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April 26, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:26:28
734 Love and fear and women - a listener breaks free!
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Hello everybody, hope you're doing well.
This is a slightly different podcast.
It's sort of a combination of a call-in show and a friendly chat, and it involves a long-time listener and a very generous donator who has some issues in terms of falling in love and some fear of women,
which arises from specific incidents in his past, which we don't really get into this podcast, but I thought that it might be worthwhile, and this listener has very kindly and very generously allowed me to release a private conversation so that the sort of philosophical cross-examination in a positive and I like to think benevolent way is put forward so that you can have some sense of how these conversations might go.
I spend a fair amount of time, of course, interacting with myself and my microphone and a little bit with people on the boards.
But with the boards, there's always a little bit of time pressure because I don't want to spend all the time on one person when there are other people queued to speak.
So I wanted to have the opportunity for you to listen to a philosophical conversation about a particular person And again, thanks so much to a listener for...
Bearing his soul, not just to me, which is of course always a great honor, but to you as well.
And so thank you so much to this gentleman.
One other thing, we do mention another listener, whose name is Nate, who had a breakup, and we talk about that breakup in the context of it being a justification for not pursuing love, to see people who have had a bad breakup.
It is no massive disrespect, of course, to this gentleman.
It is really only brought up as a good example of how Seeing the suffering of others when they fail to achieve something that we want but are also afraid to achieve can also cause us some comfort, but it's not a very positive comfort.
So without further ado, this is the conversation about love and fear and women.
Thank you so much for listening. Yeah, so what was on your mind?
Now, you said that I knew what it was that you were talking about, unless I'm the worst friend on the planet.
I don't. So you may be giving me more credit than I deserve.
Well, and I guess that really wasn't fair either.
I mean, you probably read 500 emails a day or something like that, but...
No, uh...
Um...
Actually, I'm reconsidering having a discussion.
I don't know if anything productive could come out of that.
Out of what?
The truth? Now, there's this podcast series called Free Domain Radio that kind of focuses on the truth that might be worth you listening to.
I've got a real cool laptop which has, you know, about 80% of its storage taken up, but this guy's rambling.
But, you know, I could send it to you.
But, I don't know if...
Do you remember the letter that I sent?
What was that?
Ask a Therapist 3...
Way back at the beginning of November.
Remind me? The one about...
The one about my trouble with women.
Right, right, right, right, right.
Right. Now, where are you in that whole thing?
I mean, as far as that goes, I know that there's always this massive incomprehension on the board when it's like, ah, relationships that are not for me, when you watch everybody else smash up on the highway and you say, I don't actually need to drive anywhere.
So, given that everybody gets smashed up, why bother going?
There still seems to be this, you know, people who just, I don't know if people don't know people who don't date.
I certainly know people who don't date.
Where are you at with that stuff these days?
I think maybe that's why it's not worth the time and trouble having that conversation.
It's all dependent on your desires.
If you could wave a magic wand and get cancer, I wouldn't do it because it's just a uniformly negative thing for me.
But if you could wave a magic wand and have a relationship that was, you know, I guess loving or romantic or sexual, whatever, would you do it, right?
I mean, that's the real question.
Because if it's something that you want, but you don't know if you can get it, or you don't know, or you don't want what everyone else has, then that's one thing.
But if it's just something you don't want at all, like that's the way your life is structured, then I agree that there's not much point.
But if you have doubts about it, then it probably is worth talking about.
Well, I guess the easiest way to answer that question is to say that I didn't have doubts.
Thank you.
Ah, tricky.
Until you heard about how well Nate was doing.
And then you're like, hey, if I could get me some of that mental torture, oh man, that's good stuff.
Actually, Christina predicted that about two and a half months ago.
Well, right, and then in between that, all the turmoil that's going on in that apartment, it's like, jeez, dude.
So, that obviously isn't what made you reconsider.
Was there something else? Well, There are, I mean, when that comes up as a topic, there are times when, I mean, I just get really angry and impatient.
And I... Like this Sunday show, this last Sunday show, I almost dropped out of it because I just couldn't listen anymore.
Yeah, tell me more about that.
I was quite interested in that as a response.
I mean, and you could well be right, but tell me more about what you think.
Or what you thought of that.
Oh, well... I guess what it comes down to is pretty much what I posted, which was...
And I have no idea why that should bother me to the extent that it did, but...
I mean, you start the conversation off...
Presuming a certain starting point.
I guess I'm wondering why that is.
Sorry, what was the starting point that we started off with?
Well, I mean, it was implicit, really, in the fact that you were addressing people's Specific concerns about relationships they were already in, right?
Yeah, for sure, or signs to look for around the next thing that, the next relationship they might get in, for sure.
So the assumption is that that's already an operating principle.
And sorry, what, the fusion thing?
Yeah, all of that. That's what I'm saying is all of that kind of presumes that people are already, that that's already something they're working on.
Right. Oh, I see.
I think I understand what you mean.
Rather than saying, if you doubt about the value of relationships at all, here's some things to think about.
Is that what you mean? Yeah.
Right. Right.
And hearkening back to the beginning of our conversation, I never used to have doubts, but in fact I was pretty certain what I wanted,
but Of course, this whole conversation has a way of unraveling all those certainties.
Right. And so, I guess I was expecting, well, not expecting, but Just wanting the conversation to go in a different direction, I guess. Well, I think you were entirely right about how people were being about the conversation.
I mean, you get all the attention in the world when you're talking about government and economics and all that, right?
Because people can dig into those topics without feeling a personal stake or personal responsibility in it.
But when you start to talk about relationships, people regress, right?
And you can see that going on in the chat window where they just started making goofy sexual jokes and all this kind of stuff.
And of course, what we were talking about on Sunday was much more involved in their personal freedom Than anything to do with the government or this, that or the other, right?
But, and simply because of that, people just got kind of, and where there is real issues around freedom and responsibility and something that you can actually get done.
Then people get kind of goofy, right?
And so, I mean, I certainly felt and understood your irritation with regards to that.
And that, of course, doesn't say a lot.
Though, of course, there's a reason we're tackling this stuff a little bit later on in the series, right?
So people have some ideas down before they get defensive.
But I think that defensiveness was also interesting.
And you picked up on that. I mean, I thought very well.
Right, and I guess I'm not exactly innocent of getting goofy either.
Well, but you had the grace to get irritated about the goofiness, right?
I don't think other people even really notice it.
I don't know if I would have described that as grace.
No, it is. It's a good thing.
Irritation is a very important part of, for me at least, it's a very important part of personal growth, right?
Yeah, I guess that's true.
So when it comes to thinking about sort of a romantic relationship, what is it that makes it, I guess, even remotely appealing?
Do you want kids or is it the sort of companionship or the physical intimacy or what is it that works for you or that entices you in that area or is interesting to you?
Well, I guess...
I guess the companionship element of it.
Right. Like a sort of permanent built-in best friend kind of thing?
Well, I guess you could put it that way.
How would you put it?
Well... I don't know how I would put it.
Well, but it's important because, I mean, you can get great stuff from friends, right?
I mean, you can get great stuff from friends who live with you and so on.
But as far as romantic relationships go, there's difference, right?
So if it's sort of the best friend aspect that works for you, then you can get that without the romantic side of things.
