 G'day, May 40 here, so I just looked at comments on some of my videos. Art Bell makes the argument that Nick Fuentes is only making about $50 a show and that people are afraid to donate to him because the FBI and other forms of the federal government froze his bank accounts and Nick is apparently on a no-fly list and so people are afraid to donate to Nick Fuentes so may get 6,000 live viewers but may only make $50 a show was Art Bell's argument so I think there's something to that. I think people may be afraid to donate to Nick Fuentes because of the law enforcement scrutiny that he's getting and so you can build up a movement by saying incendiary things as Nick has done but if you empower your opposition more than you empower your own supporters, which at C&C's done just like Richard Spencer did, then you get into trouble and so when you move from simply being funny and entertaining to being toxic and moving beyond toxic to being under law enforcement scrutiny and crackdown and having your bank accounts frozen, you get pushed increasingly to the margins of society, that comes with a huge price and so people who have something to lose are increasingly loathe to associate with you so that happened to the alt-right, it's happening to Nick Fuentes and so when I'm reading the making of the atomic bomb just thinking how important it is to have smart people on your side. You really don't want to create a situation where people with something to lose are increasingly incentivized to have absolutely nothing to do with you. Then there was another question I think by Don Cooper, he said considering the religion you converted to I would tread lightly questioning the faith of Christians in America. Why would I tread lightly? It's either true or it's not true and I said absolutely nothing about questioning the faith. So everyone sees the world through their own prism. They see the world as they are not as the world is so I said absolutely nothing about questioning people's religious faith. Simply made a point that empirically, behaviorally, when you look at the behavior of Christians, just like when you look at the behavior of a large number of modern Orthodox Jews, outside of specifically religious commitments there's no behavioral difference in the way they lead their lives. So I'm saying absolutely nothing about the faith just that by their fruits you shall know them. By their fruits American religion by and large is a mile wide and an inch deep. So in Europe and Australia when someone goes to church every week it says something very distinctive about them. It means that overall that they have a life that is quite different from the lives of people around them. But in America it says virtually nothing about someone that they go to church beyond that that is a a savvy way to position themselves socially and for business. So this is nothing about questioning the faith. I would argue that faith in and of itself doesn't there's no connection between someone's faith and how they behave. Sometimes a faith commitment will show itself consistently in behavioral changes but just as often it won't. So I know there I remember there was some there was a Hulu mini series about Pam and Tommy Lee, Pam Landison and Tommy Lee and there was a pornographer in there who who sold the tape went off to Holland took $10,000 from Bucci Pereno and associated the mafia and did a lot of drugs and hookers and I think the same pornographer at one point, Milt Milt Ingle, he became an Orthodox Jew or a pornographer like him. And so he went from being from an outside perspective from many people's perspectives in the porn industry scumbag to being an Orthodox Jewish scumbag. And so you can switch to Orthodox Judaism and absolutely still be a scumbag and you can switch from being an atheist to being a Christian and still being a scumbag. So these quote unquote faith commitments frequently don't mean absolutely anything. Sometimes they do. So I particularly seen it with certain types of evangelical Christians that they've had seemed to have had a genuine change of the heart, a change in spirit that their faith has transformed them and it demonstrates in a completely different attitude and a completely different way that they speak and conduct themselves. So sometimes faith has definite behavioral changes. But what was it that was it the Apostle James said in the New Testament, you show me your faith, I'll show you my works. So it was a lot easier to profess a faith change and even a quote unquote religious change without manifesting a behavioral change so that you're less needlessly angry, you're more patient, you're more tolerant, you are a better neighbor, you're more honest in business. So tell me I'm wrong. Tell me that there are distinctive behavioral changes between those Americans who go to church and those Americans who don't. Like what are the behavioral differences between those two groups? There certainly doesn't seem to be any significant behavioral differences between people who believe in God and don't believe in God in America anyway. So remember in the 1950s and 60s I think it was thought that once people lose God, lose religion, lose fear of hell, that their behavior is just going to go downhill. And we have not seen that. On the other hand, you've seen enormous changes since the pill. So people haven't gone to hell since they stopped believing in hell, but there have been enormous changes in sexual more rays since the pill. So sometimes a change will have profound effects, and sometimes a change in faith or a lack of religiosity or a lack of faith will have no discernible behavioral impact. And then there was a question, how does my spirituality affect the practice of my religion, affect my