6322 I Fight with a LISTENER! X Space

Good evening, good evening.

I hope you're doing well, 6th of March, 20th, 26th,

and we are talking Friday night live with Stefan Molenu.

I hope you're doing well.

Hope you're having a lovely day.

Hope you can have a great weekend.

And with philosophy, you always can.

Let's dive straight into callers.

You can of course call on X.

I want to thank Jay Dyer for having me on the Alex Jones show

today, my first foray back into TV land.

So to speak in, oh, probably six years or maybe more.

So he's a great guy.

And if you are a donor, you can get the show at freedomain.locals.com.

If you're a subscriber and actually have some openings

next week for call in shows.

If you want to do a public or a private call in show,

just go to freedomain.com slash call, freedomain.com slash call.

I'm begging you, I'm begging you if you've got a big decision

coming up in your life that has moral implications.

Call in, call in, we can anonymize your voice.

Don't stay on names and places.

There's no unmasking here as has happened before in other situations.

So freedomain.com slash call.

All right, Jeff, if you wanted to unmute,

I'm happy to get your questions or comments.

And you can type your questions in wherever you like,

through the various social media platforms, and all that.

Jeff.

Yes, thank you.

Good evening, and thank you for hosting this as always.

For the benefit of home-to-home listeners

who may have missed some of your recent broadcasts,

I was wondering if you care to share any thoughts

about the continuing forever war over there

in the far distant sandy lands and whatever else you care to share.

And thank you again for all you've done through the years

and the impact you've had on millions.

Well, I appreciate that.

Thank you for the question I did talk about it

on the Alex Jones show today.

And you know, to be honest, sorry,

that's an annoying thing to say.

Like when I say, when I don't say to be honest,

am I just lying about everything?

I don't think so.

I don't think so, man.

But to be more concise and perhaps

to lift a little bit of the kimono, so to speak,

I got out of politics in 2020.

And I got out of politics,

just before I was de-platformed, I got out of politics

because I could see which way the wind was blowing.

I could see which way the wind was blowing,

which way things were going to go.

Firstly, I think Trump put up a good fight.

You know, it's easy if you're not in the ring

to blame the people facing the blows.

But I think Trump put up a pretty good fight.

I think he went in with good intentions,

but there's a machine in the world

that disassembles integrity, right?

We have a try to be in a situation where

you are facing a temptation

and you try to stand for what is right.

The betrayal, the turnabout, the viciousness,

the undermining, the sland, the lies,

the insults, the gossip mongering, the tea spreading,

the reputational attacks and destruction.

There is a lot of media out there

that trains people to lower their heads,

square their shoulders, link arms and charge

to overcome and undermine and disassemble anyone

who stands up to a corrupt system

with an attempt at integrity.

This is all the way back to, I guess,

when I was 15 or so when I read the fountainhead

and I'm like, yeah, there's something really kind of true

in that.

In the business world, I really tried

to stand up for that, which was right and good

and to push back against some of the lies.

I mean, I get there's a certain amount of fake

until you make it, but there's also stuff that is not

acconscionable.

And you could just see people get into these,

like a fail-anx of Roman legionnaires

with their shields and a tortoise shell all around them.

People just lock in, they lock down.

And they all unite to attack.

And I don't know if you've ever had this.

I've seen this a bunch of times in my life

that you have a relatively stable group,

relatively positive group, relatively enthusiastic

and decent, not necessarily morally great,

but decent, decent group.

And then like a stucanoid, like a whistle, like a speer.

In comes a bad person, a crazy person,

a person who takes a lot of offense,

a person who they're called split.

You divide somebody who comes in

and is able to easily divide people into two groups

and then just a split and undermine make enemies

and so on.

And I don't know what it is.

I've seen this in just about every community.

I've seen this in the paternity communities.

I've seen this in atheist communities.

I've seen it in Christian communities.

I've seen it in philosophical communities.

I saw it when I used to run a message board

many years ago in the early days of free domain

back when the radio supercab was at the end.

That crazy people come in

and everyone follows their lead.

It's the pie-piper thing.

I've seen it over and over and over again.

To the point where, you know,

it's kind of tough to join any kind of groups

because what happens is you have a group.

It's getting along well.

One crazy person comes in and it's just

everyone turns into these bowling pins.

It just gets shattered and smashed and so on.

I mean, I remember way back in the day,

this would be probably around 2008,

almost 20 years ago now.

I was running a message board

on the free domain radio website.

And a professional troll came in.

I found this out much later through other sources

and professional troll came in

and started talking about hookers and blow.

Hookers and blow.

And was just needling and provoking and so on.

And the whole, I mean, I did a pretty

valiant effort to keep and eventually we conquered

and so on, but it was like months of struggle

and battle and escalation and so on.

So Trump did stand against the machine,

the machine of war and so on.

But I think largely through the influence,

probably of Ivanka,

there wasn't good to last, you know,

it's hard as a father to say no to a child that you loved.

And I think that a lot of that went down that way.

So as soon as I sort of the family alignments and so on,

I'm like, yeah, it's not gonna, it's not gonna work out.

It's not gonna, it's not gonna work out.

And also, I mean, not to neck in my usual way,

one website over.com,

when like 95, 98% of my listeners couldn't bother

go to one site over to sort of maintain

or give me support or during my transition, right,

from a public figure playing stadiums too.

An obscure jazz figure playing, I don't know,

tea rooms or something like that.

That crazy people come around and groups

from individuals to families, families less so

because families generally the level of insanity

stays the same in families.

But groups as a whole,

and if you've got stories about this,

you know, please of course, let me know.

But groups as a whole,

they don't seem to have a defense against crazy people

coming in.

And my whole life, my whole life has been kind of

pointing out that crazy people are coming in

and everyone ignoring me and then siding

with the crazy person and surfing me out.

I'll say it again, because maybe you've had the same experience.

And if you haven't, I think it's probably because

you haven't done enough.

But my whole life, it feels like I have groups

that I'm part of that seem okay,

not perfect, obviously nobody perfect,

but okay, pretty good.

And then some crazy person comes in

and the whole group just goes nuts, explodes, polarizes, attacks

and it seems that I have not,

I mean, the remaining friends and family, yes,

that I have, which is great.

But in groups that I've known in the past, you know,

crazy person comes in, everyone just

gets plowed under, everybody just lines up, everybody,

you know, we don't have a way yet.

And you know, maybe there's a way down the road,

philosophy, peaceful parenting, whatever it's going to be.

But we don't seem to have a way to deal

with the crazy people who disassemble groups as a whole.

I mean, in the old, it was a very sort of loose coalition

of skeptics about the media and about mainstream politics,

the sort of the dissident outlaws of say 2015, 2016

and so on.

The crazy people attacked and everyone scattered.

Somebody has asked me, Steph, during your de-platform,

did you ever get invited to other people's shows?

Peter Schiff, yes.

I think I had a show with Dave Smith.

I think that was it.

No, I didn't get invited down to other people's shows

during the de-platform.

For sure.

Let's talk about ground troops in Iran.

Yeah, so Iran, of course, one of the three or four times

the size of Iraq, Iraq is much flatter.

Iran is incredibly mountainous.

And it's a much higher IQ population as a whole.

And there's kind of, I'm sorry, I know that we have more

callers that get you in just a second, but as a whole,

there's kind of a cycle which goes from hedonism

to incredible religious or moral strictness,

from hedonism to this kind of strictness.

And if you look at Iran, you'll see these videos

or images of Iran back in the 60s and 70s.

And it's all the girls in the university,

in the girls who are in long slacks and so on.

And then there's this sort of tragedy or sorrow

that the Islamic Revolution took over.

I think it was 79 and then clamped down,

stripped down, but there is this kind of cycle.

And the cycle goes something like this.

And I'll keep this brief and I get you a callers in a sec.

And so the cycle goes something like this.

There's a certain amount of a freedom,

a religious freedom and in particular,

economic freedom, property rights and so on,

which characterised to run in the early to middle part

of the 20th century, when you get wealth,

you get economic inequality, when you get economic inequality,

you get politicians who come along and say,

we're gonna take from the rich and we're gonna give to you.

And it take from the wealthy, we're gonna give to you.