But if it's a family or a sexual relationship or whatever, if that's an important aspect for you or something that would be an enticement, I guess, then that's a different kind of thing.
And see, that's when I start getting kind of mixed up because...
I think that that would work just fine, you know, the best friend angle of it, and that that would be sufficient, right?
Right, without sort of the romantic relationship.
Right, I mean, I could live without that.
Right, for sure. I mean, we all can, right?
It's not like food or water. Right.
Exactly. But it's an enticement, right?
I would say, for a lot of people, and this is where it's important just to know what your heart wants, right?
It doesn't mean that you have to go and get it, but it's important that you know what your heart wants, right?
So if you don't get it, at least it's a choice, right?
But is that sort of the whole package kind of thing where you get the love, the companionship, the physical affection?
Because, I mean, sex is just a subset of the physical affection, right?
The cuddling or whatever, the hugging.
And if that's something that you like, right, then that's not something you're going to get with a roommate very easily, at least without a fair amount of slapping and comments.
But if the whole package thing is of interest to you, then the only thing to know is, is it something that you want?
And if it's not something that you want, like, is it something you want regardless of the risks or the costs associated with it, right?
So if you want to See, that's just it.
I don't know if I want it or not And And And And And it's happening again And this is why I didn't want to talk about it Because I'm getting tense And angry Excellent! Excellent!
That means that we're on to something.
That's good stuff. I don't know why.
Why you're getting tense and angry?
Because, I mean, I would guess...
It's not like you're saying anything aggravating, you know?
Well, sure I am. Sure I am, because you're saying, I don't know if I want something, and I know that you do want something, right?
I mean, and whether you're getting that unconsciously or not, that's where I'm leading you, right?
I mean, rightly or wrongly, I don't want to be manipulative or anything.
But without a doubt, you feel ambivalent about this, right?
I mean, nobody can look at the possibility of a deep, passionate, loving, companionship, friendship, sexual relationship and say, no, that's not for me.
I mean, if I could wave a wand, so to speak, and get that for you, you wouldn't say, Steph, you bastard.
What have you done to me?
I mean, you wouldn't, right?
I mean, you may say that there's lots of risks associated with getting that and people do bad or wrong things or whatever in that and it doesn't work or whatever.
But if it is possible, then it is something that you would want.
I mean, who wouldn't, right?
I mean, it's a good thing.
So, I mean, that's probably why you're getting irritated because I'm guessing that you do want that, but you don't feel that it's possible.
And, of course, there's many good reasons looking around the world as to realize that, you know, trying to find love can be like trying to save for your retirement by playing the lottery, right?
Like, yeah, I guess it happens to one in a million, but it's not something you should really plan on.
And you can torture yourself thinking that you can, right?
Right, right, exactly.
Right, so you do want it, but you just don't believe that you can get it, or that it's possible, or that the risk is valuable, right?
Like, it would be very exhilarating to throw yourself off a plane, and I guess it's possible that you would land, bounce off a haystack into a snowbank and survive, but you're still not going to jump out of a plane, right?
Right, I suppose.
So the annoying thing about this conversation, and I don't know if it's Christina's fault, most of these things are, but I don't know if it's something that you're saying, well, it is possible, right?
I mean, I certainly think that Christina and I have a good marriage.
So if you accept that it is possible, then that's kind of annoying, right?
Oh, I see what you're saying.
Like it's easier if it's not possible, right?
So you're sort of just being who you are is kind of implying to me that my presumption is wrong.
Well, or that the odds...
I mean, I don't think that you ever said all love...
I mean, I don't know, maybe you did.
I don't think you ever said all love is a lie and it's all impossible and so on.
But... No, no, no.
Certainly, the odds probably may have changed for you a little bit.
Seeing a sort of positive relationship in action, the odds may have changed for you a little bit.
And without a doubt, that's really annoying.
I mean, for sure. Because it's like I had reconciled myself to this.
You know, it's like if you can live with a terminal disease and then somebody says, no, there's a cure.
Well, that's kind of annoying in a way, right?
When you've reconciled yourself to a particular condition and then it's like, oh, really?
Like, I have to re-examine this again and don't tell me I've got to get hope up and all this kind of stuff, right?
And that's, you know, that's annoying.
At least I can totally see how that could be.
Right, and the corollary of that was the sort of sick pleasure...
I guess, in watching Nate go down in flames.
Sure, absolutely, because that's a relief, right?
That's a relief, like...
It's a validation.
Sure, sure, absolutely.
I mean, it's not cruel or anything.
I mean, it's actually... It's a kindness to yourself, in a sense, right?
Where you say, oh, gosh, like, I don't...
I really don't want to have to go down that road, for sure.
And now that I've seen somebody else flying out, it's like, great, now I can retreat back into my home at Crab Shell and not worry about going out there, because there's nothing but bombs and shells and landmines out there, so...
You know, although I may have fantasies of traipsing through the woods, that isn't what's actually going to happen.
What's actually going to happen is I'm going to get my ass kicked like everyone else who goes out into the love arena.
But yeah, for sure. I mean, then it's like, okay, so somebody else jumped out of the plane and went splat on the pavement, so now I don't have to, right?
But when someone jumps out of the plane and flies, that's really annoying because then it's like, oh, really?
That's possible? Damn it.
I've got to reevaluate this again?
But let me find some other people who've splattered so I can go to the back of the plane and not think about flying.
Right, right. And that's not really fair to Nate, either.
In what way? Well, I mean...
You know, because...
It'd be like laughing at a best friend who's just gotten into a car crash, right?
Yeah. Well, I don't think, I mean, I know what you're saying, and I certainly do understand that.
But the fact of the matter is that Nate totally went against the advice of anybody who had anything, any sort of smarts about stuff.
I mean, I think Christina told them directly.
I can't remember if it was private or not.
Like, you just got out of a relationship, don't get into another relationship.
Like, you need to process the mistakes so you don't just sort of go plowing along and just have another smash, right?
So it's the difference between somebody who gets into a car crash and somebody who's drunk driving and ends up in a car crash, right?
And it's not like he hasn't listened to 700 podcasts about integrity and virtue and value and relationships and this and that and the other.
Right, and see, that's something that, I mean, really concerns me.
Oh, and he just defooded.
So, I mean, there's a hell of a lot to process.
But he's got an insecurity about his value, and he associates his value with sexuality, right?
With being sexually attractive.
So he goes for these younger women that, you know, basically don't throw their ass from a hole in the ground.
Not because they're dumb, it's just, you know, they're just 10 years younger than he is, right?
And not as knowledgeable.
You know, I mean, who knows, right?
I mean, like, I'm dumb relative to who I'll be at 50, I hope.
But, you know, he went into that against any decent advice, against anybody who knows everything, anything about relationships.
So, yeah, it's like, don't drive drunk, don't drive drunk, don't drive drunk.
He goes and drives drunk and says that he's having a great time and, you know, and then gets in the smash-up.
It's just a lesson he's going to, I hope he doesn't have to learn it too many more times, but, and it's just, it takes a while for people to integrate the philosophy into how they're actually living, right?
In a way, though, it scares me from the point of view that you start getting yourself mixed up in somebody else's life to that level, and then all of a sudden you can't remember what your own values are.
