Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 3114 - The Scott Adams School 03⧸13⧸26

00:00:00.000 Go ahead. Tell me Lang is first. I can't wait to hear it. 0.99

00:00:05.260 There's no YouTube.

00:00:06.420 There he is.

00:00:07.580 There's Steven.

00:00:08.960 Lang does not disappoint.

00:00:10.680 Oh, man. How does he do it? Good morning.

00:00:14.040 Hey, Patty. 1.00

00:00:15.700 Hey, Gracie. 1.00

00:00:18.520 Angela, let's go. Welcome in, everybody. It's Friday.

00:00:23.880 Hey, Hank. Hey, SGV.

00:00:26.160 Lawler, look who's sitting in here with us, you guys.

00:00:30.000 Ooh, we have a nice, juicy Friday coming in hot.

00:00:36.200 Hey, Kev.

00:00:38.000 Andy.

00:00:39.340 Aw, look at YouTube over there.

00:00:42.920 All right, is everyone looking good, feeling good?

00:00:46.000 Big plans for the weekend?

00:00:48.860 Mm-hmm.

00:00:49.640 I see some people coming in.

00:00:52.440 Just put your coat down there and come up front.

00:00:55.140 We have room.

00:00:56.300 You're not going to want to miss Stefan Molyneux.

00:01:00.000 famed philosopher, guest professor extraordinaire,

00:01:05.980 and he's ready to get our mindset straight.

00:01:12.920 All right, guys, there's something we need to do

00:01:15.800 before anything else can happen,

00:01:17.640 so grab a vessel of any kind.

00:01:20.500 Are we ready?

00:01:22.480 I'm ready.

00:01:23.380 Let's go.

00:01:24.900 There's a little thing I like to do.

00:01:27.080 It's called the simultaneous hip,

00:01:29.120 and I know you like it too, and that's why you're rushing to get in here on time.

00:01:35.660 Imagine how bad you'd feel if you were in the, let's say, the third 1,000 people to

00:01:42.100 come in here, and you missed a simultaneous sip.

00:01:45.580 Well, you'd feel sad all day.

00:01:47.620 No, you wouldn't.

00:01:48.900 But it's better if you have it, and you're going to have it right now, and all you need

00:01:54.780 is a copper, a mug, or a glass, a tank, or chalice, or stein,

00:01:58.680 a canteen jug, or flask, a vessel of any kind.

00:02:02.380 Fill it with your favorite liquid.

00:02:04.220 I like coffee.

00:02:05.640 Join me now for the unparalleled pleasure,

00:02:08.280 the dopamine hit of the day,

00:02:10.120 the thing that makes everything better,

00:02:11.320 the simultaneous sip.

00:02:14.020 Go.

00:02:18.000 Oh, yeah.

00:02:20.840 Yeah, that's good.

00:02:21.840 Whoa.

00:02:24.780 I miss him. I love that. And he's right. It does make the day better. All right, you guys. So I'm

00:02:33.220 Erica. We are here at the Scott Adams School. Like I said, oh, it's Friday the 13th. This is a good

00:02:39.760 luck day. I just want you guys to know that, especially if you're Italian. So turn that 1.00

00:02:46.220 thought around. If you think it's not good luck, it is. And proving that point, we have Stéphane

00:02:51.640 Molineux back with us. Probably one of the most downloaded philosophers we have. And we did some

00:03:00.160 facial warmup exercises with him before this show. He's in a good mood. We're in a good mood. And

00:03:06.100 we're going to get everybody in the right mind frame. So Stefan, I'm just going to turn it over

00:03:10.440 to you. And you can set our minds straight. Welcome. Thank you. I still miss him. It's

00:03:19.240 funny to see him up there on the screen. And it's a wild thing now because the archives that Scott

00:03:25.540 shows and his books and all of the work that he did, I'm sure there are a bunch of his speeches

00:03:29.840 that are recorded when he was out there being a public speaker. And it's wild because normally

00:03:34.260 people go out of focus over time. You know how you age? Well, some people age when their eyes

00:03:40.620 get a little blurry, you got to glass it up and so on. And so people kind of go out of focus.

00:03:45.680 Like, we don't know Socrates because he never wrote down anything.

00:03:49.280 We only know what Plato said about Socrates.

00:03:52.340 Aristotle's original works are long gone, but we have his students' notes from which

00:03:56.920 they've tried to reconstruct his books and his thoughts, which is a real shame because

00:04:00.040 Aristotle was considered to be a better writer than Plato, and Plato's writing is fantastic.

00:04:05.520 And so we don't know what happened with the trial and death of Socrates because there's

00:04:11.060 no transcripts, there's only Plato's recollections.

00:04:13.640 you know, however much he loved Socrates, we can't expect much objectivity. But the funny

00:04:18.240 thing is now, because everything is recorded, everything is archived, everything is there

00:04:23.980 forever, that Scott won't go out of focus. People will be able to reference him. And of course,

00:04:30.080 his AI comes along, which has its own hallucinations, but I'm not convinced any more than the average

00:04:34.200 person does. As AI comes along, it can summarize and you can look things up and cross-examine

00:04:39.460 Scott as his text and his words transcribed are out there. And I'm going through a basement

00:04:46.400 cleanup. I know this sounds like a real left turn here. I'm going through a basement cleanup at the

00:04:50.500 moment. So I'm coming across all of these old photos. And I have photos that my father sent

00:04:55.240 me of my ancestors from like 1902. And, you know, they're peering out of this blurry alternate

00:05:01.180 dimension. But of course, now we're all high def. We don't age. Our voices don't degrade. You listen

00:05:07.780 to old recordings of opera singers, and it sounds like, you know, some Martian going through a tin 0.57

00:05:13.600 can. But now all of the richness of our thoughts, the vividness, we will never age, we will never

00:05:18.520 die. And I think that's really a wonderful thing. The closest thing I think in the past was the

00:05:23.220 epistolary format where you could get letters from people, but that's not quite the same as

00:05:28.400 actual conversations. So it is always startling to me, maybe I'm just old, but it's always startling

00:05:33.880 to me when someone who's gone is talking right there, as if he was still here. And that gives

00:05:41.800 a kind of ache, of course. I'm glad that all Scott's recordings and his statements are all

00:05:46.880 there forever and ever. Amen. There's no Library of Alexandria that's going to burn the whole thing

00:05:51.040 down. And just having him come back just reminds me of, you know, all the value that he brought

00:05:57.780 and all of the great things he had to say. And all of the things that I thought were actionable,

00:06:02.660 You know, this is one of the things you don't get from academics, but you get from public intellectuals.

00:06:08.480 And I would certainly put Scott in that category, is that what he did was actionable, right?

00:06:14.100 There's a lot of stress and strain and not just rumors of war, but actual war that is going on in the world.

00:06:20.680 And, you know, one of the things that is very easy is to feel overwhelmed, to feel helpless.

00:06:26.280 You know, they call it among the young now bed rotting.

00:06:29.040 I don't know if you've heard this term, but bed rotting is when you just lie in bed and

00:06:32.620 you scroll and it's bad news and it's bad news and it's overwhelming.

00:06:37.040 And I think that is a very great temptation.

00:06:41.300 You know, people love to court despair and I'm not even going to count myself out of

00:06:46.080 this number.

00:06:46.620 This is a pretty wide net that includes my big chatty forehead, but people love to court

00:06:52.360 despair because despair is an excuse for inaction.

00:06:55.220 You know, like I talked to guys on my show who were like, oh, you know, I like this girl, you know, but she'd never go out with me.

00:07:01.280 And it's like, first of all, don't make that decision for her.

00:07:04.440 And secondly, despair is an excuse to avoid courage.

00:07:10.640 And in many ways, the courage is simply reserving your actions for that which you can most affect.

00:07:17.540 It's easy to be courageous in the abstract.

00:07:20.380 It's easy to be courageous.

