 I'm 840 here, so I find it surprising how many people, particularly on the right, feel like they're living in a dystopia, feel like they're living in a hellhole, feel like they're living in an asshole, feel like they're living in a crap hole. In the United States of America today, when there's a land of so much opportunity, land of so many blessings, the most powerful nation in the world, this is the place where the future is being created. And yet on my section of the internet, on the dissident right, in my section of YouTube, I keep getting this sentiment in YouTube chat that we're living in a dystopia. Like America in 2021 is supposedly a dystopia, equivalent to North Korea, equivalent to living under communist repression. I just think it's absolutely absurd that there's no common sensical or empirical basis for regarding America in 2021 as a dystopia. Now, if you're right-wing, not everything in America is going your way. Obviously, the right is consistently losing the culture wars, granted. The notion that we have a same-sex marriage is shocking for someone with my traditional sensibility. And I understand you can make a good case from Torah that a Jew is not allowed to live in a country of such moral depravity that it institutionalizes same-sex marriage. So you can make a good case from orthodox Judaism that it would be better for a Jew to live in Putin's Russia rather than the United States of America because Putin's Russia does not have same-sex marriage. And so there are considerable sentiments within the Masora, the Jewish tradition that the same-sex marriage is an absolute abomination and that it renders a land so sunk in moral depravity that a Jew should not live there. For example, the Talmud was written after the Jews had just fought two bloody wars with the Romans. And the Talmud is not generally given to praising the Romans, but it does praise the Romans for three things. One of them is that they don't permit them. They don't conduct marriage ceremonies between men and men. But I understand the right is consistently losing the culture wars. And I don't like it. And I find that sad. And there even been times I felt quite down because of the consistent losing of the right in the culture wars. But then to think that this country right now is a dystopia and a hellhole and a crap hole is absurd. Are you not permitted to marry the woman that you love? Are you not permitted to court the woman that you love? Are you not permitted to have children? You're not permitted to go to the church or the synagogue or the mosque of your choosing? Are you not permitted to be an atheist? Are you not permitted to fill your house with sacred objects? You're not permitted to study Shakespeare or study cutting edge post-modernism or modern economic theory or biological determinism. Anything you want to study, you can study it in the United States of America. If you think that we're living in hell, then that's about you. That's not about the world. You're not seeing America as it is. You're seeing America as you are. If you think this is a hellhole, the only hellhole here exists in your soul. If you think that America is one big bag of crap, well, the bag of crap is in you. You are the bag of crap. You think America is a bag of crap? No. You are the bag of crap. You likely also think that you're hard done by in life when in our likelihood the reality is that you have been unnecessarily harsh on other people. You probably think you're the victim. The truth is probably that you're consistently the victimizer. You probably think that, you know, all the important people around you have been lying and deceiving to you. In our likelihood, you've been lying and deceiving to the people around you. You think that you're consistently being taken advantage of by others. I suspect that you're living in such a world of delusion that you are the one consistently taking advantage of others and lying and deceiving and manipulating other people. You think you're consistently getting screwed over by the United States of America. I suspect that you are consistently screwing over your fellow Americans. You think this is a hellhole. You think that we need an American Caesar. I think that you're probably passive in your own life. I think you're probably a pussy in your own life. I think you're probably a wuss in your own life. I think you're probably weak in your own life. I think you're probably failing in your own life and you want to blame your failure on the United States of America. I think that's what's going on. I notice people carrying these huge chips on their shoulders and usually the truth is the very opposite of what they're thinking. They're probably thinking like the type of disaffected people who say that we're living in a hellhole in the United States of America, generally people who have a disaffected relationship with their family. If you think your family is being consistently screwing you over and holding you back and being mean to you, in all likelihood the truth is the very opposite. You have disappointed your family. You have let down your family. You have screwed over your family. You think that your spouse is consistently screwing you over and betraying you. In all likelihood, you are screwing over your spouse and betraying your spouse. You think that your community is holding you back. You think your community is taking advantage of your kindly nature. In all likelihood, you are taking advantage of the kindness of your community. You think that you can't get ahead in the United States of America because all the odds are stacked against you. No, you can't get ahead because you're getting in your own way. You have constructed a life where people don't want to have much to do with you. You think that we need a Caesar in America. You think we need a dictator in America. Well, that's because you have no control over your own life in all likelihood. You're failing in your own life. You're not moving ahead in your own life. You're not developing skills in your own life. You're not developing relationships in your own life. You've fallen out with your family. You can't sustain friendships. No woman wants to make love to you and nobody wants to pay you more than $20 an hour. Then you take your own personal feelings and you say, oh, America's a hellhole. No, America's not a hellhole. There's a hellhole in you. There's a hole in your soul. There's something wrong with you. You are disaffected. You feel like a pariah. You can't get along with other people. You are restless, irritable, and