← Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
The Unspoken Truths About Masculinity And Leadership! | Konstantin Kisin PT 2
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- [00:00]
Grainger Announcer
When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters, but when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Grainger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple suppliers and no room for shipping delays. That's why Grainger offers millions of products in fast, dependable delivery so you can keep your facility stocked, safe and running smoothly. Call 1-800-GRAINGER Click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.
- [00:30]
Tom Bilyeu
If you work in university maintenance, Grainger
- [00:33]
Constantin Kissen
considers you an MVP because your playbook
- [00:35]
Kevin Rose
ensures your arena is always ready for tip off. And Grainger is your trusted partner, offering
- [00:41]
Constantin Kissen
the products you need all in one
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Kevin Rose
place, from H Vac and plumbing supplies to lighting and more.
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Tom Bilyeu
And all delivered with plenty of time
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Kevin Rose
left on the clock.
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Tom Bilyeu
So your team always gets the win.
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Kevin Rose
Call 1-800-GRAINGER visit grainger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.
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Tom Bilyeu
Welcome back for part two of this riveting episode of Impact Theory.
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Kevin Rose
With my guest Constantin Kissen, we're going
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Tom Bilyeu
to explore the powerful themes of free speech, the resilience needed to navigate modern society, and the nuanced dynamics of intimate relationships. Get ready for more thought provoking insights and profound discussions.
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Kevin Rose
Let's dive into in right now.
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Tom Bilyeu
How much would you give up for free speech? How far would you let people go?
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Constantin Kissen
Well, it depends what you mean because I, for example, you know, in certain countries in Europe, it is illegal to deny the Holocaust, right?
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Tom Bilyeu
In Constantine land, in Constantinople. Is that, is that okay?
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Constantin Kissen
Denying the Holocaust? Yeah, it is to me. Yeah. And you know, I have family who, who, who've died in, in that war and who were Jewish. I don't personally want to that but, but we, we've got ourselves into a bit of a confusion as a society because people confuse. You know, you won't have a Holocaust denier on your podcast. That means you don't believe in free speech. That's slightly different conversation.
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Tom Bilyeu
Agreed.
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Constantin Kissen
But I do think people should be allowed, you know, look, this isn't a popular view, particularly as someone who has experienced racism. I don't think it should be illegal to be racist. Right. To say racist things should be illegal to discriminate against people because of their race and employment and in education or wherever. But people should be allowed to have and express pretty much any opinion in my view. I recognize that's not how other people think.
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Tom Bilyeu
Do you think that's a like if, if the scales had to tip one way or the other, do we lean more towards people Believing in free speech now in the west or away from it?
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Constantin Kissen
Well, I think the scales is the wrong metaphor because I think there's some people who very strongly feel free speech is important, and there are also some people who feel very strongly that feelings. And, you know, protecting people from hearing things they don't like is very important. So I don't know where the balance of that is, because I think those camps are almost separate. They're not even on the same scale to some extent.
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Tom Bilyeu
Right.
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Constantin Kissen
I think if you were to poll the ordinary person, it depends country by country. I mean, in the uk, we have laws against. We have law. It's illegal in the UK to be grossly offensive.
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Tom Bilyeu
That freaks me out.
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Constantin Kissen
It freaks me out.
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Tom Bilyeu
When did that happen?
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Constantin Kissen
I believe it was brought in under the Blair government. I don't quote me on this. I could be wrong, but that's fairly recent, actually.
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Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, yeah.
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Constantin Kissen
So between 97 and 2010, it would have come across. Come in at that point, maybe even before, but it was never really robustly enforced if it had been in place. So don't quote me on it. But it, It's. It's a relatively new occurrence.
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Tom Bilyeu
Right. It's not from the 1800s.
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Constantin Kissen
I. I don't believe so. And if it is, I don't recall. You know, when I was growing up in the uk, I don't remember hearing about people being, you know, prosecuted or arrested or even having the police visit them for things that they said. And now it's. It happens and it freaks me out. You're right. And it should. It should freak us out.
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Tom Bilyeu
Yeah. Where do you think that. Where does the denial of free speech go?
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Constantin Kissen
Well, you charted it perfectly yourself. If we cannot challenge bad ideas, bad ideas thrive. And when bad ideas thrive, that disconnect between reality and ideas gets wider and wider. And then you and I have both, I think, explained where that leads. It leads to, you know, the clash with reality. I mean, you can believe that gravity is not real as long as you want, but when you jump out of a window, you're going to find out.
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Tom Bilyeu
Talk to me about Russia, because I think there's another element to this, where I watched the movie Chernobyl and it really freaked me out, like how being watched all the time, knowing that there are certain things that you can say and can't say, like what it does to the psyche and how it can lead to a nuclear disaster, because you're not able to speak up. You're not able to just plainly say, hey, asshole, like, I can't do that. Because it's going to fucking melt down. You were born in Russia. What does it do? Like, to the vibe. I'm not sure what the right word is to use, but what does it do to this society when people aren't able to just be open and honest? Because there's really fear of punishment.
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Constantin Kissen
Well, a lot of people. It's obviously not comparable, but a lot of people know what that feels like now because a lot of people worry about expressing their actual opinions in public. And it was funny because I was just in New York. We've just done a couple of weeks of a trip around the US and I got invited to this thing that's run by a friend of mine called Thought Criminals. And it's a small group of people who get together and talk about things that they believe that they can't talk about in public or in their work and whatever. And they asked us, Francis and I, to speak a little bit. And, you know, I said to them, I've been in this room before, because Even in the 1980s, I remember as a little kid running around in, you know, my grandfather's kitchen, and there would be, you know, physicists and biologists and musicians and artists sitting around in a small kitchen talking about the very things that they could not discuss elsewhere.
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Tom Bilyeu
That's a lot of trust, man.
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Constantin Kissen
Yeah. And it didn't always work out. So in my grandfather's case, in one of the gatherings of this kind, he criticized the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. And within very short order, he was fired from his job. His wife was fired from her job, and both their children, that's my father and my aunt, were kicked out of university. He had the KGB searcher's house. They found a radio receiver that he used to listen to BBC World Service and Voice of America. And you couldn't. You were not allowed to. This was a terrible crime. And so eventually, that's actually in part why I ended up in England, because he couldn't remain in the Soviet Union. And as it was sort of tapering out at the end, he left and went to the uk. And then when my parents had a bit of money, they sent me to boarding school to England, to be there. But my point is, it creates. And to this day, we don't actually know what people in Russia think about the war, for example. We don't, because what polling says isn't necessarily reflective, because Russians learn, and other people in the Soviet Union learn over a long period of time, that you have a public reality, you have a work reality, and then you have the kitchen table reality. And some of these can be in complete contradiction to each other. And it creates a culture of fear in which, as you say, people are afraid to speak up, people are afraid to take initiative. That's the worst thing. Imagine a business where people don't take initiative because they're afraid. If you have a bunch of people working for you, how bad would the product that you produce be? If none of them ever felt able to say, actually, why don't we do it like this? Let's try that. You see what I'm saying? If everybody was constantly worried about protecting their job and therefore didn't innovate, didn't do anything different, didn't try things, didn't challenge authority, didn't challenge the people above them, and so on, it's a very stifling atmosphere, and it's extraordinary to me how successful the Soviet Union was in competing with the world superpower in spite of that system. It shows you the incredible talents and intellect of the people of the former Soviet Union, who really punched above their way, in my opinion, given the terrible structures that they were operating in.
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Tom Bilyeu
Yes, this is the thing that scares me, and this is why I think what we're calling this will be interesting. I'll try to dissect my own argument here. This is the thing that I find terrifying, is that even in a country like that, that has what I would call very bad ideas, they are able to be successful to a certain point. And so somebody that's going to attack me. If I were going to steel man their argument, I would say, look at China, look at what they've done. Look at Russia, look at what they did. I mean, they. For a long time, they were the other superpower. And yes, they've had sort of a blip, and for a while, they struggled, but it's like, you know, they're kind of coming back, like, depending on how you look at what Putin is doing. He's God. This is not me saying this. I want to be very clear. But, like, reunifying the country or however it's thought of. And so as somebody who has read the Gulag Archipelago, who's read Mao, the Unknown Story, who's read the Red Famine, Jesus. It really is. It's really distressing, depending on what it is that you value, because this stuff will go on for a long time. Like, a lot of people died in the Red Famine, but the country didn't go away. Like, they still, like, they managed to, like, you know, figure some things out and keep going. And even when The Soviet Union fell. It's not like Russia fell into the sea. Like they, you know, they build back and countries fragment, but they start doing their own thing. And so it really comes down to what vibe do you get when you think about. And I'll just make this about work. As you were talking, I was like, oh man, that's actually a really good analogy. The way that I view what happens when you lose free speech is what most people experience every day at work where, oh, think about how much like, you think your boss is an idiot, but you're like, I can't say anything because if I do then I'm going to get fired or whatever. That's what it would be like. And so I don't know why people are racing towards it when they're busy hating their job and they think, you know, they work for a moron, but they can't say anything. And they complain about it and they want out and they want to do their own thing, but yet there's like this cultural movement that will yield the same result. So in at impact theory, dude, you can't imagine how many times to my own team I've given the speech. Nobody here is above criticism, least of all me. I am not smart enough to take us where we want to go. I need people to tell me when I'm going awry. I need people like, you are literally being hired for two things. Are you willing and able to make decisions and stand by them and can you speak to power? Because if you can't speak to power and you're not willing to tell me what you really think, we're going to crash and burn. Have you heard about South Korean airlines and how they used to have the worst safety record in the entire industry? Okay, this is crazy. This to me is what happens when free speech goes away. So they have a cultural thing there where you respect your elders. So if the captain outranks you and you're in the plane and you're the co pilot and something's going wrong, you can make suggestions, but you can't like snap them out of it. And so they have these black box recordings, do this. Eerie. They did this whole documentary of black box reenactments of these famous plane crashes. And there were a couple in there from South Korea and it goes like this. Excuse me, pilot, do you think we're getting a little close to that mountain? No, no, no, everything's fine. Excuse me, sir, could it be possible that if we were to pull up that we'd be in a better Situation. I told you to maintain your course. They are careening towards a fucking mountain, man. They eventually crash into that mountain, and at no point does the co pilot go, hey, motherfucker, we're going to run into the mountain and we need to pull up. What the fuck are you doing? And that, to me is when you lack free speech, you get Chernobyl. Watch it. If you haven't, you get South Korean Airlines. They finally had to do this whole, like, cockpit protocol, where in the cockpit you could absolutely. It did not matter. Hierarchy was gone. So whatever. Like before you clock in, whatever deference you're showing somebody, the second you clock in, that goes away. You've got to say exactly what you think is true. You've got to be assertive. You've got to be willing to call it. And I was just like, wow. There are real consequences when people aren't, for whatever reason, compelled to say what they think is true.
