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Nov. 29, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
42:33
535 Prostitution Part 3: Stef Concedes...
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Thank you so much for taking the time to come back and chat a little bit more, or listen a little bit more, to the challenging topic of prostitution.
Now, I'm going to take an approach here which, in my view, is a clincher.
In my view, it's a knockout blow.
Now, maybe I'm incorrect about that, but I've let this debate run on quite long.
I mean, like I have any power or control other than banning people, which is not what I want to do.
But I have let this debate chug on for a little while for a variety of reasons.
We can get into another time.
But I sort of wanted to let people put forward the sort of very passionate ideas that they had about how I should not judge them or judge people based on a fact like they went to a prostitute.
I've sort of not talked about the following aspect of things because I really wanted to, you know, this is not manipulation or punishment or anything like that, but I think it's important for people to really have a run and to really have a go at their position, right? I mean, I don't think it's important not to squelch it because you really want to see just how far these defenses can take you before realizing the truth.
So I've held back from talking about this particular aspect of things, which has nothing to do particularly with what I've talked about before, because I really did want to let people have a real go at this and get in their high dungeon and get aggressive towards me and lecture me about all of the morals and ethics and logic in the world.
So, as I've mentioned before a number of times, if an argument is illogical, you can accept every part of it except the last bit, and still it will fall over.
So this is sort of the aspect of the argument that I would like to accept, is the following.
That you cannot judge another person based on Inconsequential or even consequential information that you cannot judge another person's nature, characteristics, morality, personality, character, or any of those sorts of things based on small segments or amounts of information.
You have to know somebody for one hell of a long time.
Sayeth those who defend the visiting of prostitutes.
You have to know somebody for a long time before you, Steph, can jump to conclusions about their nature.
About the ethics of their life and their situations and you're a square and you're not comfortable with sexuality and Christina's projecting and this and that.
Right? So that's fine.
Let's accept that premise.
I have no problem with that.
Let's accept that premise.
And let us say...
That I have been completely and totally and utterly and woefully, nay, almost criminally unjust and unfair in saying to people that they show evidence of low self-esteem by going to a prostitute.
I absolutely, completely and totally concede that point.
I should not have said This about somebody.
I should not have said that based on having known someone, and the gentleman who I've been arguing with, I've known him and had a number of conversations with him on the board and in call-in shows.
I've known him for several months and know several salient characteristics about his life and more unpleasantly about his brother's life.
But let's just say that the knowledge that I have of somebody through interacting with them and seeing them process intellectual, moral, ethical, economic, political, philosophical, artistic, and spiritual information over the course of a couple of months in no way renders me competent to judge their nature and their circumstances,
right? That months of knowing somebody in a fairly intimate situation, as is to the discussion of all core beliefs and ideas, in no way allows me to judge that person's self-esteem, circumstances, character, morals, or anything like that.
Totally wrong. Absolutely apologize.
Totally the wrong thing to do.
Let's say that their criticism of me is totally just.
Step one. Let's move on to step two.
The wonderful thing about the argument for morality, or logic really as a whole, Is that, as I mentioned before, it is a stick shop into both ends.
So if I, with months of knowing somebody and with pretty important and detailed information about their life, cannot make a judgment with regards to their self-esteem, circumstances, character, morals, ethics, and so on, right?
Then this is also true of those who defend themselves.
The fact that going to prostitutes has no bearing or cannot be used as a criteria by which to judge somebody's self-esteem.
In other words, I can't know somebody's circumstances and character and history and personality in any depth after months of knowing them.
It's completely incorrect for me to do that.
But this is also true of those who defend going to prostitutes.
If you say to me, Steph, that you cannot judge somebody, judge somebody's personality based on months of knowledge and facts about their life, then this is also true of those who defend prostitution or defend going to prostitution.
Fine. Now, We know that the vast majority of prostitutes are criminally and sexually raped and abused and violated and hurt and maimed.