And the sort of strictness and productivity

that came out of the relative economic freedom

dissolves into this class-based resentful,

greed grab of the wealthy.

And then the government succeeds in that

because the government dangling free stuff

in front of a population is a lure that never fails

in the long run.

There's a funny video.

It's a two black guys that are imitating fish

and one black guy grabs the fish hook so to speak

and then gets yanked out of the water.

And then the other one looks over for a long time,

then the hook comes back down.

He just grabs it too and that's people with free stuff

from the government.

The government will print money, the bank government

will tax people, you know, like there's a hundred people

in California who pay like a 40% of the tax, right?

Everybody wants to attach to the wealthy

and use the state to drain them of resources.

And from there, you get a horrifying kind of hedonism

because free money detaches and dissociates us

from reality.

And then we feel our humanity slipping away.

I feel that.

I feel that very strongly, it's not an argument,

and I'm just telling you what I feel.

I think there's a reason for it.

I feel that very strongly that when the government prints

and borrows and hands out money like candy,

people's humanity dissolves.

We become like animals.

Like rabbits don't plant their food.

They just mow down on every piece of vegetation.

They can get a hold off until their ass

as a young sky would buy an owl or something.

They just, ah, ah, ah, ah, right?

So when people get free stuff, we lose our moralities.

They were saying on the Alex Jones show today,

morality requires scarcity.

And when money and resources are perceived

as pretty much infinite, then you end up without morality.

And without morality, we lose our humanity.

We are moral animals.

We are, I mean, Aristotle referred to us

as the rational animal, which is true,

but Kroza pretty reasonable in their own experiment as well.

But we are rational animals.

And we are moral animals most foundationally,

because morality is the one thing that separates us

from the rest of the animals,

particularly abstract conceptual language-based

morality universals.

And so we have wealth that comes out of the strictness

of moral property rights.

Governments dissolve those property rights

to buy the population.

And then humanity goes out of focus,

like a fast forward of middle age

when your eyes get kind of blurry, right?

Just goes out of focus.

And people freak out foundationally.

They freak out about all of this easy free stuff

dissolving their humanity.

And people lose love,

because when you get free stuff from the government,

you don't have to have any morals.

And when you don't have any morals,

it can't be loved and you can't love.

You can't love each other.

You can't love your children.

You're just a greedy parasite off the body politic.

And people feel their humanity slipping away.

And their love and their self-respect,

their souls, right?

What is the story that the devil offers you things

of free and then takes your soul when the government

offers you things of free and then takes your soul.

You lose your humanity when you are in possession

of free stuff.

There's always this kind of cliche.

The son of the king is incredibly cruel.

Like you've seen this, like I was watching

Night of the Seven Kingdoms the other day.

And it's so predictable.

The blondest guy is always the meanest guy.

The blondest guy is always the meanest guy.

The blondest guy is always the meanest guy.

You have a inblade runner,

Malfoy in Harry Potter, this guy.

Just the, but it's always the son of the king,

and particularly the eldest son of the king,

is an absolute a-hole.

And that's because he's inherited all of this wealth

and power he can earn it himself

and that destroys his humanity.

Humanity, morality based on scarcity.

Without scarcity, you can't have morality.

Without morality, you can't have love.

Love is our responsive virtue of a virtuous.

So then people feel their humanity

going out of focus.

They feel their souls leaving their body.

And then when very strict religious people come along,

they seize it at it, right?

They seize at it.

Desperate, we must have religious strictness.

It's the only way to contain our soul

from leaving our body, which is why the free market

with the government, free market,

leads to hedonistic welfare state, leads to tyranny.

Every single time.

All right, let us get to our callers, Mina.

If you would like to unmute,

I would be happy to hear your thoughts.

Going once, going twice.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, sir, go ahead.

Hi, good evening.

Yeah, keeping on the topic of Iran,

I couldn't help but notice that they are kind of using

the strategy from your book, The Future.

Not to spoil it for anybody, but in the novel, The Future,

there is a scene in which there's a conflict

between one society and the other.

And the one society, instead of doing a full-on boots

on the ground strategy, they just target

the other society's leaders.

And I think that's what they did with Iran in this case.

And I saw just on X just now,

the person that they picked to replace comedy,

which who I think is his son was also just killed.

I don't know if that's confirmed or not.

But it seems like they, I don't know.

My question is, do you think that's still a winning strategy

and or how is it going for them?

Or and how does it feel to see a little bit of what you wrote?

Like happening.

Yeah, I mean, there certainly have been some offshoots

of the work that I've done over the years

that I've mostly kept to myself.

Maybe this is one of them, maybe not.

But I am very happy that a war-mongering leader gets killed.

And I'm not talking about Khomeini

because the question, and it is a big question,

which is, did Khomeini want to attack the West?

Was he imminently going to attack the West?

It doesn't seem to be.

Now they say, well, he was two weeks from nuclear weapons

and so on, and I've sort of said before that I don't.

I don't believe that because the last people

who made predictions that turned out to be false,

nothing ever happened to them, right?

It would be like if you had an oncologist at a hospital

and the oncologist kept telling people

without cancer, they maybe they had a tumor,

but it was benign, and he said,

oh, it's cancerous, you've got to go through all this

expensive treatment, and it turned out they never had cancer.

But he kept getting paid and promoted

and kept going on TV.

Then you wouldn't expect anything to change

because he's not suffering any negative consequences

for what he's doing, clearly he wants the money

from diagnosing people falsely with cancer.

And if he never gets punished and he only gets praised

and he continues to get his paycheck

and is continued to be welcomed in society

even though then you wouldn't expect to go.

You wouldn't want to go to that hospital

because that guy is going to still continue.

So there have been a number of times, of course,

when people have made claims,

I did shows on this back of the day

aside use weapons of chemical weapons.

On his own people, you know, this kind of stuff.

And of course the golf of Tonkin incident

that was fabricated to start Vietnam

and then of course the weapons of mass destruction lie

about Iraq.

And nothing happens.

Well, does anybody ever get dragged in front of a court?

Does anybody ever get thrown in jail?

Does anybody ever get executed for causing deaths

of hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands

or even more of people?

I know.

So maybe you have to wait for a generation

to go past every time.

So it's not believable.

But if there is a leader that is fomenting war

then taking out the leader

is the best chance you have to not have the war.

I mean, this is the old Hitler argument, right?

Let Hitler was fomenting a war.

And if people had taken out Hitler,

I mean, it's a whole Tom Cruise movie about this, I think.

But if people had taken out Hitler,

I think everybody would have been better off

as far as that goes.

If people had taken out Lenin,

then, you know, it's entirely possible

that 70 million Russians wouldn't have died.

When you look at sort of the great man theory of history,

if somebody had taken out Napoleon,

then a whole bunch of,

well, a whole bunch of countries wouldn't have had

their legal systems revamped

and put it this nicely as possible.

So, yeah, targeting a leader.

The big question, of course,

is what's remaining about to attack the United States?

The answer to that, of course, is no.

Now, of course, China gets a significant portion

of its oil through the straight of Hamus.

Maybe they want to close that to harm China.

Maybe it has something to do with expansionism from Israel.

Maybe it has something to do with, you know,

any other number of things.

Maybe it's an old grudge.

But I suppose one of the questions that I would ask

if I was in America's shoes is,

why do they keep chanting death to America?

I mean, it's an important question.

I mean, you could argue that Switzerland

is a pretty free country.

They're not chanting death to Switzerland.

They're not chanting death to New Zealand.

Why America?

And I think the answer, of course,

is that America has an imperial power

with 800 plus military bases overseas.

That is at least in the eyes of many Muslims

besmirching the Holy Land in Saudi Arabia in particular

with troop presence and so on.

And, of course, the invasion of Iraq.

You know, I think people were looking to America

once the invasion of Iraq was proven to have been mounted

under false pretenses.

They were looking for the American government

or the American society to take a strong action

against those who had fermented this war.

And you can argue, of course, Afghanistan,

as well, they went to Afghanistan

because of bin Laden, but they'd already turned over.

They already turned over.

They said, well, turn over bin Laden,

but you've got to give us some proof that he did 9.11

and, right, for whatever reason,

they went in 12 of trillions of dollars

and to protect the bachi boys.

