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July 3, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:06:45
310 Family Freedom (From a listener topic)

A deep analysis of a family issue manifesting itself as a problem with a co-worker

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Good morning, everybody.
It's Steph. It's July the 3rd, 2006, 1021 in the morning.
This is going to be a murmurcast, because Christina is seeing some patients downstairs.
I'm trapped upstairs and can't make a lot of noise.
And so we're going to have a non-shrieky podcast, something suitable to get you to sleep in the evening.
So if you're looking...
To get yourself down into slumber with nary a waft of discomfort, this is the podcast for you.
There will be no shrieking in the podcast, which is going to be shocking.
I know, but I thought it would be worth doing one quiet one while I wait for Christina to finish with her patient.
Now, I did have a question that came from a listener around a question that came from another listener.
So, let's call the first listener Bob and the second listener Jerry.
So, what happened was Bob wrote a thread where he was asking about a power-tripping co-worker.
And I'll read you this short thread and then I will mention why it became a question from the other listener.
So the first thread is, I have a co-worker who is the company's network admin, Computer Guy, and he has some serious power trip issues.
This is the same guy that said, quote, My son is going to be the kind of kid that when it's time to get a whooping, he will go get the belt and say, let's get this over with and ask for more.
And then he does the wham, wham, wham, like he is spanking the kid.
Yeah, shoot, my dad used to get after me with the belt.
This guy has, I don't know why, it's always a deliverance accent with these kinds of guys, right?
This guy has her network computers locked down, but in ways that annoy the users most of the security is a bit of a joke.
And he walks around with this air of superiority like everyone should respect him and get out of his way.
Everyone is monitored by this guy.
He reads emails, and we're not talking emails requested by supervisors or anything, monitors all internet usage, etc., but is subject to no oversight himself.
Anyway, I have to deal with this guy on occasion, and I was wondering if anyone has dealt with anyone like this, and if so, could you give me some tips, tricks, advice?
Oh yeah, this guy's brother is a cop, and his other brother is some big loser, his dad is a trucker, was an auto mechanic, and his mom died when he was a teenager.
Now, when I was talking about the Holy Vision Dream, I mentioned that certain people, when they're trying to help others, it's more about them than it is about helping others.
And I commented that one of these gentlemen posted a four-word response to this original poster's problem with his co-worker, where he said, Talk to your boss.
And I quoted this as an example of somebody who really wasn't helping.
In particular, the person, but it was more around their own ego.
And then this person heard this and said, Steph, you said in the latest podcast that what I said here wasn't really helping and just had to do with myself.
I don't see how this is so.
And the reason that I said that this was an example of somebody who was not interested in helping somebody else is that...
I'll sort of use an analogy, if you don't mind, because analogies are so much easier than arguments.
But I'll use an analogy, and the analogy is this.
If you are an intelligent and competent doctor, an unusually intelligent and competent doctor, and you come to me and you say, you know, one of my patients has this really stubborn infection I just can't get rid of.
And I say, you should try antibiotics.
Do you think that that's a helpful thing or not a helpful thing?
I would say, and what would you think of my own ego strength if I said something particularly obvious without saying something like, I mean, I would be embarrassed to say to a competent doctor, you should try antibiotics, as if the other person just had never had any kind of medical degree.
And the reason that I say that is that people who post on the Free Domain Radio boards, they're not intellectually shabby.
I mean, these concepts in Free Domain Radio, they're tough to work with.
They certainly are for me, and I assume that they are for listeners as well.
And so, if you're saying to somebody the most obvious thing in the world, which is, talk to your boss, When the person is posting a problem with a co-worker, I think that that is not a particularly helpful thing to say.
If you do have the impulse to say, talk to your boss, I think it is incumbent upon you to respect the other person's intellect to the point where you're going to say, well, the most obvious thing to do would be to talk to your boss.
I'm sure you've thought of that, but tell me why that's not a possibility.
Because then at least you're putting forward that the solution that you have is particularly obvious.
And of course, we libertarians face this all the time.
Well, we come up with stuff that is a solution, and everybody asks us the most obvious, well, actually states the most obvious objections, as if we've never heard them before, when, of course, anybody who's got any brains who's into libertarianism does have to have some understanding of how the poor are helped, and some understanding of how defense Is achieved, especially in anarchism, and yet everybody comes to us and says, well, it wouldn't work because everything would descend into civil war, or, well, it wouldn't work because the poor won't get helped, or whatever.
And nobody ever asks us and says, well, you have this philosophy, I'm sure you've had this question a million times, so tell me what your response is.
No, they simply assume that we're kind of idiots who haven't even thought of the most basic objections, and in the same way, I don't think that it's particularly elevated to say to somebody who's having a problem with a co-worker, talk to your boss.
Personally, I think it's actually a little bit insulting to communicate that obvious solution to someone as if there's no possibility that they could have thought of it themselves.
It's kind of, I think, kind of insulting and not particularly helpful.
Now, what I'd like to do is spend a few minutes explaining at least my approach to this particular person's problem and why I think that the phrase, talk to your boss, isn't that helpful.
And I think it's more around ego gratification on the part of the person who posted that response, sort of saying, well, here's the simple solution, here's the easy solution, you haven't thought of it, I'm smarter.
I mean, I think that's one possible way of interpreting this kind of advice.
The reason why talk to your boss is not a helpful piece of advice is that you have, this is obviously not a large company if they have one person who's the network admin, so there's not a lot of layers of management here.
That much is pretty clear.
It's also not a large company because it would seem to me that a large company would probably not hire or retain or give a lot of power to somebody who read emails because they would be in a legally compromised position if somebody was reading other people's emails and they would not be likely to hire somebody like this.
Large companies have their problems but usually brutal and sociopathic unsophisticated network admins is not one of them.
That's more on the sales side.
This is not a large organization, which means there's not a lot of layers of management between the network admin and the top dog, the CEO, or whoever is the boss of the company.
Now, this company has hired this obvious sociopath, this guy who openly talks about beating his children and about how he himself was beaten, and talks about his family, and talks about the death of his mother as a teenager, and talks about his brother as a big loser.
This is obviously somebody who has...
If not a sociopathic personality, certainly sociopathic tendencies.
So given that this is a company, and you can get all of this out of the email, this is not complicated stuff to unravel, it's all right there.
So this is a company that has hired a sociopath to be in a pretty key and responsible position.
Now, that tells you quite a bit about the company culture.
It tells you quite a bit about the top dog, the bosses, and what the company approach to ethics is all about.
And what that means is that going to your boss, if you're in this situation where you're having problems dealing with this co-worker, that going to your boss is not going to help.
I mean, that's all right there, right?