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Constantin Kissen
And the most beautiful illustration of that is the movie Crimson Tide. Have you ever seen it?
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Tom Bilyeu
I have, but a long time ago.
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Constantin Kissen
Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman, I think.
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Tom Bilyeu
Yes.
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Constantin Kissen
And that's the whole plot of the movie. It's the captain of the boat and his xo, and there's a decision to be made, and the XO is doing everything he can to prevent a bad decision from being made by the captain who's chosen a particular path to pursue. And the entire movie is about that fact. And at the end, the way that that whole thing is shown as being the true value of not just free speech, but honor in that whole system is what happens is they end up not launching nuclear weapons at my boys as it was a Cold War movie. And it turns out to be the right decision. However, there is a mutiny aboard a nuclear submarine, which is pretty big fucking deal, right? So there is some kind of investigation, and the captain is questioned about what happened, but his XO is not in this courtroom, the military court martial, whatever it is, and they bring in Denzel Washington, who's there. So. And they say, you know, we've made a decision, something like this. And he goes, what? Without my testimony? And they say, you know, Captain Ramsey, who's the captain of the boat, I've known him for 30 years. You know, we don't. We don't need to. We don't need to mistrust him, right? And the point is, at the end of that whole process, the captain who fought so hard to have his decision implemented, knows he fucked up and he's willing to admit it. That's the whole point of the movie, right? And it ends by, I think, the final shot of the thing is, since then, they've changed the protocol on the submarines so that you can't. You need. I think, you know, they changed the whole thing, basically, right? So you no longer have that conflict, which is exactly what you're talking about, right? The situation. Someone speaks up, that speech is eventually heard. People cling more to what's important over what is in their own personal interest, right? Because there's a bigger thing at stake and lessons are learned. That's like the whole thing in a movie. That's why free speech is important, because it prevents you from making mistakes in the future.
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Tom Bilyeu
You've said that every generation has to fight for free speech. Again, why? What. What is the. So I'm. This is my bias. There's some biological thing that makes people want to shut down free speech for whatever reason, and then there's some biological reason why people want it on the other side. Now, I think we've made a pretty. We've laid out why it can be wildly problematic to not have free speech. But what's the pull on the other side? Why? Why does every generation have to fight this over and over?
- [16:18]
Grainger Announcer
When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters. But when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Grainger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple suppliers and no room for shipping delays. That's why Grainger offers millions of products in fast, dependable delivery, so you can keep your facility stocked, safe and running smoothly. Call 1-800-GRAINGER Click grainger.com or just stop by hi Grainger. For the ones who get it done. When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters. But when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Grainger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple suppliers and no room for shipping delays. That's why Grainger offers millions of products in fast, dependable delivery. So you can keep your facility stocked, safe and running smoothly. Call 1-800-granger. Click granger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.
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Constantin Kissen
Well, free speech is kind of unpleasant, isn't it? Isn't it?
- [17:25]
Tom Bilyeu
It can be, man. So, no, it is.
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Constantin Kissen
It is. I mean, when we think.
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Kevin Rose
In what way?
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Tom Bilyeu
Because people say things that make you go, oh, yeah, that was kind of stupid to me.
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Constantin Kissen
Or they just say things that you don't like, or they express opinions you don't agree with. Right. For example, I feel very Strongly about what's happening in Ukraine. Right. So for me, hearing people saying horrible shit about Ukrainians who are fighting for their lives and calling them Nazis and lying about that whole situation, it upsets me. Or it could do if I let it. And at some points, I let it. It's a fact. What if I could just press a button and then none of these people ever say any of that again? Wouldn't my life be so much more improved?
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Tom Bilyeu
Definitely not. But that could be because I'm already so far down the path.
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Constantin Kissen
Yeah. So you understand that my life would not be improved. But a lot of people don't understand that because it's reaction, stimulus, reaction. That's all it is. Oh, I feel bad. Okay, shut it down. That's how a lot of people feel about life in general. Because most people, as you well know, don't go through life not feeling in control. And so when a thing happens that you don't want to experience, that's what happens. It's quite a natural instinct. And so in many ways, I would argue, free speech is very unnatural. It's a very unnatural thing. And that's why it has to be fought for repeatedly. Because people. It's always tempting to go to shut it down. I don't like to. I don't want to hear this. And also, if your ego is invested, this is the hardest thing for people who do what you do and do what I do, Whether you run a small YouTube channel or a massive business, everyone has an element of ego that takes ages to get rid of, to process. And so it's a challenge to your ego to have people challenge the things that you are saying or believing or thinking. And it's only when you transcend that and you go, this is about something bigger than me. This is what you said about the speech you give your team. Right. You said, if we are going to get to where we want to go, then you have to be able to challenge me. But if all we are trying to do is get to where I want to go, maybe I don't need to hear your crappy opinion about how I'm doing it. And maybe I just need you to suck up to me so that we carry on doing stuff that makes me feel good.
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Tom Bilyeu
An owner will never do that. A successful owner will never do that because they know that at the end of the day, the rubber meets the road. If you get a company, I guess that's like, finally hit escape velocity and it's just making enough money, then you can start being stupid. But this is why the average company now stays in The S&P 500, I think, for 12 years. It used to be 61. If you made it to the S&P 500 baby gravy train, 61 years now, 12 bananas. So anyway, there's just a death spiral that happens when you want people to suck up. It's really interesting. So I came to being a CEO through a very weird way. I started as a copywriter, worked my way to partner in one company, then tried to quit that company. And so they made me an equal partner in the next company story. My audience has heard me tell the story a thousand times. And so that I was like, I clawed my way to the top in a very emotionally difficult environment. That was the intellectual equivalent of Thunderdome. Like, we actually used to say that this is not me, like, making it up. It was like, one man or two men enter, one man leaves. Like, we used to talk about that all the time. And so it really was meant in some ways to be that difficult. And so as I looked at it and was like, how much of this works? How much of it doesn't? There were some ideas that were brilliant, like, challenge me. Other ideas that were less likely to make it with me when I was on my own.
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Constantin Kissen
Like what?
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Tom Bilyeu
Like, I realized very quickly that I need to give my power away. So my job in getting to the CEO position is not to flex and show everybody how powerful I am. My job at getting to CEO was to empower everybody else so that it could scale. And that is very difficult to do, to claw your way to that role and then be like, hey, actually, for me to get where I want to go, I have to. In some ways. In some ways, it actually be really interesting. It would take us hours to really explain what running a business is. But in many ways, you're submitting yourself to your employees, and you're saying, one. I actually don't refer to my employees as my employees. Just psychologically, it's not the right move. So we refer to each other as teammates.
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Constantin Kissen
Yeah, that's what I call my team.
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Tom Bilyeu
The psychological thing that does, I think, is very important. We also give equity to our team. So it's like, hey, you actually really own a piece of this company. So now it's like we're pulling for the same thing. We're teammates. You're not my family. I'm holding you to a standard. I absolutely expect you to perform well. I consider myself to need to be as good as a human could be at my position. So I know what My position is I am not interested in being a micromanager, but I have to. Hey, how are things going for you? I want to make sure that you have the way that I refer to myself as I'm the soil, you guys are the things that are going to grow. And so my job is to create the soil here. That freedom of speech, challenge authority, all of that stuff is incredibly important to create that kind of vibe so that you can ultimately get the things you want to go. But as that one to create, that is very difficult because I think, and this is the next thing I want to talk about, that there is part of the reason I think that people have to fight for free speech every generation, is that there is innate inhumans, partly because of ego, partly because of fear, partly because of insecurity, partly because it's awesome. Is a drive for totalitarian style control.
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Constantin Kissen
Yeah.
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Tom Bilyeu
And I've often thought it's really good that I'm not smart enough to lead this company in a dictatorial fashion, because if I were right, like say 85% of the time, I could probably get away with it. But the reality is that I'm not. And so I never worked with Steve Jobs, so maybe I'm wrong and this is just mythology, but I have a feeling he was just smart enough that he could just like slap people around, be absolutely horrible, tell them what to do. And it still worked. They built an amazing company. And so very few people were like, he's a lot of fun to work for. So I can't do that. I can't deploy that methodology because if I'm a dick to you, I'm going to be wrong way too frequently. And now I'm just going to hemorrhage human capital. So anyway, I think that's a big part of the pool pull, is that being a dictator feels awesome telling people.
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Constantin Kissen
Does it though? Does it? See, people say that, but look, I've never been inside another human being's skin, obviously, but
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Tom Bilyeu
it's insecurity, provoking. Is that where you're going?
- [24:42]
Constantin Kissen
No. Why? It doesn't feel good.
- [24:45]
Tom Bilyeu
Why not?
- [24:46]
Constantin Kissen
Because you're making other people feel bad.
- [24:49]
Tom Bilyeu
Do you think they see that? Yes, because some of them, like when I heard stories about Saddam Hussein's son. Yeah, yikes.
