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May 25, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:18:00
772 Parenting: Time Outs and Universally Preferable Behavior for Children
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Just before we begin the chat, what do you think is going on with this Ron Paul debate?
It's really quite fascinating.
Did you see my last post?
I did, I did.
He can be a little bit annoying myself, you know?
It's just so bizarre that on an anarchist forum that's also specifically atheist that they're rabidly defending a Christian politician.
Yeah, that's completely bizarre to me.
I mean, you know who's hanging out on this board.
But you come here anyways to be drubbed constantly about why you're defending him.
Right, right. No, it is most strange.
You there? Hello?
Oh, I've lost...
Never mind.
I guess you're there now. Yeah, it's very strange, and I mean, I've put out, I don't know, at least half a dozen podcasts, either in the Sunday shows or specifically about Ron Paul.
I thought I made a pretty good case with the KKK argument, but nobody seems to be picking up on that, but...
Yeah, I thought it was good, too.
But, you know, it's kind of...
It's kind of...
I get a sort of really hard tension emotionally from the people who are for Ron Paul.
And it's kind of a weird thing.
I mean, I sort of just try and, you know, feel the aura.
I mean, I know that sounds kind of weird, but I just sort of feel the aura about the people who are posting.
And there's a belligerence to it that just seems kind of strange.
I mean, it's only strange because the context is clearly the family.
But nobody's going to talk about it, right?
And the problem is, like the first time you bring it up, even gingerly, to say, you know, well, what are your feelings?
Why is this such an important issue for you?
And if people brush that aside and continue on with their political arguments, it's very hard for them to backtrack, right?
Because then they, you know, they kind of dig themselves into a hole, right?
That they sort of keep going down this road.
And then if, you know, if they were at some point to stop and say, oh, I guess it's family related, they would really not look.
I mean, it's a face saving thing that gets involved.
That's why it's very hard to take a stand when you don't know what you're talking about too much, right?
Especially if it turns out to be emotionally driven.
Oh, they do know what they're talking about.
I'm sorry? I think they do know what they're talking about.
What do you mean? You have to know what you're talking about.
When it's all right there in front of you, how can you not know?
I'm not sure what you mean. Well, for example, Charlie's post about the less aggression principle, which I thought was hilarious.
I mean, they know that's what it is.
They know that.
I mean, I knew that.
But you just pretend like it's not true, you know?
Yeah, or not there, or, you know, there just seems to be a fair amount of obscurantism, like, you know, where people are just sort of talking past each other, and then guys, you get the, oh yeah?
Well, maybe you guys have family issues.
Yeah, right, the Pee Wee Herman argument.
Right, and it's like, great, you know, maybe we do.
I mean, maybe I do. Maybe, I don't know, my dad left me and I don't like Ron Paul.
I'm perfectly happy to discuss that.
Somebody just has to ask the question, right?
I mean... It's just that it just seems like, I don't know, I guess here's where you sort of find out where people are willing to abandon their principles, you know?
And it's hard, you know?
We make jokes about being dream crushers, or at least I do, but it's hard for people to give up on this solution.
I think that there's a lot of mainstream stuff that they feel they're going to get booted out of, or, you know, if they're deep into the Mises world or the Lou Rockwell world, then they're going to have some tough bites on their hands, and it's, you know, it's tough.
Yeah. They know it's true because they keep telling themselves it can't be.
It can't be what?
It can't be true.
Everybody keeps saying this, but it can't be.
It just can't be true because the whole world is like this and this is what I believed for so long.
So it can't be true. What can't be true?
That... Ron Paul is, you know, supporting Ron Paul is an unprincipled position.
Right, right. That the whole point of politics is the use of force, is the rationalization of violence.
Right, right. And they're saying to themselves, it can't be true.
I mean, look at Ron Paul, right?
I do believe in God!
I do! I do! I do believe in God!
It's strange, too.
Even from a pragmatic standpoint, though, right?
They say, well, okay, so he's not been able to cut any government spending in his, but he doesn't have control over that.
Do they think that the president has this massive amount of control?
I mean, it's not a pure dictatorship yet, right?
With that whole argument, they're basically conceding the very supports they were trying to use to defend Ron Paul.
Right, right. Like if you say for 20 years he's never been able to even slow down the growth of government, let's give him more power.
I mean, that just... It really is quite an embedded fantasy, because I think it is driven by, obviously, what the hell do we care about Ron Paul?
It's an interesting issue, but the people who dig into this degree, it's definitely a lot more personal, and because they're not talking about it, I mean, I don't think it's going to go the same way Niels did, but it's the same thing that happened with Niels, right?
Where Niels took a stand and I said, well, maybe there's something more personal for you here and blah, blah, blah.
But that just intensified his stand and then it just became name-calling.
There's nothing you can do about that if people choose to go that route.
But yeah, it's just wild.
I mean, to me, it's... It's a, you know, it's a very strange thing, and there's a kind of hard, cold pragmatism to it, you know, and there's this, you can feel the mythology, you know, like pushing insistently against your reality processors, you know, like, come into the Matrix, who are up is down, black is white, and Christian politicians who are given great powers can be very virtuous, you know, like it's like...
You can feel the story, and the story then comes like, well, you guys are just negative, and all of these storytelling words start to come into the debate, which is why you know the debate doesn't have anything to do with Ron Paul anymore.
You guys are just dreamers.
You don't want to take pragmatic solutions.
This is the best thing we have.
Words alone aren't going to change anything.
And it's like, well, I hope you're having fun writing your fairy tale, but don't think I'm a character in it, because it's got nothing to do with me, right?
Oh, too funny. And it requires people participating in that fairy tale in order for it to manifest itself in any real way.
Yeah, I mean, I don't. If he wants to go and...
And I've tried to get out of the debate by just saying, you know, well...
Go vote for him. Let's find out.
Time will tell. And also, I think they're younger people too, right?
So I was too young for Goldwater, but I've read some of his speeches where he was fiery, pro-constitution and anti-state and anti-big government.
And then Reagan came along with the same kind of story.
And a lot of people fell for Goldwater.
I bled off a lot of support from the libertarians.
And then people fell for Reagan.