And in fact, going to your boss is probably going to cause you more problems than solutions, because if you go to the boss, and the boss also has sociopathic tendencies, That word might get back, that the scuttlebutt might sort of float around the office, and this person might be in a whole lot more personal discomfort than he is now.
Now, the other clue as to why the phrase talk to your boss isn't going to help, and I mean, this isn't particularly important to talk about in this context, but the reason that I'm bringing this up is that if you do want to help people, I think you need to go a little bit deeper in terms of understanding their history and motivation.
And the real issues that they're asking about.
Because most people, when they're asking about particular issues, are asking about issues in a much larger context.
They're not just saying, how do I deal with my co-worker?
But there's a lot more in the mix that they're trying to get some clarity on, in my particular opinion.
So here's what else I get from this posting.
So the gentleman who posted this on the boards also quite clearly indicates that this sociopath, who's the network admin, this sociopath feels quite friendly and relaxed around the poster because he's telling him all about how he was beating that kid and about how he's going to beat his kid and the kid's going to beg for more beatings and so on.
And so the other thing that's very important to understand about this person who posted is that He doesn't have any particular boundaries for corrupt or crazy or dangerous or sociopathic people, because they feel quite comfortable sitting down with him and being all crazy up in his face.
So this is another sort of cry for help or understanding that's embedded within the post.
I mean, for example, when I was younger, or much younger, I was about 13 or so, and a friend of mine and I were sort of walking down the street out front of my apartment building, and we were stopped by this guy who went to our high school who was Palestinian and a real crazy guy.
Talking about how he went on for an hour or two about how he could get whoever he wanted killed, and he was in with all the gangs, and he knew all the guys in Hamas, and that he had all of these capacities, and I mean, a real crazy nutjob, right?
A real death cult worshipper who was really, obviously, a very sick human being.
And, of course, he felt perfectly comfortable chatting with myself and my friend about his crazy death cult worshipping, can get anyone killed, I want to, approach to life.
Because we, well I can just speak for myself, I didn't have any way of managing crazy people in my life because I was surrounded by crazy people in my life.
So I didn't have any boundaries around which to enclose somebody's craziness or sort of fire a warning shot across their bowels so they would go elsewhere and not be crazy around me.
And so this guy who's having problems with his co-worker is having much larger problems in his life.
And the comfort that the co-worker feels, his crazy sociopathic network admin feels around him, is the result of him having been exposed to a lot of sociopathy in his life.
And so the phrase, talk to your boss, doesn't deal with the fact that if somebody's around you who's really crazy, and who is pumping you earful of all of this crazy, evil, corrupt stuff, is doing so because they feel a certain kind of comfort around you, which means that you haven't developed any boundaries for dealing with crazy people in your life.
You haven't found a way to fire a shot across their bowels to get them to back off, to get them to be more sane around you.
So they feel that you're a sort of comfortable container for their insanity and corruption, which means that you have been exposed to way...
I mean, any amount is too much, but you've been exposed to way too much craziness and corruption in your life.
And this is what the real, I think, the real intelligence or the real purpose behind the post is not so much how do I deal with my co-worker, although that is how do I deal with these symptoms.
And of course, the way that you deal with symptoms like this is by going to the cause.
And so if somebody asks you for advice and you give them something pat and obvious when you should, if you really want to help them, I mean, if you're going to put the energy into responding to the post, then you need to ask questions, you need to get a definition of what the problem is, you need to really reflect on the post itself and figure out what's really going on.
Because if you don't, if you just give them a pat and obvious answer to a question that obviously is giving them great difficulty, then, and this is a strong word, and I apologize, I can't think of a softer one at the moment, but you're kind of continuing the abuse.
So this is somebody who obviously has had a lot of people in his life who do not value his intelligence or his sensitivity or his history.
And if you simply give somebody pat answers to a difficult problem, then you are denigrating their intelligence and their capacity to reason things through, which means that you are kind of insulting their own intelligence and their own capacity to To come up with productive solutions, or at least the obvious ones, to complex problems.
So I would say that showing up in somebody's life as somebody who says, oh, you should try antibiotics, as if that's not something that would be the first thing that somebody would say.
And so, if you are the kind of person who gives, you know, like if somebody says, and this shows up in another exchange as well, not with the same person, but with the same person who responded, where somebody is saying, I'm having a great deal of difficulty with my weight, and weight is a very complicated issue and has a lot of psychological roots, usually in prior abuse.
When people have a lot of weight gain, it's because...
They, as a loneliness, they're sort of, as Christina calls it, stuffing their emotions or covering up their emotions with overeating.
And, of course, they're also avoiding sexual capacities or romantic capacities by becoming overweight, so that nobody's going to ask them, why don't you have a boyfriend or girlfriend?
Because they're overweight. They can be involved in social things as sort of the jolly fat person, and they don't ever have to worry about sexual anxieties, Approaching whoever they're attracted to, same-sex or opposite sex.
And so weight is a very complicated issue that has a lot to do with some very, very deep history and some very, very complex abuse.
And in another exchange, the person who posted the talk to your boss comment also posted to somebody who had a significant abuse history and was complaining about an inability to get out of a particular overweight situation.
He posted him a site just basically saying, well, you see, All you need to do is not snack on any days that don't begin with S, Saturday, Sunday, and special days.
Just don't snack, and don't eat sugar.
Well, of course, this is, I mean...
Of course, everybody who's overweight absolutely knows how to lose the weight.
You don't have to crack the rosetta stone to figure out how to lose weight.
Eat less, or eat better, and exercise more.
That's as simple as... I mean, everybody knows that.
And so if you say to somebody who's overweight and is expressing a great deal of frustration and difficulty at losing weight, if you say to them, well, eat less and exercise more, it's kind of annoying.
Like, it's kind of an insult to that other person.
And what you're doing is, instead of coming up with really intelligent solutions, And this is where the sort of ego weakness comes in, in my opinion.
If you give people really obvious solutions to really complex problems, what you're doing is you're trying to come across as a smart guy, not by coming up with really intelligent and creative solutions, but by pretending everybody else is a complete idiot.
And I don't think that that's a very strong ego thing.
I think that if you can come up with helpful solutions to people while accepting the complexity of their difficulties, then that's a pretty intelligent response.
If you pretend that everybody else simply doesn't get the obvious stuff and you think that you're more intelligent, then what you're kind of doing is becoming the smartest guy in a dumb room.
Instead of taking the really tough math courses, you're taking remedial math and then being really proud that you're the best mathematician in a remedial class.
And I don't think that that's a very strong ego stance.
I think that what you want to do is throw yourself into the most complex problems, have the most humility, In terms of solving those problems, asks lots of questions.