- [24:58]
Constantin Kissen
Yeah. So I suppose there are some psychopaths and they probably accumulate at the top of Fortune 500 companies. It's weird to me. I've never. I've never been because I fear in myself the. The instinct to authoritarianism. But when I actually started managing Our team. I quickly realized that I actually didn't need to fear that at all, because I'm actually the opposite. I have to force myself to say things that might not be pleasant for them, but that need to be. It's something I have to overcome all the time. I do not enjoy making other people feel bad one bit. And dictators.
- [25:38]
Tom Bilyeu
I won't say that's the only part of being a dictator, though.
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Constantin Kissen
It's not.
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Tom Bilyeu
Because when you run a company, I like knowing I'm the one person that can't be fired. They can all quit. And I think. I think people working at a company underestimate how brutal that is. But they can't fire me. And that feels nice.
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Constantin Kissen
Well, yeah. Does that make you a dictator, though?
- [26:03]
Tom Bilyeu
There's an element of that. I have the totalitarian control over my company. People are going to do what I say, and it ultimately, it forces you into a George Washington position where it's like, I could keep this power, but I actually am going to give it away. And in the way that he gave it away, because he felt it was the right thing for the country. And it's probably good that he was as old as he was because he was just like, Jesus Christ, this is a pain in the ass. And I would really like to retire to my farm now. Uh, there. There is something about that feeling of like, as long as the company is making money and I can't be fired, this is why I don't take money out. I don't take outside money. Because then you can be fired. The board can fire you, and I would hate that. Anyway, I get your point. It's. It's a mixed bag.
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Constantin Kissen
And I suppose the fact is that as we talked about, people have different psychological profiles. There are some people who are psychopathic. Right. We're talking about authoritarianism, though, why we
- [27:06]
Tom Bilyeu
always have to fight every generation for free speech.
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Constantin Kissen
Because it's not natural. That's why it's. It's not a natural state of being. I think. I don't think that in. In the ancestral environment, in a tribe of 150 people, there was a huge amount of free speech. Do you know what I mean? So I think it's a quite artificial idea in some ways. That's why it hasn't been around for very long in historical terms. I mean, the idea that freedom of expression matters is sort of a few hundred years old at best, actually, and never really been properly implemented anyway, even in those times. Now, look, the reason we keep banging on about free speech, we should Acknowledge this as well is the technological environment is very different. A word said in private 200 years ago really probably didn't have a huge amount of impact on how people thought and felt. And whatever you say something on Twitter now, it could be seen by hundreds of millions of people and have far reaching implications. So even though language hasn't changed that much, the impact of language has. And I can see why. You know, I don't believe there's ever going to be a free Internet again. You know, there was a, there was a, there was a gold rush moment of the Internet. Do you remember it?
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Tom Bilyeu
When you say free, you mean uncensored?
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Constantin Kissen
Yeah, yeah. That's not going to happen again. The technology is too powerful, but nobody would allow that.
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Tom Bilyeu
What do you think about what Elon is doing with Twitter?
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Constantin Kissen
What specifically?
- [28:39]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, that's interesting. So the way that I see it is him taking over this thing, making it open source so people are not open source, but transparent, so everybody can see what the algorithm is and there's no mystery about who's getting blocked or why.
- [28:55]
Constantin Kissen
And that part of it I like. That part of it I like. But I think I never met Elon. I actually did Bill Maher show with him today, but we didn't get a chance to talk. So I don't know what he's like. I've never met him. And I'm just saying this as an outside observer and I actually think he's a very important figure in the culture and what he's attempting to do in terms of the survival of humanity, actually really important. I disagree with him about certain things. But you have to be honest and recognize that Twitter is a benevolent dictatorship, which is much better than the oligarchy we had before. It is better. But I see that there is any dictatorship is benevolent as long as it's benevolent. So, you know, for example, Twitter I think is in a bit of a standoff with Substack at the moment, which for someone who writes on Substack, I find a little bit frustrating.
- [29:54]
Tom Bilyeu
What's the standoff?
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Constantin Kissen
The standoff is that Substack came up with a thing called Substack Notes, which I think the people at Twitter believe is an attempt to compete with Twitter, which I don't think it is, given that Substack I think have like 35 million subscriptions versus whatever Twitter has. You know, they're not comparable, but there's been some things that happened on that front that make me, you know, make me think that, you know, I really wish this dictatorship remained benevolent for as Long as possible.
- [30:29]
Tom Bilyeu
Is he throttling substack people or something? Like, if you're trying to link out
- [30:33]
Constantin Kissen
to it or I don't have access to the actual data to be able to say accurately. There was a period of time was quite short when if you posted a substack link on Twitter, it would actually, if you clicked it, it would be. It would take you to a page saying, this link is unsafe.
- [30:51]
Tom Bilyeu
Interesting.
- [30:52]
Constantin Kissen
And if you tweeted a link to substack, you couldn't like or retweet it. You could only quote, tweet it. So it was direct suppression.
- [31:00]
Tom Bilyeu
Right.
- [31:01]
Constantin Kissen
This happened for a very short period of time. And then we are in the position where we are now where some people say suppression is going on quietly and some people say it's not
- [31:13]
Tom Bilyeu
interesting. Well, if he makes a code available, people real fast point out whether that's really happening or not. But that's interesting. Okay, so free Internet was a moment going away. It becomes a very interesting question getting back to do we want freedom of speech? How far in kissing land we're gonna go, what we're gonna.
- [31:35]
Constantin Kissen
I'm so grateful. I'm not. Elon. I cannot tell you just the pressure or what that decision, that specific one decision is like, where's that line? Nobody knows. Nobody knows. Because once you go from. Anyone's allowed to express an opinion, which I genuinely believe, like you and I sitting here without the cameras on. If you wanna be racist, I may not stick around, but I believe you have a right to say that. Right. What about when that is recorded on camera and it goes out to millions of people? What if I say, as David Icke, this conspiracy guy in the UK said at the beginning of the pandemic, that Covid is caused by 5G and then the next day people go out and burn down 5G masts. Right. You know, I was abhorred. I found the decision to. That's probably not even a word. I found the decision to ban Trump from Twitter abhorrent.
- [32:27]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah.
- [32:29]
Constantin Kissen
But I can also, if I'm being intellectually honest, I opposed it completely and I said it at the time. I can find in my mind a situation in which a leader of a democratic country, in my opinion, should be banned from the public square.
- [32:44]
Tom Bilyeu
Really?
- [32:45]
Constantin Kissen
Yeah.
- [32:45]
Tom Bilyeu
Give me an example.
- [32:47]
Constantin Kissen
Well, it's obvious if they're inciting large scale mass violence, for example, they're saying, you know, what we need to do is go out and shoot these people right now.
- [32:57]
Tom Bilyeu
I don't think Putin tweets, but would you boot him if he did. Because there is a guy. Oh, God. I follow him. I forget his name on the Russian side because I was like, oh, my God. Like, he's tweeting what he really thinks about the West. Yes.
- [33:09]
Constantin Kissen
He drinks a lot.
- [33:10]
Tom Bilyeu
And I was like, whoa. Like, this guy's just not pulling any punches. Like, these idiots and all this. I was like, wow.
- [33:15]
Constantin Kissen
Like, okay, this is why I'm saying I'm grateful not to be in the position where I have to make these decisions, because I think at the end
- [33:20]
Tom Bilyeu
of the day, because there's no right answer.
- [33:22]
Constantin Kissen
There's no right answer. Interesting. Now we're all fighting over where that line is. And my argument is that line has been pushed way in against free speech. I think that's Elon's point, and that's why he's taken over Twitter, and that's why he's rolling that line back. But inevitably, there will always be a point where you go, okay, that's far enough. I think, because the technology is too powerful now. The impact of words is so can't. Is not. But can be so catastrophic. But then again, I can see counterarguments to my own argument. I mean, think about, you know, what about the civil war in America? A bunch of people saying, you know, we must end slavery. And if people want to fight us over that, we got to go out and fight. What if that happened today? What if people went out and said, you know, we got to fight whatever. And that means we need to pick up our weapons and go to the street. Do you interfere with that as the owner of Twitter?
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- [34:49]
Constantin Kissen
Most people out there in the world do not care about being perceived to be moral or being perceived to be virtuous or being perceived to be anything. They care about some very simple things like money, oil, precious metals, rare earth metals, land force, power, military capacity. This is what they care about. And to the extent that they are able to achieve that, they will pursue that by any means necessary. You see this with what Russia is doing. You see this with what other countries are doing. They are pursuing the interest as they understand them, by any means necessary. And if we cut off our ability to do the same because we go, oh, this is dishonorable. It's dishonorable to use force. It's dishonorable to have regions of the world under our power, under our influence. Why should we be involved in this country far, far away? Well, the reason is that's how you make America prosperous and safe. Right. But nobody wants to say that because in the world that we live in, it's dishonorable. It doesn't sound good. Right. The truth is, you know, I remember I said this on Twitter recently, in 1990, in the 90s and the noughties, you had all these American movies in which some CIA guy would be like, and they hate us because we have freedom. And I was like, no, idiot. They hate you because you have power. That's why they hate you. People don't want to hear this, but on 9 11, most of the world cheered. It wasn't because they hate your freedom. It's not because most of the world is jihadi terrorists. People don't like the people at the top of the pyramid. Everybody wants to take your place. And that is the simple truth of the world. And unless you're willing to stand in that place and defend it, someone will come and take it away from you. It's no different to cartels in Mexico, right? Once they sense a weakness in the strongest cartel, what happens? Someone comes after it. It fragments, they form a new thing. They start again. That's how power works, and there's no
- [36:49]
Kevin Rose
escaping it on the power front. And then I'll come back to the beliefs that lead us astray on the power front.