00:07:21.520 I watched the movie recently, Stand By Me.

00:07:23.300 I don't know if you've ever seen it.

00:07:24.500 it's an old Rob Reiner film. And in it, there's a self-insert of the writer. The writer in all

00:07:30.980 stories, the writer is the hero because the writers like to project themselves into that.

00:07:35.360 And of course, it's an old movie. I don't think there's much of a spoiler. But in the end,

00:07:38.980 the writer pulls a gun and fends off these bullies. And you just know that didn't happen

00:07:43.540 in real life. It's a fantasy of what the writer wanted to have happened that's recreated on screen

00:07:48.360 because I doubt that he pulled a gun and warded off all of these teenage thugs. And there were

00:07:53.980 no negative repercussions, but I think, Scott, one of the things I always got out of him was

00:07:58.860 you can change what is in your mind. You cannot easily change what is in the world. And certainly

00:08:05.660 with regards to politics and war and debt and the propagandizing that has replaced higher education,

00:08:13.040 you and I, we can provide alternatives. We can provide ways of reviewing it, but we can't change

00:08:18.620 it. We can't go in and rewrite the curriculum to be more reason and evidence-based or more rational

00:08:23.240 or more moral or more empathetic or more curious or anything like that. But what we can do is we

00:08:29.280 can do two things. And I think I focused on one, Scott focused on the other a little bit more.

00:08:34.000 For Scott, I think it was in the reframe, you can change the way that you think about things.

00:08:39.300 In the old Hamlet sense, there's nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so, which is a bit too

00:08:43.200 far for me as a moral philosopher, but definitely very, very important. And the other thing you can

00:08:46.780 do is you can bring as much honesty and courage as you can to your relationships. Because one of

00:08:56.160 the things that this bed rotting or the doom scrolling is going to do is it's going to fill

00:09:00.500 you full of despair. It's going to fill you full of helplessness and hopelessness. And unfortunately,

00:09:05.320 that releases you from the challenge of moral courage, but it also releases you from the

00:09:10.480 possibility of actually being loved. So I have a formulation for love that is love is our

00:09:16.440 involuntary response to virtue if we're virtuous. And I'm not talking, you know, some massive warlike

00:09:22.740 virtue or anything Genghis Khan resisting. I'm talking about just, you know, the basic honesty

00:09:27.540 and integrity to think clearly about what you believe in, to stand up against falsehoods, to

00:09:34.480 promote a truth to some reasonable degree. You know, there are some truths that are still quite

00:09:39.400 radioactive and we don't want to go the Charlie Kirk route, at least I don't think Charlie Kirk

00:09:43.680 did and i certainly don't so sort of maximum truth while still being able to draw breath

00:09:50.560 because truth tellers get axed in society on a fairly regular basis although now we've

00:09:55.400 upgraded to deplatforming which is very very civilized compared to a big cup of hemlock

00:09:59.740 and so to sort of divide the world into things we can change and things we can't which is an

00:10:06.140 old bromide but but very true to work on telling the truth in our personal lives and to approach

00:10:14.940 people with love and affection and resolution right so we want love and affection we want

00:10:18.920 to think the best of people and then give them the opportunity to behave in a positive manner

00:10:23.800 give them some grace period because it all takes people a while to change and adapt to the truth

00:10:28.720 but then at some point you know if they simply resist truth or are hostile or hateful to have

00:10:33.780 the courage to say no more and to then end up with the very best thing in the world we can't

00:10:39.620 have much control over our political freedoms we can't have much control over the censorship

00:10:44.240 complex or the de-platforming complex that both scott and i were i could say victims of we were

00:10:51.300 liberated by we were we were set free to have more integrity by having our audience sharply

00:10:56.320 reduced you know you if you're a jazz musician it's better to play a club than a stadium because

00:11:01.060 What do they say? A stadium is three chords to 10,000 people and jazz is 10,000 chords to three people. So I think Scott made that choice and I think it was a good choice in a lot of ways.

00:11:12.420 And so if you can act in reasonably courageous and honest and enthusiastic moral ways to bring the truth to people around you, to bring reasonable levels of truth to society, to have maximum effective courage, then you do get the great benefit of being loved and having the capacity to love and to be loved.

00:11:36.580 and it really doesn't matter if you have a first amendment in politics or you have free speech in

00:11:42.320 society if you are censored in your own relationships because you're afraid of upsetting

00:11:46.760 people you're afraid of bothering people you're afraid of imposing quote imposing things on people

00:11:51.360 or people are going to blow up and react negatively to the truth that you're in pursuit of and you're

00:11:56.640 delineating and if you have that kind of virtue in your life and you have those kinds of people in

00:12:03.700 your life. You have a better life than the king of France 200 years ago. I've talked to a lot of

00:12:11.400 people over the course of doing my show for 21 years who have, you know, wealth, professional

00:12:16.300 success, and yet are heavily censored in their relationships, are unhappy in the home. You know,

00:12:22.460 build a happy home. I really don't care about my tax levels. Like I'd rather have a happy marriage

00:12:26.680 and be taxed at 80% than be taxed at 0% and be unhappy at home.

00:12:32.820 So building the kind of happiness at home,

00:12:35.100 building the kind of honesty in your relationships

00:12:37.520 that gives you a good chance or the only chance really of being loved

00:12:42.340 and reframing things so that you can look at them as positively as possible

00:12:47.980 is I think our greatest chance to achieve a kind of happiness.

00:12:50.820 And what I really strongly resist, and I won't monopolize the whole thing,

00:12:54.680 but what I really strongly resist is don't surrender more than you have to to bad actors

00:13:00.420 in the world. Look, we can't control who goes to war. We can make our recommendations. We can make

00:13:04.960 our case. But if people choose to go to war, don't let them further invade your peace of mind.

00:13:12.300 You have to have very, very strong fences in this world. You know, if they're going to tax you at

00:13:17.560 50%, don't give them 90%. You know, if they're going to control you for two hours of the day,

00:13:22.480 don't then think about it for the other 22 hours of the day and be frustrated at that because then

00:13:28.240 you're never free surrender what you have to reserve for yourself every remaining freedom

00:13:35.660 and option and i think if we do that that is maximum freedom and i think that can't help but

00:13:40.700 spread to other people if we are bed rotting if we are doom scrolling and we are spreading despair

00:13:45.980 we are enslaving people beyond what is inevitable in society you're going to be enslaved to some

00:13:52.180 degree in society you're going to be forced to do things by the law that you don't agree with

00:13:56.100 you're going to be forced to pay for wars that you don't support and other things so you know

00:14:00.960 pay what you have to and not one thin dime more and reserve everything else for your own contentment

00:14:07.840 love and happiness i really can't think of a better way to live your life i got a lot of that

00:14:13.300 from scott and i'm adding maybe a spice of cayenne pepper to to the mix as a whole i love that oh

00:14:19.360 did you want to say something well i definitely think it is a problem today that a lot of people

00:14:24.380 seem to be very discouraged and in despair um i see some of that in my own kids i certainly do

00:14:29.540 everything i can to turn that around every every time it comes up and i'm i think i'm pretty

00:14:33.600 successful with it um but i also saw a story i may have posted a day or two ago that said something

00:14:41.000 like a third of people think the end of the world is coming within their lifetime which just sounds

00:14:46.280 so crazy uh you know i mean i to me i would say that's you know a one in a million chance one in

00:14:51.840 a billion one in a trillion like it's not going to happen and somehow a third of people at least

00:14:57.860 on a poll are saying i think the end of the world is coming very soon um and so it does seem like a

00:15:03.460 lot of people are discouraged a lot of people are economically discouraged thinking i'm never going

00:15:07.060 to own a house i'm never going to have the american dream everything's rigged against me

00:15:11.280 there was another poll that talked about that where people think the economy is rigged against

00:15:15.520 them. So it's definitely a big problem. And I don't know exactly what's causing it. I mean,

00:15:20.880 I'm sure there is some reality in there, but to me, it's only a grain of truth. It's not

00:15:25.160 the big picture. And that's kind of what I talk about with my kids. Like, you know,

00:15:30.400 my son would say, oh, I'm never going to be able to afford a house. I'm like, yes, you will. You

00:15:33.920 will be able to afford a house. Maybe not today. It might take you five years. But if you save for

00:15:39.860 a down payment like you are, and if you have a good job like you have, you're going to be fine.

