right?
00:29:30I mean, I was reading this story the other day about this nurse who worked in an IVF
00:29:40clinic and she got addicted to, I think it was fentanyl.
00:29:45And so what she did was she drained the fentanyl out of the painkilling vials and injected
00:29:52it in herself and replaced that with saline.
00:29:55And so then when women at the IVF clinic were getting those giant needles going in to extract
00:29:59their eggs, there's supposed to be a lot of anesthetic in there, right?
00:30:02And they would scream in pain and jerk around and say, this is unbearable, this is ungodly,
00:30:07this is agony.
00:30:08And they didn't know why.
00:30:09And it's because they were giving mostly saline with very little fentanyl rather than fentanyl
00:30:11or whatever the drug was that was the painkiller.
00:30:14And this went on for months.
00:30:15And they said, oh, well, you know, I guess we have a cluster of patients with very high
00:30:18pain sensitivity, right?
00:30:20It turns out the woman had been replacing the fentanyl with saline, which meant that
00:30:23the women were pretty much not anesthetized when these giant needles were plunging into
00:30:27their midriff, right?
00:30:29So the people who put the painkilling drugs in thought they were giving real drugs and
00:30:33they couldn't give more because they were afraid the women were going to die, like OD
00:30:37or something, right?
00:30:38Because they thought they were pushing decent amounts of painkiller.
00:30:40So if someone is pushing painkiller, they think they're pushing painkiller, but they're
00:30:48not, then that's an innocent error, so to speak, right?
00:30:53But once they, I mean, can you imagine, not that this happened, can you imagine someone
00:30:55who's like, oh, wow, I can legitimately cause pain in someone by pretending to push fentanyl
00:31:00when it's mostly saline or whatever the painkiller was?
00:31:06Well, then that would go from, I thought I was, to I know I'm not.
00:31:10And then that goes from ignorance to sadism, right?
00:31:13So if these people are like, well, I've heard that the war is good and this guy seems very
00:31:17passionate about it, so I guess it's fine.
00:31:19But once you expose the ignorance, you're giving a moral choice, not to the NPC in a
00:31:23sense, but you're giving the moral choice to the audience, right?
00:31:25And they don't particularly like it.
00:31:28They don't like it.
00:31:30People avoid clarity because then they don't have to feel like shitbirds for not taking
00:31:35a stand.
00:31:36That's why people like avoiding clarity.
00:31:38That's why people get so pissed off at the clarity that this kind of show provides.
00:31:42Not you guys, of course.
00:31:43People get pissed off because people avoid moral clarity because when you have moral
00:31:51clarity, you have to make a stand or you feel like crap.
00:31:54Whereas if you avoid moral clarity by only listening, say, to one side of a propaganda
00:32:00conflict, if you avoid moral clarity, you don't have to take a stand, or at least you
00:32:06don't have to feel bad for taking a stand.
00:32:14I keep, I'm going to go, go to Grok.
00:32:20Grok is king of the universe.
00:32:22How many times has Russia been invaded by a European country?
00:32:36Let's find out.
00:32:37Ah, there we go.
00:32:44Russia has been invaded by European countries several times throughout history.
00:32:48Here are some notable instances.
00:32:50Swedish invasion during the Great Northern War, 1708 to 1709, French invasion by Napoleon,
00:32:56German invasions both during World War I and World War II with Operation Barbarossa.
00:33:03So I knew of the two, Germany and France, but since 1700 has been invaded by European
00:33:12countries at least three times by major powers.
00:33:16However, however, if we consider other conflicts or smaller engagements, the number could be
00:33:24seen as higher when taking into account various other conflicts or border skirmishes.
00:33:32And when you invade Russia, things go very badly for the local Russians, right?
00:33:42Russia is the largest country by land mass or something like that, right?
00:33:46Russia, in general, does what's called the Scorch Earth Policy.
00:33:55So they withdraw, they poison the wells, they slaughter the livestock, they withdraw, and
00:34:00then they let winter do its thing.
00:34:07That's in general how it goes, which is really brutal for, all right, so it's really brutal
00:34:14for the Russians.
00:34:15I wonder if the group would allow this to unravel.
00:34:18I find women tend to eye roll and huff and other micro things to try to shut people up
00:34:23and then other people will rebut on their behalf.
00:34:25No, I get that with women and I've had these conversations with women around and they do
00:34:29tend to like, oh, let's not fight, let's not fight.
00:34:31I'm like, well, yes, exactly, let's not fight.
00:34:33But I said, so what I do with the women is I will say, so for, I mean, you obviously
00:34:39love your children, you care about your children.
00:34:41So for the hundreds of thousands of young men who've been killed, or middle-aged men,
00:34:46or sometimes even older men, every one of them has a mother who is mourning the brutal
00:35:00death of a son.
00:35:01And you know that in this conflict sometimes soldiers will film killing another soldier
00:35:13and then we'll find that soldier's cell phone and we'll send the murder video or the death
00:35:17video or the killing video to his mother.
00:35:21It's one thing to get a telegram, it's one thing to get a knock on the door from the
00:35:27war office, it's another thing to see your son being slaughtered, to have that video,
00:35:37to see that.
00:35:40Now we want to avoid that if at all possible, right?
00:35:44So you, I mean, it's one of the challenges in the field of literature, right?
00:35:49Men will generally write about the world and women will write about women.
00:35:54A female reimagining of, a retelling of the Greek myths, you know, but it's always from
00:35:59the perspective of the women, right?
00:36:00And they say, oh, well, women were underrepresented and so on.