discontented. You can't stop using porn. You can't stop avoiding reality by spending an inordinate amount of time in daydreaming. You are wasting your life in fantasies. You are going to become that person who sits on the bar and tells the guy next to him, oh, what I could have been. You're not taking charge of your own life. You're not moving ahead in your own life. You're not building up something in your own life. You're not contributing in your own life. You're not a blessing to other people in your own life and you're blaming that on America. You're blaming that on the Democratic Party. I mean, wake up and smell the coffee, bucko. The problem's in you. You think this is a hellhole. You think this is a dystopia. You think this is an SHIT hole right now in the United States of America. The problem's with you. You have no desire to be of service to other people. You have no desire to help other people. You have no desire to contribute to other people. You have no desire to be of assistance to your boss. You just do the bare minimum at work. You have no desire to help your clients. You have no desire to do the things that your boss wants you to do. You're not building up anything in your community. You're not learning new skills and you just blame it on America. Now, the more tired we get, the harder we work, the more pressure we're under, then the less likely we are to have empathy for other people. If you are working hard and you have a lot of obligations, you've got a wife to support, you've got kids to support, you've got obligations for your community and to your profession, then it makes perfect sense where you don't have much empathy for people above and beyond those for whom you have substantial obligations right now. We all only have so much willpower. We all only have so much empathy. We just can't extend the same amount of empathy to everyone or it's not empathy. If you're under those circumstances, you've got four kids, you've got a spouse, you've got to earn $150,000 just to keep a roof over your head and keep everyone moving along in your family. You also have obligations to your profession, to your employer, to your community, to your church or synagogue, to your family, to your ailing parents. All right, then under all those pressures, it would make perfect sense if you lack empathy for people outside of those for whom you owe obligations. But a normal person, a normal happy person, does have empathy for others, right? If you don't feel for other people, if you're unable to ever see things from another person's point of view, if you don't have a desire for other people to flourish, if you are not eager to help and to contribute and to volunteer and to give, right? In all likelihood, you're a miserable bastard. There's something wrong with you. If you're not interested in contributing to the lives of other people, there's something wrong with you if it does not make you happy to increase the happiness of the people around you, right? If you just have a bitter perspective on everyone around you, then there's something wrong with you. And I understand if you're under just this inordinate amount of pressure, and so you're bearing up on the significant adult responsibilities, then the more pressure, the more tension that you're under, obviously the less empathy you're going to have. But a normal person who's enjoying life, he's going to welcome opportunities to help other people. It's going to make him happy to contribute something to an acquaintance, to a friend, to a member of his community. If you're a normal person and you're in the elevator with other strangers, and you see someone struggling, carrying a box, you volunteer to help them out. If you see someone's blind and they're having a hard time getting across the street with all the traffic, a normal, happy person is happy and glad to assist that blind person. A normal, happy person finds out that there's like a lonely Holocaust survivor living on their block, goes volunteers, brings them food. That's normal, right? It's not like it's some inordinate, strange burden to be of assistance to other people. A normal, happy person enjoys opportunities to be of assistance to others. Now, that doesn't mean you give up everything. That doesn't mean you forget about your own welfare. That doesn't mean that you're always on call whenever anyone has a whim. No, you have to use good sense. You help moderately. But this idea that we're living in a hell hall, what the hell's in you? You know, there's something wrong with your soul, right? When you feel happy, all right? You naturally incline towards treating other people nicely. You naturally incline to be of assistance. You naturally want to contribute. You naturally want to volunteer. Like if I see something that requires very little effort from me and it really helps someone else, I love to do it because I feel great, right? But if you feel like a prior, if you feel like an outcast, if you just fear and loathe other people because you think everybody sucks, then there's some radical rejiggering that you need to do. So you can talk about it in biochemical, neurological terms that you need to reprogram your reactions to stimuli. You can talk about it in spiritual terms. So instead of just following your own will, you connect with higher power, with God, with the universe or with reality. You can phrase it in many different ways. But if your basic attitude is hell is other people, there's something really wrong with you. My father loved that saying by Jean-Paul Sard, hell is other people. Well, my father was a very unhappy man. Now he had his own list of accomplishments and there were many admirable, admirable calls. Sounds like coming gobbledygook to want to be of assistance to other people, to feel happiness when you can contribute to the life of someone else that's communist. I mean, this is just basic human psychology, unhappy people don't want to help others. Happy people are glad to be of assistance to other people. So you can go through life as a miserable SOB and think everybody else sucks and hell is other people and you will be miserable and in all likelihood you won't be prosperous. If you genuinely incline towards being of assistance to others, there's no way you can't be prosperous. If you genuinely take pleasure in other people being happy, if you genuinely want to contribute, if you genuinely want to assist, if you genuinely want to moderately help other people, then you will naturally become prosperous. You can't be poor when you have