Right, and that's one of the reasons why in the show we talked about warning signs Before you get into the relationship, so that you can avoid this kind of problem, at least to some degree, right?
So that's why we talked about, here's what to look for before you end up getting involved with someone, so that you don't get enmeshed with someone and then find out that they're crazy as, you know, bad gurus.
Right. So...
So then...
What exactly is the process?
Of sort of trying to evaluate someone?
Yeah.
I mean, you can't exactly hand them a question here.
Love Smart.
I mean, Dr. Phil is not bad on this kind of stuff, and it may be worth, he's got a book called Love Smart, which is about how you can talk about values in a non-obtrusive way with somebody before you get involved with them to make sure that there's a compatibility kind of stuff.
But I mean, the first thing that I would do is, I mean, you've got lots of hobbies, and some of them will involve women, and if you sort of go, I don't know, like badminton or something, whatever it is, right?
Then at least there's someone there who likes badminton and that means some stuff about them that may be sort of helpful or important.
And so there's just ways of being able to get involved with people who can have at least some shared values, like they're sporty, they're outdoorsy, they're whatever.
Whatever it is that's going to be similar to what it is that you do.
There's that kind of stuff where you've at least got some sort of – they've played in teams before.
They have some social skills.
I mean, that's one of the reasons why sports is not a bad way to meet someone because at least you're not dealing with somebody who's a complete goth loner or whatever.
and so there's just ways to do it from that standpoint But it's tough, you know, when you're cutting edge, it's very tough to find the right people.
And certainly the weird thing is that if you're looking for someone, you don't find them.
I mean, I don't know if that's true or that's just what it feels like, but that doesn't seem...
Certainly the online dating, I think, is pretty much a disaster.
A good way to meet people is through hobbies, through joining clubs or groups.
Maybe you've always wanted to try learning how to cook Thai food or something like that.
And maybe that would be something that you would do and then just chat with someone there.
I can certainly tell you from experience, when you're not looking, you don't find somebody.
For sure, yeah. No, for sure.
But, I mean, if you're out there consciously looking, you know, like every waking moment is, you know, I'm looking for someone to have my children.
That's sort of a bit of the – and not to pick on Nate, but, I mean, he's just the most recent example of someone who, for instance, is – It's like, I must settle down.
I must breathe. I have no time left.
I'm not getting any younger.
And my penis is lonely.
So, I mean, if you're on that sort of approach, then the problem is your standards are too low.
If you're not looking at all, then you're not going to find anyone for sure.
But you can put yourself in sort of situations where you meet people.
Let's go to parties or Or you go to a sports event or take a cooking class or a photography class or whatever it is that is of interest to you.
And that can be very positive and very helpful.
And then just be receptive and curious in the same way that we try to be philosophically with regards to somebody who may be of interest to you.
That's all. I mean, with the recognition that finding somebody who's obviously exactly the same is not going to happen.
I mean, certainly. Before all of that, it's all just a matter of intention.
If you say, I'm going to go out into the world and try and find someone to go out with so that I can prove to myself that love is possible, then nobody's going to want to sign up for that kind of experimentation.
That's not going to be particularly pleasant.
But if you say, love is possible, and I'm going to go out there and see if I can get me some, then I think that's quite different.
That's quite different. And then it's more of an invitation for somebody else, if that sort of makes any sense.
And that, I think, is sort of different.
And that's why I sort of said the first thing you have to do is figure out what you want.
And that's true in life in general.
You figure out what you want. The destination is all.
And then you can figure out sort of how it is that you want to get there.
But the first thing you have to do is figure out what it is that you want.
Yeah, what do I want?
And you can get it.
I mean, I know that it seems like a million miles away sometimes, but you can definitely get it.
I mean, if you sort of, it's like anything in life.
You sort of have a plan, apply yourself, figure out what it is that you want, how to get there, you know, read up on it and all that kind of stuff.
I mean, you just, you can absolutely get it.
If you want it, you can get it.
And I think that's the big hump.
Because you don't want to end up saying, well, I'm not going to go for love because love is an illusion and this and that.
And then you sort of find out later in life that you were just insecure and you didn't think that you could get it.
And therefore you said, well, you know, that sort of sour grapes thing.
Who wants those sour grapes anyway, right?
But if you say that you want it and you give it your best and honest shot, then if you don't get it, you at least won't have any regrets because you won't sort of have not tried.
I mean, for me, the worst thing is always not trying.
And I mean, I've failed at so many damn things in my life.
It's ridiculous. But I've never regretted the trying, I think.
And I don't think there's anything I've wanted to try that I didn't try and just happened to fail most of it.
I think that's kind of where...
That's kind of where I'm at right now.
I've cleaned the whole whiteboard off and I've started over from scratch.
In what sense? I guess figuring out exactly what the hell it is I want to do with the rest of my life.
Right, right. And the great thing about this blank slate is you absolutely can write anything that you wanted there in terms of your goals, right?
I mean, if you want to say, in two years or three years, I want to have a wife and kids, I mean, who knows whether you'll get them or not.
But if that is your goal, that's going to help you to organize what it is that you do and where it is that you go and your sort of priorities.
The deadline doesn't matter.
It's the goal that matters.
Well, you're right, but if you say at some point in the future, then it tends not to prioritize anything for you, right?
Like, we tend to get our taxes done because there's a deadline, right?
Right. Yeah, that's true.
Like, there's a thing that Dr.
Phil says. He says it's kind of cheesy, but I think it's kind of true.
He calls it project status, right?
So he says, if we say, you know, it'd be great if we painted the house one day.
It's like, yeah, that would be great.
Hey, what's on TV? But if you say, we're going to paint the house today, you go get the paints, you go get the brushes, you do this, then it's, you know, it's project status.
It's like, it's on, it's on the go, it's on the move, right?
But if it's just, if there's no, if there's no sort of, and it doesn't have to be three years, it could be three days, whatever it is, but, because, you know, you can get those mail-order brides from Uzbekistan, I think, is hard these days.
But it is a little bit more than, you know, at some point it would be nice if.
Also, you know, neither of us are spring chickens, so it's not like you're 18 saying, you know, it'd be nice if someday, right?
So you don't want to be like the 70-year-old Anthony Quinn dad, right?
So... So, I mean, but the first thing is to say, you know, if I could have it, would I want it?
And if I could have it, would I want it relative to other things, right?
Because there's no doubt that having a marriage and having kids eliminates a whole bunch of other things, right?
Everything in life is a trade-off, right?
So, if someone were to say to you, well, you can have a wife and kids, but you could never travel, or whatever it is, right?
Knowing that there's all these different kind of options available in life, the important thing is to know whether you want it or don't want it, and then the second thing is to say...
Do I want it relative to the other things I could have if I didn't have this, right?
Like I want a million bucks, but I don't want to work 80 hours a week for five years.
Alright. But the first thing is to know whether you want it or not and then prioritize it relative to other things and so on.
And then, you know, really go for it.
And I know that sounds like a weird thing.
It's like, go get that bride and children or whatever, right?
But, you know, really say that this is an important thing for me.
This is something that I've decided is important in my life.
And maybe three days from now, you sort of go, you know what, this totally sucks, right?
Like I was enthusiastic about this job and then two months into it, I was like, hmm, I don't know about this.
