Sunday Morning Live 30 March 2025
In this episode, I engage with our community, addressing personal dilemmas ranging from guilt stemming from impulsive reactions to the interplay between anxiety and suppressed anger. We explore the implications of recent financial market trends, particularly in gold and cryptocurrencies, and how these shifts reflect broader economic sentiments. The discussion delves into the complexities of navigating toxic dynamics in personal relationships, emphasizing the importance of honesty for the well-being of children involved. I advocate for authenticity amidst societal pressures and reflect on the dual desires for connection and integrity. Additionally, I share insights into my upcoming literary work, introducing a character grappling with addiction and existential struggles. The episode concludes with a contemplation on the influence of societal structures on individual identity and the lessons learned from personal experiences.
GET MY NEW BOOK 'PEACEFUL PARENTING', THE INTERACTIVE PEACEFUL PARENTING AI, AND THE FULL AUDIOBOOK!
https://peacefulparenting.com/
Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!
Subscribers get 12 HOURS on the "Truth About the French Revolution," multiple interactive multi-lingual philosophy AIs trained on thousands of hours of my material - as well as AIs for Real-Time Relationships, Bitcoin, Peaceful Parenting, and Call-In Shows!
You also receive private livestreams, HUNDREDS of exclusive premium shows, early release podcasts, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and much more!
See you soon!
https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/UPB2025
In this episode, I engage with our community, addressing personal dilemmas ranging from guilt stemming from impulsive reactions to the interplay between anxiety and suppressed anger. We explore the implications of recent financial market trends, particularly in gold and cryptocurrencies, and how these shifts reflect broader economic sentiments. The discussion delves into the complexities of navigating toxic dynamics in personal relationships, emphasizing the importance of honesty for the well-being of children involved. I advocate for authenticity amidst societal pressures and reflect on the dual desires for connection and integrity. Additionally, I share insights into my upcoming literary work, introducing a character grappling with addiction and existential struggles. The episode concludes with a contemplation on the influence of societal structures on individual identity and the lessons learned from personal experiences.
GET MY NEW BOOK 'PEACEFUL PARENTING', THE INTERACTIVE PEACEFUL PARENTING AI, AND THE FULL AUDIOBOOK!
https://peacefulparenting.com/
Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!
Subscribers get 12 HOURS on the "Truth About the French Revolution," multiple interactive multi-lingual philosophy AIs trained on thousands of hours of my material - as well as AIs for Real-Time Relationships, Bitcoin, Peaceful Parenting, and Call-In Shows!
You also receive private livestreams, HUNDREDS of exclusive premium shows, early release podcasts, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and much more!
See you soon!
https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/UPB2025
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Good morning, good morning everybody. Oh my gosh, it's almost the end of the month.
00:04March 2025. And I hope you're doing very well. It is Sunday morning and we're going to do the
00:13first hour open. Second hour is for donors. Thank you for your tip this morning. Think clearly. I
00:19hope to live up to your name. And you can of course tip at freedomain.com slash donate as well.
00:26As well. All right.
00:30Hello, Stefan and community. Love the show. Question for you. Have you ever had moments
00:34in your life when you reacted to something in a snap moment and only hours, days, weeks later
00:40play it back through your mind and wish you could go back and react in a different manner?
00:45How do you get past a feeling of guilt that sometimes can be so overwhelming that it
00:57consumes you? I often find myself asking, how would Stefan tackle this situation? Thanks for
01:02your hard work and dedication to the truth. The snap moment, I tend to be somewhat delayed in
01:08my reactions. I tend to maybe overthink things a little bit too much from time to time. So I
01:12don't think that's my major issue. I wish I could go back. My ear is just ringing a little bit
01:22because a friend of mine wrote a musical and I went to go and watch it and it might have been
01:27a bit loud. So I might not regret about that. But generally stuff recurs, I think, in your mind
01:38until and you get the fundamental lesson. Like once you get the fundamental lesson,
01:44I think your brain will let it go. But until then, I think it recurs.
01:49And so the fundamental lesson is often related to,
01:58it's the opposite of what you think. So if you're nervous, you feel nervous and maybe you're angry.
02:04And that's sort of unacceptable. Like if you were raised in a situation where you were not allowed
02:09to be angry, then maybe you sort of turn that anger in on yourself and you feel
02:13nervous or anxious. So maybe the lesson there is kind of like the opposite of what you think it is.
02:22Oh, hey, Dylan, nice to have you back on the live stream. Thank you for the tip.
02:26So I always start, if something is recurring to me, I always start with the idea
02:32that it is the opposite that is going on. And that can sometimes be really helpful.
02:38All right, Serpanta, welcome back. It says, it's crazy to see gold shoot right through 3k US
02:44and is now less than $18 away from 3.1k. There was little to no resistance at the 3k mark.
02:50Yeah, that's true. That's true. And compare that to what was it? 27% return on Ethereum since
02:572017, 2018 or something like that. And Bitcoin, of course, is not performing
03:07the way that it used to. Of course, after the 2016 halving, Bitcoin did 30x, 30 times its value.
03:16After the 2020 halving, it went 8x. And after the 2024 halving, it's gone 0.2x.
03:28I mean, not terrible, obviously, but not comparable. And I think if I had to guess,
03:38I would think one of the reasons why Bitcoin is not performing as it used to is people have more
03:42optimism for the economy at the moment, at least compared to what they used to have,
03:48because Trump is really trying to, in America, bring manufacturing back. And I think because
03:53of that, people are looking and they're not quite as hungry for the safe havens, if that makes sense.