And this is now on the board and has been on the board for two days.
Yesterday. No, yesterday I posted it.
It's been on the board for a day. So everybody who's involved in the debate has now seen the statistics.
And of course anybody who gets involved in a debate about prostitution should first of all start with the facts.
That would be a rational thing and a reasonable thing and I would say a decent thing to do for a community or a group that claims to be interested in the scientific method in facts and rationalism and evidence and logic and so on.
So if you've been involved in the debate on the side of defending going to prostitutes or defending that this is not a negative thing Then, if you have not read the statistics or looked up any of the statistics, then that's pretty irresponsible as far as debating goes, right?
To simply toss around opinions with no regard for the facts is no excuse.
You have no excuse. If you don't know the statistics on prostitution after they've been posted on the board for a day and a half, after Christina has talked about them after they came up in the show, wretched lives that they live even on Sunday, then you are not being a responsible debater.
So I'm going to assume that by the time you hear this, and also since I did post in public view of everyone some pretty horrifying statistics, and Greg posted some more pretty horrifying statistics that 80 plus percent of prostitutes had experienced rape as children and so on, right? So you know these statistics, and this deterred no one.
No one that I can recall.
And I'm sorry if you were deterred, and I didn't see it.
But I didn't see anyone say, oh my god, I hadn't realized that about prostitution.
Greg did, but he hadn't actually been pro-going to prostitutes.
So, I mean, it counts as far as a decent thing to do when you see the statistics.
But it deterred no one, as far as I can tell.
Everyone still maintained the position that, Steph, you cannot and it is wrong to judge people based on incomplete information to judge their circumstances and character and so on.
So, let's move on.
We know now that the vast majority of prostitutes Are sexually abused as children and physically abused and grow up in horrendously difficult, horrible, murderous, drug-addicted, hysterical households.
There's no doubt about that anymore.
Everybody knows that. And people cling to the idea, and it may not be clinging, it may be accurate, so I apologize if I'm mischaracterizing it.
I believe it's clinging, but I can't prove it, of course.
They believe that there are The happy hookers out there, right?
The strong, independent women who just choose to get banged by strangers for money because they think that's just a wonderful career move and they have no history of abuse and they have joined in the company of all of this human wreckage that flows out of the houses of pedophiles and drug addicts and rapists and murderers and criminals and...
Other prostitutes, right?
They have chosen to surround themselves with these sorts of people, right?
I mean, if you go to a job and everybody's really damaged, broken, weird, drug addicted, and so on, and you're really healthy, I bet you're not going to go to stay at that job very long.
So, one of the reasons that I say there aren't any healthy prostitutes is that, like in currency, bad currency or forged currency or fiat currency drives out good currency.
And in social and work situations, bad personalities drive out good personalities.
Bad neighborhoods drive out good people.
Thieves drive away honest people, or honest people drive away thieves.
So if 80 to 90% of the people are pathological and sick to an enormous degree in a profession, there aren't a whole lot of healthy, wonderful people floating around.
But let's say there are.
Again, I'm no problem conceding all of these points.
No problem whatsoever.
We'll get to the clincher in a sec.
But let's say 5% I think it's a ridiculous number, but let's just say 5% or 10% of prostitutes are wonderfully healthy people who have simply chosen to get banged by strangers for money,
to submit themselves to the risk of maiming, to the illegality of the profession, where it is illegal, which is most places, To the predation and violence and sickness and STDs and possible AIDS. Because they're really healthy, wonderful, happy people, they have chosen to submit themselves to these murderous, terrible risks.
And let's just say that there are 5% of prostitutes who are really happy, wonderful, healthy people.
Now, people then say to me, well, Steph...
You can't decide if somebody has low self-esteem if only 95% of prostitutes are ex-victims of pedophiles who are recreating childhood rape situations and can dissociate and that's how they get paid.
Oh, Steph, there are 5% or 10% of happy prostitutes.