00:15:44.520 i mean my son is doing really well like he's probably in the top you know 10 for people his

00:15:50.000 age in terms of his income and i'm just like you know i i can see the reality because of my age

00:15:55.320 you know my the history i've seen bad times economically i've seen good times you know my

00:15:59.920 parents went bankrupt when i was in high school i've seen ups and downs in my own life too but

00:16:04.620 you know having that perspective is really helpful to me to say okay things might look bad

00:16:10.780 but they're not really as bad as they seem and things are going to get better but oh and don't

00:16:17.600 you think um don't you think a lot of this has to do with what they are seeing in the news and on

00:16:24.740 uh tiktok and social media there's still i mean i if i go on x within like 30 seconds i'm like

00:16:32.460 oh my god i gotta get out of here everything is so leveled up and i think especially for younger

00:16:39.520 people, you know, it, it seems like reality, you know, you had AOC telling young kids that the

00:16:45.920 world was going to end in 12 years. Luckily we survived that. Um, but I get it, you know,

00:16:51.840 like kids are so scared and then there's a lot of like scared parents and then they're putting that

00:16:56.320 fear into their kids. And I don't know, I just think that we have to be really careful, you know,

00:17:01.320 what we're telling younger people, what they're seeing. Um, and I think between having, uh,

00:17:07.680 Brian Romelli here yesterday, you know, pointing out that experiment with the mice. And it was

00:17:13.600 like, yeah, you know, everybody's got to feel useful. You've got to like make your own way.

00:17:17.980 You can't become like that sloth, lazy person. And so it was like, you know, what my takeaway 0.96

00:17:24.900 was, was like, turn off the noise and like, just get grounded back in reality and connect with

00:17:31.640 people more more eye contact more socializing send letters and cards instead of texts and

00:17:37.820 you know kind of get back to basics and i i think um kids were so much happier i don't know i mean

00:17:44.840 you guys can tell me in the chat i think kids were happier when they didn't have all this stuff in

00:17:48.520 their face all the time and they were just using their imagination and playing but i think that's

00:17:53.140 what's happening i'll turn it over to stefan that's interesting yeah so one of the things

00:17:59.900 that we have a very wealthy generation. The boomers were the wealthiest. Gen X is the second 0.87

00:18:03.980 wealthiest in all of human history. Now, call me a madcap optimist, but if after, you know,

00:18:11.100 14 billion years of the universe and 4 billion years of life and a million plus years of human

00:18:16.140 beings, you are only the second wealthiest generation in the history of the planet,

00:18:22.000 it's a little tough to cry woe is me when you came in second out of four billion years four

00:18:30.540 billion years oh no you brought the second wealthiest generation that's that's pretty

00:18:35.520 precious you know like well you know it's true that i won 20 million dollars in the lottery but

00:18:41.220 there's some other guy who won 23 billion dollars at 23 million dollars so i'm at i'm down three

00:18:46.700 million. It's like, that's what you, that's what you focus on. I focus on the incredible

00:18:51.440 opportunities that exist. Look, we're all here having this conversation to thousands and thousands

00:18:56.960 of people without a TV studio, without having to apply places with no gatekeepers. We can talk

00:19:02.440 within reason about whatever it is that we want to do. You can make a living in a Thailand cafe

00:19:08.180 doing, doing work online. There's AI assistants that make being an entrepreneur infinitely easier

00:19:14.600 than when I started being an entrepreneur in the 90s.

00:19:19.000 There's ways to connect with people in the present.

00:19:23.700 I was around before the internet, you know,

00:19:25.520 but before the internet,

00:19:26.600 when I wanted to start a philosophical debate,

00:19:29.020 I took an ad out in the newspaper and set up a PO box

00:19:32.720 and people mailed me stuff.

00:19:34.920 I read it.

00:19:35.780 I wrote letters back.

00:19:36.820 I mailed it back.

00:19:39.440 That's how crazy things were.

00:19:41.120 Now you can just set up a server.

00:19:42.520 You can get going.

00:19:43.460 You can live stream.

00:19:44.180 So the opportunities of communication and connection and community for people who genuinely think for themselves is something that was beyond our possible imagination.

00:19:56.980 Even just a couple, 20 years ago, 25 years ago, it was impossible.

00:20:00.940 Now people like Scott, people like this show, people like me, we're able to create communities, as is just about anybody, to be able to bring people together and to think.

00:20:09.780 We never would have met in any alternative universe.

00:20:12.940 there's ways to make money from home there's ways to put your mind into solving humanity's problems

00:20:17.720 you know with a 300 laptop and your cell phone that is absolutely unbelievable the other thing

00:20:24.720 too is that when you grow up in a wealthy household you grow up in a house you know maybe

00:20:30.080 it's 2500 square feet it's got three or four bedrooms a little backyard and so on and so you

00:20:34.500 think well that's that's what i should have and it's like but your parents didn't have that when

00:20:38.680 they were teenagers. And your parents didn't have that when they were in their 20s. I didn't even

00:20:43.160 get a car until I was in my 30s. I bought my, with my wife, my first house, or our first house

00:20:47.820 in my 30s. And so you're not supposed to have these things when you're young. And so it feels

00:20:53.080 like being almost kicked out of paradise. It's like, I love this lovely suburban home with two

00:20:56.960 cars and all of that. And now I'm going out there and I'm, I lived in a house with five roommates

00:21:03.840 when I was in my 20s, I moved 18 times because I went to various universities and then worked up

00:21:09.400 north and all of that. So you're supposed to live this semi-starvation vagabond rubbing shoulders

00:21:15.520 with the proletariat lifestyle in your teens and in your 20s. And if all you do is compare that 0.94

00:21:21.320 to the wealth that your parents accumulated in their 40s and 50s, it makes no sense. It makes

00:21:26.500 no sense. So you're going to be kicked out of paradise if you grew up in a happy home. It's

00:21:30.820 going to take you a while. And listen, it may be true. It may be true that maybe you won't end up

00:21:35.060 making as much money as your parents. Maybe, just maybe, instead of being the first wealthiest

00:21:41.000 generation in the history of the planet, or the second, you might in fact only be the third,

00:21:46.180 only be the third wealthiest generation. With opportunities that your parents could never

00:21:51.620 have dreamed of, the amount of conformity that was required prior to the internet because you

00:21:55.840 could only deal with the people in your immediate environment who were strict at conforming,

00:21:59.880 The fact that you can go out and find like-minded people on the internet,

00:22:02.720 I mean, it has its pluses and minuses.

00:22:04.560 Some sexual deviancy gets reinforced by r slash dating toasters or whatever it is.

00:22:09.140 But for the most part, it's a fantastic and positive thing.

00:22:12.140 And the last thing I'll say is, with regard to doom and gloom,

00:22:16.020 it's a tale as old as time.

00:22:18.400 And you can read Roman texts about the youth are completely corrupt and decadent

00:22:23.300 and society is going to end.

00:22:24.300 Now, their society ended, but society as a whole did not.

00:22:27.440 I grew up with a nuclear war.

00:22:29.780 If you're older than all you fresh-faced, young-looking people on this, or young people, I'm going to be 60 this year, which means I was born in 1966, which means I grew up under the shadow of the Cold War with TV shows actually funded by the Kremlin, it turns out, to terrify us about nuclear war and the end of the world.

