0:00

morning, everybody. Hope you're doing well.

0:02

I'm Stephen Molyneux from Free Demand.

0:04

Please help out the show

0:06

at freedemand .com. All

0:08

right. Big topic here.

0:10

I will try to do it

0:12

justice in a reasonable amount of time. I

0:15

will fail in one of those counts. I guess it's up to

0:17

you to figure out which one. Hello,

0:19

Steph. You've spoken about the

0:21

challenges faced by the single sons

0:23

of single mothers. Would

0:25

you please elaborate on the

0:27

challenges they face? their

0:30

mental slash emotional blind spots

0:32

and handicaps and how

0:34

To best navigate and understand the

0:36

struggle they may not even know they have many

0:38

things in advance. It's a

0:40

great question and I

0:42

actually kind of have both in

0:45

a way. I had a sort

0:47

of odd pastiche or quilt

0:49

of childhood in

0:51

that of course

0:53

my Parents

0:55

separated when I was a baby

0:59

and what happened

1:01

was my brother went to

1:03

boarding school for a year

1:05

before I did so I

1:07

had a year as the

1:10

quote single son and then

1:12

around the age

1:14

of 12 my brother went

1:16

to England for a couple of

1:18

years and it was just me

1:20

and my mother and of course

1:22

when I was in boarding school You

1:24

know for some older brothers the younger brother

1:27

is not particularly cool and I was

1:29

only six when I went to boarding school

1:31

So I was not quite emotionally

1:33

ready for that kind of separation

1:35

a bit a tad young I

1:37

was the youngest kid. I think of the

1:39

whole school if I remember rightly just

1:41

based on my birthday, so I Didn't

1:43

spend much time with my brother

1:45

of a boarding school So there were

1:47

two spans of about three years

1:49

where I didn't really have a

1:51

brother for my childhood But

1:54

two of those years, of course, was not

1:56

with my mother for the most part because

1:58

I was in boarding school. And

2:00

I can't remember. Honestly, I can't remember it was

2:02

two or three years that he was in England. But

2:05

I had sort

2:07

of significant swaths of my

2:10

childhood where I was the

2:12

single son of a single

2:14

mother. So

2:16

some I can't speak for everyone. Of

2:18

course, I'll try to keep this as general

2:20

as possible because What's important is the principles

2:22

i extract from my life to you not

2:24

my life in particular which is important to

2:27

me but is too personal

2:29

to be translated to you so i'll try and

2:31

extract the general principles as i usually do sorry you

2:33

don't need to hear this it's a general principle but i

2:35

will be talking about myself to some degree

2:37

but talking about principles in general so. So

2:41

the first a big

2:43

challenge that the single son

2:45

of the single mother. has

2:47

to answer. And this is true of sons of

2:50

single mothers as a whole. Let's talk

2:52

about them as a whole. The first question

2:54

you have to answer is, why

2:57

am I here? Why do I

2:59

exist? What are the causal factors

3:01

behind my existence? And the reason

3:03

that we're programmed to think about

3:05

that kind of stuff, of course,

3:07

is because we want to replicate the

3:09

factors that led to our existence

3:11

because the purpose of our DNA

3:13

is to replicate And so

3:15

we have to recreate the conditions

3:17

under which we exist. So

3:19

emotionally, conceptually, at the very

3:21

sort of basic level of

3:24

DNA, our entire

3:26

being is calibrated to

3:28

figure out why we exist

3:30

and then to do everything

3:32

in our power to recreate those

3:35

circumstances. Regardless

3:37

of levels of happiness, regardless of

3:39

levels of functionality, it's just the blind

3:41

photocopier of history, right? Copy

3:44

paste, copy paste, copy paste, copy paste.

3:47

So why do I exist?

