The Troubadour Podcast
"It is the honourable characteristic of Poetry that its materials are to be found in every subject which can interest the human mind." William Wordsworth The Troubadour Podcast invites you into a world where art is conversation and conversation is art. The conversations on this show will be with some living people and some dead writers of our past. I aim to make both equally entertaining and educational.In 1798 William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge published Lyrical Ballads, which Wordsworth called an experiment to discover how far the language of everyday conversation is adapted to the purpose of poetic pleasure. With this publication, he set in motion the formal movement called "Romanticism." 220 years later the experiment is continued on this podcast. This podcast seeks to reach those of us who wish to improve our inner world, increase our stores of happiness, and yet not succumb to the mystical or the subjective.Here, in this place of the imagination, you will find many conversation with those humans creating things that interest the human mind.
The Troubadour Podcast
Red Pill Poison: Unpacking the Controversy and Misconceptions
Are men today navigating love and relationships with outdated maps? Join us as we sit down with Mike Mazza, associate fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, to explore the controversial red pill manosphere's impact on modern dating advice. From fitness and fashion to the contentious pickup artist culture, Mike recounts his journey through the early manosphere. We scrutinize the blend of self-improvement and manipulative tactics, emphasizing the importance of genuine personal growth over superficial strategies.
In our conversation, we map the evolution of men's self-improvement resources, moving from surface-level tricks to profound personal development. Inspired by works like Ryan Holiday's "The Obstacle Is the Way," Mike and I discuss how overcoming social anxiety and building real connections can lead to more fulfilling relationships. We share stories of transformative experiences, such as door-to-door sales and public speaking, which have helped men develop essential social skills for both their professional and personal lives.
We also tackle complex topics like the alpha-beta male theory, gender stereotypes, and the psychological landscape of the incel community. Mike and I debunk myths like "alpha fucks, beta bucks" and hypergamy, offering a more nuanced understanding of human behavior. We highlight the importance of self-awareness, realistic expectations, and holistic self-improvement. Tune in for a thought-provoking episode that challenges societal norms and encourages a deeper, more balanced approach to personal and relational success.
Today we're going to talk about red pill manosphere and love advice for men in particular. How's that for a setup? There's a lot of things I want to talk about with you, but first I just want to let you know guys, this is Mike Mazza. He's an associate fellow or fellow.
Speaker 2:Associate.
Speaker 1:Associate fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, where you teach at the Ayn Rand University, dr Mazza received his PhD in philosophy from St Louis University. His research is focused on the philosophy of science, especially the metaphysics of causation, and now we're going to talk about the causation of love, maybe, but you wrote an article recently entitled the Manosphere's Poison Pill, which I've been interested in this for a long time. I'm single. I don't want to be single. I've, you know, not been single in the past. But there's, you know, so I'm interested in this. You know advice that you get out there in the in the world for young men I'm not even that young anymore, I'm 39, you know just men in general there's a big middle-aged audience in the manosphere.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's great because we're getting older, we're still not getting married.
Speaker 2:Oh, you know you're out of the dating sphere for 10, 15 years. If you're married, yeah, you get back in. And then you're divorced, and you get back in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I wanted to get started before we talked about the article specifically you got involved and interested in this subject.
Speaker 2:I mean philosophy of science, metaphysical conversation, manosphere. Yeah Well, like a lot of young intellectual types, I got interested in just what kind of dating advice I could get online on the internet. Now this is 20, you know, 15, 20 years ago I guess, but that's how I first got introduced to it and this is a time before there were things like red pill and we'll talk about the evolutionary psychology influence on these people. It was basically a conglomeration of fitness advice, fashion advice, lifestyle advice and then the kind of pickup artists type things. So I read the game, the book, the Game, which was Neil Strauss.
Speaker 1:Neil Strauss, it was like 2005.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for people who don't know, I guess there's a it used to be. I think it's died down a little bit. I assume there's still some version of it around. These guys would go out to clubs and bars on the weekends and they had a whole system of how to be social in such a way that would get you a woman's number or get her to come home with you, and they were selling seminars that you could go and they would coach you and things like that. And a journalist wrote a book about these people, called the Game, and what was interesting about the Game was that the journalist started out as just this kind of you know how you would picture a journalist kind of nebbish, introspective, shy kind of person who then not only is following these guys around but learning their skills and eventually becomes one of them. So that's why the book was kind of interesting. So that was what I knew about it back, you know, 15, 20 years ago, and I got a little bit out of it.
Speaker 2:You got something out of it as a man, not just an intellectual, not just an intellectual you know, the kind of basic things that, as I say in the article, like if you've never heard, you know that, hey, if you know you work on your appearance a little bit, that'll help your dating life, and it's like really, I mean, once you hear somebody say that and then once you do something and see success, it becomes like, of course this was obvious the whole time, but if you're, you know, teenager, early 20s, mid-20s, and just you know, you just don't know what you don't know. Um, so that kind of thing. I got out of it, but none of the more, none of the stuff that you'd identify with manosphere ever kind of grabbed me, none of the pickups that seemed silly to me okay like, like, like I'm not trying, like my goal in learning this stuff is not to be able to go to a club and like go home with somebody.
Speaker 1:I would just want to find a girlfriend, or you know that kind of thing Even in your twenties, yeah.
Speaker 2:Even in my early twenties.
Speaker 1:So you had a healthier perspective than some, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, and you know I'm in college and the whole kind of thing, I'm going to go read scripts to women at college, but like it didn't, there was no. Even if I wanted to, there was no. There's no like nightclub scene. You know it's, you're going to parties and oh yeah, right. So and then at parties everybody's like at normal nightclub for adults, not everybody there is smashed right this is true but at a college party, like at least half the attendees are just drunk right by the yeah so.
Speaker 2:So none of it. None of it jibed with anything I wanted to do or even really could do. And then, you know, once some of the other parts of this movement sprung up years later, so that now they're having opinions on not just here's how to meet girls, but now it's like here's why dating is so hard these days. They start to comment on the sociology of American dating and they have views about it. Then they start getting attention for that and you know, I read some things. Oh, why do they think that? You know, men have it bad these days and it was Men's rights.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that kind of thing, think that you know, men have it bad these days and it was Men's rights actually, yeah, that kind of thing.
Speaker 2:But also, you know, here's the problem, here's how feminism is ruining everything and that kind of.
Speaker 1:You know a lot of what they say about it is right, but yeah, and you always see that with the other side too, where some of their criticism?
Speaker 2:Yeah, here's the stupid things men are doing.
Speaker 1:That's ruining everything and it's like, yeah, that's right, yeah, yeah, and so the question is always like how do you navigate to get to the truth and really guide your life in a meaningful way, and that's what your article is kind of hitting on.
Speaker 2:Now for the article. I went back to look at some of the things I'd been following casually way back when and most of that stuff was defct, but there was. There was one that was like a news aggregator for all of this stuff. I don't want to. You know it's, it hasn't been updated in three years and what's on there. So I just was curious, like, what are they talking about now?
Speaker 1:okay, this isn't reddit. No, this is something. This is just a website. Okay, I was aggregating for the red, yeah viva.
Speaker 2:La manososphere is what it was Okay. It was like the Drudge Report.
Speaker 1:You know how For the Manosphere For the Manosphere right. I didn't even know about it.
Speaker 2:The last time I had seen this website, it was like a. It was literally just an aggregator, so it was like half of it was just like fitness blogs and the rest of it was like lifestyle and fashion, and then there'd be, you know, then there'd be the weird stuff, right, yeah? And now I went. I went back to it to look at it recently and the the last time it was updated, like I said, it was three years ago. But everything that's up there is like all these stories about women behaving badly like that's what they had to say it seems to be a dominant trend.
Speaker 2:This crazy person did this in england and this crazy woman did that in california and took the kids and then like stole all the guy's money and like that's all that was up. There was these stories, and then there'd be like a little in the corner like here's how to lose 10 pounds in a month. You know that that kind of thing, um, but it was clear that the vibe had shifted to bitching about women versus some sort of semblance of self-improvement.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, so I got into this stuff very casually. I wouldn't say that I became a pickup artist or anything, but I started listening to this podcast a long time ago called the Art of Charm. Have you heard of them, the Jordan Harbinger?
Speaker 2:charm. Have you heard of them? The jordan harbinger?
Speaker 1:what I remember is mystery method and the guy who named himself after a fight club somebody called himself tyler durden oh yeah, I know there's mystery from the the game book, yeah, no. So the art of charm was a bunch of like. Jordan harbinger was a young law student, lawyer in new york, and him and his friends got into the pickup game with Neil Strauss and all those guys, I think, in the New York City scene and in their youth, in their 20s, they were really into this and it was really successful. But then as time went on, so when I started listening to it it was 10 years in when it did become just a self-help book. So this is actually where I got introduced to ryan holiday and he had a book called the obstacle is the way, which was so I got into it.
Speaker 1:Like after a big breakup, I was, you know, heartbroken and sad and miserable and so I was like I gotta get out of this miss and I gotta get you know, get back out there. So the art of time had all this advice on how to you know the obstacle is the way is the first one I listened to, which was about you know these things that happen in your life, for that's actually helpful guide to getting to what you ultimately want. Blah, blah and so you know?
Speaker 2:yeah, you said this was 10 ish.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 2:And so what you're describing so far a completely normal self-help to me, yes, and I noticed a sort of pattern, the people that you know if you read the game and you like Google. Where these people are now, there's kind of two categories. There's what seems to have been young guys who really just wanted to get better at being able to meet women, who got carried away, so to speak, and now they're just normal people. They're off to something else, like the guy that wrote that book Double your Dating.
Speaker 1:Eben Pagan. He was going by David DeAngelo at the time. I have his little piece.
Speaker 2:I had that book in 2005 or whatever. And now he's just a marketing guy right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's the other pig in his market.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's changed his name or whatever and I would wager that he has a healthy. Really I don't know this, but I would wager that he has a healthy relationship or maybe, if he's between, he has a healthy attitude now versus somebody. Like if you read, if you read the game mystery who's, you know it's like institutionalized at some point, like suicidal. I didn't know that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I mean, it's in the book. It's in the book, oh, that's okay.
Speaker 2:I haven't read it since, like 2006, yeah, or the last I heard about neo strauss. He like gave that all up and like got married and kind of like. There was an interesting article in maybe one of those you know, the New York Times Magazine or New York or something like that, about him giving this up and getting married. Now I don't know if that stuck or what the latest is why not.
Speaker 1:Jordan Harbinger was married and has a kid. I don't know over the last several years what's happened to him. Last I checked that's what was going on with him. But yeah, I mean he had. When I was listening to him again, this was 10 years after he had done the pickup stuff and they actually taught pickup. That's how Art of Charm started. It was something else and then it evolved from.
Speaker 1:You also did, with Nikos, a show of YouTube on new ideal, on manosphere tonic or poison. So it was before the article where you were kind of exploring this, I think at the beginning and you mentioned, or Nikos mentioned, the outer and the inner game and that's kind of what happened with this guy Jordan Harbinger is he. You know, when he was younger, him and his friends were focused on the outer game. That's like I mean it is the sleazy stuff you hear about. In a sense it's kind of manipulative. It can be.