00:36:03So you just have to try and find a way as a whole for women to connect with, like, imagine
00:36:08if, you know, a man, like, you've got a son right here, he's 19, imagine if he was forced
00:36:13to go and fight and then in three months you get the video of him being killed on your
00:36:21phone.
00:36:23He's begging and pleading for his life, he's begging and pleading for his mother, as in
00:36:28general happened in World War I in the trenches, and people die and cry out for their mothers
00:36:34and you watch him be slaughtered.
00:36:40Surely we should do what we can, if possible, to reduce or avoid that situation.
00:36:50Now, of course, if the women are like, well, I don't care if mothers get murder videos
00:36:55of their own children, it's a just cause, okay, well, I mean, why would you want to
00:37:00be in that kind of group?
00:37:07So I'm afraid it's your job to bring moral choice to people, much though they will kick
00:37:14and scream and dislike you for it.
00:37:17It is your job, as a person who knows virtue and who knows morals, it is your job to bring
00:37:26moral choice to people, though they will dislike you for it, that's all right.
00:37:33Moral ambiguity, moral complexity, moral fence-sitting is just a virus that needs to be expelled
00:37:45through moral clarity.
00:37:52If reconciliation can be achieved without the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of
00:37:58people, is that not better?
00:38:04Is that not better?
00:38:16So, Ukraine has devolved into trench warfare because of the stalemate, it's very sad.
00:38:21Well, the purpose of war since, in many ways, the purpose of war since the First World War
00:38:28has been stalemate, because stalemate allows the war to continue, which allows satyrs to
00:38:34enjoy the death and profiteers to continue to profit.
00:38:39The purpose of war is stalemate, that's why it so often is inconclusive, the purpose is
00:38:46to be inconclusive, the purpose of the war is to continue.
00:38:56So this is just one of a number of different options, I think it is probably the best and
00:39:01the most powerful option, but it's not just, well, do I get the guy kicked out, and maybe
00:39:12you do, but this would be the way, or do I leave the group and so on, take a moral stand
00:39:16and see if the group is worthy of having you in it.
00:39:21Take a moral stand and see if the group is worthy of having you in it.
00:39:27That's like me with the dissident movements of the 2010s, right?
00:39:33I took a stand and I saw whether that group was worthy of having me in it.
00:39:40Spoiler!
00:39:41It wasn't a spoiler, it's just facts.
00:39:46So much evil is being rushed through before Trump takes office, yeah, yeah, for sure,
00:39:51they're definitely trying to make it as bad for him as possible and get as much terrible
00:39:56stuff done as possible before.
00:39:59So, uh, sabotage, yeah, I agree with you about that.
00:40:09All right, here's a post, but let me gauge the audience first.
00:40:19From minus 10 to plus 10, please to tell little old Steph-bot, what are your view of
00:40:30doctors?
00:40:32Minus 10, Mengele, plus 10, Robin Williams in some sentimental movie, right?
00:40:37What is your view of doctors?
00:40:42Your doctor, doctors as a whole, the medical profession, but in particular doctors, not
00:40:47I don't know, anesthesiologists or whatever, but in your current sort of way of thinking,
00:40:54minus 10, doctors are just terrible, to plus 10, doctors are fantastic and wonderful benevolent
00:41:06servants of general good.
00:41:10Okay, we got minus 10, minus 5, minus 4, minus 10, minus 4, 0, minus 5, minus 5, minus 7,
00:41:19plus 8, most want to help people, plus 4, minus 6, minus 5, plus 1, minus 4, depends
00:41:26on their age usually, that's true, plus 4, 3, 0, minus 5.
00:41:31Okay, so we got a good old scatter plot, right?
00:41:34We got a good old scatter plot, minus 5, sorry, minus 9, 5, my DVM, I don't know what
00:41:42DVM is, plus 10, hard to paint all with the same brush, no, no, no, I'm just, I'm not,
00:41:48oh my, yes, of course, that is, that is, what is your opinion or view of doctors as a whole
00:41:57and say, well, but there's variances, it's like, hard to paint all with the same brush.
00:42:06Oh, you're a veterinarian, DVM is your veterinarian, okay, let's not count vets, let's not count vets.
00:42:19I, R, R, R, Y, to go to, I think they're supposed to be only, please check your spelling,
00:42:27go to homeopathic doctors, oh, try, try, okay, plus 4, minus 3, I, midwit, okay, minus 100,
00:42:38okay, so just, I'm just curious, I'm just curious what your thoughts are about this.