They fell for Reagan again. And then Bush was like...
We're going to have a modest foreign policy and we're going to reduce taxes and, you know, government is the problem, not the solution, blah, blah, blah.
I mean, when you've been through this, it's like the first time you go through an environmental scare, you know, like, oh, global cooling, global warming, you feel like it's a big catastrophe.
But after you've thrown the lock a couple of times, it's like, yeah, okay, so this is another guy and he seems like a nice guy.
I mean, he seems like a genuine guy.
I'm sure if I sat down and had dinner with him, we'd have a whole lot in common to talk about.
But that doesn't mean I want to give the guy the key to nukes.
I mean, that's a whole different situation, right?
More than just the key to nukes, you're giving them control over you.
You're saying, here, have power over me.
I like you so much!
That's the same argument I use myself.
With some people, it doesn't seem to work.
When I say, who are you going to vote for?
Well, I'm going to vote for myself.
I'd rather not give control to other people over me.
That's how I view voting, is just voting for somebody else to govern me.
It's like, I want to govern myself.
Right, right, absolutely. I mean, I could just go to some crazy guy in the park, give him a gun, and say, what would you like me to do?
And that's sort of the same process.
And nobody responded to my atheist working within the system of the church or voting for the next mafia boss or something, or a mafia boss that's going to end hitman contracts or something like that.
No, no, again, when you put these sort of metaphors, the metaphors they can't respond to because they sort of work at an emotional level.
And if people are heavily defended, they don't get the emotional metaphors.
They don't process them or they just reject them.
And these defenses in the people, they're not something that is just summoned out of Ron Paul popping up his head out of the political rabbit warren, right?
I mean, these are old defenses because they're very adroit, right?
I mean, they know exactly what to focus on, what not to focus on.
I mean, these are long, deep, and old defenses.
So, yeah, I don't think there's much that can be done.
I mean, if people don't respond... To the argument that says, well look, if I don't vote, I'm not imposing anyone's will on you.
If you vote, you're imposing Ron Paul's will on all of us.
Yes, we hope it's going to be good, but that's sort of not the point.
I'd rather not have that as a factor.
And if people don't respond to, you know, you're supporting somebody who's going to impose his will on the rest of people through force, then they say, of course, well, but he's going to eliminate people imposing rules on you by force and so on.
But there's no proof of that.
And power corrupts. We know that, right?
I mean, there was no good people in communist Russia who got to the top.
Power corrupts, even if he's a great guy going in.
How long is it going to take before he just turns in?
Power has a force on all of its own.
It messes everyone up. I would say that they almost go hand in hand.
I mean, nobody who was not interested in being corrupted would pursue that.
Right. I mean, I like what Lou said about it, that he's not running as president, he's running against the presidency as it stands.
I thought that was, you know, it's a clever way of looking at it.
But, yeah, I don't mind.
People want to go vote for him. Just, you know, just be honest.
I mean, that's all I care about, right?
I mean, if you're going to be honest, you know, I don't think prostitution is evil, right?
If somebody says, yeah, I'm going to go to a prostitute and I know that she's been abused and this and that, that's fine, you know?
It's just honesty, right?
So people say, yes, I think that the use of force can be beneficial in this area.
Well, that's fine. Then go vote for Ron Paul and have fun.
All I want is for people to be honest and just admit that they're using coercion.
That's actually why I think he's more disingenuous than the actual politicians are.
Because in a lot of ways, they're doing exactly that.
They're saying, hey, screw it.
We're better because we have the guns.
So we're going to use them.
Right. And by he, you mean...
I hear that all the time from people in the military.
We're the good guys.
We have the biggest guns. Therefore, we should use them.
It's an admission of the fact that it's all about the violence.
There are several of the presidential candidates that are exactly that way.
To me, they're the more honest ones.
It's just that everybody's blinded themselves so well to To the fact that violence is not a good thing, right?
Right, right, right.
And diminishing the violence is not the way to solve the problem.
That's been argued for the last...
It's so funny, right? I think it was David, I think his name is, who was lecturing people on the history of libertarianism and so on.
Yeah, the history of libertarianism has been compromised.
I mean, political sort of activist libertarianism has been massive compromises.
I mean, you have Murray Rothbard joining with the leftists and the Black Panthers, and you have libertarians now throwing in their weight behind Ron Paul.
I mean, the whole movement has just been a history of compromise after compromise after compromise.
And things are like a thousand times worse than when the movement started.
So, you know, pardon me for wanting to try something different, you know?
I mean, I just like to work empirically, right?
That stuff clearly doesn't work.
This sort of, well, let's work within the system and let's compromise and let's find fellow travelers and so on.
I mean, God, I would be so happy if that had worked.
Then I wouldn't have to do all of this, right?
It'd be great. I could go back and earn a living, right?
It would be great. But it just hasn't worked, right?
And, you know, just saying, well, okay, here's now someone who's new.
Let's go join them and go stampeding over to this new statist.
It's like... But it doesn't work.
Just empirically, this thing's been going on, if you count classical liberalism, for about 130, 140, 150 years, and the state has just inexorably gotten bigger and bigger and bigger.
So I'm not trying to be difficult.
I'm just saying, look, empirically, it doesn't work.
Right. The...
The method of practical compromise over principle stance has been tried over and over and over again, and it just keeps getting worse.
The whole point is to get you to accept practical compromises in the first place, because the minute you accept one, you've immediately abandoned the principle.
Oh yeah, then it's just a matter of degree.
And you've also legitimized The system, right, in a very sort of fundamental way, right?
I mean, if you say, well, okay, I'm only going to own one slave as an abolitionist, well, you know, you've now been totally neutralized, right, as a sort of vital force of ethics or intellect within society.
You've just totally neutralized yourself, and it's just so weird to watch these libertarians going and inoculating themselves from any sort of particular relevance or power or effect.
You know, what's wrong with just looking for a little patience, right?
Just wait. You know, what if we just stand by our principles?
What if? You know, what if?
Every fool in the world is willing to throw his principles over the railing, you know.
What if? What if a group doesn't?
Like, what if? You know, I mean, it's not like we're going to stand out if we're wrong, I mean, because everybody else is throwing their principles.