Speaker 1:It can be like nagging is the popular one everyone knows about, where you kind of nag a woman on some of her, you know, subtly on some of her flaws, which is supposedly supposed to get her to want to prove herself to you by sleeping with you or something. That's the dream that they had back then. But what that often leads to if you're the better sort is the inner game, where it's about building a character, so the kind of things that Jordan Harbinger and the Art of Charm guys mostly it was just Jordan Harbinger's show where they would have guys like there's this read to lead podcast. It was about how to be a better reader.
Speaker 1:And you know, like I said, the Ryan holidays I even got Alex Epstein when I was working for Alex Epstein at the Center for Industrial Progress. He had just published his book. The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels and my job is to kind of help get him marketing things like that. So I like this podcast. I was like I wonder if I can get them together. And they talked about how to think about things. That was the podcast and this was like a podcast at the time that got 3 million downloads and stuff but it moved into this inner game.
Speaker 1:Like this, becoming a better man is the best way to attract and achieve the things you want, including a woman.
Speaker 2:Well, so there's, if you want to help somebody who's, you know, young, trouble with dating, doesn't know how to meet women, there's not going to be like one thing wrong with everybody. They're one problem everybody faces so a lot of people. It's just like social anxiety. You're just shy, you don't go out and you meet people. So if you learn some of these things you're talking about, if you like really try to do it, what do you do? Well, you'll actually go out in a public place and you'll talk to strangers. Yes, just going out and talking. You'll oh, I can talk to somebody and they're not going to like embarrass me or like bite my head off or something. I mean that's a kind of revelation to a lot of people. And then that you yourself are capable of doing that, like so I sold vacuum cleaners door to door.
Speaker 1:Yeah, was it Kirby, kirby vacuum? Yeah, I always stayed away from them and, yeah, I was after.
Speaker 2:I did that for a few weeks in one summer. It was my summer job for a while. One year in college I was way less socially anxious. Yeah, I realized you could literally talk to strangers about anything and most people are friendly. I mean, the worst you'll get is somebody doesn't want to talk to you and they'll brush you off. Yeah, so doing that kind of stuff is going to help a lot of people, even if the advice is actually bad. So here's this script you memorized go say this to some girls at bars or whatever. I mean, yeah, that's not the healthiest way to think about meeting somebody for a romantic.
Speaker 1:Not for real? Yeah, for real. But if you do that, that's the beginning stage.
Speaker 2:If you go and do that, you will find yourself just like if you you know what's the best way to give a public speech. Well, if you ask people who are really good at it, it's you know, there's pre-planning, but it's pretty extemporaneous, like the best ones are like that.
Speaker 1:But it's not just reading books about it. No, it's not just reading books about it. You have to go out and actually do it when you start when you start.
Speaker 2:Maybe the best thing is to have a teleprompter yeah, literally have it all written out well so I have cards and then and then, and then you know you get used to it and now you're comfortable.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can, whatever it is um, well, but like so, but but the point I'm making is that yeah it's the people who like if that's really all that, the only reason you're having trouble meeting a girl is that you're just too shy and socially anxious. Once you get over that and then you'll meet somebody and it'll be like what do I need all this other stuff for? Like by now I meet women the same way that all my healthy friends meet them. Like you kind of you go to a party oh she's cute, do you know her? Yeah, that's so and so's friend, and you go talk to them. Now you can do that too, and yeah, okay, so here's I.
Speaker 1:So I agree with that. So there's two things I want to say about that. I guess in terms of actual advice since we're now in the advice realm, it's like in my experience. One I agree with the scripting thing to get started, even though it's really weird and I understand especially to women I've talked to, it's like the weirdest thing possible and I get it.
Speaker 1:But I sold knives for four years and at first I had a script and I literally was like with my grandmother yeah, like shaking and reading this script, but then, once I got through it and I did it several times I developed my own style yes, I'm not recommending this.
Speaker 2:I didn't mean to. I didn't mean to recommend the script. I'm just pointing out that if you do that, you'll get over your social anxiety.
Speaker 1:No, I am recommending the script.
Speaker 2:You're recommending the script? Yeah, because I'm not taking any. So. I don't know what the best way to get over social anxiety is Okay.
Speaker 1:Sorry, You're right. Is it to use a script? Whatever you might need? Yeah, right.
Speaker 2:For me I did at a piece of paper that I read to some lady and she took pity on me and let me in, and then I sold the vacuum because the way it works is.
Speaker 1:That's how it works.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you show the vacuum and then you call your manager and he shows up and he's Then he does the sale, he's the slick salesman and he makes the sale. So we sold the first house. I knocked the door on. That's a huge confidence, but she could have just slammed the door on my face. That's a huge confidence, but she could have just slammed the door on my face. She should have, probably should have, I mean I would have Exactly Well.
Speaker 1:So, first off, what I'm just saying about the scripting thing is just for me it was helpful because I actually, like people think you know I'm in sales. People look at me and they're like, oh, you're really you know, outgoing and social and things, which is actually not true. I was not raised that way. I was a very you know, but I did what you did, you know, but I did it for longer because I'm slow learner I did it for four years, but I'm a slow learner, so I did it.
Speaker 1:Took me some time no, I'm just kidding, but. But the point is that there was some value in the scaffolding that for me, other everyone's going to be a little bit different. They might be better socially, they don't need these things. But the other thing I did, you know I do think is interesting, is, like you know, once you learn that you can actually regress, like you know. So so there's a value in getting back into and having some kind of scaffolding to help you get into it again. So, and kind of thinking about it again, because I, you know, I just going through COVID, for instance, and kind of thinking about it again, because I just going through COVID, for instance, I noticed a huge regression in my social abilities.
Speaker 2:And I just was not.
Speaker 1:I was more shy again. I had reverted to this. I was because I was in a house by myself for nine months, literally, and so my point is that these types of skills are something that you have to develop, you have to work on for your whole entire life and value them as skills in and of themselves well, I think the social, not just talking to girls, right, but if we are just thinking about dating and meeting women.
Speaker 2:I mean, so, a lot of young guys who read this stuff, I think you know, based on their self-re, a lot of them it's not like, oh, this is hard for me, I need advice. It's like I'm 25 and I've never been on a date. You know, I've never had any positive response from a woman. So, yeah, sure, there can be regression in that you're more or less social and things like that. But just discovering that somebody might actually be interested in you, yes, is can be like a I don't know keystone moment or something in your development. So so, yeah, so there's, of course, for any skill you can regress if you don't practice, if you don't exercise it. Um, but I think what's really valuable or can be really valuable about some of this advice is that if somebody can get you your first positive reaction, you know a coach, a piece of advice a book, whatever, then that thing is going to really cement itself in your mind as this person or this set of ideas.
Speaker 2:There's something special about this.
Speaker 1:They have the deep insight into the charm for like two years after that religiously like a lot yeah and it's.
Speaker 2:It can be hard to either realize, you know, first person, realize that well, there's nothing special about what they're teaching. It's just that I needed somebody to kind of provide external motivation for me to take any kind of action. So it can be hard to realize that but can then can be also hard to to convince somebody like, if you're like, look, this is what I say in the article there's certain certain things you'll find on red pill websites that are actually good advice. They have nothing to do with anything uniquely red pill.
Speaker 1:Like it, websites that are actually good advice. They have nothing to do with anything uniquely Red Pill, it's just good human advice.
Speaker 2:It's good human advice Like some older brother or you know coach or somebody could give you this advice too if you went to them and hey, you know, I need some help. Now that's the reason people don't do that is there's a kind of embarrassment guys have about this stuff. So that's why it's all like underground secret and everybody has a pseudonym, or at least used to have a pseudonym, because it's like there's shame around asking for this kind of advice, but it's nothing in principle, which is bizarre.
Speaker 2:Yeah, nothing in principle red pill or mystery method or any of these things about yeah, let's, you know, let's go out and practice talking to people Like so anybody could help you do that and there's no method to it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think the important thing is that there are these valuable skills. That's how they kind of hook you in a sense, and then, of course, trying to keep you around. What are they advocating in that realm? And I don't think it's just red pill. I think religion does the same, like Christianity does this. Again, this was another breakup. I think all the things in my life with development happen around breakups, but this is many, many, many years ago another breakup and I almost got sucked into what's elron hubbard, the?
Speaker 2:oh scientology.
Speaker 1:I just got not really sucked into it, but like I got duped into going to their office I had no idea, because you didn't know what they were I didn't know what they were, but because again, but at first the advice they were giving was actually good, I think, good, good psych, like they were like. What happened was I was at this mixer. I met this very attractive young lady it's always out there and then she seemed very interested in me and she was flirting. I was like is she flirting?
Speaker 2:Come down to my yeah.
Speaker 1:And then she's like oh yeah, I'm a psychology major, can you take this, you know, would you? Yeah, and I took the test and I was like this is actually kind of interesting. And then, of course, at the back of my head, I was like, well, let me try, yeah, I took one of them as a, as a, as a goof years ago.
Speaker 2:They used to be in the subways in new york. They would just stand and there's the same. There's a, an attractive woman, a young woman, an attractive guy, yeah, and they, you know, they profile you pretty well and they'd come up to you hey we want to take this stuff yeah. So me and some of my friends were like, let's just because we knew what it was.
Speaker 1:They had a big diet yeah, they had a big dietetic sign and we know this was just out of mix, but it was you hold these cans.
Speaker 2:But then it's like uh, do you get stressed about school sometimes? And yeah, like yeah and then the you know the needle is going crazy and oh, you need all this other stuff yeah but no, there was a that's interesting I didn't't do that, but all kind of movements do this stuff, good movements and bad movements.
Speaker 1:Exactly that's what I was trying to say yeah.
Speaker 2:So this prominent objectivist once spoke at a conference that was billed to them as like a self-helpy type conference. It was really like a I think this was before Red Pill, but it was a Manosphere type thing. So they went and they gave us. You know he was telling me the other day yeah, there was some really good talks on like health and nutrition and personal finance and I gave something about, you know, happiness and building a purpose or whatever it was.
Speaker 2:And then the dating guys came up and you know, the people who were there under not exactly false pretenses but didn't really realize what they were getting at, were like what, what is this other stuff that these other lectures are about? So, yeah, so there's a kind of rope-a-dope, you know you kind of oh, here I'll help you get in shape, I'll teach you about lifestyle and how to make more money, and here's my dating advice too. And then if you aren't, you know, especially if you're a little desperate or you don't know a lot about life, you can see it all is going together. So, oh they, this guy gave me some good fitness and financial advice. Let me try out see what he says about women and you can see that as all being one package and it's not.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so let's, let's get into the article the red pill aspect of it. That is the negative.
Speaker 2:So there's, yeah, they start with the only negative.
Speaker 1:Sorry that there are negatives. Like you know, there's a poison to it. There's something that's actually detrimental to your love life, detrimental to your happiness, detrimental to your short, medium and long-term flourishing. And even if there's something positive that you get, so even if you lost 20 pounds, you might also get this horrible incel manifesto type, you know, hatred of women or envy of certain kinds of men who get women, or things like that. That is coupled with it. That's really dangerous and I'm seeing it move into. You know I'd like to talk about like to me it seems like it's moving it even into movements like trad con stuff and what I told you before the show, the natalalism. It seems like it's moving into that. But before we get into that, let's talk about the negatives.
Speaker 2:I can't imagine the pro-natalists having a positive reaction to red pill, as I say in the article. It's so. The way you describe the pro-natalists to me is it's very techie types, people in the sciences and genetics, that they would look at what the red pill is doing with evo psych and have anything other than a disgust reaction is implausible to me so the the pronatalism one is difficult because I don't one.
