May 9, 2025 • 28 mins
What happens when God dies? Not literally, but culturally—when science explains away the mysteries that once required faith, and decadence fills the void left behind? This profound question forms the backbone of our latest episode exploring the tension between virtue and venality in modern society.
I frame this discussion through the lens of our current cultural divide, not to push a political agenda, but to examine the philosophical underpinnings of where we find ourselves today. The MAGA movement represents something deeper than politics—a "primal scream" from traditional America yearning for virtue in an increasingly decadent world. Meanwhile, progressivism embraces what I call venality: victimhood narratives and boundary-less living that feels good but undermines social foundations.
Drawing from Stoicism's four pillars—justice, moderation, wisdom, and courage—I propose a philosophical framework for those who can't find meaning in traditional religion but seek a virtuous path forward. The nuclear family stands at the center of this vision, where parental sacrifice replaces self-absorption, and where marriage represents commitment beyond convenience.
My personal journey from "smiling villain" to Stoic philosopher informs this conversation. Prison provided me a monastic experience to reflect deeply on virtue, helping me understand that evil always comes smiling, pressing all the right buttons until we find ourselves justifying actions we once would have condemned.
For society to flourish, we must choose virtue over venality. Whether through revitalized religion or philosophical frameworks like Stoicism, we need a moral compass that transcends political tribalism. Because history teaches us one consistent lesson: when decadence overtakes virtue, democracy itself dies.
Join me in this exploration of how we might navigate our post-religious world with meaning, purpose, and virtue intact. Your thoughts on this journey are welcome—share this episode and continue the conversation that might just help us find our way forward.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Happy Friday everybody.
It's me, herbie, your host onthe Spiritual Agnostic, episode
14.
Not bad for brand new Pickingup a few listeners here and
there on the various streamingservices, feeling good about it,
feeling cool, feeling loose theway the algorithms work.
I probably won't start pickingup any serious audience until
(00:21):
after the 50th episode.
But you know what?
The key is consistency.
So here we are.
So, whether it's 330 or 300 or3000 or more, we're not going to
get over that.
If this particular listening, Iam happy as a clam, although
I've always wondered about thatstatement.
What does that mean?
Happy as a clam?
Are clams happy?
I have personally dug clams.
(00:42):
I have never seen a happy one.
All right, so I mean, I can'teven imagine what they're
thinking.
Not that they're thinking Okay,where am I going with this?
It's Friday, I'm a little goofy, I'm a little loose.
I may have loosened myself upeven a little bit more.
I'll let you read into thatanything you want.
Let me just say, carefully, Idon't drink.
Okay, let's move on.
(01:03):
Today we're going to talk aboutvirtue versus venality and to
have this discussion.
I thought about this long andhard.
I am going to frame it in theterms of the modern political
discussion because it's a commontheme that all of us will
understand.
But and I know this is afruitless disclaimer or the
(01:24):
chances of anyone paying anyattention to what I'm about to
say I'm just going to go on therecord so that, if this ever
comes up to bite me on the tushin the future, I can say that I
was very clear about this.
I don't care who you vote for,I am not making statements about
the long term of eitherpolitical party.
I'm only talking about wherethe parties are in regard to
(01:47):
virtue and venality in asnapshot of the moment.
I'm not going to talk aboutpersonalities.
So when I talk about virtue orvenality, I don't want to hear
about 34 felony convictions andI don't want to hear about the
insider trading of the formerSpeaker of the House.
I don't want to hear it.
That's not what this is about.
This is not a discussion ofpersonalities or the ebbs and
(02:07):
flows of the daily politicalriver of steaming bullshit.
You know, it's just.
That's not where I'm going.
I'm talking about broad,philosophical, ideological terms
.
What is virtue and venality?
How does relate?
Because remember that thedownfall, particularly of every
democracy, is the descent intotyranny, always led by decadence
(02:31):
, and what could you call ourculture now?
But decadent, okay.
And what we have now going onbefore us is a cultural war and
I'm going to talk about that andyou know, I wish there was a
better word for it A culturaldebate.
It's beyond debate becausepeople are just on both sides
have gotten just downright nasty.
It is kind of a verbal war, butI'm not going to participate
(02:52):
Again.
Don't care who you vote for,don't care what party you're
affiliated with.
I know that everything I'mabout to say can change.
You know.
Things can change for thebetter, things can change for
the worse.
This is me discussing ideologyas it relates to our broader
culture in the context of themoment we're in, because we can
only discuss the moment we're in.
(03:12):
What's over is over, past isprologue, future.
History doesn't repeat itself.
History repeats itself withsurprise twists.
Okay, it varies, you know, butthere are general themes and the
general theme of the downfallof every single democracy
(03:34):
historically ends in tyranny andbecause of the speed of
technology evolving so fast, wecould find ourselves in it so
easily.
So I want to talk about and youknow, and just again against the
backdrop of the broader podcast, the spiritual agnostic.
I acknowledge that God is dyingNow when I say that my
religious friends, no one hasmore respect.
(03:56):
And the truth is a healthy envy.
I wish I had faith.
I wish I could sit in church or, in my case, synagogue or
mosque or wherever it might be,and actually believe that I was
talking to somebody or somethingwhile I was there.
But I have my strong,overwhelming, unconquerable
doubts.
And because I don't call myselfan atheist, because to me
(04:19):
atheism has all the attributesof religion without redemption.
You know, basically, as Ialways say, atheists are
assholes.
They're always trying to tellpeople of faith that they're
stupid.
They try to say it in all kindsof nice ways.
Don't you think?
Don't you this, don't you that?
Do you recognize?
Do you believe in evolution,all that crap?
Listen, not going down there,I'm just saying overall, since
(04:43):
the creation of civilization andcivilization is built on the
bedrock of religion, it isreligion, at least according to
what most I'm not sure if I cansay that accurately a tremendous
, let's say a large percentageof mainstream archaeology and
anthropology believes thatreligion is the foundation of
society.
(05:03):
The other part thinks it'sagriculture.
I'm being broad in thatdiscussion.
Again, this is not a podcastabout archaeology or
anthropology, so I am simply notgoing to go any further.
Anyway, having said that, it isexcept that it's true and since
the dawn of civilization as weunderstand it, about 10,000
years ago, there have beenroughly 10,000 gods.
(05:24):
And I'm not saying mankindhasn't been on earth for a
quarter of a million years.
I'm talking about cities, oryou know, as we understand them,
in an organized way, builtaround a culture and people
living together in the samespace and learning how to govern
each other, and so on and soforth.
All of that basically began10,000 years ago.