And then what you can do when you start to work out your brain in a really significant manner is you can start to become a smart guy in a room full of smart guys, which I think is much more ego strength.
When you downgrade other people's intelligence or capacities in order to make yourself feel more competent, then you're actually doing quite a bit of harm to your own self-esteem.
Because deep down you know that you're offering people completely obvious solutions to complex and thorny problems and pretending that that's all that needs to be done.
And so what you're doing is just taking a very easy math test and calling yourself a great mathematician.
And I don't think that that's a very strong ego stance to take.
So what I would say to the person who posted and then wondered why I said that they were doing more, they were more trying to shore up their own ego than how the other person is, and I could be wrong about all of this, it's just sort of my perception based on a couple of exchanges, to look at your own history.
Look at your own history and try and figure out...
Has your own intelligence been valued or devalued in your own history?
Have your obvious language skills and your obvious analytical skills been valued or devalued in your own history?
And if they've been valued, then fantastic.
We need to come up with another theory as to why you might want to pump up your own ego by pretending that other people aren't very intelligent.
But if they haven't been valued and you haven't processed that, then this is why you're doing what you're doing, right?
So if your own intelligence and creativity and obvious abilities, this is of an intelligent man for sure, Your own obvious abilities, if they weren't respected and valued and treasured and nurtured when you were growing up, then what's happened is you've experienced a fair amount of intellectual humiliation and devaluation at the hands of your parents or your teachers or other people.
And because you haven't processed it, you have no choice but to recreate it for others, right?
The danger of not processing our own histories and our own feelings is that we turn around, and just about immediately we start creating these situations for other people, which is really, really unjust and terrible, right?
You always got to turn your problems to their real source, right?
Because if you don't process your own histories correctly and accurately, With feeling, then what happens is you end up recreating it all for others.
So if you experience intellectual humiliation, or at least a lack of respect for your own intellectual abilities in your past, then you are going to have no choice.
I mean, it's absolutely going to be involuntary, and so you're not responsible for it until now, right?
Until you're listening to this.
You're not responsible for it until now, but if you don't process your own intellectual humiliation, you're going to end up You're going to end up recreating it for other people.
And you don't want to do that.
Trust me, you really don't want to do that.
Because it is making your...
You're then becoming whoever hurt you in the past.
You're becoming that person in the present.
Very, very bad. Very, very bad for your true self.
Not going to make you happy at all.
So, if that is the case, and be sure to let me know if it is, then I would really start to work to processing your own history so that you don't end up repeating it on others.
So, of course, my theory was that the original poster was dealing with some more significant issues than a sociopathic co-worker and that his relationship with his co-worker was more of a symptom than a cause or a real problem itself.
And so let's go a little bit further.
A couple of days after my last podcast on this topic, we got a reply or a...
Some additional information, let's say, from the original poster.
So I'm going to read this email or this post so that you understand a little bit more about the kind of complexity that I'm talking about.
So he says, See, the interesting thing is that my co-worker's direct supervisor feels the same way about this guy, or at least I think he does, but he doesn't do anything about it.
In fact, the IT guy recently got a raise.
Even the President and Vice President seem to kinda dislike this guy, but they don't do anything about it.
And I'd been thinking about this a bit, and thought about the corruption, but kinda discarded it.
But when Steph mentioned it in the podcast, it seemed to make a bit more sense.
I think they don't fire this guy, because he kinda plays along.
I can only think of one person, Y, that was sort of fired.
One of those, leave or we will fire you.
Before she left, she started complaining to people, and specifically the person she was having problems with about issues she had with this other co-worker, X. X is a bit of a moron and is likely to have some serious issues.
X is overly nice, always happy, and once admitted that when X got home and flicked on the TV, X desired almost only to watch Sex and Violence.
Anyway, crap, forgot where I was going with this part.
Hey, brother, I know what you're saying.
I know what you mean. So, to continue with this post.
So, for the past year or two, I've been thinking about finding another job, or quitting and doing school full-time instead of part-time, but I think I lack the confidence to go and do this.
I also, for some reason, feel that I owe it to stick around with these people, and at least once or twice every couple of weeks or so, I feel like just saying, fuck all of you, and walking out.
I also still have some issues with the company for screwing me out of some money.
My review, up until one year ago, was done on a yearly basis, regardless of the number of hours I worked.
Last year, I was to get my review, and as was somewhat normal, we were busy, so my supervisor had been putting it off with the promise of retroactive pay, which was an established practice.
Now when the review was finally done, I did get my raise, but no retroactive pay, and so now I only get an official review every 2,000 hours, which is about every 18 or so months.
The problem I have had with this is that they changed the agreement without telling me.
Boy, was I mad! And I told my supervisor this.
He understood and talked to them, but to no avail.
And I decided to stay.
Reasons, decent pay, flexible schedule, etc.
I'm thinking this may be just bullshit to make myself feel better.
Now, me staying probably has something to do with my family and family issues for sure, and may explain also my anger when being slighted.
The family issue I most suspect to be related to this has to do with my dad.
When I was about eighteen or nineteen, I was listening to some heavy metal at my parents' house on my computer in the office, when my dad came in and told me to stop listening to that music, or turn it down, and that it was crappy music and, quote, evil.
If I remember correctly, I said, you don't know what you're talking about.
This is a fairly Christian band.
So he goes and says something about religion or some shit, and I say, bah, that stuff is a bunch of lies slash bullshit or something, and it's made up.
Jesus didn't exist. My dad then goes and gets his Bible and opens it up and starts reading a part of it or trying to get me to read it.
I say, why, that is just some shit that men wrote down.
He then gives... The, it's inspired, bullshit.
And I say, prove it. And that's just some fucking bullshit men wrote down.
And that I didn't believe in the Bible, God, Jesus, whatever.
Now, at this point, he fucking had it.
His eyes filled with rage.
I had seen it before, and I sort of liked making him mad sometimes.
But this time was a bit different.
As he started punching me on the back and side of the head about maybe five hits or so.
Don't exactly remember.
And he may have tried to get me to fight him.
Somewhere in here, or that might be a different story.
So he's hitting me, and I just sat there, kind of put my arms up to protect my face, in case one of the fists went that way.
I'm not exactly sure why I just sat there, because at the time I was quite strong.
I had played sports and did a bit of weightlifting, and was actually bigger and stronger than my dad, but I did.
I was surprised by the punches, as they didn't really hurt, but I didn't quite expect him to start punching me.
This is the only time he ever punched or hit me like that, so either...
Or either of my brothers or my mom.
But boy, was I mad, sad, and surprised.
My mom ended up crying.
I think my dad left for a while.
I either went to a friend's place or went to my room.