Speaker 1:I think it's really new. Two, I don't know that there's a lot of intellectual.
Speaker 2:Like intellectual defense.
Speaker 1:Defense, or like the only defenses I've heard are the population is decreasing intensely.
Speaker 2:It's maybe what's the pro-natalism Moving it for people who aren't familiar.
Speaker 1:So pro-natalism is. I think Elon Musk is a big proponent. Janice and something Collins, I think that's their names. There's a few of these people and they're pro, and I think it's more than just pro having babies. It's pro having babies because the world's going to end because population is going down?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and isn't it pro smart people, productive people, having babies?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know that they're saying like oh look, there's a lot of people in sub-saharan africa or the poorest parts of america that they're having babies. Good, yeah it's more like yeah, we need the elites to have more babies.
Speaker 2:So it's like elon musk is which you know he has a lot of kids.
Speaker 1:He has a lot of kids and you know good for him. He's got billions he could have. He can afford a babysitter and a tutor for each one of them. So yeah, but you know, to me I'm very pro-kids, I'd like to have kids. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is the argument of the world's going to end, you know, or like there's going to be a lot of deleterious effects of the downward trend of population in the world, and particularly the West. And they do talk about western values, for sure.
Speaker 1:They say you know, we need to have lots of kids so we can put our values into them too I mean that stuff is the negative, like I don't see that as a positive reason to have a kid but to connect it to.
Speaker 2:I could see some sort of connection to manosphere type things there. If, if you're, why aren't more people procreating, and that kind of question. I could see that as yeah, as and if there being some tie-in with with red pill. But, like I was saying before, I don't really know much about the. Yeah, it's not it's not super plausible to me that they'd take anything like red pill serious, I mean it's well, let's get into what the red pill stuff is saying on the negative side.
Speaker 1:So in your article you point out some things like the gender, you know, the views of the opposite sex and also determinism free will you know that are kind of built into it.
Speaker 2:So, like all of these terms we're throwing around, they sort of refer to ideas and they sort of refer to groups of people. So what is red pill? Can I define a doctrine that everybody who thinks of themselves as a red pill would sign up on, like you could if you were talking about, like communists or something? Yeah, there's a set of principles that everybody who thinks of themselves as a Like a card, yeah, right, so that's a set of principles that everybody who thinks of themselves as a you actually have a card.
Speaker 2:Yeah right, it's a card carry Whoa so that's a literal part, that's a literal group of people. But I'm thinking of like if you think of yourself as a Marxist.
Speaker 2:I mean like there's a set of doctrine you'll agree with, or an objectivist, or you know, or a Christian or something. There's some like minimal philosophical commitment. So with these, these sort of groups, what you get is more like sometimes it's called like family resemblance concepts. So your red, there's like a list of like 10 things, and if you believe in six of them then you're red pill. But two people don't have to believe. I didn't know that. Well, that's not what they're saying. This is my characterization of it.
Speaker 1:So there is a minimum. It is like an ideology.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there are ideas, but it's not like a set of doctrine that you have to agree with all of them. That's not how I think about it. Some of them might think about it a different way, like if they're thinking about themselves as a group or a movement. But just because red pillars aren't automatically right about red pill, any more than Marxists are automatically right about what Marxist doctrine is, you have to, you know, you can.
Speaker 1:you can have a view Disagreement about what red pill is.
Speaker 2:No, like you can have, you can. You can have a disagreement about whether a certain doctrine is essential to the ideology.
Speaker 1:Okay, right, yeah, there's not. There's not like a prescribed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not. It's not like. The definition of red pill is not what red pillars say.
Speaker 1:Red pill is right I see, well, and so red pill, just so, I mean I mean they're going to be more informed about it.
Speaker 2:Presumably they're going to know, themselves better like as it turned as just a matter of like. Who's going to be most informed about what's going on in marxism? Probably a Marxist right. Yeah, so I wouldn't dismiss their own self-categorization, but it's also not infallibly true. Well and just so people.
Speaker 1:I'm pretty sure everyone watching this is familiar with red pill on some level. But red pill is the reference to the matrix where you get a blue pill, a red pill, and if you take the blue pill you get to stay in the fake society and the world that's built up by the powers to be or whatever. If you take the red pill, you go down the rabbit hole and you get the truth of what reality is really like.
Speaker 1:And that, to me, that reality view is really interesting. And I was talking to a friend about what I was going to have and talk to you about this, and he was telling me about Rolo Tomasi and my friend's argument. And talk to you about this, and he was telling me about rolo tomasi and his, my friend's argument and I I had heard about rolo tomasi but I had never really read the book the rational male or any of this stuff and you know, but the things he was saying to me was just like red flags were going off in my head, like one of the arguments he was saying is rolo tomasi is saying that he doesn't have ideology, this is just the facts. And I was like, well, I'm, you know, as someone who's trained in objectivist, it's like, well, that's not really possible. Like there's going to be a philosophy. He may pretend like there's not or advocate like this is just the facts, the straight facts, but his facts, like I think, are going to have an ideological base to them well, I think that's right.
Speaker 2:About rola tomasi but so the kind of I. I so this is somebody else speaking about another person, right? So it's your friend, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, who's who's like? Obsessed with who reads?
Speaker 2:a lot of it, so you think it's going to be an accurate.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so like he's read a lot of it, like he's very well, but so.
Speaker 2:So one of one of the let's give a concrete claim of these red pill type people. So there's this. I don't know how do you mind if I swear?
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:So they have this view that they call alpha fucks, beta bucks. Right, you put an X at the end of it to make it like rhyme or something, I don't know, or to spell it that way, so it doesn't get flagged by YouTube, that's good advertising yeah.
Speaker 2:So the idea is that women like a certain type of men, alpha for sex, and they pair up with another type of men, the betas, for money and resources. The pull towards the beta type guy is more like transactional, reproductive, like oh, she needs somebody to take care of the offspring that actually the alpha is going to, you know, sire, and the beta is going to be the cuckold. That is not a reporting of facts, that is a theoretical processing of alleged facts about so women tend to be attracted. You know, if you do a like a study of who women are prone to sleep with, like looking for their revealed preferences, not their stated preferences, and if you found that, oh, there's a certain type of archetypical guy who's really aggressive, has lots of masculine features and et cetera, et cetera, and women really want to sleep with that guy but they don't want to have a long-term relationship. If that were the fact, that would be the kind of that would be a fact. If you discovered that and there's another type of guy who's got more androgynous characteristics, less aggressive but very, you know, productive and caring and et cetera, she'll want to. That's the sort of person that women tend to marry.
Speaker 2:And then if you found additionally that, like half of children are actually not the children of the father. They think that is the father. Like, if you found those kind of, if that kind of stuff was true, just empirically, the whole theory of psychology that women are attracted to that would be, would explain that. So is it a reporting of facts? No, it's a theory of alleged. It's a theory to explain alleged facts, and those alleged facts aren't actually true either. So so it's not true that he's just explaining, he's just reporting facts.
Speaker 1:They're not true in the sense that every woman has to do that. It's true that some women do that, yeah, so there are some women who cheat on their husbands with a more masculine man.
Speaker 2:Well, we can get into what's actually true in a second. I'm just making the point that if those statistical patterns were true, were facts, your alpha-beta doctrine would not be an additional fact. It would be a postulate to explain this, and then you could say you know, you might have another explanation that has nothing to do with alphas and betas or any kind of social hierarchy or something. It might just be that, yeah, women prefer, women are more aroused by hyper-masculine behaviors and traits, and does that mean you're not a good provider? No, I mean some people can be both, and some people could be a poor provider and a criminal and also, you know, also have androgynous or effeminate features. And so you could, you could give a different accounting of this.
Speaker 2:That doesn't have to do with any kind of the alpha beta idea is, is is sort of a view of where someone stands on social hierarchy in within a social hierarchy, and sort of a view on genetic fitness. It's kind of both and neither. So anyway, but it doesn't it does the point is. The point is not to go into the details of this, it's just there's, there are, there are the facts, and then there are the theoretical explanations for the facts and the kind of thing that come out of red pill are the, you know the alpha beta thing, hypergamy or hypergamy I'm actually. I hear both.
Speaker 1:I always hear hypergamy. Hypergamy yeah, I've heard hypergamy too, but that doesn't sound right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and hypergamy just so we're clear is when a woman chooses a guy who sleeps upwards in terms of social hierarchy and genetics, yeah, but I think like if you would think about it, to tie it into the alpha-beta thing like if she's cheating on her husband with some alpha guy, she'd be prone to cheat on him with another, more alpha guy, and if the husband's a good provider but not up to her standards, she'll look for the better provider at some point, not you know up to her standards, she'll look for the you know, the better provider at some point.
Speaker 2:So there's a kind of upward climb. That's an innate part of women's sexuality that they're postulating Again. That's a like if the you know, it's like any theory. If the theory is true, then yeah, it's in a way a fact. But like if you're talking about it, oh, he doesn't have an ideology, he has Well, he says that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Rolo Tomasi says that about I don't have an ideology.
Speaker 2:No, you have a whole theory of psychology and like that's. That's not an ideology in the sense of it's not a political agenda for social change. That that's what ideology is, but it's still. It's not. Oh, I'm just reporting, I'm just stating facts. It, I'm just stating facts, it's no. You have a theory to explain certain alleged facts that you're pushing, and even scientific theories can have social political implications.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So, but you know, but that's what's rolled up in all of these red pill ideas and you can disentangle them. You can say, you could say like oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Or you could just say look, I don, I don't. Of course every scientific theory has social, social political implicator. Not every, but many, especially scientific theories of human behavior, have social political implications. I'm just not concerned with them, I'm just, you know, I'm just doing the science, this is the science, you other people figure this out, uh, figure out the ideology. I mean, somebody could, somebody could say that and in that sense like but he's giving actual advice though. Who.
Speaker 1:Rolo Tomasi.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so he's saying that this is the basis for the advice I'm giving.
Speaker 2:Yeah right.
Speaker 1:So the advice I'm giving you is you know, this isn't from him, but just the. I'm taking this from your article.
Speaker 2:Well, so the advice is not supposed to be from him, it's supposed to be from the Reddit forum on the red pill.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So this is just to be clear this is not quoting from Rolo Tomasi, but it's red pill, Right. This is why I made the point that there's it's. The idea of red pill is sort of sociological, sort of philosophical, theoretical right.
Speaker 1:So yeah, so mixing a lot of right.
Speaker 2:So so if you're into the red pill, yeah, not every red pill person is going to give the identical, same advice, but the kind of the family resemblance is they're probably going to think in terms of alpha beta hierarchies. They're probably going to think of women in in hyperamy type, you know as hypergamous. Yeah, so those are the kind, those are what. That's why I picked.
Speaker 1:That's what universally is.
Speaker 2:That's why I picked those two things, because, as far as I've seen, all the red pill. Yeah, you're looking for the common denominator All the people who self-identify as red pill talk in that kind of either they literally use that exact language alpha, beta, hypergamy or they're not using that language, but it's the same ideas, right.
Speaker 1:Well, and there's I also. I just have to say about that language it's now made it, I think, mainstream. I've heard just casual conversations talking to younger people, the alpha, beta, sigma type conversation. It's like oh, oh, that was a sigma move or something like that. I was like what, what exactly is sigma? Like that's a new one. Like I've always known what an alpha is, of course. Like we know what that. That goes back to anything.