So, you know, there's no problem changing your mind, but, you know, the first and key thing is to figure out what you want and then aim at that thing.
And you can always change your mind, but don't change your mind because you suddenly feel like you're not good enough to have love or, you know, all my childhood was too bad to have love.
Because, I mean, of course, that just means that the bad people win, right?
You end up broken and that's no good.
Right. Well, how do you know?
What you want. Well, the irritation is the key.
The irritation tells you all that you need to know.
Really? Oh, yeah.
In my mind, again, you can tell me what you think, but in my mind, the irritation is everything that you need to know about this issue.
So you're saying I only get irritated because really that's something I want, but I'm resisting it?
Is that what you're saying?
Or... Well, yeah, sure.
I mean, the irritation comes from, like, if I desperately wanted to take a submarine ride, but I was afraid that I was going to get claustrophobia and freak out, I mean, if I had that kind of ambivalent conflict, I could desperately want to do something, but I'm totally terrified that I'm going to freak out and, I don't know, run like a fool, bang my head on a bulkhead and die, or whatever.
I'm going to live my life like submarines don't exist, because I don't want to confront that anxiety.
But then when someone calls up and says, listen, dude, I'm going to pick you up Monday morning at 9 o'clock, and we're going to visit the Titanic on a tiny little submarine.
How are you going to feel? Probably terrified.
Right. You're going to feel irritated because this time pressure, you want to do it, but you're not ready for it, and you haven't been preparing for it, and you desperately want it, but you're desperately afraid that it's going to I'm going to end up horribly abusing children and then running around in my house and hitting my head on a bulkhead and dying or something like that.
So for sure there's a great deal of desire because otherwise there'd be no irritation.
I actually would not want to go on a sub to visit Titanic.
So if somebody says, hey, you want to come on the sub to go and visit Titanic?
I'm like, no thanks. There's no tension, right?
There's no irritation in that.
Oh, I see. I see.
That makes sense. That makes perfect sense.
So, yeah, I mean, of course you desperately want it.
And the other thing that I would say is that you know you can have it, because otherwise there wouldn't be irritation.
If some crazy guy comes and says, strap on these wings, let's fly to the top of Mount Everest, I don't feel a lot of tension or irritation about it, because it's impossible.
And if you genuinely either did not believe in love or genuinely did not believe that you could achieve it or were worthy of it, there'd be no tension with you in that area.
Any more than there would be if somebody said, hey, let's go sign up to go to Iraq.
You'd be like, no. Like, no.
I mean, I have no desire to.
In fact, it would be the worst thing ever.
I don't feel any stress and tension about it because there's just no way that I would want to do it.
And you think that's all conscious, or is that a conflict between conscious and subconscious?
Well, I think that there's a surge of desire for you to achieve love, to have love, to have that in your life, romantic love.
There's a surge of desire, and like a hand reaching from the grave, you pour more dirt on it, because there's fear.
So, the irritation is like, what, dammit, can't you vampire how many stakes through the heart does it take to kill this dream, right?
But the dream can't be killed because the dream is something that you really want.
Right, and every time I listen to one of your podcasts, I'm putting a shovel in the ground.
Well, yeah, I mean, the hand is coming up, right?
The true self, you want to be loved, right?
I mean, who wouldn't? Who wouldn't?
You want to be loved, you want to have a permanent best friend, whether it's someone you have kids with or not, but you want to have a companion, you want to have someone with you when you grow old, and you want to live through that primal and joyful human experience of being passionately and totally in love with someone.
I mean, who would say no to that, right?
A million bucks comes with complications, and love occasionally does too, but for the most part it's just joy, right?
And so who wouldn't want that?
Right. That wouldn't make any sense, would it?
Yeah, I mean, that, so for sure you want it, and the closer we are to achieving something that we can have, but we're afraid of, the more tension we get, right?
So the fact that you're feeling more irritated and more stressful is, that's why I said that's good, right?
I said at the very beginning that that's excellent, right?
Because if you genuinely did not believe that it could happen for you, or that you deserved it, or that it was possible, you wouldn't feel any of that.
And I think on another level, not that I don't feel worthy,
but I feel, I don't know, How to put it...
I feel a kind of sense of...
like like it's not something I should want right And by asserting it, I'm indulging in a guilty pleasure.
You mean, like, love is crack or, you know, bathroom's full of masturbation or something?
Or both! I don't know, right?
Well, kind of like that, I guess.
Right. I don't know.
Like, it's not something you're allowed to think, you know?
You're not allowed to think that you want love.
Right. And why are you not allowed to...
Sorry, go ahead. I was just going to say...
It's one of the reasons why I have so much trouble, I mean, even saying the word.
I love you, mate. Now, why is it that you're not allowed to think of that?
Are other people in your family allowed to think of that, or is this a general family thing, like we just don't use the L word?
You know, I... I don't know, I just...
I don't know why I feel like that.
Did someone tell you that you weren't allowed to think of this or to have this?
Well, not that I can remember anyway.
So was it a decision that you made for yourself?
Well, I think to a certain degree that's true.
I just decided when I was, I don't know, maybe 15 or 16 or 17, something like that, that I didn't tell myself explicitly, but I just assumed from my experiences that it was just something that I wasn't going to be allowed to have.
Right, right, right.
Right. And so, arguing against that now is kind of like arguing with myself, I guess.
I don't know. Well, I mean, that's assuming that you're not right relative to who you were and where you were in your life when you made that decision, right?
Right. Let's just say that you were young.
Puberty is probably the time where it first began to arise for you as an urgent physical issue, as it did for all of us, right?
So, at the age of 12 or 13 or 14 or whatever...
You said to yourself that love is not for me, right?
And of course, given the way that most relationships go at the age of 14 to 80 for most people, right?
It was a perfectly rational and sensible decision, I think.
Right? Right.
I mean, you wouldn't go back and give yourself advice to the contrary and say, yeah, get involved with somebody who...
You know, maybe a complete mess and this and that, right?
You probably wouldn't say, go date and whatever, right?
Because, I mean, that can just cause even more messes, right?
And also you would say that, look, given where you are with your family history, given where you are in terms of your intelligence and your sensitivity relative to...
To everyone around you, who are you going to date?
Would you sort of go back through your junior high school yearbook and say, you know, that woman was a real...
That girl was a real cat.
She would have been great for me. There probably wasn't anyone like that, because if there was, you would have befriended them, and that would have taken you somewhere, right?
No. Yeah, it was...
I think that I could describe my experiences as a complete disaster.
Yeah, slim pickings, total mess.
And, of course, you had to preserve your self-esteem, which meant don't get involved in, like, ghastly...
I mean, you were hanging by a thread, right, as we all were in those days, right?
You were hanging by a thread.
I mean, you were born a very intelligent and sensitive human being into a brutal and indifferent family Who, you know, mocked and derided everything you did.
I mean, we didn't have a lot of resources to go chasing women all over hell's half acre, right?
So, and of course, it may have been additional humiliation.
And we recognized that we did not have the emotional skills to have positive and productive relationships.
And we sure as hell knew that it was very unlikely that anyone who was a 13-year-old girl could teach us those emotional skills, or 15 or 17 or whatever, right?
That wasn't going to happen.
You know, if we need to know how to apply blush and put on tight pants, we're fine.