As far as we know, we can learnsomething new every day, but it
(05:47):
won't change what I'm saying.
There'll just be a biggernumber with more failures.
There have been a roughly10,000 gods since that time.
We're on the roughly 10,000,jehovah's the 10,000th, or Allah
, or whatever you call him, orKrishna perhaps, or you know
again, I don't understandHinduism and the hierarchy of
gods and so on and so forth.
So I'm just not going to godown that we're talking about,
(06:10):
since God is dying.
The central premise of thepodcast is God is dying.
Science is explainingeverything that used to be
mysterious.
Even when science is wrong,it's only wrong within the
science itself mysterious.
Even when science is wrong,it's only wrong within the
science itself and theexplanation.
One explanation is simplyreplaced by another, but it's
not a lack of explanation.
(06:30):
We know how the sun rises andsets, to put it in simple terms,
as the ancients might havelooked at it.
And then, you know, had godsdoing it?
The mystery is gone.
So all that's left to defendGod as a concept is faith, and
faith is being eroded by science, combined with a wave of
decadence that's come with it.
And if we are going to survive,we're going to have to find
(06:52):
something as a culture toreplace religion, and that has
got to be philosophy.
And within that framework,that's what the spiritual
agnostic is all about virtue.
And since I am primarily a Stoic, with a little objectivism and
Taoism mixed in, as you probablyalready have found out or will
soon learn and I tend to, Idon't tend I try to live my life
(07:13):
according to the four pillarsof Stoicism justice, moderation,
wisdom and courage.
Not in that particular order,it's just how it came out of my
mouth.
And that what Stoicism believes, and I believe this to be true,
and I believe this to be thecentral conversation of this
(07:36):
podcast, which is to live a lifeof value, you must live a life
of virtue.
Virtue, this is a word that'snot used in modern society.
You know we all want to livelives of value.
There's an enormous wave ofdepression overcoming America,
primarily women currently butyou know that ebbs and flows and
women are unhappy today.
Using a broad brush, becausethey waited too long to have
(07:56):
children, they bought into adecadent agenda you can call it
feminist, I call it decadent Adecadent agenda that told them
that they should put off havingchildren for career first and
that their value as women toculture and society is lesser if
they become a stay-at-home momin a traditional way and
literally fun was and is madefun of those stay-at-home moms
(08:20):
and as a result of that we'veraised increasingly that nuclear
family, for other reasons too,has broken down.
We can discuss that broader.
I don't know if I have the timetoday to do it within a
reasonably short podcast, but wewill discuss that as time goes
on and I have discussed it andwe're circling the drain of the
(08:40):
whirlpool of destruction anddecadence.
I mean when, for example,kanye's wife, ex-wife, whatever
she is, or yay, or whatever thatanti-Semite pig is calling
themselves these days.
I only bring him up because hiswife, he brought her to some
event and the woman might aswell have been naked.
You could see her, pinotcha.
For those of you who don'tspeak Spanish, ask your friends.
(09:02):
And it was ridiculous.
I mean, the barriers andboundaries are being kicked down
.
You know, what the decadentnever understand is they see a
fence, they can't resist kickingit down.
They don't realize that most ofthose fences are there to
protect them, not keep themconfined.
You know the boundaries arethere.
(09:24):
It's like raising children Allfour of my children will tell
you without me being present.
And I'm close to all four ofthem to this day, which I
consider my greatestaccomplishment because to be 68
years old.
My youngest daughter is 30.
She'll be 31 this year and myeldest daughter is 40.
(09:45):
I'm thinking now 40.
Wait, how old will she be thisyear?
Yeah, 47 this year.
And then two sons in between.
All of them talk to me.
Okay, in fact, I just hung upwith my youngest daughter just a
short time before doing thispodcast.
I talk to them regularly, ifnot some of them, I, it depends
what's going on in their life.
I don't call them, they call me, which I consider a huge
(10:08):
accomplishment and I don't callthem because they're adults and
part of transitioning as aparent to a counselor.
Basically, a parent counseloris my role now, not a parent who
sets boundaries, which is thewhole point of this discussion.
When I raised them back on tracklet me just bring this back, I
was meandering, sorry about that, bringing it back on track I
(10:29):
raised them with strictboundaries and lots of love.
The kids I can't remember past,let's say toddlerhood, ever
having to ask them to doanything twice or ever having to
paddle them.
They got some diaper paddlingsas children, but that's it.
And once it became clear whattheir boundaries were, you know,
they just didn't cross them andthey would complain.
(10:51):
And they went throughadolescence and I have all kinds
of stories, like every parentdoes, of rebellion which I
quietly considered healthy, butstill within my boundaries I
enforced them, even though Ithink that rebellion is
completely normal and healthyand if your adolescent is
rebelling to some extent,there's something wrong with him
or her.
But that's all within a normal,healthy, two-parent family
(11:14):
which I'm fortunate enough tohave raised my children with,
except for a brief period when Iwas a single parent and had
custody of my children from myfirst marriage to my second, but
that's another long story foranother day.
We actually pulled off the mostsuccessful blended family, I
believe, in history.
I know that's very hyperbolic,but we'll talk about that
another day.
Okay, so virtue and venality.
The reason that right now, atthis moment, the Republican
(11:37):
Party is the party ofworking-class, mainstream
America is because it is inworking class, mainstream
America.
The traditional values stillreside.
It's not the nature of whatthey do for a living.
It's not necessarily whetherthey are a plumber or an
electrician or a carpenter.
(11:57):
I'm not.
I don't want to pigeonholethese people.
These are entrepreneurs.
These are people who a lot ofentrepreneurs and small business
people, a lot of people whohave to hustle for a living, who
work hard, who play the gameright and who are, miracle of
miracles, by and large majoritystill married.
There are, of course, singleparents mixed in, but not as
(12:19):
generally.
And again, when you makegeneralizations, there are
exceptions.
But the MAGA movement and it isa movement, it is separate and,
apart from Donald Trump, donaldTrump's a whole other story I'm
not going to discuss today.
He is in my feeling.
He sees the momentum of amovement as opposed to created
the movement himself.
We can debate that.
Maga folks feel free to writeme.
The movement himself we candebate that.
(12:40):
Maga folks feel free to writeme.
But I view MAGA as a genuinepolitical movement and a giant
primal scream on behalf of theworking class that they want to
return to virtue, from venality.
They're tired of being made funof and being ridiculed for
going to church.
They're tired of being made funof and being ridiculed for
being married.
The women are tired of puttingtheir families as priorities, of
(13:01):
making fun of that over work.
And the ones who are workingwork hard and want a fair chance
and equal opportunity.