3:51

What are the circumstances

3:53

which cause me to come into being

3:55

and I am then either

3:57

blessed or doomed to recreate

3:59

those circumstances? So

4:03

why do

4:05

I exist and where

4:07

is my father and

4:09

why am I with my mother? We

4:12

don't know anything of course

4:14

in our essential natures, our

4:16

unconscious, our DNA, our ancestral

4:19

instincts and

4:21

so on. We don't know

4:23

anything about family courts

4:25

or alimony or

4:27

child support or international

4:29

money transfer restrictions and so on, right?

4:32

I'd say that because of course

4:34

my father, being a geologist specializing

4:36

in gold, went to Africa, not

4:39

massive amounts of gold deposits. In

4:42

England, outside of the war chests of

4:44

the royal family, so he went

4:46

to Africa and getting money out of

4:48

Africa, South Africa to England

4:50

was not the easiest thing in the

4:52

world as far as I understood it. So

4:54

we don't understand any of that, right? So

4:57

one of the

4:59

problems that we have

5:01

as sons of

5:04

single mothers is, why am I with

5:06

my mother and not my father? Why

5:09

am I with my mother and not my father? Now

5:11

one of the most foundational

5:13

instincts that we have about

5:15

that is, my father

5:18

didn't want me. My

5:20

father didn't want me. And

5:23

that's a big challenge

5:25

for a son. Because

5:29

you would have to say, why

5:31

didn't my father want

5:33

me? Why did

5:35

my father leave me

5:38

with a woman rather

5:40

than take me with him

5:42

as a son Now

5:44

there were really only

5:46

two answers to that either a

5:48

my father is completely messed

5:50

up and ran away from all of

5:52

his responsibilities and someone and there's

5:55

that or or be

5:57

my father Found

5:59

me too feminine or

6:01

effeminate to take with

6:03

him and therefore felt it was best

6:05

and most appropriate that

6:08

I stayed with my mother, that

6:11

I was not masculine enough

6:13

to go with my father,

6:15

that my father is one of

6:17

these Norsemen Viking manly men, giant

6:19

beard, sloping shoulders,

6:22

mild potbelly, excellent hunter, manly men,

6:24

and I was

6:27

left with a female

6:29

because I wasn't manly enough

6:31

to go with my father. Now,

6:34

fortunately for me, my father

6:37

was kind of messed up, and

6:39

so I never really got the

6:41

sense that I was not with my father. I

6:44

never really even crossed my mind because I wasn't

6:46

bandally enough or anything, but I can certainly see

6:48

that that that happens. So

6:50

if there is this concern

6:53

or this fear, again, we're

6:55

talking about ancestral

6:57

instincts and so on, evolutionary instincts. Why

7:00

have I been left with

7:02

the woman rather

7:04

than taken? with

7:07

the man. Either my father's

7:09

messed up or there's something wrong with

7:11

me, says a lot

7:13

of, I assume at least some

7:15

proportion of single sons or

7:17

any sons of single mothers. Why

7:20

was I left behind? Because my father rejected

7:22

me. Well, why did my father reject

7:24

me? Well, either he's messed up

7:26

or there was something about me

7:28

that he didn't like. Now, it could

7:30

be a certain kind of a feminacy.

7:32

It could be any number of things,

7:34

but In general, I think

7:36

the instinctual, the ancestral

7:38

instincts are basically, well, I must

7:40

be rejected because I'm not manly

7:43

enough. And I mean, I can

7:45

think you can see this quite a bit in modern culture

7:47

with the fairly

7:49

not overly masculine young

7:51

man, right? Now,

7:53

either one of these forks

7:55

in the road does not lead to

7:57

a particularly ideal place because if

8:00

your father left you because he's messed

8:02

up, Well, you're half your father and

8:04

more aligned with your father than your

8:06

mother because you're both males. And

8:09

so that doesn't lead to

8:11

a particularly great place emotionally.

8:14

My father is an

8:16

irresponsible fornicator or fallender

8:18

and that's half me.