00:22:50.020 Then when that began to fade a little bit,

00:22:52.400 ooh, we got global cooling

00:22:53.540 that we were going to turn into an ice age

00:22:55.640 and we were going to all end up like Encino Man.

00:22:57.580 And then we got global warming

00:22:58.760 and then we got killer bees

00:23:00.300 and then we got the ozone layer depletion.

00:23:02.900 And I'm not saying none of these things

00:23:04.220 were at all relevant,

00:23:05.400 but they certainly did not turn out

00:23:06.980 to be anywhere close to the hype and fear

00:23:09.820 that was being promoted

00:23:11.360 because the powers that be

00:23:12.720 want to keep you nervous,

00:23:14.340 want to keep you scared,

00:23:15.560 want to keep you jumpy for two reasons.

00:23:17.140 One, it makes you want to flock to authority.

00:23:20.080 When we feel nervous, we flock for protection.

00:23:23.200 And number two, if you're nervous and jumpy,

00:23:26.140 then you can't relax into the kind of confidence and happiness

00:23:31.240 that, again, to go back to what I was saying earlier,

00:23:33.180 ends up with you being loved.

00:23:35.580 And if you're not loved, then you can't found families,

00:23:38.280 you can't have children,

00:23:39.860 and that means you don't have anything to fight for.

00:23:42.680 If they can get you to not have children as a whole,

00:23:45.140 assuming you can if they can get you to not have children they've won most of the battle because

00:23:50.580 then what do we fight for we fight for our kids right i mean i live a pretty comfortable life but

00:23:56.400 i want to make sure the world is a better place for my child and so keeping you jumpy keeps you

00:24:02.140 isolated keeps you so unhappy that no one can fall in love with you which means you can't get married

00:24:07.180 and have things that you love that you want to protect and if you have people that you desperately

00:24:14.380 love and desperately want to protect and desperately want to make a better world for,

00:24:18.740 well, you get to do some great things in the world that have their risks.

00:24:21.720 Of course, as most people have found out who've spoken uncomfortable truths.

00:24:26.440 But this PSYOP, I mean, just think of all the things.

00:24:30.200 Sometimes when I really want to waste an hour, I'll sit there, and I think everyone does

00:24:35.960 this probably at one time or another, and I go through the list in my head and I say,

00:24:39.400 okay, let's just think of all the things I was worried about in my life that did not come true.

00:24:47.800 It's an, I mean, I'm not too bad at prognostication, but I got to tell you,

00:24:51.680 it's an embarrassing list. I've never been able to get to the end of it.

00:24:55.320 Because what happens is I'm like, God, think of all the things I worried about that didn't come

00:25:00.020 true. And now I'm worried that I'm wasting time thinking about all of the things I'm worried

00:25:03.960 about that didn't come true. And it just goes round and round and round and breaking out of

00:25:07.260 that cycle and realize that while caution and fear and sometimes even anxiety can be a healthy thing

00:25:13.120 it definitely can be a rut that you get into and it does become an excuse for inaction and it then

00:25:20.520 does become a self-fulfilling prophecy because the world ends in our hearts if we're unloved

00:25:27.000 long before the tiny percentage possibility that there's going to be big dislocations in the world

00:25:31.780 come to pass. So again, that's sort of back to Scott, that you control what you can,

00:25:38.280 focus on the positive, and have the courage to build a life that you'll do almost anything to

00:25:44.260 protect, because that's the only way we're going to get to preserve our freedoms going forward

00:25:47.520 anyway. I love that. So I want to remind everybody, listen, you guys, as one of the hosts here on the

00:25:54.940 show, it's my job to remind you that everybody has different opinions and, you know, we don't

00:26:02.500 always agree with everybody who's a guest. A lot of you disagree with me. Um, and that's all good,

00:26:08.600 but sometimes I want to reference like a contrarian point of view, even maybe, maybe it's

00:26:15.960 something that is even contrarian to how I personally feel. Um, and I want to put it out

00:26:22.480 there because if I'm having like even a little feeling about something or Owen is, or Marcella

00:26:27.540 is, there's a bazillion people that fall in line with that. So it's good to put those things out

00:26:33.500 there just to hear a take on it, um, and try to represent people. But I, and also, you know,

00:26:41.560 I, like I said yesterday, I didn't always agree with Scott. Maybe I don't always agree with

00:26:46.460 Stefan or Owen or Marcella, and that's okay too. But if you can like, just pick up some

00:26:52.900 genius tidbits here, like I am, I think overall, sometimes like, you know, and they say, when you

00:26:59.620 go to therapy, it's not the therapy session where the work happens. It's after therapy,

00:27:05.620 when you're out in the real world and things come at you and thoughts come at you. And then you're

00:27:10.200 like, you know what? Uh, like maybe I remember Stefan saying that, and that's a good way to 0.99

00:27:15.140 look at that. I can reframe this thought in my head and, you know, maybe there's an alternate.

00:27:20.620 So, um, I like it. I, I like hearing all sorts of opinions. Um, I want to hear them all. I want

00:27:28.180 to hear what, you know, even if, you know, some people are like, well, I know the difference

00:27:32.420 between, you know, emotion and reality. Like, okay, I do too. Um, but some things, you know,

00:27:39.900 like I, I still feel, I feel things, even though I know the difference, I still have a feeling I

00:27:46.560 have a reaction. So that's why I like to bring these things up. And I don't know, I think it's

00:27:52.360 important that we understand that we, you know, we're like a little teeny, teeny little microcosm

00:27:58.320 of the everyday people that you're dealing with out there. So unless you're only talking to people

00:28:03.080 who fully agree with your exact mindset, which is never going to happen, this is just like,

00:28:08.920 you know we're like a little world right here um so i i appreciate all of these things and also

00:28:15.260 these are just opinions okay so that's my little spiel that i needed to say in the middle of this

00:28:21.900 and we're sorry that youtube isn't working right now we'll get on with it um marcella did you have

00:28:26.620 any questions from the group or owen i see a lot of questions going by

00:28:30.820 Getting ready for a game means being ready for anything, like packing a spare stick.

00:28:39.840 I like to be prepared.

00:28:41.500 That's why I remember 988 Canada's Suicide Crisis Helpline.

00:28:45.380 It's good to know, just in case.

00:28:47.540 Anyone can call or text for free confidential support from a trained responder, anytime.

00:28:53.000 988 Suicide Crisis Helpline is funded by the government in Canada.

00:28:56.260 well i i i guess i wanted to talk about this in terms of philosophy stefan you mentioned

00:29:05.280 virtue as being one of the important things and that that would lead you to being loved and having

00:29:10.240 you know what i would call a good life i think that's how some of the ancient philosophers

00:29:16.200 talked about it as you know you'll have a good life if you live this way if you have these virtues

00:29:21.100 and you stay away from the vices and things like that and it seems like more modern philosophers

00:29:26.400 like Nietzsche for example had a much more negative take on things and they would say how

00:29:31.420 the bad people are being put in power and the good people are being put down and the other thing that

00:29:37.060 I noticed when I studied stoic philosophy was they pointed out that back in those ancient

00:29:43.040 philosophy days philosophy wasn't actually a very actionable thing like it was it was teaching you

00:29:49.680 how to live life it was it was meant to be very actionable you would send kids

00:29:53.820 to these schools to study so that they knew how to live a good life but it

00:29:59.100 somehow transformed into this more academic discipline and also became much

00:30:03.400 more negative I think so how would you go about maybe selecting the right

00:30:08.820 philosophy and you know do you think philosophy should be more of an

00:30:13.440 actionable thing where you're actually saying okay I'm gonna adopt my

00:30:15.960 philosophy based on the actions i'm going to take and you know try to live the way my philosophy

00:30:21.440 tells me i should well philosophers have always had a pretty uneasy relationship with actionable

00:30:27.020 things in the world because socrates took pretty significant action in the world and ended up as