But, by God, they would muchrather in their heart of hearts,
would much rather be with theirchildren.
And they're forced to workbecause of inflation and all the
other things that the state hasdone.
Inflation is a manifestation ofthe Federal Reserve, my friends
, and the printing of money,plain and simple.
(13:21):
It is always and everywhere amonetary phenomenon.
Again, not for this discussion.
But it is the government thathas put the shackles.
And on top of all of that, themainstream media, in collusion
with show business, and thefamous, in collusion with much
of the traditional politicalclass, including traditional
Republicans, have done nothingbut make them the butt of jokes.
(13:46):
It's kind of like anyone who hasever taken a DEI class, and I
had this experience for a brieftime after I got out of prison.
Well, brief time, it wasn'tthat brief.
I worked for DoorDash for twoand a half years and how I
separated from DoorDash wasreally over this, and so
DoorDash is.
I didn't work as a delivery guyby the way, they don't let the
(14:06):
people don't worry, the guycoming to your door making
delivery cannot have a criminalrecord.
That's just out of the question.
But I was able to work in theback office sort of thing, and I
did a lot of telephone work,service work.
It was great.
I enjoyed my job.
I enjoy people, I enjoy doingcustomer service anyway.
So I was doing it blah, blah,blah.
But they had mandatory DEIcourses and every DEI course and
(14:30):
it was videos and you had to doit.
They had little tricks to keep,just like they do a traffic
school.
Now, when you do it online, youcan't.
You have to be there, you can't, you know you can't phone it in
.
So I'd have to sit through itand in every single video I was
the villain, not me personally,but the older white male in
every, every video, all theother minorities, real and
(14:52):
imagined, okay, all the otheraggrieved victimhood classes,
real and imagined and there's alot of imagined ones, but we're
not going to get into that todaytoo much either.
But just understand thatDoorDash recognized all of them
and in all of these videos itwas examples of persecuting all
of the victimhood or victimclass by me, and all it did was
(15:15):
make me resent it.
You know, I'm not a racist tobegin with, but it could have
turned me into one by the time Iwas done, and I made that very
clear.
And that's why so manycorporations, that's why I got
fired, but there's so manyseparated voluntarily, by
agreement.
You can take the package andtake the severance or you can
wait till we fire you.
You know that was that kind ofdeal, like I anyway, neither
(15:35):
here nor there.
So, that being the case, that'swhy the culture war that's
going on, those DEI classes thatall of those people in the
working class have been forcedto take by their employers and
have been subjected to.
You can't look at the new SnowWhite, and that's all you have
to know.
(15:56):
We have been bombarded withthat kind of propaganda.
These are propaganda films.
These aren't works of art,these aren't works of classics,
they don't adhere to any canon.
They are diverse fordiversity's sake.
They're not there to entertainor even enlighten.
They're there to preach andpropagandize.
(16:16):
And the MAGA movement is tiredof it.
And they're sick of it becausethe message that's not only are
they tired of being made fun ofand being the victim of every
the butt of every joke by thesearrogant people, and these
people are generally made up ofthe oligarchy.
Okay, the very, very wealthiestpeople tend to be on the left,
not the right.
The ones that are on the rightare migrating now, but there's
(16:39):
still the majority on the left.
And because megalomania suitsthe wealthy, and a party that
believes that a centralgovernment can exert not only
control but can actually shapethe culture and human nature
based upon its will, whateverits will arbitrarily might be,
has to be a party of oligarchy.
(17:01):
Only an oligarchy would lovesomething like that.
Anyone else would think it waspoisonous, just on its face.
So when you talk about virtueversus venality today, and the
Republican Party I want to makethis very clear is not the
Republican Party I grew up with,it is not a conservative party,
it is a MAGA party.
The conservatives are out theremoaning they hate.
(17:21):
This week they put up a statueI think it was, or some sort of
memorial or honoring BarbaraBush.
God rest her soul.
I got a kick out of BarbaraBush, but Barbara Bush was a
tough woman and nobody detestedDonald Trump more than Barbara
Bush, and yet he was the guythat was at the ceremony.
Her son didn't come out ofrespect for her wishes, because
Barbara Bush, it was beyond hate.
(17:43):
She hated Donald Trump with apurple passion.
A lot of that had to do withhim stomping all over her son,
jeb, but that's another storyfor another day.
But let's just say that's true.
Feel free to fact check me, butthose Republicans are gone.
You know they're out there inthe fringes hollering Trump's
this and Trump's that, butthey're, they're not part of the
(18:06):
Republican Party anymore.
Republican Party today is apopulist party, and populist
means what the name says.
It's run by a popular idea, andthe popular idea today is by
the working class and thetraditional and the religious to
take back America.
The problem is it's a 50-50country and the other half of
(18:27):
the country is either in a grayzone of confused, and that's who
I'm hoping to be, if the wordis right, preaching to and
bringing over to understand.
There is an alternative inphilosophy for you.
Even if you can't sit in church, you can embrace the philosophy
that unites us all of virtueversus venality.
And then the rest are theDemocratic Party is today closer
(18:52):
to a cult than a politicalparty, and I don't mean this to
be well.
I do.
It is pejorative.
Let me just be straight up.
Look what does the DemocraticParty stand for today.
It stands for victimhood, whichis venality.
It stands for things likereparations, which are venality.
There's no virtue in demandingreparations for something you
(19:14):
never suffered from people whonever did it.
That's venality.
Okay, they stand for unlimitedabortion.
And even if you're pro-choice,most Americans on the issue of
abortion, if you ask them, areyou pro-choice?
Most Americans say yes.
But if you also ask them do youthink abortion is killing a
human life?
They also say yes, the same 70%.
You get a 70% yes and 70% yeson both questions.
(19:37):
It's all how you ask thesepolls, my friends, and what
that's telling you is Americansare deeply ambivalent on
abortion.
So most Americans feel likewhat Bill Clinton used to say.
Whether he meant it or not isanother story for another
podcast, someone else's.
Like I say, I don't dopolitical podcasts, but he said
(19:58):
something that I always thoughtwas true, which is abortion
should be safe, legal and rare.
But the Democratic Partydoesn't stand for that anymore.
It stands for abortion shouldbe available up to the moment
you're pulling a nine-monthfetus out of the mother's womb
and killing it by sucking itsbrains dry, anyway.
We could go on and on.
Most people are grossed out bythat, but somehow that is the
mainstream of the DemocraticParty.
Again, venality, okay, murder isvenality.
(20:18):
Okay, murder is always venality.
I don't know any other way toput it.
And what else do you call that?