So you can't tell me that I have low self-esteem for visiting a prostitute and exploiting somebody because not all of them were exploited in the past.
They're a healthy people. Fabulous.
Let's take that as a premise.
No problemo.
So you say to me 10% of prostitutes are not abused and therefore if I go to a prostitute it's not for sure that I have low self-esteem.
Great.
Let me ask you then one simple question.
How do you know the prostitute that you're visiting is the one in ten who's mentally healthy?
Thank you.
Just turn that around in your brain for a second.
How do you know Given that you have a 9 in 10 or 19 in 20 or, according to my view, 20 out of 20, a 100% probability, but let's just say it's 9 out of 10.
9 out of 10 of the prostitutes statistically you're going to visit are leftover pedophilia rape victims and you are continuing that exploitation because they can't make sensible decisions about their own bodies.
I mean, you can punch a blind man too, but it ain't a fair fight.
But if you have a 9 in 10 possibility of, quote, having sex with a woman who is only there because she was raped as a child, How do you know that you didn't go and visit one or more times the 90%?
Or the 95%?
Or the 99%? Or the 50%?
I don't care what the number is.
How do you know? Well, one guy IM'd me and said, well, I talked with her.
I talked with her for a few minutes.
You jerks. And let me tell you why I say that, and I don't say that to listeners very often.
I don't think I've ever said it to a listener before, but let me tell you why I say that.
I am not allowed to judge someone I've known for months when I've had deep conversations and listened to them, posted, read their articles.
I'm not allowed to judge someone because I don't have enough information.
But you people can sit down with a prostitute and chat with her for a minute or two and you suddenly know she's had no history of abuse.
I can't say that somebody Has low self-esteem if they visit a prostitute.
Because I don't know them well enough.
I've only known this person for months, the person who's reacting saying I can't.
I don't have enough information, people tell me!
But you can go and visit a prostitute and you can be totally sure that you're visiting this mythical happy hooker who's never had any history of abuse.
I can't judge based on enormous amounts of information and an enormous theory and lots of history, lots of evidence, lots of facts, lots of theory, and my wife's 14 years of experience in the industry.
I can't judge.
Because judging people with insufficient information is wrong, you see, I am told.
Oh, but you people, you can go and screw a hooker and you know, you know that she was never abused.
You know she's not a trembling, frightened, terrorized, brutalized wreck of a human being because she told you.
How is it That I cannot judge with lots of information and lots of theory and lots of knowledge.
I cannot judge somebody's history or personality or character or circumstances.
But you can sit down with a terrified prostitute who has a 90 to 95 to 99 to frankly 100% chance Of only being there because of a history of rape as a child.
And you just know, you just know that she was never abused.
And then, oh my heavens, I've got to tell you, it has not been the easiest thing to keep my peace about this.
And then people have the gall to tell me that I should not judge.
Because I don't have enough information.
All I have are facts and statistics.
And a knowledge of somebody that has been gained over months.
And the experience of almost two decades and a half from my wife and a number of other people that we've talked to.
That's all I have.
I can't judge. But the people who go visit prostitutes, they know for sure that the prostitute isn't being abused, that the prostitute isn't frightened, that the prostitute isn't being beaten up if she doesn't smile and act pretty and say, no, I love doing this.
They just know. See, I can't see clearly with facts and 20 years of philosophy and psychology and personal therapy for years and married to a psychologist and 530 podcasts that people are finding useful for its penetration of truth and logic.
I can't judge with any of that.
But somebody who goes in to see a prostitute, oh, well, he can judge.
He can judge whether she's being abused.
If you can judge, see this is the quandary that you're going to end up with, my friends, if you can judge that a prostitute is not being abused, how is impossible, but let's just say that you can, right?
If you can judge that a prostitute is not being abused, the prostitute that you're seeing, then obviously you only need a minute's conversation to determine somebody's entire history.
And no theory. And no studying of psychology, because one of the guys telling me that I was a massive fucking idiot, no, totally fucked up human being, admitted to me that he knew nothing about psychology.