00:30:33.240 you know being murdered by the state plato said well you know enough of this theorizing i'm going

00:30:38.340 to go into politics and so he ran for office in syracuse and ended up being sold into slavery by

00:30:43.960 his political opponents and only got accidentally freed by one of a student who paid 400 drachma to

00:30:50.100 relieve him of his burden of being a slave. So it's kind of uneasy in terms of doing things

00:30:57.840 in the world. Evildoers are very happy if we just sit and think because they get to do their evil

00:31:04.680 deeds without interference. And so whenever you do good, and again, to reiterate on Scott's legacy

00:31:12.600 did a lot of good and brought a lot of uncomfortable truths to the fore. His stuff about DEI and being

00:31:17.360 a white male in the hiring environment, and to name one of many, many things that he did that

00:31:22.220 was very honest and courageous and really, really important to talk about. But one of the things

00:31:29.740 that I think is really important is to focus on action that can be sustained. And there's this

00:31:39.660 tension we want to do good in the world but when we do good in the world that is actionable we

00:31:44.180 interfere with the designs of evildoers right people who want to control and bully and subjugate

00:31:50.840 and humiliate and you know sadists and political power mongers of every kind addicts to political 0.60

00:31:55.820 power like political power is a genuine measurable addiction they've done these studies and i think

00:32:01.640 it's in bonobos as bonobos climb higher in the social hierarchy they get more dopamine like

00:32:07.940 it is an addiction and it hollows out the personality to control other people, which

00:32:13.240 is why control freaks tend to be so empty and also so violent, because anytime you interfere

00:32:18.520 with the supply of a drug, the addict gets manipulative, hostile, emotional terrorism

00:32:22.680 and violence will often emerge. So when you promote freedom, independent thought, skepticism,

00:32:29.860 reason, all of the stuff that Socrates was promoting, and even the pre-Socratics were

00:32:34.080 promoting, then you interfere with the goals of the addicts of power. And the addicts of power,

00:32:42.540 you know, whatever you say, your enemies get your say back, right? You can promote as much as you

00:32:46.840 want, and you know, you can fire these horrible missiles into Iran, and Iran gets its responses, 0.51

00:32:53.520 which are going to be somewhat unpredictable, because the fog of war is essential to any

00:32:57.400 approach to victory. So you want to do good in the world that is practical and actionable.

00:33:06.140 And then your enemies get their response. And then there's blowback and there's all of these

00:33:12.740 challenges that they'll work to, you know, do the two things that people generally do in the modern

00:33:16.600 world if they're in the wrong and can't make a good case is they'll, you know, attack your source

00:33:20.180 of income and they will attempt to destroy your reputation. And I think, Scott, if I have this

00:33:26.920 right, and of course you guys would remember this, but I think he said he lost over $100 million

00:33:31.420 in his support of Trump as a result of deals falling through. And he had a very lucrative

00:33:37.980 speaking engagement career that he lost most of. And so there's prices to be paid. Of course,

00:33:46.400 we want to leave good behind us more than money, because if evildoers get their way,

00:33:52.940 your money ends up worthless anyway, because they print it into oblivion or just steal it

00:33:56.420 in some Bolshevik-style revolution.

00:33:59.400 So, yeah, we want to do good.

00:34:01.200 And it's a sad thing about the world.

00:34:02.800 It's always been the case.

00:34:04.080 The more good you do, the more you can be loved.

00:34:06.840 The more good you do, the more you're going to be hated.

00:34:10.000 You know, like it's sort of the argument is if you cure cancer,

00:34:13.980 then all the people who have got cancer will love you,

00:34:17.260 but then all the people who are currently profiting off

00:34:19.240 whatever they do to try and treat cancer now

00:34:22.080 will not be happy with you.

00:34:24.560 The guy who invented the car, people liked the car.

00:34:27.740 All the people who shoveled horse poop off the roads and sold horses instead of cars,

00:34:32.600 they weren't so keen on that.

00:34:34.300 And that's just practical stuff.

00:34:36.900 And so the price of being loved is being hated.

00:34:42.000 And the price of doing practical good in the world is getting blowback,

00:34:45.780 which is why a lot of philosophers like to sit in dark rooms, think and scribble,

00:34:49.220 and not really interfere with the plans of anyone who's doing bad things.

00:34:53.620 But, you know, we kind of have to interfere with the plans of people who are doing bad things because that's the only kind of measurable courage that gets us love.

00:35:02.300 To get love is to get hate.

00:35:04.940 To me, it's a worthwhile bargain.

00:35:06.620 I would much rather be loved by my wife, my child and friends and family and have, I don't know, some mean typing on Wikipedia than I would be innocuous to evil, which means impossible to be morally admired and therefore loved.

00:35:22.060 It's just a deal that I'm willing to take. And I think that sort of framing, which I think Scott

00:35:27.620 would somewhat appreciate because he sacrificed a lot for the cause of what he perceived too,

00:35:32.400 and I think was in fact the good. And the loss is immediate. The gains in terms of love and

00:35:39.000 happiness take a long time, but it's well worth the wait. I wanted to say something. Thank you,

00:35:45.740 Stephan. I wanted to say Andy Wang has a question. He said, how do we do good when doing good is

00:35:53.480 punished like Daniel Penny got punished and during the process for saving people? He was the one that

00:35:59.140 was on the train. I get that, Andy, because you do get punished, right? So how would you respond

00:36:07.120 to something like that? So you can look at punishment as a negative or you can look at it

00:36:13.120 as a guidepost. So when I was, I worked up north after high school, gold panning and prospecting,

00:36:19.480 and this is long before GPS and satellite phones or anything like that. And the big terror was

00:36:23.980 getting lost because it's just endless wilderness up there in Northern Canada. It just goes on and

00:36:29.660 on. And, you know, several people a year would get lost and die. So what do you do? You blaze,

00:36:36.420 right? It's one of the things you do is you blaze trees so that you can always find your way

00:36:39.720 back. When I was in Africa exploring the jungle as a teenager, and my father lived there, I would

00:36:45.560 put little stones in arrows so I could find my way back. So you can look at punishment as

00:36:53.300 just a negative, or you can look at punishment as a sign you're doing something right.

00:36:59.360 So when I was in the business world, I would go up against other companies to try and get

00:37:03.040 contracts for the software that i wrote and i don't want my competitors to like me in fact

00:37:10.800 i want them to mutter and curse or when i when i come into the room and so you can look at this

00:37:17.000 kind of punishment as oh it's a negative it's hurtful and it's a harmful thing or or it's a

00:37:21.880 sign that you're doing something right and if you just look at it as a negative you're going to be

00:37:28.280 scared away from doing the right thing. If you say, well, you know, the old cliche that they only

00:37:35.140 shoot at you when you're over the target kind of thing. So you can look at it as just pure

00:37:39.260 punishment and negativity. And, you know, with regards to the Daniel Penny situation, it is very

00:37:44.080 risky in a leftist controlled judicial system to act in any manner of self-defense or defense of

00:37:52.080 a third party. They are, for reasons we can get into either this time or another time, depending

00:37:57.340 of the interest of the audience and the panel, they're very pro-criminal, and they're very

00:38:03.080 anti-self-defense. And of course, as a white male as well, you have all of these other political

00:38:07.960 considerations that are a challenge. So if you are in a heavily leftist-controlled legal system,

00:38:16.760 then self-defense is probably too risky, in defense of another is too risky. You know,

00:38:22.180 there's an old saying, it's better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6, in terms of the 0.68

00:38:26.140 coffin. So self-defense, yes, defense on behalf of another can be risky unless it's someone you

00:38:34.000 really care and love, but you are going to get opposition and you are going to get hostility

00:38:42.020 for doing good in the world. And you can look at that as a huge negative that is only isolated as

00:38:48.100 a negative, but everything is a cost benefit in life. Everything is a cost benefit in life.