8:20

He broke my mother's heart. That's

8:22

half me or more than half me. And

8:25

that's not great. Of

8:27

course, you also do have

8:29

the challenge of growing up

8:31

looking like the man who Abandoned

8:34

the single mother broke her heart. I mean, according

8:36

to her narrative, right? I'm not saying it's always that

8:38

way, but this is according to her narrative. And

8:40

if you're raised by a single mother, you

8:42

get her narrative. Not the

8:44

dads for the most part, right? So

8:47

if you look like him,

8:50

and this is a really unfortunate in

8:52

my family that I looked

8:54

like my mother's father

8:56

and my brother looks like her ex -husband

8:58

and it was very. Very unfair, she did not

9:00

handle that well at all, much to my sympathy

9:02

for my brother. So,

9:05

either of these two folks in the road,

9:07

I was rejected for not being good enough for my

9:09

father, and that usually means not masculine enough for my

9:11

father, or my

9:13

father is a messed up Philandra who broke

9:15

my mother's heart, and that's more

9:17

than half me as the male. So neither of

9:19

those things lead to a good place.

9:23

Now, another challenge,

9:26

of course, is in the sort of

9:28

existential which is to

9:30

say biological question, why am I here and

9:32

how do I recreate it, right?

9:35

We only exist because

9:37

we are expected to

9:39

have babies, right? We

9:41

only exist because we are expected to have babies.

9:43

That's why the people who don't want kids are just

9:45

breaking a foundational contract that is the reason for

9:47

their existence. Or to

9:50

put it another way, how many

9:52

people would choose to

9:54

have children if they

9:56

knew in advance those children

9:58

would be sterile and never reproduce,

10:00

like be unable to reproduce. Let's say

10:02

that a couple get together, they

10:04

get some genetic testing, and it is found

10:07

that their offspring will be sterile. How

10:09

many people would choose to have

10:11

children knowing that their offspring would

10:13

be sterile? I mean, obviously

10:16

not zero, but it would be

10:18

lower than the norm. So

10:24

that's why the people who don't want to have kids

10:26

are kind of breaking that foundational social contract. You

10:28

only exist because you're expected to have children. And

10:30

if your parents knew ahead of time that you

10:32

weren't going to have children, they probably

10:35

wouldn't have you. So the

10:37

deal for being alive is to

10:39

reproduce because if it was

10:41

known ahead of time that you wouldn't reproduce, you'd be

10:43

much less likely to be alive. And

10:45

so your existence is predicated

10:47

on the deal to reproduce. I

10:50

mean, obviously there are some people who PCOS

10:53

or endometriosis or sperm dysfunctions

10:55

or whatever. But that's

10:58

the deal, right? So

11:00

then the question, the existential question of why

11:02

am I here? Why do I exist? If

11:05

you have a dysfunctional

11:07

single mother and for

11:09

the most part you do, for

11:12

reasons I've gone into before, then

11:15

the challenge you have with

11:17

regards to your view of women

11:19

is why did my father

11:21

choose to reproduce with this

11:23

woman. Why did my father

11:25

choose to reproduce with this woman? Why

11:28

did my father choose to reproduce with this woman?

11:31

That's the cause of your existence. It's

11:33

a pretty important question to

11:36

answer. Now,

11:38

when you ask the

11:40

question, which happens again at an

11:42

instinctual level from a very early age, when

11:45

you ask the question, why did my father

11:47

choose to reproduce with this woman? Then

11:50

The answer is essentially

11:52

what is the value

11:55

of women? What is

11:57

the value of women? Why

11:59

are women valuable? Now

12:03

to answer that question

12:05

we have to examine again

12:07

at an instinctual level the

12:09

motives or

12:11

motivations of our fathers right

12:13

as the sons of single mothers. We have

12:16

to examine the motivations of our fathers.