Speaker 1:Just the big dog yeah, basically, and the beta dog is the one that falls on his belt, on his back and shows his belly.
Speaker 2:I mean, I would, I would assume the the most relevant comparison would be like gorillas or chimpanzees. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's like the silverback is kind of like the leader has the most sexual access to the females in the group.
Speaker 1:Now, there does seem to be something true about this, though. Well, there seems to be something true about that. For primates generally, yeah, but whether or not that applies to exactly, yeah like, and how much it applies to what I mean. We are animals and we are rational beings, so we have both elements, so part of that human, human beings organize into hierarchies.
Speaker 2:Hierarchies can be good. They're not, you know, automatically good. Um, hereditary hierarchies are evil. But hierarchies of like this guy is the boss because he's, you know, he founded the company and he had the idea, and he's like you know. Or this person is more senior in the philosophy department because he published more papers, he's got more influence. I mean, sometimes it's he's been here longer, which usually isn't mean anything, but in some contexts matters. So yeah, there's different kind of hierarchy there's you could think of like a family, like in this family, like dad's kind of the boss, and in this family mom has the final say, and like that's a little bit of a hierarchy that parents are above the kids. So there's there's all kinds of respects in which there are hierarchies. Yeah, you know, the quarterback in a football team is in some sense a little bit higher.
Speaker 2:There's a coach, you know so hierarchy hierarchies are fine and people organize into hierarchies for valid reasons all the time. Is that the same thing as the alpha beta theory? Well, it's Well, it's not.
Speaker 1:Because it includes genetics, or like your masculine features and your higher genetics. That's what she's really interested in, versus what she's really interested in is competence.
Speaker 2:Yes so. I mean the red pill, alpha-beta, and this is not an original criticism for me, but it doesn't make sense in the following respect Like, like, if you think of it as the alpha is the most genetically fit, I mean, what does genetically fit mean? It's most capable of surviving. Yeah, who's, who's more? Alpha, some like jack's bodybuilder no, I was. I was saying like some you know mma fighters like conor mcgregor or something.
Speaker 1:Oh God.
Speaker 2:Or Elon Musk or Bill Gates Bill Gates back when he was actually doing interesting things. Would you think of geeky Bill Gates as like an alpha type guy or some guy with a job that will make him famous, but he's really good at it and makes a couple hundred thousand dollars a year. Who's more alpha? Who's more beta? For human beings, productivity is the survival relevant trait, so whatever character traits that make you more productive, that's that's the actual that's the that would be if you wanted to think this way.
Speaker 2:that's the alpha, but so well, you saying like.
Speaker 1:So the memes that I see because I lift weights the chad, me it's like the memes where it's like this guy walking and he's a body butter. He's like walking into the gym knowing that I own this because I bench 315. Yeah, like, so I actually own this company, or something like that, and there's those kinds. So that's the the conor mcgregor or the fight. Like I'm a fighter, I'm a black belt, I could beat up everybody, but I barely can make 40,000.
Speaker 2:You have traditional masculine traits or something, so so yeah. Or you have physiologically masculine traits. You're really you're really, you're really fit, you have the strong jaw, Well, but this is kind of one of the but but well, that of what they're drawn to, part of it also is going to be levels of sexual aggression or just social like aggression generally towards other people. Um, so, what's a beta which is more beta like some? When which is more alpha like some? But would you like to go out on a date with me maybe?
Speaker 2:so yeah, that's like beta and the alpha is and be like let's go on a date, you know, like really assertive.
Speaker 2:So there's all there's all different there's, there's there's physiological traits, behavioral traits that they're going to think of as alpha and beta, and the point that what I'm not saying is, oh, women don't like any of these traits, or something. I'm just saying like, if this is how you're going to look at the facts about what, what, uh, women are attracted to, and you're going to look at the facts about what women are attracted to and you're going to think of it in terms of alpha and beta, there's a kind of internal incoherence to it, because if you're thinking about alpha as most genetically fit, most genetically fit is like the intelligent, hyper-focused person who's?
Speaker 2:highly productive. Yeah, and whether or not he has a Chad jaw or if people know that meme of the really sharply angled face. It's usually in black and white drawing.
Speaker 1:Hey, I saw some memes on Instagram of all these ladies loving the Tony Soprano and I was like I look like that dude. I was like, yes, go Tony, he doesn't have like this jaw, although you might have to wax the dude. Tony Soprano is super alpha in his behavior if you watch the show, that's what I'm saying. But he doesn't have the Chad jaw. He doesn't have the Chad jaw, so he just makes up for it with wacky moves. He's basically obese. Yeah, right, exactly.
Speaker 2:And that's part of the story is you can see him get bigger over the years and it's a little bit part of the character.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I'm just saying it's that inconsistency, it's not just the Chad jaw, yeah and they're not saying it's just the Chad jaw. Yeah, that's just one aspect of it, but the point is that there's a lot of that within the red pill community. There's a lot of that view that I think leads to other One of the things you mentioned in your article what's in the red pill is speak to women as though they are children, because emotionally they are, and that's one of.
Speaker 2:So that's that's yeah, that's less alpha, that's less alpha beta stuff yeah, and more just about women's psychology yeah, no, but like more just directly about that. It's not. That's not a claim about how they are towards men or something. That's just romantically or otherwise.
Speaker 1:Women or children is what this is emotionally, yeah but what I'm saying is like do you think it's the same level of thinking? Right, that, that's, it's so. They're they're giving this piece of advice of women are children.
Speaker 1:So when you're talking to a woman, kind of treat her like a child and don't treat her like another, like a man, like you would treat a man yeah and that's the same to me I guess that's what I'm saying is the same kind of, not the same exact logical connection, but the same level of thinking, I guess.
Speaker 2:I'm not really sure I follow the question. So it's the same level of thinking, in that it's, I mean, because it's like you're observing some trait.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the trait. And then you observe that there may be some truth once in a while that you saw, but it doesn't mean women or children are like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the trait that it's picking up on is relative to each other. Women are more emotional and men are more repressed. Or you could either say women are more emotional or you could say women are the exact right amount of emotional. Men are not emotional enough. I mean, you could anything like that. You could?
Speaker 1:Which seems more correct to my observations for me, yeah, I mean I don't know what, the right amount?
Speaker 2:I don't think there is a right amount of emotionality. I mean it's.
Speaker 1:Well, okay, that's a whole. Yeah, I agree, there is such a thing as repressed, and there is such a thing as like childishly emotional thing, as like childishly emotional.
Speaker 2:You have no emotional self-regulation. But then, like outside of those two groups, like what's the right amount? I mean it just seems to me that there'd be completely healthy variations such that some people, you know, or maybe people, make the choice not to show their emotions in public, but they're very emotional yeah, okay, so I guess I was just trying to get at is there some kind of that's like the fact, that's like that's in, that's the? Basis that they point to. It's like look, women are more emotional.
Speaker 1:So just talk to them like children, that will get you more results is kind of the idea behind that, which is based on Partially it's getting more results.
Speaker 2:But partially it's just so you don't have any false expectations or you know what you're getting into. You wouldn't expect a child to Children throw tantrums. You wouldn't expect a child to. You know children throw tantrums. And if you're expecting your five-year-old to act like a 40-year-old man, like you, don't have that false expectation and okay. So if I'm expecting a woman to be to process some conflict the way a 40-year-old man, you know, picking a kind of age of a man's prime where he's most in control of himself, then yeah, don't expect that out of women. Now again. So there's like a little scintilla of fact in that we notice this difference between how emotional men and women are, that they want to conceptualize as women are like children. Now, maybe the women that people who follow the red pill attract are like that, but women generally, I do not see any reason to think that's true of them.
Speaker 1:Well, and so it seems like underlying the theory is this view of determinism that we are determined by our instincts, our genetics, things of that nature. So we are just who we are. So women are more emotional, as you know, qua woman, because they're a woman and they have nothing outside, no abilities or free will or agency to control their own emotions. To you know like which? I have to say is absurd, because I have dated repressed women Like I think I'm not as repressed Like I feel, like I'm the opposite of some.
Speaker 2:I'm probably more emotional than a lot of women. You can't think of it as oh, the red pill is wrong for thinking women are more emotional than men. I think that something like that is probably true. Women are, oh shit. Emotions come easier to them, or they're.
Speaker 1:I think culturally they're encouraged.
Speaker 2:Culturally they're encouraged, or men are you know there can be all kind of like. You can just observe that fact that, yeah, women are, wear their emotions on their sleeves and men don't. Let's say less or less. So yeah, so I wouldn't want to commit to any particular like. Are women naturally by their nature?
Speaker 1:more emotion?
Speaker 1:yeah, okay, I mean, that might be true right, okay, yeah, but what I'm saying is I was trying to get to the idea of the advice that's being given to different people and the underlying viewpoints that they're using, which is they're seeing us and they're pigeonholing humans, including women, and I mean you mentioned this in your article about radical feminism does the same thing for men, and it's about men and sense that they're all kind of, you know, rapists or not all of feminism, but there's a branch of you know the Schrodinger's rapist thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, the idea is that every man you meet, yeah, the idea is that every man you meet, like you don't know, is he Like every new man you encounter you don't Like. It's a Like the Schrodinger's cat thought experiment in physics, like under certain conditions, you have a cat in a box. You can't see the cat. Is it alive, is it dead? You don't know. And this is a kind of inherent puzzle to this physics allegedly is an inherent puzzle, and this physics allegedly is an inherent puzzle, and the parallel as well. And every man you meet, is he a rapist? Is he not like there's something in men that could make them all, you know could make them all that way, and you don't know whether it's tripped up in this guy or not?
Speaker 1:but so that kind of determinism is what I'm yeah and what you know.
Speaker 1:When I was reading your article and listening to stuff and it was I was thinking about I I had, a long time ago, read a book by Raphael Patel called the Arab Mind, and there was another book by someone else I can't remember, strong Horse. I was reading some stuff about Middle Eastern and Islamic cultures and it really reminded me of that. The idea of why they encourage the hijab is not just to protect the woman, it's to protect the woman from the inner urges of a man, that a man is incapable of controlling his sexual desires. So if you go out and entice him, it's actually your fault and it's like cause you, you know you did that and he didn't have any control over his urges, and that.
Speaker 1:I'm seeing the same kind of thing in a sense, with this kind of view of, yeah, the same kind of thinking, where it's like people don't really have control over their urges. Women are just going to, you know, cheat that, so we just have to figure out how to build a system around that. Or you know what I'm seeing now with the trad cons and all this stuff is like let's let's just pigeonhole them into this old, you know, barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen type idea, it doesn't matter if they're not happy. That's not really the goal. The goal is merit, even j Jordan Peterson. His advice is happiness isn't the goal. We're all suffering.
Speaker 2:Well, if we're talking about sexual attraction and preference, if that's the part of the theory, the red pill view, there's a sense in which I don't want to come down unduly on the red pill. I think there's a lot of posturing, as if people know why we're attracted to the things we are.
Speaker 1:Okay, yes, I agree with that 100%.
Speaker 2:Sexual preference is the most confusing thing in the world you can certainly say like as a statistical thing men prefer X in a woman.
Speaker 1:You can look, heterosexual men. Yeah, heterosexual men.