a natural inclination towards connection with other people and being an upstanding member of your community and contributing something. But my father would often say that Jean-Paul Sartre saying, hell is other people want, my father's life was hell. My father's life was misery and hell. And I don't envy that. And he didn't choose that. I don't think you should blame yourself. I mean, you don't beat yourself down because you think other people suck. You don't beat yourself down because you feel like a pride. You don't beat yourself down because you feel like a social outcast. You didn't choose this. My father didn't choose his level of misery and anxiety. But if there's a better way to live, why would you not seek something out? I mean, it's a really miserable way to go through life thinking that hell is other people. And my father had more than a share of misery. I remember my therapist said to me once when I confess and like, oh no, I feel like I'm repeating parts of my father's life, the social isolation and the rejection. And my therapist said, why would you want to repeat your father's life? I wouldn't want to do that for all the tea in China. So, yeah, I react to the notion that being close to others is some communist gobbledygook. It's a funny line from Norm MacDonald. But if you seriously think that, if you seriously think that, oh, other people suck, America's a hellhole, yeah, I'm going to react rather vigorously to that because it's insane thinking. And it's in my domain. I encounter it all the time on YouTube and in the distant right. I don't think it's productive. I don't think it's good for people. I don't think it's good for society. Okay. Why do I like the 12 step approach so much? Because every other thing that I did to improve my life didn't work. All right. I have always been in love with self-improvement. I've always been an enthusiast. It's like, oh, yeah, this new thing running marathons or doing investigative journalism. Or, oh, I'm going to embrace Judaism and convert to Orthodox Judaism. I've always been seeking something to turn my life around. And none of it worked. The only thing that I've ever turned my life around was 12 step programs. So I don't know why, but it just really seemed to work for me. So there's something about 12 step programs. You go into them and you find you're not alone. So let's say I've had times of like, you know, off the hook porn addiction, where I'd be using pornography three times a day. So most of my life was not like that, but there are enough days that it was, it was not good. And so to get into a room with other people who have struggled at times with porn addiction, it's like, oh, wow, I'm not alone. So yeah, I am an extremist. I am naturally unbalanced. I am an enthusiast who like bounces from like one enthusiasm to another. I'm an intellectual jiggler who like falls in love with every beautiful, comely idea that comes along, but ultimately staying loyal to none. But 12 step programs. So I step into a room, I find out, oh, there are all these other people who have problems with debt. There are all these other people who have problems with underwriting. There are all these other people here who have problems with porn. Oh, here's a program for all these other people who tend to love addiction, where you get infatuated and falling in love and you get that rush. And it's just so exciting, but you can't sustain it. And you can't sustain any relationship over a year. That's my life. Then you find that 40 other people in the room have the same problem you do. And many of them have found recovery and they've found a way to sustain a relationship and they've gotten married and they have kids and they have a thriving, prosperous career. And it's like, oh, wow, it's possible. I can go from beating the heck out of women to getting married to a woman and having kids and building up my own business. These real life examples that I count in 12 steps. So the shared experience and then the hope, people who've had the same problem that I do and have completely turned things around, people who felt alienated from their family. I get into a room and I see that many of the problems that I've had with, say, my father or my mother or other members of relatives, I find it's common and I find that there's recovery. So getting into a room, like I've gone through much of my life feeling isolated. I get into a room with other people who've gone through most of their life feeling isolated and they've recovered from it. So I too can recover. There's a path, there's a way, there's a program. There's other people who will help me, mentor me, who will sponsor me, who will take my cause, who I can reach out to if I'm feeling isolated, depressed, down, wanting to act out in my various addictions. I can reach out to people and get help. So you get into a room full of people who struggle with isolation and they're usually going to be people that have overcome that problem and built a good life and I can learn from them and maybe one of them will sponsor me. I've spent much of my life feeling uneasy with other people. I can get into a room with other people who struggle with the feeling of lack of ease, who feel totally irritable, restless and discontented and I can learn from their story and how they found recovery from perennially feeling uneasy around other people. I can get into a room with people just having knee jerk hatred and opposition to authority usually carrying on from one's own troubled relationship with one's father. So I've gone through life just having this knee jerk hatred of anyone who reminds me of my father. I was not doomed, however, to continue that because I found help in torture programs. I was able to recognize the problem. I carried around this vast chip on my shoulder, this resentment, much of it not conscious towards my father that I then carried on to all authority figures and I was able to let that go and that just changed my life. I no longer instinctively just hated everyone who was in authority and I was able to recognize my own tendency to always think that I was smarter than everyone else. Therefore, I should be in charge. Therefore, I should be the authority and I was able to look and see how ridiculous that was. Do I remind myself of my father very much of the three kids of my father? I am the most similar to my father. I'm very much like my father. I love to give you my opinions. I love to fancy myself a leader, fancy myself a leader of men, a spiritual teacher. I resemble my father in so many ways except