12:18

Why did my father have

12:21

sex with this woman. Well,

12:24

it can't be because he truly loved her, because

12:26

if he truly loved her, she

12:28

would still be married to him, he would still

12:30

be married to her, and I wouldn't be facing

12:32

a father absence. Why

12:34

did my

12:36

father have sex

12:38

with this woman? My mother. Again,

12:41

foundational questions that need to be

12:43

asked and answered. And remember, of

12:46

course, we grew up in tribal situations where future

12:48

options and choice were not available. We grew

12:51

up in tribal situations which for tens

12:53

or hundreds of thousands of years were basically

12:55

just the same day over and over

12:57

again. So whatever your

12:59

father did is what you would be doing. That

13:02

the best reproductive strategy

13:04

would be to replicate what your father did. So

13:07

the question then

13:10

is what is the

13:12

value of women? I

13:14

mean, obviously, your father found a

13:16

value in a woman, your mother, in

13:19

that he had sex with her. But

13:21

if he had sex with her and doesn't

13:23

love her, then, unfortunately,

13:26

for your mindset, although completely understandably

13:28

from the evidence, if

13:30

your father

13:33

had sex with a woman

13:35

that he does not love, then

13:38

the value that women provide

13:40

in this formulation, in this

13:42

empirical example, the value that

13:44

women provide is sex. The

13:47

value that women provide

13:49

is sex. And that's

13:51

the great danger of the

13:54

evidence and the instincts.

13:56

The instincts trying to parse

13:58

out the evidence to reproduce

14:00

sexually successful strategies. Your

14:03

mother will often

14:05

complain about

14:07

her ex -husband, your absent

14:10

father, your mother will

14:12

often complain about him, saying he's this,

14:14

he's that, negative, whatever, right? So

14:16

then the question is,

14:18

if my parents don't like

14:20

each other, but had

14:22

unprotected sex and produced a child,

14:24

and in most cases, I don't

14:26

know what the odds are these

14:28

days, but in many cases, let's

14:30

say, they tried to make

14:32

it work, right? I mean, my parents... did

14:34

were married for a couple years and

14:36

they obviously tried to make it work. So,

14:40

if your parents don't like each

14:43

other but had sex, then

14:45

the value that men and women

14:47

bring to each other is not virtue,

14:50

not integrity, not moral courage, not

14:52

consistency, not honesty, not affection,

14:54

not support, not the

14:56

hard work of running a household both

14:58

in terms of income and organization

15:00

and child raising, the

15:02

value the men and

15:04

women have for each other

15:07

is rutting, is mere sexual gratification.

15:09

In this case, the primary

15:11

value that the man brings

15:14

is money, and the primary

15:16

value the woman brings is

15:18

sexual appeal. So

15:20

that's the danger

15:22

for the boys,

15:24

is to say, my

15:27

father found the only valuable

15:29

thing in my mother with sexual

15:31

access because he does not

15:33

like her as a person and

15:35

she does not like him

15:37

as a person and there's a

15:39

lot of retribution and wounded

15:41

vanity and hostility and attack and

15:43

all of that. So

15:45

if my parents don't like

15:47

each other then the only reason

15:49

they reproduced was because of

15:51

lust. Now what

15:53

this means is

15:55

that lust is a

15:57

danger that brings

15:59

great sorrow. Lust

16:01

is a danger that brings great sorrow.