- [36:59]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, it. The truth of the world is deeply
- [37:04]
Kevin Rose
uncomfortable, and there's something very weird about that. Nature is red in tooth and claw. So for anybody that's heard that but never stopped to think about it, what it means is you stop your enemy. And unfortunately, I'm actually really curious to get your emotional take on. So I've seen a lot of the footage coming out of the Israel Hamas conflict. It's doing something to me that I really don't like the way it makes me feel. And I watched one today. Wow, I'm getting emotional. I watched one today where there was somebody from Hamas going through, and they had a camera like a GoPro or whatever on their head, and they're just filming it. And through the window, they shoot and kill somebody. You can't really see it, but you hear the person die. It's crazy. And then that person ends up getting shot and killed. And I just thought to kill another human, you rip their body like you tear a hole in their organs.
- [38:00]
Tom Bilyeu
They bleed out.
- [38:01]
Kevin Rose
It's violent and painful and simple and fast. And watching that person die, I mean, they die fast, man. Like at the end, somebody shoots him.
- [38:15]
Constantin Kissen
I don't know.
- [38:15]
Kevin Rose
Sniper.
- [38:15]
Tom Bilyeu
What?
- [38:16]
Kevin Rose
Single shot. Not even like just pow drops. You hear him? He's talking it. Oh, dude. It was just so crazy. And that nature is red in tooth and claw. We have not escaped nature, not entirely. But there is something about how much progress we've made that is thrilling. And when I think about how much prosperity and how much peace the western world on our home turf, because I am well aware of the horrendous forever wars that we have gotten into. But on our own home turf, how much that we have had. And what scares me is that it's huge blessings. Huge blessings. And also seems to derange our thinking in some way. Going back to the idea some people need to be chased by a lion. Like there is something about human nature that has to be. Has to be this wrong way to think about it. If it isn't kept in check that. That a way of thinking becomes pathologized and we
- [39:31]
Constantin Kissen
the.
- [39:32]
Kevin Rose
Oh, God. I'm explaining an idea that I have not had to articulate out. This is why I love having you on. The group begins to vibrate. Stick with me. The group begins to vibrate.
- [39:46]
Constantin Kissen
It sounds like a sexual fantasy, mate.
- [39:48]
Tom Bilyeu
Let's see.
- [39:49]
Kevin Rose
It doesn't end like one. I don't think not for the group begins to vibrate and the individual gets lost. Collective thinking takes over and all hell breaks loose. And that all hell breaks loose can be just a weakening and so a stronger force from the outside comes in and takes over. Or it can be. I'd have to really think about times where the group, the collective becomes like a mouths china or something like that. That worries me. The deranging of that to keep it on. Things we've already talked about in this conversation. When you get the pulling all of the structure apart so that there is nothing left to push back on, so that everyone is equal, everyone is the same, nobody is worse off because we
- [40:44]
Tom Bilyeu
have the luxury to believe that.
- [40:45]
Kevin Rose
So I say that because if. Great example. If somebody broke in to the this studio right now and they said, okay, we. You have to win a debate or everyone here dies, I would immediately go, okay, Constance is a better debater than me. So Constantine, sorry. So you. You go do the debating. And I would just have. Because I don't want anybody to get shot. I don't need to be right. I just need somebody that I've seen do it and I know that they're good at it.
- [41:17]
Constantin Kissen
Boom.
- [41:18]
Kevin Rose
So now reality slaps you in the face and everybody lines up behind that. But when there is none of that,
- [41:23]
Tom Bilyeu
you get this slow decay.
- [41:25]
Kevin Rose
And the slow decay is hard to protect against.
- [41:27]
Constantin Kissen
And that's where we are. I think that's exactly where we are. We've become very uncomfortable with. Look, this is a very, very difficult thing to talk about, okay? But I think we have to talk about it, particularly in this moment. So I've talked to. We've got a. I don't know when this will go out, but we have an episode with Sam Harris and Eric Weinstein coming out. We talked about Israel and Palestine a lot. And the thing that we were talking about is this World War II ended because United States dropped two nuclear weapons on Japan and because of what happened to Germany, Okay? Now, when the United States dropped, I think it was Hiroshima. When they dropped that nuke, they. Afterwards, one of those two, they went and measured the blast impact of those detonations, not the release of energy from the nuclear weapons, which are much greater, but the blast impact. And they calculated how many conventional munitions you would have to use to achieve the same blast impact on a city when they did those calculations. There's a Russian historian called Mark Salonian who's gone through all of this. In the last year and a half of World War II, the Allies, that's mainly the Brits, the Americans and The Soviets dropped 50 Hiroshimas a month on Germany.
- [42:57]
Tom Bilyeu
Whoa.
- [42:58]
Constantin Kissen
Every month for 18 months, they wiped Germany off the map. Flattened cities. Hundreds of thousands of people burnt alive. Now, historians have come along and said that was too much, that wasn't justifiable, that was wrong, etc. But the fact is that Germany was in the grips of a death cult. Hitler said, we're going to make a final stand. We're not going to retreat, we're not going to capitulate, we're not going to surrender. And that is what happened. And the only way the Allies could win that war was. Was to kill a hell of a lot of innocent people. Okay, Are we saying that was wrong? Are we saying that murdering. Not murdering, sorry, killing millions of innocent civilians in war is wrong? Well, I think so. Don't you? Yes. Can you win a war without doing it?
- [43:52]
Kevin Rose
No.
- [43:52]
Constantin Kissen
No.
- [43:53]
Kevin Rose
I don't know. I will say that.
- [43:54]
Constantin Kissen
No, you can't.
- [43:55]
Tom Bilyeu
Look like it.
- [43:55]
Constantin Kissen
You can't. You can't. So what does that. We are in. So if you accept my premise, then we are in a moral paralysis right now. Because if you want to win the war, you have to kill innocent civilians. And we don't want to kill innocent civilians. What's the outcome? We can't win the war. And that's where we are. That's where we are.
- [44:19]
Kevin Rose
Okay, so power as the returning theme. I imagine people are getting squeamish.
- [44:28]
Constantin Kissen
What you point out, you keep saying that, but what. What does squeamish mean?
- [44:31]
Kevin Rose
It means that they're going to. What I mean by that now is people are going to reject a tool because it can also be used to do horrendous things. So I saw a tweet that said there, there is only tragedy in the Israeli Palestine conflict. There's no good that can come of it. No, that's not what they said. There's only tragedy. That is what they said. And I wish I had memorized it because it was a really eloquent description of.
- [45:04]
Tom Bilyeu
It's.
- [45:05]
Kevin Rose
It's not good guys, bad guys. It's just tragedy. Every which where you look and nature is red in tooth and claw and there is tragedy to that, but I don't know that there is any way to escape it. And relinquishing your power is not the
- [45:20]
Tom Bilyeu
way to do it.
- [45:20]
Kevin Rose
As somebody who thinks and movies, I will remind Everybody of Superman 2. When Superman gives up his powers because he wants to just be a normal person and be in love with Lois Lane and do the things that a normal person would do, only to then find out that he gets knocked around by the bully and to help people has to get his powers back. That's interesting. I have not thought about that metaphor, but yeah, that I think is the very hard lesson we're learning. That it feels really good to
- [45:57]
Tom Bilyeu
focus
- [45:57]
Kevin Rose
on how much I love my wife, to focus on how much I care about my team here at Impact Theory, to focus on the people that I'm trying to help with the show. But there's a reason why I talk constantly about. The imagery that I use to keep myself motivated is me in a loincloth covered in the blood of my enemies. And I have to channel that willingness to be hard, to be tough in order to stay focused, to not give up, to not fall into a weak mindset. Here's another quote that I wish I had memorized, but I'll get you close with a paraphrase. This is George Washington. George Washington said When a group of people loses their hard fighting disposition,
- [46:44]
Tom Bilyeu
they
- [46:44]
Kevin Rose
can no longer claim themselves to be among the best. Just as cowardice is a mortal sin in the individual, it is a mortal sin at the population level. And I was like, whoa. Like, especially when you understand his role and what he did in order to help America get the American experiment off the ground, which is hopefully something we'll get to before the end of this talk. What the American experiment is, why it matters, why it's not owned by America.
- [47:16]
Constantin Kissen
One of the aspects that we're circling around here is sacrifice. Think about what George Washington did. He led hundreds of thousands of men, many of whom were maimed and killed, into battle over what an idea. The idea that you people in this country should be free of external tyranny. And he sacrificed men's lives to achieve it. Now, we would agree that killing people is bad. Maiming people is bad. We don't want any civilian or anyone killed, do we? Because we're good, moral, virtuous people. But that is not how the world works. If you want to achieve goals, inevitably that will happen. If you want to defend your country, you have to sacrifice some men, usually men, almost always men, have to sacrifice themselves. And someone who's in charge of that will be in charge of, do we send these people here? Do we send them there? Some of them are going to die. We're on moral paralysis in the West. At a level of society, we still have generals, we still have presidents who will press the button and send men into battle and whatever. But a level of society, we are incapable of understanding that reality. We're incapable of understanding the fact that, look, the Israel, Palestine situation is a perfect example of this. If you believe that Hamas is a terrorist organization, you understand that this was Israel's 9, 11. And Israel has to destroy Hamas. If Israel has to destroy Hamas. Hamas using civilians as a shield means that civilians are going to die. I don't feel comfortable being the guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, press that button, go on. I'm not happy saying that. I'm not saying that. But the people making that decision, if they want to destroy Hamas, have to take innocent life. That's the moral quandary that the entire world is in. And the reason that Israel is particularly in that position, it is being forced to play by Western rules against people who play by a completely different set of rules who don't operate on those values whatsoever.
- [49:35]
Kevin Rose
It's interesting calling them Western rules. I like to think I haven't thought about this, so I can tell that what I'M about to say is ill informed.
- [49:44]
Tom Bilyeu
But I'll walk through the way that
- [49:47]
Kevin Rose
I was thinking about it and then I'll sort of self correct. What I was going to say is I like to believe that as a society finds itself prosperous. Not quite true. This is how I know this is ill informed.