My mom ended up getting my dad to apologize, but that didn't make me feel any better.
But outwardly I accepted it to smooth things over.
I also know that my dad had some issues with my grandpa, and had a bit of a shitty childhood.
I don't know many details, as my parents don't talk about it.
I suspect it had something to do with his childhood, and my grandma's death maybe, and whatever it was, it caused my grandpa not to associate with our family very much.
I also had a bit of a violent dream, in which I ended up strangling my dad nearly to death, but I saw his eyes go from a sort of anger to pain, and he was nearly dead.
And I let go. After I have these nightmare dreams, when I wake up I feel a bit better, like maybe I'm starting to understand things I have been suppressing.
Now that's the end of the post, and I think it's fairly important to understand that when somebody says, I'm having problems with my co-worker, it goes a little bit deeper than, you know, go to your boss or go talk to your boss.
Because this person has a sociopathic family structure, right?
Or at the very least, a dysfunctional family structure, you could say.
And so his father is a bully and obviously has a capacity for a great deal of violence.
When somebody beats you up, let's just say that it only happens once a month or once a year or maybe even once in your life.
It changes the entire relationship.
It changes the relationship totally and completely and utterly.
So, if you are married to a guy and he only beats you up once a month, it's not like for 29 days of the month you're happy, relaxed, and in love, and then one day, sadly, you get the snot pounded out of you, and then you go back to being happy and relaxed, and so on.
What happens is your entire relationship, once violence enters into the equation of a relationship, the relationship is over.
The relationship is absolutely, completely, and totally over.
You cannot Ever relax around somebody who has pounded on you, unless, I mean, with the possible, possible, possible exception, which I don't really have any proof for, but it could be, with the possible exception that if somebody jumps up and pounds on you and then is absolutely shocked and appalled, goes into deep and long-term therapy, goes to anger management, really starts to work out their issues, then it's possible that down the road you might be able to have a relationship with that person again.
And so where you have situations where you're having dreams about killing somebody, which is perfectly understandable, and what this is, the dreams about killing the father is not a desire to kill the father, of course.
It is a recognition of the murderous rage that is occurring within the father's psychology because, obviously, he went through his own stuff and he has decided to become an irrational absolutist in the form of religion rather than to deal with his own issues.
And so he ends up reproducing them on his son.
And the dream is a fantasy that you can choke the anger out of your father while still keeping your father, which of course is not.
It's a fantasy, and it's going to make you feel better for a little while, but the problem is it's going to keep you trapped in that relationship.
You can't get rid of somebody's personal characteristics that are negative to you, like rage or hostility, jealousy, and so on.
You can't get rid of those and keep the actual personality.
It's not possible. It's like getting rid of eyeballs and keeping sight.
It doesn't really matter.
And you can't do it.
So the fantasy that you can choke the anger out of your father and then at the end see your father as a more sorry and reasonable person is not going to happen.
It's an understandable fantasy and an understandable desire, but it's not going to happen at all.
So let's go one step further into these email responses because I think it's important to understand the complexities that people are dealing with when they come up with particular issues that are manifestations of the problems that they're having deep down, like I'm having trouble with my co-worker and how important it is if you want to help them.
Nobody's saying you have to help anybody, but if you do want to really help them.
Then you need to really understand where they're coming from.
You need to really put yourself in their shoes.
You need to have empathy with where they are.
And you need to recognize that they would be confident and happy and secure if they could.
But they're lost a little bit.
Because not only are they raised with traumatic events, but there are so many lies in society that it is very hard for us to reach our way through to any kind of rationality.
So, another email that this person writes, where he says, I think the family thing has something to do with my confidence issues.
I haven't really thought about it that much, though.
I don't think that one incident had much to do with my confidence.
He's talking about a lack of confidence he has in general.
I think the confidence thing is also related to primary, intermediate, and secondary school.
In first or kindergarten, I remember one of my classmates was really mean to me.
She said I couldn't color, but in a really, really mean way.
I can also remember not wanting to go to school, really, really not wanting to go, bawling my eyes out and scared.
I think this not wanting to go lasted for some period of time.
I do remember one time they stuck me in the principal's office, probably because I was really upset and wouldn't shut up.
I also remember having trouble learning to read and write, and I was in the slow group.
I also had a hard time wanting to do classwork in first grade.
In fourth grade, my teacher was fucking mean.
She would tell us to shut up, and also tell us we were the dumbest students she ever had, also that we needed to stop asking questions, especially what-if questions.
My best friend at the time and I went to the office at least twice a week or so, him more than me.
I also remember the teacher asking me to read a passage from a book, and I refused to read it, not because I had trouble reading or anything.
Most likely, I think, it was a sort of hate for being forced to read.
The teacher got pissed, I had some tears, and she made the teacher's pet take me to the office for discipline.
I think my dislike of being forced to do things that I didn't want to do was a common theme throughout my schooling.
What would make it worse was when I would ask why I needed to learn X. They would give me some bullshit reason like, because, or so you can learn, or it is required of all students, etc.
In middle school I had issues with English and spelling.
I hated those classes. Math was a bit of trouble until 9th grade, and in 10th grade I was the top math student in my grade.
I had always enjoyed and was very good at science class, though.
Verbal fights. Hmm, yeah.
But when I was little, if I got into one of those, I would end up getting spanked.
When I got too big for that shit, the arguments would last longer and I would end up being grounded.
Now, pretty much anything dealing with my parents is pretty hollow and empty.
When I go to their house, I almost always end up getting mad slash irritated and avoid interacting with them.
Here is another Pops Rage thing.
A couple of months ago during the NBA Finals, I made some comment about why one should be a fan of a team just because they're from your city.
A podcast-inspired statement.
My dad nearly shit himself.
He was so mad. He had a bit of a rage eye.
And my mom said something like, we talked about this, let it go, or something like that.
I don't think I'm going to go over there this 4th of July, even though my mom makes really good food, and it's nice to go over there and veg out watching TV. So I think it's fairly clear that we can see the kinds of issues that this poor kid, oh man, that's just heartbreaking.
You obviously have an intelligent child, top in the math class, just brutalized by the state school system, as so many children are, just brutalized by a horrible state system.
State school system.
And, oh, my heart breaks about the degree of violence and rejection and brutality and scorn and contempt that this strong but weighed-down young soul had to weather.
Oh, it's like watching a very deeply-rooted sapling trying to survive a hurricane, and so many get torn out and lost to the sky.
But some survive, and kudos to this gentleman.
I mean, fantastic. What an incredibly great job you did of raising yourself.
And I think that you really should be proud of what you have accomplished in your life.