So with no knowledge of statistics, with no knowledge of psychology, and with a desire, I would say a fairly unholy one, to have sex with a prostitute, He can judge whether the prostitute is there voluntarily.
He can judge. He can judge.
He knows. He's done a case history.
He knows the whole theory behind it.
He knows the whole history of the person.
He's interviewed. He's got her away from a situation where she's forced and coerced to smile and pretend that she likes it.
He knows. He just knows.
I put the statistics up to show people 90% that is documented 90% of prostitutes experience severe abuse.
80 to 90% severe abuse.
60 to 80% was rape from a family member.
These people, 40 times mortality, 15% of suicides.
These people are wretched.
Wretched, wretched, wretched.
I put those statistics up, and I was curious if anybody would say, hey, guys who go to prostitutes, how do you know that these aren't the prostitutes that you're seeing?
And they would say, well, I asked.
So I have a minute's conversation with no studying psychology, no history, no statistics, and with the desire to have sex with her, which we know that never makes anybody lie, or never skews anybody's questions, right?
But nobody asked that. Nobody asked, how do you know you're not exploiting a pedophile's leftovers?
How do you know you're not in a situation where you are pretty much extending the abuse that she suffered as a child for her?
Nobody asked that.
Everybody jumped all over me like I'm not allowed to judge.
Situations and characters and people.
But these people can talk for 60 seconds to a prostitute and know for sure that she's not there in coercion.
They know her whole history. She says, no, I like doing it.
Right? And they know.
They just know. No studying psychology.
No history. No knowledge of the field.
They just know. And this is what I mean when I say I can grant every premise but the last one, and it still turns back and bites you.
If you can judge a prostitute to the point where you can say for sure that you're not dealing with an abuse victim, Then clearly I, with far more information, can judge you.
You don't get to judge the prostitute situation without submitting to the judgment of others, because if you can glean the truth about somebody in 60 seconds of coerced conversation with no knowledge, no statistics, no understanding of psychology, if you can glean the truth about a situation in 60 seconds, then sure as shit, Sherlock, I can determine the truth of the situation over six months.
With knowledge, with statistics, with being married to somebody who has worked with these people in an industry that suffers enormously because of these people, sees the suffering of these people every day.
With all of that, with not just 60 seconds of, I've got a hard-on and I want to bang someone, asking and making sure, oh yeah, it's fine.
If you can judge it, if you can judge a human being's circumstances and character in 60 seconds when you want to bang them with no knowledge and with every incentive to fool yourself, then surely give me the credibility that if you can do it with your incentives and your knowledge in 60 seconds, you can judge who's abused and who's not.
If you can judge a person's character that quickly and that accurately, then so can I.
With much more information and much less incentive for error.
So that's the thing that is important to understand.
That's really the basis Of the hypocrisy and contradiction that is occurring in this debate.
Steph can't judge, but I can judge.
With lots of information, Steph can't judge a damn thing.
With no information and every incentive to fool myself, I can judge.
With no information, no training, no experience, no statistics, no knowledge, and with every incentive to fool myself that the hooker's having a great time, I can judge whether the hooker is the one in 20 who's not abused.
Please. Please, people.
You've got to be kidding me, right?
I mean, you really fundamentally have got to be fucking kidding me with this bullshit.
And that's why I said this morning, you know, you absolutely, totally and completely know.
You cannot know, even if this mythical happy hooker exists, you cannot know that you happen to have this unicorn in your bedroom.
The one happy hooker who decides to surround herself with the violence and degradation and drug abuse and surround herself with people who were all raped as children and surround herself with women getting their children ripped away because they're drug addicts and prostitutes and expose herself to danger, to disease, to violence, to the whole criminal underworld, right?
