All righty, good morning, everybody.

It is Thamemmolony from Free Domain.

Freedomain.com slash donate.

How about the show?

Really would appreciate that.

And let's start with some passive-aggressive Facebook comments.

So some guy wrote, because I asked more philosophy questions, please.

And he wrote, you don't respond to comments.

So what's the point?

This is a way of goading me into responding to his comment.

I would have responded either way, but just this kind of passive-aggressive stuff is not good in your relationships.

It means that direct and honest people really won't want to spend time with you.

Anyway, so he asks, are republics a natural

trajectory of all human civilizations? Or are we naturally directed towards hierarchical pyramid

structures in society? So there is no natural trajectory to all human civilizations

if people are willing to think. if people are willing to reason,

then there is no natural trajectory. If people avoid thinking, if they avoid reasoning,

if they avoid empirical evidence, if they avoid better arguments, then there is an inevitability.

I'll give you an example.

So if somebody is a heavy smoker and they avoid dealing with whatever childhood trauma,

they are self-medicating with nicotine, if they avoid looking at the data about smoking

and how dangerous it is, if they avoid thinking about their terrible

...