16:03

Lust is not part of the

16:06

pair bonding of a healthy relationship that

16:08

shores up all of the golden

16:10

virtues of love and integrity and honesty

16:12

and and courage and all of

16:14

that. That love is not

16:16

required in fact you can have sex

16:18

with people you hate because remember

16:20

of course when you are a kid

16:22

and you're raised by a single

16:24

mom your son son or daughter we're

16:27

just talking about sons today. And

16:29

your mother is bitching and complaining about

16:31

your dad. You don't know the

16:33

courtship, right? You're not aware of the

16:35

courtship. You're not aware of the

16:37

positives they had to say about each

16:39

other. You're not aware of any

16:41

affection, really that they may have had

16:43

in the past. I

16:45

mean, all you're doing is you're

16:48

seeing Hiroshima after the 45 bomb. You're

16:50

not seeing it before. And

16:52

so all you see is

16:55

this negativity and hostility and

16:57

aggression and... and

16:59

anger, if not rage and disappointment

17:01

and bitterness, like that's all

17:03

you see. So if

17:05

the value that your father

17:07

found in your mother was only

17:09

sexual access and in a

17:11

sense from your perspective post separation,

17:13

abandonment or divorce, if from

17:15

your perspective, they basically had to

17:18

hold their noses to be

17:20

with each other. In other words,

17:22

they had to pretend that

17:24

they liked each other while secretly

17:26

not liking each other just to get

17:28

their rocks off, to chase the

17:30

eternal O of orgasm. The

17:32

story of O is the story of life. So

17:35

if they don't like each other,

17:37

then the only value they had

17:39

in each other was sexual access.

17:42

And what this does is

17:44

it provokes in your

17:46

hormones when you get older

17:48

or even when you're

17:50

younger, it provokes in your

17:52

mindset, hypersexuality. Because the

17:55

genes say, oh crap, people

17:58

don't like each other, so I have to

18:00

crank up the lust. Men

18:02

and women don't like each other.

18:04

They're not honorable, respectful, virtuous

18:06

in this tribal environment. So I

18:08

have to really crank up

18:10

the lust. I have to make

18:12

lust a kind of crazed

18:14

hysteria that overcomes highly toxic emotional

18:16

and moral traits, immoral traits. I

18:19

mean, if the food is

18:22

bad or questionable, You have to

18:24

wait until you're really hungry to eat

18:26

it, right? You have

18:28

to wait till you're really hungry to

18:30

eat it. And so if

18:32

the personalities around are toxic

18:34

and negative and dangerous, then the

18:36

hormones say, well, in order

18:38

to overcome the negatives of bad

18:40

personalities, we have to

18:42

crank up the lust to

18:44

insane levels. So

18:46

we are a lust and ruttings

18:48

-based society and the lust has

18:50

to be so high that

18:53

you're willing to have sex with

18:55

people you don't respect or

18:57

even despise just to get the

18:59

relief from the crazed sexual

19:01

hunger. Which is why

19:03

both males and females from single

19:05

mother households end up often

19:07

hypersexual. That's the gene saying,

19:09

well, people don't like each other, so

19:11

how do babies get made if people don't

19:13

like each other? If men and women

19:15

don't like each other, how do babies get

19:17

made? Well, babies get made because the

19:19

lust levels have to be cranked up to

19:21

insane levels or I guess, genetically sane

19:24

levels, in order for people to reproduce. So

19:27

that's the great danger. That

19:29

your lust levels will

19:31

crank up to the point

19:33

where you only view

19:35

the value of women as

19:38

sexual objects. And

19:40

of course, we can see this all over

19:42

in the culture. I don't

19:44

even need to list all of the examples. They're

19:47

too obvious to mention. So

19:49

the challenge is to say what is

19:52

the value of women. Now,

19:54

again, we're not designed to

19:56

have different choices from our

19:58

parents because for 99 .99999 %

20:00

of human history, you had

20:02

no choice to act differently

20:04

from your parents. That's

20:07

what I talked about. In Australia, with

20:09

regards to the aborigines of 40 ,000

20:11

years of copy -paste groundhog days, everybody

20:13

was the same. The time slice

20:15

was the same for tens of thousands of years. So

20:18

you did not have the

20:20

choice to be different from your

20:22

parents. So the danger

20:24

of course is that your

20:26

lust leads you to overlook negative

20:29

qualities of men and women

20:31

and have sex with them to

20:33

gain relief from the torture

20:35

of sexual desire to eat the

20:37

bad food just because you're

20:39

hungry to the point of madness.

20:42

You'll drink water in a

20:45

mootstack as someone I

20:47

knew working up north did.