You know, once a fetus isviable, the discussion is over,
don't you think?
Okay?
So anyway, and the fetusbecomes.
Because of modern science,which is advancing at light
speed, it becomes viable earlierand earlier, making abortion
(20:39):
less and less likely.
We're going to have that'sanother broader societal
discussion.
I'm not going to, I'm not evengoing to spell out my own
position on this right now.
I'm just going to leave it be,but moving along, what are the
other?
It comes down to calling thepresident of the United States
Hitler, which is an insult toevery Jew alive.
Speaking as a Jew, I'm sorry,trump's not Hitler.
(21:00):
Trump call him whatever elseyou want, but stop it with the
Hitler.
It is spitting on the grave ofsix million Jews.
The guy does you know.
Give me a break.
But yet it's a repeated theme bypeople all the way to the top.
All the way to the top.
It's a party.
If you ask a Democrat, give methe ruling central ideological
(21:24):
tenant of the Democratic Partyof progressivism and they
couldn't tell you.
Try it.
If they name one, maybe rightnow they might say due process,
but they don't even know whatthat is.
It's a party of people who haveswallowed the Kool-Aid all the
way down of evil.
(21:45):
And when I say evil I don't meanlike there's no redemption from
it.
I'm not talking heaven and hell, because I don't believe in
heaven and hell.
I'm talking about evil alwayscomes smiling.
Okay, venality, evil same thingalways comes at you smiling.
You never recognize it becauseit's not like the movies, the,
you know, villains are not twodimensional.
Villains are very threedimensional and villainous
(22:07):
people are three dimensional.
Recognize it because it's notlike the movies, the you know,
villains are not two-dimensional.
Villains are verythree-dimensional and villainous
people are three-dimensionaland they can be charming and
they can be persuasive and theycan be glib and they, you know,
and they can tell you what youwant to hear, because they know
how to press your buttons,because they're highly
manipulative and it all feels sogood and you go along with it
until you realize at some pointyou too are evil and we have to
(22:28):
stop that in our society.
And the only way we're going tostop that is either by the
restoration of traditionalvalues as supported by you.
Choose the mainstream religionof your choice.
Okay, whatever it is that youpractice, the commonality
between all the world's majorreligions is a basic set of
rules to live by.
(22:49):
I, of course, preferJudeo-Christianity for its
emphasis on the individual, inparticular Christianity, and I
say that as a Jew, which is acompliment.
Believe me, it is not acoincidence that Western culture
has produced everything ofvalue that we consider to make
our lives easier and better andlonger today.
(23:09):
That's not a coincidence.
It's Christianity's emphasis onthe individual.
Despite all, I know what all ofyou atheists are saying they
did this and they did that.
I'm a Jew.
I know about the Inquisitionthe Holocaust is only the latest
.
They have been slaughteringJews and pogroms and
inquisitions and Jewslaughtering has gone on for
(23:29):
thousands of years.
Life is not filled withperfection.
Institutions don't rise up outof the sand and glow white in
the sun.
If you're looking for theperfect solution to everything,
you're going to be very, verydisappointed.
You can only choose a side ofvirtue or vernality.
(23:51):
And what is virtue?
It boils down to this it'sdoing the right thing when
nobody's looking, and you knowwhat that is.
And if you don't know what thatis okay, then you need to study
the works of the philosophersor the prophets, depending on
where you are on faith.
Faith today is believing in whatcan't be true.
(24:13):
Before it was believing in asupernatural being.
I say before meaning beforemodern science.
You were believing in asupernatural being or beings to
explain everything going onaround you.
Now that it's pretty clear,even to the most religious, that
all of that was not true,what's left is the nurturing of
(24:35):
the spirit, which is anintangible, which is why
religion is losing ground,because all of the mysteries
have been explained.
I hope religion can find a wayto turn the corner and change
its message.
Who knows, maybe the new PopeLeo that was chosen yesterday,
as I'm recording this on Friday.
Maybe he'll have something tosay about it.
I hope so, but probably not.
(24:58):
And because of that we have torely on something else and we're
not going to rely on politics.
Neither MAGA nor theprogressive movement that is the
Democratic Party today have theanswer.
Maga is a primal scream forvirtue and progressivism is a
primal scream of venality anddecadence and victimhood, which
(25:21):
I can't believe that anyonedefends.
But yet it is true.
It's because it feels so goodwhen I say I can't believe it.
I believe it because I know it.
I was a villain.
I know what it is to be avillain.
You don't become a villain as Iwas before I went to prison.
For sure, I was a smilingvillain, I just didn't know it.
It all seemed so right to me.
You always start out down theroad and you can justify
(25:43):
anything, but then you realizeif you have any self-awareness
at all and spend some time.
That's what prison was soimportant to me.
It was monastic, it gave me achance to really look inside
myself and, of course, readMarcus Aurelius, and then get
into Stoicism, and the list goeson.
But I think that's all I wantto talk about today, my friends.
It's virtue over venality.
(26:04):
Today, in the public sphere, theMAGA movement is where virtue
resides, not perfect virtue.
It's got lots of things tocriticize.
I'm going to leave that for thepolitical shows, but the virtue
in public life lies with MAGA,and the future of our country
lies in embracing the valuesthat it professes to espouse
(26:28):
Self-reliance, working hard,going to church, staying married
, raising your children together, doing the things that are hard
.
It's just one more example ofdoing the right thing.
Once you have children, myfriends, one of the things that
we did to destroy the nuclearfamily was, across the country,
make no-fault divorce legal.
(26:49):
That was a mistake.
No-fault divorce means you canget divorced no matter what you
know.
You can just say we'reincompatible, that's all you
have to say.
No one can stop it once it getsgoing.
We have to go back to the dayswhere now, before you have
children, fine, do whatever youwant.
Where now, before you havechildren, fine, do whatever you
want.
But the minute you conceive,divorce has to become a court
(27:13):
case and it has to be hard,because it's not about you
anymore and that is an idea ofvirtue, not finality.
It is not about you.
When you have children, it goesout the window, you take a back
seat.
This is your biologicalimperative as a human being to
replace yourself with somebodybetter than you were.
And we're falling down at thisand we need to change this.
And the way we're going to doit is, hopefully, through a
(27:36):
combination of religion andphilosophy, and that's what we
talk about here on the SpiritualAgnostic.
Before we go, don't forget topick up a copy of a radical
recent my book aboutanti-politism.
A system of virtue.
It is a republic by lottery,all surrounded in merit and
built on virtue.
Check it out.
I know that sounds far out.
(27:56):
It's not as far out as youthink when you read about it.
Go, check it out.