YouTube channel and affect how I conduct my daily life? So I believe I experienced a genuine spiritual change through working the 12 steps. And so I think this is manifested by saying pure needlessly hurtful things to other people. So I believe I become a lot easier to be around over the last 12 years. So I believe it affects my YouTube channel that I try to make the impact of my videos either neutral or positive. I'm not so naive to think that everyone who watches one of my videos is going to have a spiritual transformation and their life is going to change a bit better. But I would prefer to make videos that either have no change on people or for a tiny minority have a positive change. What's more central to my life, the 12 steps or Torah Judaism? Well, the form of my life may be much more affected by Torah Judaism, but my practice of Torah Judaism did not affect my addictions and did not affect my character defects. And so the spiritual core of my life comes much more from the 12 steps that it does from Torah Judaism. So my experience of Judaism did not change my fundamental moral challenges, my fundamental addictions, my fundamental character flaws. So through the 12 steps, I developed a greater peace with myself than I received through Judaism. And Judaism didn't really help me that much achieve greater peace with myself. What does that tell you about Torah Judaism? Nothing necessarily. It just tells you something about me, my experience. So I absolutely think there are people who have a profound changing character through the practice of Orthodox Judaism. And then there are other people for whom religion is not going to make a profound character change. So my life experience and my reading what I see around me is that for most people becoming religious does not create a change in their moral character. Does not fundamentally change the character deficits, character defects that are hurting innocent people. So the most profound path that I know for changing someone's character is the 12 steps. I'm not saying that it is definitively the most powerful path that I have seen and what I know. It's much more powerful. Can 12 step programs be regarded as a religion? I mean, yeah, you can regard them as such, but they're not. They're a power of spirituality. They're a form of spiritual practice. They're an accompaniment to a spiritual practice. They're an accompaniment to a life that works. So I didn't consistently develop a life that works until I stumbled on the 12 steps. So life that works means number one that you become at ease with yourself. And I think from the number of hours of live streams that I do, I think you're seeing someone as fundamentally at ease with himself. If you had to give up one Torah Judaism or 12 step programs, which would you give up? I would not give up my sobriety. All right, my sobriety comes first. So without emotional sobriety. So I've never, never engaged in in drinking or drugging. But my emotional sobriety comes first. So for me, a life that works means I'm at ease with myself. And I do feel at ease with myself 95% of the time plus I'm a happy person 95% of the time. And then I am increasingly at ease with other people. So I'm unaware of being in any significant fuse with other people for many, many years. Right? I can't remember when I was last in a, I can't recall the last time I was in an ongoing intense feuding with someone, say prior to 2010. So I think I've gone the last 12 years without any intense feuding. So that's benefited my life. So I think I get along better with other people. I think I cause much less needless harm to people through my blogging and through my videos than I did prior to 2010. Rune says, are you stoicism, minimalism, and some Torah set knowledge? Sounds like 12 step is more important to Luke than Torah and rabbis and Talmud. Well, yeah, without sobriety, I am trouble. I'm trouble for myself and I'm trouble for other people. So I've got to put my emotional sobriety first. Now, I love Judaism, love Torah. You know, I love going to synagogue love, love participating in Orthodox Judaism. But unless I'm sober, I'm doing damage to people. Like I am needlessly offending people. I'm needlessly hurting people and needlessly wounding people. I'm needlessly creating division among people. I'm needlessly creating headaches for people. I'm needlessly wounding people. I'm needlessly a source of aggravation to people without emotional sobriety. So the other night, for example, I started feeling lonely and started feeling like my life was on the wrong track. And so I responded to that by getting into some 12 step material, and I managed to get my emotional equilibrium. What I might have done in the past is act out to get attention. The 12 step had its own temples and religious ceremonies would I go. I didn't know I like that it's not a religious program. You know, I like that anyone from any religion or no religion can go. So I have no plans to move outside of Orthodox Judaism. I'm Orthodox Jew for life. But what I used to do with my anxiety and loneliness is, you know, I'd watch pornography that make me feel alive or I would act out online. I'd say something outrageous to get attention or I would use my sex and love life to soothe my anxiety. Why do they keep saying Putin looks sick when he looks 100% normal? I'm not sure. I noticed that a lot as well. And I don't see obvious signs that Putin looks sick. Point is depressing. Yeah, I mean, the net effect of pornography is depressing, but temporarily it takes people out of state just like alcohol. Like many people in miserable, they take alcohol and it takes them outside of themselves. So if you're fundamentally a miserable person, you're going to look for some form of