00:42:51Yeah, the exception to the rule stuff, yeah, what's your general thought, well, I can't tell,
00:42:54it's general, I mean, why people think that they're adding anything other than annoyance
00:42:59to intelligent people when they point out that there are exceptions to every general rule,
00:43:05okay, minus 8, oh, his veterinarian was good, minus 8 to everyone else, okay,
00:43:11all right, so the reason I'm asking this is CoffeeBlackMD on X wrote the following,
00:43:21so there's a bit of a longer post, but it's really, really important, I think, to talk about,
00:43:26because it's a very, very important principle down at the bottom here, he said, I felt like writing
00:43:31a post in defense of physicians, we seem to be getting a lot of crap recently, but I don't know
00:43:37really where to start or what to say, there's so much cynicism and bad faith and really plain
00:43:43unhidden contempt these days, but why, because we couldn't fix you and never could,
00:43:50because you want us to be something we're not, a coach, a trainer, a knower of all things
00:43:55nutrition and all things non-pharmaceutical, a knower of every little niche thing you're into,
00:44:02that isn't how we're taught or trained, but that's our fault somehow that the reality of us doesn't
00:44:07meet with the expectation of you, so it doesn't open well,
00:44:16it doesn't open well, I don't think anyone's mad at doctors foundationally,
00:44:24because doctors can't fix everyone, I don't think that's the case,
00:44:31so I think he's starting off with a wee bit of a straw man, it gets better from here, but
00:44:35okay, so he says you're mad about how we don't have long periods of time for you and this can
00:44:40lead to less accurate or optimal diagnosis or treatment, you're mad the drugs cost a lot,
00:44:45you're mad you pay for health insurance and it seems like it never pays for much,
00:44:50yet none of these phenomena are the fault of physicians, we're mad about those things too,
00:44:54you're mad about covid and vaccines, a pandemic we didn't create,
00:45:05no other, nor other endemic viruses we had anything to do with, you blame us for the
00:45:09vaccines and policies put in place by politicians and bureaucrats as if we are personally responsible,
00:45:17you get mad that we make a good salary, tell us we only make this money
00:45:21because we did dirty tricks to prevent those there from being enough doctors,
00:45:25decisions made decades ago based on predictions that seemed reasonable then but turned out wrong
00:45:29now that those of us are working currently had nothing to do with, our knowledge, experience
00:45:36and expertise downplayed, all that is needed out there is a smart teenager with an AI and access
00:45:40to any chemical they want, I don't even know how you even begin going after addressing all of it,
00:45:47it's rather daunting, I'm not sure I can, so I won't try,
00:45:52the thing is I don't owe anyone any explanations or apologies,
00:45:58I've showed up every gd of this job to be the best doc I could for the people the lord put in my path
00:46:05and I've manned the effing wall against the dragons and barbarians with honour for a decade,
00:46:11apparently he's not just a doctor he's a paladin, I run into the rooms of the sick when everyone
00:46:16else is running out, I've stood in the gaps between life and death and fought hard for
00:46:20everyone even the ones I lost and you never really ever forget the ones you lose, it's been nights,
00:46:27weekends, holidays, birthdays, anniversaries and kids sporting events, I've taken those hits to
00:46:33my health and in my family life for the same people who just want to shit all over me and
00:46:37my profession today and it's so heartbreaking and disappointing, I guess maybe you were
00:46:43disappointed by a doctor at some point, we clearly aren't infallible, we have bad days too,
00:46:48you can see the burnout in the way they make many physicians in clinic practice,
00:46:55I don't know what to tell you about the guys that are really awful, they do exist,
00:46:58they also aren't all or even most physicians, most of what everyone is mad about has nothing
00:47:05to really do with us, it's politics, this is our, it's policies and laws made by bureaucrats,
00:47:12politicians, corporations, we simply exist in it, try to work inside the crazy nonsense ourselves,
00:47:20we've never had a quote lobby and it might be interesting to see what things would look like
00:47:25if we actually did, there are people working in this now but mostly physicians have been too busy
00:47:32just being docs to get all caught up in any of it, there's barely anything left after a week
00:47:38in clinic for my family and some working out, let alone some cynical ploy or play to keep it hard
00:47:43for people to become physicians, I don't know if enough people really understand that, how really
00:47:49taxing and exhausting the work is, I wouldn't wish the responsibility on anyone either,
00:47:55heavy is the white coat, this post probably won't change any minds of the bad faith actors but I do
00:48:03hope it in some way humanizes us to you, if only in some small way, I'm just one guy fighting the
00:48:11good fight on tonight actually and holding down the fort, if any are in need of my expertise and
00:48:16I hope not, no one meets me, in a good day I'm here. Well, what do you think?
00:48:29What do you think?
00:48:35Somebody says it's more profitable to treat symptoms, I stopped reading after that opening,
00:48:40this guy is the worst, I hate it when doctors that are clearly way out of shape try to give
00:48:45me the medical advice and also support the covid nonsense, making ticky tacky videos while forcing
00:48:51jabs and blowing folks lungs out, go f yourself, I think most people lump in doctors with the
00:48:58healthcare industry, insurance companies are almost equal to the definition of evil, they only
00:49:02care about profit, most doctors have good intentions even if they fail sometimes, even they are human
00:49:09and have limitations with their knowledge, doctors aren't trained to think independently, says someone
00:49:14a few tick tocks melted their credibility forever, a lot of this plea reminds me of public school
00:49:19teachers, zero accountability, so what you couldn't take the time to evaluate the claims being made
00:49:25about covid and the vaccines, surely that would have been a good time to make sure you have it
00:49:30right, reminds me of the lady who talks about her baby holding a lock on her hair in the show
00:49:38about how your kids don't love you, dear doctor says someone until I see the man that oversaw
00:49:46the systematic death of my father hanging in sweet justice from a lamppost, you all suck,
00:49:49right, right, so as you probably know I take feedback and criticisms you know very seriously,
00:50:04very seriously, I'm not trying to give you oily foot rubs because that's a bonus, it's extra, it's
00:50:11on my OniStefans channel, but I do have access and feel very privileged to be part of a great
00:50:19community of feedback, you guys are very smart and I hope obviously that I've not given you any
00:50:25kind of impression that I am beyond criticism, I get mad at criticism, I need your help as I need
00:50:33the help of the people who love me, as I need the help of my own conscience and philosophy to do my
00:50:37best to walk the straight and narrow in this dangerous cliff edge of virtue, right, to do
00:50:42maximum philosophy without self-destruction is not the easiest gig in the known universe,
00:50:47so people have been saying to me, well Steph, you know, you cuck to women, you don't hold women
00:50:53accountable, you say that don't blame women, blame the state and all of that, and I've been thinking
00:50:57about that kind of stuff, I really have, and that's one of the reasons I wanted to bring this
00:51:05stuff up, is I've really been percolating what my view is on all of this stuff deep down, I'm going
00:51:10to tell you what I think, which is not to say that I'm right, I'm just going to tell you where my
00:51:14thought process is with that because I want to put it through the grinder of your skepticism
00:51:20and criticism to see what I can improve in my approach to these things, so let me tell you
00:51:27my approach to these things. It's absolutely true that if you want to be a doctor you have to go
00:51:31through all of this licensure and you have to pay massive amounts to medical schools and you have to
00:51:35go into a lot of debt and there are these sort of shadowy licensing boards that can just yank your
00:51:41ability to practice medicine like that, and it's pretty tough.