04:02All right. All right. Good morning to those on Rumble. And of course, good morning to those
04:09on Locals. Very nice to have you here today. And thank you so much for your support and your
04:13kindness and your questions. So as I wait for the questions to come flowing in.
04:25Let's see what I have saved here.
04:27Ah, yes, look at this. Michael Burry, stock trader, Burry Tracker on X, wrote 6.1 million
04:35Americans are behind on their mortgage. FHA delinquencies just hit 11.03%, the highest in years.
04:43That is kind of a trippy. That is kind of a trippy number, to be honest. That is not ideal.
04:53I will share the picture here. All right. Yeah, so you can see. Can I share it from the studio?
05:02I think I can. I'm going to share it from the studio.
05:05All right. Yeah, so you can see. Can I share it from the studio? I think I can. Okay. I don't think so.
05:19No. Okay. I'll put it in the show notes. Actually, maybe I'll just share it over here on.
05:26Yeah, I'm going to share it over here on Locals. And Windows never seems to keep the last view
05:34you had. I know better what you want. Well, that's not it. All right. Where did you happen
05:45to put it now? I wonder. Let's try over here. Look at all of this skilled studio work going.
05:54It's like a blur of semi-lucid activity. There we go. All right. So you can have a look at there.
06:02And I think this is well worth looking at. It's a little chilling.
06:06Hello from China. Well, hello. I'm glad to see that you can see me from China. That is very nice.
06:16All right. Sapanta says Bitcoin will eventually turn around. I have no doubts about that.
06:21I don't know when. Likely when the Fed cuts quantitative easing, QT, and drastically lowers
06:27interest rates, thus harming the almighty dollar's value. Well, it's tough. You know,
06:31you can't save the economy without re-industrializing. And it's tough to
06:34re-industrialize without de-dollarizing. And if you de-dollarize, all of your foreign
06:39influence diminishes. So it's not easy being an imperial power. Love this graph. Well, thank you.
06:48Good morning, says Parallax. You always say that philosophy is about prevention.
06:54What if you did not have the benefit of prevention and married the wrong person?
06:58You get divorced, and now you are the victim of parental alienation. Is there an acceptable time
07:04to walk away? Or do you always have to put up with the tactics for the sake of the child who did not
07:08ask to be there? That is, I mean, I'm so sorry. I mean, that is so tough. It's a brutal situation.
07:16And I just really wanted to extend my very deepest apologies for all of that.
07:24Now, my father did choose, in a way, it was somewhat of a choice to walk away. And I don't
07:34necessarily disagree with his decision. And you know, it's tough. I mean, obviously,
07:42in point of fact, you can't know before you know. Right? You can't know before you know,
07:48but you are responsible for trying to know before you know. But I mean, I'm pretty good at trying
07:55to figure this stuff out as a whole. I'm trying to figure life out as a whole. And it took me
08:00a long time to really begin to live philosophy. I've been studying philosophy really for
08:0715 years before I really, really began to put it into practice in my personal life. Like this
08:15journey of, you know, when I talk to people in the call-in shows, this journey is a big and
08:23accelerated one for people. Because you get the benefit of me not living philosophy and realizing
08:29how important it was to do that. So as far as the answer goes,
08:39I mean, I'm not going to give you any advice. I don't know your situation. So this is not
08:46any advice in particular for you. These are just my thoughts on the general situation.
08:53And my thoughts on the general situation is that if I am in a relationship where I cannot tell the
09:00truth, that relationship is generally toxic for everyone involved. So of course, one of the big
09:08challenges of getting divorced is with children is how little truth can be told about what happened.
09:19What happened, right? Let's say that your wife was really difficult and, you know,
09:25threw things and, you know, can you really say that to the kids? Because it's really volatile.
09:34It's a really volatile situation. So if you were a drunk and you were mean, as a father say,
09:47can you tell your kids the truth about all of that? Because you're talking about the furnace
09:53in which they were forged. And the reason for that furnace is existence. That's really tough.
09:58That is really tough. So if you are in a situation where you can't really see your children,
10:08and you can't tell them the truth, you know, again, I'm not going to try and give you any
10:15advice, because again, it's a very individual situation. But I'm not sure that much in life
10:24is well served by being in situations where your kids are just watching you obfuscate,
10:29avoid and lie all the time. I don't think that's a good situation at all. And
10:38there are times in my life when I've had to walk away from significant investments because I just
10:44couldn't tell the truth. I remember being in a business context many years ago.
10:53It was a company in the US and I was working with them. And
11:00they promised a four to six month implementation window.
11:04They promised a four to six month implementation window
11:09for their technical solution. And I, of course, was a chief technical officer. So I know
11:17the challenges of technical implementations. And I talked to the tech guy,
11:25the head of their tech department, and he just scoffed at it. He said, No, they keep saying that,
11:29you know, some of these are 16 to 18 months, and we're still not done.
11:33And a lot of them, he said, I think we did one in six months. And now they're just saying it's a
11:38four to six month implementation. And it's just not the case. Now, obviously, that's a business
11:45context. But I am I couldn't do it. I couldn't, I just, I can't do it. And, of course, I know what
11:56that's like on the receiving end, right? The receiving end of all of that is that the sales
12:04people move on to make new sales, and then the tech people get yelled at for the next, you know,
12:10year to year and a half or more for a slow implementation. And meanwhile, the sales people
12:17are sending themselves on the beach in Cabo and the technicians, the technical people are working
12:23at nights and weekends, for no extra pay, in particular, when the checks have all been cashed
12:30and the sales people have all moved on. It's a very common problem in tech, of course. So it
12:34was scarcely me who was isolated in that. And again, I'm not trying to say that this is a direct
12:41kind of analogy as a whole, but I just couldn't. I couldn't, I can't be in a relationship, I can't
12:46tell the truth. I just can't. It's one of the reasons I don't do politics. Can't tell the truth.