A Radical Reset in Amazon,kindle, paperback or hardcover.
Please, please.
If you want to support the show,there's a link wherever you're
listening to this that'll takeyou over to the website where
you can support the show.
I hope you do.
That would be lovely.
Share this with your friends.
Yada, yada, yada.
I'm not good at all that stuffthat the kids do the kid, my God
(28:19):
.
I'm, by the way, the most.
One more point before I go away.
What's very interesting to meis how the younger people are
flocking to MAGA while the oldpeople are clinging to
progressivism and that's just alot of evil selfishness, because
people my age we're the problem.
It's the boomer generation thatkicked over the traces.
My friends, I am not holding mygeneration harmless, I'm
(28:42):
blaming it, but we'll talk aboutthat more another day.
Have a beautiful weekend.
I'll talk to you on Monday.
Happy Friday everybody.
It's me, herbie, your host onthe Spiritual Agnostic, episode
14.
Not bad for brand new Pickingup a few listeners here and
there on the various streamingservices, feeling good about it,
feeling cool, feeling loose theway the algorithms work.
I probably won't start pickingup any serious audience until
(00:21):
after the 50th episode.
But you know what?
The key is consistency.
So here we are.
So, whether it's 330 or 300 or3000 or more, we're not going to
get over that.
If this particular listening, Iam happy as a clam, although
I've always wondered about thatstatement.
What does that mean?
Happy as a clam?
Are clams happy?
I have personally dug clams.
(00:42):
I have never seen a happy one.
All right, so I mean, I can'teven imagine what they're
thinking.
Not that they're thinking Okay,where am I going with this?
It's Friday, I'm a little goofy, I'm a little loose.
I may have loosened myself upeven a little bit more.
I'll let you read into thatanything you want.
Let me just say, carefully, Idon't drink.
Okay, let's move on.
(01:03):
Today we're going to talk aboutvirtue versus venality and to
have this discussion.
I thought about this long andhard.
I am going to frame it in theterms of the modern political
discussion because it's a commontheme that all of us will
understand.
But and I know this is afruitless disclaimer or the
(01:24):
chances of anyone paying anyattention to what I'm about to
say I'm just going to go on therecord so that, if this ever
comes up to bite me on the tushin the future, I can say that I
was very clear about this.
I don't care who you vote for,I am not making statements about
the long term of eitherpolitical party.
I'm only talking about wherethe parties are in regard to
(01:47):
virtue and venality in asnapshot of the moment.
I'm not going to talk aboutpersonalities.
So when I talk about virtue orvenality, I don't want to hear
about 34 felony convictions andI don't want to hear about the
insider trading of the formerSpeaker of the House.
I don't want to hear it.
That's not what this is about.
This is not a discussion ofpersonalities or the ebbs and
(02:07):
flows of the daily politicalriver of steaming bullshit.
You know, it's just.
That's not where I'm going.
I'm talking about broad,philosophical, ideological terms
.
What is virtue and venality?
How does relate?
Because remember that thedownfall, particularly of every
democracy, is the descent intotyranny, always led by decadence
(02:31):
, and what could you call ourculture now?
But decadent, okay.
And what we have now going onbefore us is a cultural war and
I'm going to talk about that andyou know, I wish there was a
better word for it A culturaldebate.
It's beyond debate becausepeople are just on both sides
have gotten just downright nasty.
It is kind of a verbal war, butI'm not going to participate
(02:52):
Again.
Don't care who you vote for,don't care what party you're
affiliated with.
I know that everything I'mabout to say can change.
You know.
Things can change for thebetter, things can change for
the worse.
This is me discussing ideologyas it relates to our broader
culture in the context of themoment we're in, because we can
only discuss the moment we're in.
(03:12):
What's over is over, past isprologue, future.
History doesn't repeat itself.
History repeats itself withsurprise twists.
Okay, it varies, you know, butthere are general themes and the
general theme of the downfallof every single democracy
(03:34):
historically ends in tyranny andbecause of the speed of
technology evolving so fast, wecould find ourselves in it so
easily.
So I want to talk about and youknow, and just again against the
backdrop of the broader podcast, the spiritual agnostic.
I acknowledge that God is dyingNow when I say that my
religious friends, no one hasmore respect.
(03:56):
And the truth is a healthy envy.
I wish I had faith.
I wish I could sit in church or, in my case, synagogue or
mosque or wherever it might be,and actually believe that I was
talking to somebody or somethingwhile I was there.
But I have my strong,overwhelming, unconquerable
doubts.
And because I don't call myselfan atheist, because to me
(04:19):
atheism has all the attributesof religion without redemption.
You know, basically, as Ialways say, atheists are
assholes.
They're always trying to tellpeople of faith that they're
stupid.
They try to say it in all kindsof nice ways.
Don't you think?
Don't you this, don't you that?
Do you recognize?
Do you believe in evolution,all that crap?
Listen, not going down there,I'm just saying overall, since
(04:43):
the creation of civilization andcivilization is built on the
bedrock of religion, it isreligion, at least according to
what most I'm not sure if I cansay that accurately a tremendous
, let's say a large percentageof mainstream archaeology and
anthropology believes thatreligion is the foundation of
society.
(05:03):
The other part thinks it'sagriculture.
I'm being broad in thatdiscussion.
Again, this is not a podcastabout archaeology or
anthropology, so I am simply notgoing to go any further.
Anyway, having said that, it isexcept that it's true and since
the dawn of civilization as weunderstand it, about 10,000
years ago, there have beenroughly 10,000 gods.
(05:24):
And I'm not saying mankindhasn't been on earth for a
quarter of a million years.
I'm talking about cities, oryou know, as we understand them,
in an organized way, builtaround a culture and people
living together in the samespace and learning how to govern
each other, and so on and soforth.
All of that basically began10,000 years ago.
As far as we know, we can learnsomething new every day, but it
(05:47):
won't change what I'm saying.
There'll just be a biggernumber with more failures.
There have been a roughly10,000 gods since that time.
We're on the roughly 10,000,jehovah's the 10,000th, or Allah
, or whatever you call him, orKrishna perhaps, or you know
again, I don't understandHinduism and the hierarchy of
gods and so on and so forth.
So I'm just not going to godown that we're talking about,
(06:10):
since God is dying.
The central premise of thepodcast is God is dying.
Science is explainingeverything that used to be
mysterious.
Even when science is wrong,it's only wrong within the
science itself mysterious.
Even when science is wrong,it's only wrong within the
science itself and theexplanation.
One explanation is simplyreplaced by another, but it's
not a lack of explanation.