00:51:47It's pretty tough. A lot of doctors feared over the course of COVID that if they did not get
00:51:55people vaccinated with the COVID vaccine that they might lose their license, that they might
00:52:03get suspended, they might get investigated, they might get charged by their licensing boards with
00:52:08some sort of professional misconduct or whatever, and they felt like, I assume that they felt,
00:52:12well jeez, if there's a pandemic the last thing I want to do is have society be down one doctor as
00:52:17I fight this stuff, and you can see what happened with Dr. McCulloch and other people, a lot of
00:52:21blowback for raising any skepticism about the 100% efficacy and 100% safety, both of which are now
00:52:29proven to be false, of the vaccine. So there was a big challenge for doctors and if you've not been
00:52:35in that kind of situation, it's easy to say, well, you should have just, whatever, right?
00:52:41But it's not easy, right? I mean, we just spent the first half of the show talking about some guy
00:52:45who's pro-war in a social group and it's not easy to deal with. It's real easy, guys,
00:52:51gotta, you know, it's real easy to say, this other person should burn their entire career
00:52:56to the ground for the sake of the truth, for the sake of standing up for what's right.
00:53:02The only people who say that are people who haven't done it. I'll be straight up with you
00:53:04about that. The only people who say, well, these doctors should have done this, or, you know,
00:53:09well, all the truckers stood up, if all the doctors had stood up, I get all of that.
00:53:12But if you haven't actually done it, you're in Dunning-Kruger territory, where it's real easy
00:53:18to tell other people to burn their lives to the ground for the sake of doing the right thing.
00:53:22The only people who say that glibly are people who haven't done it themselves.
00:53:32Uh, they are, they have all of the empathy of your average comic book character. Honestly,
00:53:39don't blame fellow victims totally. Could doctors have done better? Yeah, we can all do better.
00:53:45We can all do better. And there are some people, some people in this audience,
00:53:50you have burned your life to the ground for the sake of doing the right thing.
00:53:56I think it's fair to say I've taken a hit or two over the past 20 years
00:53:59to do the right thing. But it's really, really not easy.
00:54:05And saying, well, other people should have just taken all these bullets,
00:54:09it's literally like saying other people should fight this war.
00:54:12Nothing is stopping you from doing the right thing.
00:54:18Right from going on social media, under your real name, with your real photo,
00:54:22talking about all the forbidden truths in the known universe, no one's stopping you from doing
00:54:25that. I'm not suggesting you do it. I'm just saying nobody's stopping you from doing it.
00:54:30And if you haven't done it, it's kind of precious to hurl slings and arrows and acid at other
00:54:35people for having discretion being the better part of valor. You know, for a doctor to risk
00:54:47his license for what? Is it going to change much? Not really. Not really. But he gets to
00:54:57lose his income. He can't pay his debts. If he's got a wife and kids and she's staying home, he
00:55:01can't pay his bills. What's he going to do? Can't be a doctor. Is he going to go and try and do
00:55:05something else? Is he going to retrain to go do something else? That's not easy. That's not easy.
00:55:13I mean, I was willing to have a 97% reduction in my audience for the sake of the truth.
00:55:20But that's the gig of the moral philosopher is to take whatever hits.
00:55:24It's not the job of the doctor in that way. So, I'm not saying that all the doctors acted
00:55:30perfectly. Of course not. But I'm just saying don't be glib when asking other people
00:55:38to give up their lives because very few of us have done that. Don't be glib. That is a warning
00:55:49sign. The reason you don't want to be glib is good people will avoid you like the plague
00:55:53if you just scorn and roll your eyes at everyone who hasn't burned their life to the ground in
00:55:57pursuit of a truth they believe in.
00:56:07So, and I know, yep, Steve, I get it. I know that some of you have really taken some
00:56:27significant heat for the cause of truth. And I'm not trying to diminish that at all.
00:56:35But people who've really gone through the ringer for the cause of truth
00:56:40tend not to be as glib about telling other people you should just X, Y, or Z.
00:56:51Because for doctors as well, look, I mean, I think we can be pretty honest about this.
00:56:58Was it Mandy Patinkin many years ago played a really narcissistic doctor?
00:57:03And I think Dr. Bob, whatever his name was, right? And somebody was saying rumors are that
00:57:09God has a Dr. Bob complex rather than Bob. Dr. Bob has a God complex. And there's a great scene
00:57:17in a pretty mediocre movie with Alec Baldwin. I think this is the one where he didn't shoot
00:57:21two people, but, you know, I'm board certified thoracic, I am God, you know, and, you know,
00:57:27he's got this arrogance. And, you know, there is that sort of aspect. So doctors,
00:57:35it's not just about the income, and it's not just about the diplomas on the wall,
00:57:40it's the status, right? Maybe their wife married them because marrying a doctor is very high status.