But if we need to know how to sort of mature and have productive relationships, they're not going to be able to help us, right?
I mean, you couldn't even talk to them.
Right. Right, because they were mostly silly little things, right?
A disaster.
I mean, it was a complete disaster.
It was not good.
It was not good. Wait, let me just see if I can read between the lines.
Not good. That's what I'm getting?
How's that? I'm working on my psychic abilities.
Well... So... Sorry, go ahead.
No, forget it. No examples.
Forget it. Yeah, so, I mean, this...
I'm not sure how it is that you were wrong.
Right, so why should that change now?
Why should that change?
Because you're not 13 anymore.
Because you're really and totally not 13 anymore.
But why is that relevant?
Why is that relevant?
Because you have learned an enormous amount more about yourself.
You've learned that one of the main reasons that you were rejected was for your virtues.
So to continue to self-reject, you know that you were rejected for your virtues.
You weren't rejected because...
You were some bunny strangler, right?
You weren't rejected because you had all of these horrible vices and you were totally mean and you, you know, like, trot on kittens or whatever, right?
You weren't rejected by your family and by those around you because you were a bad guy.
Right? Or a weak guy, or whatever it is you want to do.
You were rejected because you were a smart and sensitive guy, right?
And you were born into a particularly brutal tribe, right?
I always think for some reason of your comment that your dad would make you do these endless, stupid chores.
Right? It just went on forever and ever and ever and ever and ever, right?
Yeah, that was his favorite hobby.
Right. Right. And that totally sucks.
He does that to himself.
Yeah, I imagine.
I imagine. It's kind of creepy.
Right. I spent an entire summer once literally just sorting coffee cans full of nails and screws.
Really? Yeah.
I mean, I did that when I worked in a hardware store, but I just got paid for it, right?
So, I mean, this is totalitarian fundamentally.
I mean, this is like everybody's description of every totalitarian regime on the planet.
It's about, oh my God, did we ever have all of these endless stupid things to do?
Right. This make work stuff.
This is the day in the life of Alexandra Solzhenitsyn, right?
It's just all this nonsense bullshit stuff that you've got to do for no reason, right?
Build a fence and then tear it down.
Dig a hole and then fill it in.
No reason, right? So you were rejected by your family, by the girls and so on because you had value, right?
It's like if, I don't know, like to take a silly example.
If Britney Spears won't go out with you, Then you think, oh man, you know, that sucks because she's cute or whatever, right?
So I guess I'm going to lose her.
Whoever it is, right?
Whoever it is. Could be anyone.
Reese Witherspoon. I don't know.
Whoever it is that you find attractive.
Let's just say Britney Spears for the fun of it, right?
So Britney Spears won't go out with you and you say, oh man, that totally sucks because Britney Spears is this ultimate hottie or whatever, right?
And then, who does she get married to, right?
Right, Kevin Fenderhead, or whatever his name is, right?
And then it's like, okay, so you threw me up for this guy?
And so this is the important thing.
Who rejects us?
I mean, it's painful and all that, but then we have to look at who they accept, right?
Who do they want?
I'm no French chef, but I can smell rotten tomatoes.
Right, but it still hurts to be rejected, right?
But at some point we have to, and this is what you can do now that you're older, is you can judge the people who rejected you based on all of the evidence that you have, right?
All the science, right? Scientific evidence.
We're always trying to make sure that we don't get stuck in prejudice, but we're always going back to the evidence, right?
So, you know, the people who rejected you, right?
Let's just say, right, the girls who rejected you, did they reject you because they were waiting for a true moral hero and you just didn't cut it?
No, I bet you they married a bunch of total fender heads, right?
You know what?
It just occurred to me that to assert that I am implicitly condemning pretty much the rest of my family.
Based on who they married?
Oh my god. Yeah, I mean, who did they marry?
Who was their highest value?
They married women very much like my own mother.
Right, who is stone evil and abused children, right?
And this is exactly what their wives are going to do, probably to a more subtle degree, because you have to hide it more than you used to.
Yeah. But this is who they married, right?
These are the people who rejected you, right?
If you get rejected by someone For me, this is the only thing that kept me going during like 20 years of having my writing rejected was My writing would get rejected, and then I'd go to the publisher and say, well, who is it that you really like as a writer?
And they'd say, oh, this guy.
And I'd go and buy the book, or they'd give me a copy of the book, and I'd go, this stuff is horrible.
Like, I mean, it's well-written. Usually it's well-written, but the content of it is vile.
It's always about the ugliest sides of human nature and brutality and alienation and whatever, right?
Everybody's dysfunctional and blah, blah, blah.
That's one of the reasons why I can't stand reading modern fiction.
Oh yeah, no, you can't pay me enough to read a modern fiction book.
And so this is who they want, right?
Of course they don't want me, because they want this shit.
Which is good. I mean, if they said, we love your stuff, Steph, this is the best stuff ever, and we also love this guy's, and this guy's stuff was, like, horrible, like, morally horrible, I don't mean artistically, whatever, right?
Then it would be like, ew, like, this is a club I don't want to be in, right?
No doubt, no doubt.
So, looking around, you don't want to, you know, having faced a life of constant rejection, as we all have, You don't want to look at that and say, well, the people who've rejected me rejected me for good reason because they're good people.
Because I didn't cut it as far as their high standards went.
Right, because then you're condemning yourself.
Yeah, and there's no... I mean, you can do that if there's good evidence for that, right?
And then you can change, right?
Right. But if you look at the relationships that people have, it's not like the women who rejected you went on to have these great relationships with these Howard Rockian heroes.
And it wasn't like the family that condemned you and the brothers who condemned you and rejected you and scorned you.
It wasn't like they went on to have these great, noble, wonderful relationships and you just couldn't cut it.
They admired all this crap, so to be rejected by them is kind of like a badge of honor.
That's why I say you don't want to make the decisions based on the environment that you had when you were 13.
Yeah, that makes sense.
That's the torture, and that's why you feel this frustration, because you know that your knowledge has expanded, your circumstances have changed.
You now understand why, or at least you have the capacity to understand why you were rejected, because of your virtues.
And we know that virtue was required for love, right?
Sure, sure. So you were rejected because you had the capacity for love, but then you ended up rejecting love.
Well, why do you suppose...
Is that because there was no other target?
Or... What do you mean?
I mean, why would I do that?
Right? Well, what was the alternative?
With no evidence, with a uniform message coming from every direction, With dependence upon your entire family structure, your school structure, your church structure, your community structure, your extended family structure, would it have been rational to oppose all of that and call it sane?
With no evidence.
Without philosophy, without empirical evidence.
Now you have philosophy and empirical evidence, right?
I see what you're saying.
What was the alternative?
It made more sense back then, minus any other...
Marker posts, it made more sense.
And given your dependence, right? Primarily given your dependence, which until you defood was significant up until your 30s, right?
Yeah. Yeah, that's true.
That is true. So it made more sense to reject the abstract ideal since I had no idea what it was or how to identify it than to reject the material reality around me.
Yeah, I mean, look at the cost-benefit analysis, right?
You would have had to...
First of all, you couldn't stomach much more humiliation, right?
I mean, that's just... We only have a certain amount of stomach for that, right?
You can't go on forever. So you would be setting yourself up in opposition to your entire community, your entire family, and, of course, what would everyone say?