00:38:53.520 If you look at the costs, you get depressed.

00:38:55.380 If you look at the benefits only, you get overly cocky.

00:38:58.140 You want that Aristotelian mean, right? 1.00

00:39:00.340 Too little courage, you're a coward. 1.00

00:39:01.820 Too much courage, you're foolhardy. 1.00

00:39:03.160 And you're running thinking you're Wonder Woman into some machine gun nest.

00:39:06.460 And you let out, right?

00:39:07.120 This goes very badly from there.

00:39:08.640 So try and find that balance.

00:39:11.940 And it is.

00:39:12.380 It's a changing and emerging situation.

00:39:14.860 The cost of doing good is that you will get blowback and you will get punishment and you

00:39:19.620 will get lied about and you will get slandered and you will, you know, bad people.

00:39:23.520 will dislike you. Well, yes, of course. I mean, you wouldn't, I don't want to use too many cancer

00:39:28.960 analogies given what happened to Scott, but I will say that if you're designing an antibiotic,

00:39:35.580 you want it to kill the bacteria, right? You don't want to be an antibiotic researcher saying,

00:39:40.860 well, I don't want to upset the bacteria. It's like, well, that is kind of your job. And if

00:39:45.400 you're promoting virtue in the world, people will go after you. It will be a negative. And you can

00:39:50.260 just say oh that's just a pure negative without saying look that's just a shadow cast by the

00:39:55.120 positive and trying in life to say I only want the positives and not the negatives is not reasonable

00:40:02.180 it's not rational it's like saying there are only negatives or there are only positive every

00:40:06.220 positive comes with its shadow every negative comes with its opportunity when I was deplatformed

00:40:11.720 well I would say I broke the trail I mean there was one or two people before me but I like to

00:40:17.120 think I was in there as an icebreaker nice and early. And I was like, okay, this could either be

00:40:21.020 a massive catastrophe or negative. My life work is destroyed and my income and the audience and

00:40:25.840 blah, blah, blah. I'm like, I am now liberated to pursue longer term truths rather than just doing

00:40:31.740 the immediate, you know, revolving door come and go of politics. I can really work. So I wrote books,

00:40:37.660 foundational philosophy. I wrote novels that will demonstrate the purpose and power of philosophy

00:40:42.780 in a more entertaining fashion, and so you can look at it as negatives, or you can just judo that

00:40:49.200 into a positive. If something bad happens to you, and you can't think of any positives, you're not

00:40:54.760 thinking hard enough. You've got to flip it on its head and say, what are the great things that

00:41:02.280 have come out of this? Because except for death, there's always an upside, and even in death, as

00:41:07.700 you could point to Socrates and Jesus and other people who gained great fame over passing their

00:41:13.520 expiration date. There are even positives in death, just not for you, but for the truth and

00:41:17.780 for virtue and so on. So if you say, well, the punishment is bad, what you're doing is you're

00:41:24.400 saying that the loss is bad, the hostility is bad, the negativity is bad, but realize that that is the

00:41:32.280 inevitable consequences of all the good in your life that allow you to love and be loved and do

00:41:36.400 good in the world and you choose the plus you choose the minus like if you choose to exercise

00:41:42.380 you're not playing piano at the same time choose to play piano you're not exercising at the same

00:41:45.980 time you're getting better at exercise you're getting worse at piano everything in life is

00:41:49.900 these kinds of trade-offs and if you just isolate and focus on the negatives you will end up

00:41:53.920 paralyzed because the negatives are always part and parcel of the positives yeah and i would also

00:41:59.440 throw in on the daniel penny situation yes what happened to him is is bad legally um but he was

00:42:06.580 then recognized as a hero by trump and vance and then he was hired by andreason horowitz so now

00:42:12.760 he's working in a venture capital firm i'm guessing he's much better off today than before any of this

00:42:16.740 happened so it's all a matter of perspective marcella i want you to jump in i know you had

00:42:23.920 question this this actually happened yesterday i don't know if you saw that stephan uh it happened

00:42:29.440 in the old dominion university where there was a uh someone that came in and shot i think killed

00:42:37.280 the rotc professor um he was part of the army um it was mohammed jalo i i'm not sure if i'm

00:42:47.440 pronouncing it right but he was killed with the bare hands of a person there i don't know if

00:42:54.480 they've named them um but basically he came in with a gun shot at them and the rotc members

00:43:03.120 defended themselves they haven't explained in what they used to kill this person we believe it's

00:43:09.920 a knife yeah i think he stabbed him yeah stabbed him 22 times so the the the the press asked if

00:43:17.280 there were going to be any charges this is virginia we're talking about so virginia is

00:43:22.720 pretty blue um they have not said that that the person that killed the terrorists is going to be

00:43:29.360 charged um it also happened in france as well at a in a train and the french did not charge

00:43:36.240 the Americans that ended up and made them heroes. So I don't know if you have anything to say on

00:43:42.180 that. And I do have a question on something else. Well, self-defense is absolutely justified morally

00:43:50.020 and it really depends on where you are. You know, in California or other blue states, it's tough.

00:43:56.920 I remember seeing a press conference from a sheriff in Florida. Some guy had shot at the police

00:44:01.960 and they emptied like 60 bullets into the guy.

00:44:06.220 And then the reporter was like, well, 60 bullets?

00:44:09.100 That's crazy. Why so many?

00:44:11.820 He's like, well, we would have done more, but we ran out of bullets.

00:44:15.220 And so there are places where the principle of self-defense is honored,

00:44:21.580 the sort of stand-your-ground stuff where there's no duty to retreat and so on.

00:44:27.160 And that has to do with the question of rehabilitation.

00:44:31.960 And this may be a bit of a male-female divide. I've sort of noticed it. I don't know if it's true or not. But when men look at a criminal who's done great evil, we generally tend to say, beyond repair, beyond reform, all we can do is segregate that person from society because reformation or rehabilitation is largely impossible.

00:44:52.540 And women, I think a little bit more, look at a criminal, and it's a perfectly valid position. 1.00

00:44:58.540 And they look back and they say, well, you know, he was raised in a foster home.

00:45:02.300 His parents were drug addicts.

00:45:03.780 You know, he never had a chance.

00:45:05.320 And all of that, I'm sure, is true.

00:45:07.620 Not everyone who's abused becomes a criminal, but almost everyone who's a criminal was horribly abused as a child.

00:45:13.140 And that level of sympathy is perfectly understandable and is an important counterbalance, right?

00:45:19.700 And men and women tend to balance each other really well, which is why we became sort of the top species on the planet, because we're a great team.

00:45:26.540 And when men tend to rule the justice system, it tends to be very Old Testament and very punitive, sometimes to an excessive degree.

00:45:36.380 When women or leftists are generally in charge of the criminal system, it tends to be a little bit over-conciliatory, over-sympathetic, and over one more chance. 1.00

00:45:46.060 And, you know, women, of course, evolved to deal with babies and toddlers and children because the men were out hunting and, you know, half the children died. 0.78

00:45:53.240 So women had to pretty much devote themselves to raising the next generation. 1.00

00:45:56.460 And I've been a stay-at-home dad myself, and you can't condemn your children, right?

00:46:00.620 You can't just say, well, they're beyond rehabilitation because they're still moldable.

00:46:04.040 They're still able to change and to grow and to progress.

00:46:08.460 And you can't condemn people until they become, you know, really committed evil adults.

00:46:12.680 And I think that that impulse to reshape personality, to give one more chance, to look for the best is a beautiful thing when you're dealing with children and toddlers.

00:46:22.720 You know, adult super predators may not be quite the right thing.

00:46:27.560 So, again, that's sort of, it's not specifically male, female, I would say.

00:46:31.500 There are these general trends, but there's tons of exceptions.

00:46:34.460 And, again, the combination of sympathy and justice, sympathy and harshness, understanding where people are coming from.

