Ep 259 - Overpopulation And Other Myths
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
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Summary
Antinatalism is the belief that human life is a curse, and no one should ever have babies again. Also, Bill Nye is a fake scientist, and Chips Ahoy has decided to sell cookies by using drag queens.
Transcript
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Today on the Matt Wills Show, we're going to talk about anti-natalism, which is the belief that human life is a curse and no one should ever have babies again.
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The thing is, this philosophy is more prevalent than you think, so we're going to discuss it.
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Also, we'll talk about the sad decline of Bill Nye, the fake scientist, and Chips Ahoy has decided to sell cookies by using drag queens.
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Finally, I got an email from someone asking a very simple, easy question is, why did God create the world?
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So I'll try to answer that easy question today as well on the Matt Wills Show.
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All right, I'll be at Northwestern University tonight talking about the left's war on reality, their efforts to redefine reality by redefining life, marriage, and gender.
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So we'll be talking about that tonight. Hope to see you there.
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All right, The New Yorker shared this week an editorial written by an anti-natalist philosopher named David Benatar.
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No relation to Pat Benatar, I think, or maybe there is.
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The title of the piece is The Case for Not Being Born.
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Okay, now this article was actually originally published a little while ago, but it's making the rounds again online.
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And it's worth talking about because it articulates an especially toxic way of thinking that I think is also increasingly prevalent in our society today.
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Antinatalism, if you've never heard the phrase before, and I only recently came across it myself,
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So similar and related to the pro-abortion movement, or maybe it's, you might call it a logical conclusion of the pro-abortion movement,
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antinatalists think that no child should ever be born ever again.
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That's their position, that no one should ever be born.
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And they, I think, generally will say that this should be a voluntary decision that we make to stop having babies,
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although there are some who will say that the government should also potentially enforce that policy.
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Now, some of the people who believe in this philosophy have organized into, this is a real thing,
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the voluntary human extinction movement, which is not a joke.
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It's a group that, as the name suggests, believes that humans should choose to go extinct.
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Now, at least there's the voluntary part of it.
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We should be concerned if the, if they ever lose, if they ever lose the V, you know,
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and it just becomes the human extinction movement, hem, then that's, that's, that's not too good.
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A guy by the name of Les Unite, which I assume is probably a pseudonym, but who knows?
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He started the group back in the, in the nineties, I think.
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If you're curious about them, their, their website has an FAQ section.
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And here's the first frequently asked question that they answer.
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It says, what is the voluntary human extinction movement?
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And the answer is it's a movement, not an organization.
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It's a movement advanced by people who care about life on planet earth.
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We're not just a bunch of, they care about life.
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We're not just a bunch of misanthropes and antisocial misfits taking morbid delight.
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Whenever disaster strikes humans, they say they're not just that.
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So they are that also, but just not only that, uh, nothing could be farther from the truth.
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Voluntary human extinction is the humanitarian alternative to human disasters.
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It's, it's a humanitarian belief that humans shouldn't exist.
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We don't carry on about how the human race has shown itself to be a greedy,
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amoral parasite on the once healthy face of this planet.
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That type of negativity offers no solution to the inexorable horrors, which human activity is causing.
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Rather, the movement presents an encouraging alternative to the callous exploitation and
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As a voluntary human extinction movement volunteers know, the hopeful alternative to the extinction
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of millions of species of planets, of plants and animals is the voluntary extinction of one
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So we're just, we're going to go extinct and we can all be encouraged by that possibility.
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Um, each time another one of us decides to not add another one of us to the burgeoning
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billions already squatting on this ravaged planet, another ray of hope shines through
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Whenever, whenever human chooses to stop breeding, earth's biosphere will be allowed to return
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to its former glory and all remaining creatures will be free to live, die, evolve, and will perhaps
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pass away as so many of nature's experiments have done throughout the eons.
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I think it sounds like a great idea now that you mention it.
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Um, so that's one reason for being an antinatalist because we are allegedly destroying the earth.
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And that's why I say that this is an increasingly prevalent philosophy.
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Uh, now most antinatalists won't call themselves that probably have never even heard the phrase
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Um, and most certainly aren't going to join up with the voluntary human extinction movement,
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but anyone who goes on about overpopulation and says that we, we have to solve overpopulation,
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Uh, people that say that, you know, we need to stop having so many kids so as to save the
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planet, anyone who holds that position is by definition an antinatalist.
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And, uh, a lot of people in the West hold that position.
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A lot of us do overpopulation by the way, is, uh, is a, is a prominent myth.
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And anyone who thinks, thinks that the earth, earth is overpopulated.