12:54All right. How often do you find philosophers practice what they preach?
13:02Well, for that, I would recommend signing up at fdraurl.com slash locals
13:10and checking out my History of Philosophers series. It's really good. Some of the best
13:14work I've done, and you can get it at fdraurl.com slash locals, or you can go to
13:21subscribestar.com slash free domain, sign up there, and you also get it, as well as all the AIs and
13:2612 hours of the History of the French Revolution that I've done and all kinds of stuff.
13:32Joe says, that happened all the time in my old job. Sales gave ridiculous timelines. Yes,
13:37that's true. That's true. It's very true. And then they move on and they're never seen again,
13:45and they get you to sign off on it, and then it's all yours.
13:51Yeah, if I can't make an honest living, I really can't be in the industry. So you have to look at
13:57your kids and say, if I can't tell them the truth about my life, my choices, the marriage, and so on,
14:08how much good can I do?
14:14All right, Serpanta says, hey Steph, I'm wondering what advice you'd have for crossing the desert.
14:21I just started this journey recently. I made a post on Locals and Telegram about the brief
14:26confrontation I had with my father or family of origin. I'm not going into this unarmed or blind.
14:33I have the amazing work you put out. I've been listening to old gems in the hundreds,
14:37from back before you did this full time, and the amazing therapist I have.
14:42I do have a rough plan I've made with my therapist. Okay,
14:45I feel that there's more to come with that, so I'll wait on that.
14:54And let's see, this is pretty good. It's called the IKEA marriage test.
15:01Before you marry someone, go to IKEA together and buy a piece of furniture,
15:06bring it home, and build it. If you can successfully navigate that entire process
15:09without wanting to kill each other, you're ready to get married. It's kind of true.
15:16Just try to make everything fun in a marriage as best you can,
15:20and you'd be amazed at how much good stuff you can get. All right, let's check over here.
15:29Is there more?
15:30Is there more? This is for Sapenta. If there is, I don't want to answer. If there's more coming in?
15:48All right, let me get back to my questions and comments.
16:03Oh yes, this is interesting. There's a psychologist, Albert Ellis. He referred to
16:21awfulizing and horribilizing, better known as catastrophizing. It has become culturally
16:26accepted to speak and think. It wasn't upsetting, it was trauma. I wasn't annoyed, I was harmed.
16:33They're not difficult, they're toxic. I wasn't uncomfortable, I was unsafe.
16:37It wasn't disagreement, it was gaslighting. It wasn't words, it was violence.
16:42Most people can see how awfulizing and horribilizing fuel anxiety and depression.
16:48It's less obvious that it is rooted in narcissism. By speaking and thinking this way,
16:53we transform life's unavoidable difficulties into the most important thing in the universe,
16:57and ourselves into the main character in the universe.
17:04And this is, he quoted Glenn Sullivan, who had a passage from a book called Intro to Psychotherapy,
17:10Session 12. And this is Albert Ellis. Take, for example, one of the popular
17:17IBs, which I have named, I don't know what IBS, IBS, I capital BS, I don't know what that means,
17:24which I have named awfulizing or horribilizing. It's awful if I fail at this important task,
17:28and it's horrible if people reject me for failing. This is a crazy idea because,
17:32although it may be highly unfortunate for you to fail and very inconvenient for you to be rejected,
17:38when you call failure and rejection awful and horrible, you imply that they are more than bad
17:44or 101% inconvenient, which, of course, they cannot be. They aren't even 100% bad because
17:52they could usually be worse. When you overgeneralize and go beyond reality in this way,
17:57you will make yourself feel panicked and depressed instead of appropriately sorry
18:01and frustrated if you fail and get rejected. Now, why does a bright person like you resort
18:07to this kind of silly, unrealistic awfulizing? Mainly, I contend, because you start with a
18:13conscious or unconscious must, and then you easily and logically derive your awfulizing from it.
18:20Thus, you start with, I absolutely must perform this task well. Then you reasonably conclude,
18:25and since I didn't perform as well as I absolutely must, it's awful. It's
18:29more than inconvenient. It's as bad as it possibly could be. It's the end of the world.
18:36If you only stayed with your preference for doing well and never escalating it into a dire necessity,
18:41a must, would you awfulize about your poor performance? Hardly ever. I contend. Yeah.
18:48Yeah. So awfulizing, very, very important.
18:55All right. Sepanta says, any help you would give would be greatly appreciated. Essentially,
19:02my plan is to work as hard as I can on my virtues and the value I can bring and be ruthless
19:07on who I have in my life. P.S., I will be giving a donation soon above my regular subs. I've been
19:12in the same financial issues, mostly self-inflicted. Oh, I appreciate that. Obviously, wait until
19:16you're stable before donating. I appreciate that. That's very kind. All right. The desert.
19:27The desert. So we are torn. We are torn creatures. We are torn into by the irrationality
19:34or anti-rationality of society as a whole. But we're torn creatures. So
19:39we want companionship. But companionship or social life so often comes at the expense
19:46of just basic honesty. Right? I mean, we've all been in those situations where
19:53something comes up that we just strongly disagree with and all of that. And it could be politics,
19:59it could be morality, it could be philosophy as a whole, it could be like any number of things.