What if we just don't?
Clearly, throwing them overboard doesn't work, and everybody's doing it anyway, so what harm is there if we don't?
Right. Especially these principles.
Right, right. If you just look at it from a purely pragmatic standpoint, you know, it's like, you know, let's just not do what the other people who are failing do.
I mean, that's got to be a step, right?
That's got to be a step in the right direction.
Those people who are failing really badly with their stated objections, let's at least not do that.
And maybe we'll figure something else out to do, and I think we've taken a pretty good stab at it.
But at least let's not do that, because that definitely doesn't work.
Alright, so let's talk about, if you don't mind, this conversation where I think we sort of turned into, at least I did, misunderstanding and so on.
And I just sort of wanted to figure out the question, right?
And the question was, if I understand it correctly, with timeouts with children, is it force?
What level of force is acceptable and how would you know?
Is that sort of the idea?
Yeah, that was our point, I guess.
Okay, and what criteria would you think would be a valid way to prove that?
Like, how could that be proven to you?
Well, I think we'd have to figure out what you mean by timeout.
Well, a timeout is...
Sorry, go ahead. I'd also...
I mean, it...
I wouldn't say...
The use of force, I guess in this case, is a little more subtle.
Of a circumstance than, say, hitting somebody over the head and taking their ice cream cone.
But still, the point is the imposition of will.
That you're trying to get the child to conform to your will as opposed to trying to get the child to conform to reality.
That's really where my sticking point is.
Okay, and this is where I think I apologize again.
This is where I think I got a bit irritated because I don't know where that came from.
For me, at least, it was like if a timeout is imposing your will on someone, then it's abusive, right?
I mean, because just imposing your will on someone through force or threat of force or picking someone up, to me, that seems abusive.
And I'm not sure where that came into the conversation.
I don't think I brought that in, but if you could sort of let me...
No, or if you remember, you don't have to look it up, but if you can remember sort of where that might have come from.
Well, if we think about the concept...
Are you there?
Yes. Oh, we started at the same time.
And then eerily, you stopped at the same time.
Well, I just thought, you know...
Time out was that.
Was what you just said.
Was what? I lost what you just said during that little scuffle.
So for you, time out was the imposition of somebody's will through the force or the threat of force?
Right. I thought that's what that was.
Okay, but the timeout is a specific thing, and then the rest of it is a story about timeout, right?
You've listened to the mythology series, so pardon me for, you know, I'll just be annoyingly precise here, but a timeout is a particular thing which we all know where you say to a child, you know, please, you know, this is what happened.
You didn't listen to me.
I gave you a warning. I need you to sit on the stairs for three minutes, and then you can rejoin your playmates or whatever, right?
And this is usually not the case with any sort of decently brought up child, but if you are babysitting for some other kid and the kid just gets up and runs around and doesn't listen, then you have to pick the kid up and you have to put him back down.
And you don't interact with the kid, right?
You don't give them any positive reinforcement.
You don't turn it into a game.
You pick the kid up and you put the kid back on the stairs.
And if the kid gets up again, you pick the kid up and you put him back on the stairs.
That's, again, that's only if you're babysitting some monster child.
I mean, if you have a good relationship with your own child, that doesn't happen.
I mean, I never had to do that with my nieces, right?
I mean, it's a little different when you're an uncle, but so the timeout is simply if you say to a child, you know, don't do X for, you know, some good reason, not just arbitrarily.
And then you give a warning, and if the child then does X, you have to take them out of the situation so that they get a sense of consequences.
And you do that to make the relationship more pleasant and better in the future, right?
So that you don't have to keep running around with them and not being effective and so on.
So that's sort of the nature of the timeout.
I'm not sure where imposing your will through force, which seems like a fairly negative story about that procedure, where that came in.
How is that not, though?
Let's say you say to the child, I want you to sit on the stairs for three minutes, and he doesn't.
You have to pick the child up and put him on the stairs.
You're much bigger than he is.
If you said that to an adult and they refused...
But children aren't adults.
Right, and that's exactly the point.
That's exactly my point.
They're not adults, so it's convenient to say that it's not forced just because you don't have to actually be threatened when you reach over and grab the child and pick him up and put him on the stairs yourself.
You're not threatened because you're four times his size.
So it's easy to call that not force.
Well, no, but we had this discussion, right?
Which is if your child reaches for their fifth candy bar of the evening on Halloween and you take the child's candy bar away, right?
It's their property in a sense, right?
They went and earned it through doing their trick-or-treating.
If you take their property away, that's like saying that's theft.
Um... I would think that is theft.
Why not let them eat it and get sick and then suffer the natural consequences of that?
Well, because children, because their brains are in an early stage of development, genuinely physically can't process long-term consequences.
Right? They genuinely, physically, you can see this on an MRI, right?
Like, when you ask an adult to figure out the long-term consequences, areas of their brain light up, you ask a child, and they just, like, all that lights up is, I want more candy, right?
I mean, they really don't, like, physically are not able to, the same way you don't feed a nice anchor steak to a newborn, right?
I mean, their bodies can't handle it.
Their brains just can't process long-term consequences.
The final stage of that doesn't come until your mid-twenties.
Even in your early twenties, your brain is still developing.
Teenagers are notorious for this, and it's all the more obvious because they have more mobility and freedom and some money.
The idea of letting kids simply learn for their own through negative consequences is, I mean, maybe there's new stuff since I last looked at this kind of stuff, but it just doesn't work.
I see. So it's like they don't know.
They won't associate candy with sick.
Well, they might, but then the next time they get candy, their medulla, their base brain is going to just take over and say, I want candy.
They won't even remember the last time.
I mean, remembering cause and effect and consequence over a couple of days or weeks or months is not...
I mean, adults have trouble with this sometimes too, right?
But kids, you know, much more around immediate gratification, non-deferral gratification, which biologically makes sense, right?
You don't want to be the kid who's giving everyone else your food because you feel bad that they may be hungry or whatever.
I mean, you've got to be greedy and selfish to some degree when you're a kid.
I think that's just sort of biologically ingrained because usually it wasn't enough food to go around for everyone and the really nice kids didn't usually make it, right?
But... But yeah, I mean, in an ideal world, sure, you could do that.