And I think that you need to deal with these issues with your past, and then you won't have to worry about co-workers and being ripped off at work, because you simply won't accept that behavior.
But it won't be something where you have to will.
Not accepting that behavior will simply occur.
So, the response that I posted, which I'll sort of talk about briefly here, is I posted one response earlier than this one here.
I said, sorry to hear about your story.
It really is heartbreaking how irrational absolutes tend to lead to violence.
And I was referring to the religion and the sports team.
Your father is a bully and I truly sympathize with you.
I believe that your continuing lack of self-confidence is not directly caused by his bullying, but by the fact that you still see him and the rest of your family who puts up with it.
With parents, siblings, whoever, the basic question is always the same.
If we had never met before, and I ran into him, her, at a party, would we become great friends?
If so, great.
If not, well, you know my answer.
This is a very important question to ask about your family, and those who are in your life, for whatever reason, historically extended family, siblings, and so on.
If you're thinking about a brother or a father or mother, if you'd never met that person before, you run into him or her at a party, would you become great friends with that person?
Or would you be like, whoa, what a freak, and wouldn't exactly make sure that you got together to go bowling in the future?
Would you go over and hang out at their house?
This is a very important thing, because this is all about choice in the present.
Where you were born has absolutely no relevance morally.
It's purely accidental.
It's like saying that you have to get married to whoever you pull the secret Santa hat with at the office Christmas party.
There's simply no moral relevance or moral content to where you were born.
And you have absolutely no need to spend one second with your family if you don't enjoy it.
Not one second.
They chose to have you.
You did not choose. To be born.
And the fact that they clothed and housed you and whatever fed you when you were growing up is absolutely zero moral obligation on your part.
That's simply the nature of having children, that you owe them that, right?
You wouldn't say that my dog has to work for my retirement because I fed my dog when the dog was growing up.
Of course not, right? I mean, you chose to get a pet and therefore you have to feed it.
And you chose to have children, and therefore you have to take care of them.
You don't owe your parents anything.
You owe your parents exactly what you owe everybody, which is justice and honesty, and a realistic and real evaluation of their personal characteristics.
You owe them that. You owe them honesty.
But you do not owe them resources or time or energy.
And I would say that, although it may be pleasant in this person's case to go over eat your mom's cooking and veg out in front of the TV, That it's actually very costly for you.
It's actually very costly for you.
You're in an environment within your family structure where you can never be yourself, where you can never be yourself, because you're always worried about the next thing that someone's going to say, whether it's your mother or your father or your siblings, that is going to cause you to either abandon your own values by not speaking up or cause a terrific and terrible fight by speaking up in this person's case.
And the reason, of course, why the father is so angry at any kind of rational question is because the father, through his own particular actions, is working on the axiom that I have value regardless of evaluation.
God has truth and value.
Religion has truth and value regardless of evaluation.
I support my team regardless of evaluation.
So the father is working on the principle that Something has value because you will it.
You do not subject what has value to any kind of rational evaluation.
It's a very, very important thing to understand.
This is how a lot of parents and a lot of people in general work.
The government works this way as well as this religion, of course.
Something has value because you want it to have value.
It doesn't have any value independent of your desires.
It's the basis of faith, right?
You believe in God because you want to believe in God.
You don't accept any evidence because there isn't any.
Something has value regardless of any independent evaluation.
It's a very important principle to understand this aspect of value independent of evaluation.
And the reason that your father is so explosive in this area is quite simple and infinitely complex in its manifestation.
Let's just say that I believe in never getting a job evaluation and never being measured on my productivity.
This is sort of an important thing.
We'll take the metaphor of work and then we'll return to the family.
So, I'm working in some factory, and I'm part of some union, and I can never conceivably get fired no matter how late I show up for work, no matter whether I show up for work, no matter whether I scream at my co-workers, or grab the asses of the female co-workers around me, or... Steal for work or whatever.
I could never, ever get fired.
Well, how well am I going to prepare for work in a free market situation, right?
So let's just say that for the last 20 years of my...
So this is going to be the first 30 years of my career.
And for the last 20 years of my career, let's just say I'm never expecting for the union to...
Be destroyed, but I am rather expecting the union situation, the unfireable situation, to continue until the day that I die, or the day that I retire, for sure, and then I'm going to get all these big, juicy retirement benefits.
Now, let's say that I do this from the age of, I don't know, 25 to 45 or 55 or 40 or whatever, and then I've got another 20 years or so where I've still got to go.
And somebody comes along and says, we're ripping out the union, right?
Well, I haven't developed my work ethic.
I haven't developed my skills.
I've abused all my co-workers.
My bosses hate me.
My co-workers hate me.
The customers hate me. Everybody's just dying to get rid of me.
And I've made all of these decisions in my life based on the premise that I have value independent of objective or rational evaluation, that I have value because I'm part of this union, that I have value because I breathe, that I have value because I'm around, that I have value because I am, regardless of any independent evaluation.
And so I've made all of these decisions in my life based on this premise that I have value simply for existing or being part of this union, and And I have, in a one-way street kind of way, backed myself into a corner.
So, given that I haven't developed my job skills or my integrity or my reputation or any of those kinds, my work habits, my negotiation skills, any of that, because I've been kind of an asshole at work for 30 years or 20 years, how prepared am I going to be to end up Competing in the free market with other people who are younger, who are more rational, who are better liked, who have better work ethics, better skills.
And to what degree is my income going to drop?
Or, in fact, to what degree am I even going to be employable if the union should go away?
Now, I can't go back 20 or 30 years and suddenly make my relationship with my co-workers better.
I can't go back and sort of go to night school.
I can't go back... And develop better work habits.
I have molded my whole personality.
I've molded my whole way of being.
I've molded my entire identity around this premise that I have value regardless of any rational evaluation.
And so I am going to be completely terrified, fundamentally, and enraged if the suggestion is made that the union should be broken up.
And no longer am I going to be protected by this entity or this collective group, which is going to protect me regardless of my value, objectively.
So from forced association, which is basically the union premise, I'm talking about current unions, not sort of free market unions, from the premise of forced association, I am now going to go to free association.
But the problem is that I have based my entire work ethic and professional identity and interaction with people on the idea that we are never going to have free association.
And I know that the moment that we do have free association, I know deep down that nobody's going to want to have anything to do with me.
I'm going to get fired the very next day with a small package or maybe even no package if those aren't the laws.
And people are going to say, good riddance, and I'm not going to have any references, and I'm not going to be able to get another job, right?
Because the first thing people are going to do is say, oh, you've been working for 30 years.
Great. Why don't you give me a reference from your last place of employment?
And I give a reference and they say, oh, that guy was a total jerk.
He stole. He grabbed co-workers' asses.