20:04Parenting or child maltreatment or, quote, discipline. All this stuff comes up, right?
20:10And it's, I mean, I think we all know, we've all experienced this. It's a horrible situation.
20:18Right? Do I have integrity or do I have a social life? This happens for young men on dating,
20:25right? Because it is so foundational how far left women have moved. Young women have moved
20:31so foundational how far left women have moved. Young women have moved as a whole that
20:40they're going to say stuff that is just appallingly bad and wrong.
20:45Like just appallingly bad and wrong. And they're going to say it in a very superior
20:50and contemptuous fashion and it's going to be tough. So do I have integrity or do I have a
20:59social life? Oof, man, it's not an easy decision at all. Do people want me around only to the
21:08degree that I'm willing to self-abdicate my reason, integrity, honesty, and independent thought?
21:16Do I have to self-erase in order to be, quote, close to people? Which is like saying,
21:22well, I can dance with people only if I turn myself into a ghost.
21:25Well, that doesn't make a lot of sense. I mean, you can't dance with ghosts,
21:29so that's the paradox, isn't it? That's the paradox.
21:38I mean, what helped me really the most? Thank you, Tony. What helped me the most was a certain amount
21:47was a certain amount of faith. And maybe it's not, I hope it's not quite as much faith for you
21:56as it was for me because I've sort of given you this example. But one of the things that
22:03helped me through the desert was I have to be myself or I can't have a relationship.
22:16I have to be honest and direct or there's no relationship that's possible at all in any way,
22:23shape, or form. And I really just had to cross my fingers and say, I can't be the only
22:30really honest and direct person in the universe.
22:33There has to be other like minds. Now, of course, one of the big challenges that I had
22:40was prior to the internet, it was kind of tough to find, right? The sort of same minds.
22:47I had, I was telling my daughter about this the other day. This was in the 90s, so pre-internet.
22:52Was it? No, 90s. I was telling my daughter about this the other day. This was in the 90s, so pre-internet.
22:59This was in the 90s, so pre-internet. Was it? No, 90s. I was in my, I don't know,
23:04early 20s or something like that. And I wanted to start engaging in political discussions.
23:11I was out of school for a bit. And I went and bought a mailbox. And then I put an ad
23:21in the newspaper saying, if you would like to discuss politics, I have a manifesto
23:26based on reason and free markets. I'd love to get your feedback on it. And we can talk about it.
23:32And so everybody who sent a letter in with their return address, I mailed them a copy
23:40of my manifesto. And we engaged in written discussions. You know how some people used
23:45to play chess by mail. It was a thing. And this, of course, was a very sort of early version of
23:57a message board, I suppose. And I got into a bunch of, I was fielding like, I don't know,
24:0220 people getting back and forth, feedback and thoughts and all of that. And
24:10it was good. It was very interesting, very helpful. And there were people who had really,
24:14you know, obviously great things to say and important things to say.
24:19So there are people out there, and they're looking for you.
24:26Just as you're looking for them. And at least, I mean, I don't mean to say, well, boy, in my day,
24:32it was a lot harder, but it was. But with the internet and with communities like this,
24:37you can much more easily get a hold of like-minded people. Boy, in the past, it was tough, man.
24:45It was really, really tough. I mean, the people that I was chatting with,
24:49below those 35 years ago, or whatever, were all over the world, really. And it was tough.
24:59It was tough to find people. But you can get them on the internet now.
25:03And I think that's a lot better. All right.
25:08Dylan says, Steph, do you think it's something psychological when people are slobs?
25:19I've worked in a lot of college girls dorm rooms, and they're all disgusting trash everywhere. Old
25:24food left out. Even one of the guys I share a home with barely wants to shower or clean
25:28behind himself. That's a good question. One of my female friends said many years ago that a man's
25:49job is his penis at a woman's home is her vagina. It's just kind of a clever thing. I've mentioned
25:53it on the show before. But in particular, when women are slobs, I mean, I think everyone knows
26:01that we males are half apes that need to be civilized by occasional washes of estrogen.
26:08But I think when a woman is a slob, she is signaling a certain dysregulation in her
26:16emotional state. And she's certainly not signaling any wife material behavior.
26:26And of course, it's not like all wives just have to clean up after everyone. But
26:37it is kind of an instinct. A woman who's a slob is like a male with no ambition.
26:47So I would say it's probably a sign of some pretty significant depression.
26:53And I assume it's also a sign of being R-selected and therefore easily available
27:01for sexual access. A woman who takes pride in her home and takes pride in her living space
27:07and environment takes pride in herself and is not going to give up sex quickly and easily.
27:16Pablo says, I dig the silver fox look. Glad it's helpful.
27:24All right.
27:29Sepenta says, oh, at the same time, I think I was talking. This is the desert guy.
27:32I want the integrity because if I sacrifice that on the altar of petty smallness,
27:36I won't have any relationships regardless. Something you've mentioned a few times. Yeah.
27:40Glad to see you are rocking the facial hair again. Yes, but not for too long.
27:46All right. Andrew says, on the topic of slobs, mom jeans, jogging pants made of denim,
27:52Steph, have you ever thought of trying nicotine lozenges? I find they help with focus and
27:56creativity. I would say I don't have a huge amount of problem with focus and creativity.
28:01And I have finally started my new book. So I'm going to read it to you.
28:06And I have finally started my new book.