So the world, as a whole, was looking to America

to say, okay, so, and the coalition

of the willing, it wasn't just America.

When it was found out or when it was discovered,

which was not an instantaneous process,

but it also didn't take years and years,

when it was found out that the invasion of Iraq

was entirely under false pretenses.

The question is, are you sorry?

Right, are you sorry?

If someone accidentally shoots your dog,

they think it's a prowler or something,

and it's a, it's in your property, but they think,

and they say, oh, I thought your dog was dangerous.

I shot your dog and so on.

And it turns out that they were wrong.

Don't they owe you some recompense?

I think they do.

Right, and so on.

Now, if they keep shooting your pets, saying,

oh, no, I thought this pet was dangerous.

Oh, no, no, I thought this pet was dangerous.

Oh, and they just keep shooting your pets.

At one point, are they just sociopathic pet killers?

I myself, when people do wrongs and the greater the wrong,

the greater the requirement, I look for three things,

when people do wrong.

Number one, an apology.

Number two, restitution.

And number three, a commitment by which is not going to happen again.

Invasion of Iraq was one of the great wrongs of the 21st century.

Great evils of the 21st century was an apology.

Nope, was the restitution.

Nope.

Was the restitution.

Nope.

Was there any mechanisms put in place

by which it wasn't going to happen again?

Nope.

And here's the dangerous thing.

Here's the dangerous thing, and I'll get to the other callers

and to say, so the dangerous thing, of course,

is that if we look at a country like North Korea,

we know it's a dictatorship.

So when the North Korean leader does something

that's wrong, bad, immoral, or whatever,

we don't blame the citizens,

because they're just, you know, North Korea

is the biggest open air slave camp in the world.

So we know that the average citizen in North Korea

is not responsible for his leader's actions,

because he's just a slave.

He's a prisoner, he's chattel.

But in a democracy or a public or whether it's voting,

the actions of the leaders are directly associated

with the choice of the citizens, actions of the leaders.

And so if the perception is, and the propaganda is,

that the government reflects the will of the people,

then the population is perceived to be legitimate targets

because they approve of what the leader is doing.

North Korean leader goes down and everyone's cheering,

and we all know that they're cheering

because otherwise they go into an internment camp at best, right?

But if everyone is voluntarily cheering terrible actions

by the leaders and there's voting and so on,

and people tune in voluntarily to the media,

like in North Korea, you have to watch the state media

and cheer it, I assume.

But if people are just cheering and so on,

then how does that look from the outside, right?

You know, if your neighbor shoots your dog

and his wife comes over, it's like, oh my gosh,

I'm so sorry, he's losing his eyesight,

he's losing his mind, please accept this gift basket,

and let's go get you a new dog, I'm so sorry, right?

But if every time your neighbor shoots your dog,

his wife and his kids are all cheering,

don't you get mad at them too?

Right, so it's a big, big and different deal.

So I hope that makes sense, thank you for the question,

and let us get to Brendan, Brendan.

If you want to unmute, I'm all ears.

Oh, is that for me?

Cut all right, what do you did there?

All right.

Hey, so Stefan, I just want to say I'm a big fan.

I years ago, I used to watch all your single mother videos.

You did those awesome, and you were big help lots

in relationships.

I just got a question, like, so we're talking about Iran right now.

Do you think with like Iran getting liberated,

more freedom, essentially going on there?

Do you think there will be a huge uprising

in like single motherhood?

And do you think like, I mean, with America right now,

United States, there's like millions of women essentially

doing like only fans and like prostitution is huge right now?

Do you think there will be a huge uprising in that?

And just like with the overall how women feel about men,

like divorces initiated 70, 70, 80% by women,

and you think we will see a huge uprising in that.

I'm just wondering what your thoughts are on that.

And I just want to say thank you for everything

you've done all over the years.

You're awesome.

Well, thank you.

And I remember, I think it was 2019.

Actually, no, it was 2019.

I did a documentary in Hong Kong called Hong Kong Fight

for Freedom, which you should check out.

Still very relevant at freedomain.com slash documentary.

It's free.

And I was interviewed on television in Hong Kong.

And I was saying, you know, one of the problems

with the West is we're not selling our lifestyles anymore.

We're not selling, you know, peace, reason, freedom,

philosophy, evidence, property rights,

and so on, limited government.

We are a very decadent society.

And I was sort of talking about earlier in the show,

just how free money dissolves our humanity

because it removes the restrictions that we need

to provoke morality.

And what would liberation, let's, you know,

put on our fantasy helmets and let's say,

what would liberation look like for Iraq?

Let's say America gets its way, right?

What would liberation look like for Iraq?

Well, it means hyperfeminism, female supremacy.

It means Western family courts that eviscerate men.

It means more anti-white racism

and the Iranians are traditionally Caucasians.

Been a couple of thousand years since they escaped Siberia

and went to slightly warmer climes.

What else did they get?

Do they get indoctrination?

Do they get creepy sacshead in schools?

Do they get the liberation of females from all restraints?

See, women evolved in a time where bad decisions

destroyed their lives and there was no particular support system.

So a woman, in all these women say,

oh, I didn't know he was a liar.

I didn't know he was a bad guy like I posted the other day

that 70% of men in prison have girlfriends outside of prison

waiting for them, like what's your excuse?

And when the free money starts flowing,

then women lose all self-restraint in that way.

And women have evolved to be restrained

by the consequences of childbirth,

which is sort of a natural consequence, right?

We have a ridiculously long gestation period

and a ridiculously long development period, right?

The first year of life is often called the fourth trimester

because we're so useless.

If you've ever been on a farm and you've seen that chickens

can run coming out of the egg

and horses can run within a day or two,

but human beings take, like we can walk,

tottering at about a year

and we can run at about two to three years.

So we have crazy slow to develop

because that, which is more complex,

takes longer to develop.

And so there were natural consequences

and so women being restrained in their sexual choices,

romantic choices by natural consequences.

When those natural consequences are removed,

it's like a balloon that's held underwater,

just pops up and goes to the sky.

Let's say a helium balloon held up underwater

to keep the continuity of the analogy.

And so women were restrained by nature

and by, quote, patriarchy and so on,

when all of that is removed

and women no longer face negative consequences

for bad reproductive decisions,

but instead are rewarded in ways

that can scarcely be conceived of.

It's $100,000 worth of free benefits

or the equivalent of $100,000 worth of salary,

free benefits to women who have children outside the home,

turning children from liabilities into assets

has completely inverted female sexuality.

Now female sexuality can follow the tingle offer,

fiscal cliff rather than restraining gritting your teeth

and settling down with a guy who's going to be a good father

and a good provider.

They don't need any of that.

So they're liberated to go after the sexy, dangerous bad boys

or to put it another way.

The kind of restraint that evolved in northern cold climates

has been eliminated by the welfare state,

which turns northern cold climate people

into the environment of tropical people

who tend to be a little bit more impulsive and more violent.

So, yeah, all of this restraint has been gone

and what happens when Iran is, quote, liberated,

even if that were possible.

Like even, even, let's just go out on a limb here,

say that was possible and what's going to happen?

Well, they're going to get endless childhood

in doctoration, they're going to get creepy sex practices,

drag queen story hour, they're going to get a communist

indoctrination, they're going to get a DEI,

which destroys meritocracy, they're going to get endless lectures

on racism and white privilege.

And they're also probably going to get mass immigration,

which is going to completely rewrite their entire society.

What do we in the West have to offer for the continuity

of Iran?

They're going to get a central bank,

they're going to get money printing,

and they're going to end up with

entire government-funded groups of people,

entirely hostile to their way of life and culture.

And I'm talking about the sort of the pre-Islamic culture.

Because you remember, like most of the Middle East

used to be Christian, right?

This is really, it's important.

I did a whole show on this, the truth about the crusades,

FDRpodcasts.com, FDRpodcast.com.

And the countries, you could just go through the whole list,

right? You can go through the whole list

of all the countries that used to be Christian

and have since become Islamic.

And that process has been entirely lost

and forgotten a history for really obvious reasons.

So yeah, what is going to happen,

I had a somewhat viral tweet the other day,

there was this woman in a really tight mini skirt

and so on, dancing, doing the Trump dance to YSEA.