Speaker 2:So you can do surveys and Heterosexual men, yeah, heterosexual men, yeah, yeah, so you can, you can do surveys and look at their stated preferences. You can like look at their actual behavior and look at revealed preferences and you can kind of form a judgment. You know, there's, there'll be a bell curve and the big lump in the middle, you know, is, yeah, the majority of men are most attracted to women in this certain age range, with this certain body type, with these certain facial features.
Speaker 1:But have you heard of Dataclips book?
Speaker 2:That's the one about OkCupid, right yeah.
Speaker 1:Have you heard about that? Where it's like sorry, I just have to point this out where they notice like men will say they're open to relationships at their own age, but their swiping proves that they're only interested in 20 to 25.
Speaker 2:Way lower age yeah.
Speaker 1:So it's like a 40 year old is going to do 20, 25 year old, a 30, 20, 20 yeah 25 to 25 year old like so like so there's obviously right. I mean, I mean, you know, you don't you? Don't need that you don't need that book to know that I mean like who?
Speaker 2:who are the actresses that everybody says are hot? Like they're younger women in their twenties. And like who are the most profitable. What's it called? Only fans and porn girls.
Speaker 1:It's young women in their twenties Like it's not, it's not a secret yeah.
Speaker 2:But now you have, okay, we have another data point that indicates the same thing. But yeah, so so if you're, if anybody going around saying I, anybody going around saying I know why people prefer this to, that I think is almost always posturing, like maybe you have a good hypothesis, but I don't think they're. We don't know why. You know even just something like gentlemen prefer blondes, or something Like some men really like blonde women, some men really like Asian girls, some Asian girls really like white guys and some people, you know, people have their little things that they're really into and we don't know any.
Speaker 2:Why do you like that kind of person? I don't know, I just really do, and it's not just yeah, so it can change over a person's life and you're not really sure why did it change? And I mean you can kind of say that about you can kind of have a view if you, oh, I like when I was young, I liked, you know, the wild girls are always out partying and you know, up for some new adventure, and now that I'm older, I want a woman who's, you know, wants to settle down and have like you can. That's a kind of self-explanatory thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you see that in reverse with women.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you, yeah, and you see that in reverse with women, they were the bad boy, and now they're like the guy who does the dishwasher properly, sure, sure, sure. But I mean that's more like what's your preference for a relationship? If you're talking about viscerally, what gets you going? Yeah, your sexual preferences. We don't know why people are straight or gay or bi.
Speaker 1:There's been a lot of explanations.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's been a lot of explanations and you know most of them are either wrong or incomplete, or maybe there's something going for them, but they're unproven and we don't know why people have the kind of fetishes they do. When it goes really weird and really wrong when that sexual attraction is directed at something really unhealthy, like where did that come from? Like I don't know. Just at some point in my life I was really into this and like I have no idea why and why, why, what was it like to be to find out your own sexuality? Well, I mean, I don't know. I was a young kid I don't even remember when and all of a sudden, from you know, one summer I could care less about girls and the next summer was all I could think about and like why? There's no what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:The some of these red pill theories are in the genre of why are people sexually attracted to what they are? They're trying to give you a story about that and they're wrong, but it's not like anybody else has a better like. They're especially wrong, but it's not like there's knowledge. Here. There are people who are taking it, answering those questions, take and taking it seriously, who don't know, and then there are people who are not taking it seriously at all and don't know, and I put the red pill in that category.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so the the challenge of people cause. You know you go to red pill. Let's say you're a little bit healthier in terms of your psychology or whatever, and you're trying to just better your life. That's why you're actually going there. There's you're going to find all these bad things. But the issue is you are these, you know, confusing hypotheses maybe that are giving you views? The issue is, you're trying to navigate and actually figure out what you want in. In my view, in a world where the some of the stories and narratives that we've always told in history are kind of in flux, and we have because of the I don't know how to phrase it, but the creative, imaginative individuality that we are capable of in today's world.
Speaker 1:We're able we really are, I think, in ways that we're not as easily uh, able 150, 200 years ago to build whatever life we want to. If we want to be with two men, a dog and a chicken, we have that ability more than in the past. You know, just because we're so wealthy, we have, like, these types of reasons.
Speaker 2:Well, it's more. It's like certain behaviors are more socially.
Speaker 1:I mean so well, and the social thing.
Speaker 2:So the main thing is just the political part. So if, if, whatever you want to do, you're going to get killed for or imprisoned, so there's just the freedom to do, there's political freedom. And then there's this social, more social tolerance of well.
Speaker 1:But so the problem with that, of course, is that then you have to build and come up to your own values from scratch. In a sense, you have to figure out, you know so, for instance, I was, you know, on this show. I've talked about this many times on, about the history of love and marriage. Like the idea of marrying for love is really new, is recent, like the like. That was not what you first off. Most humans do not get married traditionally. Like in the history, you are married to whoever you sleep with first. That's how peasants were.
Speaker 1:There was a courting marriage for, you know, within the higher elements or the higher aspects of society. But this whole story is something we're inheriting and we have to either accept it, deny it, reject it or build our own. And that, to me, is the like. That's where it becomes really confusing. And then, when you add into it all this, well, you know, I want to have a lot of sex, but then this doesn't, you know, match with that, like getting this kind of woman who's you know maybe more, not going to have this hypergamy where she has more options, like it's just to me, it's like so confusing. So the important, you know, it's more than ever we need some kind of helpful guy.
Speaker 2:So I think what you're raising is there's a kind of there's a what's good for me question.
Speaker 1:So if you're just a regular old like straight guy who wants you know. Nowadays you gotta say this who just what's? It called cis, cis cis normative, normative cis or something like that yeah.
Speaker 2:So if you're just a regular old straight guy and you just want a regular old straight girl like yeah all the things are there for you to just you know, you just gotta find her.
Speaker 2:And then there's all these kind of like structures there for you to just execute on your plans together. But it and it doesn't really the question, doesn't really rate like occur to you Is this good or healthy for me? But then now if you deviate from that, just based on the fact that you're not like everybody else, it's going to occur Like do I really want to be this way? Like it's a common for young gay people to go through like. Like they fight with it Like. Now maybe less so, but it used to be very common old. My understanding from talking to gay and lesbian people is that you know you'd go through this period where you're like no, I'm not this way, and like you deny it or try to fight it or maybe can I make myself not this way. And part of that is like, is this good for me? Is part of the question is this good for me? And I think now it's pretty clear that gay and lesbian relationships are completely healthy and valuable to the people who have that preference.
Speaker 2:But there are other things that other things that deviate from the hetero norm that you might that there's still a real, quite like if you have some fetish, that's, you know, not really harming anybody, is it harming yourself if you engage in that? So like extreme but consensual BDSM, or in obsession with particular body parts or activities that aren't normally sexual, you know PG, but like, is that bad for me? What's the standard of determining that? And I don't just mean that as like a personal question. You can think of that as, like, if you're a psychologist or an ethicist, like is this actually a harmful, you know, fetish or paraphilia or something, and I don't know how to answer that question. Now, obviously, if somebody is being seriously hurt or it's interfering with other necessary function, life functions, like if you're, if your fetish is to give your dominatrix all your money which is a real thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, ok, that's obviously putting your sexual desires in stark conflict with your ability to just go through the normal functions of life pay for your car, pay for your house. So there are certain things like that, but other things that don't have any obvious conflict. If you're just really into some kind of, you know, unconventional play, let's say, um, you might think, well, what's wrong with this. But it's also kind of weird and I don't like if you're into like scat things or something like that. Like, okay, that's physically gross to people who aren't into that. Like what, what's like psych? Like, give me the psychological theory why I'm like a bad person or why I'm, why I'm harming, like I'm harming myself in some deep way for doing this or for indulging in this. Like I can't make the desire go away. Like that's part of that's part of having a sexual desires is you can't. Will it away? Yeah, is it right to act on it? Yes, so no, but the whole point is, I think there's just not knowledge here.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And you can in individual cases. You can.
Speaker 1:Well, there's not universal scientific knowledge, but you can have knowledge about yourself.
Speaker 2:There's not universal scientific knowledge, but even so I took an extreme one. But, like I said, so, imagine really kind of extreme, masochistic, sadistic, but consensual kind of BDSM stuff and you go and do your thing in private with your consenting partner who's also into it, and then you go about your life regularly, like there are people like that who just live regular lives and they have this thing. Is that bad for them? Like is there some sense in which that's not, like it's coming from some deep, harmful self-evaluation?
Speaker 1:I mean, I can imagine.
Speaker 2:There could be there could be, yeah, but, and again, my point isn't to say any of these things like people want to be belittled all yeah, but my point isn't to say any of these things are or are not, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:my point is that in in individual cases, you might be able to say, like you know, this is destroying your entire life. That alone makes it bad for you. But in the cases where you kind of have it like this is the bedroom play I do, and then that's the only place it affects, does anybody have any knowledge about how to evaluate and think about those things? I think the answer is not really.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and yet you have to figure out, and yet you have to figure out how to do it like if you want a full, flourishing life, if you, you know is poly is polyamory healthy yeah, so I don't. I think that I'm very skeptical yeah, I'm skeptical of it too. I, I think, I think just because humans are limited and you know, in their capacity in general, we, we're a limited consciousness, we can't you know so yeah, I can. But I can understand people who want to try it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I can. You know you can make a case in its defense that I don't find convincing, but I'm also not confident I can disprove it convincing, but I'm also not confident I can disprove it. So again, the point is to just say that there's a lot of ignorance in the whole sphere of what is good for us, which.
Speaker 1:I think is important to acknowledge.
Speaker 2:Is important to acknowledge. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I think that's your point. I think that's part of the problem. Out there is people, and I'm going to say Rolo Tomasi only through my friend, so I can't quote him. You can't quote him Because again through my friend, so I I can't quote him, but he's because, again, my friend is someone who really likes him and reads him. But the the idea is of what rollo tomasi is kind of saying is like this is just the truth yeah right this and that's what the red pill kind of indicates is.
Speaker 1:I'm just telling you the facts, man. This is how women are, this is how sexual behavior is. This is so, but you have to. What you're saying and I agree with a lot, you know it's very important is that you have to just acknowledge we don't really know a lot about what these preferences come from, why they are. I think for me, the duty of yourself is to learn about yourself.
Speaker 2:You can, you can say. You can say, though, what they are in a statistical way. Well what they are in a statistical way. Well, sure, and, and that doesn't necessarily, but I think that's, that's the kind of knowledge that actually you can act. You don't if you're, if you want to be, if you want to be more successful dating, you can have a strategy of just playing the numbers right, like most women find the following, the following they, they like like guys, like subs, they call themselves right.
Speaker 2:So no, I don't even, I don't even mean stuff like that. I mean like well, but did you see, like do women, do women in america today like like beards or clean shaven? Oh, and you can say you you can see if you let's say, you did a survey and it was 80 of women prefer a clean, shaven face yeah and that's both a stated and revealed preference then shave your beard then, then, if you tell me to shave, my beard.
Speaker 1:Well, what I'm?
Speaker 2:saying is why do you have? Why do you have the facial hairstyle that you do.