They'd say, oh, yeah, Greg's just all defensive because he can't get a date.
Oh, he's just so high and mighty just because he can't get a date, so now nobody should date and everybody's bad.
All that would have happened is that you would have been further humiliated if you had not taken the stand that you took.
So in the absence of any evidence, in a uniformity of message coming from those around you, and with the fact that you couldn't stomach much more humiliation, it would have been self-destructive and masochistic to do it, and that if you had come up with this philosophy at that time without all the evidence...
You would have been mercilessly attacked and humiliated.
I would have done exactly the same thing.
Who wouldn't? That's the only rational course of action, I think.
I've had those things said to me before, too.
Oh, and you will again, for sure.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
And that's just natural.
It's just people who can't think, just attack, right?
They just try and humiliate, right?
Right. When your own father tells you that, then you know it's pretty much over, you know?
Right. You know it's over, but of course, the empirical evidence which you can process now is, look at the witch he married.
Is this the guy that you want to tell you that you're not going to get a great woman or whatever?
So your definition of a great woman is mom?
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Could I ask for any better verdict from you than to say you're not going to get someone like mom?
Well, actually, thinking of it that way, that's kind of a relief.
You mean I don't get someone like dad or like mom?
Or I don't get someone like the women that your brother's married?
That's the standard they have, right?
You don't have to have their standard anymore.
And that's kind of the position I had taken up in my 20s and 30s, which was essentially, look, if that's what love is, then fuck it, I'm not interested.
Right, and that is exactly right.
And that prevented you From, and this is when I, you know, when I say that you're very smart and very sensitive and that you know all of this stuff deep down, and this is all just preventative strategies, this prevented you from getting involved with a woman and having kids with a woman and maybe not being a very good father.
Oh man, that would have been a disaster.
Oh my god, better that you should not live than you should harm a child, right?
Exactly. Right, so what you did was entirely sensible.
It was entirely the right thing to do.
And now you can, you know, with the weight of maturity and the weight of evidence and all of the understanding that you have innately and that you've also developed in these and other conversations, you can make a decision for yourself based on the evidence rather than reacting to the power that other people have over you.
Because by defooming, they don't have that power over you.
You can make a decision, you can make mistakes without people giggling over your shoulder, right?
And I guess that kind of explains the cynicism, too.
What do you mean? Well, you know, I stumble on, you know, your podcast, the boards and all that, and you're prattling on about how fantastically, wonderfully joyous life is, and I'm going, oh yeah, right.
Yeah, he's heading for a fall.
I'm going to wait for the screech of tires and the thud of impact, right?
For sure, for sure.
And that is, I mean, that is a very natural reaction to something that you want.
If somebody says to me, I've decided to go and move to Morocco and become a Muslim fanatic, I don't feel a lot of envy there, and I don't feel any, because it's not something I want to do, right?
There's no complexity in me.
There's no unfulfilled yearning in me with regards to that.
Because, I mean, I have no desire.
I might think they're an idiot, but I'm not going to feel like it's not going to have any big strong effect on me because I have no investment or desire in it.
Now, if, on the other hand, I had sort of always felt that I could be a good speaker and do some good in the world, and then a friend of mine said, I'm running this podcast and talking about ethics and this and that or the other, then, to me, that would cause a great deal of stress in me.
If I was terrified of doing it, thought I could do it, and that would be a good thing to do, then, as soon as I found out that somebody was doing it, that would be an implicit demand upon me.
Not quite demand.
But it would be your...
It would be a test of your own resolve, right?
Yeah, it would certainly...
It would move something into the possible that I was constantly saying was impossible.
And once it was moved into the possible, there would be an implicit...
I would either have to act on it or give up on my desire.
Because to have a desire that you don't act on is kind of like a torture, right?
Right. And that explains the doubt.
The? The doubt.
That explains the doubt.
The podcast is testing my resolve, my conscious resolve, Where a subconscious desire has always been there.
Yeah, and there is no doubt in you deep down, otherwise there would be no...
I mean, deep down you know that you're the only one in your family capable of love.
Like, deep down you know that you're the only one in your family capable of love.
Now what I meant by doubt though was like at the beginning where you were asking, you know, is this something that I want?
and I Or, you know, that I didn't want, right?
And I said that I was certain until, right?
Oh, I see, I see, I see, I see.
Right, right, right, right, right. That makes sense.
Sorry, yeah, I jumped in. Got it.
No, no, no, no problem. I didn't mean to yell.
No, no problem, no problem at all.
No problem at all. So...
So I guess the question becomes, when is it the right time to make a project out of this?
Is it too soon?
Well, the first thing that I would accept is that you've had a yearning for this.
That has sort of been mocked and derided and this and that and the other.
You have a yearning for this, that you want this, and that you can have it and that you deserve it, of course, right?
And you earn it through virtue.
And you're totally committed to this process, right?
And that's the requirement.
You don't get love without that.
So the first thing to recognize and to explore, in my humble opinion, is just, I do want this.
I do want this.
And then look at the history of rejecting the want for this and learn to understand why, right?
Because what you don't want to do, right?
This is in training for the Olympics, right?
What you don't want to do is to find that you find someone, you're attracted to someone, you enjoy chatting with that person, but then the dark and ugly waves of cynicism roll over you in this black and oily wave and kill your spontaneity and your joy in the process.
So you want to make sure that you deal with the cynicism as scar tissue and work it out so that your heart can be open.
Like most of us who face this kind of rejection in your life, you can be a bit trick-or-happy in terms of closing your heart or the cynicism can undermine you or the self-doubt can undermine you.
So I would focus on that sort of process and that sort of history.
And for God's sake, get a better therapist.
And that means that then when you do find the person, that you won't end up with this, you know, horrible self-fulfilling prophecy thing where what happens is you say, well, love is impossible, right? And then that feeling evokes all of this darkness and cynicism within you.
And then... Guess what, right?
Love turns out to be sort of impossible, but it's the belief that makes it so.
It's not objective. I could never get a PhD, so I'm not even going to apply.
Well, you know, it kind of makes it so.
Yeah, that makes sense.
I mean, desire is a funny thing.
Desire does an enormous amount of good.
Fundamentally, it's not up to you, right?
I mean, the actions of your heart are not under your control.
They're not under anyone's control.
And so you don't have any control over it.
And this is the hard thing for philosophers to get, right?
Because it's annoying.
But you know everything that you need to know in order to get...
To get what you need.
There's no doubt that you can get exactly what you need to get from all of this.
And it's in your heart, right?
The important thing to understand is your heart got you all the way through this, right?
Your instincts got you all the way through this.
And that is...
If they did all of that...
I wouldn't try and second-guess them.
This isn't really around letting control in a lot of ways, learning about your history, learning to undo your defenses, but your heart is going to get you there.
Your gut, your instincts, all of that, it got you this far intact with the capacity for this change, for this growth.
You can't do better than that, right?
Because if you'd have made the decisions consciously in the past, you had to kind of be manipulated by your true self through fear and defenses and frustration and irritation and so on, right?
But you got exactly where you needed to get to.
You didn't screw up.
By getting involved in a woman and a family, or you didn't end up heaping so much scorn on yourself that you gave up on any kind of human interaction, which can certainly happen, right?