And I said, you know, can women find some balance

between stripper and burka?

I mean, I think that would be not the worst thing in the world,

but because women evolved to have restraints imposed upon them

by nature and society, when both nature and society,

when those restrictions are lifted,

then women have monetized their sexuality.

And the welfare state and having children

is another form of monetizing your sexuality, right?

You have sex, you have kids,

and then the government pays you to not work

and you can make a fortune.

Honestly, you can make the equivalent

of a middling engineer salary just by pumping out some wee

badant.

So the monetizing of sexuality occurs when fiscal and social

and consequential restraints are released.

And then, of course, you end up as is in the case in America

with 10% of women aged 18 to 24 being on only fans,

which is a statistic that will absolutely blow

the minds of future people.

And then the question is, well, where,

well, of course, and a lot of the money from it,

only fans flow as well, you know.

So what kind of money is being spent on only fans

or websites like it?

I don't know for sure.

I don't know if there's any way to know for sure.

But what I will say is, yeah, Iran will get casino stuff

but they're trying to be similes.

Yeah, maybe.

I mean, that's certainly like, who looks at the West

and says that's who I want to be?

Who looks what countries look at the West and say,

boy, they've got it going on.

They've got a great system now.

So I have a general theory, which I can't prove,

but I strongly suspect.

My theory is that most of the money flowing into only fans

comes out of non-earned money.

Because I can't imagine that people will take

a lot of their hard earned money and dump it into only fans.

My guess is that the money that goes into only fans

comes from un-earned money, whether it's criminal

or inherited or whether it's welfare state money

or student loans or student grants or something like,

it's not directly earned money.

Because otherwise, when you directly earn the money,

you have to turn it over.

There's a calculation that goes on in your head.

It doesn't really seem to be happening

with the people who are currently spending money

on only fans, which you shouldn't do, of course.

All right, is there anything else that you wanted to mention

or ask?

Well, I just wanted to say with the liberation,

how do we make, has this happens?

How do we make the women not hate the men

and how do we make it so divorced,

doesn't happen so much, so frequently, right?

That's happening in the United States.

It's a pandemic of women hating men.

How do we make sure that that doesn't happen

in all these countries that are about to be liberated

while specifically talking about Iran area and Iraq there?

Well, you can't stop it as long as there's a government.

Because when you have a government

that can print its own money, it buys votes.

Now, in order to buy votes,

people have to want to sell their votes.

And so the best way to create a group of people

who want to sell their votes is to keep women single.

Because women who are single receive far more benefits

in government than they ever pay in taxes.

In fact, I think most women who are single

are not really contributing much to the government at all

because a lot of their jobs are HR made up jobs,

a lot of their jobs are quota, DEI jobs, and so on.

And of course, when a society pays women excessively,

then they don't have children, right?

This is sort of a study that's not too too old,

which has pointed out that when you give a man a race,

he's more likely to fund more children.

If you give a woman a race, she is less likely

to have and fund more children.

So moving money from men to women

is part of a general depopulation of the intelligent program.

And as long as governments can give women money for free,

then the governments and the media

and those who want political power

have an endless incentive to turn women against men.

Because women are always gonna need security and protection.

They yearn for it, like children hunger for the minds

as the meme goes.

So women yearn for security and protection

and you get more security and protection from the government

in a way than you can, than you will with a man.

So a man will give you money and protection,

but you actually have to run a household race as kids,

hopefully do some community work, be a helpmate

and be helpful.

The government will just give you money

and free housing and food stamps and all of that.

The government will give you $100,000 worth of free resources

and I did that presentation like 10 or 15 years ago,

it's probably way higher than that now,

but let's say $150,000.

The government will give you all of that

and all you have to do is jump into a booth

once every two or four years

and check next to the most leftist candidate you can find

and you get all of that free stuff.

So women who are married and particularly with kids

either happier and be, they want more the government

and lower taxes.

So unfortunately, as long as you have governments

and fear currency, the governments will always, always

try to turn women against men.

I mean, it happened back in ancient Rome as I'm sure,

you know that the girl boss meme

and they don't need no stinking man

and men are stupid, let's throw rocks at them

and so on and kill all men, hashtag kill all men.

That's inevitable.

Governments will always do that

because single women vote for bigger government.

All right, I think I've answered his questions.

Let us move on.

We have quite the queue.

All right.

Do do do.

All right, Australia and Australia and talk.

I think we've talked before.

What's on your mind, my dingleberry?

Good evening, yes.

I am your huckleberry then, Mr. Moan.

Oh, in fact, if you were thrown down the gauntlet sir,

I will meet you in Main Street at the front of the saloon

as we will engage.

Mr. Moan, Stefan,

I caught you a couple of evenings ago actually.

There was one particular speaker that came up

that I love the interaction between you both.

It was a battle of minds.

I do believe he was your intellectual equal.

I think you went by a hitch slap or something like that,

but it was a brilliant back and forth

will you really explore how people come to communism,

my commons would be horrible for people going forward,

how people would don't have much,

want to then come and murder people

who have things in the future

because they have scribed them blame

or their lack of material possessions in their life,

et cetera.

So I appreciated that award view, I guess,

but to be honest, Stefan, to be honest,

and I love that you started that, mate.

You're talking about the crazy people

that used to come into some of your spaces

or whatever it may have been.

And then you were talking about how they immediately

launched into dire tribes.

And then they quickly found a support

from your listening audience

who seemingly were easily swayed by crazy.

Well, sorry, not all, they would split people, right?

So they would, as some people would be half and half,

let's say half of the people would say,

but the crazy person, the other people would oppose

and then the battle would rage, if that makes sense.

Yes, yes, it does.

So it was my observation then based on that

and recalling a few instances

where it happened in your spaces,

but in other people.

So it's almost a cultural norm at this point, I think.

That when crazy is introduced into a peaceful place,

that crazy quickly finds a home

and unlocks the crazy in others

that were hoping that crazy would arrive at some point in time.

And I was wondering if you can sort of break that down,

how some people are subdued from their,

I guess, peaceful behavior,

and they can quickly become enthralled in the riot, Stefan.

What is about us that put impulse control,

which is normally not lacking, quickly becomes lacking

in those moments?

Yeah, so I think sometimes of the Inuit,

I don't remember the word, but there's an Inuit word

that indicates the kind of man who fakes an injury

so he doesn't have to go hunting

and then when all of the men go hunting,

he tries to seduce their wives.

And what they do with that kind of person

is they put that person on an iceberg

and send him off onto the ocean.

And if he tries to come back, they kill him.

So they ostracize him in a very foundational way.

And the only two solutions to very deranged

disturbed people in society is ostracism or violence, right?

Now, violence has been diminished in some ways

for the right and in some ways for the wrong.

And so in the past, there was a standard,

certainly among the upper classes,

which my family came from, at least on my father's side.

My mother's side was more intellectual elite.

My father's side was intellectual plus landed

gently elite, I'd formally have an Esquire

at the end of my name.

So in the past, of course, you know that if you insulted

another man that he would wipe you across the face

with a glove and there was jewels, there were jewels.

Now, what was the point of jewels?

The point of jewels was to keep people polite.

Jewels, not jewels, jewels.

I should pronounce that better, D-U-E-L-S.

And so if you insulted a man's honor,

if you called him a liar, if you called him a cheat,

if you accused him of cheating at cards or something like that,

then you had insulted his honor

and you would have to answer for it.

And this sort of lasted until the mid 19th century.

These jewels, particularly among the upper class,

the other thing, like if you talk trash,

you'd get punched in the face.

Now, I understand the free speech considerations.

I understand the UPB considerations and so on.

But now, if someone comes along and insults you,

they don't get popped.

Right?

I mean, when I was a kid, if you ran your mouth,

you'd get a knuckle sandwich.

Somebody would punch you in the face.

If you ran your mouth and you called someone's mother

a terrible word or whatever it is,

then they would intimidate you.

And there was a certain amount of,

keep your wife's mouth,

keep my, sorry, keep your wife's mouth out of my filthy ear.

Keep your wife's name out of your filthy mouth.

That's sort of right, the Chris Rock thing.