Speaker 2:I don't have a good face, yeah but if, if that's, and if and if you think, if you think to yourself well, I grew a beard because I thought it would make me look more manly so I could meet more women. Turns out that that's not true. So what's the point of the beard? Now, if you like the beard because I don't know, you kind of identify it. You like looking like the, you know the, maybe you go going for the lumberjack lumberjack thing or something you know, then that's another reason. So that kind of information is, can be or is or can be valuable to know. But you don't need a whole theory Like if you then just, oh, women don't like a clean, shaven face because beards, it seems like you have something to hide and like you start philosophizing about it and it's like you don't know that and you don't need to for the purposes of I want to make a better dating profile on on Tinder or whatever. You don't need to know that.
Speaker 1:Well, so I was going to bring up this podcast, this Lex Friedman podcast, where he interviewed and I cannot remember her name, but she is a sex worker- yeah, I know how to spell the name.
Speaker 2:I think it's Isla. Yeah, a-e-l-l-a.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's. But she so because she goes into fetishes. And Lex was saying and I don't know if this is true that she probably has the most robust study on fetishes in the world. I don't know if that's true.
Speaker 2:As far as I know, her data gathering is Twitter polls. Okay.
Speaker 1:Then, yeah, that's probably not the most accurate.
Speaker 2:Or polls she sends out to her Twitter followers. I don't know what her methods are so, in fairness to her, I've seen. I follow her. I know who that is. I follow her. I know who that is. I follow her on Twitter. I think and I or at least the enough of my, the people I follow follow her because she comes up in my recommended feed a lot so I know, I know who this is.
Speaker 2:Yeah and I and I know I know the poll, like the data. I've seen some of that and it's everything I've seen is either just a direct Twitter poll or Twitter link to some other polling software or something. So if that's all she's getting, then you know something about the people who follow I, I, I yell out, however you say that name you know something about the people who follow and happen upon her things, but I don't know if that's that's not representative. Now, in fairness to her, maybe she's got other things she's done that that are, that are she was studying.
Speaker 1:Like I fairness to her, maybe she's got other things she's done that that are that she was studying, like I thought she was actually going to school for this or something, but I don't know, yeah. But yeah, I mean one of the points I remember her making that it's kind I think it's kind of similar. What you're saying but I thought was interesting was she was making a point about the, the number or the percentage of women who claim to want to be a subordinate in the sexual preference versus the number of men who want to be a dom or dominant in the sexual preference.
Speaker 1:There's a huge gap where there's way more women who want to be subordinate than there are men who claim they want sexually to be dominant. So I mean, that seems to be something that is, if it's true, is an important thing to maybe learn about because it could help you if you are dominant, or if there's something you can do, because to me, if you know, I think preferences, because we don't have a lot of understanding I think there may be something you could do to activate or to become more like this how much you know preferences you could do.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's a little different from like what kind of facial hair do I have, or what kind of hairstyle do I have, Because if presumably the woman who wants to be a sub wants the guy not just to be dominant but to want to be it.
Speaker 2:So if you're just like well, I could more women if I could just go to a class on how to be a good dom. And do I like it? No, I don't hate it. That's not what anybody's looking for, but how you style your facial hair is just like whatever. It's not as practical. Now, if it's a deep part of your identity, then sure, then yeah, then sure, then yeah, then don't shave or don't grow a beard.
Speaker 1:But if it's just, you know I sometimes I have a stubble, sometimes I shave clean Like if it's just something like that You're just talking about, like the kind of preferences that are superficial preferences and adapting to that to some degree versus these.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, look, everybody modifies their behavior to some degree. Nobody never showers and never does anything to their hair and never shaves, like people who look like that are homeless or crazy. Yeah, like, everybody does something to take care of their appearance a little bit. They'll look in the mirror and you know, go like this or whatever. Yeah, so what way do you do that? Well, and why do you do that? And why do you do that? Well, you want to look your best, and what does that even mean? Like, look your best to yourself. For what reason? Look your best on camera, look your best for a date. Like you do different things.
Speaker 1:And what I'm saying is, if you know a little bit about what modern American women tend to find, and in your region and in your, the way you live american women tend to find, and in your region and in your, where you live, I think austin might be a little different than like. Yes maybe so, but yeah, so you could. There's universality, so something in the culture.
Speaker 2:Change your hair. You know, if you have a hairstyle that was in in vogue 20 years ago and now you're divorced and you're 40, change your hairstyle.
Speaker 1:Yeah, especially because what was that if you're a middle-aged?
Speaker 2:man, the kind of young hip hairstyle doesn't hit. Stupid crazy love or crazy. Have you seen that movie crazy, stupid love with michael scott from Especially? Because if you're a middle-aged man, the kind of young hip hairstyle doesn't hit right. Stupid, crazy Love. Have you seen that movie Crazy, stupid Love with Michael Scott from Steve Carell and Ryan Gosling?
Speaker 1:No, I haven't seen it, because that's kind of what happens to him. He's been married since he was 18, has a grown adult daughter and he separates from his wife. And then he meets Ryan Gosling, who's this like hip, cool and a suit guy, and then, and you know, he's Steve Carell's like his New Balance sneakers and his cheap jeans and looks like a dad and then Ryan Gosling kind of transforms. It's kind of like a makeover for men.
Speaker 1:Makeover for men and it teaches him how to like Makeover for middle-aged men yeah, for middle-aged men and then he teaches them like the game and like they go to bars, and he learns how to pick up women and things like that.
Speaker 1:But of course it leads to bad things or it leads to conflict and oh yeah, yeah, it leads to a lot of misery and eventually, things like that and bad, which would you know.
Speaker 1:It's probably a good thing to point out that it's not going to necessarily be fulfilling to do this, but the. So there's an earlier point I was, I was actually trying to make about the, the kind of these trends that we see and that what I, what I see happening is people pushing, like people in the you know, in red pill, in the manosphere they're, they're pushing a kind of you know they're, they're pushing this ideology that on some level, they're moving into that and because, for whatever reason, some of these things I don't know if they collapse or what happens I'm just seeing this move into this. Trad con is and this. And you know, jd Vance was just, I think, like people have started associating him with the pro natalist actually, and things like that, because he, he and other people on the political right are saying things what was the quote? Like the government is being run by a bunch of cat ladies and so it's like this idea, that and this was like this was a couple of years before.
Speaker 2:Trad trad con is they want, they want to they want to go back to the kind of mad men fifties, sixties.
Speaker 1:That's the broad view.
Speaker 2:The man is the head of the household and works and the woman is a but this.
Speaker 1:But this is popular now this is becoming more and more popular and I think a lot of it is the same kind of thing. As you start, you know, you try to do this whole pickup thing and either works or it doesn't, and it leads to something you know, something like I'm still miserable. You know, I'm 35 and I'm miserable. Or I'm 40 and I'm miserable and I I maybe I had sex a couple more times than I would have, but I'm still alone and I got broken up with. So now what? And now I find myself attracted to this idea of well, this sounds like yeah, I'd like to have this kind of household, I don't want to be lonely anymore.
Speaker 2:But the trad con as a movement is less a men's like. There are women who prefer this too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I think that's relevant because it's not like you pointed out in your article and your new ideal with Nikos, that there's a kind of mirror to the radical feminist things and the red pill type philosophy, and perhaps this is what we're kind of getting from the book.
Speaker 2:Well, look, if all you know how to do is I don't mean all in a sense of trivializing but if all you know how to do is have a career and make money, and that's all you need to do to get a wife, you don't have to think about what is she like other than somebody to have money? I mean, that's, that's a kind of easy mode for for getting paired up, right. So everybody who's a functioning.
Speaker 2:Every male who's a functioning, every male who's a functioning adult probably has some kind of job, some kind of income. And if you don't, there's no shame, anxiety or felt. You don't feel like less of a man. If you try to get a better job, Sure. You don't feel like less of a man if you try to get a better job, Sure. If you're single, almost never or never had any female affection.
Speaker 2:You feel like shit. It's humiliating, it's embarrassing. You don't talk to people about it. You can go to a career counselor and there's like legitimate people who, and then the whole system. There's a whole system of getting a better job coaches and mentors?
Speaker 2:yeah, that that are not. They're not. Those people aren't bsers. Whereas if you try to get that kind of advice about improving your sex life for your love life, like yeah, like 70 of the people are just completely full of crap. So if you're in a time, or if you revive a time, where all you need to do to attract the woman is just have a good job, yeah that's.
Speaker 2:You know, that's okay. You don't have to deal with any of this other problem about, oh, what kind of guy and what kind of personality and how like, how good looking do I have to be and like all of that stuff. There's just an easy cure.
Speaker 2:You just kind of get one, you know, somebody introduces you and he's he's single and works for so-and-so, and she's oh wow, I'm 20 and I'm a woman, so who can't work, so that works out for me and that's. You know, that's the kind of, that's the kind of fantasy people. I mean how accurate it is.
Speaker 1:I'm not sure sure of what pairing was like prior to the sexual revolution, yeah, and how accurate it is. Yeah, it's an interesting question but that's certainly how definitely the depiction in movies.
Speaker 2:In the movies, yeah and you know I love the show mad men and it's, you know, in the first couple seasons, when the, when the lead is married to betty draper so the lead is named don and betty Draper is his wife she just, you know, she's just a housewife state, stays at home and how did he meet her? He met, you know, he had a nice sales job and he met her in a store and he's kind of handsome, he's, he was, he's handsome and she's pretty, and so it kind of just like that's all he had to do is yeah, I have a job and it works out. Just, women are just naturally interested in me because I don't look like a slob and I have a good job.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which isn't a bad start.
Speaker 2:Which isn't a bad start, yeah. But now it's like, yeah, she doesn't need a provider, like women now don't need a provider. Is the thinking it's like she's got her own job.
Speaker 1:So that's 100% true. Yeah, so you have to offer something else. You have to offer something else, right?
Speaker 2:She doesn't need that, she might still find that attractive like oh he's going places and he's got a career, but it's not like it's not. It's no longer a necessity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, at least with certain. I mean that's like a strata of society, it's not all, it's a little strange not to at least have the ability to have a job as a woman. Oh, okay, yeah, like it used to be. That's weird.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, like that's the whole, like half. The plot of the first season of Mad Men, which starts in the early 60s, is there's this young girl at the ad agency who wants to.
Speaker 1:She wants a career.
Speaker 2:She wants a career there, not just a job to like wait for a man and part of what's interesting is like this lead guy is like all I care about is good work and she does good work, so he kind of mentors her a little bit.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But that's weird. For the time yeah work, so he kind of mentors her a little bit.
Speaker 1:But that's weird for the time. Yeah, that's sweet.
Speaker 2:So but people the whole.
Speaker 1:That's also that culture.
Speaker 2:Yeah. The whole thing, though, is like no, there's something good about that, like, and to make it on the women's side, the case is like look, you want a career. That means you're doing all this, all this work and focus on your career, and, you know, have time for kids, um, and. But so you know, it's not true that you can have it all in the sense of, like, women's fertility starts to run out in a way that a man's doesn't. So a man can be 50 and still have kids. The older a woman gets, the more, you know, dangerous to both herself and the potential offspring is, and so there's some truth. Yeah, yeah, there's some truth. And then there's this kind of like kind of a little bit of bullshit around it, like, no, you can, you know, you can have and certainly people give birth later, into their 30s and 40s, but like that that becomes very so hard, and it's hard, it's expensive yeah
Speaker 2:like you have to go to facility doctors. You can do it, yeah, but the the harder. The longer you wait, the the harder it is. And then you get a bunch of, you know, like jd has to say old, old cat ladies, or like they missed out and they kind of fell for the idea that I could just do it whenever and then it didn't happen for them. So you get like this kind of regret around this and there's a certain that's certainly true of some people. And then where I'm going is just you hear young women hearing about this and maybe they're also Christian and they're involved in some kind of religious and they say, yeah, I'd rather just have my career be a mom, yeah. And then you get the trad cons. So you get the women who want this because they're kind of disillusioned with this feministy type stuff, and you get the guys who want to be guaranteed, Neither seem to be leading to personal satisfaction.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no right. I'm explaining where this is coming from. I agree with that.