as one girl told me, yeah, you're quite like your father, but he's not as pompous. Okay, sometimes to protect myself, my own fragile sense of identity, I've often compromised myself and become a people pleaser. I remember in community college I walked out of the I think trigonometry class or medium algebra class and these three people were talking about how stupid Republicans are and I was like a die hard Republican at the time, but somehow I lacked a sense of self to hold onto myself in that situation and I just kind of went along with it because I was so fragile in my own sense of self. I couldn't handle the peer pressure dumping on Republicans. So my own sense of self has been so fragile that I tended to take on the personality of whatever the group was that I wanted to join or whatever I saw would get me the most attention. I would just be a chameleon. I'd just constantly be changing to try to suck the most attention out of people. Much of my life, I would perceive any personal criticism as a threat. So just have an instinctive fear and loathing of any personal criticism when much of the personal criticism, it can benefit me like all feedbacks a gift, some feedbacks more a gift than others. So I would lose myself in my addictions because I had such a fragile hold over myself and I couldn't stand living being uneasy around other people, thinking other people suck, thinking that other people, you know, hell is other people and so because I couldn't connect with others, I had to connect with something so I'd connect to a process like sports addiction or Netflix addiction or porn addiction or fantasy addiction or love addiction, right? Because I was so uncomfortable with who I was or I would try to rescue people who had these addictive tendencies. So I've gotten a great high at times out of trying to rescue people, you know, including pornoes, including sluts, including the mentally ill, including the trouble, the trouble. I would get high from rescuing and I would get high from the prospect of being rescued. I think a major reason that I started blogging and doing all this stuff online was as I said, desperately wanted to be rescued. But if I just put my story out there, someone will hear my story and they'll reach out and they'll help me. You know, they'll give me some advice. You know, I'll find the connection that I need. I'll find the friends that I need. I'll find the supplements or the program or the community that I need. And that's why I spent so much effort, you know, putting myself out there on YouTube and on the internet and through blogging. Just it was like a desperate reaching out because I, you know, this help out there, I just need to, you know, get myself out there as much as possible, expose myself to as many people as possible and connect with that help. Do I think the distant ride has any legitimate grievances? Absolutely. Yes. We need to sort ourselves out as George Peterson would put it. Yeah. You need to sort yourself out if you want to be happy and if you want to be effective and if you want to be prosperous. But if you want to live in a world of delusion and just blame everyone else for your problems, then there's no need to sort yourself out. Luke, you have a nice healthy glow about you. Is this the fruit of the spirit or is it the fruit of the booster? Or is it just good lighting? It's just because I'm so annoyed with my fellows on the distant ride. I think that America's a hellhole and America's a dystopia. Like America, the beautiful from seed to shining seed. There's so much goodness and beauty in this world. Yeah, there's ugliness too, but there's so much beauty in America that I'm convinced that most of the people who think that America's a hellhole, that the hellhole's in them and the healing has to come from within. America is the great Satan. Yeah. There's certainly many sistenic aspects to America, but there's also so many beautiful aspects to America. All right. So I've often been attracted to other compulsive personalities because I needed to fulfill my own sick need for abandonment. Like abandonment was the most rejection and abandonment with the most emotionally intense parts of my childhood. And so I created a life where I get to re-experience those most intense emotions of my childhood again and again and again. I converted Orthodox Judaism, then made it absolutely impossible for Orthodox Jews to have me around. Like I consistently tried to join groups that didn't want anything to do with me. I have created a life where those whose connection I most wanted rejected me. I remember there's this one person I really admired had a great relationship with him, but I kept going on and on saying things that I knew he found offensive, but I thought they were very witty. But after about the eighth time that I said something that I knew offended him, he just completely blew up at me in front of other people. And then I went back at him and I completely destroyed what was and should have been and continued to be a beautiful friendship. And I just blew it up because I ignored his signals that he found many of my comments offensive. And I just ignored his signals and I just trampled on his sensibilities again and again in the workplace until he just blew up and no relationship anymore. What was I saying that's so offensive? Well, it wasn't a good idea. I would say things like after I'd say something incredibly offensive and crass and provocative, I'd say, I wasn't like this before I converted to Orthodox Judaism, Orthodox Judaism morally desensitized me. I mean, I was just trying to say something like completely out of left field and shocking, but it's not a good thing to say. Or I also said when two Jews in the workplace were discussing techniques on how to bargain, how to hundle, how to approach a particular deal, and what would be the right bargaining approach. I said, oh, I love I love to hear you guys talking Torah. And then they're just like, you know, exploded at me and accused me of crass anti-Semitism. But this guy given me the signals like eight times that he did not find these jokes funny. And yet I kept making them until he blew up and destroyed that friendship. Do I believe that the mainstream is treating white people fairly? Yeah, generally speaking, I think white people are being treated fairly. So there are exceptions from new action obviously works against white people's interests. When you when we brought in the civil rights revolution that that destroyed our traditional order, so you no longer had as much authority