And I get it's kind of animalistic and all of that,

but there was a culture that insults had consequences

so people learned to be kind of civil.

Now, this was violence, not a big fan of the violence thing,

but there was also ostracism.

This is the scarlet letter,

idea from Nathaniel Hawthorn.

Are you really advocating for forces theory

to shut people up?

That's so girly.

Oh my gosh, I wish I could email you with tampon, bro.

That is so girly.

Are you really, haha?

Just said, I understand all the implications.

I'm not a fan of the violence, I'm simply,

so this, are you really blah, blah, blah, blah, blah?

Oh, you know what, I can't even imitate it.

My boobs will grow and my balls will shrink.

So you're gonna have to go work out

so you don't ask people these shocked Pikachu faces

of are you really?

So the violence thing, yes, not a great answer,

but it does keep people polite.

The other, it's ostracism though, right?

So ostracism is if people run their mouths,

you stop dealing with them as kids, right?

So, I mean, when I was a kid, I had this,

I had this glorious childhood in many ways.

I was just at the tail end of the baby boom.

The demographic dangers hadn't landed in England,

they landed and I sort of realized this later on

just as I was believing that my mother was saving me

from immigrant gangs.

I was a pretty boy.

So I had all of this glorious energy

where we had no money, we had a lot of play space

and we had a lot of kids.

So we would all play together

and had to be in force rules without an empire,

without the rules giver, right?

Because right now, kids don't have that free play as much.

And it's really bad.

Now you go to Chuck E. Cheese, you go to an arcade,

you play online games where the rules

are all enforced by others.

And we would spend sometimes half the game playing

and half the game figuring out the rules

and how to enforce them and so on.

And if someone, if some kid was a cheat, right?

They would, you'd tag them and they'd say,

you didn't touch me, man, you only touched my shirt.

When they wouldn't be tagged, then we would just tell them,

well, that's a bit much, that's not on.

And if they kept doing it, we just would stop inviting them.

We'd just say, and it would become like a game

and it would become actually kind of a fun part of the game

is, you know, let's say there's a kid named Bob

who didn't play by the rules,

then we'd figure out how we could exclude Bob, right?

Don't tell Bob, we're not gonna play here,

we're gonna play over there, don't tell Bob.

And you know, Bob might get the message

and Bob might not get the message,

but the message would be clear either way, right?

And so we did, yeah, there are still playgrounds for sure

and if you've been around kids, you know,

that half the time they've been playing,

they've been arguing about the rules

and that's actually very healthy.

That's a very, very healthy and positive thing.

And so, our ostracism was important,

but then all of these hallmark movie,

came along, they turned my stomach,

I get hairballs of sole excrement when I think of these things.

And all of these hallmark movies came along,

which was, you know, some kid, he's a nice kid,

but they're all these mean kids and these mean girls

and these mean bullies and nobody comes to his birthday party

and he's not invited to anyone else's a birthday party

and he's really a sad and it's really tragic and how awful

and it was all just, you know, this tear jerking,

heart stomping stuff and all of the bullies

were just super mean and all of the little kids

were just, all of the bully kids were super nice

and it's like, nah, sometimes the bullied kids

are just a-holes of the first order.

You know, creepy, weird, they are, you know,

looking up girls skirts, they are doing weird stuff

in the bathroom, they are showing their penises

like that can be just weird kids who get bullied for that

and all of that, right?

I hear you, I hear you so-

So, Stephanie, if I may just-

We don't have ostracism anymore.

I'm so sorry, you had something that you were saying?

I guess, I think that's the key word and you brought it up.

Thank you, Stefan, ostracism.

So, you know, it does to ostracism.

So it's my view and it's for ostracism has been used

as a weapon which is wielded against individuals

to keep them subjugated or compliant with social norms

or are dictated by the state, but like a better term.

And so therefore, in regards to that ostracism, Stefan,

is a better for the man to not attach himself to the group.

You're mentioning groups earlier on

and happy people just go along

because they don't want to be ostracized.

So it's a better for the man to not attach himself to the group

and instead retain his own independence

are not independent from participation in group dynamics,

but rather are, and most importantly,

retaining his independence of thought.

Because people upon himself ostracized

not necessarily by their actions

but by their thoughts, Stefan.

And is that where the danger truly lies?

Well, let's unpack it a little bit more.

So, ostracism has positive and negative effects, right?

So you can ostracize people for not believing

in your local superstition,

but you can also ostracize women was a big thing.

Ostracizing women who had affairs.

Ostracizing women who left their families.

Ostracizing men who left their families.

Ostracizing or beating up men who seduced women

with false promises of commitment

and then took off ostracizing women

who had children out of wedlock

or who had sex before marriage.

That didn't lead to marriage, right?

There's this nonsense on like a 98%

of women were virgins on their wedding night.

It's like, oh, they weren't.

No, they were.

I mean, a third of,

this is my truth about the Wild West presentation.

A third of women who got married in the Wild West

were pregnant at the time.

But let's see if it leads to marriage.

That's sort of okay,

but pregnancy that didn't lead to marriage.

So yeah, there was a bunch of ostracism

that was helpful and positive.

Now, ostracism can be used for good or ill.

That's not particularly relevant.

I'm sorry to say what is or isn't.

Let me sort of make the case very briefly.

So the problem is if you're not allowed to ostracize,

then that is a violation of the non-aggression principle.

If you are forced, right?

Freedom of association is important.

Force association is a violation of freedom of association, right?

If you were told as a business,

10% of your workforce has to be

red-headed people,

or we're gonna sue you for $100 million,

then you have to hire red-headed people.

That is a violation of freedom of association.

If in a free society, let's say,

a bunch of simoleons come over

and start setting up fake leering centers,

learning centers, and people aren't forced to pay them,

then what happens?

Well, not much because they set up these learning centers

and nobody wants to pay for these learning centers,

so they stop and they go home.

People come into your country, can they sign up for free health?

Can they get free health care?

Can they get free benefits?

Can they use all the roads?

Can they participate in all the benefits

of the social contract without actually following

the social contract?

Well, sure, but that's only because

modern Western societies absolutely violate

freedom of association.

For most of us, that begins in childhood.

That begins in kindergarten, it begins in school,

where you don't have freedom of association.

You have to go to the same damn school,

where the same, I guess in my high school,

there were like 1200 kids or so.

When I was in boarding school, there were 500 kids

with jam together with no particular freedom of association.

Now, you can say my parents or my father

in particular chose the school, yes, that's true,

but certainly for public schools, no freedom of association.

It's entirely forced association.

These are not people that you would choose

in general to spend time with,

but you have to spend time with them

because you have to go to school,

your parents have to pay for it,

and everyone has to be there.

And so in general,

ostracism is not subject to the laws of market efficiency.

If you ostracize too much,

nobody wants to be part of your group.

If you don't ostracize enough,

people don't want to be part of your group.

And no, cancel culture is not ostracism,

just so you know, cancel culture is not ostracism.

A cancel culture is political and economic

and it's based upon political power.

So it is not a case of ostracism.

Sorry, go ahead.

I was hoping you'd go there

because whilst you were saying that step

on what came to mind for myself

was the gay wedding cake controversy

wherein there was a humble baker inside the United States

who was swept up into a contrived controversy

and they were shamed and they were expected to be ostracized

because the business owner did to express

the freedom of association.

And explain to potential customer

that if they wish for this gay wedding cake to be made,

perhaps they'd go to a different store

because the owner of this store had a belief system

which potentially precluded them from wishing to make this cake

as an artistic expression.

If they're fundamentalist Christians,

they're not going to celebrate a gay wedding.

Okay, and also one other thing, taking you back.

Oh, hang on, hang on, sorry.

Did you, I don't want to go past the baker's thing

because it is important.

It wasn't just, I mean, they were sued

if I remember rightly.

They had to pay huge amounts of money in legal fees.

So what didn't happen, which is to me quite important,

what didn't happen was people didn't go to gay bakers

and ask them to bake cakes for a fundamentalist Christian wedding.

It's number one.

Number two, I'm pretty sure nobody went to any Muslim bakers

and asked them to bake cakes for gay weddings, right?

So it's not, it was just targeting Christians

and it wasn't doing the reverse

and it wasn't targeting groups

that people might be a little bit more anxious about.