- [50:04]
Tom Bilyeu
Okay.
- [50:04]
Kevin Rose
There are two ways to approach it. You've got the individualistic way, you've got the collectivist way. You can achieve extraordinary things through both. As China's shown over the last whatever 30 years has been absolutely breathtaking to see that level. I just have a feeling that that one deranges a little more quickly than does the individual. So if you made me place a bet on which one going to yield the best results over time, I would say that betting on the individual, meaning individual freedoms, property rights, all the things that we'll call Western values, I think that that makes sense. I think the. Once you do that and you make the individual, you think of them as having a divine spark within them and that each individual is precious and not this disposable thing that, that has a self correcting mechanism in it that leads to what we're seeing now. Now we have looped back to beliefs that end up creating the, the pathology and we'll, we'll keep going through some of them because I think it's pretty fascinating. But I, that to me, I think makes a lot of sense. So I want to believe that any society the best in the, in elevating the individual, the individual as the, the right unit of account. As you begin to analyze what to do, what not to do, that it requires you to look at them as sacred individuals and thusly protect them. And thusly any society that goes down that path is going to find themselves not wanting to use human shields or blow up human shields. So anyway, I think I navigated that reasonably well. I stopped myself from the most absurd trip ups which is that a collectivist society can work. I just have a feeling that because it only requires one person to become pathologized, that that has a tendency to end in tyranny and bad news much faster. But it's certainly not impossible for either system to end up there. Okay, anything on more on that belief?
- [52:04]
Constantin Kissen
No.
- [52:04]
Kevin Rose
Okay, so I have more so problematic beliefs that cause collapse that I want people to pay attention to. Because if you adjust these in your own life, not only do I hope that that means the collective won't derange that, it means if we really are living through effectively the modern version of the Roman collapse, so this is going to help you see opportunities if you can avoid these problematic beliefs. Okay, so prosperity is a fundamental law of human nature. I feel like people believe that that's true. What do you think?
- [52:37]
Constantin Kissen
Dumb people believe that that's true?
- [52:39]
Kevin Rose
Yeah.
- [52:40]
Constantin Kissen
Or maybe I take that back. Lucky people. People in the western world believe that that's true because they've never experienced anything else. But that isn't the world. The world is very, very different to that. And this is one of the things I've made up my business to remind everybody. We talk endlessly about all sorts of forms of privilege. This privilege, that privilege. The real privilege that we all enjoy is western privilege, first world privilege. And we have been very comfortable for a very long time in that privilege. And we have forgotten that life for the overwhelming majority of people throughout human history has been an immense struggle for survival. Prosperity is not a given. It is a product of the things that we have been very lucky to enjoy in the West. And the values that we have are what has allowed us to build it, which is why they're important to preserve. So prosperity is not a human right. It doesn't fall out of the sky. It's not on your birth certificate. Prosperity is a product of action. It's a product of action in your personal life, It's a product of action at the level of society. For you to enjoy the prosperity that you enjoy, you have to work your butt off as you have done, and be smart and be creative and be driven and be talented and have great ideas that you test against reality and fail and recover and adjust. That's how you build prosperity in your own life. And countries are no different.
- [54:08]
Tom Bilyeu
I heard a really cool quote, I'll
- [54:10]
Kevin Rose
paraphrase, I mentioned it earlier. In the capitalist system, people recognize that prosperity is the miracle. In a socialist system, people get confused and think that redistribution is the miracle.
- [54:25]
Tom Bilyeu
So if it's true that it's the
- [54:28]
Kevin Rose
rules and rules of thumb that really are going to equate to your level of success, whether that's emotional success, financial success, societal success, what are high level rule sets? The two that came to mind the fastest, just at the highest, highest level, were capitalism and socialism. So I was like, all right, without looking it up, what would I define these two systems as? So for capitalism, I said individuals try to con, try to contribute to the group, and prosperity is their reward if successful. For socialism, I said, the group takes from the individual to divide prosperity evenly. And what do you think about those definitions?
- [55:05]
Constantin Kissen
First of all, pretty good. I mean, they're obviously by Definition extraordinarily simplified.
- [55:10]
Kevin Rose
Yes, but.
- [55:11]
Constantin Kissen
But broadly speaking, yes.
- [55:12]
Kevin Rose
Okay. So when you look at those rule sets, one of them, I think, acknowledges that prosperity is going to be hard to come by. That's why I said, because originally I was like, individuals contribute to the group and prosperity is their reward. And I was like, hold on, because you're going to try to contribute, you may not be able to. Society may say, I don't like your contribution, the one that kills me. Society may say, you're not smart enough to contribute meaningfully. That one is hard but real. And there are going to be people that just do not have the intellectual horsepower to contribute meaningfully to society. And hence I like a social safety net of some kind, like looking out for people, wanting to help people. All of that's amazing. Anyway, socialism takes that prosperity for granted and does not realize that you can break the very thing that creates the prosperity, which is giving people the individual freedom to try to contribute to the group. And if they're able to do that successfully, that prosperity is their reward. They are able to create a differential between themselves and other people. They're actually able to do that. Now, of course, anybody that's familiar with the Gini coefficient knows that if that gap between the haves and the have nots becomes too much, you are basically guaranteed violence. Because people can actually be poor. And it's not a problem if everyone around them is poor. Where it becomes a problem is if your neighbor is super wealthy and you're even normal.
- [56:37]
Tom Bilyeu
Like, you have a refrigerator, you have
- [56:39]
Kevin Rose
air conditioning, you have a PlayStation, like, you can have it all. But if your neighbor is Elon Musk, now there's a real problem, and he has rocket ships and makes his own cars, all that stuff, so they can be a problem. But if you fail to recognize that you that prosperity is by default, everyone is broke. All through human history, and everyone but the smallest number of like, royal people just suffered endlessly and were victims of just climate. Just you froze to death, you overheated,
- [57:12]
Tom Bilyeu
just was or you starved to death.
- [57:13]
Kevin Rose
Probably even way more common. All right, here's a new one.
- [57:16]
Constantin Kissen
Can we pause on Nature has no rules. Because I think one of the interesting things about this all, all of this thing is the biggest problem with blank slatism is the attempt to pretend that human nature doesn't exist, that humans are not wired to be predisposed to certain things. And it's incredibly unscientific belief given that we know that we evolved, we're evolved creatures, and therefore it's Obviously understandable, but at the same time very silly to think that horrible things that human beings do are some kind of weird occurrence. You know, I can't believe there's a war somewhere. Really. Why don't you look at our history? When was the last time human beings were not fighting over something? We are tribal chimps that evolved to do what we do. And all of the terrible pathologies of human beings are a product of our evolution to a very large extent. So when we know that that is the case, we prepare for war and therefore are kept safe. When we pretend that is not the case, we don't prepare for war and we go, oh my God, I can't believe we've been invaded. So the denial of the existence of human nature is pathological and very dangerous.
- [58:44]
Kevin Rose
Yeah, this one, this one I don't understand. And this is the thing that's really been an animating force for me. So as I think about, okay, impact theory. What theory? It's a belief that they're the only difference between me and the level of success that I've had. And the other average people, because I consider myself very average, is a set of ideas. Many of the ideas that we're talking about right now, today, and the one that I find the, the most jarring that people don't just rush to embrace is that 50% of the way you work is hardwired. You're not going to get around it. And so I've thought a lot about then. Why is it that people can get confused? Because they can get confused and they can make very compelling arguments. And so, because I never want to assume that, oh, I've really got this mapped out, I'm like, okay, wait, how is it that people are so confused about this? And they're confused because there's 50% of you that is malleable and we can change a lot. So in fact, I mean, let's confront gender non conforming square on. It really is happening. And a lot more people, maybe it's still a tiny, tiny number. Maybe it's still only one and a half percent of people.
- [59:52]
Tom Bilyeu
Whatever.
- [59:55]
Kevin Rose
They're actually, they feel accurate in saying that I, while my body may be male, I am a woman. And if we can, let's, let's assume that some people, the edges are totally lying. Men. Oh God, you guys have a really funny name for it. Prison onset gender dysphoria.
- [60:17]
Constantin Kissen
Yeah, it's when you get, when somebody who's a trans woman that a male with a penis gets arrested and goes to court suddenly they're like, oh, I'm a woman now, you know, rapid on prison onset gender dysphoria. You see a bit of prison coming your way, suddenly you're gender dysphoric.
- [60:32]
Kevin Rose
So setting that aside, I, I have a sense that there really are people, that they really do believe that.
- [60:39]
Constantin Kissen
Sure.
- [60:39]
Kevin Rose
And so something is malleable enough that they, because I don't even think all of them started that way. I think some people, this comes on very late in life. So the question becomes, why are they able to get, and I don't mean this, this word derogatorily, why are they able to get confused. Why are they able to be migrated from here I am feeling male to now I'm not. What, what allows for that confusion, do you think?