But there will be situations where you can't do that, right?
I mean, if your kid is having trouble understanding that fire will cause them a third degree burn, then you have to intervene.
because you can't sort of let your kid crawl all over the lit oven and say, well, he'll learn.
Or if you say to your kid who's like three years old, don't go near the swimming pool.
I mean, this is silly.
You wouldn't let your kid near the swimming pool, but you sort of understand they fall in and drown.
It's not like, well, they'll learn in their next life.
Right, and there's a difference, though, between putting your child in mortal danger and letting him get sick from chocolate.
And no question of that.
I mean, I'm using extreme examples, not to say that you guys think that children should learn by getting their limbs amputated.
I mean, I don't mean that. I'm just sort of talking about a more extreme example.
But the basic thing is that kids, when they're young, won't recall.
I don't know if you remember this.
I remember this as a kid. Like, I never wanted to brush my teeth.
It was boring and who cared and blah, blah, blah.
And it wasn't until I was like, I don't know, six or seven years old that I finally got they were my teeth and bad things were going to happen to me if I didn't brush my teeth.
I mean, it took a while to sort of get the hang of that.
Otherwise, I wasn't raised that well, but it's not something that clicks in right away for kids.
So then we can't really say that UPB applies to them because they don't have the cognitive facilities really to fully apprehend it.
And therefore, judicious uses of force, for example, making your kid brush his teeth is acceptable.
Well, again, maybe this could be my discomfort with the term, but if it's not theft to take a candy bar away from a kid who's already had three candy bars...
I don't know.
Well, I don't know that they...
I mean, I don't think that they fall outside of UPB insofar as UPB for kids.
Right? Like, it's universally preferable that kids eat a balanced meal and don't slug their playmates and, you know, that kind of stuff, right?
But it's also universally preferable that their parents are going to play an active part because the kids aren't going to be able to figure everything out on their own.
Wait a minute...
Eat a balanced meal is a universally preferable behavior?
Well, yeah, in the nutrition sense, wouldn't it be?
No, I mean in the actual sense.
The only universally preferable behavior that I'm familiar with, anyways, is the proscription against force and fraud and theft, right?
Well, sure, but I mean, when you have children, and we know this is the whole question of positive obligations with regards to children, right?
If you have children and you don't feed them, that's murder, right?
Although we are not obligated to feed children.
Everyone in the world, right?
If you have children, like if you have a pet and you put it in the basement and you don't feed it and it dies, that's being a jerk, right?
Once you have a pet, you have a positive obligation to either give that pet up or feed it.
Right, but a dog, again, does not qualify for protection under UPB because he's not a rational being.
Well, no, I mean, I'm not saying that that person would then go to jail, but I certainly think that It could be taken rather dimly for you to keep buying dogs and starving them to death.
If you have a baby and you don't feed the baby and you don't give up the baby, then you killed the baby.
Correct. So, in the same way that there's no positive obligations for strangers, but if you have a baby and you don't, then you have a positive obligation when you have a baby.
If you have a baby, then you have to feed it or you have to give it up.
Otherwise, you're just killing it because it can't feed itself, right?
Similar children can't get their own nutritionally balanced meals for two reasons.
They don't have jobs, and also they don't have enough nutrition information or the ability to process long-term consequences, so parents have a...
That's why I meant sort of by UPB. Like, I mean, you can't just have a kid and feed it nothing but candy bars because it's going to get sick and die, right?
So, just so I'm clear on this...
The positive obligation comes out of the fact that you produce the life.
You choose to produce the life, correct?
Yeah, and you don't have a positive obligation to feed the kid.
But if you don't feed the kid, you have to give it to someone who will.
You have to find someone who will and whatever, right?
Right, the actual positive obligation is to the well-being of the life.
Right, and you can transfer that to someone else if you don't want to take care of it and so on.
And sorry, I know I jumped like 12 steps there, but...
That's sort of what I meant by the UPB is, like, if you don't give your kid a nutritious meal, or nutritious meals, then the kid's going to get sick, and, you know, that's kind of like injecting someone from poison, right?
Because they can't fend for themselves.
So stopping the kid from eating the candy by putting him over on the stairs...
For three minutes, or taking the candy away, or stopping him from hitting somebody by restraining him and putting him on the stairs, that's a positive obligation for the parent.
Well, I think we just conflated six examples and it just blew my mind, so I didn't follow all of those.
But I mean, there are certain instances, and this is sort of the gray area stuff, right?
So if your neighbor is drinking really heavily and is screaming that he wants to kill his wife and you've borrowed his gun, right?
And he comes over and says, give me the gun, right?
You're not going to give it to him, right?
Even though it's his property and you should return.
Like, there are gray areas here in certain situations where property bows to just protecting someone from getting shot, right?
So, and, you know, generally with the idea that, I mean, one of the tests, and it's not an objective test, but I think it's not a bad conceptual test, you know, is the person going to thank you later, right?
Like, I mean, when your neighbor sobers up, Is he going to say, gee, I wish I'd been able to shoot my wife last night?
He's probably going to say, man, I'm really glad you didn't give me that gun.
I would be in a whole heap of trouble right now.
And then you say, I'm moving, right?
Or whatever, right? So there are situations where the sort of absolute property rights, I mean, that's so rare as to who cares, right?
And I know libertarians get all knotted up about this, and I don't mean you guys, but...
But there are certain situations wherein that can occur.
And so similarly, you know, there are times where you need to grab your kid and yank them.
You know, if your kid gets their, I don't know, legs stuck in a bear trap, I mean, maybe you've got to saw it off to save them.
I don't know, right? I mean, I'm just saying that there are situations that are going to be extreme for sure.
But I definitely would say that it's not theft to take a candy bar away from a kid who's been eating too many.
And it's not forced to pick up a child and put him back on the stairs if he's been hitting his playmate or something with a shovel.
Right, but I think that these lifeboat examples of lesser of two evil, which property would you rather sacrifice?
Your life or your material goods?
I'm not quite sure how that applies to this situation of the Of the timeout.
I can't remember either. About halfway through that, I'm like, where did this come from?
Did it come from you, Nate? No, I don't remember anything about the lifeboat situation.