28:10Sometimes it feels like jumping off a cliff to sit down and start something,
28:13but I have started it and I'm very pleased. Actually, hit me with a why,
28:20if you'd be interested in hearing a little bit of the new book.
28:28It's very raw and obviously pre first draft, but don't feel you have to. But if you'd like to,
28:35I'd be happy to read a little.
28:40Yeah. Okay. Sorry, I missed a couple of questions that came out of,
28:48what happened to couples who disagreed over the COVID jam? Well,
28:50maybe they're not couples anymore for a variety of reasons.
28:56All right. Some guys are still looking for that stripper reading Nietzsche. Yeah. Yeah.
29:00Yeah. Every seven years, says someone from Rumble, every seven years, we are all a
29:08cellularly new person. Endocrine and chemical changes along with that. Too much change equals
29:13divorce. However, no change is not healthy. Interesting. Thank you, Steph. This helps a lot,
29:25says the Panther. Sometimes I find it rough on dating apps, looking for like-minded people.
29:31DAs aren't my only dating strategy. Oh, direct approaches. I see a woman, she says she's looking
29:36for a family, a good masculine man. She says she's conservative, loves deep combos, loves to read,
29:41values honesty and integrity. You'd think we'd be a perfect match right away. I've seen so many
29:45women like that, but they never get back to me. Well, you have to up your texting game.
29:51You have to up your texting game for sure. All right. Okay. Let me see. I think I have a
29:58handy dandy copy of the book somewhere close by. I'm crazy. All right.
30:17So the genre is modern.
30:18And I'm going to read a bit about a bad brother.
30:39All right. So this is the main character.
30:47Two disasters that occur in his life. The first was that his brother had become perhaps
30:52the laziest addict in human history. The first thing was that his older brother, Derek,
31:01had gone to university to study art and graphics design. He'd been bitten by the scribbling bug
31:07early in his teen years and had cranked out massive amounts of medieval fantasy art and
31:11bug-eyed anime at the expense of social skills, sports, girls, and sunlight. He scribbled on paper
31:21then sort of became paper, pale, flat, and easily impressionable.
31:30Both his parents sighed and wrote checks more out of any lack of practical alternatives than
31:34any foundational enthusiasm for his graphical talents. His art was technically good,
31:40but woefully derivative. He was sort of a high DPI photocopier rather than a creative visionary.
31:48But what else could be done? He preferred his own company, which is usually a sign of social
31:54anxiety or giddy vanity. But in Derek's case, he just never seemed to connect with others
32:00to the point where they would have anything practical to offer him.
32:04His parents were utterly unaware of one of the greatest, gravest dangers of an education in the
32:10arts, which is exposure to other cornered artists. Most parents want their children to find their
32:18own people, so to speak, not as often realizing that if their children are weird, hanging out
32:24in the funhouse mirror maze with other weirdos only further distances them from the world of
32:29normality. People go to art school in order to avoid selling their art, to avoid placing their
32:35heightened self-evaluations in the crass market of money changing. Their art is for the ages,
32:44for the universe, as a manifestation of their dreams and dark and lightest desires, not mere
32:50pieces of paper or digits to be hawked and sold. They're not interested in the world of money
32:58to be hawked and haggled over like a rusty scooter in a dead-end yard sale.
33:05As a teenager, the limited social contact that Derek had with others swirled
33:10around the socially scornful and often secretly soft-cutting world of goths and
33:17renaissance fair fans and their oddly dressed fellow travelers. The girls had all grown up
33:23without fathers, circled and prodded and sometimes pursued by unrelated maternal
33:28boyfriends and other leftovers of the extended families that had somehow survived early divorces
33:32or breakups. They took forever to answer questions, pondering what unguessable blowback
33:38might follow any pronouncement, had little to no sex drive, and dressed to repel all but the most
33:44desperate. Romance was to be scorned and mocked. Everyone was supposed to be friends, which meant
33:53listen for eternity while I trauma-dump with absolutely no plan to escape or change.
34:01When Derek got to university, his heart was immediately
34:05one-shotted by Regina, who always claimed that her name rhymed with fun and
34:11She pulled him into a world of endless introspection and unrelated insights,
34:17and taught him to always analyze his dreams with the most negative possible interpretation,
34:22and drew him like a siren of the underworld into Jung's mandalas and
34:26collective unconscious and exploring the deeper mind like a newly discovered Africa.
34:32She was a woman of the mind, and she was a woman of the mind.
34:36Derek fell into the role of acolyte with very little resistance.
34:57Regina was his muse, his medusa, his Beatrice, his guide in the underworld that led
35:04not to the truth, but to unity and connection and inspiration and every other form of
35:12undefined positive, nothing that could be measured, nothing that could be completed,
35:17nothing that could be built upon. And he pursued her into the swamp of manipulative mysteries like
35:23a hypnotized leg walker following a dancing will-o'-the-wisp into a soggy swamp without end.
35:34Derek fed Regina's vanity. Regina fed on his deference, obedience, and worship.
35:42She had enough sex with him to get him hooked, then claimed that their relationship had moved
35:47beyond the physical and demanded that they share auras and massage odd body parts.
35:54She did not go as far as the cliche of opening chakras, but almost, almost.
35:58And then she fed him drugs.
36:05Regina spoke of his secret unhappiness, his alienation, his obedience, his lack of self
36:11expression and authenticity. Factors common to all young people and whispered that the
36:16cure was enlightenment, and enlightenment was brain altering chemical compounds.