over who you hire and who you rent to. So people lost lost a lot of freedom of association. Sounds like these Jews need to get thicker skins. Well, everybody has sensitivities like I blow up at times, like I get annoyed and offended at times. I mean, I don't get offended by people's political and cultural views, but I get triggered at times we were all far more vulnerable than we may otherwise appear. We all are tremendously vulnerable. We all have huge numbers of weak points that can if someone pokes them we go. There's no escape from being human. Why do so many distant right content creator site in the Babylonian town? Because it's so enormous that you can find something in there. Well, there are also all these bogus analyses of the Talmud trying to make it look like the most authentic document ever. And most of their quotes are not authentic to the Talmud. So hating the Talmud has a long history. And while they're undoubtedly all sorts of elements of the Talmud that are jarring and offensive to one sensibilities, most of the compilations of the most outrageous Talmudic quotes are bogus. America is great. And also much of it is in decline. And certainly we have much less social cohesion than we did 20 30 40 50 60 100 years ago. There are many ways that America is worse off now compared to 20 30 40 50 100 200 years ago. And there are ways that we're better off. I'm almost entirely invulnerable. That is a delusion. You just don't know your vulnerability. You may get a toothache after this show. Your back may go out as you get up from your chair right now. You may stub your toe. You may get an ingrown toe nail. You may have somebody say something and you will be laid low. None of us are invulnerable. When will you and Joseph Cotto talk again? Schedule another chat with him. You guys have great discussions. I really enjoy talking to Joseph. I love going on his show. I've never turned down an opportunity to go on his show. I hope to go on his show soon. None of those things happen. Yeah, well, you're living in a world of delusion if you think that you're invulnerable. You just don't know what's going to come around the pipe and just knock you down. Life will always humble you. How old are you, Randy? You sound like a young person. So usually someone by their late 30s, I'm protected by divine intervention. Yeah, I think that's a delusion. God never promises that you won't be laid low. Yeah, right, you're eternal. So much of my life, I've lived from the standpoint of the victim even though I deny it. But my inner talk would be, oh, I'm so effed, eff me. There's no hope. Why does this always happen to me? I've often had this overdeveloped sense of responsibility. I'd much rather be concerned with other people than with myself. I go into therapy and I talk about a friend. And my therapist said, why are you going on and on about your friend? And I couldn't figure it out. And the therapist said, well, maybe it's because your friend reminds you of you. But much of my life, I'd rather get ultra concerned with other people's lives in an unhealthy way, not in a healthy, contributing, caring way, but in an unhealthy obsession to get myself out of my concern for my own failures. And then on those occasions, when I appropriately stood up for myself, I would often get a feeling of guilt because I just didn't give in to others. I've gone through my life as a reactor rather than an actor, letting other people take the initiative. The reason much of the time I was so radical in my politics was because my own life was so passive. I've often been a dependent personality, clinging desperately to other people, terrified of abandonment. They're willing to do anything to hold on to our relationship, to not be abandoned, and just put up with abusive behavior. We have a substantial say in how other people treat us. And if you put up with bad behavior, you encourage it, you license it, and you bring on more of it. I would choose insecure relationships because they matched my childhood dysfunctional relationships. I choose insecure relationships because they would bring about the abandonment and rejection which I experienced so intensely in my childhood. I grew up for a time in foster care. My mother died of cancer when I was three. I moved around a lot of different homes and my stepmother was very ill and very angry, so constant chaos, abandonment, rejection in my childhood. Then I created an adult life where I bring that about again and again and again, not being able to sustain romantic relationships, not being able to sustain many of my friendships that blew up. Now, I've had some friendships from childhood. I've had some friendships that have lasted through my life, but I've blown up unnecessarily a lot of friendships. Yeah, I was afraid of feelings. I was afraid of emotions. I was afraid of being honest. I was afraid of accepting my fallibility. I would confuse love with pity. I would tend to love those I could rescue. And I became addicted to excitement in all of my affairs. I prefer constant drama and upset as opposed to working relationships and actual accomplishments. So living that way is simply not sustainable. Here are 40 questions of self-diagnosis from Sex and Lovatics Anonymous. There are about 10 sex addiction 12-step programs. Society needs a pressure release valve for these energies. Well, there are so many pressure relief valves. The best pressure relief valve is talking to a friend, having friends. That's the best pressure relief valve. Have you ever tried to control how much sex you have or how often you would see someone, sign of addiction? You find yourself unable to stop seeing a specific person even though you know seeing this person is destructive to you. Yeah, I've gotten into more than my share of destructive relationships because I couldn't say no to the sex. You feel that you don't want anyone to know about your sexual or romantic activities. Yeah, I had such a scandalous sex life. It really damaged my standing in my Orthodox Jewish community. I really don't want to be promiscuous and then try to build a coherent, stable life in Orthodox Judaism. Sexual promiscuity, Orthodox Judaism, very much at odds with each other. But because I was so uneasy with other people and uneasy with myself, I would constantly seek to get high from sex and from romance and from fantasies and delusions of grandeur. So I'd get high chasing sexual highs, romantic highs, intensity highs, and then I'd crash. Yeah, I'd try to have sex outdoors. I'd have sex at inappropriate times, inappropriate