The one or the five or the twenty mythical women who are just happy and healthy and fun-loving and sexy and who just happen to enjoy surrounding themselves with all of this human detritus and pedophile leftovers, this mythical beast of the happy hooker,
you know for sure That you didn't pay a woman and have sex with a woman and that she was only there because she'd been raped as a child.
That you weren't continuing a kind of abuse on a pedophile's victim.
That you weren't a stand-in for her abusive, destructive, raping father or uncle in her mind.
That you weren't a stand-in for the pedophile in her mind.
You absolutely know that 150% for sure, to the point where you're going to get mad at me for asking questions.
You're so absolutely, positively sure, even after you've seen the statistics and you know the odds, you're totally sure that you didn't do that.
Totally sure. No question.
Not even a hint of a doubt.
Not even a hint of a hint of a doubt.
The only thing that you are sure of, other than the fact that you didn't bang a pedophile's victim, the only thing that you are sure of is that I, Steph, should not be sure of anything.
Because, you see, certainty is really bad.
Certainty about a person's character is really bad.
Except if it's certainty that the woman you want to pay to bang was never raped in the past.
Is not there, trembling and frightened, is not there because she ended up on the streets because she was raised by a sadist who raped her.
That you are not exploiting somebody and throwing some bucks on the table and calling it even, but not exploiting the leftovers of somebody else's sexual predation on children!
You're so sure of that.
Because, you see, certainty is only impossible for the people who are questioning your motives.
Certainty is only impossible for the people who say, hey, you know what?
Most prostitutes, if not all prostitutes, can have been raped as children.
And that's how they end up in that situation, right?
Certainty is only impossible for the people who are interested in protecting helpless child women from these sorts of predations.
We can't be certain. Good people can't be certain.
No. People who want to protect the adult victims of child sexual molestation, oh, we can't be certain.
No. No, we have to have nothing but doubt.
But you people who go and prey on these victims, oh, well, you can be certain.
You can be totally certain.
Why would you have any doubts?
See, doubts are only for the good people.
Doubts are only for the people who are interested in protecting the children.
Doubts aren't really there.
Doubts aren't applicable to those who are exploiting the victims of childhood sexual abuse.
You guys aren't supposed to doubt.
There's no doubt for you. There's only doubt for people who are interested in the possible immorality of exploiting the victims of pedophilia.
We're supposed to doubt.
The good guys. The good guys are supposed to doubt.
It's the guys who care and who want to sort of protect people from this sort of stuff.
Or who are interested in protecting people from this sort of stuff.
And who put it pretty mildly.
Who put it pretty mildly.
I don't start off by saying, you guys are exploiting the victims of pedophilia.
I didn't say that. I said, indicates low self-esteem.
Is that a general condemnation?
No, it's not a general condemnation.
Now, it's a general condemnation of my employee punches.
Now it's a general condemnation.
Because I've looked into it, and I've listened, and I've listened, and I've listened, and I've listened, and I've listened, and I've listened, and I've listened.
And I get it now.
I get it, I get it, I get it.
All I can say is, nice try.
Nice try. But it didn't work.
In the court of your own souls, right?
In the court of your own conscience, you know for sure, you cannot in any way, shape, or form guarantee that the women you paid to bang were not victims of prior sexual abuse.
You can't know that for sure.
And the odds are highly, highly, highly, highly against that possibility that they were not victims.
Almost for sure, almost for sure, they were trapped, cowering, frightened, terrified child women, fearing for their lives, fearing for their sanity, fearing for their health, fearing for their bodily integrity, terrified of you, and they conformed.
And you don't care.
Or you do care and you want that.
Because the women only exist to serve your needs.
They don't exist as independent, terrified entities of themselves who end up being thrown up in these situations out of the wreckage of past sexual and physical abuse.
And I get, I can't get to the core of this.
I just, I've tried. Maybe I will someday.
I can't get to the core of this, but I can say this, that you yourself were horribly exploited.
I get that. You yourself were horribly exploited in some manner in your life.
And you were taught that your needs don't matter.
And you don't admit that to yourself, right?