00:57:46They have a whole social circle where being a doctor, they socialize with other doctors.
00:57:50If they get dragged in front of a board, de-licensed and disgraced,
00:57:54it's not just their income, it's their whole life.
00:58:08And I mean, the last thing I would ever in a zillion years do is give anyone medical advice.
00:58:15I'm just talking about the economics of it. It is entirely possible that public health,
00:58:22that the health of the population improves because of skepticism about doctors.
00:58:30If people have a sense that doctors aren't particularly great
00:58:34at keeping you healthy or making you healthy, then what happens?
00:58:45What happens?
00:58:52Thank you, C2.
00:58:53Yeah, what happens? If people are like, ooh, I don't know if doctors have the very best
00:58:57intentions. Maybe they're just a bunch of people who want to cycle you through quickly and throw
00:59:01you on some pills for the rest of your life because the government pays for everything.
00:59:04Ooh, maybe, maybe, just maybe doctors can't make or keep me healthy in any foundational way
00:59:09in many circumstances. That kind of skepticism about the benevolence of doctors
00:59:18may genuinely and generally improve people's health.
00:59:29May genuinely and generally improve people's health.
00:59:32If people are more skeptical of medical treatments, what will they do? Exercise and
00:59:36eat less in general. There's a crisis of lack of faith in largely government medicine. It's
00:59:47not private medicines. Lack of faith in government medicine. That may end up with people being
00:59:52healthier. You know that the more people have access to Medicare and Medicaid, the worse their
00:59:58health outcomes. If you think that there's a pill for every ill, you don't care that much about the
01:00:06ills. Right? So it could be to the betterment. Somebody says, there was a doctor who was
01:00:30righteous who left the hospital after my father's death in disgust. It's important to stand up and
01:00:33fight when it matters. I agree with that. I agree with that. But it's important to have some sympathy
01:00:41for the stakes that people have. Right? Somebody says, it's not so easy. I am waiting until I
01:00:46retire to be honest about my opinions. Appreciate those who do. Yeah. People need to keep their
01:00:55livelihoods. The threat of losing your job is very important. Could be considered a use of force.
01:01:00Well, for doctors with regards to their licensure, it's not just losing your job,
01:01:04it's losing your capacity to practice as a doctor. My frustration is doctors don't correct
01:01:10themselves when you correct them. Well, but come on. Come on, man. You know why doctors don't admit
01:01:17fault, right? Okay. Everybody type after me. Type. Why do doctors not want to admit fault?
01:01:33I've seen many a life saved by doctors in my life. I think I hold such a statement.
01:01:37Minus five against doctors since COVID because I ended up choosing to get vaccinated and want
01:01:41someone to offload that responsibility to. Well, I mean, is the threat of losing your
01:01:49livelihood the same as choosing? Not really. Not really. I mean, if somebody said to you,
01:02:04pay me $50,000 or I'm going to get you fired, not just from your job, but I'll make sure you're
01:02:10unable to work, right? That would be considered blackmail, right?
01:02:27I don't think that much of what happened in the hospitals was good.
01:02:33Yeah, doctors don't like admitting fault because of medical lawsuits.
01:02:38Now doctors are not responsible for the legal system, right? They just have to live and work
01:02:42within it. So getting mad at doctors for not admitting fault, it's not just like they wake up
01:02:57in the morning and say, I'm never going to admit fault. It's that they don't like admitting fault
01:03:03and they're, look, doctors take all of these seminars about how to talk to patients so you
01:03:07don't get sued. Doctors don't want to lose their patient's respect and confidence. I think that's
01:03:12normally why they don't want to admit fault. No, it's not that. It's not that, right?
01:03:18So doctors get, they go to seminars about, you know, here's what you can't say to patients.
01:03:23You can't admit this. You can't, I mean, and heaven forbid, if you are a doctor and you
01:03:29miscommunicate to a patient, the patient sues you. What if your insurance doesn't cover it?
01:03:34Ooh, welcome to living in a box, right? So I just want to sort of point this out as a whole
01:03:43that the powers that be want us to all get mad at each other, right?
01:03:51The powers that be want us all to get mad at each other.
01:04:05So what is the answer?
01:04:11What is the answer?
01:04:21Why are things going the way they are?
01:04:31Why are people getting mad at doctors and the doctors saying, we didn't make the system,
01:04:34we're just trying to survive within it? What is the root? And I've really been
01:04:38thinking hard about this, so hopefully I got it somewhat right.
01:04:43Yeah, I can't, I can't imagine in Canada, I can't imagine having a patient in significant pain
01:04:49and saying, uh, well, I guess you can see a specialist in a year.
01:04:58Oof. Oof. I couldn't imagine, I couldn't imagine being part of a system like that.
01:05:04But of course, people say, well, you know, doctors have a loyalty to their patients.
01:05:08A lot of them, and they're like, well, I don't want to give up on my patients and I've got to
01:05:11keep practicing and all of that, right?
01:05:17Thank you for the tip.
01:05:18freedomain.com. To help out the show right before I give you an answer that I think will blow your
01:05:23mind. Thank you for the tip.
01:05:26Double bow.