He screamed at people.
He broke machines when he wanted a break.
He only showed up half the days he was supposed to work and he was drunk and he beat up on co-workers.
My God, the guy was a complete lunatic.
And, I mean, I'm not going to give him any kind of reference.
You can hire whoever you want.
So, this is a person who has now completely backed himself into a corner in his professional life.
And so, when someone comes along and says, I think that we should get rid of this union, then he's going to really freak.
He's going to absolutely panic.
That's a very important thing to understand.
So, to return this to, and we'll just talk about a father here, rather than parents as a whole, but, you know, I'm sure you'll get the idea in general.
So, if a parent believes that...
If a father believes that he has value...
Why? Because he's your father, goddammit!
That this is what gives him value.
that he basically is in a union of one called fatherhood, which is never going to be subject to outside rational criteria, is never going to be subjected to any kind of judgment.
Well, the real challenge then is if you ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, bring up any kind of rational evaluation with your family of anything, right?
In this case, these two examples were religion and sports.
this When the gentleman who was writing these posts is sitting with his father and says, why on earth should you prefer one team or another just because you happen to be born there?
Well, I'll tell you exactly what gets translated in the parent's unconscious.
Very, very, I mean, the false self grabs that and process it and says, you know, danger, Will Robinson, danger, danger.
Because what gets translated in is why, so the son says, why should we care about a sports team just because we happen to be born there?
The sports team doesn't have value just because we're born there.
What the parent gets out of that is, why should I respect you, father, because I happen to be your son?
You don't have value just because I happen to be your son.
And that's why the father freaks out.
And so when somebody also, when the question of religion comes up and somebody says that I'm not going to believe in the virtue or value of religion just because somebody tells me to, it's all made up nonsense.
Then what the father's unconscious feels, or the false self correctly identifies, is that the son is saying, I'm not going to believe in the mythology or value of fatherhood just because somebody tells me that fathers are so great.
I believe that that's a lie, and therefore I'm going to judge the value of you, father, on your own personal merits, rather than this abstract category called fatherhood.
And the father's false self immediately is picking that up, and that's why the violence occurs, right?
The violence occurs, and this is sort of an important thing to understand, this is a basic root of violence in human relationships.
It may be the basic root, I don't know, but it certainly is a very fundamental root of violence in human relations, and it goes like this.
So, I'm your father, and I say, I have value to you because I'm your father.
Now, if I have value to you, independent of my actions, then my actions are going to be worse.
If you can't get fired, and if you're always going to get a big raise, and you're always going to have a job, and you're going to get a great retirement, regardless of how well you behave at work, then your behavior is going to be much, much worse Then it's going to be if you can get fired and if there are other people competing for your job and if you have to be judged on objective metrics.
This is why communism doesn't work.
There's no profit incentive. So, if you have value, regardless of any kind of objective evaluation of your person or your behavior, then that behavior is always, always, always going to be worse.
Now, if anyone ever comes along and says, no, I need to judge you, you see, based on your actions and your words, rather than some abstract capacity called father, or estate, or church, or family, or culture, or country, or whatever.
I need to judge you according to objective metrics, not according to some abstract category that is always going to make you perfect.
Then what happens is, the person...
It feels two things.
One, it feels that you're absolutely aggressing against them because in the same way that the arsehole worker who's threatened with decertification of the union feels that somebody is aggressing against him and so must respond in self-defense.
That's sort of the one aspect of things.
And the other aspect of things is that if I can't provide you a positive value By being part of an abstract category called father or priest or whatever.
If I can't provide you that abstract value, then what I can do is switch from positive economics to negative economics.
And this is a very nice way of saying that I'll stop beating on your ass.
So, the myth in parenting, the myth in fatherhood, let's just stay with fatherhood.
The myth in fatherhood is, I have value because I'm your father.
I am wiser because I'm your father.
I am wiser because I'm older.
I know the world because I've been around longer.
That is the value that I bring.
Nothing that I say and do in any sort of tangible, objective manner, but this category of father and elder and whatever is what I do to bring value.
And that's a completely false value, right?
I mean, there's no value in being a father.
You don't suddenly become a better human being because you have sex with someone and impregnate them.
There's no moral content in fatherhood whatsoever.
And so what happens is when this false positive economics, I have value because I'm your father, when that gets exposed in a family situation, then what happens is the person still needs to provide value.
And the way that they can then provide value is to inflict violence on you and then stop.
So instead of them providing value to you in a positive sense, once the lie of that is exposed, then they switch over to providing value from a negative sense.
In other words, I'm going to beat on you, and then I'm going to stop and apologize, so I'm bringing value to you by not beating on you.
So this is a pretty fundamental reason that irrational absolutes, like I'm good because I'm your father, I have value because I'm your father, Why all of this tends to end up in violence when it becomes questioned, because then the only value that the person can provide is to frighten you or hurt you and then stop doing it, right? So the withdrawal of a negative is not a positive, but it's a whole lot better than openly admitting that you provide no value whatsoever.
Now there's one last metaphor that's probably worth it, and it's a related metaphor, but I sort of want to understand why this is such a desperate endgame for parents.
And the reason for that is this.
If you are somebody who believes that you're this union worker who's going to get this great retirement package that's based on why, well, you're breathing, and the younger generation is going to be forced to pay for your retirement.
And so you believe that you're going to get $100,000 a year when you retire, and you can retire at $55,000.
Well, are you going to come up with a big retirement savings plan?
Are you going to manage your money?
No, of course not. You're going to spend it, you're going to have vacations, you're going to go bet on the ponies, you're going to go gamble, you're going to drink, you're going to have all the fun in the world, and you're not going to save for your retirement.
So, of course, when decertification comes along, and the younger generation says, you know, I don't really think that I do want to fund this asshole, For his retirement, because I don't know him, or if I do know him, I think he's a jerk.
And so good luck with all that pops, but it's not really my responsibility.
Well, of course, the father is going to freak out, and is going to feel cheated, and is going to feel enraged, and isn't going to say to himself in a mature fashion, well, I kind of rolled the dice.
I mean, there was no guarantee that I was going to get any of this kind of stuff.
I kind of had all the fun and pleasure of gambling and traveling and all that kind of fancy stuff.
So I really rolled the dice.
I can't go and get my money back.
So, eh, you know, I'm not going to sort of brutalize the younger generation because I never had any particular guarantees.
And so, eh, I rolled the dice.
I came up snake eyes. I'll continue to work.
I'll start to save. I'll sell my big house and move into an apartment.
You know, hey, you gamble.
Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose.
Of course, the person's not going to do that.
What they're going to do is get enraged and feel entitled.
And, you know, because their behavior has been so bad financially, I don't know what the magic age is.