00:46:41.620 Also, having a pretty good certainty of where they're going to go, which is to worse and worse places, is a good combo.

00:46:47.680 And if you're in a place where it's mostly sympathy, then self-defense is very tough to maintain and defend against.

00:46:56.600 Although philosophically, it's perfectly justified.

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00:47:07.800 Employees also have the opportunity to grow their skills and their paycheck by enrolling in free skills training programs for in-demand fields like software development and information technology.

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00:47:22.800 dot ca i would just bring in scott's point of views on those issues that number one he did say

00:47:35.320 self-defense is kind of like you know absolute um but he also would he had that sort of duality

00:47:42.720 i think in what he said about crime that he said you know he doesn't believe in free will which

00:47:47.780 means a criminal didn't have a choice. They basically were put on that path. But at the

00:47:53.640 same time, he said, we still need to punish them. We still need to lock them up because that's the 0.59

00:47:58.080 only way the system will work. Well, interestingly enough, this proves your point, Stefan, because

00:48:05.480 the guy that the terrorist yesterday was actually supposed to be in prison for 11 years. He helped 0.99

00:48:11.740 uh isis convicted for 11 years he only served i think five years um and then he went out and

00:48:20.120 the first he was on probation the first thing he did was shoot um and kill i think two people so

00:48:28.100 um it shows i mean you you i wanted to get your perspective on um something else but but it

00:48:36.500 reminds me I lived in in Europe and in Europe they see it very differently when in Norway you can

00:48:43.760 you you're serving prison for murder but you can basically you're in the prison it looks like an

00:48:51.380 apartment and well like a room very nice room and then you're able to work outside of that prison

00:48:58.100 come back every day I think the same as in Denmark and so it's a very different over there they don't

00:49:06.120 believe in capital punishment and they believe in uh getting um you know helping someone change

00:49:17.480 their views and that they can be rehabilitated and all that um so but going to a different point uh

00:49:26.440 i saw your post on charlie kirk yesterday and i think somebody had a question on it regarding

00:49:32.440 and i don't know if you want to talk about that if that's too it's it's your show i i am an open

00:49:37.320 book whatever works for you is fine with me um so you posted something about erica kirk and charlie

00:49:46.680 stefan can you just hit me for the echo thanks sorry we're having like an echo thing um so

00:49:54.440 you posted um and i don't know if you want it to clarify what you meant or

00:49:59.160 oh sure yeah so I mean the murder of Charlie Kirk was of course appalling to to anybody with half a

00:50:10.840 heart in mind I didn't know him super well I'd worked with him once at a conference and we sort

00:50:16.120 of knew of each other and I sat on a panel with him and was he was an amazing man I mean his his

00:50:24.340 command of facts and memory it seemed that was almost nothing that he hadn't read and and also

00:50:28.580 had a steel trap mind. I'm good with principles. I'm like B.B. King. You know, if you've ever seen

00:50:32.760 him in the U2 documentary, B.B. King is like, I don't do chords. I'm good with solos. I'm not

00:50:38.180 good with chords. And I'm good with principles, but facts kind of come and go, like birds flying

00:50:43.680 through a barn with me. And his grasp in facts was just absolutely unparalleled. And it was a truly

00:50:48.800 stupendous mind that was shot down on that terrible day last fall. Now, with regards to

00:50:56.640 Erica Kirk, I, of course, I can't imagine the horror and the suffering with the children and

00:51:03.340 also seeing it recorded and repeated endlessly. I watched it once because I think it was somebody,

00:51:11.540 I think it might have been Tim Poole who was saying that he's, you know, he's in stable but

00:51:15.560 dangerous condition or something like that. And I saw the shot and I was like, I'm certainly no

00:51:21.520 doctor, obviously, but I was like, that's not a stable condition situation. He's gone.

00:51:26.640 Now, Erica Kirk, the issue that I had in particular with Erica Kirk, and again, I very much hesitate to criticize a widow, but, you know, as Plato said, you know, we care about people, but we have to care about the truth even more.

00:51:44.280 There was a lot of outrage and energy that was generated and a lot of exposure of the leftist sort of slavering, bloodthirsty, lustrous violence that characterized a lot of people's responses to Charlie Kirk.

00:51:55.460 and I very much very very strongly disagreed with what I felt and would argue was very performative

00:52:04.360 in terms of saying as she did a couple of days after the father of her children and the love

00:52:11.320 of her life was gunned down that she forgives the murderer and she got applause and that was

00:52:17.460 very performative and I believe I genuinely believe that took a lot of the energy and outrage

00:52:21.820 out of the response. And theologically, much though I sympathize with her suffering,

00:52:29.520 theologically, she's totally wrong. There is no instance in the Bible, there is no instance in

00:52:34.380 Christianity where forgiveness is granted without genuine contrition. You do not have the right to 0.68

00:52:43.340 forgive people who don't apologize, who don't have that genuine repentance, who don't have a

00:52:51.380 come to virtue or come to Jesus or come to virtue or come to morality kind of moment.

00:52:56.080 And so that performative apology really sucked the energy right out of the outrage.

00:53:01.080 And I thought it was kind of selfish.

00:53:03.000 It's that she wanted to be perceived as a good Christian.

00:53:05.300 I can't read her mind.

00:53:06.160 Obviously, it's just my particular opinion.

00:53:08.280 And I think it took a lot of energy out of the movement.

00:53:11.000 And, you know, if you've seen the videos of her, you know, talking with people,

00:53:15.760 and we can say, well, it's shock and this, that, and the other,

00:53:17.780 but she seems to be fairly positive about marketing opportunities and so on.

00:53:21.780 And I say, again, all of this with great sympathy towards her,

00:53:24.980 but it is the kind of behavior, you know, I don't want anyone to,

00:53:31.300 if I happen to get killed by someone, I'm just putting this forward,

00:53:34.940 of course, as a tiny, tiny possibility, please don't forgive them

00:53:39.180 if they've never repented within a couple of days afterwards.

00:53:42.820 That seems to me almost incomprehensible.

00:53:45.460 and I think it did great harm to the outrage that was necessary to fight back against this level of

00:53:53.360 violence that we see coming out of the left. But of course if you forgive when the other person

00:53:59.940 hasn't repented that is saying that you know better than God. God does not forgive people

00:54:05.720 in the Christian theology. God does not forgive people without repentance and so to will that

00:54:11.180 is performative and I thought was again we can say it was shock and so on I'm simply talking I

00:54:16.080 can't read her mind but I can certainly look at the effects that it had and the energy and the

00:54:21.220 outrage kind of went out of the shock and and horror of Charlie's assassination and I think

00:54:29.720 that that her behavior uh since I gotta tell you like I mean I I can't imagine uh being in that

00:54:37.340 situation. I can imagine. I think we can all imagine it. But honestly, fireworks and glitter

00:54:41.320 pants and things like that, it just doesn't seem right to me. And I'm not trying to police

00:54:47.640 other people's grieving, but it's a little hard to follow as a whole. And that is a challenge,

00:54:55.540 because as a Christian, he would have, I assume, prayed to God for guidance and so on. And

00:55:02.000 I don't know that he got the right answer before he got married and so on. So it is troubling.

00:55:11.940 And it is, I think, part of this excessive empathy, this pathological sympathy stuff that

00:55:19.820 honestly, if somebody gunned down somebody that I truly loved, I would be quite the opposite of

00:55:30.480 forgiveness pretty much for the rest of my life. And I think we needed some of that energy in the

00:55:35.100 West. I just was, I wanted to add stuff on, um, my father was assassinated. He was a politician

00:55:41.760 in El Salvador. So, um, I know I'm not Erica, you know, but I did lose my significant other as well.

00:55:49.620 And I have to say that when we mourn, we mourn differently. Uh, everybody mourns differently,

00:55:57.660 I, for example, for the killers of my father, I, for a long time, I held a lot of rage,

00:56:06.880 but I forgave them, you know?