places with inappropriate people, not a life that works. What makes for a good friend? Sometimes they can be overbearing. Well, it's hard to sustain friendships if you're not a good friend to yourself. So until you start to become a good friend to yourself, start wanting to give yourself the care, the concern, the nurturing, the love, the admiration that you want from other people until you start wanting to give that to yourself, you're unlikely to be a good friend with other people. When you want to become at ease with yourself, then you will be able to be more at ease with other people. Because, glib mainly, I was unnecessarily harsh on you yesterday and I apologize. You made a good point that the NFL was unable to expand internationally, therefore is trying to expand domestically with the world crowd and with the women and the homosexuals, etc. And that was a good point. And I was unnecessarily harsh too often and too much with you yesterday, glib. You make me want to be a better man. Your comments are so sharp. Dennis Prager's anti-vax position surprised you. Yes, it does. Now, I haven't listened to Dennis Prager on a consistent basis for about three years or so. So I thought Dennis Prager did a much better show when it was only on the weekends, but once he got into the more of producing a daily three-hour nationally syndicated show, he had to fit in with the formula for winning talk radio, and that is to engender a sense of victimhood in your audience and tell your audience that you are going to battle on behalf of them. So I'm not sure Dennis Prager, who only did radio, say one night a week or two nights a week, would have taken on the ludicrous positions he's taken on with regard to COVID. So Dennis Prager said that the lockdowns were the greatest mistake in human history. And I think that's absurd. Now, I'm not saying that every lockdown in all aspects was a good idea. I don't have enough expertise with regard to social policy, but certainly social distancing in reaction to a pandemic in general makes a certain amount of sense. It's a policy that's there in the Torah. The Torah uses social distancing. Social distancing has been around thousands of years as a rational response to a pandemic. So is Prager fully vaccinated? It does not sound like he's vaccinated. And this idea that a natural immune response is better than getting vaccinated is absurd. It's just this naturalistic fantasy that everything that is natural is superior to that which is artificial. In the natural world, many of us would be dead. Like in the natural world, the old and the weak die in a much quicker than they do in our unnatural world. So sometimes that which is natural is better than that which is artificial. And much of the time that which is artificial is better than that which is natural. There's nothing inherently superior about natural or artificial. So Leponius, I'm curious you're talking about how you don't care to extend empathy to those who impose vaccine mandates. So Leponius, I'm curious to whom do you extend empathy? Aside from your family and your friends and to people who think similarly to you, to whom do you have an interest in extending empathy? Now empathy is tiring. So I only have a limited amount of empathy. The more pressure I'm under, the less empathy I have. The heavier the burdens I'm under, the less empathy I have. So empathy is tiring. We just can't dole it out indiscriminately. We should be judicious. But Leponius is such a smart guy. I would wonder how would he not be able to extend empathy to all sorts of people? Like Leponius, it's like you are living in, you know, right here with me. You have so much empathy for me. Like you read me so acutely. You're such a keen observer of the human condition. I'm just curious, what groups do you have empathy for? Leponius says, I believe people should take the vaccine if they want to. I don't like mandates, vaccines protect you, not others. No, they also, what about with regard to measles and polio? And other diseases for which we all get vaccinated, right? We got to wipe out all sorts of diseases like polio by making sure that everyone was vaccinated. So what about our responsibilities to other people? Do you want to bend the curve, bro? Come on, bro, let's bend the curve. If more people get vaccinated, then COVID's ability to spread is reduced. So why would we not want to be pro-social and do our little bit to reduce the spread of a deadly disease? What is the answer to love, deprivation, loneliness, isolation, and porn addiction? The answer is connection. The opposite of addiction is connection. Johan Hari makes this point in one of his TED Talks and one of his books. So the opposite of addiction is connection. We have to learn to feel at ease with other people and that usually begins with learning to feel at ease with yourself and accepting, you did not choose to be loved or deprived. You did not choose to be lonely. You did not choose to be isolated and you did not choose to be a porn addict. So you should not beat yourself down for those things. If you're a debtor and an under-owner and a codependent or an alcoholic or a drug addict, you did not choose to be an addict. So don't beat yourself down. Don't trash yourself because you have these addictions. But recognize you have a serious problem and the answer is connection and it's going to take some work. So if you feel like a social outcast and a pariah, you have to learn to feel at ease with yourself and with others. So I found, for me, 12-step programs were the most effective vehicle, but anything that helps you to connect with other people who are healthy and good for you, you should pursue. So is there not some kind of healthy community where you feel at ease? Don't you have mentors or I mean study how to feel at ease with yourself? How to be a good friend with yourself? There are so many resources online. So once you learn to be a good friend with yourself, just start writing everything out. Start a notebook and be a friend to yourself. Like, dear self, today I felt lonely, today I felt sad, today I felt angry when so-and-so said this, today I gave in to my porn addiction. I really wish there was a better way to live. Like, spill it all out in a notebook. Like, let your notebook be your friend and the clarity that you get from writing out everything that you're feeling. Like, keep a feelings journal. Notice what you're feeling and write it down on a regular basis. When you start to acknowledge what you're feeling, start to be a good friend with