20:50

It was so thirsty. You'll drink

20:52

bilge water if you're thirsty enough. Or

20:54

after that, you can saw off

20:56

a slice of Guinness. Now,

20:59

how do you escape this? Well, the way

21:01

that you escape this is you say, my

21:03

parents were dysfunctional, my

21:06

parents were immature, my parents

21:08

committed the sin of lust,

21:10

which is to have sex

21:12

with someone you do not

21:14

respect and admire morally. and

21:16

it is to denormalize what your parents

21:18

didn't say, they were, they

21:20

made bad choices, other choices can be

21:23

made. But in order to do

21:25

that, you have to give your parents

21:27

moral responsibility and judge them negatively. And

21:30

to give your

21:32

parents moral responsibility and

21:34

judge them negatively

21:36

was not allowed and

21:39

would often result

21:41

in attack, ostracism, imprisonment,

21:43

exile, death. If

21:45

you judge your parents morally

21:47

and said that they

21:49

made bad, corrupt, immoral choices,

21:53

well, I mean, let's play that out, right? So

21:55

throughout most of human history, if you

21:57

say, you go out into the dating market and you

21:59

say, well, and remember, we grew

22:01

up in tribes where people's mindsets were

22:03

essentially the same. So if

22:05

you go out into society and

22:07

you say, my parents made

22:09

bad, corrupt choices, they were immoral,

22:12

And you go and try and date well

22:14

remember the girlfriends your girlfriend's parents or your

22:17

potential girlfriend's parents are kind of the same

22:19

are you gonna say the same thing to

22:21

them well if you say the same thing

22:23

to them they're not gonna want their daughter

22:25

to date you if you Say to a

22:27

woman your parents seem to be kind of

22:29

corrupted immoral then those parents are not gonna

22:31

want that Girls to date you and remember

22:34

throughout most of human history the approval of

22:36

the parents was pretty it was a pretty

22:38

important ingredient in getting married and the support

22:40

of extended family was pretty important in getting

22:42

employment in raising your children in security in

22:44

your old age. And so

22:46

the option to be morally

22:49

objective and judge people according to

22:51

universal standards, that's a pretty

22:53

new phenomenon. And as

22:55

you know, of course, history is replete

22:57

with people who tried to judge

22:59

people according to fairly objective moral standards

23:01

or even knowledge standards, as Socrates

23:03

did. He was more of an epistemologist

23:06

than a moralist, like what is

23:08

true. So they got killed

23:10

or crucified or exiled or cast out or

23:12

couldn't find anyone to reproduce with them

23:14

like Nietzsche, who I think went to a

23:16

prostitute once and then got syphilis, if

23:18

I remember the story correctly, bad luck. But

23:21

it was a genetic

23:23

dead end to attempt to

23:25

apply objective moral standards

23:27

to the elders in your

23:29

society because they controlled

23:31

access to the next generation,

23:33

they controlled access to

23:35

resources. And if they disapproved

23:38

of you, then you, in

23:40

various levels of ostracism

23:43

to violence, to murder, you

23:45

just didn't get to

23:47

reproduce. So it very

23:49

much goes against our instincts. Like we

23:51

have two separate instincts, right? One is

23:53

to universalize, one is to

23:55

universalize, and the

23:57

other is to to

24:00

power, right? So

24:02

this is the detentions within the

24:04

human mind, right? We We have

24:06

flourished as a species through our

24:08

ability to conceptualize and universalize and

24:10

we are told that morals are

24:12

universal when we were a kid,

24:14

right? Well, I was certainly raised

24:16

and maybe this was obviously this

24:18

was a Christian thing. I doubt

24:20

it's coming much from the atheist

24:22

left these days, but I was

24:24

raised morals were universal morals were

24:27

universal and it didn't matter whether

24:29

someone had power or not. I

24:31

mean, I was raised in

24:33

England, of course, and I was

24:35

fascinated with World War II history,

24:37

culminated in my novel called Almost,

24:39

which you should definitely check out,

24:42

freedomain.com slash books. And

24:44

I remember being quite young and

24:46

reading about the Nuremberg Trials, read

24:48

about the Holocaust, read about the

24:50

Nuremberg Trials. Of course, in

24:52

the Nuremberg Trials, the fact that

24:54

something was legal, that what

24:56

the Nazis did was legal, didn't matter. This

24:59

was a big swing between Positive

25:01

law and natural law. Positive law says

25:03

that virtue or the right or the

25:05

good is whatever the law says. Natural

25:07

law says there's a standard by which

25:09

you judge laws as moral or immoral

25:11

that is independent of legal statutes. And

25:14

so the fact that the German government

25:16

was voted in, the fact that the

25:18

German government had power and quote, a

25:20

democratic legitimacy based on the vote, didn't

25:22

matter. That there

25:24

was a moral standard

25:26

higher than all authority, right?