I suspect it's around puberty, but it probably is earlier than that.
But at some point...
Your parents' relationship with you becomes unrecoverable.
I would say, I mean, Christina would probably argue that it's around two or three years old, but I don't know.
Let's just say at some point your parents' relationship with you becomes unrecoverable.
And so what happens is that when you start to bring objective criteria to bear on your father, then your father is going to panic, because your father has behaved very badly on the assumption that he has value because he breathes, that you are going to take care of him when he gets older, that you're going to come and visit him, that you're going to be his companion, and you're going to give him money and time and resources when he gets older.
And that is going to happen.
Why? Because he's such a great guy?
No, because he's your father.
And you owe it to him, damn it, and that's what good sons do, and blah blah blah blah.
Now, the moment you bring objective criteria to bear, he knows that he's going to fail.
He knows that if you evaluate him in any just or objective manner, that you're not going to give him one thin dime or one split second of your time.
In this particular example, I mean, this may be a little less obvious with other examples as well, but this is sort of a particularly important one.
now he can't go back and be a good parent he can't go back and be a good father now it's far too late for him to change his ways because you've already had 20 years of experience dealing with him and of course as I've mentioned in podcasts before when you get older and your parents become needy and they then decide to change their ways well it's far too late it's far too late right I mean the guy this is an extreme example but this is sort of the principle at hand
A guy who is a real jerk, who pistol whips you, and who steals your wallet, and is screaming at you, and so on.
Well, if you manage to get the gun, and he becomes all peaches and cream and nice, and, oh, it's just a misunderstanding, and I'm so sorry, and I'll never do it again.
Well, of course, you can't trust that.
The only reason that it's changed is because you've gotten the gun.
There's no sort of revelation on the part of the person who was stealing you and pistol-whipping you and all that.
All that's happened is the power situation has reversed, so now he's become all nice and saccharine.
Well, that's not believable at all, right?
Nobody would say, hey, wow, what a fantastically coincidental turnaround.
I guess this guy's going to be purely virtuous.
Here, sir, here's your gun back.
Well, you know exactly what's going to happen if you do that, that you're off to pistol-whipping camp again.
And it's the same thing, of course, when your parents get older and suddenly become needy, that what's happened is that the power in the relationship has shifted.
And so now they may come and say, well, you know, we're sorry, we didn't mean it, I can understand that you have problems, but what can we do now?
All we can do is be the best parents that we can, we did the best we could, we provided for you as Well, as we knew how, and oh, my childhood was really sad, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
You're going to get all this nonsense from parents.
But you know, of course, if you went back 30 years, or 40 years, when you were a kid and they were the parents, exactly the same thing would happen again.
So it's not any kind of change.
It's far too late at that point to do.
I mean, you can do whatever you want, but don't think you're doing it because they've turned around.
It's just that the power relationship has shifted.
So that's an important thing to understand from that standpoint.
And the second last thing that I mention is that The father in these sorts of situations will often forget the real pleasure that he got out of exercising power over his children.
I'm not saying it's a healthy pleasure, but obviously it was something that he preferred to do rather than to deal with his own issues.
So rather than go through the troubling, difficult, and painful process of coming to terms with your own history, if it's been abusive, what he does is he simply acts out the abuse on his own children, which in the very short run is a much more pleasant thing to do relative to re-experiencing the vulnerability and pain of having had your own difficult and horrible childhood or whatever.
Even if it wasn't horrible, pretty much everyone has had a difficult childhood in some manner or another because the world is kind of lost and amoral at best and immoral usually.
And so rather than deal with all of that, he decided to act it out on his children.
And, well, that's a choice, right?
I mean, that's like saying, well, because I'm expecting this grand retirement benefit of $100,000 a year, I can blow all my money, have all this fun, and then if it turns out that I don't get this retirement benefit of $100,000 a year, at least I can say, well, I had fun with the money.
Because the father won't remember that.
He won't remember that he made all these choices that were more beneficial to him in the short run to act out abuse against his children rather than to deal with his own past.
All of those benefits will be good.
We'll be gone, and so what he's going to want to end up with is a situation where he gets all of the benefits of having acted out in an abusive manner towards his own children, and all the benefits of resource allocation that occurred as if he were a good person, right?
So everyone's going to sort of claim to love him and take care of him when he gets older and feel guilt and this and that and the other.
Now, the last thing that I'll say is that I get a lot of flack when I talk about these topics, and I understand it, so I don't mind in particular, but I just sort of want to put this out for clarification's sake.
If you want people to be happy.
Right, and people say, well, you have all these problems with parents, and some people say, well, you're acting out your own problems with parents by getting other people, creating friction with other people and their parents, and I understand all of that as a theory.
But the actual fact of the matter is, I love parents.
The actual fact of the matter is, I want parents to be as happy as humanly possible.
I want parents to really enjoy their relationship with their children.
I want children to really enjoy their relationship with their parents.
So, to go back to the union metaphor, if you want people to be happy, If you want workers to be happy and to be productive and to enjoy going to work, then you don't want a state-sponsored union, right?
Because if you have a state-sponsored union, then assholes are going to be protected.
Everyone's going to be miserable.
There's going to be much less productivity.
The economy is going to get worse, and everyone's going to end up not preparing for their future on the assumption that the future is going to present them with these big rewards, when in fact it probably won't, right?
So if you want people to be happy...
Then forced association is not going to make them happy.
The only way to make people happy is for people to be good based on the principle of voluntary association.
That's why I'm a free market guy.
Voluntary association is the key.
But you don't say, well, I don't think that there should be unions in the free market, and I don't think that there should be protection, and I don't think that there should be corporate welfare, and I don't think that there should be private welfare, because freedom of association is great.
And then say, but I have to go and see my parents because they're my parents, right?
I mean, that's completely illogical.
And you shouldn't have that as part of your philosophy.
If you're really into the free market and you're into libertarianism, as I've mentioned before, and you're really into free association, and you're really into justice, and you're not into compulsion, then you should start at home, right?
Monetarianism begins at home.
It doesn't begin with you railing against the state and the welfare system and so on and the invasion of Iraq.
It starts with you rigorously and honorably pursuing free association with others within your own life.
If you can pull that off, then you can ask people to deal with the state.
If you can't pull off free association with your own life, if you end up going to see your parents because you'll feel guilty if you don't go, then that's fine.
I'm not saying you can do that, but then you can't morally or logically ask people to give up the state.
Because if you can't deal with semi-coercive relationships within your own life, then you can't ask people to give up coercive relationships in a political sense.
You have to deal with libertarianism within your own life before you apply it to the state and to larger institutions like the church and so on.