So that was pretty, pretty ratchet, of course.

Of course, a gay baker doesn't have to bake a cake

for a fundamentalist Christian ceremony

if he doesn't agree with it.

And of course, a Christian does not have to bake a cake

for a gay people whose lifestyle he disapproves of.

Of course, I mean, to me, this is so obvious,

but of course, the left is aiming to get the votes

of the gay community, which they quite regularly do.

And this was a way of signaling, I guess,

some sort of solidarity or something like that.

Yes, and they, of course, naturally,

then did not want the shoe to be placed on the other foot,

which is why you didn't see people

of different faiths going in and demanding the same thing

from people they knew would be opposed to doing it.

Yeah.

And just didn't roll that way.

Step on the other one and start.

And thank you for your time, mate.

I'll wrap it up now.

But you're talking about how you had almost saved yourself

some grief and exposure to all different types of people

when you took a bit of a hiatus from politics as it were.

And in a sense, you missed the messing Trump era

and the Biden mystery era or whatever

was taking place there.

But now you're back thrown into it.

Well, sorry, just to be over to be accurate,

I didn't miss the Trump era

because the Trump era was over.

Me almost over like 2020 is when I dropped politics.

So I did most of the Trump era, but sorry, go ahead.

Yeah, but what you were doing,

I think you were trying to talk about you saved yourself

some exposure to all of the crazy people.

So there was the whole orange dam bed

and naturally knowing, of course, yeah,

you were there and looking and breathing during the Trump era

and actually aware of the day going on,

but not necessarily participant in all the arguments

and day-to-day because what the Australian government

determined step-on-mind was persona non-gratitude

in gentleman.

He's thoughts were appreciated by the establishment,

which was quite unfortunate step-on,

but I'm glad you're back, mate.

Well, I mean, genuine criminals can come into Australia

but not rational philosophers.

I mean, the government is wretched.

I could go into it like about that.

Maybe at a different time by all means.

But I think what you did is you escaped the exposure

to a lot of psychosis by not being participant during that

because a lot of the crazy people found

a happy place during that time step-on.

And I know that because people were previously quiet

and then had to fire because they became involved

and thinking they could espouse all its things

in a workplace and make all these demands,

which weren't actually required in our day-to-day activities

and they wish to bring politics into a place

where politics did not belong.

Hmm.

Did you have a question?

I mean, that's an interesting comment,

but did you have a question?

Oh, well, I guess it was all reading into

you were mentioning earlier.

Who are these people?

Are they bad people?

Are they crazy people?

I think you said some could be libertarian,

they could be atheists, they could be Christian,

they could be from any denomination.

And I think you even said they could be philosophical as well.

So it affects everyone across the board

and I think you're wrapped up by saying

it's a side-pipe principle.

But I want to get through this step on.

I want to impress upon people, you know,

it's up to us and there's hope

and we can make it through.

Ideas are bulletproof

and we're quite happy to involve ourselves

in the battle arena of those ideas.

And I think that's what you have somehow

entertained in people as well,

it's pretty much what you've done over many years.

You've awoken that in people,

that sense of curiosity

and then further explanations are required

because things have gone astray.

We've got to get things back on track.

So I'll leave it there with you mate.

All the best to you, Stefan Mauder.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

It was a pleasure to hear from you.

And Nathan, if you want to let me know what's on your mind,

I'm happy to hear your thoughts.

Nate, the great unburdened yourself.

Hello, sorry about that.

I was just listening and then,

are you cutting things off at the end of the hour?

No, no, we can go a little longer, sure.

I mean, I did three shifts today.

I did a three and a half hour call in this morning.

I did Alex Jones this afternoon.

This is evening.

So it won't be a super long show,

but I'm certainly happy to entertain your questions or thoughts.

Okay.

Well, so I first heard about you.

I think through Jordan Peterson, maybe,

but you know, just true Jordan Peterson.

I don't think he ever mentioned.

I don't think he ever solid his pure lips with my name,

but we did do some shows together back of the day.

Okay, maybe not.

Maybe not.

I don't think he said one thin syllable

about my de-platforming.

Okay.

Maybe I could be mistaken.

All I remember is that I believe I remember somebody talking about,

you know, the controversy and book and stuff like that and so.

But just to say that I haven't gone very deep into understanding your philosophy

or where you're coming from or anything.

I just watched some of the video where you explain what you believe,

which was helpful.

So, but anyway, by the way, just getting to know you more,

I was wanting to ask you,

what do you think about Socrates?

What do I think about Socrates?

Do you want to narrow that down at all?

I mean, I don't mind taking a wide swing,

but I don't want to swing it a miss.

I can.

Well, so this may be too specific,

but I was wondering also,

have you heard of third wave,

like a third wave Platonism?

No.

I thought you were going to say Feminism, yes,

but third wave Platonism, no.

Let me give you a minute or two on Socrates

and then we'll talk about third wave Platonism.

Okay.

So Socrates was a play dumb troll.

Right?

So you know the story that he went to the Oracle of Delphi

and said, who's the wisest man?

And the Oracle at Delphi, who could not lie,

said, you Socrates of the wisest man?

And he said, well, that can't be true,

because I know nothing.

I know virtually nothing.

So he went to around to examine everyone

and Socrates was smart enough to know

that most people are totally bullshiting.

Most people, I mean, you go around the world, right?

And people are talking about stuff.

And I try to be hesitant about this kind of stuff as well.

How can the chat support you, Mr. Molenu?

Thank you.

Socrates is free to main.com slash donate

to help out the show, share shows, share books,

in particular, peaceful parenting.

If you can share that, both the English

and the Spanish language version,

I would really appreciate that.

The book is free.

So Socrates knew that the sophists were lying.

And this is true for most people.

Like this is kind of joke about how, oh,

the US is is waging war against Iran.

Now everybody wakes up and they're an expert on the Middle East.

Right?

Which I'm not.

Actually, I have some expertise when it comes to moral philosophy

and history, but I'm skisly an expert on the Middle East.

So there's this sort of joke that most people,

oh, they wake up, they read for, they go to a chat GPT

for an hour or two and now they're an expert on the Middle East.

And most people are so full of shite,

their eyes are brown.

I mean, they're just saying stuff.

They don't know stuff.

They don't believe stuff.

Like my whole life, I was like, oh, I'm really,

I'm really interested in Iran.

Iran is a really great writer.

She's really, although I'm re reading the fountain head now,

it is a little long-winded.

But anyway, maybe it's just because I'm older,

don't have as much time to waste on endless exposition.

But people would say, oh, Iran, she's so this, she's so that.

And then you'd ask them some questions, right?

To become an expert in anything and ask people stuff

is to just realize how incredibly shallow

and unthinking most people are about just about everything.

They don't know.

They just guess, you know, oh, there's a social contract.

Oh, what's a social contract?

How is it a force where did it come from?

Did you agree?

They don't know.

They don't have no idea.

Oh, well, we need the government for X, Y and Z.

It's like, oh, has the government,

has it ever been provided without the government?

I mean, I think Europe's saying, well, we need the government

to protect ourselves from invaders.

Well, they might not, in fact, believe that,

or too much longer.

And I wish that they'd listened to voluntaryists like me

decades ago and they would have been disabused of those notions.

So most people are just making stuff up

and they're lying about stuff.

And I'm not talking to the stuff they're specialists in,

like a doctor knows about the health and the lawyer

knows about the law.

But just in general, most people don't think for themselves.

They just study stuff and they just regurgitate stuff.

And so, Socrates rolling around Greece,

cross examining everyone, he said,

no, no, no.

It's just because the article said that I was wise

and I'm faced with this paradox that I don't know anything.

But the article says that I'm the wisest

and then after he does this for a certain amount of time,

he's like, oh, I now know what the article meant.

And the article meant that I am the wisest,

because I know that I know nothing.

Now, that's kind of a troll thing.

It's a nihilistic thing.

It's like a Nietzschean thing.

To tear things down without building something new

is very cruel and destructive.

So I basically believe that Socrates hated his current society.

And those of us who think have to ride this knife edge

of wanting to help the world and just loathe it get.

I don't think I'm alone in that.

I want to help the world kind of load the world as well.