01:05:27will blow your mind. Thank you for the tip. Double bow. I think you should have written
01:05:40the article for that doctor. The whiny attitude has written is just infuriating. Yeah. Everyone
01:05:46needs a little F.U. money in the world if you want to be truly honest. Well, they don't
01:05:50just get you through money, right? All right. So I'll tell you what I think the answer
01:06:00is. I'm going to try and sell the answer hard. Feel free to push back if it doesn't seem
01:06:07realistic or reasonable to you. Why do we fight with each other? Why do we fight with
01:06:17each other? What is the most foundational belief that causes these dysfunctions, these
01:06:31problems, these horrors in the world? The reason we fight with each other so much, the
01:06:42reason why these dysfunctions flourish and maintain and gain power is because we cannot
01:06:52surrender our fetish for violence to the strictness of virtue. We cannot, cannot, cannot surrender
01:07:03our belief that the only path to virtue is through the bloody fists of violence. That
01:07:11virtue cannot be achieved without violence. If we cannot confront that demonic thought within
01:07:19our own hearts, there's no point in fighting anybody else. We are raised, and I'm sure that
01:07:29there is a predilection for it as well, we are raised to love violence. I was raised with war.
01:07:41I was raised with comic books, and in all of the war and the Marvel movies and the DC movies and
01:07:48the comic books, the solution to all foundational conflicts was what? What was always presented as
01:08:00the solution to all foundational conflicts? Escalation, violence, blood, death, destruction.
01:08:15When I was in school, and I climbed a fence to get a ball, and I was knocked on by some
01:08:23A-hole prefect, what was the solution to me disobeying the rules? I don't even remember that
01:08:32it was a rule. I was six, and I climbed a fence to get a ball, and I was dragged out to the
01:08:36headmaster's office, and I was caned. Did they say, oh, did you know about the rule? Do you not
01:08:42agree with the rule? Tell me what it makes sense. Here's why the rule existed. They reasoned with
01:08:46me. Nope. What was the solution to the headmaster disagreeing with my action? A beating.
01:08:59My father used to rap his children on the head hard. Ah, it stung like a little ball-peen hammer.
01:09:06Bang. Did he reason? Was he curious? Nope. Bang. My mother, of course, incredibly violent.
01:09:20In school, if you did something they disagreed with. Some of the outright violence was gone by
01:09:26the time I got to junior high school, most of it, but if you disagreed with something,
01:09:33the teacher would make you stay after school. If you had a job, which I had, I could not afford
01:09:39to stay after school. I had to get to my job, so I had to obey, and if things got bad enough,
01:09:46they could put you in school prison for a year by holding you back, so you'd be the guy with hair on
01:09:52the back of his knuckles in the grade six class, way too big, way too awkward, and made fun of
01:09:59forever and ever. Amen. Unable to date the girls because they were too young in your grade because
01:10:04you're held back. Unable to date the girls in the grade you're supposed to be in because
01:10:07they think you're stupid. You're screwed. Your teenage years are wrecked. It's a softer power,
01:10:16but I'd rather just have a beating than be held back a year, and that was the punishment. Or
01:10:23they would call your parents and say, oh, he didn't come to school today. He's cutting class.
01:10:28You need to deal with this, and then bam, they would outsource the violence.
01:10:35We are so addicted to our bloodlust that we can't think of a fucking problem in the world
01:10:40that we don't want to pound someone into the ground in order to solve.
01:10:47Oh, do people need some health care? Okay, let's have the government force people to provide
01:10:52health care and force people to fund it. Violence is the only way to provide health care for people.
01:10:59Oh, you're saying kids need to learn how to read, write, and do arithmetic? Well,
01:11:03let's do that for a while, and then we'll just hit them with brutal ideology and teach them to
01:11:07hate themselves. But yeah, if we want kids to get educated, yeah, we got to force people to fund it
01:11:12and force people to send their kids and force people to pay, and if they don't, we throw them
01:11:17in jail. Got a problem? Bam, the fist will solve it. Have you seen those videos of the ninjas?
01:11:29Right? They take their sword out, they cut an apple falling through the air, and you can barely
01:11:33see anything move. That's how fast we are to draw our katanas when we want to solve a problem.
01:11:41Got a problem? Draw a sword. Got a problem? Arm up. Got a problem? Reload. Got a problem? Call
01:11:49an airstrike. Got a problem? Throw people in jail. Got a problem? Cage them so they get raped. Got
01:11:54a problem? Use force. That's all we can think of. It's reflexive, and I understand that in our
01:11:59human evolution. I understand all of that in our human evolution. Force was tragically the solution
01:12:05to most conflicts because people didn't have reason and they didn't have communication,
01:12:08they didn't have the language for it, they didn't have the debate, and then, right?
01:12:12Parents. Got a problem? Yell, intimidate, frighten. Dial up the cortisol. Get the child to self-attack.
01:12:18Beat, hit, confine, starve. Shame. Got a problem? Use force.
01:12:31That's the problem.
01:12:35For doctors back in the day, the reason why we have licensure boards not because the customers
01:12:39wanted them is because the doctors wanted them. Oh, there's too many people who are providing
01:12:43healthcare services, it's really bad, so we need a licensure to make sure things are safe and
01:12:49proper and protected and that the customers are served. Well, the customers don't want it,
01:12:53they're happy. I talked about this many years ago with the eponymously named,
01:13:02poor name, Dr. Roderick Long. Yes, his name is Rod Long, and he wrote a great article
01:13:07on the provision of healthcare prior to the government stepping in with licensures
01:13:12and you could get an entire year's worth of access to healthcare for the price of one or
01:13:17two days' salary. He joined a friendly society, they were called, and the problem was, of course,
01:13:24the doctors felt that they were being undercut, so they ran to the government, want the unearned,
01:13:27want the unearned, want the unearned. And if we can't confront the basic demonology in our hearts
01:13:37that all complex problems require a fist to solve and cannot be solved in any other way,
01:13:45then people, because we have this addiction, say this, will keep inventing problems,
01:13:49so we keep suggesting more and more violence, more and more violence.