escape. So gambling, I used to be really into gambling. TV sports, you know, watching TV sports, that would take me outside of myself with excitement. It's kind of dangerous for the addict like me. So how is 12 Steps effective, say, in my practice of Judaism? I've become less concerned with the form and more concerned with my spirit and my heart and why I'm doing things. Daily Mail had an article, Putin looks sick because this and that. Yeah, I don't know. I know that's a major talking point and I just not saying it, not saying it's not true. It's just not just not obvious to me. So, so for example, instead of trying to doven all the prayers, I may just choose a line to meditate on. So Orthodox Judaism say that Saturday morning service, there may be 60 pages of prayers to say and instead of putting an emphasis on getting through all the prayers to be a good Jew or to look like a good Jew, thanks to 12 Steps, I may just concentrate on a phrase or a sentence or a paragraph. I may just meditate on one of those over and over again, instead of going through all the prayers. I think it's more important that I stay like emotionally sober than that I, you know, show up to dobbling. So it's often more important that I talk to my sponsor or talk to sponsors or get to a meeting and then I get to a Torah class or to a prayer service because going to dobbling or going to a Torah class, it's not going to have the same effect on my emotional addictions as 12 Steps. So I pay more attention to what's the effect that a particular practice or service or rabbi or Torah class or community, what effect does it have on me? Like is it eating or harming my sobriety? So people looking for any experience and yeah, that is why Pentecostalism is so big right now and celebration forms of worship, whether in Judaism or Christianity are so dominant because people want to experience something. And so I start approaching life through the filter of what effect will this have on me and what situation will this put me in because there are certain situations that will put me in a position of wanting to stand out from everyone else, that wanting to show that I'm smarter than everyone else, wanting to try to assert my intellectual superiority to want to raise my status. There are all sorts of like competitive situations that are just bad for me. So I guess I use the 12 Steps to more carefully gauge which situations are good for me to be in and which situations I should perhaps avoid. And so I'm less concerned with the form, more concerned with the spirit. How often do I think about Brundlefly? Probably every couple of weeks. Probably think about Brundlefly and hey, give him a call or reach out in some way or curious how he's doing. So there are a lot of people that I've met through doing these live streams and I reach out to them and then they don't get back to me. So I may reach out once or twice to someone and if they don't get back to me I just let it go or I may wait a year and reach out again. So that's something I learned from Alanon, make a suggestion to someone only once and like calling someone and saying, hey, call me back. That's a suggestion. So generally speaking I think it's best to make a suggestion or to leave a message with someone only once and then just leave it up to them. Question from the chat, why did Brundlefly worship Richard Spencer for years? I don't think Brundlefly worshiped Richard Spencer for years. I think Richard Spencer sometimes has some interesting things and Richard Spencer is very good at live streaming and he can hold attention and so I don't think that Brundlefly was any more smitten by Richard Spencer than tens of thousands of people. Pentecostal wave is eventually going to burn out. Well everything's going to burn out but this desire to have a genuine experience of something transcendent I don't think that's ever going to burn out and a genuine desire for emotional comfort that as we live in a world that's increasingly less magical, less mystical, Brundlefly used to defend Richard Spencer against Matt Forney and Spencer's other critics. Well just because Brundlefly defended Spencer vis-a-vis Spencer's critics like Matt Forney doesn't mean that Brundlefly was worshiping Spencer just meant that compared to Matt Forney or compared to Richard's other critics Brundlefly found Richard Spencer more impressive. So these things are situational as opposed to whom all right so so Spencer had a run where he met a need for people an emotional and intellectual and social and cultural need just like a good live streamer like a good radio talk show host right people need emotional comfort people feel dislocated people feel the need for a reconnection to magic how come Nick Fuentes can barely get any super chat money anymore because people think that he's the the feds are after him and that they'll get on some kind of no fed list and so they don't want to get people want to avoid trouble right people don't want to want to become the subject of law enforcement attention people don't want like extra IRS scrutiny people don't want scrutiny so people are afraid of law enforcement tension I was more moved by the ending of the fly than by any Bible story Richard Spencer puts on a great show it's a pity you can't run enterprises and take care of people yeah it's a very compelling live streamer but many of the qualities of the compelling live stream such as for example what Spencer does is consistently say the unexpected right that does make for a compelling live stream doesn't make necessarily for a good leader of men or someone reliable or someone who you want checking the the engines before the plane takes off so the very qualities that make someone a great live streamer often make them a bad