25:30

And I mean, I accepted

25:32

and absorbed that lesson,

25:34

right? That Nazi Germany

25:36

was evil and totalitarian and murderous

25:38

and so on. So a government could

25:40

be judged according to an objective

25:42

moral standard of virtue. And even though

25:44

it was a government, even though

25:46

it was voted in, it was utterly

25:48

evil and immoral. And I accepted

25:50

that lesson. Heck, I still

25:52

accept that lesson. Nothing really has

25:54

changed in the half a century

25:57

since I first read about the

25:59

Nuremberg trials. My

26:01

mother had a bunch of World

26:03

War II books floating around. So

26:06

I was raised to a

26:08

judge according to a universal

26:10

standard that was larger even

26:13

than governments and the law

26:15

and the will of the

26:17

people and so on, right?

26:20

But that's new. That's new.

26:23

That's new. And fairly

26:25

unprecedented in human history. So if

26:27

You want to get out

26:29

of the trap of viewing the

26:31

value of the opposite sex

26:33

as sex objects. If you

26:35

want to get out of that trap, then

26:38

what you have to do is judge them

26:40

morally to be wanting. If

26:42

you make excuses for their behavior,

26:44

then you will make excuses for

26:46

your own behavior. Free will

26:48

is a big giant lever, right? You raise it up

26:50

and you lower it down. And

26:52

if you lower free will for your parents,

26:55

say they're victims of circumstances or history, their own

26:57

bad parents or whatever. If you lower free

26:59

will for your parents, then you lower free will

27:01

for yourself. Willpower

27:03

is the most important thing in life, right?

27:07

Because with that willpower, you can't get to virtue.

27:10

It's necessary, of course, though not

27:12

sufficient. So with

27:14

willpower, you say, I

27:16

can choose my fate. I can choose

27:18

my circumstances. I can choose the contents

27:20

of my mind. I can choose my

27:22

actions. And through that, through

27:24

that responsibility of choice, then you

27:26

have the responsibility, through the

27:29

capacity of choice, you have the responsibility to

27:31

pursue virtue. Nobody

27:33

says of a prisoner

27:35

in a gulag, or

27:37

Solzhenitsyn or Dostoevsky, nobody says of a prisoner

27:39

in a gulag, you should have eaten better.

27:42

There was no eating better. You eat whatever

27:44

slop they put in front of you. There's

27:47

no diet in prisons, no diet choices

27:49

in prison. Certainly not back then,

27:51

right? Maybe now you can get some

27:53

lactose -free stuff or, I don't know, but...

27:55

eat what they put in front of you.

27:57

So there's no choice there, right? So

27:59

when you dial up choice, you dial up

28:01

willpower, the value of willpower, and if

28:03

you dial down choice, you castrate yourself with

28:05

the capacity for willpower. If you say

28:07

your parents couldn't choose any better, then you can't choose

28:09

any better. So you have to, the only way out

28:11

of it is you have to dial up the choices

28:13

for your parents. And you

28:15

know, know thyself, Socrates' commandment, the

28:17

child is the father of the

28:20

men, even the Freudian,

28:22

Jungian stuff, which although horribly imperfect

28:24

in many ways, did provide

28:26

a path towards self -knowledge

28:28

and the value of

28:30

the unconscious and understanding yourself.