Speaker 2:And then the two kind of groups meet, kind of merge, kind of merge, and it's like yeah, I want a career, I don't want to have to do all this Tinder stuff, I just want to.
Speaker 1:Finance blue eyes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I want a pretty wife who will give me a family, and I don't care if she's got a career or whatever. I mean, probably having a career makes it harder to do that. And the woman says, yeah, I want to have a whole bunch of kids and if I have a career, that is difficult or near impossible. And these two groups who think this way meet and then you have a social movement.
Speaker 1:And that seems to be what's happening now, and that's what.
Speaker 2:And you can't divorce it from the fact that these people are largely Christian and there's a kind of Well, that's what, yeah, and I think that's what's out in the culture.
Speaker 1:So that's the philosophical basis and I think this is something that Ayn Rand is really good at pointing out is that there is going to be that philosophical connection or something, and that it's going to eventually lead to some kind of you know what does what does she say something about? Admixtures will always get to something, yeah well, I mean you need all.
Speaker 2:Life is difficult, requires thought and work, and that's just some people don't want to do that, some people don't want to do that work, but but every time you're in that kind of situation where, yeah, this part of life is really hard and I'm not sure what to do, that's when the need for philosophy really comes front and center. And now you have this. Well, I'm already sort of a Christian because I was born into a whatever.
Speaker 1:My parents were Catholic.
Speaker 2:Now you're a cultural Christian and now I don't know what. Should I have kids now and not have a career, or should I have a career? Or what should I do? And then you have this voice giving you what seems like advice, or what seems like is advice whether it's good advice or is it another question. Yeah, so there will always be something to come in and fill that void. Now for young men who are just completely confused about how to have a love life, what they get is manosphere stuff.
Speaker 1:So what would be like the? Well, actually, I wanted to say one thing you say about the Christians I wanted to point out is the one thing that people are starting to observe about the pro-natalism movement like I found the name Simone and Malcolm Collins is one of the prominent examples is that they're atheists but they behaviorally and a lot of their underlying ideology seems very religious, traditional, even though they're claiming to be atheists. Right, they're saying we're atheists and they name their children things like industry Americas. In one article this is in the Intelligencer and it's talking about the new rights it's saying that the children have Randian rather than biblical names. But in reality they have a lot in common with biblical Christian perspectives on family, on corporal punishment, even on things of that nature.
Speaker 2:I don't know what to make of that connection, not knowing more about the natalist movement. So one thing it's not true that Christianity has a monopoly on valuing families. People in all kinds of cultures are proud of their kids, proud of their family. Yeah, so that, that's a you know almost universal thing so so yeah.
Speaker 2:So the fact that people want to have more kids, thinks it's good, think it's good to have more kids, it doesn't strike me as particularly Christian. It it might strike you as Christian if that's like the only other movement pushing that in the United States. You see the similarity.
Speaker 1:But I mean. I guess it's because there's duty-bound premises that seem to be ingrained in it. It's not about like have a kid for your own personal happiness.
Speaker 2:Brian Kaplan, the economist, who, as far as I know, is not a Christian, has a whole book on why you should have kids and it's all a whole bunch of selfish reasons to have kids, and he has like seven kids. So is that Christian? I mean? No, he actually enjoys kids and he's trying to convince you that you might. You know, if you don't have kids, what seems to loom large for a lot of people as well. Well, that's a way less money to spend on fun, and you know the things I like to do.
Speaker 2:do now, and sometimes you got to become convinced that the having the kids, yeah, that's going to be more rewarding than going to concerts every weekend, whatever you're spending your money on. So that kind of argument doesn't strike me as christian. Now that if the natalists have some I don't know end of the world thing going on, like you mentioned.
Speaker 1:Maybe there's some connection there I mean, mean, I guess here's yeah, I'm going to read this quote to you then, because I don't want to come across as like I'm not anti-family and anti-kid.
Speaker 2:I'm very pro-family.
Speaker 1:I want to have a family. That's not what I'm saying when I'm looking at their arguments of you know, this is a numbers game focused on producing the maximum number of heirs. They're associated and they no. They are connected to the effect of altruism, movement and the point, the purpose of maximizing number of heirs, not to inherit assets, but genes, outlook and worldview. That's a quote, and so to me it's more like what is underlying the connection, like there seems to be, like there's a fundamentalist Christian belief that large families are a blessing from God, blessing of God, and you should have, you should maximize the number. And all they seem to be doing is replacing that with science and data and saying we should scientifically they're just saying scientifically we should maximize the number of you know heirs that we have, and that's it. And that's what to me, is.
Speaker 1:Concerning the idea of like, first off, you know, if you want to promote having children, the value of having children, come on the show. I'm all for that. I will talk all day about the value of kids. I was a teacher. I like kids, I'd like to like, I said, but to tell people who are confused about their happiness what they're trying to accomplish, that look, just have as many kids as you can yeah just just maximize your heirs period, try to get you know, spread your world view and you know things like that.
Speaker 1:Like that's the whole premise of it, that I don't. That's where I'm just in this burgeoning new movement that's where it's, it's, it sounds it's. And then the arguments of the genetic stuff about look, the world population's going down. So those are the two arguments I've heard well, it sounds like something that's it it sounds like something some christians say.
Speaker 2:So have more kids to have a greater influence over the culture. Spread your worldview, like that's I maybe. I've just never heard it before.
Speaker 1:That sounds to me protestant, not catholic sure, I mean yeah yeah, so so it's quiverful is the connection they use in this particular article. So that is a particular christian fundamentalist view that children are a fun. Now again, I don't think there's a lot of intellectual discussions about this yet it's, it's. It's like a year. I mean natal con, I think was the first one, was like last year. So this is very new. I'm just, you know, reading about it because it's like here's what you know it's.
Speaker 1:Elon musk is obviously a very big proponent of having, of maximizing the amount of kids you can have, and he's telling people to do that all the time. And then you have people like JD Vance who's criticizing. So when he calls these women in, you know, when he calls them cat ladies, it's not, you know, I don't think there's anything wrong with being a cat lady, necessarily. I mean, if you made a mistake in realizing, oh, I waited too long, but I want kids, that's a problem. But if you, like many women or men, choose to not have kids, to pursue a political career or another career, then that's a good thing.
Speaker 1:Obviously, cat lady is a derogatory term. He means it derogatorily because there is I've seen this also related to this argument. Is this idea that? Okay, you're like I think it was applied to Sarah Silverman and these other kind of leftist female people where well, they didn't have kids. So now they're being this kind of advocate because they want. They they're kind of motherly instincts is being applied ideologically to us and they're trying to control us, as you know, like a mother with their kids or something like that, like some pseudo psychological yeah, and it's.
Speaker 1:It's nonsense, I think. But I think JD Vance is kind of implying that we're now maybe there's truth to. These women are, you know, cat ladies and they're miserable because they didn't? I don't know that, I don't, I'm not going to psychologize, I don't even know who's specifically talking about. He mentioned a couple people, but my point is that that connection is what's worrisome to me and I see it growing and I see more people moving toward that. I see more, you know, even young, objectivist men who are that I've talked to, who are successful in many ways and they're frustrated with this thing. I've seen them have these kind of flirting with these ideas a little bit of natalism.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like pro natalism with, with this kind of like, yeah, the family traditional. Like why don't we have more women like this, like it's. It's problematic that they're like that kind of thing becomes. You know the envy of women who are like this. I think that becomes more prevalent the more frustrated you get.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, ask the women who actually have a career and have a family how they do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, plenty of people do it. It's not impossible.
Speaker 1:I think a lot of people do it.
Speaker 2:It's certainly going to be difficult I would. I mean, I assume, but I'm sure if there probably are books about this. People write all kinds of advice. You know how to balance a career and a family as a you know, as a career woman. I'm sure there's a lot of advice, so maybe some of it's good. People do it. So why you would prefer if it's pot, why would? Why would you prefer somebody who has no career and is just a mom for you know, 15 years and then doesn't have anything to do over somebody who has a you know, a career and can be a mom and, you know, can balance the two? Why would you prefer the one over the other? That seems strange to me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I guess to me and you know, maybe we could start wrapping up or something here the important advice needs to be something along the lines of how to think about your own life, how to plan and organize your own life and how to navigate the confusing world to build the life that you want, and that everybody can be different. You don't have to be a model of everyone else. There may be something you can learn from other models, but you have to figure out, at the end of the day, the buck stops with you in your life and you have to figure out what kinds of things are going to make you happy. Do you need to have kids? So, for instance, I mentioned love and marriage. Do you want to maximize for resources? Then that's the that's. That's actually the traditional way of marriage is is that you, you marry because of your merging economic resources to maximize your ability to have the most resources, and sure, you get two people with 200, 250 000 incomes. That's a hell of a nice life, right?
Speaker 1:there right so do that and then don't worry about kids, or get $5 million in the bank and then get a nanny and you're like stuff like that, like you could do that. But then you're when you're mating, you're finding your match, you're prioritizing that and you may be deprioritizing romantic love.
Speaker 2:And what?
Speaker 1:is romantic love and how does that come about. That's a whole other conversation, of course.
Speaker 2:You have to figure it out. That's the scary thing. That's something that's revealingly absent from the discussion, like theories of attraction in relationships, if you look at especially things targeted towards men.
Speaker 2:It's about maximizing sexual partners almost a lot. I, I, somebody sent a comment to one of the places where I posted my article, these comments on it, and it was well, what about this guy? This guy is not like that, this red pill guy. And I watched a video of this guy, for he talked for two hours about, and the title of the video was something like love, sex and marriage, and he didn't talk about love at all, it was all how to. It was all a sexual relationship as a kind of transaction, that his advice was that a woman to keep a man should be the sluttiest version of herself. And this guy has a.
Speaker 2:This guy has a, has a phd in. Uh, not a phdsy, he's a psychologist, psy D, p-h-y, psy D. It's a different kind of doctorate, psy D Like there's medical doctorate Anyway. So and he's, you know, he's a kind of guy giving advice to men and, you know, women also. And at no point did he talk, say anything about any love, romantic attraction. It was all just a transactional view of yeah, and you know, I'm all for thinking about a relationship as a kind of trade, but there's a difference between trade and transaction. So he's thinking of it as, like, you give sex and he gives resources.
Speaker 1:Like that's the whole framework. What's purely material trade?
Speaker 2:But I mean material trade, can Think about a friendship. So part of a friendship is doing material things for your friend, like can you give me a ride to the airport, sure. And like if you ask your friend for material help, you know nothing major, over and over again and they say no every time. And you're doing things to help them.
Speaker 1:That's a material there's something unbalanced about your energy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm not denigrating material, I'm saying like I guess that's all I mean by the, the transaction by transaction.
Speaker 1:I mean A trade can be material, but the trade could also be just a conversation where we're enjoying ourselves.