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Well, what do you, when did we go from populated to overpopulated?
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Uh, what, what do you think the capacity is and where did you come up with that number?
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Um, if, if there is a max capacity for the earth, for human beings, we are, we are not
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anywhere close to it and we'll never get close to it because human birth rates are declining
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Now the population is still growing and it will continue to grow for a few more decades,
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There are people are having fewer and fewer kids.
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So we're not anywhere close to, if there is a max capacity, we're not anywhere close to
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Um, because right now only a tiny fraction of the earth's land surface is populated.
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Um, half of the earth is still, is still an untamed wilderness right now today.
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And, uh, and then you have a lot of very spread out rural, rural areas and so on.
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In fact, you could fit the entire population of the world into Texas.
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You could not only fit us all into Texas, but we could all have our own, uh, our own townhouse
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I mean, we wouldn't have a ton of space because we're all living in Texas, but, um, we could
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all fit in Texas with a townhouse and, uh, and a yard.
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So, uh, which would leave the whole rest of the globe completely unpopulated.
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Now, have you ever noticed that whenever, whenever you read an article about overpopulation, it's
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always accompanied by a picture of Manhattan or, uh, Hong Kong or LA or, you know, uh, a
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But those are relatively small areas where millions of people have chosen to cram themselves
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And yeah, Manhattan, um, does have a max capacity, um, a max capacity.
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That's much larger than you think because we started living vertically, right?
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Unless we start building skyscrapers rather than living horizontally, we live vertically now.
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And that's how we can cram all these people into a small space.
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But, you know, if you leave the city and you travel across the country, which, um, I think
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it's no, no, I don't have statistics in front of me, but I'm willing to bet that the majority
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of people who believe in overpopulation live in cities.
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And these are probably a lot of people who have never even been anywhere else.
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If you actually drive across the country, uh, what you're going to notice is that there
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are vast swaths of inhabitable, but uninhabited land, vast swaths of it.
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Same thing in China or Russia, any other large country you can think of.
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What you're going to find is you're going to have cities where a lot of people crammed
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in, but then there's a lot of land where no one's living.
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There is a problem with overconsumption, uh, and, and waste.
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That's a problem, but that has nothing to do with population.
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If, if you're buying more food than you need, and then you end up cleaning out your fridge
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once a week and throwing out a bunch of food that's gone bad because you didn't eat it.
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Well, you're not doing that because of the population.
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Um, and that's an individual decision and yeah, we should encourage people to make better
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decisions, but that doesn't mean that we need fewer people.
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What we need is we need more responsible people and it's good to advocate for responsibility,
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but to claim that, well, instead of being responsible, let's just have fewer people.
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Um, and you can't, you can't say that, uh, greater population numbers, um, lead to more
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people starving because there's not enough food to go around or, or whatever.
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Well, you know, 5,000 years ago, there were 10 or 15 million people living on the planet
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and a far greater percentage of those people would have been destitute by our standards,
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Um, we have figured out better ways to feed people and provide for people.
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There are still people who are destitute, but we are much better today at feeding people
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and producing food and doing all that than we were 5,000 years ago or a thousand years
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Now, so the overpopulation thing is, is, uh, is just a myth.
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Um, but this article in the New Yorker about David Benatar takes a different approach.
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Um, because you have people who say that we should stop having babies because we're killing
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It says David Benatar may be the world's most pessimistic philosopher and antinatalist.
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He believes that life is so bad, so painful that human beings should stop having children
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Um, in a, in a book he writes, while good people go to great lengths to spare their children
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from suffering, few of them seem to notice that the one and only guaranteed way to prevent
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all the suffering of their children is not to bring those children into existence in the
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In Benatar's view, reproducing is intrinsically cruel and irresponsible, not just because a horrible
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fate can befall anyone, but because life itself is permeated by badness.
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In part for this reason, he thinks that the world would be a better place if sentient life
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Sounds like a, maybe the title of an emo song in like 2002, permeated by badness.
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Um, and yeah, this is, this is really nothing new.
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This is what emo bands have been saying this for, you know, decades now.
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This is basically a dashboard confessional song that this guy is putting into book form.
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Um, the idea here is that life itself is so miserable, so painful that it's better to
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Now that may sound like an extreme view and it is, but it's not a fringe view, or at least
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And there are a lot of nihilists today in the world, people who believe that life is
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And if life is meaningless, then pain and suffering is meaningless.
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And if pain and suffering is meaningless and life incorporates so much of both, then it
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isn't a stretch to say, well, maybe life is a net negative in the end.