yourself. Start to develop clarity on what's going on in your life. Clarity always leads to strength and increased happiness and well-being and an increased sense of self-efficacy that you are more effective. Clarity leads to passion, leads to strength, leads to success, leads to feeling at ease with yourself and getting along better with others. Empathy causes poor decision-making. Emotion takes precedence over logic and reason. Empathy sometimes causes poor decision-making. Glib, I don't know you well enough but I'm gonna, I'm gonna profit this, this thought. I think I'm suspecting Glib that you, like me, have often been overwhelmed by empathy and you've had inappropriate levels of empathy at times and this has led you to make bad decisions. So, rather than empathy being a bad thing, you want an appropriate amount of empathy and you want to be the master of your own vessel so that you can deal with your empathy. I have often been flooded with empathy and this has reduced my ability to do the things I need to do. I am going to wage you, Glib, that you have had enough occasions of being flooded with empathy so that you became essentially incapacitated and unable to make good decisions. So, the problem is not empathy, the problem is an inappropriate level of empathy. Why have we suffered from inappropriate levels of empathy and getting emotionally flooded? Because we are broken and we need to heal and we need to get well and we need to learn to extend empathy for ourselves. Empathy should begin right here. Shoulder empathy for ourselves. We should not hate ourselves for our failures. We should not loathe ourselves for our setbacks and shortcomings. We should not beat ourselves down for not being married with kids, being more successful for not being prosperous, for not being pillars of our community. Once we start to extend a little bit of empathy for ourselves and for the mess that we have made of our lives, then we can start extending appropriate amounts of empathy for other people and that will reduce our tendencies to get flooded with empathy, inappropriately flooded with empathy incapacitated by our empathy. So, until maybe the last three years, I would often experience while reading a novel or watching a movie or a TV show, I would get flooded with unbelievable amounts of empathy that essentially incapacitated me. So, you don't want to be flooded with empathy. You want an appropriate level of empathy and no, you don't want to just be cool, calm and calculated. You want to be emotionally real too. You want to know what you're feeling. If you don't know what you're feeling, sometimes you want to be brave, sometimes you want to be dominant but other times you want to be run away, all right. There are never going to be all circumstances where you're going to be brave. There'll be situations where you're brave and there'll be situations where you cowardly. There will be times when you want to confront and there'll be times when you want to run away. You've got to know when to hold them, you've got to know when to fall them, You've got to know when to walk away and you've got to know when to run. There's a time for counting, but it's not when you're at the table. There'll be time enough for counting when the dealings done. Is 40 streaming with a flip phone? The resolution is terrible. I'm streaming with the iPhone 11. What's the best solution to stop being an under order? To connect normally and naturally with yourself, first of all, to have an appropriate level of empathy for yourself and then to extend that empathy out to other people appropriately and moderately. Once you learn to connect with other people, once you learn to be of service and to contribute to other people's lives moderately and appropriately, like I'm not saying go out and subsidize and enable drug addicts and horrible people. Use an appropriate amount of empathy and an appropriate amount of helping other people. Once you learn to connect with others and you become a blessing with others, you can't help but start to become prosperous. You cannot be poor as long as you're a valued member of your community. If other people are excited when you walk into a room, when other people love you, you cannot be poor. Good people love you, like you and respect you, the money will flow. I dislike most humans and consider them beneath me. I have zero empathy, says Loponius. So who did this to you? This is your defense mechanism because you were so let down and hurt in life. You were vulnerable, you're empathic, you reached out, you loved and you lived, Loponius, and you were hurt. And to try to protect yourself from being hurt like that, again, you have developed this cynical shell. But what you think, right? You think that your lack of empathy is the weapon that protects you, but maybe Loponius, maybe you will never heal until you put your weapon of cynicism and lack of empathy down. Maybe to heal and to get well and to get whole, you have to let go of your cynical defenses. I had a therapist who said to me, maybe you'll never get well until you put down your weapon, meaning blogging. I was using blogging as a weapon to try to keep myself safe, but now when people would screw me over, then when people would try to destroy me, then I'd have my blog to fight back. The therapist said, maybe you'll never get well until you put down your weapon. Medicine is inhumane. Sometimes medicine is inhumane, but it's notion that like Jordan Peterson offered that medicine is killing more people than it saves. That's insane. There's no empirical basis for that. Since the 1930s, medicine has saved a considerable number of lives and has made many lives better. Now, it's not the primary cause of our increased lifespan, and many people do just fine without any medical interventions, but medicine overall is not inhumane. It has its shortcomings like any other profession or any other part of society, but generally speaking, most people would prefer to have access to medical care, like for most people they experience a piece of mind knowing that they have access to medical care if they need it. How does empathy increase my panacea? Because people would rather do business with people they like. People would rather work for people that they like. People would rather hang out with people that they like. If you lack empathy, people aren't going to like you. They're not going to want to spend time with you, and it's going to reduce their desire to do business with you. The leading cause of death in the US is preventable medical error. I think