(06:30):
We know how the sun rises andsets, to put it in simple terms,
as the ancients might havelooked at it.
And then, you know, had godsdoing it?
The mystery is gone.
So all that's left to defendGod as a concept is faith, and
faith is being eroded by science, combined with a wave of
decadence that's come with it.
And if we are going to survive,we're going to have to find
(06:52):
something as a culture toreplace religion, and that has
got to be philosophy.
And within that framework,that's what the spiritual
agnostic is all about virtue.
And since I am primarily a Stoic, with a little objectivism and
Taoism mixed in, as you probablyalready have found out or will
soon learn and I tend to, Idon't tend I try to live my life
(07:13):
according to the four pillarsof Stoicism justice, moderation,
wisdom and courage.
Not in that particular order,it's just how it came out of my
mouth.
And that what Stoicism believes, and I believe this to be true,
and I believe this to be thecentral conversation of this
(07:36):
podcast, which is to live a lifeof value, you must live a life
of virtue.
Virtue, this is a word that'snot used in modern society.
You know we all want to livelives of value.
There's an enormous wave ofdepression overcoming America,
primarily women currently butyou know that ebbs and flows and
women are unhappy today.
Using a broad brush, becausethey waited too long to have
(07:56):
children, they bought into adecadent agenda you can call it
feminist, I call it decadent Adecadent agenda that told them
that they should put off havingchildren for career first and
that their value as women toculture and society is lesser if
they become a stay-at-home momin a traditional way and
literally fun was and is madefun of those stay-at-home moms
(08:20):
and as a result of that we'veraised increasingly that nuclear
family, for other reasons too,has broken down.
We can discuss that broader.
I don't know if I have the timetoday to do it within a
reasonably short podcast, but wewill discuss that as time goes
on and I have discussed it andwe're circling the drain of the
(08:40):
whirlpool of destruction anddecadence.
I mean when, for example,kanye's wife, ex-wife, whatever
she is, or yay, or whatever thatanti-Semite pig is calling
themselves these days.
I only bring him up because hiswife, he brought her to some
event and the woman might aswell have been naked.
You could see her, pinotcha.
For those of you who don'tspeak Spanish, ask your friends.
(09:02):
And it was ridiculous.
I mean, the barriers andboundaries are being kicked down
.
You know, what the decadentnever understand is they see a
fence, they can't resist kickingit down.
They don't realize that most ofthose fences are there to
protect them, not keep themconfined.
You know the boundaries arethere.
(09:24):
It's like raising children Allfour of my children will tell
you without me being present.
And I'm close to all four ofthem to this day, which I
consider my greatestaccomplishment because to be 68
years old.
My youngest daughter is 30.
She'll be 31 this year and myeldest daughter is 40.
(09:45):
I'm thinking now 40.
Wait, how old will she be thisyear?
Yeah, 47 this year.
And then two sons in between.
All of them talk to me.
Okay, in fact, I just hung upwith my youngest daughter just a
short time before doing thispodcast.
I talk to them regularly, ifnot some of them, I, it depends
what's going on in their life.
I don't call them, they call me, which I consider a huge
(10:08):
accomplishment and I don't callthem because they're adults and
part of transitioning as aparent to a counselor.
Basically, a parent counseloris my role now, not a parent who
sets boundaries, which is thewhole point of this discussion.
When I raised them back on tracklet me just bring this back, I
was meandering, sorry about that, bringing it back on track I
(10:29):
raised them with strictboundaries and lots of love.
The kids I can't remember past,let's say toddlerhood, ever
having to ask them to doanything twice or ever having to
paddle them.
They got some diaper paddlingsas children, but that's it.
And once it became clear whattheir boundaries were, you know,
they just didn't cross them andthey would complain.
(10:51):
And they went throughadolescence and I have all kinds
of stories, like every parentdoes, of rebellion which I
quietly considered healthy, butstill within my boundaries I
enforced them, even though Ithink that rebellion is
completely normal and healthyand if your adolescent is
rebelling to some extent,there's something wrong with him
or her.
But that's all within a normal,healthy, two-parent family
(11:14):
which I'm fortunate enough tohave raised my children with,
except for a brief period when Iwas a single parent and had
custody of my children from myfirst marriage to my second, but
that's another long story foranother day.
We actually pulled off the mostsuccessful blended family, I
believe, in history.
I know that's very hyperbolic,but we'll talk about that
another day.
Okay, so virtue and venality.
The reason that right now, atthis moment, the Republican
(11:37):
Party is the party ofworking-class, mainstream
America is because it is inworking class, mainstream
America.
The traditional values stillreside.
It's not the nature of whatthey do for a living.
It's not necessarily whetherthey are a plumber or an
electrician or a carpenter.
(11:57):
I'm not.
I don't want to pigeonholethese people.
These are entrepreneurs.
These are people who a lot ofentrepreneurs and small business
people, a lot of people whohave to hustle for a living, who
work hard, who play the gameright and who are, miracle of
miracles, by and large majoritystill married.
There are, of course, singleparents mixed in, but not as
(12:19):
generally.
And again, when you makegeneralizations, there are
exceptions.
But the MAGA movement and it isa movement, it is separate and,
apart from Donald Trump, donaldTrump's a whole other story I'm
not going to discuss today.
He is in my feeling.
He sees the momentum of amovement as opposed to created
the movement himself.
We can debate that.
Maga folks feel free to writeme.
The movement himself we candebate that.
(12:40):
Maga folks feel free to writeme.
But I view MAGA as a genuinepolitical movement and a giant
primal scream on behalf of theworking class that they want to
return to virtue, from venality.
They're tired of being made funof and being ridiculed for
going to church.
They're tired of being made funof and being ridiculed for
being married.
The women are tired of puttingtheir families as priorities, of
(13:01):
making fun of that over work.
And the ones who are workingwork hard and want a fair chance
and equal opportunity.
But, by God, they would muchrather in their heart of hearts,
would much rather be with theirchildren.
And they're forced to workbecause of inflation and all the
other things that the state hasdone.
Inflation is a manifestation ofthe Federal Reserve, my friends
, and the printing of money,plain and simple.
(13:21):
It is always and everywhere amonetary phenomenon.
Again, not for this discussion.
But it is the government thathas put the shackles.
And on top of all of that, themainstream media, in collusion
with show business, and thefamous, in collusion with much
of the traditional politicalclass, including traditional
Republicans, have done nothingbut make them the butt of jokes.
(13:46):
It's kind of like anyone who hasever taken a DEI class, and I
had this experience for a brieftime after I got out of prison.
Well, brief time, it wasn'tthat brief.