friend or a bad leader or someone that you that you don't want to rely on so often the very thing that feeds us is also the thing that's going to kill us and so often people become you know that people become intoxicated by live streaming and they do it to the detriment of their real life and their real friendships and relationships and so I try to fit my live streaming to my life like my life is more important than my live streaming my emotional sobriety is more important than my live streaming so you'll notice after the Jim Goad Saturday Night Massacre I never did another blood sports again I didn't like how that Saturday Night Massacre made me feel I didn't like the after effects have I considered TikTok no I have not seriously considered TikTok so that's that's one example of how 12 Steps influences my live streaming is I try to do live streams that fit within my 12 Step communities that fit within my own welfare to fit with the welfare of people who are close to me that fit with my life so I don't shape my life to my live streams I shape my live streams to my life so that means that I don't say certain things I don't tackle certain topics I don't do you know the blood sports to get the huge views all right it means that I go in a much more high IQ direction I go in a much more pro-social direction I try to think about the effect of my words on every major segment of my life and every major relationship of my life of every major community in my life I try to consider you know what will be the impact of this live stream on this you know important relationship on this important community is it gonna is it gonna diminish any of my important connections and so I give up you know some of the more rambunctious live streaming some of the more you know intoxicating edgy commentary for the sake of having you know a pretty good life right my happiness and my emotional sobriety are more important to me than getting large numbers of YouTube viewers so after the Saturday Night Massacre with Jim Goad I think that was December of 2018 I could have kept doing blood sports and I could have had thousands of live viewers and I made a deliberate choice not to go in that direction like I made a deliberate choice to have a smaller more elite more pro-social audience and to make videos that are either morally neutral or possibly have a positive effect on some people Luke get in the water I was in the water I did go for a swim and my friends with Jim Goad no I have not had any contact with Jim Goad since probably a week or two after the that Saturday Night Show so I guess I'm not friends with Jim Goad anymore and also as I get older I'm less and less likely to have difficult friendships like some people are just a challenge you know some people can just be difficult to be around and so part of the ethos that I've learned from from the 12 steps is to you know perhaps create some some distance from those who are who are ornery and difficult and and threatening to my emotional equilibrium and there are a lot of things that are a lot more important to me now than excitement and viewership and superchats yeah this is so you can see the Santa Monica pier straight ahead and then north of that is Malibu and then that's Venice down that direction and the LAX spot you've seen that Jim Goad had to be a friend with Jim Goad is a chump doesn't just assent to things so he has his own moral code and his own rigorous sense of honesty that would many people to shame but that can also be tiring and and challenging so I usually prefer that there's relationships that that are not going to predispose me to to say things that I regret or to feeling things that I don't want to be feeling I don't want to I don't want to be defending myself a lot I don't want to be feeling awkward and out of place you don't see many shillers on this beach mate this this beach is filled with shillers surely shillers are all around us so how does the 12 steps affect my live streaming I think I'm and to that how does it affect my religion I'm more interested in the the spirit on the emotions the the me that emerges from the practice of my religion than simply fulfilling practices I'm concerned you know what what effect will this have on me and how can I try to ensure I'm my best self and put myself in the best situations so I'm less concerned with going through the motions and more concerned with connecting with connecting with God then how does the 12 steps affect how I make a living well I try to limit my my earning to to honorable work right I was I was more willing to do to do things I wasn't proud of for instance I made a lot of money on running pornography banner ads 15 20 years ago I don't think about azmador from the daily storm and you think he is a great intellectual I haven't paid any attention to him in the last few years so I have no idea but I do notice that many people got like an intense emotional experience from the daily storm or from the right stuff they just had a negative effect on their life so I'm sure there are plenty of people for whom it's not had a negative effect but I do notice some people but there they're playing around with the alt-right online with such an intense emotional experience that it meets their needs in a way that has led them to back away from real life and has ended up having a deleterious effect on their real life I wonder if Yigdrasil is still alive yeah no idea so yeah I noticed many people getting morally desensitized by the alt-right learning learning a kind of overly provocative edgy and antisocial ways of thinking and speaking and acting that have not benefited their real life what do I think of Adam Green a pretty chill guy pretty easy to talk to so you know my my defenses didn't