that's somewhat overstated, but it is significant. Something like 100,000 people a year die from medical malpractice. But what's the alternative? So obviously, medical malpractice and medical error is a major issue. That's why you need a system, right? That's why we need checklists. That's why we need habits. So when a pilot gets ready for the plane to take off, he just doesn't do what he thinks is right. He's going through a checklist, right? Because that reduces error. Medical professionals need to follow a checklist because that reduces error. We all need checklists in our lives because that reduces error. We need practices and procedures and habits that reduces error. Yes, Leponius, you can pretend to be likeable, bro. You do it all the time. Yes, and you saved my life from the black mold that was in my bottle. So is that too much black mold? Is it time for me to scrub that again? Is that like a healthy amount of black mold, Leponius? So like a little black mold, it builds up my immune system, but too much black mold is unhealthy. Is a connection a way for people to take advantage of us? That's why if you know yourself, you will have a better understanding of other people. I know how easily I become self-absorbed. I know how easily I become self-aggrandizing. I know how easily I've been willing to sacrifice everything for an erotic encounter with a beautiful young woman. Now, I know how easily I choose the lazy way out rather than fulfilling my responsibilities. Once you come to terms with who you are, you will have a better read on other people. Once you come to terms with yourself, once you become much more emotionally cognizant, once you recognize your own emotions, you'll have a much better opportunity to recognize the emotions in others. So you'll notice if someone's having a bad day and you'll say, hey, it looks like you're having a bad day. People love that. People love that when you recognize their emotions. Looks like you're having a great day. People love it when you show that tiny little bit of empathy, right? So you learn about yourself, you learn about your emotions. You come to terms with yourself. You forgive yourself. You accept yourself. You have empathy for yourself. Then you'll extend an appropriate amount of empathy to others. You'll read other people much more accurately. And you won't be driven by your addictions. As long as you're driven by your addictions, your life's going to be a hellhole, right? You're driven by your addictions to porn or to dating or to excitement, all right? You're going to be distracted from reality. And your life's going to fall apart again and again and again. But you come to terms with yourself, then you start to come to terms with other people. You come to terms with God. You come to terms with the universe. You come to terms with reality. Once you form a positive relationship with reality, you'll be much less likely to be taken advantage of by others. I can't think of the last time someone took advantage of me. It's very rare because I think I have a reasonable understanding of myself and my own mixed motivations. And I've been forming a more productive relationship with reality. When you form a positive relationship with reality, when you accept reality, acceptance is the answer. You accept yourself, you accept your fallibility, you accept your addictive tendencies. You accept other people are similarly fallible. You accept how the world works. You accept how business works. You accept how politics and culture works. You accept your place in the universe. You accept that you can't control very much. You have an ability to control yourself to varying degrees and you have an ability to have some influence over a small number of people. But outside of that, life is not under your control. So once you come to terms with reality, form a positive relationship with reality, you'll get along much more effectively with other people and they will, you will not leave yourself wide open to be taken advantage of. What is your strategy for dealing with overly hysterical people? Avoid them, minimize contact with them. So there are people in 12-step programs who want to talk to me about their suicidal ideation. I stop it. You cannot talk to me about your suicidal ideation. I have no interest. I'm not going to put up with it, right? There are other people who are depressed and after I've spoken to them three, four, five times and they're such deep levels of depression, I just stop. I give up. I never return their calls. If they're sharing on a phone meeting I'm on, I just unplug from that meeting for those three minutes when they're sharing. So overly hysterical people, distance yourself from them. Is watching porn immoral and a thing or wrong? I think for most people, it is not a benefit to them. So as you come to terms with yourself and your own tendencies towards hysteria, when you start building a productive life, you're not going to have time or interest in hanging out with dramatic people, right? For productive people, they have no interest in hanging out with drama queens, right? You build a good life. You start becoming enthused about things that you're working towards. You become enthused about your life. You're going to have no time or interest in hanging out with drama queens, right? For most people drama is their substitute for achievement, for people who are actually achieving something. They have no time for the drama queens, right? You're not going to want overly dramatic people in your life. You're not going to want people who are dysfunctional. Once you pull out of the quicksand of under-earning, you're going to pick up the stench of under-earning on other people and you're going to avoid them unless they're also in recovery doing the work to recover from under-earning. So when you pick up the stench of sex addiction, love addiction, under-earning, dead-ing addiction, alcoholism, drug addiction, once you recognize your own addictive tendencies start getting healthy, you will pick up the stench of addiction in other people. Like a normal, healthy person does not want to hang out with under-earners and debtors and love addicts and sex addicts and alcoholics and drug addicts. Once you recognize your own addictive tendencies, start getting on a healthy path, you will hang out with the winners. That's classic advice in 12-step programs. Hang out with the winners, stay away from the losers unless you can be of service to them and then help moderately. Don't become overly engaged in other people's problems. Bye-bye.