Speaker 2:Sure, but the transaction is more like a one-for-one view of it. So these dollars for this product, this amount of sex for this amount of relationship stability yeah, so that's what I mean by transactional. I think that's not the right way to think about the trade that occurs in.
Speaker 2:I mean, some relationships are literally transactional, like you get paid a certain salary to do certain things for your employer. That's literally transactional. But there are non-transactional trades that people engage in all the time, like friendship and romance, and parent-child is a kind of trade. They each partner gets something out of the relationship. It's something different, radically different. And a mentor and a mentee like there's a trade there. It's not transactional in the sense of you need to give me this much mentorship if you expect me to improve this amount. You can't think of it that way. That's the wrong way to think about it. So that's what I mean by a transactional view of the relationship. So it's right to think about it as a trade. What does she get out of it? This is one of the things that's missing from a lot of advice for men in dating, where there's it's one-sided in terms of what they get out of it.
Speaker 1:It's clear what I get out of the beautiful woman, terms of what they get out of it. Yeah, it's clear what I get out of the beautiful woman. What does she get out of what is? Why would she want to date you like yeah?
Speaker 2:there's this in, there's this attitude like society's unjust because I'm owed. This is more the incel kind of thing, like you're just owed a woman and you don't have one and therefore there's something wrong with the world. It's like no, what do you have? Like she needs to get something from you. You don't want it. You don't want just any woman.
Speaker 1:You want one that you find valuable, attractive, etc and that takes a lot of work to really think, realize that.
Speaker 2:I think, though I don't know to realize, to realize that as well, because you think of yourself as a good person. Yeah, internally you think of yourself.
Speaker 1:You're like, I'm wonderful, if you know like I mean not everybody does, some people that's true, there's a lot of, there's, unfortunately, some of that, but I just I guess I remember when I was young, teenage or whatever, and I would have another breakup or like and, and I was like, if only she got to know me or see me here, or something like that, like I had that kind of you know going into this. She just didn't get to know me, or she didn't, because I thought of myself as really amazing, but the reality was that I wasn't. There was some, you know, maybe not with that particular woman, but just there's something you're not offering.
Speaker 2:Or if you don't realize you're not projecting properly, or you think you're projecting but you're not really projecting it this way One of the things that happens as you get older and especially if you stay single and get experience and you actually grow in.
Speaker 1:What you understand is I think you'll find that you're better at picking out somebody who will respond to your advances. Oh, yeah, because it's not. That's the big mistake. Yeah, when you're a teenager, you talk to. Yeah, when you're a, when you're a teenager, or or or if you don't at me. Yeah, if you don't mature if you don't mature.
Speaker 2:There's kind of like you kind of fall in love a little bit with every girl who's nice to you?
Speaker 1:yeah, exactly. And which turns some women into like cynics about men?
Speaker 2:yeah, another one another, one of these guys yeah yeah, there's a. There's a song that has a line that's something like I secretly in love with everyone I grew up with. It's the band the National has this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which I get that?
Speaker 2:That's a kind of you know, immaturity, and that's fine to be immature when you're 14, 15, 16.
Speaker 1:But, like at some point I was like 20.
Speaker 2:I mean, at some point you get less.
Speaker 1:I was a late bloomer.
Speaker 2:At some point it gets less and less excusable, uh, but and and hopefully you start to learn and then like it's because part of the thing that you think about is well, what kind of woman do I want and what kind of woman would want that the kind of guy I am? And then you, you get better at just like, like finding, finding the positive to your negative. You know, charge it kind of, and when you're younger it's just this generalized thing. I just I want a girlfriend and like, what kind of girl do you want?
Speaker 1:Especially if you're a pretty one like loner and you don't talk to people in general, and then you definitely don't talk to women, and then you're basically falling in love with a idealized idea of a person, idea of who she is, not who she is which I think is also part of maturing. Yeah, but that's I mean, and that's where, in fact, that's.
Speaker 2:That's where like infatuations come from yeah well, she's pretty and she's nice to me, so she must be, and then you invent this whole story about who she really is and not that person. So one of the things that's missing from a lot of this advice for young men is helping them develop that kind of perspective, or that kind of not perspective, that kind of method of self-improvement. And that's why, like I say in the article, a lot of the commons I call it common sense kind of advice that and this is the advice I would give to young guys like there are certain high reward easy things to do, comparatively easy things to do, that you can start with. That'll both actually get you positive responses from women, but it'll also get you in the mode of thinking about like, what do they actually like? What do I have to offer? What do they actually want for me?
Speaker 2:And that's that's why I say things like being. You know, learning to be more social, getting in shape is a is a big one. Learning to just kind of present yourself in a better way, and I don't mean becoming like the best dressed guy in every room or something, but like learning that maybe your faded Simpsons t-shirt and your gym shorts are not what you should wear to social gatherings if you're trying to meet someone like maybe you should not have greasy hair all the time like that. That kind of thing like is um low-hanging fruit low-hanging, low-hanging fruit now.
Speaker 2:Now, some of those things like becoming more social and and going to the gym and getting in shape are not like low-hanging fruit. They take a lot of effort, but especially getting in shape is not psychologically painful and difficult the way. Maybe becoming more social is yeah, and it's the sort of thing that if you do it right, once it becomes noticeable, has a really strong feedback loop. That's why it's one of my favorite early advice, like what's the first thing you should do?
Speaker 1:But it's also not just for dating. Well, yeah, so there's other reasons.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's other reasons to do it, and I think that's one and one of the things that teaches you something about women, too, is that it's not just that, I think they're also.
Speaker 1:Or just dating is like you're not just, you know you're if you do it just for that one purpose. One, I think you might take shortcuts which could be damaging. But then, two, I think you don't realize that part of what, in my experience, what many women have complimented me on working out, is not because I. You know, there was a time when I looked more muscular and I remember I looked in front of the mirror with my girlfriend and she's like, oh cute, and she didn't really care that much. I could tell she's like, well, I think it's. I'm actually more interested, or I like you more because you're passionate about it, not because of it. And so, anyway, the underlying thing is like, if you start falling in love with things and you develop passions, including health, which I think is an important one we should all have, because you only have one body, that is has so many other benefits than just like oh, I go to the gym Because you see this in bro culture, right?
Speaker 2:We could go down the list of the reasons why it's good to reasons why it can benefit you too, and going to the gym is something you and I have in common, but I don't mean to use that as like a frozen abstraction. I mean like, when I think of getting in shape.
Speaker 1:I mean like learn a sport that you like, or something, and join a softball league and like go to practice and like run some more and do something physical and like you know if you size up a young guy and he's like why can't I meet a girl?
Speaker 2:Like one of the things on the list is almost certainly going to be lose or gain 20 pounds.
Speaker 1:Well, especially if you ask him like well, show me women you're attracted to. Yeah, cause, like if he's attracted to a woman who's fit, then it's like well, well, hold on. So if you're attracted to a woman that looked like you, then you probably have a good chance. But you are attracted to this stellar, you know, olympic gymnast like. Why the hell, unless you're Elon Musk, what are you offering her?
Speaker 2:that's the think about. That's a good example. There's these so called incel guys that involuntarily celibate. It's like well, show me the kind of woman you would be un-celibate for, and you're not going to get the female version of them. You're going to get kind of like an OnlyFans-looking girl or something like that, and it's like you're voluntarily celibate.
Speaker 1:I never thought of it. Know, I'm sorry, it's not funny if, but, but it is.
Speaker 2:It is funny in this in the sense that people, when it's ridiculous kind of yeah, when people are self, when people have self-caused suffering let's say yourself, self-caused problems that are obvious to outsiders, that can be funny like that is. Yeah, that is, and you kind of deserve to be laughed at a little bit. Now it's not like the way you would approach it as their mentor, but as their friend, as their friend.
Speaker 1:You're gonna be like yo, bro. What do you? What do you do like my friends will be like dude. You're like. I remember I sat in a car a long time ago.
Speaker 2:Sometimes, sometimes pointing out that your friend is being ridiculous can snap them out of what they're doing.
Speaker 1:Oh for sure, yeah, and I think it's, and this is one thing I appreciate about good guy friends. I remember I was sitting in the car. This was a long time before I started working out ever. And I'm a big guy now. I've always been big. But I remember I just said something and I was like, yeah, I never thought of myself as that fat.
Speaker 2:And he's like dude, you're fat. I saw and I was like okay, yeah, I guess, I guess. I saw. I saw a meme the other day. It made me laugh. It was a woman says to her her female friend am I fat? And the friend the friend says, no, you're beautiful. And then the guy says to his male friend, am I fat? And he says, bro, I know five fat guys and you're four of them, like there's, there's something, there's something, there's something that can be and that's the npc meme yeah where it's like it's, it's the npc versus like the mail chat or whatever.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but there can't, so there, so this is a digression, but there can be something healthy about a little bit of ridicule which is like telling them the truth.
Speaker 1:Telling them the truth in a way that kind of is yeah, sometimes humor is more hurtful than just saying the truth.
Speaker 2:Sometimes it softens the blow. But the point is, with the I was making with the incel type guys and I called them. No, they're voluntarily celibate, but part of it is part of it. The way they're like that is they don't have the perspective, like they can't even raise the possibility to themselves. Like if I were a woman I wouldn't like somebody who looks like me and and, but at the same time they're like kind of ogling these, and I alluded to this at the end of the, the essay. Yeah, they're, you know, ogling these OnlyFans type women. It's like that's the object of their fantasy and it doesn't occur to them that, yeah, that kind of girl probably isn't interested in and you could go down the list just for brevity just how they look, but like how they behave and their jobs and their personalities and all those other things that are wrong with them they're not offering much but just looking at yourself in the mirror is such an is.
Speaker 2:This is why it's comical. It's it's such an easy thing to do that you're not, that people don't do, and it's like. It's like there's no rule that says you, you have to, and it's like there's no rule that says you have to be like in really good shape or something Like. It's just that people who are fit and healthy tend to partner with people with fit and healthy people and there's a kind of one of the you know, as we were talking before empirical findings of the psychology of sex dating. Is this called the sort of mating, said the psychology of sex dating? Is this called the sort of?
Speaker 1:mating and that it's.
Speaker 2:People tend to partner with people who are like them on along another a number of dimensions. So, yeah, maybe you see. Maybe you see, like the fat guy with the pretty skinny girl, sometimes that happens like it's not. But you'll find you'll find on other dimensions yeah, that they're very similar or that's yeah that, that dude oh, I mean like he's got a compensation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's an old saying birds of a feather flock together. I think that's that's true.
Speaker 2:That's true for people like people's, when, when they have the ability to choose their romantic partner, that's what happens in the long term, is that they sort out into yeah so if you want to, if you want the only fans looking girl who's doing squats on the time, like what? What are the odds that she's going to? She's going to be likes like greasy, overweight guys who played, who play yeah, play video games all day in their mom's basement, like some of them might actually like that.
Speaker 1:but it's pretty, pretty rare, pretty rare, yeah, some of them might actually like that but it's pretty, pretty rare, pretty rare, yeah, yeah, all right, any last thoughts on your article before we wrap or before you finish up?
Speaker 2:Not, really Okay.
Speaker 1:You said everything you wanted to say.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I said everything I wanted to say. I encourage anybody who's deep down this red pill rabbit hole to reconsider and to take seriously the fact that most men who have success with women do not think this way, do not read this garbage and yet are doing way better than you. So maybe they, maybe they know something and maybe these people who preach the red pill don't know what they're talking about.