- [61:12]
Constantin Kissen
Well, we have done a lot of interviews with various people, including many trans people, and the conclusion is that gender dysphoria is a mental illness. It's a mental illness. So people have all kinds of mental illnesses. They feel that they shouldn't have an arm, they feel that they shouldn't have this, they feel that they shouldn't have that. They are distressed by various aspects of their body. Some people think, some people look in the mirror and see someone who's fat while they're really, really thin, call that anorexia. Some people eat food and then go to the bathroom and throw it up. Right. That we call that bulimia. And actually, interestingly, many of the people, particularly young women who are now gender dysphoric are the ones that used to have anorexia and bulimia, statistically speaking, in the past. So they're able to do that on, on an individual level because, you know, human brains have variability that they're not perfect. Some people experience distress, some people experience illness. We all experience illness of one kind on another at some point, but we don't go, well, I am diabetic, therefore I now identify as healthy. Right. So it's, I, I don't say this in any unkind way. I have a lot of empathy for people who suffer from these conditions. I really, truly do. We have someone that works at trigonometry who is, we had her on recently. I don't know if you caught that episode. An employee of ours, and that's what she says. It's, it's a disorder. It's a mental disorder that people need help with. The problem is, in our society today, we have created the idea that you can identify out of reality and all you have to do is replace the word identity with pretend to Be or claim to be or whatever and everything suddenly makes sense. There are some men who pretend to be women, or there's some men who feel that they're women or who claim to be women and they're allowed to feel that they're women. That's their right. You can dress whatever way you want. If you turn up here in a dress, that's your right. Let's not say pretend, let's feel that right. Some people feel that they are the opposite sex. I may feel that I'm a 6 foot 4 NBA player. I'm not. And indulging that delusion of mine isn't kindness. It's not virtuous, it's not right. It doesn't help me, it doesn't help anyone. Now if people want to identify any which way and they're not hurting anybody, that's absolutely fine. But indulging their feelings, pretending that we agree with them when we don't, is not helping anyone.
- [63:51]
Tom Bilyeu
The way that you feel good about yourself is basically following the guidelines of fulfillment, which I think there's a recipe for. And it goes something like this. Again, evolution guy over here. So evolution is going to guarantee that if you do the following things, you will be fulfilled. And if you don't, you won't. No matter what, don't care how rich you are, you're gonna have to work really hard to gain a set of skills that allow you to serve yourself and others in a way that you find exciting. If you do that, your life will be awesome. If it comes easily to you, you won't have the things you want. If you work really hard but only serve yourself, you won't have the things you want. Like nature is trying to make sure that you have kids that stay alive long enough to have kids that have kids. So it's like that's the drill. And that is, as far as I can tell, that's the formula that's going to make you feel that way. So in the working hard and all that is where you earn your own respect. Earning your own respect is about having a value system. You say, these are the things that are worthy of respect, and I'm going to do these. I think the only feedback loop is the pursuit of fulfillment. So anyway, if you're doing things to earn your own respect, then I think you'll feel good about yourself when you're by yourself, even if you're failing. There's a whole. I've got a whole shtick about how to construct your mindset to be resilient. Et cetera, et cetera. Beyond what we're talking about right now,
- [65:11]
Constantin Kissen
where does raising children, particularly if you're a woman, fit into that?
- [65:14]
Tom Bilyeu
Okay, so.
- [65:16]
Constantin Kissen
And family generally.
- [65:17]
Tom Bilyeu
So this is where you, if you think about all like what I'm trying to do is the grand scale version of what having a family is. And I think if the, if the individual is the right level of analysis for your own life, for the government to think about the, its constituency, all of that is to get down to the individual. The family is the smallest cluster of meaning. And so you get, if nature wants to make sure that you contribute to the group, the family becomes the place where you can first express that. But it's also the place where you get to be, you have a role and so you're going to be able to have autonomy. So there's a lot of things, if you've read Steven Pinker's book, Drive talks a lot about this Daniel Pink. I forget which one of them wrote this. Forgive me, but there's a book called Drive.
- [66:15]
Constantin Kissen
I think it's Steven Pink.
- [66:16]
Tom Bilyeu
There's a book called Drive. You're right, it's definitely not Daniel Pink. Maybe the book is Drive. Anyway, and in it it talks about what really drives people a huge driver, other than meaning and purpose is autonomy. And so at the family level, there's a reason that people say I'm the king of the castle, meaning of my own home. Like when I come in my own home, nobody else gets to tell me what to do, et cetera, et cetera. And so the husband and the wife come together as this yin yang duel, that together is truly better than either of them are individually. If you take a long term stance, you're going to shape each other. So you're literally making each other better when it's functioning well. And then when you have kids, now you've got that. I have done the thing. I have worked hard to become a worthy wife or a worthy husband, a worthy mom, a worthy father. So worked hard, gained a set of skills, and now I'm serving the group, not just myself. So I'm doing things that matter to me. So I'm going to teach my son to be a man in a way that feels good. This is the way I believe things ought to be. And so in doing that, in that small atom now it's like you're going to get all that fulfillment that you want. Now I get it. This is probably somewhat of a modern construct. Even if you give me modern in the last 20,000 years, right? But I think it's all an echo of things that work at the tribal level, things that work at like the state level. All of it is you get these, the individual has to be strong unto themselves, accomplished. That's probably a dangerous word to use, but strong and accomplished in the ways they will need to be to serve the family, need to be to serve their local community. And then it just scales up from there. So we do have that drive to, we're really going to derail now, but to we want to be recognized for our contributions. And so my wife and I do that for each other. We want to have something that lasts beyond us kids. So anyway, again, I would like to restate, I don't have children, so it's not the path that I've chosen to walk. But when I look at from an evolutionary standpoint, I'm like, that is the safer path. So anyway, it goes back to there's no solution, there's only trade offs. And I just want people to understand, okay, whatever path I walk, it's going to be a trade off. So what am I trading off?
- [68:31]
Constantin Kissen
That's right. And I think that's the question that, that's why I said what I said on Twitter about women not having true choice. I didn't quite phrase it that way, but that's what I meant. Which is a lot of people are being culturally manipulated into making decisions that are not in their long term benefit or interest or happiness. They're just not.
- [68:51]
Tom Bilyeu
Not.
- [68:51]
Constantin Kissen
They're just not. And they're being encouraged to see the pursuit of meaningless things as far superior to the things that will actually give them meaning and fulfillment. On average. Doesn't mean there aren't exceptions. Right, but on average. So that I think is. And those things, you know, find a partner who loves you, that you love, that you grow together with, have children, if that's what you want to do, seek meaningful work. And you know, to me, I'm speaking just from personal experience, personal growth and experience. Experiencing myself develop is probably one of the highest values that I hold for myself. You know, guaranteed skill acquisition. You know, I always talk to my guys about this. It's like you don't really want to learn how to do a job necessarily. You want to acquire a set of skills and build the set of skills that can be used to do many different jobs. And you package them together. This is why, you know, like I know you, you, you tried your hand at stand up and I did stand up for probably four or five years. I never got to the point you Know, it takes about 10 years to become a great stand up. I never got to the point where I was great, I was doing well, I was pretty good. But what happened was I found something that combined my skills in a better way, which is thinking and talking and joking. And you put that in a package and then you've got something that's much more interesting than just for me, at least as a standup comedian, I never found that as fulfilling as what I do now. So meaningful work, learn, grow, etc. And then I think, you know, another layer to add on top of this. And this is actually something that I am aware of, thanks to my wife. Men and women are incredibly different. Incredibly different.
- [70:33]
Tom Bilyeu
And so you can't imagine how surprised I was to find that controversial. I was like, what? Of all the things, I was like, wait, wait, wait, what?
- [70:42]
Constantin Kissen
I don't know what to say about that, man. I mean, it's so silly that we even have to have this conversation, but men and women are incredibly different. And one of the most beneficial things to my wife and I's relationship has been the fact that we've read books about how exactly different we are. I mean, John Gray, who I think lives somewhere around here, who's been writing about this for decades now, I don't know if I subscribe to every tenant of his ideology or whatever, but his books work and some of the things that I've learned from that meant that we have a much more fulfilled and happier relationship, but also we're much more fulfilled and happy as individuals. So it's that know thyself thing, I think. And part of the problem with what I see is we're deliberately brainwashing people not to realize that they are to a large extent what they are. That part of who you are is driven by your biology. And if you can understand how best to manage that, particularly in partnership with someone of the opposite sex. If you are heterosexual, you're gonna be like a rocket that's taking off because you've got all of those things, you know, your trigger points, you know, the things that don't work for you, you know, what works for you. Just like, you know, I don't know if you're familiar with John Gray's work, but like the idea of the cave for a man, basically, it's the idea that every now and again a man will pull back in a relationship and will feel like you'll go and like, you know, work, try and repair his motorcycle or play computer games or read a book, and you'll close the door to the office and not be available. And. And women tend to find that very scary because they're like, whoa, what the hell's going on? But the guy is just doing his recharge so that he can come back and be full of love again. Like, that was revolutionary. Because what women will do if they don't know that is chase after you into the cave, which means you only run away further and. Right. It's this dynamic. And John Gray wrote about this. And men are from Mars, women are from Venus, like, 40 years ago. And now we've got all these crazy people running around saying, oh, there's no difference between men and women. I mean, it's insane.
- [72:45]
Tom Bilyeu
The one that helped me the most, it's like one of those catchy phrases, and I'm like, oh, my God, this is so true. Is women need to feel loved to have sex.
- [72:54]
Constantin Kissen
Yes.
- [72:55]
Tom Bilyeu
And men need to have sex to feel loved.
- [72:57]
Constantin Kissen
That's right.
- [72:57]
Tom Bilyeu
When I heard that, I was like, oh, my God, like, it was like, such an epiphany where, oh, now I get why she acts the way that she does. And now I actually understand myself better because I never really thought about it, but I was like, yeah, if we're not having sex, I feel disconnected.
- [73:13]
Constantin Kissen
Yes.
- [73:13]
Tom Bilyeu
Whereas for her, if she feels disconnected, she doesn't want to have sex. So now you can get into this really weird dynamic where it's like, she wants, you know, all this talk and, like, connection, and I'm like, man, like, I'm not into that unless we're having sex. Like, what are we. What are we even talking about here?
- [73:29]
Constantin Kissen
And here again, we come back to the problems with the society that we live in. If you've got that issue going on, which every couple has had, the solution is difficult to articulate out loud because it's very controversial, potentially. I mean, John Gray's solution, I don't want to misrepresent it, but it's kind of like sometimes you need to have sex even though you're not entirely sure.
- [73:54]
Tom Bilyeu
Oh, I'm waiting for you to say it.
- [73:55]
Constantin Kissen
Oh. And it's like, do you see what I mean?
- [73:58]
Tom Bilyeu
I do.