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Um, it seems to me certainly that if there is no God, which these people, you know, if
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you're an antinatalist or a nihilist or whatever, then you, you almost certainly don't believe
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If there's no God, then human consciousness at the very least is a disastrous mistake
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Uh, this New Yorker piece quotes a line from Matthew McConaughey's character in True Detective
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Russ Cole, when he says, um, human consciousness is a tragic misstep in evolution.
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And without God, yeah, that seems probably true because we not only live meaningless and
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short lives in that case, but we are doomed to be aware of the meaninglessness and brevity
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Um, we have to live always with the awareness that we are hurtling headlong into non-existence.
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And I think that's what, what Benatar is saying.
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But I think the big flaw in the idea that we need to stop having babies to save the planet,
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or we need to stop having babies to spare our future babies from the pain of existence,
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um, is that consciousness is the only thing capable of perceiving value in the first place.
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So the thing that makes our, our planet special is that it is our planet.
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We are conscious and aware and able to cherish it.
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Without that, um, our planet is just one among trillions in the, there are probably trillions
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And if, if, um, if there's no human life on this planet, no one around to cherish it and
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love it and, you know, um, appreciate it, then who really cares?
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And then it's just, it's just, like I said, it's one of trillions.
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Um, I would say that our planet matters because we're here because we live on it.
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It doesn't make sense to say that we should go extinct so that we don't destroy our home.
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Because if we're, if we're, if we are extinct, then it's not our home anymore.
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And if it's not our home anymore, then it's just one truck, one rock among trillions of
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And, um, I don't see how it has any special value in that case.
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Yeah, it has other life on it, but that other life is not capable of perceiving the
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Um, a horse can't love the earth and a horse can't love horses.
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Um, so it's kind of the old, if a tree falls in the forest thing, if the earth is beautiful,
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but no one is around to perceive and appreciate its beauty, then why does its beauty matter?
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I guess it still is, but there's no one around who can notice it.
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Now you might say that even without people, the earth would still matter.
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Its beauty would still matter because it glorifies God.
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But again, these antinatalists don't believe in God.
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So from their perspective, human life dies off and really there's no one left.
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Um, so far as we know in the whole universe to appreciate the universe's beauty, the thing
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that makes the earth so special is because as far as we know, it is the only, uh, planet
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in the universe that has, that plays host to conscious life or any kind of life, as far
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You get rid of that conscious life, then what's the point?
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Now it's like if you took the Mona Lisa and, um, you, you threw it into the ocean.
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Well, yeah, then it's the Mona Lisa will still be beautiful on the seafloor while it's sitting
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down there, but you may as well have destroyed it because no one is going to be able to see
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The fish might see it, but the fish don't care to them.
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Um, so it would be little solace to say, well, yeah, I threw it into the ocean, but it's still
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You know, it's, it's down there somewhere being beautiful.
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But what's the point of a beauty that no one who is capable of appreciating beauty will
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And it's kind of the same thing with Benatar's argument that if, if, that life is, you know,
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people say, well, life is so miserable, so why curse people with it?
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Second of all, it doesn't make sense to say that non-existence is somehow better than life,
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Because a word like better assumes value, but non-existence can have no value.
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So to say that something is better than another thing, you must be saying that the better thing
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But if, but non-existence by definition has no value, so it cannot be better than anything.
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And as nothing, it can't be better than something, even if that something is, is pain.
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Um, there's a logical problem with all these ways of thinking.
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Um, that we're going to somehow, you know, uh, save our, our home by making it so that
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it's not our home anymore because we're all dead.
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But it's, uh, like I've been saying, it's, uh, it's a lot of people sort of think this
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And it's, um, it's a very troubling sign because what I see really is a Western culture just
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You have Western culture is giving up on itself, giving up on life, giving up on existence.
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Um, and that is a, uh, certainly a troubling sign for the future.
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He popped up on John, John Oliver's show this, this, uh, past weekend.
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By the end of this century, if emissions keep rising, the average temperature on Earth
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There are a lot of things we could do to put it out.
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I didn't mind explaining photosynthesis to you when you were 12, but you're adults now,
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Bill Nye, uh, he's so relatable when he curses, isn't he?
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So he's, uh, you know, he just, he gets me as a millennial.
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Has anyone, I'm trying to think, well, I posed this question yesterday online.
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Has anyone ever gone so far from one end of the likability spectrum to the other?
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Because you think back to the nineties, Bill Nye was, uh, you know, people in my generation,
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we grew up with him and he was a charming kind of nerdy, uh, fake scientist guy on TV.
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And, uh, and now he's just a insufferable partisan hack.
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Uh, has anyone, and I said that and a few people suggested, well, OJ Simpson, Bill Cosby.