36:23It was like 20 years of therapy in a single night. There was no such thing as a bad night.
36:29It's the only way to contact true reality, to see beyond the physical and feel beyond the
36:33historical. She constantly promised and swayed and seduced with the hint of a reality beyond
36:39the mundane accessible only to those who erased absolutely everything about their former selves.
36:46To not be who you are is to be everything, she would murmur, repeating, of course,
36:52the words of a sinister older cousin who had introduced her to drugs when she was 12.
36:58She could not define evil as evil. So she pretended evil was good,
37:04and thus did good by corrupting others in turn.
37:10And to some degree, Derek did find genuine relief and release in these drugs. But it was the
37:18release of a return to infancy without rational boundaries or clear communication or moral
37:24responsibility. It is the short term reaction of all uncertain souls to find sweet, tremulous
37:30relief in the surrender of will to a perceived master or mistress. Wax on, wax off. Being led,
37:39blindfolded into a mystery loosens us from the responsibility of having to judge and decide for
37:44ourselves. We are always promised that if we can self abdicate, sorry, we are always promised that
37:50we can self abdicate into paradise. But all that happens is we hollow out. And if we are very lucky,
37:58only have to spend a few years trying to find our free will again.
38:03And to be fair, there was a burst of creativity in those months, a lack of restraint and self
38:10criticism that produced a significant improvement in technical skills and emotional visions.
38:16But the void being produced by Regina's mysticism and the corrosive drugs, the
38:20liberation that came not from the achievement of new standards, but the abandonment of all standards,
38:26produced dark, grueling visions from Derek's hand, dead robots dripping down stairwells,
38:34hollow-eyed Victorian housekeepers holding dead birds in front of children in tiny golden cages,
38:41shadowy eyes at the edge of vision staring at the viewer, cats eating a vaguely human form.
38:54All forms of demonic visions came pouring out of him as the borders and boundaries of his personality
39:00collapsed. Rational restraint is the essence of humanity. We have to negotiate with rules,
39:10find ethical, universal standards. The abandonment of rules is the end of our humanity.
39:17And what lies on the other side of restraint is not heaven, not even hell, which is a violation
39:22of rules. It is a vaguely disturbing emptiness, which shaves off the nerve endings designed
39:29to have us react with horror and claw our way back to the right path.
39:34And the abyss that Derek stared into on Regina's drugs began inevitably jumping into his peripheral
39:43vision as he played hacky sack in the quad, or traded cash for food vouchers in an acquaintance's
39:50tiny dorm room, or followed a black-haired woman with auburn roots as she climbed the stairs to
39:54the music practice rooms. Dark shapes would flit into view, and he would see the world in a
40:00dark light, and he would turn around, and they would vanish.
40:06He tried explaining this to himself as a trick of the light or a random deficit of vision,
40:11but it kept happening. And he began to slowly, and he resisted this quite seriously,
40:18feel that he was surrounded by entities that he had summoned with his self-dissolving explorations,
40:25like the ugliest of ducklings that bonded with him because he happened to stroll
40:29past. He felt followed and intruded upon and never alone.
40:37He became jumpy, slept poorly, and he knew it, became annoyingly clingy with Regina.
40:44She had no sympathy for his decay. She gave him the very clear impression that he must
40:49have done something wrong, that everyone else gained insight without becoming paranoid,
40:53that he had to fight and find his way back to the path.
40:56In other words, after dissolving his scant will so he could pursue the unknown,
41:00she then tried to summon the dead in his fight with the perpetual shadows.
41:10He went to therapy. The university had a very busy mental health department,
41:14as can be imagined, and the therapist referred him to a psychiatrist,
41:17who spoke with him for 10 minutes and wrote him a prescription for a lifetime of pills.
41:21A kind of deep spasm of survival instinct had him throw the prescription away, then take it back,
41:27smooth it out, and file it in a book he had never read. He holed up in his room,
41:33quit the drugs, quit Regina, rhymes with done, and tried to regain his sanity.
41:42He was lost without religion, without guidance, without morality or philosophy,
41:47religion, without guidance, without morality or philosophy,
41:50battling the inevitable entropy of mindless opposition to discipline,
41:55with muscles atrophied after years of isolation, inflated self-praise and untested expertise.
42:03And in his isolation, in his silence and mad inner pursuit of anything real and true,
42:10Derek began to brush up against the essence of the modern world.
42:13He had visions of the world and its maps as tax farms for human livestock.
42:21He got a sense of the threads that bind every imaginary individual to the media and propaganda
42:26and programming designed in blinding white chambers to steal the eyes of all its subjects.
42:33He had visions of the old world, his grandparents' world, where a man in a tweed suit could kiss his
42:38slender wife, go to the office for eight hours, and then go back to the office for the rest of his
42:42eight hours and afford a lovely house, a white picket fence, a safe neighborhood,
42:48four children, and a car well worth tinkering with.
42:54Derek became obsessed with looking at the videos of this old world from the early 20th century to
43:00the 1950s, with people in suits buying newspapers and staring strangely at the camera lens.
43:06They were all dead, was his constant thought, but it was their world that had died.
43:13Through government-borrowed bribery and the greed of new flesh liberated from reproduction
43:18and responsibility. He imagined the pixelated faces and deep-set eyes trying to warn him.
43:26But the warning came decades too late. All the tragedies that had consumed their world
43:34were set in motion long before Derek was even born. It felt so strange to be in a theater,
43:40forced to mouth lines at gunpoint, holding a script written by hands long dead.