What are you talking about? Well, never mind then.
It probably was just a tangent of mine.
They've been known to happen. Well, what I'm...
What I'm trying to understand is if it's not forced to do that to a child, to essentially use intimidation to require him to stay in a certain place for a certain length of time...
Well, no, no, no, sorry. I've got to interrupt you there, and I don't know if you've ever done the time-out thing with a kid.
It's not intimidation.
It's not intimidation.
It's authority. And the two are not...
Even related in my book, right?
I mean, if you have authority with a child, then you don't need to intimidate the kid, right?
You don't grab the kid and squeeze their arms and then shake them gently and glare at them with flecks of foam coming off you.
I'm not saying you're suggesting that, but it's not intimidation.
It's not intimidation.
It's actually quite gentle, and it's just authority.
It's like, well, I gave you the warning.
You didn't listen to the warning. Now I'd like you to sit on the stairs, and if the kid then gets up, you have to pick the kid up and put them back on the stairs.
You're not intimidating the kid.
It's just consequences. So it's like having the authority of earned credibility and respect and stuff like that.
Right. And the reason that you pick the kid up if the kid runs away and you put him back on the stairs is so that you don't have to keep doing that.
Why does he stay?
Why does he stay?
Because you have authority.
Because you prove yourself over time to be a wise and gentle person who is concerned with the child's benefit or welfare.
So the kid learns to trust you.
That you don't act arbitrarily, that you're not ego-gratified by bullying a five-year-old or a four-year-old or anything like that.
You just gain authority by being consistent, by being reasonable, by being firm.
And that way, I mean, kids statistically do a lot better when there are rules that are enforced, that are, I mean, not intimidated or anything like that, but just rules, you know, like...
Like, you don't hit people with the shovel, and the reason that you pick the kid up, and so you don't have to keep doing that, right?
So then the next time you say, I don't want you to do X, right, then the kid will remember that when he went to the stairs for half the afternoon, or it never is like that, but And then you don't have to even do that, right?
This is something which is supposed to be self-eliminating, right?
I mean, you are consistent with the stairs thing or the timeout so that you don't have to do the timeout, right?
So that the kid just knows that the warning leads to the timeout.
And so when you give the warning, the kid changes the behavior and you don't have to go to the timeout.
Right. So, in other words, he learns, if I do X, then I'll get in trouble.
Well, no, because you don't...
I mean, yes, of course, but I mean, you don't sort of say, I need you to stop doing this, otherwise you're going to get in trouble.
I mean, that's bad parenting, right?
It shouldn't be like, don't...
Don't hit your sister because otherwise I'll put you on the stairs.
I mean, that's just not causal at all for a kid.
That's just bullying, right?
Maybe that's what you're conflating, right?
That's it. He's right.
That's exactly what happens. I'm just warming up.
You can't cut me off like this.
Oh, now I have to have a cigarette. Anyway, go on.
No, no, no, I was done.
I was just saying, yeah, that's what we were thinking it was.
Oh, so don't do it, otherwise I'm going to put you on the stairs.
Yeah, it's not just what I was thinking, it's what I know.
I've seen that.
That happens all the time.
That's exactly how it's used.
You do that one more time, I'm sending you to your bedroom.
Right. Right.
That's what happens. If the kid refuses or rebels or is contrary in any way, then the intimidation comes out and the kid goes to his bedroom and stays there.
Why? Because of the threat of force.
Sure. I totally understand that.
But what does that have to do with me?
Well, I just...
It doesn't...
I mean, do you think that's what I was suggesting?
Yes, we thought that's what you were suggesting.
No, you didn't. No, really. You didn't think I thought it was great to bully kids.
No, that's why we were surprised by the fact that you were saying that, because that's what we thought you were saying.
So you thought that I would be parents like your scary, horrible siblings or the people that you've seen, right?
No, I don't understand how you can use timeout without saying to the kid, don't do this or I'm going to put you in timeout.
Well, but you explain to the kid, right?
You say, don't do this because it's wrong because of X, Y, and Z, right?
You're going to hurt yourself, you're going to hurt someone else, blah, blah, blah, whatever, right?
You don't like it when you're hurt, well...
Then it's not any nicer for anyone else.
It's how you teach kids empathy, right?
To get them to understand that other people have feelings just like they do, right?
And then you say, do you understand what I'm saying?
And you assume that they nod and say, do you agree that you're not going to do this?
And if they say no, then you just keep explaining it until they fall asleep.
But I mean, if they say, yes, I understand it and I'm not going to do it, right?
Then they're not...
Going to the stairs.
They're not being put in a timeout because you just want to intimidate.
They've already agreed. You can start this contractual stuff with kids very early.
They've already agreed that they're not going to do it.
And they already understand that the consequences of them doing it is going to the timeout.
But you don't just say, hey, if you do that one more time, I'm going to throw you on the stairs and, you know, you're going to sit on you.
I mean, that's not... And that's just bullying, right?
And so if they refuse to agree, then they've essentially waived their...
they waived their right to well if you sorry if you're going to if I'm going to go I'm a little kid right So if I'm going to go and play with someone and I hit them with a shovel, right?
Then my dad is going to come and say, you know, it's not good to hit someone with a shovel, right?
You don't like it when you get hit with a shovel.
This person doesn't like it when they get hit with a shovel.
So if you're going to play with them, you can't hit them with a shovel.
Do you understand? And, you know, if this is a verbal state, or you don't put toddlers, or you don't put sort of babies in a timeout, right?
Because they're just whoop themselves, right?
What do they care? But, you know, they have to nod, and they have to say, yes, I understand that I'm not going to hit this person.
And again, the condition of me playing with my friend is that I don't hit them with the shovel.
And you say, if you hit them with the shovel, I'm going to have to take you out.
I have to put you on the stairs, right?
Because I can't have you hitting someone with a shovel.
That's not nice. It's not right.
And they have to agree to that.
And if they don't agree to that, then you say, okay, well, I can't have you playing with this kid.
Because if you're telling me you're going to go in there and hit somebody with a shovel, then I can't have you play because I've got to protect this other kid.
That works.
Okay. So you're enforcing their rules, the rules that they've agreed to, not your rules.