01:13:56Want people to take a vaccine? Well, hide all the documents from them, hide all the tests from them,
01:14:02hide all the validation that it's safe from them, give immunity, legal immunity to the
01:14:07manufacturers, and take away their jobs and their ability to travel. Or eat in a mall.
01:14:16I was kicked out. I was kicked out of malls. Would like to eat? Show your certificate. Nope,
01:14:23you get to eat in the snowy parking lot. Force, force, force. It's all we can think of.
01:14:30It's our reflex. It comes out of parenting, of course.
01:14:36But, you know, how did public school start in America? Public school started in America,
01:14:42despite a 98% literacy rate and a population so literate that the rather complex Moby Dick
01:14:48was a national bestseller. Herman Melville's novel, go try and read it, and imagine people
01:14:53these days reading it when we've had 150 years of advancements in nutrition and education,
01:14:59when we fall into half the IQ, it seems, of the early Americans. So, why? Because there were a
01:15:05bunch of non-Protestants, right? America was founded as a Protestant nation. A bunch of
01:15:09non-Protestants coming in that said, well, we're going to lose our culture. You know,
01:15:12it's going to become un-American if we don't have the government take over education.
01:15:17How's that working out for you? How are American values, how well are they being preserved
01:15:22by the government educational system, right? Got a problem? Run to the government. Got a problem?
01:15:27Use force. It's not just a good idea. It's the law, right? And that's binary thinking,
01:15:33and binary thinking comes from trauma, and trauma leads to more binary thinking.
01:15:37Binary thinking is so easy to manipulate. It's either this or it's that.
01:15:42Why the fuck would I have to listen to your two options as if you are some god of reality?
01:15:49Well, either the problem doesn't get solved or we throw people in jail at gunpoint. Okay,
01:15:54that's binary thinking. Binary thinking is the mark of a slave mentality,
01:16:02which we all have. I understand it, right? This is why to be free, we have to reject binary thinking.
01:16:10Either this or this.
01:16:16Oh, women getting pregnant out of wedlock. Welfare state!
01:16:22Alimony! That's it! Just put guns to the heads of mostly males and
01:16:27give their money almost exclusively to females. Otherwise, there's no solution.
01:16:34Well, even single mothers would be infinitely better off without welfare because single
01:16:43mothers are incredibly isolated and isolation bad enough for men, a particular torture for women.
01:16:49Without welfare, the single mothers would all band together, they'd rent big houses,
01:16:53they'd have a community, their kids would have other kids around,
01:16:57they'd get to share parenting duties, they'd work, and they'd be way happier. Way happier.
01:17:08You were kicked out of a mall for being unfaxed. Love to hear that story. What is the story?
01:17:13I was eating at a mall with my daughter, and a woman came up and said,
01:17:20where's your certificate? Said, don't have one. Said, well, you'll have to leave.
01:17:24Don't make me call security. And we took our food, and we ate in a snowy parking lot.
01:17:27So, if we can't see, when people don't even see their reflexive call to violence whenever there's
01:17:51a problem, they can't see it. And that's part of the horror of accumulated violent
01:17:58or coercive solutions to complex social problems, is that if you start saying maybe
01:18:09violence or force or coercion should only be used in an extremity of self-defense
01:18:14and in no other way, place, shape, or form.
01:18:35We can't even see how much of our society is founded on this knee-jerk
01:18:40got-problem-use-force, got-problem-use-force, got-problem-use-force.
01:18:44One solution, draw katana. One solution, reload. One solution, point guns.
01:18:52Most people can't even see it, and they think that they're solving problems when
01:18:56all they are is handing around justifications for endless wells of bloody violence.
01:19:01Somebody says, I see it as the repeat of parents causing siblings to fight.
01:19:15Escalate until compliance is achieved, yeah.
01:19:19It is a narcissistic mindset to say the solution is what I want,
01:19:25and escalation is the only way to get it.
01:19:32Yeah, I love how school uses itself as a punishment, yes.
01:19:37Education is so wonderful that if you really screw up, we'll just give you more education.
01:19:42Right.
01:19:44Somebody says they start most meetings with, what problem are we trying to solve?
01:19:48Amazing how often we don't even have a problem clearly specified, yeah.
01:20:01So, this is the against-me argument. It's designed to wake people up to the violence
01:20:14they worship. If we can't get people to stop worshipping violence,
01:20:18fighting amongst each other is pointless.
01:20:32Yeah.
01:20:36Did you see Kamala Harris talk about fining parents for truancy of their kids?
01:20:41Yeah, yeah, I saw that. I saw that. Isn't that wild?
01:20:51Yes, school, it's so wonderful that parents have to be threatened with jail
01:20:57if they can't force their kids to go.
01:21:01Lovely.
01:21:04You were held back a year. Actually, I was kicked back to two years,
01:21:06but I was two years ahead in England when I came to Canada. They kicked me back two years.
01:21:13Steph, you're assuming everyone is capable. Simple R versus K.
01:21:16Society cannot exist with more blood being sucked than it can replace.
01:21:22Don't fucking tell me what I'm assuming. That's rude as hell.
01:21:28Do not do that. Do not do that. No decent person's going to want to hang around with you
01:21:34if you just make up these phantoms of ghost thoughts, put them in the other person's mind,
01:21:38and say, I'm correcting you. When the hell have I ever said everyone is capable?
01:21:45Oh, babies? Are babies capable? How about people with significant mental developmental delays who
01:21:49end up with an IQ of 60? Are they capable? You don't think I know this stuff?
01:21:53Steph, you're assuming everyone is capable. Don't fucking tell me what I assume.