28:32

Of course Christianity has

28:34

set itself against the baser

28:36

instincts since time immemorial

28:38

or I guess 2024 years

28:40

and a couple of

28:42

days. So we have this

28:45

tradition. Parenting books, self

28:47

-help books, therapy, at least it's

28:49

all been around for many

28:51

decades, arguably century and a half.

28:53

Oh, arguably going even further

28:55

back to know they self, right?

28:58

I mean, Hamlet's soliloquies are

29:00

an attempt to understand himself. So

29:03

that's all part of our

29:05

tradition, certainly in the West,

29:08

of self -knowledge and the

29:10

tension between instincts and ideals.

29:13

Mind -bodied dichotomy has been talked

29:15

about and discussed fairly endlessly

29:17

in philosophy and psychology, of

29:19

course, right? Although

29:21

psychology has become progressively

29:24

more amoral. and

29:26

conformist. So, you have to

29:28

denormalize what your parents did. You said

29:30

they had choices, they chose wrong, they

29:32

should have chosen better, they could have

29:34

chosen better and that liberates your free

29:36

will from the unconscious hamster wheel of

29:38

history just round and round. Copy, paste,

29:41

groundhog day. You have to

29:43

assign free will to your parents and

29:45

your grandparents and you have to then

29:47

you get to wear the medal of

29:49

free will yourself. And

29:51

then you can choose differently. And

29:53

then you can say the value

29:55

that I should look for in

29:57

a partner is not sex, but

30:00

virtue. Sex

30:02

in the absence of virtue, which

30:04

is the presence of corruption, right?

30:07

The absence of health is the presence of

30:09

disease or dysfunction. He's

30:11

not healthy means that there's something

30:13

wrong with him. So if

30:15

you're not virtuous, then corruption or

30:17

immorality or evil is inevitable. So

30:20

you have to say that

30:22

I will pursue virtue as my

30:24

parents should have. I reject

30:26

base mammalian rutting as the foundation

30:28

of a pretend relationship. I

30:31

reject the sin of lust. I

30:33

look for the good. I pursue

30:35

the good. I'm not going to

30:37

be ruled by hormones and testicles.

30:39

I'm going to be ruled by

30:41

a conscience, a

30:43

courageous heart and a

30:46

virtuous willpower and that

30:48

is a break. with

30:50

the copy paste of history and that allows

30:52

you to chat a different course. But if

30:54

you say people can't chat their courses, which

30:56

is the fundamentals of quote forgiving your parents

30:58

without apologies and restitution, then you're saying people

31:00

can't choose. Like what if you say about

31:02

your parents, you say about yourself. Whatever

31:05

you say about your parents, you

31:07

say about yourself in terms

31:09

of their choices. If

31:11

they couldn't choose, you can't choose. If you can choose,

31:13

they could choose. If you can do better, they

31:15

should have done better and they're responsible for not doing

31:18

better. And of course, you

31:20

say, well, they didn't know how to do better.

31:22

Well, of course they did, right? You've heard me

31:24

say this a million times in Colin shows that

31:26

abusive parents almost never abuse their children in public

31:28

or where they would suffer negative consequences for abusing

31:30

their children. So they know exactly what the right

31:32

thing to do is and they do it on

31:34

a regular basis. They just indulge

31:36

themselves, right? Corruption is

31:38

really just a form of indulgence. It's

31:41

giving yourself permission to do something. Willpower

31:43

is when you get to decide

31:45

what you do. mean, you

31:47

can't diet if you give yourself permission to

31:49

eat crap, right? So I think that's the most

31:52

important thing that I would talk about or

31:54

I have talked about in this kind of conversation.

31:56

So I hope that helps and I would

31:58

love to hear what your thoughts are. I'm happy

32:00

to make this a series if you think

32:02

there's more value that I could offer. But I

32:04

think that foundational aspect is the most important

32:06

stuff to look at. So lots of love from

32:08

up here, freedomain.com slash tonight to help out

32:10

the show. Love you guys. Thanks for the great

32:12

questions. I'm to

32:15

talk to you soon. Bye.