Well, they're mutual rules.
They're yours and his.
Well, they're UPB, right? They're universally preferable behavior, right?
Because you say to the kid, that's how you get kids to understand this is the empathy thing, right?
You don't like it when someone hits you, right?
And the kid's going to say no, right?
So then hitting you is wrong.
Yes. Well, then you hitting someone else.
That's UPB, right? It goes both ways, right?
Which is not a phrase. Well, at that point, it's only contractually preferable, but...
Well, no, but you don't say, you don't put it in the contractual thing, right?
You say, you don't like it when a kid hits you, and so it's, I mean, so it's wrong for a kid to hit you.
You would prefer that the kid not hit you, right?
The other kid would also prefer that you not hit them, right?
Because you're both kids, right?
You both have the same sort of preferences.
And they'll get that.
I mean, they understand that, right?
If they don't like it, then, you know, and they're grudging them, okay, well, he started it, you know, and you have those debates, right?
But, Sure. It really is around...
Kids get that reciprocity thing very, very easily.
I mean, kids who don't share, like within the age of three or four, those kids are bad news in the playground and the other kids aren't as positive towards them because they kind of get there, right?
So... I think that UPB... I mean, I believe, and I'll find this out in time perhaps, but I believe that UPB is just hardwired.
I think it's like the core, and I think that's why it takes so much propaganda to get us to not see it in society.
Well, if that's the case, then it really shouldn't matter how cognitively developed they are.
I mean, once they're capable of speech, they should be capable of UPB. Well, sure, at the very basic level.
But that doesn't take into account long-term consequence processing of the kind with the candy bars and so on.
But yeah, at the very basic level, they're kind of going to get that.
And you see that in kids, right?
I mean, you come across two, three-year-olds who are crying and If they've got the power of speech and pointing, they're both going to point at each other and say, he started it.
And why are they going to do that?
Because they know that self-defense is viable and that the initiation of aggression is wrong.
And they don't just know that because they get in trouble, right?
And they know that just kind of deep down.
I mean, I think it's, who is it?
It's a plea for protection.
Yeah, I mean, Noam Chonsky said this about his grandkids, you know, it's like, if they're not pointing at each other and saying he started it, then they're not human beings, right?
Like, they're some other species.
Exactly. So they get that UPB thing, right?
They get that self-defense is more morally justified than in the initiation of aggression.
And so the moment the kids are using UPB as a defense, then they get it.
And then you can contract with them in a sense, although it's just basically trying to get them to understand that what's preferable to them is also preferable to others.
But yeah, I mean, they get that very, very young.
Alright, well that makes sense, but I would still say that you're not really in...
In a parent-child situation, you're not really in anything like an analog of adult situations at all.
You can't really...
Well, even in an adult situation, this would apply.
Instead of a timeout, the guy who's harassing the patrons in a bar gets kicked out of the bar.
We may not even have to go that far for the metaphor, but yeah, no, that's quite right.
And of course, with adults, though, you have the breakup, right?
I mean, that's the timeout, right?
I mean, you break up with somebody if they don't do things that are pleasing to you in whatever form.
We hope that that's just, but even if it's not, right?
So if your girlfriend doesn't do the things that make you happy and causes you unhappy, then you break up with her.
But you don't have the choice to break up with your kids.
Plus, you've got the obligation of well-being there.
Yeah, and that's what I mean. Clearly, even if you feed your kids good meals, but don't teach them any conceivable boundaries and let them do whatever the heck they want, whenever they want it, then they're going to grow up without any empathy.
They're going to be unable to form decent relationships.
They're going to just be a mess, right?
And that's kind of cruel.
I mean, I don't know what you do about that in a free society, but that's to me almost as bad as just starving them.
Well, it's emotional starvation.
Yeah, it is. It is for sure.
And that kind of stuff is really, really hard to unwire in people.
All right. So, I mean, in that sense, though, the child is in a state of quasi-ownership, really. You mean by the parent?
Yeah, I mean, I don't know whether I'd say ownership, but certainly responsibility, for sure.
I mean, I guess you could say to some degree that the child is your property, in the same way that a pet is your property, I mean, to take a very loose analog, but for sure, the parent is responsible for the child, right?
I mean, in a way that single-foot-loose vagabonds aren't responsible for anyone, but yeah, if you have a kid, then you're sort of bound up in that responsibility thing.
That positive obligation is the one thing that distinguishes it from property.
And without that positive obligation, then the child would genuinely be just property.
There'd be no other way to make the distinction.
Right. I mean, you can buy a car and you don't ever have to give it an oil change, right?
But if you rent a car, you can't just go and smash it up, right?
Then you have to pay for it.
You can smash up a car and not pay for anything, right?
Just have it drag off somewhere or have it sit on your lawn if you live in Right, because you have no obligation to the car.
I mean, it's entirely yours.
Right, but I mean, in a sense, children are more rented than they are owned, in a sense, because, I mean, when you rent a car, you can't just smash it up and say, I'm going to leave it on my lawn, right?
They'll come looking for it at some point, because, I mean, so, you know, you borrow your children from the future, that kind of stuff, but...
They're kind of passing through.
They're not your final property.
You are their guardian and you are their nurturer and you are their coach and their trainer, but you are passing them on to the future.
You're sort of renting them from the future in a sense.
So you don't have final ownership over them.
You have custodianship of them, maybe a better way.
You have kids the way that somebody has a trust fund before someone else matures.
You have custodianship over it and you have to treat it well.
That's sort of part of the responsibility of the deal.
So then, that being the case, the fundamental problem with that is that there's no authority to whom the parent has to answer for his responsibility.
You mean in the current world or in the perfect world?
In a totally free society, there's no authority to whom a parent answers for this positive obligation for creating life.
I completely disagree. I think that no DRO on the planet would let a parent get away with maltreating a child.
I mean, I wrote an article on this some time back, but...
I mean, DROs, I mean, they're long-term concerns, right?
It takes a lot of money to set up a DRO. They're long-term concerns.
They don't want crazy-ass psychotic hooligans going around setting fire to people's cats and torching the local neighborhood, right?
They can't have child abuse.