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So maybe another way of putting it is, has anyone ever traveled so far from one extreme
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end of the likability spectrum to the other without committing a violent crime?
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And I think, uh, probably no one has done it as effectively as Bill Nye going from so likable
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Uh, he, he, but it, it, it shows you what the left has done with science.
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I think it's kind of, it's, it's sort of perfect that Bill Nye has become the left's scientist.
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He is their scientist of note, uh, and the guy that they go to, to make a scientific point
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when he's not even a, he's not a real scientist.
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He's, as he pointed out in the video, he, he taught, uh, you know, eight-year-olds about
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Um, I think he got a, he got a bachelor's in mechanical engineering or something.
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He got a bachelor's in mechanical engineering, and then he taught eight-year-olds about photosynthesis
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But it's, it's very telling that the left has taken him and he is now their voice of
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science because that's what the left has done with science.
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They've turned it into a, into this, into something that's certainly whatever else you want to say
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And Bill Nye is the, is the mascot for that brand.
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Um, speaking of brands, Chips Ahoy, uh, decided to celebrate Mother's Day.
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Chips Ahoy, you know, the company that with the really bad cookies, uh, really inedible cookies.
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And I'm not just saying that because of this, what I'm about to show you, but who the, especially
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the, the hard cookies, the Chips Ahoy, I, I, who, does anyone eat those?
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How could you, I don't, what I don't understand is how could you ever eat a hard pre-packaged
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If you've ever had a homemade chocolate chip cookie in your life, how could you possibly
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eat that other stuff when, when you have that comparison in mind?
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But that aside, um, this is how they decided to, uh, celebrate Mother's Day.
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And I am so thankful to have a mother like mine who supports me through all my craziness
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and loves on me and buys me Chips Ahoy cookies, Chewy, the original, everything under the sun.
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And what's the sweet gesture for you to do to your mama, your real mama, your drag mama,
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whichever mama, somebody, whoever take care of you, whoever you feel or consider your
00:25:42.440
You can't buy the cookie without some milk, honey.
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It's time to celebrate, love, all that cookies.
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And if you don't, how you going to celebrate Mother's Day?
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So now Chips Ahoy, after releasing that video, they have then been, then gone on to
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taunt the people who are mad because they had a drag queen selling their cookies.
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And no, but see, this is, again, this is something the left does where they, they, they do something
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Why do you need a drag queen to sell your cookies?
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It's a really weird, bizarre, confusing, dumb thing.
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I really don't care how Chips Ahoy sells cookies, but why do you need to, if you want to sell
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cookies, why do you need to put drag queens into it?
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You notice this with, with that, this is what they're doing.
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They, they incorporate drag queens into everything.
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Now they're really trying to get this drag queen thing going.
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How is it that a guy wearing a native American headdress appropriates native American culture,
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but that dude in that video doing this ridiculous, embarrassing impression of a woman does not
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That's what I want to under, how is it that you can appropriate native American culture, uh, black culture, Asian culture,
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a white person opens up a Chinese food restaurant.
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How is that thing that you, that, that act that you just witnessed there?
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How is that not an appropriation, um, of womanhood?
00:28:13.080
I recently asked a good friend of mine, several questions about religion.
00:28:17.080
She informs me that she has sent religious questions to you and you have answered some of
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them on your daily show, which she listens to every day.
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She thought that if I sent my questions directly to your email, you might answer them on your
00:28:27.120
The main question I have is why did God create the universe?
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The only answer I can find on the internet is that he slash she created the universe.
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So that human beings can worship him slash her.
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Why would an all powerful, all knowing, all benevolent supreme being need or even want
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My other two questions I raised with your listeners are much simpler than the one above.
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First, why do people have different blood types?
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It would seem that if everyone had the same blood type, it'd be easier and faster to cure
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The last question is why do we only have one heart?
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We have two eyes, two ears, two kidneys, two lungs, but only one heart.
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It says our heart is the only important body part, or is the most important body part,
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In order to exist, it would seem that we should have two of those.
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The last question, the last two questions are similar to the website that asks the question,
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These questions may seem trivial, however, I know that if I had the ability to create
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a human being without any limitation on my ability to do so, the extra heart is a no-brainer.
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I'm just trying to find some common sense answers to what I consider reasonable questions.
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I, and almost all non-believers, would easily become believers if we were shown solid proof
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Let me, if you don't mind, for this, for our purposes now, I will hone in on one of those
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questions, and maybe I'll answer the, I can answer the other ones in a follow-up segment of
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And then this bit about why does he want worship.