- [73:59]
Constantin Kissen
I am not advocating that anyone has sex for fucks. I don't want to do this, but you know what I mean.
- [74:05]
Tom Bilyeu
I know exactly what you're saying.
- [74:06]
Constantin Kissen
So in order for men and women to be healthy together, it requires us to be able to say some things that we don't want to say in public. And that's a bad place to be that we feel hesitant to Say them in public. Right. That's a bad place to be if we want men and women to be healthier. And that's another of the things that really bugs me about the situation that we're in is like, the idea that men and women are engaged in some sort of battle of the sexes is the craziest idea I've ever fucking heard. These two groups of people who have spent the entirety of human evolution having to work together to survive and to thrive, they are. They're what? They're against each other. Are you crazy? Are you insane? That and the very notion that we spend almost no time talking about how the sexist can and should live together and coexist and grow together and so on, and we spend all our time talking about who gets paid more and all of this stuff. I'm not saying those things aren't necessarily important, and I'm against discrimination of any kind, obviously, but the focus of our attention to me is on that issue completely in the wrong place.
- [75:20]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, it's interesting, all of this stuff going back to that idea. There is a reason that these arguments endure, and the reason is that there's truth on both sides. So I read a lot about history. This is something that came to me pretty recently, like the last five or six years. And you read historical stuff and you realize men and women were working together to survive. It was very harsh. But also, people weren't really trying to understand each other as deeply as we might care about that now. And so there very much was like, you went off to war and you did your thing and you really may do some raping and pillaging and then you come back, but it's like, you're still my husband. And so all of the stuff of we would never have survived without helping each other. And oh, by the way, people really did Raven pillage. It's like both of those things are true and history is messy. And one thing I want to talk about today, but maybe not yet, is what I call the triangle of evil. Humans are complicated, like, really complicated. And if we. I like the idea that there are certain mind viruses that as. As a society, make us on the long arc of history, bend towards justice. I love that. Like, that's amazing. But any one lifetime can. Can have its, like, horrible things happened in that society, things that we would never be okay with today. I'm just like, really grueling. But at the same time, you can go back to any time in history and there was. Would be love and you'd be. Even if you were an arranged marriage that you would find this mutual respect and you'd raise kids that you love and you die for each other. I mean, it's just like humans are messy and complicated and beautiful and wonderful, and it's really, really interesting. But you have to be willing to get into the nuance. And so when I think about living in a modern time, I've been with my wife for 22 years, and in no uncertain terms, I am a better person because of her. I don't know who I would be without her. There was a time before she stepped out front, so she was a housewife and just really supporting me. But I was starting to take off as an entrepreneur, starting to get recognized, had a show like all of that, and I burst into tears one day. And I'm not a crier, man. So for people that really, really know me, they know that this is weird. I burst into tears one day privately, just with my wife, and I was like, you will never get credit for the fact of who I've become because you have influenced me. And even having that conversation, I love talking about, there's a reason the cliche of behind every powerful man is a powerful woman. Because women for eons, not necessarily true now with the pill and the sexual revolution and all that in the workforce, but for millennia, they had to work through men. And so they got very good at I want a thing, and I'm going to get you to also want that thing.
- [78:25]
Constantin Kissen
Are you saying women are manipulative?
- [78:26]
Tom Bilyeu
Oh, brother. I'm saying if we can use a word that is less radioactive, but 100%. So in.
- [78:35]
Constantin Kissen
In the movie, I'm just.
- [78:36]
Tom Bilyeu
No, I love it. It's just true. It's true. So going back to this idea of being a predictive engine, right?
- [78:42]
Constantin Kissen
If you.
- [78:43]
Tom Bilyeu
The more you can predict the outcome of your behaviors, the closer you're getting to ground truth. And so from an evolutionary perspective. And look, this has changed now, and it's awesome. I want women to work. My wife is a boss bitch and is an entrepreneur in her own right and is unbelievable. But my wife will be the first to tell you. Oh, yeah. For the first decade of our marriage, she wasn't expressing herself in business. She was expressing herself through me in business. And it worked. And she knew how to get what she wanted. And it was women from an evolutionary perspective, they needed to be optimized to tend to young. And so they have effectively superpowers for raising kids. Doesn't mean they need to raise kids. You can allocate those superpowers however you want. But that nature was just like, hey, I need you to be very good at raising children. 15% of women have a fourth photoreceptor that actually lets them see colors that guys can't even see, which hypothesis goes, would help them see changes in color in their kid's skin tone so that they'd be able to read sickness, mood, whatever. That makes a lot of sense. Their breasts can produce milk. I mean, just all kinds of things. Their hips for childbirth, on and on and on. And so understanding that for millennia, women were. I mean, we are a sexually dimorphic species. Not massively. We're not like gorillas, where they're eight times bigger than the fe. Female, but there is sexual dimorphism. Men have stronger upper bodies, et cetera, et cetera. So the workloads would tend to get broken up in a certain way. And so if you're not going to be the half of the species that's going to confront something head on, like, for a woman. And unfortunately, I've seen these YouTube videos where when you see a guy snap and throw a punch on a woman and you recognize the difference in ability to generate force, it's distressing. And you realize at the ends of the spectrum, because there's a ton of overlap. So, of course, there's a lot of women that could beat up a lot of men, but as you get to the ends of the distribution, the strongest man is going to be able to beat up every single woman on the planet, period, bar none, end of story. And so it would not be a good evolutionary strategy for women to do the confrontation head on. So they get far more ingenious. Like, they just have a sophisticated set of tools that happen to be psychological in nature. That was a lot of words to get around the word manipulation, but you get the idea. So I was rocked to tears to be like, whoa, you've shaped me into a person that you will never get credit for. Thankfully, now, with everything that's happened, I think she does get a lot of credit, and she's able to tell her own story and all that. But it was really a breathtaking moment for me to realize, whoa, like, you have shaped me, I have shaped you. We are a partnership. We bring equal value, but in different ways. And the more we've come to understand the different things that we're good at, and each of us are good at different things, but together we really do bring equal weight. But they're not the same thing. Like, we're not competing on the same things.
- [81:53]
Constantin Kissen
You Know what? It's so interesting to me that you tell that story, because my wife and I are exactly the same. Been together 20 years.
- [82:03]
Tom Bilyeu
I know you guys have been together so long.
- [82:04]
Constantin Kissen
Yeah. Been together that long. And it was exactly the same story. My wife was always working from the beginning, but she was also working on me from the beginning, and pretty damn hard, actually. And actually, I forgot to give you a copy of my book. I'll give you one afterwards.
- [82:22]
Tom Bilyeu
Oh, I have read it.
- [82:23]
Constantin Kissen
I know, but I want to give you a signed copy. And if you've read it, you know that the dedication and it says, to Alina, with whom. Without whom nothing would be possible and everything would be pointless. And that's how I feel. And more generally, you know, women are incredible. To a man, a woman is amazing because she can do things that you like. I remember the first time I saw my mom resolve a conflict just with a smile and a joke. I was like, wow, I couldn't believe it because it was so different to the way that young men in particular tend to do things. And I was like, whoa, this is incredible. And so that's one of the terrible things about the standoffs that we create. It's like, you can learn so much and grow so much together and help each other so much that this division is completely unnecessary. It should be the other way around. We should be looking for ways to work together. And, you know, that's why I've always found personal development and relationship growth together to be like essential parts of life. Essential parts of life. So I hear exactly what you're saying. Now, as for the recognition, I mean, do you. You know, I believe that partly by talking about it, my wife does get the credit by dedicating my book to her. In that way, from people who read the book, she gets the credit. And also now I'd like to think after all the hard work that she put in, the investment is starting to slowly pay off. And as we know from Jordan peterson, women make 80% of the purchasing decisions. So all that bacon that I'm going to be bringing home, you know, she's going to be enjoying the fruits of that, and so are our children. And that's kind of how it should be, at least for us. You know, she. She's very talented photographer in her own right, but it's not something that she's ever made into a huge business. And I'm sure she'll carry on doing it, but right now she just wants to be with our son. And I, I. I could not be happier to be that in a society in which that's actually become quite difficult. Not many people can do that for each other.
- [84:29]
Tom Bilyeu
Very true. Yeah, it's interesting. And society definitely has a lot of influence on what people want or think they're supposed to want. So I lived a really interesting trajectory with my wife. So started out she was a good Greek girl, raised to be a housewife. Her dad literally said, all right, fine, you want to go study film, it doesn't matter. You're just going to end up married and with kids. And he didn't mean it in a horrible way. I mean, that's just how he came up. And so for her, she was very much raised to be a wife and a mother, but she had dreams. But for the first decade of our relationship, she wasn't pursuing it. She ended up writing a book about this. And it was actually really interesting to see the beginning of our marriage from her perspective of like, oh, I've kind of been relegated to this housewife role. I don't know. Like, I know I want to of be part a mom, because in the beginning she did. She wanted four kids. And I know I want to be a mom, but I don't know that I want to be a housewife, but I do want to support my husband. And so that was the vibe. And then I needed her help at work when we started this new company, and she was like, to support my husband, I will help. No interest in being an entrepreneur. Just, I want to be a good wife. I'm going to support my husband. And then supporting me was like, okay, the job's getting kind of big. Okay, now you. I'm going to need you to hire some employees. Now. You're running a division with 40 people under you, and you're responsible for $85 million in revenue, and you've got like a 10,000 square foot warehouse and like all this stuff. And it was just like, whoa, how did I turn around? And she's now an entrepreneur and like, in the thick of it for years and then realizes, actually, I don't want kids. I'm getting so much fulfillment out of this and growing and all of that that I want to do this thing. And I had to mourn the loss of my housewife. And it's something that we've talked really openly about. And she, you know, as this is all playing out becoming very different dynamic between us is changing. And I was like, I want you to become whoever you want to become, and my value system mandates that I help you thrive in whatever way you want to thrive, but you have to give me the space to mourn that. I used to have somebody that was supporting me, cooking all my meals, laying out my clothes, taking care of the house. We were preparing to have kids, all that. And now that's going away. And I'm cool with that because I want you to be who you want to be. But let's be realistic about this is a major change, and so this is going to take some reorientation. And so we talked through it and processed through it, and I actually was very fine not having kids for the longest time. I was the one dragging our feet. She wanted to have kids right away, and I was like, yo, let's slow roll this here. So I was very fine with that. But that change in dynamic wasn't something that was easy. But to your earliest point on this, it's. We're not battling, like, we're trying to find this thing where we're sharing a life together, and that's how we've always looked at it is okay for us. Divorce isn't an option. We never say the D word. We don't even joke about it. So I'm never going to be like, oh, if you don't do that, you're going to find yourself out on the street. Ha, ha, ha. Like, nope, we don't play that game at all.