So you walked this incredible fine line where you got to a point in your life, right?
Came close to that a couple times, but never quite crossed it.
For sure, but you were saved by yourself, right?
And your true self, and it's that...
Aspect of yourself that you need to, I think, learn to rely on.
And it's not the easiest, but dying to help you, right?
I mean, the true self is dying to help you, to give you everything that you want, right?
And that is something.
So the how do I do it and that kind of thing, certainly, you know, learn to figure out the patterns that got you here and learn to recognize that it is something.
Keep reminding yourself that it's something that you want, right?
I do things as cheesy as stick a post-it on the mirror when I go to shave in the morning, right?
Like, I want X. I want Free Domain Radio to be really successful, and success for me in Free Domain Radio is enough money to eat, and the price low enough, and the donations voluntary enough that I get tons of listeners.
Because for me, it's all about the listeners, not about the money.
If I get enough to eat, I'm happy.
I just want to make sure that there's enough listeners out there.
I'm certainly not going to charge in the foreseeable future, because if I charge, I'm going to eliminate the marginal listeners, particularly the young people who are the most important, right?
So anyway, I mean, whatever it is that you're defining as success, know that you want it, and And know that you can absolutely get it.
It may involve doing things that make you feel uncomfortable, but recognize that you have a great passion to be in love.
You have a great capacity to be in love.
You certainly deserve it.
And you can get it if you just make sure that you begin to unhook this wiring to do with cynicism and scorn and rejection.
Because you're strong enough and independent enough now that you can take rejection for what it is, right?
Which is bad people trying to hurt you.
Oh, sure. Sure.
That makes sense.
Well, I guess it's back to the phone book.
Starting with the A's?
Trying to find another therapist.
Yeah, and I'm sorry, but certainly you can, I only went through, I did one before I found the one that I liked, and the one that I liked actually was recommended to me by an ex-girlfriend who was also in therapy, but yeah, you'll know in the first meeting, right, whether you feel energized, whether you feel enthusiastic and so on, you'll know in the first meeting.
Yeah, I stuck around with the therapist I had because I didn't know what to expect and I didn't want to make any snap judgments.
I wasn't sure if it wasn't working because of me or it wasn't working because of him.
And that's the challenge that, you know, Greg, just between you and I, this is the challenge that you need to work out, which is that you're right.
That's a good point. Right, you're right.
I mean, this is a great leap, and it almost sounds like a leap of faith, but it's not, right?
Because you're right.
I mean, if you're not enjoying therapy, you're right.
If you're attracted to someone, you're right.
If you are attracted to someone, then find out that they're not attracted to you.
I mean, just when is it that we get to be certain, right?
Is it when we're 60 or 70 or 80 or like three minutes before we die, we finally get to feel certain?
Like, just take it now.
If certainty is something that you'd like, then just take it now, right?
I mean, you're not a bad guy. It's not like if you say, you know, everyone says, well, gee, if we get rid of the state, everyone's going to go haywire, which is not true, of course, right?
And if you accept that you're just right about things, you're not going to go haywire.
You're going to go haywire if you keep doubting yourself, right?
Because it's going to be very frustrating for you in your life.
Oh, yeah. That's a very anywhere way to live.
Yeah, no, it's no fun, right?
It's like you're just forever doubting and it's like you step on a carpet thinking it's quicksand the whole time.
That's just kind of crazy-making, right?
Yeah. So I would just, you know, this is what you can get out of this therapy thing and it's a great thing to get out of it.
I mean... Which is that you're right.
If you're not enjoying it, it's because you've got a bad therapist.
If you're not enjoying a date, it's because the person is not good.
It's more than just not enjoying it.
I wasn't learning anything.
Right. In which case, you're with a boring, empty person.
You're just right. There's nothing wrong with you.
You're right about what you think and what you feel.
How do people like that become therapists just boggles my mind.
I mean, he was completely boring and empty.
He had nothing to say.
I was two steps ahead of him every time.
And look, you are going to be a challenge because you're very smart and you're very sensitive, right?
So you're going to need a very good therapist.
And you can probably even get it from the phone call.
There's nothing wrong with saying, you know, these are my issues, this and that.
And if you don't feel engaged over the phone when you're setting up the appointment, just say, I'm going to think about it and I'll give you a shout back.
That's how right you can be.
What's this book? Blink.
It may be worth picking up. It's amazing.
People can pick up in two and a half seconds of a professor's voice how popular that professor is.
And they just all they hear is two and a half seconds of that professor's voice.
And they know exactly how popular that professor is with a gauge that includes a full year detailed evaluation by his students.
And it's almost exactly the same with two and a half seconds of listening to the professor's voice.
You can be that correct.
right.
Wow.
You know that you had me at hello?
Oh, what's that great line?
I think Jason Alexander is trying to pick up someone in the film Shallow Hell.
You had me at get lost.
But literally, you can be that sensitive and aware and that efficient that you'll know in like five seconds whether or not it's the right therapist for you.
And you'll know in two seconds whether or not you're interested in dating someone.
I've already kind of had that sense in certain social situations that I could tell in less than a minute whether I was welcome or not.
Right. Without anybody even ever saying anything.
Right. And you could probably do it in less than that time.
You're probably just still flexing your muscles this way.
But, you know, it's like the first time I read Rant, the first time I podcasted, maybe the first time you listened.
You just get... That it's something that's positive and works, or you don't.
We have this incredible horsepower within us.
We don't need to pray to a god.
We've got all of that capacity within us, and we've got all of this pseudo-psychic.
It's all just observational and unconscious power, but we can get all of that sort of stuff.
You can be incredibly efficient when it comes to dating.
You just have to trust your gut.
I was watching a clip that Jake posted on the board about this guy.
These two advertising execs, he had hired these two advertising execs to do a project for him.
And he didn't tell them what the project was until they got to the office.
But he picked them up in his cab and he took them to the office by his route.
And then once he got them to the office, he said, okay, this is what I want you to do.
And he showed them a picture. He pulled back these fake doors, and there was a little window box with, well, not little.
It was floor-sized with a stuffed bear and a stuffed eagle, right?
Yeah. And he says, okay, I own a chain of taxidermy stores.
I want you to come up with an ad and a tagline for me, right?
With some pictures in it and that sort of stuff.
And they drew this picture of, I think they called it Animal Heaven or something like that, right?
And it had a picture of a teddy bear with a lyre.
And it had a picture of these eagle wings down in the corner with a little crest and a slogan over the crest.
And so the guy, after they were done, he says, okay, that's nice, that's great.
Now let me show you what I did.
And he had already drawn this up and put it in an envelope and sealed it.
So he goes, let me show you what I did.
Opens the envelope, and what he had was almost identical to what the ad execs had come up with in their little brainstorming session.
And then he shows you video footage of the cab ride from their hotel to the office.
And he pauses the video where he had planted certain visual images all along the route, like the pearly gates that were in the drawing.
He had a team of schoolgirls wearing sweaters that had that pearly gates image on it.
And the lyre was placed in corner shop windows all along the way.
Like every other shop window, there was an actual lyre in the window.
It was kind of weird. The point being that a lot of people want to attribute that to psychic phenomenon and that kind of thing.
It was all in their subconscious.
They already knew what he wanted because he was planting it in their subconscious all the way over.