It is a really tough thing.

I feel like a surgeon who has the Hippocratic oath

and his worst enemy, like the guy who strangled his wife to death

comes in and the surgeon needs to save his life.

And the surgeon is like, I hate this guy.

But I'm kind of on a bound to save him because of my doctors oath

and stuff like that, right?

And I think most people who tell the truth and are curious

and want to be good in this world have a love-hate relationship

with the world.

We love the world that could be.

At least I got to write about that in the future.

My novel, The Future.

But we love the world that could be

and we love individual bits within the world.

But most of the world is just effing horrible.

Most of the world is effing horrible

and most people are effing liars.

Just a fact.

I mean, I've been around the block a long time.

I've been doing philosophy for 45 years.

Most people are full of shite and bullshite.

And they're just liars and they're fakers

and they're virtue-signalers and they're manipulators

and so on, right?

And...

So, Socrates was obviously brilliant.

I understood all of that.

But he had to kind of play dumb.

Oh, I just want to examine you

so that I know how much you know

so that I can find out why the Oracle that can't lie

has called me the wisest of all.

He knew that everyone was full of shite.

He knew that.

But he had to have this cover story.

He was just fulfilling the Oracle and so on.

And the reason, and I did a whole series on this,

a six-part series on the trial and death of Socrates

almost 20 years ago,

you can get again after your podcast.com

that Socrates at the end of his life,

again, according to Plato,

I think it was accurate because Plato wrote this at time

when people really remembered what happened with Socrates

and if he had been completely wrong,

it seems unlikely that he would have gotten away with it.

But Socrates was offered the option to flee Athens.

And he said, no, no, no, I'm not going to flee Athens

because I grew up under the protection of the laws of Athens.

I have celebrated my entire life in Athens.

I have lived in the culture of Athens

and the courts have protected me from bad people.

And so I'm not going to turn against the laws at the end of my life.

This would be like turning against the father

who has saved you from a terrible fate.

Now, he says most people are complete liars,

but you should obey the government.

He said, most people are faking knowledge

and are incredibly volatile and angry

when their vanity is punctured,

but you should obey the law.

So I think that Socrates was an incredible troll

and I think that Socrates faked not knowing things.

I personally think he kind of lied about the whole Oracle at Delphi

thing because he was wise enough to know

that the gods weren't going to do that to him.

I think he created a wonderful fairy tale about just trying to please the Oracle

and I think that he cursed the world by telling everyone

you have to obey the government.

You have to obey the state, you have to obey the laws.

The laws which were killing him.

So I think he never got particularly angry

and I think that was a problem.

I don't trust people who can't get angry.

I do not trust people who can't get angry

because they're outraged in their anger

and their frustration and their hostility

is going to come out somewhere.

It's going to come out somewhere

and people who can't express anger

just become manipulative as hell.

People were angry at me

over the course of my rise to fame in the 20 teens

and they did not express anger to me directly.

But the people of the powers to be

didn't call me up and say,

well, you're wrong about this and you're wrong about that.

I had an open forum.

I'm happy to debate anytime people come along.

In fact, people who disagree with me,

I put them right up first as I've done before a number of times.

So...

When people are angry at you

but they can't express their anger directly,

it comes out in subversive, manipulative,

undermining horrible ways.

And if you anger a passive-aggressive philosopher,

he will curse you for 50 generations

by promoting that which is immoral

under the guise of virtue.

If you provoke a philosopher,

and it's been hard to avoid the trap of Socrates for me

to put myself obviously in somewhat illustrious company,

but it's been hard to avoid that curse,

which is the world shows you its ass

until you can't stand the smell and then begs you to save it.

If you've ever been wronged by someone who then asks you to save them,

some guy who's just completely trash-talked you

and insulted you and tried to get your girlfriend to break up with you,

and then he's in desperate need of help in some way.

It's kind of tough, right?

I'm not a Christian that way.

So with Socrates,

the world treated him like absolute crap.

He was put to death by the government

and then his final curse to humanity was,

oh no, you really should obey the government

and that is his curse,

and that's because he couldn't express his anger and contempt directly.

Now, I'm sorry about that.

Lengthy one, if you want to tell me about

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay, I don't know if that's the best way to take it.

Are you curious about it?

Sorry, curious about what?

About Third Way Platonism.

I just asked you to tell me about it.

What do you mean am I curious about it?

Okay, sorry.

Okay, sorry.

Yeah, so I wrote a paper

and where I kind of briefly introduced it.

So it's about five sentences.

Could I just read that?

Yeah.

Okay, so there is an anthology by Francis Goggen's

all-asset titled The Third Way.

The book takes many different angles on Plato

from different authors,

but largely in a general framework

of the overarching historical interpretation of Plato

is taking two tracks.

Plato was making a case for a systematic set of doctrines.

He was positively asserting.

And secondly, Plato was not making any assertions

for rather was skeptically undermining

all doctrines on an open-ended pursuit.

The Third Way being advocated here by Gonzales Anthology

is plural, but centers around an extremely sophisticated

dynamic interpretation of Plato

that avoids all these myopic views.

I go through some of these different ways

that the writers in this anthology

were looking at Plato differently,

but basically it's sort of intentionally occupying

the in-between or like a dialectic between different ways.

Okay, brother, brother.

Brother, sorry to interrupt.

What are you doing to me?

I'm sorry.

Seriously, this is a general audience show, right?

Yes.

You haven't defined a single term that anybody can follow.

So help me understand what you think you're trying to communicate

because you mean we have a general audience,

you haven't defined a plateenism, right?

And you haven't defined...

I mean, there was a sentence in there

that struck me as kind of a softest sentence.

Like, oh, we want to reject this myopic view of blah, blah, blah.

Right? So...

Yeah.

Why do you not think...

Do you not think that philosophy should begin

with a definition of terms or an explanation

of what you're talking about,

especially if you have a lay audience?

Well, I agree that that would be helpful.

Let me do it.

Chatchy PT says,

Stefan, you're very right too, correct me.

Well, I'm just...

If you want to communicate effectively,

people have to know what the hell you're talking about, right?

Yeah, let me do that.

So basically, let me try to put it in layman's terms.

Basically, the scholarship around Plato,

it seems for a long time was taking one of two tracks.

Either Plato was laying out a strict set of beliefs and doctrines

or he was just a skeptic that was saying,

you shouldn't believe anything.

Is that simple enough?

Okay.

So, I don't know how you could,

and just for those who care,

and it's a good presentation,

I've got a four-hour presentation on Plato

on my website, freedomain.com.

So, I'm not sure how people could say

that Plato wasn't advocating for anything

when he was talking about the realm of forms

and its relationship to concept formation.

Like, so Plato said,

before we're born, like, how do we know what a...

How do we know what this cup is, man?

How do we know it's a cup and it's a mug and so on?

Now, Aristotle would say, well, we know it's a cup

because it's a conveyance for liquid to the mouth and blah, blah, blah.

But it handles, so it's not too...

If it's hot or whatever.

So, that would be a Aristotle's argument.

You see something repeatedly used

and you understand what it's for,

and it's also fashion for that purpose and so on.

Whereas Plato would say, well, the reason you know it's a cup

is before you were born, you were floating around in the world,

the perfect forms, and you beheld,

the celestial perfect cup.

And every time you see a cup,

you have a vague memory of that celestial perfect cup

which allows you to know what a cup is.

So, I don't know that Plato wasn't advocating

for a positive knowledge when he said that he understood

where concepts came from.

Yeah, well, so just to be clear,

I'm not saying that the, you know,

the academic literature on Plato...

No, not that.

Some of the...

I'm just saying, I don't know how you can...

I don't know how even academics could make that,

but okay, so either he was advocating knowledge

or he was a radical skeptic in the realm of Socrates,

and what's the third way?

So the third way is saying like it's...

So there's multiple third ways is to not just one third way,

but in general, the third way is saying,

well, he's not really doing that or that,

he's doing something else,

and people have different opinions

about what that something else is,

but in general, it has to do with like,

that he's using dialogue

not just as an ornamentation to his presentation,

but that the dialogical form was part of his philosophy

that he was trying to present.

I don't know if that...