So if you're an atheist, you can't say, well, people shouldn't believe in abstract authority like God just because someone tells them to, and then say, well, I have to go and visit my father for Father's Day, even though I don't like him, and I don't really enjoy the experience just because I feel guilty otherwise.
Well, that's kind of a contradiction, right?
That's not really being an atheist.
If you're an atheist, then you don't believe in authority except in terms of justice and knowledge.
And therefore, you can't say to people, well, you shouldn't go to church because that abstract authority doesn't exist and isn't moral, and then go to a father's house that you dislike for Father's Day and give him that sanction.
Philosophy is your life.
Philosophy is not abstract.
Philosophy is how you live your life.
Philosophy isn't being able to argue the existence or non-existence of God.
There's nothing wrong with that. But philosophy is living And doing.
It's not thinking and talking.
I mean, the thinking and talking is important, don't get me wrong, but philosophy, in order to be legitimate and honorable, is something that you have to live, not something you just have to talk about.
And so, I actually do want parents to be happy.
I do want families to be better.
I am absolutely and totally committed to improving human relations in this world.
That is my major goal, to improve human relationships And to add to the happiness and joy of this world.
And what that means is break the unions.
What that means is free association.
What that means is no guilt, no ought to, no should, no have to, no gotta, no must, no value except where there is objectively and legitimately value.
Where there is honor, where there is virtue, where there is pleasure.
There is no value in family.
There is no value in the state.
There is no value in religion.
These things do not exist.
There is no such thing as father.
There's some guy who has sex with your mom.
There is no such abstract category as father.
It is a mere biological descriptor.
It doesn't exist any more than a forest exists in the absence of a bunch of trees.
And so my whole purpose in this is to improve human relationships, to make families happier.
And the best way to make families happier is for evil people to not get the rewards of good people.
The best way to make the world happier and the best way to make the world virtuous is to quit rewarding non-virtuous people as if they were virtuous.
It is to quit giving raises to sociopathic network admins.
It is to quit going over to your father's house when you don't enjoy the interaction.
It is to quit rewarding corrupt people as if they were moral people.
Because if you keep rewarding immoral people, you can't complain about immorality in the world.
You simply can't.
You are contributing to immorality within the world if you reward corrupt and vicious people with your time, money, attention and resources.
You can go to your father's house if you don't like your father and you can pretend to chew through a meal and talk about the weather and pretend you're having a great time and then go home and feel depressed.
You can do that, heavens, I'm the last person to tell anyone what they should and should not do, but every action has consequences.
You can't complain about the power of the state and how silly people are for believing that the state is virtuous and then go over to your father's place and pretend that he is someone that has value to you independent of his actions.
You can't say to people, how come people still believe in the virtue of the state when the state is so obviously corrupt and bad?
Well, if you still believe that in your own family, then you're kind of talking out of both sides of your mouth, right?
It's extraordinarily hypocritical to be very bothered by abstract things like the state and to feel so superior and to feel so enlightened and wise because you see through to the core of state corruption and then go over to your family and pretend that they're great people when you don't like them.
I mean, that's really hypocritical, to be perfectly frank with you.
You're missing the whole point of freedom, and you're missing the whole point of libertarianism if you think, as I've mentioned before, that it applies to the state.
Now, the best way, in the union example, to get a happy work environment is to blow apart the union.
That is going to make workers happy and productive and secure, and it's going to mean that bad people get punished, and therefore it's the only chance they have to change their ways, right, to quit subsidizing bad people.
Bad people will get punished and have a chance of changing their ways.
To let consequences accrue to bad people is the most beneficial and loving thing that you can do for them.
It doesn't mean that they're going to change, but it means that you're contributing to virtue in the world as a whole.
So if you want industrial relations to be happy, you have to get rid of the forced association within a union.
It doesn't mean free market unions, I'm talking about the state-sponsored ones.
That is actually focusing on making people happier.
If you keep negative consequences away from corrupt people, you are not doing anything.
To help them. What you're doing is you're managing your own discomfort, right?
If you go over to your father's house because you feel guilty and you feel that you should, you are managing your own discomfort.
It has nothing to do with any kind of justice with regards to your father.
And when I'm saying to people, you should treat people in a just and honorable manner and you should be free...
To associate with whoever you want, what I'm doing is attempting to improve family life.
What I'm attempting to do is to make human relations better and more joyful and happier.
And does that mean that some bad people don't make it?
Absolutely. But that's not my fault.
I mean, I know people are going to get mad at me about this, but it's not my fault.
I didn't invent this whole thing about family has value and people have, your father has value because he's your father.
I didn't make that up. Like if someone comes along and says, we need to decertify this state-run union, and then some people end up going through really hard times, it's not the person's fault who's decertifying the union.
He didn't create the union.
He didn't put the laws in place.
He's just coming along and saying, this is really unhealthy.
This is really bad.
This is creating a toxic and poisonous and negative and destructive work environment for everyone.
So I'm the one coming along saying we need to decertify the family.
We need to de-unionize the family.
We need to de-state the family.
We need to have a stateless family.
We need to have a family that is composed of rational virtue and no obligation other than that of justice and integrity.
That's we need to sort of take the compulsion out of the family because that's where everybody's mini-state actually exists and has the most dominion over them.
I'm doing that because I want families to be better.
I want families to be happier.
I want families to be good and to be positive places to be and to be happy places to be.
Because I have a family now that I'm overjoyed to be part of.
Myself and my wife.
And we do that because we don't assume, I don't assume that she has value to me because she's my wife and that I have value to her because I'm her husband, that we re-earn our love every day.
And that's a beautiful and joyful place to be.
I want that for everybody's relationship.
I want that for everybody's family.
And that means that we have to stop supporting and providing value to people who have no value.
That's the fundamental problem that is the case in the world, that we keep rewarding people who are corrupt because we're too frightened to deal with the truth.
Which is that we don't love these people who have been corrupt towards us and who've been bad towards us.
And there is no value in family.
There is no value in genetics.
It's bigoted and the equivalent of racism to be pro your own family regardless of their actual thoughts, words and actual words and actions.
It's absolutely bigoted.
And we hate racism and yet we run to our own families because there are blood relations and consider that they have value based on that.
I absolutely oppose that, and if you want to have happy families, you have to quit supporting bad families.
If you want to have a happy work environment, you have to quit supporting the people who have no value in that work environment, and work to consistently reaffirm within your own life the value of voluntary association, and keep rejecting forced association, whether it's based on the coercion of the state, the guilt of religion, or the obligation of the family.
We consistently have to strive for freedom, because through that, we end up with far better and happier human relations.
So I hope this has been helpful. Thank you so much for listening, as always.
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