01:21:58You can ask me a question if you want to have a decent and civilized conversation,
01:22:02but don't tell me what I'm assuming. It's ridiculous. How embarrassing.
01:22:11Don't do that stuff, man. That's really, really sad. Nobody's going to want to talk to you with
01:22:16any sense of self-knowledge or brains if you're going to just make up imaginary thoughts, project.
01:22:23Hey, Steph, if you were completely retarded, this is what you would say,
01:22:27so I'm going to correct you on that.
01:22:31My God, who the hell have you been hanging around with in life that you haven't had pushback on this
01:22:35nonsense before? Jesus. I love it. Well, if Steph was completely stupid, he would have said something
01:22:44like this, so I'm smarter than Steph because I've imagined he said something and I'm now
01:22:48correcting him. Yeah. Well, it's like slowing Freddie Mercury down to 110 speed and saying,
01:22:58you know, he's not a very good singer because he sounds kind of...
01:23:09He's too slow, man. Well, you just slowed him down.
01:23:10No, now somebody is saying, I have developmental delays but can score a high IQ.
01:23:23Yeah. Excellent. I may be an exception to your general rule. I'm going to add that
01:23:34because I think I'm adding something.
01:23:41When I was transferred from public school for sixth grade, I was a year ahead in math,
01:23:44but they put me with the other sixth graders. It was one of my favorite subjects, but their
01:23:47solution was to give me extra option of work, which I passed on. Yeah, that's James, right?
01:23:52Yeah, yeah. Oh, I'm so good at math. How nice for you. All right. Any other last thoughts,
01:23:59questions, comments, issues, challenges, problems, tips would be more than gratefully,
01:24:03deeply, humbly and accepted. I'm not going to call all the people over on Rumble cheap,
01:24:08but there'd be no tips on the Rumble side tonight. I'm just saying,
01:24:13if you find value and use in what I'm doing and how many thousands of hours I've saved you by
01:24:20not having commercials, you ever have a podcast that you like and it's like suddenly there's
01:24:24a commercial for something? Think if you've listened to a bunch of shows,
01:24:35think of the thousands of hours I've saved you or hundreds of hours I've saved you by not having
01:24:39commercials. Well, that's a benefit. Don't let everyone else pay for the benefit that you,
01:24:44this is a basic integrity thing, right? Don't let everyone else pay for the benefit that you
01:24:48achieve, right? It's like, I don't have a bunch of commercials. I don't have sponsors.
01:24:53I don't have a break. So, you know, when you're falling asleep, you can just listen to me.
01:24:57There's not a break. And often people have loud bumper music for their breaks,
01:25:02which can be kind of startling. Think of the car crashes I've saved by not having commercials
01:25:06because people don't have to flip a head on their player, which you should never do, right?
01:25:13Never take your eyes off the road or your hands off the wheel. But yeah, think of all of the good
01:25:17things that has happened in the world, not just now, but in the future. It doesn't have to all
01:25:21get recompiled without commercials, which would happen in the future and lose quality thereby.
01:25:25But just think of all of the great things that has happened.
01:25:27From not having commercials. Think of all of the great conversations. People are crying about their
01:25:33childhoods and there's not some five minute ad for a VPN, which then you, right? Think about all
01:25:39of the flow and all the beautiful thing that happens without commercials. Well, that is
01:25:43because the show relies on donations. Freedomain.com slash donate, you know, the right thing to do.
01:25:48And I'm promising you, you'll feel better when you do it. If you haven't donated,
01:25:53heaven forbid, or donated for a while, even if you're listening to this later,
01:25:56the facts are still the facts. Somebody says, in school, we learned government did actions
01:26:02to better our society, like fight a certain war, pass some law or create some social programs.
01:26:06We learned that violence is the answer to complex problems. Yeah, that's right. That's right.
01:26:12Steve says, school just bludgeons you to a generalized level when you
01:26:16could be exceptional in any one thing. And I'm sure that's true.
01:26:19to a generalized level when you could be exceptional in any one thing or more.
01:26:22Oh, yeah, I was constantly hived off from the classes. And given my own work,
01:26:27there was another guy, another kid I worked with in England, we basically just told go read these
01:26:32books, tell us what you find in them, because they recognize that we were completely bored
01:26:36doing the general stuff. Steve says we have a six year old who reads at an eighth ninth grade level
01:26:43can't imagine telling them to hold up and slow it down for the sake of classmates. Yeah. Your
01:26:48mother used to call the police on you. Me too. Yeah, she certainly did. That was amazing. Thank
01:26:53you. Loads of value here. I really do appreciate that. Thank you. Time to go have a good think.
01:27:01Yeah, imagine today's free domain episode brought to you by Boeing and ExpressVPN.
01:27:06Great stuff. Not having commercials. Yeah, I can't. I can't do it. Can you imagine?
01:27:11Can you imagine Socrates in the marketplace saying, all right, we're just in the middle
01:27:19of solving the concept of justice. But first, I need to tell you about these wonderful
01:27:24Peters you can get over at Donnie's here. Let's head over there. Can you imagine?
01:27:29Don't work. It don't work. It don't work. It don't work. All right. Thanks, everyone so much.
01:27:34I really do appreciate your very kind support and questions and comments. It's really great to have
01:27:41these conversations as a whole. I treasure them in my heart of hearts. And I think the world finds
01:27:47great benefit for them now. And of course, in particular, into the future. All right. Thank you
01:27:53so much. Have yourself a wonderful week. Lots of love from up here. I will talk to you soon.
01:27:59Thanks for coming by today. Bye.