I worked for DoorDash for twoand a half years and how I
separated from DoorDash wasreally over this, and so
DoorDash is.
I didn't work as a delivery guyby the way, they don't let the
(14:06):
people don't worry, the guycoming to your door making
delivery cannot have a criminalrecord.
That's just out of the question.
But I was able to work in theback office sort of thing, and I
did a lot of telephone work,service work.
It was great.
I enjoyed my job.
I enjoy people, I enjoy doingcustomer service anyway.
So I was doing it blah, blah,blah.
But they had mandatory DEIcourses and every DEI course and
(14:30):
it was videos and you had to doit.
They had little tricks to keep,just like they do a traffic
school.
Now, when you do it online, youcan't.
You have to be there, you can't, you know you can't phone it in
.
So I'd have to sit through itand in every single video I was
the villain, not me personally,but the older white male in
every, every video, all theother minorities, real and
(14:52):
imagined, okay, all the otheraggrieved victimhood classes,
real and imagined and there's alot of imagined ones, but we're
not going to get into that todaytoo much either.
But just understand thatDoorDash recognized all of them
and in all of these videos itwas examples of persecuting all
of the victimhood or victimclass by me, and all it did was
(15:15):
make me resent it.
You know, I'm not a racist tobegin with, but it could have
turned me into one by the time Iwas done, and I made that very
clear.
And that's why so manycorporations, that's why I got
fired, but there's so manyseparated voluntarily, by
agreement.
You can take the package andtake the severance or you can
wait till we fire you.
You know that was that kind ofdeal, like I anyway, neither
(15:35):
here nor there.
So, that being the case, that'swhy the culture war that's
going on, those DEI classes thatall of those people in the
working class have been forcedto take by their employers and
have been subjected to.
You can't look at the new SnowWhite, and that's all you have
to know.
(15:56):
We have been bombarded withthat kind of propaganda.
These are propaganda films.
These aren't works of art,these aren't works of classics,
they don't adhere to any canon.
They are diverse fordiversity's sake.
They're not there to entertainor even enlighten.
They're there to preach andpropagandize.
(16:16):
And the MAGA movement is tiredof it.
And they're sick of it becausethe message that's not only are
they tired of being made fun ofand being the victim of every
the butt of every joke by thesearrogant people, and these
people are generally made up ofthe oligarchy.
Okay, the very, very wealthiestpeople tend to be on the left,
not the right.
The ones that are on the rightare migrating now, but there's
(16:39):
still the majority on the left.
And because megalomania suitsthe wealthy, and a party that
believes that a centralgovernment can exert not only
control but can actually shapethe culture and human nature
based upon its will, whateverits will arbitrarily might be,
has to be a party of oligarchy.
(17:01):
Only an oligarchy would lovesomething like that.
Anyone else would think it waspoisonous, just on its face.
So when you talk about virtueversus venality today, and the
Republican Party I want to makethis very clear is not the
Republican Party I grew up with,it is not a conservative party,
it is a MAGA party.
The conservatives are out theremoaning they hate.
(17:21):
This week they put up a statueI think it was, or some sort of
memorial or honoring BarbaraBush.
God rest her soul.
I got a kick out of BarbaraBush, but Barbara Bush was a
tough woman and nobody detestedDonald Trump more than Barbara
Bush, and yet he was the guythat was at the ceremony.
Her son didn't come out ofrespect for her wishes, because
Barbara Bush, it was beyond hate.
(17:43):
She hated Donald Trump with apurple passion.
A lot of that had to do withhim stomping all over her son,
jeb, but that's another storyfor another day.
But let's just say that's true.
Feel free to fact check me, butthose Republicans are gone.
You know they're out there inthe fringes hollering Trump's
this and Trump's that, butthey're, they're not part of the
(18:06):
Republican Party anymore.
Republican Party today is apopulist party, and populist
means what the name says.
It's run by a popular idea, andthe popular idea today is by
the working class and thetraditional and the religious to
take back America.
The problem is it's a 50-50country and the other half of
(18:27):
the country is either in a grayzone of confused, and that's who
I'm hoping to be, if the wordis right, preaching to and
bringing over to understand.
There is an alternative inphilosophy for you.
Even if you can't sit in church, you can embrace the philosophy
that unites us all of virtueversus venality.
And then the rest are theDemocratic Party is today closer
(18:52):
to a cult than a politicalparty, and I don't mean this to
be well.
I do.
It is pejorative.
Let me just be straight up.
Look what does the DemocraticParty stand for today.
It stands for victimhood, whichis venality.
It stands for things likereparations, which are venality.
There's no virtue in demandingreparations for something you
(19:14):
never suffered from people whonever did it.
That's venality.
Okay, they stand for unlimitedabortion.
And even if you're pro-choice,most Americans on the issue of
abortion, if you ask them, areyou pro-choice?
Most Americans say yes.
But if you also ask them do youthink abortion is killing a
human life?
They also say yes, the same 70%.
You get a 70% yes and 70% yeson both questions.
(19:37):
It's all how you ask thesepolls, my friends, and what
that's telling you is Americansare deeply ambivalent on
abortion.
So most Americans feel likewhat Bill Clinton used to say.
Whether he meant it or not isanother story for another
podcast, someone else's.
Like I say, I don't dopolitical podcasts, but he said
(19:58):
something that I always thoughtwas true, which is abortion
should be safe, legal and rare.
But the Democratic Partydoesn't stand for that anymore.
It stands for abortion shouldbe available up to the moment
you're pulling a nine-monthfetus out of the mother's womb
and killing it by sucking itsbrains dry, anyway.
We could go on and on.
Most people are grossed out bythat, but somehow that is the
mainstream of the DemocraticParty.
Again, venality, okay, murder isvenality.
(20:18):
Okay, murder is always venality.
I don't know any other way toput it.
And what else do you call that?
You know, once a fetus isviable, the discussion is over,
don't you think?
Okay?
So anyway, and the fetusbecomes.
Because of modern science,which is advancing at light
speed, it becomes viable earlierand earlier, making abortion
(20:39):
less and less likely.
We're going to have that'sanother broader societal
discussion.
I'm not going to, I'm not evengoing to spell out my own
position on this right now.
I'm just going to leave it be,but moving along, what are the
other?
It comes down to calling thepresident of the United States
Hitler, which is an insult toevery Jew alive.
Speaking as a Jew, I'm sorry,trump's not Hitler.
(21:00):
Trump call him whatever elseyou want, but stop it with the
Hitler.
It is spitting on the grave ofsix million Jews.
The guy does you know.
Give me a break.
But yet it's a repeated theme bypeople all the way to the top.
All the way to the top.