Okay, so yes, he uses dialogues

as have a lot of philosophers,

including I and Rand, I suppose,

and so to continue.

Yeah, so, well, I mean, I was wondering

if you were familiar with that or what,

you know, kind of like,

your general stance on Socrates,

which we got a lot, you know, from your explanation earlier.

But can I ask you sort of another question

that has more to do with what you were saying?

Sure.

Yeah, so I actually...

So I've been...

So I'm probably chief among the bullshitters first off,

but I have been reading through the dialogues,

probably about halfway through,

and unfortunately,

before I even really started reading the dialogues,

I had kind of already fallen in love with Socrates,

and so I've sort of like,

pivoted my entire...

I was like a...

probably you could say a fundamental excursion,

and so I've sort of moved away from that,

and I've sort of like focused my life on

following After Socrates.

Okay, and I appreciate that.

So just before you get to your question,

what is the biggest moral issue

that mankind faces that we can do the most about?

What is the biggest moral issue

that mankind faces that we can do the most about?

As individuals.

Because I mean, you want to...

you study philosophy in order to do good in the world, right?

Yeah.

Okay, so what is the biggest moral issue?

How long have you been studying philosophy for?

And it's great that you are, so I'm just...

No, and that's not that negative, I'm just curious.

Yeah.

So how long have you been studying philosophy for?

I don't know if I can answer that.

I mean...

Like, just roughly...

I'm not talking down to the nanosecond.

Well, I mean, I've never...

I haven't ever formally studied philosophy.

No, no, I didn't ask formally.

I didn't just...

Yeah.

Don't over-complicate the question.

Okay.

How long have you been studying philosophy?

Probably since I was a child.

To some degree.

Yeah.

But, I mean, but I've only...

Okay.

Go ahead.

Bro.

Bro.

Bro.

Go ahead.

You're a little lacking in empathy.

I'm sorry.

I'm not saying in general, I'm just saying in this conversation, right?

Yeah.

So if you say to me, Steph,

I've been studying philosophy since I was a child.

Does that tell me how long you've been studying philosophy for?

No.

Why not?

Uh...

I guess because you don't know how old I am.

Well, I don't know what you mean by child, right?

Could be anywhere for me.

I started thinking about philosophy when I was five,

two at 17, I picked up a book,

so that's a 12-year span.

I don't know how old you are now.

So this is what I mean by empathy.

I'm trying to...

I'm asking you...

And you don't have to answer, right?

But this vagueness...

So when I ask you...

How long have you been interested in philosophy?

And you say, well, my answer is that I've been...

I've studied it since I was a child.

Or I've been interested in it since I was a child.

If you don't know that that doesn't answer my question,

it means that you have trouble

putting yourself into somebody else's mindset, right?

Because logically, it makes sense

that you're not answering the question.

If I ask you how long you've been interested in philosophy,

and you say, oh, since I was a child,

when I don't know what you mean by that,

and I also don't know how old you are,

so that could be anywhere from one to 30 years.

Mm-hmm.

Or more, right?

And you think you're...

So it's funny because for me,

you know, I said...

If I said, as I did just now, right?

I'm 59.

I got into philosophy when I was 15,

so that's 44 years.

So I've been...

If somebody said, how long have you been studying philosophy,

I'd say, well, I got into it 15, 59 now, 44 years, right?

That's my answer.

But you don't answer the question.

And neither do you say, I'm not going to answer the question,

you just do a kind of funky dance that waits time.

And that's what I'm curious about.

Do you aware that you're not answering the question?

Mm-hmm.

I don't mean this in a big critical way, I'm just curious.

Well, it was an intentional.

I want to have a good conversation with you, but...

Oh, my gosh, you're still not answering the question.

I asked...

Well, I asked, well, you were aware that you weren't answering my question.

And you said, well, it's not intentional, but...

But I was like, that's still not answering...

Can you just answer a question, please?

Okay, just give me a moment.

Give me a moment.

If I'm speaking, I'll be more able to answer it.

Okay.

So I think that I have always been interested in philosophy

as far as I can remember.

But my intense interest in Socrates started about two to three years ago,

probably closer to two years ago.

But I was interested in philosophy before that,

but, you know, I couldn't give you...

I can't give you a definite timeframe,

because, I mean, like, I've been reading the dialogues in the last year,

but, you know, in terms of, like, actually studying philosophy,

probably only in the last two years, is what I would say.

Okay, so you've been interested in philosophy for how long?

Since I was a child.

So, you know...

You're trying to give me an aneurysm, bro.

I'm 38, so...

Okay, thank you.

I don't know what to say.

Thank you.

Okay.

So was it around...

So was it 30 years, something like that?

20 years, 18, eight?

What are we talking about?

Uh...

Yeah, I'd say 30 years is fair.

Thank you.

Maybe...

Yeah.

Okay, sorry.

If you're interested in philosophy, you should be out by answering a question,

like that.

If you can't even answer how long you've been interested in philosophy,

how am I going to take you seriously about more complicated topics,

like law and justice and virtue?

It sounds like you didn't like my answer,

but I'm giving you the best answer I can.

Uh...

What?

The fuck does that mean?

I didn't like your answer.

What do you mean?

Do you think I didn't like when you said 30 years and two years of Socrates?

What do you mean?

I didn't express any dislike of that.

What did I not...

Okay, let me ask you this.

What did I not like?

I don't know.

Um...

I was happy with the answer I gave you.

You were not...

Okay.

When you say...

I've been in...

I say, how long have you been studying philosophy or how long have you been interested in philosophy?

And you say, since I was a child,

do you think that's a good answer that explains things to me?

I think that the answer that is best will come from our dialogue,

not a single statement that I can make.

Do you not answer my question?

If I ask you, how long have you been interested in philosophy and you say,

since I was a child,

does that answer my question?

Yes.

It does not.

Okay.

Because I don't know how old you are,

and I don't know what you mean by childhood,

which is anywhere from five to eighteen, let's say.

Okay.

Well, no don't.

You're okay me like I'm being some pedant here.

Well, I don't know, maybe you are,

but I'm always ready to give you a more precise answer if you ask.

But did you know that you weren't giving me a precise answer?

That's my question.

I didn't know that you wanted a more precise answer than that.

Okay.

I'm happy to dig in.

I'm happy to dig in.

I'm happy to dig in.

Okay.

Let's dig the fuck in.

Okay.

Okay.

It could be that you are 19 and got into philosophy when you were 17,

or it could be that you're 18 and got into philosophy when you were 17, right?

So that's one year, right?

Is that fair?

Like logically, that could be the case, right?

Yeah.

Because 17, you're technically a child, 18, you're an adult.

So it could be anywhere from six to 12 months, right?

Sorry.

I don't know what it means.

Do you agree logically?

You like Socrates, right?

So I'm giving you Socratic reasoning here.

You're on the receiving end of Socratic reasoning.

Yeah.

Do you understand that if you are 18 and you say I've been into philosophy since I was a child,

it could be six to 12 months, right?

I'm sorry.

You're saying, if I was 18 and I said I've been into philosophy since I was a child.

Yeah.

Then it could be six to 12 months, because you were technically a child legally at 17,

but you're an adult at 18, right?

Okay.

Sorry.

Do you understand that that could be six to 12 months?

Yes.

Okay. Fantastic.

Now, let's say that you are 65 years old.

Okay.

And let's say you started getting interested in philosophy and thinking about it when you were five.

Okay.

Right?

Mm-hmm.

So that's 60 years.

Okay.

So if I ask you how long have you been interested in philosophy and your answer is somewhere between

six to 12 months and 60 years, is that a precise answer?

No.

Thank you.

That's all I'm saying.

That's my entire point.

I agree.

I agree.

It's an imprecise.

Well, it's completely vague.

And did you, my question is, did you know that it was imprecise to the point of uselessness?

No.

I don't think it's useless.

No.

Completely useless.

Well, there's a whole other set of measurements that I could make on your life, which I would

call very imprecise without getting to know you.

I have no idea what that means.

Do you think that some way, hang on, do you think that an answer, if somebody's asking

you how long you have lived in the country you live in, and you say, well, it's somewhere

between six months and 60 years, you could understand that that would be not a helpful

answer.

No.

I mean, it depends on the conversation.