go up like Kevin McDonald's also someone who's easy to talk to but you know I don't feel threatened when I talk to a Kevin McDonald or an Adam Green so certainly there are many things that Adam Green has said that I strongly strongly disagree with and however there is not like this you know burning you know unpleasantness to Adam Green that there are with with many distant people what do I think about Christianity I think Christianity has a very positive effect on many people's lives but it has no discernible behavioral effect on most Americans who claim to be Christian right their behavior is essentially indistinguishable from non-Christians so I believe the West has been profoundly shaped by Christianity and I believe that the West has been a pretty good thing I have seen many people's lives change from a genuine experience with with the evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity so that kind of high intensity experiential Christianity where you experience the presence of God I've noticed that that's had a profound effect on many people's lives so those who practice high intensity religion there is a profound difference in the way they live compared to those who just practice mainstream religion where there's much less of a difference between the way they live and the way non-religious people live but some people intense high intensity religion makes them worse so there's no panacea there's nothing that that makes people you know always better right sometimes religion makes people better sometimes it makes people worse sometimes Christianity makes people better sometimes it makes it worse it's so much Judaism good for its adherents I'm sure it's good for many of them and I'm sure it's bad for many of them and I'm sure it's a wash for many of them so people want comfort and connection and not sure why we've got a siren going off here so Adam Green hates Christianity because he regards it as Jewish yeah a lot of I noticed that's that's very common I don't know that much about Adam Green I've had two conversations with him which were perfectly pleasant and Duvod says he's had various interactions with him again which have been perfectly pleasant on the other hand if I go to Canary Mission and I see quotes that they say Adam Green has said then he looks absolutely nuts there he looks he looks like fiendish when you when you go to Canary Mission so pretty much any of us if you put some of the quotes some of the things crazy things we've said and done now we look terrible and that's certainly true for Adam Green it's certainly be true for me you look at certain things I've said and you just put them up on a website like I'd be appalled you'd be appalled right so many Christians particularly in America don't regard their their the Jewish origins of Christianity is a bad thing and so American Christianity in particular is probably the most Jew friendly form of Christianity of which I'm aware and given that Christianity in large part comes from Judaism yeah that seems a pretty pretty adaptive understandable response now on the other hand there will be tensions between Christians and Jews but in certain contexts you know these tensions will will flare up and be particularly intense in other contexts Christians and Jews will finally have a lot in common so prior to the 18th century Christian and Jewish fortunes tended to rise and fall in opposite directions so when when Jewish fortunes were rising Christian fortunes were falling when Christian fortunes were falling Jewish fortunes were rising but after the 18th century 19th and 20th century into the 21st century Jewish and Christian fortunes have tended to rise and fall together so prior to the 18th century differences between Christians and Jews were keen but after the 18th century Christians and Jews frequently found they had more in common than they did with non-religious people right so in modernity where religion is becoming increasingly watered down where life is becoming increasingly less magical mystical and religious Jews and Christians find a lot in common it's frustrating that there doesn't seem to be room for a non-antisemitic form of Christianity within the distant right yeah that's true makes it difficult though if you also have distant right sympathy as well like the MAGA movement is certainly Jew friendly right the the Steve Bannon Breitbart movement is certainly Jew friendly and approaching dissident right or new right are you looking at global Christianity or the narrow backwards version of small town America well there is global Christianity means nothing Christianity in Nigeria is completely different than Christianity in New York City or Christianity in small town Alabama or Christianity in Japan or Christianity in Scandinavia okay global Christianity and global Judaism mean almost nothing right you have to place religion in a particular situation in a particular context right there's almost nothing that say the Nigerian Christian the Japanese Christian the Norwegian Christian and the I don't know the Brazilian Christian having common right because there aren't any essential qualities to being Christian or Jewish or Muslim or black right it's all situational it depends on the particular people in a particular place in a particular time so in in Australia and in Europe someone who goes to church every week generally leads a life that's quite distinct from those of the unchurched around it but in America that's not so true Christianity in Africa is very syncretistic it's a mixture of you know various forms of African religion and witchcraft that would be largely unfathomable to say European Christians Christianity practice in Japan very different from the Christianity practiced in in Europe