43:46The lost freedoms, the lost honesty, the lost self-expression, the lost upward mobility, the
43:51lost... Derek did not even have the words for it. Those had been lost as well. But the world that
43:58is, is a hell of manipulation and degeneracy. And the promise that liberty from rules breeds
44:04liberty from consequences. That if you smoke enthusiastically enough, you will never get cancer.
44:13And nothing was entertaining. It was all just
44:17programming. And the world was making children insane far faster than the healers could make
44:22them sane. And the lemmings that flowed off the cliff pretended to fly but just fell forever.
44:32And so Derek fell back into his depressed and isolated teenage years, into his rebellion
44:37against the shallow hollowness of his parents. And he hovered above the endless vacuum of a
44:42life lived in reaction rather than purpose. To recoil like a child's hand from a fire is not to
44:49live, but rather just to survive and avoid damage. Prey must always and forever react to predators,
44:58to predation itself, to sniff and startle and flee and kick, not with purpose, but in the wild
45:04zigzag of desperate survival. To survive the next five seconds is the only purpose,
45:09and whatever needs to be sacrificed to not be swallowed is greedily discarded.
45:13Derek felt instinctively the greatest gap between generations in the history of the world, which was
45:24the boomers to the millennials. The boomers inherited a world of relative reason and predictable
45:31purpose, of stability and familiar demographics, and a clear sense of the relationship between
45:35effort and reward. For the boomers, deferring gratification paid dividends. For millennials,
45:42deferring gratification was a fool's quest, like storing ice in blinding sunlight, hoping to chill
45:47your drinks later. Time horizons had shrunk to almost nothing, so Derek's generation grabbed
45:53whatever happiness they could, barely thinking of long-term costs, because the mathematical spinal
46:00fluid that fills the soul of every intelligent person had calculated that the current system
46:06that absorbed them was utterly unsustainable. The debt was too much, the unfunded liabilities
46:15were too great, the tensions too unstable. By the time things were going visibly wrong,
46:22the entire foundation of society had virtually rotted away. The whispers of misdirection at the
46:27beginning of these catastrophes had passed unheeded, and like a smoker who throws away
46:32his pack of cigarettes at the diagnosis of lung cancer, all that was left was a hysterical
46:37reaction to oncoming disaster. Prevention had left the table decades before.
46:46Derek had never voiced these misgivings, but doubtless he felt them deep inside,
46:51in the bowels of instincts designed to gather enough food for the family to survive the winter.
46:57His instincts of sustainability had been perverted to the cause of general environmentalism,
47:01rather than personal cultural survival. His generation had been pillaged and sold
47:08off to foreign bankers to such a degree that they were like slaves with a chance to drink
47:12themselves into oblivion. Why stay sober when self-erasure is the only chance to escape the
47:17consciousness of enslavement? And in a slow radiating detonation, Derek's escalating drug
47:24use spread out throughout the family, in waves, in curves, and began to swallow up everyone's time,
47:31attention, and resources. His brother Robert felt the impact from a distance,
47:38in his parents' whispered tones and angry phone calls, and felt beyond reason, below reason,
47:45that depth led to disaster, and the only way to survive the quicksand of introspection
47:50was to gather enough material possessions to keep you buoyant.
47:53Wanting to avoid depth, art, self-reflection, and the slow decay of navel-gazing, Robert pursued
47:59the central hedonistic god of the upper-middle class, wealth, status, possessions, as if the
48:04dead demons of math and cultural decay could be kept at bay by white pillars and electric cars.
48:13And he put all his hope in this equation, and kept it there, all the way through his girlfriend
48:20Chloe, until he met Helen, and her curves, on the beach. So yeah, that's about half of the
48:27first chapter. It's starting to get in the middle, but I'm quite pleased with it. I think it's a good
48:32first draft.
48:38All right.
48:52Somebody says, oof, mom threw out my old sketch pads and paintings I had on them while I was still
48:57in school. I might have tried to do something with them. What the motive was, I have no idea,
49:01other than maybe no care or like for art. Derek sounds like a guy who will end up doing ayahuasca,
49:07yeah. Wow, demonic lures, yeah.
49:13Derek and Regina sound like so many, quote, couples out there. I'm loving this novel already.
49:18I do like how the woman's name rhymes with her greatest, quote, value in the relationship, yeah.
49:23Aha, the horror story we were talking about some time ago. I'm scared already.
49:27Horror of a life wasted, nothing accomplished in this life or the next, the awful truth coming
49:32to light before it's too late or not. Reads like the drug exploits were held as a mistake,
49:37an injury to overcome, yet post-drug Derek seems to finally be alive.
49:44Free will is a false concept. Agency is the correct one. We are free to choose an action,
49:47but never free of the consequences, yeah. This is a vivid explanation of don't fuck with
49:52mysticism. Well done, thank you. This new book is great. Damn, awesome. You are an amazing writer.
49:57I was placed right in his eyes. The next part can involve the greenies burning EVs. Great work,
50:03Steph. Thank you. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. Yeah, I'm pleased with it.
50:07It always feels like I'm throwing myself off a cliff to start a new book, so
50:10when the creativity really begins to pop in, it's always a great relief and pleasure.
50:18All right, any other last questions or comments? Will there be a happy ending?
50:23Well, for that, you'll have to read the book.
50:25For that, you'll have to read the book. All right, so we're going to go to touching on the subject
50:29of drugs in your new book will resonate with a lot of people and families. Ready for the full
50:33release. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. All right, so we're going to go to—no, we're not going to go
50:41there. We're going to go to—not there either. I really feel like I used to know how to do this.