And you're all tough talking about, hey, you know, sometimes I just get horny.
I totally get that your needs were never met and were attacked.
You were attacked for having needs.
I totally get that. I really do.
But the way to solve that is not by going out and exploiting other people.
The fact that you were exploited is a tragedy, and you really should deal with that.
Go to therapy and get a good counselor and deal with it, deal with it, deal with it.
Do not act it out.
I'm telling you this is a peril of your own soul and any possibility that you have for happiness in your life.
You will not ever experience joy or peace of mind or love or happiness or contentment if you continue to go out and exploit others.
And let me say just one other thing, if you don't mind.
I just hit the gym and had dinner with the beloved wife.
And I just sort of wanted to mention one other thing, because I don't know that people have a strong idea of the stakes that are involved.
And I do, with sympathy, talk to people or try to talk to people about how hard it is to look at Our own capacity to exploit others.
And I have gone through this in my own way, where I got involved in some pretty dodgy financial stuff.
And my talents and energies ended up feeding some pretty corrupt people and some pretty corrupt business transactions.
I did end up exploiting people in a kind of roundabout way, and I had to really look at that in myself.
It's the dark side, right?
The capacity for exploitation.
Once you get that, once you sort of, you know, explore your own dark side and recognize that it is your scar tissue, and it is something that you don't want to have dominate your life, and that you have the capacity to do harm, and so on, and we've gone through this before, there is great peace and freedom and strength, and strength on the other side, and, of course, pride.
You know, conquering the worst devils of your nature.
Because I really do feel, and rightly or wrongly, I really do feel that I'm engaged in a wrestling struggle with your soul, with a devil for your soul, with a kind of devil of history and a devil of exploitation and a devil of abuse.
That I know there's a true self in there somewhere that's crying out for this kind of help and That I don't think that you know that this isn't going to come again.
I don't think that you know That this is not going to come again, right?
Life is not an infinite series of options, right?
Life is not, you know, do whatever you want and you can always go back and fix.
And you can always go back and change.
And you can be mean to people and you can get mad at me and you can, you know, whatever, right?
You can fudge stuff and you can hide and you...
Right? Everything you do is a habit for the future.
And, you know, we can all, you know, I... Don't tell the truth.
I will lie very sort of rarely or whatever.
And, you know, I can get testy with Christina and have to apologize.
We can all handle the little things, right?
Like, you can eat a candy bar a week without getting diabetes, and you can have a drink every week without being an alcoholic, and you can do things that, you know, your body can take things, and you don't have to be sort of white and lily pure and all this kind of stuff, right?
But in the larger things, there's not a whole lot of give, right?
There's not a whole lot of give in the larger things.
And you don't have an infinity of time and options and choices and do-overs, right?
You don't get infinite do-overs.
And I pretty much can guarantee you that nobody else is going to fight as hard for you as I am.
And that no one else is going to get in there and confront you on things that you're doing that aren't good.
And that's what your false self is trying to hide from you, right?
That's what your false self...
Your false self is saying, oh, you know, this guy's making us angry.
Get angry at him. He's a jerk.
He's this, right? You've got this devil whispering in your ear, you know?
This guy is a jerk, right?
Yeah, okay, he's right about a whole bunch of other stuff, but on this thing, ah, he's a total jerk.
He doesn't know what the hell he's talking about.
He's insulting you. You've got this devil whispering in your ear.
I can hear it. I totally get it.
He's whispering in my ear, too.
It's just I'm not going to listen to him.
And, you know, every time you listen to that devil, the devil of getting offended and getting angry and stomping around and having a tantrum and insulting people and putting them down and storming around, like, every time you do that, the devil gets a little bigger.
And you say to yourself, well, I'll, you know, like, deep down, you say to yourself, okay, just this once, you know, I'll do it now.
Later, I'll deal with all this.
I'll fix it later. I'll fix myself later.
But... You know, that's exactly what this devil wants you to believe, right?