- [87:53]
Constantin Kissen
Yeah, we don't either. And this is the other thing that's difficult to say, but if you want to preserve a relationship, that's the sort of attitude that we will take. In a lot of cases. In a lot of cases. And there are people who get married and never say a cross word to each other, but they're not the majority. And there are obviously people who are abusive and all of that. But for the vast majority of people having a relationship that you're not prepared to give up on either of you, it has to be both of you. It has to be both of you that are not prepared to give up on is going to make it much more likely that you don't give up on it.
- [88:36]
Tom Bilyeu
Absolute facts.
- [88:38]
Constantin Kissen
And so, again, in a culture where we treat each other much more as objects than we, I think, ever have done before, where, you know, oh, blonde, brunette, you know, get whatever you want on. On an app, that is much less likely, I think. And also, we are all. We're all so much more interested in ourselves as individuals. That, again, becomes more difficult. So that thing that you're talking about, that's the way. That's the way. It's certainly the way that I've experienced it, the way to fulfillment in the relationship, the way to being together, to being able to have different visions of your future and reconcile them over time and accept that you're not both exactly the way that the other person would like. That's a. That's a process, man. That's a process that you have to really, really work on. And in order to do that, when you've got all these other great options, supposedly, you know, it takes that commitment. It takes that commitment. I think it takes saying, we're not talking about divorce because I don't know about you. There have been plenty of situations in which, in our relationship we could have gone down that. Towards that path at least, you know, and to me, you know, all the stuff that we do and whatever, it's inevitable that your relationship with your spouse is going to be the most important thing. It just is.
- [90:06]
Tom Bilyeu
No doubt.
- [90:07]
Constantin Kissen
Just is.
- [90:08]
Tom Bilyeu
No doubt. Yeah, man. Relationships, this is. It's hard to watch what's happening in the culture now where there's just people having sex a lot less and you get the. God, I always forget how the stat goes, but it's like a small number of men are getting all the action. Getting all the action. Yeah, Nice and easy way to say it. And then hypergamy, which for people that haven't heard that word before, the female tendency to date across and up in the status hierarchy. As women make more money, it becomes a more narrow pool. And if they're not able to broaden their horizons economically, then they find themselves without a mate. Or they're competing for that really, really small pool of guys that then aren't. They're not going to commit because they've got so many women coming to them for sex.
- [90:56]
Constantin Kissen
And I hear this anecdotally, I mean, I have friends who are like incredible women. Incredible. They're hot, they are successful, they are fucking brilliant, talented. And they. They find themselves in relationships with guys where, you know, their expectation of what relationship is supposed to be, which is commitment and so on, because the. The guy that they're with has to be, even in many situations, even more amazing. More amazing. You don't need. You didn't need to commit. It doesn't need to commit. And there's also another factor here which is, you know, again, this is difficult to say, but. But mate value is different for men and women, particularly over time.
- [91:45]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah.
- [91:46]
Constantin Kissen
And as a woman, as you get older, a guy in his 50s who's a billionaire and successful and famous and whatever, he doesn't need to be dating a woman his age, right. But a woman in her 50s is not likely to be dating a hot 25 year old guy. It's just not how that works. So I feel really so much empathy and sympathy and a lot of concern actually for women who are in that situation because they deserve to, to, to be fulfilled and to have those relationships and to have the kids that they want to have. But we've, we've got a society where that, that's more difficult. You know, it's, it's really not a healthy situation in my opinion. And also you talk about, you know, people having less sex and it's true, young people are having less sex than others. And you do have the issue at the top of the sort of male where they're having a lot, but also there are a lot of women now who are having a lot of sex not because they actually want to, but because they think that this is the one that's going to take them to the relationship that they want. You see what I mean? And women are now quite often finding themselves having sex in a very masculine male way where it's like you're supposed to not feel attachment and all of that. And the truth is that's not really how it works for the vast majority of women. There are some exceptions, of course, but having sex in the male way of women just kind of makes them miserable, you know, And I think that's tragic. I think we should all acknowledge that that's tragic that a lot of women are doing things that aren't making them happy. But again, for some reason, saying it makes you a bad person.
- [93:29]
Tom Bilyeu
I think that. So if I were going to steal man, why that makes you a bad, bad person? Here's what I think is happening. So there is, people need to know that I'm a worthy person. I'm worthy of love, I'm worthy of respect no matter what path I choose. And so that's why if I were going to insert like a new way to talk about this, it's like, let's say that I'm a life counselor and I do this in business a lot actually. I do this in life stuff. We have something called impact theory University people come and ask me questions and I'm like, here's how I think through that problem. If somebody came to me with that, the first thing I always say is, okay, what's your goal? You tell me the goal and then I'm going to try to help you get there. And if you tell me that, okay, my goal is to have a lot of sex, but I don't want to catch feels. Okay, we can do that. But we have to understand there's no solutions, only trade offs. So if you run that here are going to be the potential risk, given what evolution has primed you for, which is going to be connection, that sex is a high investment thing. Because from an evolutionary standpoint, you getting pregnant was a big deal for guys, not so much amazing. You know, dine and dash and they're good and maybe they have a kid, maybe they don't. But for you, you're going to carry that kid. It's a huge expense. You have to raise them.
- [94:46]
Constantin Kissen
Ah.
- [94:47]
Tom Bilyeu
So that is a. It puts you in a super vulnerable position, all that. So there's a lot of machinery in your brain that's going to be different than the partner that you're seeking who's really wired for that game that you're playing. So we can do it.
- [94:59]
Constantin Kissen
Cool.
- [94:59]
Tom Bilyeu
But like, we need to understand what, what are going to be the trade offs here. Odds of you catching feels go up a lot. Odds of you finding fulfillment and doing that go down a lot. You're going to be pulling against sort of the evolutionary trajectory, which again, I'm perfectly open to navigating that path, but I just want people to start this. This isn't a moral thing. You're not a worse person. But if you're playing a what I'll. When I say a higher risk game, what I mean is that, that evolution has given you a playbook for fulfillment. There's not only one path. So there are different ways to get there. But the thing that I think protects Lisa and I somewhat is we understand by not having kids that we're taking the more high risk path to fulfillment because we're doing it through a company that's part of it. So what happens to my fulfillment if the public that is consuming the product that I make is like, this sucks. Do I get to be fulfilled anymore or is it now? Well, you didn't get the outcome that you wanted and so that invalidates my whole life. So we've had to build like thought matrices to deal with that. Right. So the way that we combat that is don't value yourself for the end result, value yourself for the sincere pursuit. So did you sincerely try to get a growth mindset out at scale through ideas and entertainment? It, yes, but it just, it didn't work. I was never able to quite build the skill set. All right, man, you went for something you really played to win. And et CETERA et cetera. So, all right, you're going down this, this high risk path. Not. Not risk, you know, necessarily cosmically, just fulfillment is my North Star. I laid that out earlier, what I think everybody should be optimizing for. And so if we can strip some of the judgment away from that, if we can give people a growth mindset so they know, oh, I didn't get what I wanted, okay, I can try something different and hopefully get something more akin to what I want in another path. So you're not giving up your agency. You know what you want. You established your goal first. You run an experiment. This is literally the physics of progress. You know what your goal is. You see what the obstacle is between where you're at and your goal. You run the experiment. Did you actually get closer to your goal? Yes. No. If no, try again. Better the next time. You know what I mean? You just repeat the cycle. But if you feel like, whoa, I didn't get what I wanted, that doesn't feel good. I feel judged by you. Now I'm just going to go on the attack. So you don't tell me the thing that I'm feeling. And that's where it's like, well, now you can't even navigate well on the higher risk path that you've chosen to get the fulfillment that you ultimately want to feel.
- [97:32]
Constantin Kissen
Which is where we come back to the fact that most people are not operating at a level of emotional detachment that you are. And so, and also, if you speak to women privately, a lot of them will say that the, the falling into the trap that I described is not a deliberate thing. They're not going out to go and have lots of sex without catching the feels. If they're actually honest with themselves, not all of them, but many of them, if they can get past the emotion, what they're. What they actually want is to date and find a partner to be with for the. For, you know, I was going to say the rest of the life, because that's kind of my value, but you know what I mean, to settle down with, to have children with, whatever, if that's what they want. But they're not able to do that because they feel that there's a pressure because all the other girls are available to the guy that they're currently with to have sex with on the second day. However, anecdotally, as I observe people around me, the women who don't. Don't let that happen straight away tend to end up much more likely securing the partner. That seems to be a strategy that works better. But you're right. I mean, I'm actually loving this conversation so much, partly because you are showing people a way of operating in the world that is so much more powerful than the way that the vast majority of people operate. Probably to some extent, me included. I don't have the level of emotional detachment that you do in terms of making these decisions. So I'm learning to learn more about these complex topics.
- [99:04]
Tom Bilyeu
Check out this episode with the one
- [99:06]
Kevin Rose
and only Jordan Peterson. Man, I am beside myself with excitement
- [99:10]
Tom Bilyeu
to have you on.