Child abuse is really expensive and is one of the most expensive things in society, if not the most expensive thing in society.
Right, and people are going to want to insure their children.
Sorry? And people are going to want to insure their children through a DRO. Yeah, and I mean, if you really mess up your kid, I bet you the DROs are going to do everything that they can to get...
I mean, they'll pay you $50,000 to take the kid off your hands because they know that it's going to be more expensive than that.
I mean, I know that you limit so people don't put up babies and maltreat them for money or whatever, but...
At the moment, parents aren't economically responsible for the damage that their children cause.
I mean, in a sort of fundamental sense, in the way that Iraq gets destroyed because people were bad to their kids, right?
That kind of stuff. That's a very good point.
Economically, even aside from the emotional trauma, but emotional trauma, where you have dysfunction, it affects your earning, it affects the stability of relationships, it means that you're more likely to be a single dad, which means that you have more problems with stability.
Those kids usually, well, not usually, will more often than more stable kids turn out to be expensive troublemakers for society.
I mean, DROs are going to be all over parenting and always, always trying to get the parenting up to its highest conceivable standards from an economic efficiency standpoint.
And, of course, there'll be all these charities who will do whatever they can to help people.
And, of course, if you want to get a good DRO insurance for what your kids do, right?
I mean, if your kids just go out and torch someone's house, then you've got to pay for the whole damn thing, right?
So if you want to get good insurance from your DRO for what your kid does, then the DRO is probably going to want to make sure that you take some basic parenting classes.
Right now, you don't have to.
You could just be some crazed lunatic and go and have five kids.
Well, that and the parents can be motivated to want the best technique in order to avoid the higher cost of poor parenting technique, right?
Because you would incur a higher cost either in your premium or Right, because you have to put the kid into a school that Can tolerate or has means by which they can deal with more troubled kids.
Right. And that's going to be more expensive.
More facilities, more teachers per student, that kind of stuff.
I mean, there are serious economically negative effects to bad parenting.
It's just that right now, right?
Nobody pays, really. The tax payers, too, right?
I mean, what about jail? Surely, jail should be partially paid for by the parents.
I mean, they raised this lunatic, right?
When you think about the scale, I mean, just the implications of all this stuff, the scale of the economic destruction going on right now at this moment...
It just boggles the mind.
Right. I just thought of something else.
You could have in the contract that they sign for the insurance for the kid that if they're doing anything to cause mal-health to the kid, that they can take the kid and give it a better home.
If I were the DRO, I would have clauses in there which would revoke your custodianship of the child.
If you wanted insurance from me, I would obviously go over this in great detail and it would apply to very, very few parents.
If you are consistently passed out in a heroin coma, I'm taking the kid.
Because DROs know exactly what's going to happen to that kid.
They're going to cause property damage.
They're going to cause crime.
That's the most likely. Every now and then you get these superhuman kids who can survive anything.
Statistically, it's very clear.
This is just cold economic calculation.
There'd be lots of people who would do it for more humane motives and more power to them.
I think that's great. A time out for the parent.
Yeah, that's right. That's right.
But I mean, if you want insurance for your kids, then yeah, you're going to have to prove that you're a decent parent.
And if you're really, really wretched and you'd have to have this proven, it would have to be all the checks and balances, right?
But it's not like DROs would have a big incentive to want to take kids on and try and find good homes for them or anything, right?
You know, there would be lots of checks and balances for this kind of stuff.
But, yeah, I mean, the horrible thing right now is because of the government, people raise kids almost completely in isolation.
It's not a communal effort.
Other people don't get involved.
There's no positive incentives for becoming better parents.
I mean, you see the household.
Just watch Super Nanny a couple of weeks.
And these aren't crack addicts or anything.
I mean, these are people with jobs and pay their taxes.
Their homes are bad.
Yeah. Most of them are upper middle class.
Right, right. And these kids are like deranged and they're just heading for disaster.
And, you know, some British nanny has to be flown in with cameras, right?
Wouldn't it be nicer if there was a more proactive sort of umbrella?
And, of course, this comes from a very personal place for me, right?
It sort of floated through society, you know, going under repeatedly.
And nobody had any incentive.
In fact, there were negative incentives.
To get involved.
But what we need to do is have a system where people have really positive incentives to get involved with making sure that kids are brought up as well as humanly possible.
And the only way that I can think of is to get rid of the state, which absorbs all the costs and put the economic incentives in the hands of the parents and the people who protect the children.
Right. All the responsibility.
Hey, what was that about...
Good people work and pay their taxes.
What was that? What I mean is that they're not like...
I don't consider people who pay their taxes evil.
They're in a state of nature. Any more than a chimpanzee is evil when it takes your watch.
They're just in a state of nature because they don't know yet.
That's why I'm trying to get this conversation out.
What I meant is that they're not people in a coma haze of drugs and alcohol.
They're not extras from the Trainspotting movie or anything.
Yeah, you're right. That's sort of what I meant.
And people who don't pay their taxes have a death wish.
Right, right. Or they just want to go totally Kaczynski on everyone and just go live off the grid, which is fine too.
Have a look at the news articles about Ed Brown.
Oh, is he the guy who got shot?
No, a guy in New Hampshire, of all places.
A dentist and his wife, they've been...
Actively resisting paying taxes for the last 10 years, I guess.
The Feds just went after them in February.
I guess the ruling came down in April.
They're basically just waiting the guy out now.
You know, they've got him surrounded with SWAT teams and whatnot, but they're just waiting him out.
Once he runs out of food and water, he's got to come out sometime, right?
Right. Once he does, they're going to take him into custody and auction off all of his property and all that.
That's interesting. That's actually kind of a restrained approach to it, right?
I mean, normally they just go in guns blazing, but that's more of a DRO approach.
Good for them. I mean, from that standpoint, at least they're not gunning the guy down, right?
Yeah. Yeah, I mean...
Yeah, I mean, the idea that you could just, like, win against the government, I mean, that's just crazy.
You might as well just throw yourself off a cliff and hope that a couple of passing pigeons catch you.
Yeah, it's really kind of tragic, because the guy, I mean, he's released a few videos and such, and his attitude is totally like, oh, I know I'm going to die, but I'm doing the right thing, right?