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The way that I would answer that question, and anytime you're dealing with a why question
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with God, it's, you're not going to be able to get a perfect answer.
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Because the first answer is, I'm not God, so I can't give you his motivations.
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I mean, I can't even give you, I can't even tell you for sure the motivations of another
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I can't tell you for sure why anyone did anything that they did, because that requires
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me to be able to read their mind, which I can't do.
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But what we can do is arrive at some reasonable conclusions based on our own logical thinking
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and based on what they told us, and we can patch that together and come up with maybe
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So, my answer would be that God created the universe out of an act of love.
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Now, the Christian belief is that God is all loving, as you, I think, mentioned in your
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And so, it makes sense that God, out of this act of love, if it is perfect love, then it
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It is love that creates its own object of its love.
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And that's the answer also that I get from Scripture.
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That's the answer I get from 2,000 years of Christian teaching and Christian philosophy,
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is that God created the universe out of an act of love.
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Now, in terms of worship, why does God want to be worshipped?
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But it's more that we, as human beings, have a need to worship.
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And I think even as an atheist, you would see that, right?
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We have a need to look up to someone or something, to admire something, to have a kind of model to
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strive to emulate, something to strive towards.
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And I think you see that all throughout human history.
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And you see it in the hearts of all human beings.
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And I think as an atheist, you have to ask yourself, well, how did that come about?
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If we are nothing but the product of blind evolution, then where did this capacity, not just capacity, but need to worship?
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And how is it that unthinking matter could develop this desire, need for something like worship?
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It just, it seems illogical that unthinking, inanimate matter could create that.
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I think you have your own question to answer, which is, how did we get this need and desire for worship?
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Where does the concept of worship even come from in a godless universe?
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My answer is that it is a fundamental desire, part of the human condition.
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You might worship money, you worship your career, you might worship your people around you, you worship celebrities, people worship a lot of things.
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But what God is saying is, none of those things are appropriate objects for worship, because none of those things are perfect.
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What God is saying is, I am all those things, so I am the proper direction for your worship to be, to go towards.
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It's just about the proper ordering of this innate desire that we have.
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Why don't you, I just posed a question to you, and email me back in answer to that question.
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I'm very curious to see what your answer will be, and then we can continue the discussion from there.
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This is from Michael, says, Mr. Walsh, why is my generation so ungrateful?
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We live in literally the best time in history, yet all we do is complain about the patriarchy, corporate overlords, and so on.
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What's wrong with people that they can't see how great life is?
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Yeah, well, this is one of the problems when you, it's just, we're talking about the human condition.
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So, it goes back, here's another thing with the human condition, is that you take for granted, we just naturally take for granted, the situation that we are born into.
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It's just, so it's hard for us, we are born into this very comfortable existence, and we can acknowledge intellectually that there are people in the world who don't have such an existence.
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And we can acknowledge that, if we look back through history, there was a time when almost nobody lived such an existence.
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We can acknowledge that, we know that it's true, but we can't really appreciate it.
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To us, it's abstract, it's just a fact that's hovering out there.
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Now, someone who falls on hard times, and lives a destitute, impoverished life for a time, and then climbs back out of that, well, now they can appreciate more of their comfort.
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But if you've never experienced that, it's hard to appreciate it.
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And that's one of the reasons why I am such an advocate for people leaving, rather than staying home with your family until you're 27 or 28, and then you're financially stable, then you go out and you get married or whatever.
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Go out on your own before that, and really on your own, without your parents bankrolling it.
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Leave the house when you're 18, 19, 20, and live on your own, and make some sacrifices, and live a less comfortable life.
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And it's going to make you more grateful for the comforts of life, I think, among all the other advantages.
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And, you know, when I say that about how well we should leave the home, people will say to me that, yeah, but historically, you'll find that people would stay home with their families until they got married.
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And that's the way that it worked historically, all throughout human history.
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But the difference is that, you know, back in the day, a man would stay home in his parents' house until he got married.
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He wasn't just living at home and his parents were taking care of him when he was 23.
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No, he was out working the fields at the age of 20.
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And he was helping to keep the family going until he went out and started his own family.
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And there are still places in the world where that's the way it works.
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That's completely different from what we have today, which is you just stay home and your parents take care of you like you're a baby until you're 28.
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And then you go out and they're still paying your bills and everything.
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That is what we have today are people who are infantilized.
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And among all the problems with that, I think you have this lack of gratitude where people have never had to sacrifice.
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They've never had to really worry about where's their next meal going to come from?
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Today on The Ben Shapiro Show, the Trump administration doubles down on the Chinese trade war and Democrats defend anti-Semitism as usual.