Later. Later. We'll be better later.
We'll be good people later. We'll be virtuous later.
I'll be brave, strong, curious, and confident later.
I'll listen to the advice of a respected philosopher later.
Well, of course, the devil doesn't want to say no, the devil just wants to say later.
Because if the devil says no, then the devil is revealed, right?
So if you listen to that voice in your ear that makes you angry and makes you lash out and this, and you surrender to it and you just act it out and you don't stop and you don't pause and you don't try and say, well, gee, I wonder why Steph...
Steph hasn't changed his personality, and I've listened to him for 500 podcasts, and yeah, we've had disagreements and so on, but I've never been this angry.
Well, can it be Steph?
What's the variable that's changed?
The variable that's changed is that, you know, we know.
We're going to have to sort of talk about it again, but...
It doesn't mean I'm right. Forget about me being right.
Forget about any of that sort of stuff.
Just be aware that you don't have an infinity of time to be a better person.
You don't have an infinity of time to address your mistakes.
I mean, it's going directly out to Andrew.
You don't have an infinity of time if your brother is somebody who does this and is unapologetic.
You don't have an infinity of time.
Your soul is at risk if you stay with people, if you have people like this in your life who inflame you and get you all angry.
They're causing you to do bad things, causing you to defend this kind of predation upon others.
And support this kind of predation on children.
That's not good company to keep, right?
And you don't have forever, right?
There's a rope coming down the well, right?
And I or whoever is dropping it down at some point in your life, it's me right now, let's say.
Like I'm standing up there saying, climb up the well.
Down there is rodents and sickness.
Climb up the well. And you're yelling up like, what well?
You asshole. You're in a well.
Right? You're a jerk.
And maybe you think that someone else is going to come by.
Maybe you think that someone else has come by.
I saw a movie that my therapist recommended me to see.
A very long film. I can't even remember what it was called now, but in it there's a scene where the guy who's got significant pathology, his therapist says to him, It's time.
You have to get up. His body's in full.
His unconscious is in full revolt, as my therapist said at the time.
And he's got sores all over his body, and he's in a wheelchair, and they can't find anything wrong with him.
It's psychosomatic. And his therapist says, he reaches an insight about his past, and his therapist says, all right, get up, get up, get up.
It's now or never. It's now or never.
And I was really struck by that.
And I talked about that for a session or two with my therapist saying, you know, like, that's amazing to me that it's now or never.
And she said, well, yes, the never is in the past.
The never is already there, right?
He's in there because he thinks he's never going to get better.
So it's now or never. It's either now you change or you continue with the never getting better forever.
And I really want to, I don't want to twist your brain too much, but I really want to get that across to you.
You do not have, right? Life comes down to these choices, these moments, these choices.
Right? Where you go one way or you go another and you don't get to backtrack forever.
You don't get to backtrack forever.
You will probably never have somebody else willing to devote this amount of time to confront you on your capacity to exploit others.
And not from a standpoint of, oh my god, I can't imagine that's so terrible.
Who could ever do that, right? Because I've done it.
Not in this context, in a more financial business context, but I've done it.
I know, I know, I know.
And maybe you think that it's going to be...
Lots of other people are going to come by and try and help you in this way.
Lots of other people are going to come by and invest this time and energy and confront you and go through all of the horrible unpleasantness of confronting people in this area.
Maybe you feel there's just going to be a whole bunch of people doing this for you in your life.
I promise you there's not.
I would be enormously surprised if anybody else were to confront you.
So if you don't change or if you don't at least accept the possibility that you might be wrong at this moment, The chance will not come again.
If I'm willing to push you this far in this area, and I'm not your therapist, I'm not getting paid for this, if I'm willing to confront you and to go through all the difficulties and insults and contempt and problems and fusses and fights and all the stuff that's been going on, if I am willing to do that, Right?
And you're not willing to change.
And no one else is willing to do that.
You will never change.
It really is.
It really is.
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