50:48We're going to go to local supporters only, so we will go there in about 30 seconds, and you can go
51:02to fdrurail.com slash locals to sign up there, and we can continue there. Cameron says, sounds
51:11like a good intro. Reminds me of a lot of people I knew in college. Yeah. Yeah, I've never really
51:19been close to people who drink a lot or do a lot of drugs, but I can imagine, and I've certainly
51:25talked to enough people as a whole, I can certainly imagine that this is kind of hell on earth, right?
51:31Hit me with a why, I guess, just before we head out to that. Hit me with a why if you have been
51:35around that. Perfect description. Yeah, thank you.
51:49But yeah, I've never written about addiction before, so I am working on that.
51:58You have, right? Okay, well, hopefully you can keep me honest as I write about this,
52:04having never really dealt with it much myself. If you could keep me honest about it,
52:07I would really appreciate that. Let me know if there's anything that,
52:16yeah, let me know if there's anything I get wrong. All right, I think we are locals only.
52:25Any other questions? This is going to stay locals only, I think.
52:30I can read more of the book, or you can ask me questions. I am at your disposal.
52:41LDS or Mormonism is a dry, drug-free church. Includes tobacco. That's good. That's good.
52:49Most excellent.
53:00How possible or probable do you think it is that Europeans will end up on the front lines?
53:07Well, you know, I guess Native Europeans are a big barrier to the establishment of more and
53:14more dictatorships, right? Native Europeans tend to be quite resistant to being bossed around in
53:22that kind of way. So there certainly will be, I think, escalating levels of aggression against
53:29that. So they will do what they can get away with, I assume. That's what generally the way
53:34it works, is they do what they can get away with. Steph, did you see Alec Baldwin talking about his
53:40wife's ex-husband's giant penis and his wife just kept laughing? Yeah, wasn't he saying that it
53:45looked like a clarinet or something? My gosh. I wonder how the parents' influence will be
53:54incorporated into the story. Yeah, we'll get there. We'll get there.
54:00Book sounds great so far. Thank you very much.
54:05What do you think about Liberation Day this Wednesday? I've seen so many people here in
54:09Canada lose their minds over these tariffs. It's as bad as COVID hysteria. Yeah. Yeah.
54:15Dylan says, I would love to hear more about the book. A lot of my family used drugs,
54:19most were functional, but a lot were terrible and tormentors. Yeah. Yeah.
54:27Love that first half chapter. Really looking forward to more. So yeah, that's the second
54:31half of the first chapter. The first chapter is about his brother. I thought the second half...
54:35Yeah, I wrote a whole second half of the chapter about artists and AI,
54:38but then realized it would be an anachronism.
54:43Yeah, I mean, Alec Baldwin, I mean, just, you know, he's a good looking guy, very talented,
54:49very successful, very wealthy. And, you know, I think it's going to be interesting to see
54:54what he's going to do with the book. I think it's going to be interesting to see what he's going to
54:58do with the book. And, you know, I think it's going to be interesting to see what he's going to do
55:00with the book. And, you know, I think it's going to be interesting to see what he's going to do
55:02with the book. And, you know, I think it's going to be interesting to see what he's going to do
55:04with the book. And, you know, I think it's going to be interesting to see what he's going to do
55:06with the book. And, you know, I think it's going to be interesting to see what he's going to do
55:08with the book. And, you know, I think it's going to be interesting to see what he's going to do
55:10with the book. And, you know, I think it's going to be interesting to see what he's going to do
55:12with the book. And, you know, I think it's going to be interesting to see what he's going to do
55:14with the book. And, you know, I think it's going to be interesting to see what he's going to do
55:16with the book. And, you know, I think it's going to be interesting to see what he's going to do
55:18with the book. And, you know, I think it's going to be interesting to see what he's going to do
55:20with the book. And, you know, I think it's going to be interesting to see what he's going to do
55:22with the book. And, you know, I think it's going to be interesting to see what he's going to do
55:24with the book. And, you know, I think it's going to be interesting to see what he's going to do
55:26with the book. And, you know, I think it's going to be interesting to see what he's going to do
55:28with the book. And, you know, I think it's going to be interesting to see what he's going to do
55:30with the book. And, you know, I think it's going to be interesting to see what he's going to do
55:32with the book. And, you know, I think it's going to be interesting to see what he's going to do
55:34with the book. And, you know, I think it's going to be interesting to see what he's going to do
55:36with the book. And, you know, I think it's going to be interesting to see what he's going to do
55:38with the book. And, you know, I think it's going to be interesting to see what he's going to do
55:40with the book. And, you know, I think it's going to be interesting to see what he's going to do
55:42with the book. And, you know, I think it's going to be interesting to see what he's going to do
55:44with the book. And, you know, I think it's going to be interesting to see what he's going to do
55:46with the book. And, you know, I think it's going to be interesting to see what he's going to do
55:48with the book. And, you know, I think it's going to be interesting to see what he's going to do
55:50with the book. And, you know, I think it's going to be interesting to see what he's going to do
55:52with the book. And, you know, I think it's going to be interesting to see what he's going to do
55:54with the book. And, you know, I think it's going to be interesting to see what he's going to do
55:56with the book. And, you know, I think it's going to be interesting to see what he's going to do
55:58with the book. And, you know, I think it's going to be interesting to see what he's going to do
56:00with the book. And, you know, I think it's going to be interesting to see what he's going to do
56:02with the book.