It's a party.
If you ask a Democrat, give methe ruling central ideological
(21:24):
tenant of the Democratic Partyof progressivism and they
couldn't tell you.
Try it.
If they name one, maybe rightnow they might say due process,
but they don't even know whatthat is.
It's a party of people who haveswallowed the Kool-Aid all the
way down of evil.
(21:45):
And when I say evil I don't meanlike there's no redemption from
it.
I'm not talking heaven and hell, because I don't believe in
heaven and hell.
I'm talking about evil alwayscomes smiling.
Okay, venality, evil same thingalways comes at you smiling.
You never recognize it becauseit's not like the movies, the,
you know, villains are not twodimensional.
Villains are very threedimensional and villainous
(22:07):
people are three dimensional.
Recognize it because it's notlike the movies, the you know,
villains are not two-dimensional.
Villains are verythree-dimensional and villainous
people are three-dimensionaland they can be charming and
they can be persuasive and theycan be glib and they, you know,
and they can tell you what youwant to hear, because they know
how to press your buttons,because they're highly
manipulative and it all feels sogood and you go along with it
until you realize at some pointyou too are evil and we have to
(22:28):
stop that in our society.
And the only way we're going tostop that is either by the
restoration of traditionalvalues as supported by you.
Choose the mainstream religionof your choice.
Okay, whatever it is that youpractice, the commonality
between all the world's majorreligions is a basic set of
rules to live by.
(22:49):
I, of course, preferJudeo-Christianity for its
emphasis on the individual, inparticular Christianity, and I
say that as a Jew, which is acompliment.
Believe me, it is not acoincidence that Western culture
has produced everything ofvalue that we consider to make
our lives easier and better andlonger today.
(23:09):
That's not a coincidence.
It's Christianity's emphasis onthe individual.
Despite all, I know what all ofyou atheists are saying they
did this and they did that.
I'm a Jew.
I know about the Inquisitionthe Holocaust is only the latest
.
They have been slaughteringJews and pogroms and
inquisitions and Jewslaughtering has gone on for
(23:29):
thousands of years.
Life is not filled withperfection.
Institutions don't rise up outof the sand and glow white in
the sun.
If you're looking for theperfect solution to everything,
you're going to be very, verydisappointed.
You can only choose a side ofvirtue or vernality.
(23:51):
And what is virtue?
It boils down to this it'sdoing the right thing when
nobody's looking, and you knowwhat that is.
And if you don't know what thatis okay, then you need to study
the works of the philosophersor the prophets, depending on
where you are on faith.
Faith today is believing in whatcan't be true.
(24:13):
Before it was believing in asupernatural being.
I say before meaning beforemodern science.
You were believing in asupernatural being or beings to
explain everything going onaround you.
Now that it's pretty clear,even to the most religious, that
all of that was not true,what's left is the nurturing of
(24:35):
the spirit, which is anintangible, which is why
religion is losing ground,because all of the mysteries
have been explained.
I hope religion can find a wayto turn the corner and change
its message.
Who knows, maybe the new PopeLeo that was chosen yesterday,
as I'm recording this on Friday.
Maybe he'll have something tosay about it.
I hope so, but probably not.
(24:58):
And because of that we have torely on something else and we're
not going to rely on politics.
Neither MAGA nor theprogressive movement that is the
Democratic Party today have theanswer.
Maga is a primal scream forvirtue and progressivism is a
primal scream of venality anddecadence and victimhood, which
(25:21):
I can't believe that anyonedefends.
But yet it is true.
It's because it feels so goodwhen I say I can't believe it.
I believe it because I know it.
I was a villain.
I know what it is to be avillain.
You don't become a villain as Iwas before I went to prison.
For sure, I was a smilingvillain, I just didn't know it.
It all seemed so right to me.
You always start out down theroad and you can justify
(25:43):
anything, but then you realizeif you have any self-awareness
at all and spend some time.
That's what prison was soimportant to me.
It was monastic, it gave me achance to really look inside
myself and, of course, readMarcus Aurelius, and then get
into Stoicism, and the list goeson.
But I think that's all I wantto talk about today, my friends.
It's virtue over venality.
(26:04):
Today, in the public sphere, theMAGA movement is where virtue
resides, not perfect virtue.
It's got lots of things tocriticize.
I'm going to leave that for thepolitical shows, but the virtue
in public life lies with MAGA,and the future of our country
lies in embracing the valuesthat it professes to espouse
(26:28):
Self-reliance, working hard,going to church, staying married
, raising your children together, doing the things that are hard
.
It's just one more example ofdoing the right thing.
Once you have children, myfriends, one of the things that
we did to destroy the nuclearfamily was, across the country,
make no-fault divorce legal.
(26:49):
That was a mistake.
No-fault divorce means you canget divorced no matter what you
know.
You can just say we'reincompatible, that's all you
have to say.
No one can stop it once it getsgoing.
We have to go back to the dayswhere now, before you have
children, fine, do whatever youwant.
Where now, before you havechildren, fine, do whatever you
want.
But the minute you conceive,divorce has to become a court
(27:13):
case and it has to be hard,because it's not about you
anymore and that is an idea ofvirtue, not finality.
It is not about you.
When you have children, it goesout the window, you take a back
seat.
This is your biologicalimperative as a human being to
replace yourself with somebodybetter than you were.
And we're falling down at thisand we need to change this.
And the way we're going to doit is, hopefully, through a
(27:36):
combination of religion andphilosophy, and that's what we
talk about here on the SpiritualAgnostic.
Before we go, don't forget topick up a copy of a radical
recent my book aboutanti-politism.
A system of virtue.
It is a republic by lottery,all surrounded in merit and
built on virtue.
Check it out.
I know that sounds far out.
(27:56):
It's not as far out as youthink when you read about it.
Go, check it out.
A Radical Reset in Amazon,kindle, paperback or hardcover.
Please, please.
If you want to support the show,there's a link wherever you're
listening to this that'll takeyou over to the website where
you can support the show.
I hope you do.
That would be lovely.
Share this with your friends.
Yada, yada, yada.
I'm not good at all that stuffthat the kids do the kid, my God
(28:19):
.
I'm, by the way, the most.
One more point before I go away.
What's very interesting to meis how the younger people are
flocking to MAGA while the oldpeople are clinging to
progressivism and that's just alot of evil selfishness, because
people my age we're the problem.
It's the boomer generation thatkicked over the traces.
My friends, I am not holding mygeneration harmless, I'm
(28:42):
blaming it, but we'll talk aboutthat more another day.
Have a beautiful weekend.
I'll talk to you on Monday.
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