Right, right. No, I mean, the amount of stuff that we pick up and store, I mean, the brain is just absolutely astounding.
And if you sort of mull over the incredible journey that you took from being a kid to where you are now without making a single life catastrophe and without even making any serious errors of any kind...
I mean, this is incredible.
I mean, it is literally like watching somebody dance across a landmine on a tightrope blindfolded with no training and be perfect at it.
Like that Popeye commercial with the little baby on the...
Yeah, that's exactly right.
And there's a reason why that sort of sticks.
You're totally right. That's a fantastic image.
And that sticks with us because that's accurate.
I mean, that's how we do it.
And it's all innate within us, right?
It's like puberty. I mean, I didn't even know what the hell was coming next.
It's like, bang, okay, I guess I'm a guy now, right?
I mean, like, I've grown up, and it's just the body does this all.
It goes nicely, so.
So that's part of the instincts that we need to trust, and that's where philosophy, I think, really has some enormous power for us.
Because once we have evidence, we can trust our instincts, because we can always validate our instincts with evidence.
Once we have logic and reason and philosophy and all this, then...
Right, it's something to hang your hat on, and that's one of the reasons why I kind of gravitated toward it.
Because it's kind of an anchor.
Sure, it allows us to be confident, because we can always change our minds for good reason.
Right. And it also allows you to know that you have good reasons for why you have the opinions you have.
Right, right, right.
So yeah, I think as far as love goes and all that, I think you can do a lot to...
To make this productive for yourself just by trusting your instincts and trusting that you know exactly what you need to do and there's not going to be a massive amount of confusion and this and that.
I get done what you need to get done.
In the same way that you managed to navigate all the way from a brutal, indifferent, boring, and retarded childhood, as far as your family went, you navigated all the way without a single catastrophe, without making a single mistake, when legions of people around you were making enormous amounts of mistakes.
That's amazing.
Frightening. Watching people falling off the road throughout my life.
Exactly. And that's something that, once you get how amazing a feat that is, And how so few people did it, right?
That's why I keep telling you the intelligence and sensitivity.
I'm not just, you know, blowing smoke up your ass.
I mean, this is an important thing. That you really did an incredible thing as far as that went.
And you made it all the way with, you know, incredible odds against you.
Like, nobody would bet on that, right?
Saying, oh, here's somebody who's not going to make any significant mistakes and is going to get all these, you know, is going to get all the way through it without making any huge mistakes.
I mean, that's... That's pretty cool.
No, but there were plenty of predictions to the opposite, and that's pretty telling too, given what I was saying earlier.
They were hoping for me to validate their view of reality.
Right, right. They're predictions.
Because as we know, right, the core of life and the core of almost all social interactions is this grim and ugly basic philosophical war, right, between truth and fantasy.
And those of us who are sort of committed to the truth side of things, we keep forgetting just how...
The fantasy thing is so dominant for people.
And how much there is this war, and this war is very much set up in your family, how much this war really affects things.
And that is something that, once we get that, it's so much easier to see the shape of life and sort of how it works and what happened for us.
And, you know, it is sort of like an Iron Man novel in a way, if that sort of makes any sense.
Yeah. Yeah, it is, kind of.
But... And so, I think you can get it.
I think you can do it. I mean, it's certainly something that I want for you, right?
I mean, you should definitely breed.
Breed, my brother.
Breed! One step at a time.
Yeah, yeah, right, right. Actually, yeah, that last one's a bit of a doozy, but yeah, no, I mean, that's definitely something that you should think of as possible.
How did John Cleese put it?
What about just a nice little kiss first?
Right, right, right, right.
So is that helpful?
I mean, I know that you were sort of humming and hawing about the talking about it and all, but is that something that is helpful?
I think it has been.
I'm certainly not as...
Tenses when I started.
That's one of the reasons why I was kind of hemming high.
I didn't want to waste your time and my time.
If this was something that couldn't If I couldn't come to some kind of conscious resolution about it, then it would kind of be not a waste of time, but something that probably would have been better dealt with elsewhere, right?
Right, right. No, and I mean, it's something that I think it would take a failure.
I mean, the problem with therapists is they're not trained in philosophy.
Right. So, I mean, one of the things that I can do, I mean, just because, you know, I've sort of been through a lot of therapy and I've also studied a lot of philosophy, is that I can sort of talk about this kind of stuff in, I think, a way that is less common.
A therapist, that's why this guy who had the PhD student problem That I was able to sort of give him some real help because I at least could explain it where he was in terms that made sense philosophically as well as psychologically.
So the problem is that they wouldn't have the same understanding of your personal history relative to the philosophical revolution that you're sort of part of.
I mean, that's at least something that I can sort of bring to bear that I hope is helpful.
And that is kind of a huge help.
Yeah, for sure. Now that you have a direction, a regular old therapist could probably do some great stuff with it.
Now you say, well, I've got some self-esteem issues because my family just messed around with me.
You don't have to get into the whole philosophical war of it all, but they'll certainly understand the psychological aspects and the family history aspects of it.
That was kind of tough for me.
I could never get comfortable enough with this guy to really start Digging deep into the family history and all of that.
No, and you were totally right about that, I bet.
Which is kind of strange because you would think that that would be the case with, you know, just somebody you meet on the internet, right?
Right, right. Spilling your guts to some guy over Skype, right?
Right, right, right.
But that still depends on, again, that's your gut, right?
I mean, obviously you wanted to deal with this.
Because if you end up not wanting a relationship, that's totally fine.
But you want to do it out of choice, not out of fear, right?
Right, and that's fundamentally what I'm trying to figure out.
Right, right. Fear is the opposite of freedom.
I didn't even choose and so on. Right, right.
All right, dude. Well, I'd better get myself...
Oh my God, it's almost 11 o'clock!
I'd better get myself off to bed.
I hope that this was helpful.
And look, I mean, if you want to chat more, just let me know.
I mean, this is not just about, ooh, you got me a notebook or anything like that.
I mean, I think that you deserve all of the great and wonderful things in life.
And, you know, you've obviously...
I mean, you're a huge part of the community and all this and that, which I think is wonderful.
But I think the other aspect is that, you know, you're just a great guy and you should get what you deserve.
I appreciate that stuff.
And I didn't mean to disparage the offer at all.
No, you just wanted to avoid actually having the possibility of love.
No, I understand. Yeah, I guess that's true.
He's not going to make me do any more love stuff, is he?
Oh my god, the horror. Well, now it's just a matter of...
Taking the next step, I guess.
Taking the next step, yeah.
I mean, don't end up not having love because you're family.
That would really suck. And that would be a kind of victory that these idiots shouldn't have.
Yeah, that's true. That's true, but that's really not...
I mean, even if I was completely healthy or whatever...
Ultimately, that's not up to me.
No, that's not, but it should be up to you relative to whether it's fear or not that is what's causing it.
Right, right. If it doesn't happen because of fate, then it doesn't happen because of fate, but that's a whole lot different than it not happening because of fear, I guess.
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
I taped this not, of course, to do with anything to do with the podcast, but just because this may be something that would be worth replaying for you at some point or having some access to again.
So I'll send this to you.
Obviously, it's totally personal and all that, so I'm not going to do anything else with it, but I'll send it to you just for your own funsies.
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