00:56:09.160 So part of the reason she might have forgiven them is selfish, like you said, and it's part

00:56:16.020 of being able to move forward as a person.

00:56:19.340 So that's, that's my only take is what I know from my own experience.

00:56:24.580 Um, but that's, sorry, that's, that's a, that's a great point. And I, I certainly understand the,

00:56:31.280 the argument that people make that forgiveness is not for the other person, but it's for you

00:56:35.420 to be able to move on and so on, but not two or three days afterwards. And also the other thing

00:56:40.840 too, is that that would be a private act, not a, to the world on stage with the eyes of,

00:56:48.380 everyone upon you, because if you publicly say, I forgive the man who murdered the father of my

00:56:57.120 children a couple of days ago with no repentance on that person's part, then you're saying that

00:57:02.460 that's Christian and that's good. And if you say that's Christian, then that's good, then the people

00:57:07.340 who want to throw him in jail or give him the death penalty are somehow being not good Christians.

00:57:13.540 In other words, if every Christian, and I don't mean to pick on Christians, there's lots of religions that have this forgiveness stuff, but if every Christian were to forgive the murderer, they'd just let him go, because he's forgiven. Just let him go. 0.56

00:57:26.920 So her forgiveness is something that is only possible because other people specifically don't forgive.

00:57:33.860 And as a philosopher myself, and a moral philosopher, I look for these kinds of contradictions.

00:57:38.300 So if one person's forgiveness of a murderer is only able to be performed because other people, usually men, specifically don't forgive that person and lock him up and give him the death penalty if that's what happens legally and end up taking his life.

00:57:57.120 In other words, she can forgive because other people refuse to forgive.

00:58:01.580 So is it good or bad to forgive?

00:58:03.200 Well, if everyone forgives, we let all the criminals out and society collapses.

00:58:06.580 if society can only be sustained again according to to scott's i disagree with forgiveness

00:58:12.820 you get forgiveness doesn't i mean i can't mind read erica but it does not mean that he cannot

00:58:21.700 face capital punishment she doesn't whether she wants that or not he he will be facing that

00:58:28.260 so that for the christians it may be that they forgive for their own selves but they won't

00:58:34.180 forget and they'll, like, keep attacking. I hear what you're saying, but to me that

00:58:40.620 makes the concept of forgiveness a little hard to understand because it's being used in two ways.

00:58:47.420 So if someone does something to me that's negative and, you know, they apologize,

00:58:54.740 they make restitution, and I say, I forgive you, then I'm saying I'm not going to punish you.

00:59:02.220 that's what forgiveness means to me. Like we're square. It's over. It's done. Some guy dings my

00:59:06.080 car and he pays to get it fixed. And I'm like, okay, it's water under the bridge. Move on.

00:59:10.100 Right. Then I don't get to, I'm going to press charges too. Right. So to me, forgiveness is

00:59:15.500 it's even, it's okay. Restitution has been achieved. Things are fine. And if we're going

00:59:21.200 to say forgiveness also means inflicting the death penalty on someone. And we use the same word

00:59:28.440 to when, you know, some restaurant brings the food cold,

00:59:33.580 oh, it's fine, don't worry about it, it's no problem, right?

00:59:36.300 As opposed to, yes, it's so bad

00:59:38.780 that we're going to have to take your life for what you did.

00:59:41.180 Then to me, the word becomes kind of,

00:59:43.740 you can't use the word to mean both we're even and it's fine 1.00

00:59:47.440 and I'm going to inflict a death penalty on you. 0.99

00:59:50.660 Yeah, and I was going to just add 0.99

00:59:52.040 that it seems to me like it's just the wrong word,

00:59:54.360 that I think it is used in two ways.

00:59:57.380 I think the, you know, some people think of forgiveness as just, I'm no longer going to hate

01:00:01.940 this person, or I'm not going to hold on to that hatred or that revenge or that feeling that is

01:00:07.520 really within the person doing the forgiving. And it is more of a, I don't know if I'd call it

01:00:13.000 selfish, but it's a, it's a, you know, self-centered act. And I think it is a very different concept

01:00:19.080 to me than saying we're square, no punishment, you know, everything's fine. We're back to even

01:00:25.380 because that's clearly not the case. And I would guess if you asked Erica, should this person go

01:00:30.300 to jail? She would say, yes, I don't know how she feels about the death penalty, but she would

01:00:34.360 probably say, yes, that person should be locked up and should be punished for what they did.

01:00:39.680 And again, that, you know, it's all about how you define forgiveness, I suppose, but it almost

01:00:44.620 seems like we need a different word for what Erica was, I think, saying, which was, I'm going to no

01:00:50.520 longer hate this person thank you for in um bringing up erica because this erica is on a

01:00:56.540 timeline um so listen these are opinions right i um and i think the chat was pretty agreeable

01:01:06.180 in both directions to everybody here marcella you are a powerhouse dynamic woman who has just 0.99

01:01:13.860 been through so much and I'm going to cry and prevails and you're a superhero. So we love you

01:01:21.480 so much. And thank you for sharing that personal side of you with us. Stefan, amazing. You gave us

01:01:30.540 so much to think about. I saw a lot of people once again saying they're going to have to watch

01:01:35.140 this a few times because there was a lot of good information here. And I'm also glad that you

01:01:39.360 brought up on your own that the next time you're on, we can talk about something because you know

01:01:44.080 I'm going to ask you to come back over and over and over again. So I would like to thank you again.

01:01:50.340 And Stefan, any closing remarks before we have our final sip? Well, first of all, Masala, I just

01:01:55.960 wanted to express my absolutely deep and heartfelt condolences, you know, virtual hug across the

01:02:02.100 planet, digital sympathies flowing your way. That is brutal. And to your point, to reinforce your

01:02:07.640 point if people have done us evil at some we can't just stare at that and be in in horror and and

01:02:14.220 rage and and frustration and tension because that then again as i said at the beginning we don't

01:02:18.260 surrender more than we have to so if some people have done us great harm at some point we do have

01:02:22.260 to move on and we do have to kind of let that go because we can't just circle the drain of people

01:02:28.460 who've injured us just as we you know we all injure each other from time to time and we don't

01:02:32.700 want people to just only focus on the negative so i i completely agree with you that at some point

01:02:36.900 we need to move on. Again, I don't know. The public, it's a virtue to forgive. A couple of

01:02:42.360 days after, it seems to me that there is a process of grieving that we can't just leap over. Like

01:02:49.180 there's a post that you get a wound, right? You get a stab. It takes a while to heal. You get

01:02:52.560 surgery. It takes a while to heal. You can't just go play squash two days after your surgery. So I

01:02:57.860 completely agree with you that we do need to find ways to move on from the evils that have been

01:03:03.240 done to us. So I'm not saying that, you know, we hold that grudge forever and we simply focus on

01:03:09.100 the negatives forever. So I'm with you there a hundred percent. And I just, again, really want

01:03:13.100 to sympathize with the wrongs and the evils that you have suffered. And the fact that you have

01:03:18.260 obviously moved on with grace and positivity is a magnificently inspiring achievement. And I just

01:03:23.820 wanted to say that. Yeah. My website, freedomain.com, blah, blah, blah. But yeah, are we

01:03:28.960 closing to our our end sip the end time sipping is occurring yes we are so you guys grab your mugs

01:03:36.560 enjoy this little echo is our special little gift to you a closing tip to scott thank you again to

01:03:44.320 stefan i love you owen and marcella and everybody in the chat you're all amazing have an amazing

01:03:50.560 weekend marcella you're doing the space tomorrow owen has a day off same time same place all right

01:03:59.920 you guys love you so much to scott to scott

01:04:03.440 bye guys

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - March 13, 2026

Episode 3114 - The Scott Adams School 03⧸13⧸26

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