I love those people, because don't they make our job so much easier?
Oh yeah, I know someone else.
He's really opposed to taxes.
You must be like them. Yeah, absolutely.
And then you put me next to Ted Kaczynski and we make the Unholy Trinity.
It's beautiful. But they are a guy like Ed Brown is a perfect example to point to when you bring up the gun in the room, right?
Oh yeah, for sure, for sure, for sure.
I'm glad he's made his life's purpose to be the example of the gun in the room.
Yeah, you know, the problem is that the guys like that just seem deranged, and so it's like, yes, there's a gun in the room, in the same way that there are restraints in the mental ward, right?
So people don't make that connection too well.
Yeah, and Brown is pretty screwed up.
He's got all kinds of weird...
Fantasy theories. I'm surprised he hasn't written a manifesto of his own yet.
Right, right. Maybe he has.
Maybe they cut off his internet.
All right.
Well, listen, does that help? I'm really sorry that we got off on the wrong foot on that debate.
I was coming from a very different angle, and I think I got...
The reason I got annoyed, and I do apologize for that because I should be more upfront about that, was that I really felt that there was family stuff I didn't know they exist.
I knew they had kids.
But that's why I was sort of asking you, because I knew there was family stuff coming in here somewhere that was eclipsing where I was coming from.
And let me know if you think that's an unjust characterization.
But that's sort of what I felt was going on, and that's why I was sort of trying to reach back to maybe where you were with your own parents or something like that, or if you were having feelings about your own, quote, discipline, which was really just the thuggery that you described.
But that's sort of where I got annoyed, because I felt like I was getting all this family stuff put on me, But I didn't think about the siblings.
Right. Well, I think where the family issues came in was that the only kind of time-out or consequences that are imposed by the parents, the negative thing, is all we knew.
Right, right.
But I mean, that's...
I mean, to be annoying, again, right?
I do apologize for being annoying.
Like, I totally understand that, but that's not me.
Right.
I guess from an objective standpoint, though, I still don't...
I mean, we can...
You know, we can put as many...
Ribbons on it as we want, but...
The bottom line is you're...
You're essentially imposing yourself upon the child.
I mean... Well, in the same sense that you would...
I can see what he means now, that you would reason with him, don't do this, you're hurting the other kid, and you're protecting the other kid by removing the child from that situation and putting him in a time-out.
So it's not a self-defense thing.
It's a proxy, like in the same way that we can intervene if some woman's getting beaten up in a bar.
We don't have to get hit ourselves in order to intervene in a situation of self-defense, right?
So removing a child physically from a violent situation where that child is being violent to another child is the same as intervening when somebody is attacking a woman who can't defend herself because he's three times her size or whatever, even if they're the same size.
Right, or if the child was running out into the street and all that.
Right, right. So it's self-defense by proxy and there's also self-defense of the child's future, right?
This is the old don't eat candy till your teeth rot, right?
That's self-defense of the child's future because the child can't defend his own future because he can't understand the consequences yet.
So that's sort of the difference.
And for kids who are born mentally retarded or whatever, that may never end, right?
They may never get that particular That's an interesting way to put it.
I hadn't thought of it that way.
Self-defensive.
Self-defensive is future.
And then the other way.
Empathy and ability to relate and all of those good things, right?
Right, and you have babies, kids under three, who can't have certain toys that are too small or they'll eat them, so you have to take those toys away from them to keep them from eating the toy or swallowing it and choking.
Right, I mean, you have those bars at the top of the stairs, that's not the same as putting them in prison, right?
I was mostly dealing with...
I was thinking of kids old enough to have a verbal interchange with.
So that would be kids over the age of three at least, right?
Yeah, yeah, I mean, and three may be premature for some kids, but for sure, it is that sort of aspect that you, it really is self-defense, for me at least, it's sort of self-defense by proxy.
If the kid was able to process the consequences of his actions, then you wouldn't be the parent, right?
I mean, you wouldn't need to be the parent, because then they're an adult, and they can go and do their thing in the world, and you're no longer morally responsible for them, right?
But as long as they can't.
They either fend for themselves, their brains or bodies have not developed, they can't fully process the consequences of their own actions, and they need to be taught things...
I mean, I think that you...
I have a theory, and if I have kids, this may be proven right, it may be proven wrong.
I think that if you're empathetic towards the child, the child would just learn empathy normally, in the sort of natural way, and I don't think that you...
I don't think... I don't think...
Again, we may put this out of this podcast if you like, and...
I may totally eat my words.
I can't imagine that a kid of mine is going to belt another kid repeatedly because, you know, I think that there's particular things that have to happen to that kid where that seems like a good idea, and I don't think I'll be doing those things to my kid, right?
So that's the theory, and again, I may be wrong, but...
That was my theory, too, because I was wondering, well, why is the kid building another kid in the first place?
What have you done to cause that to happen?
Or is the parent doing something wrong in the first place, like over a period of time, maybe long before, starting way back, now he's starting to hit other kids because, well, obviously something's being done wrong.
No, I mean, I think that's right.
I mean, the kid has learned that that is a good way to solve problems is through the use of violence and intimidation.
And, of course, that's not something that we're born with.
That's something that we learn through the actions of our parents.
So, yeah, no, you're right. Well, I mean, the human being is capable of both.
For sure, for sure.
And that's the amazing thing about us, right?
I mean, as a species, that we have instantaneous adaptation.
We don't have to wait for 12 generations to develop aggression.
We can go either way when we're born.
And my theory is if there's lots of resources, then you develop cooperation.
And if there are few resources, then you develop aggression.
And that is usually...
Yeah, no, I mean, when you're in a situation where, say, a five or a six-year-old...
Is hitting another kid and is getting up and running away from the timeouts?
I mean, you already have a kid that's so far off the rails, it's going to take significant intervention to pull that kid back on track.
So those are situations where the parenting has just been so bad that it's really hard to turn that around.
You can get some short-term conformity, but the longer-term pathologies are really hard to deal with.
So you think that even though we're equally capable of both negotiation or aggression, that the only way the aggression would What would occur would be through circumstances whereby it was,
say, used regularly in the home or something like that.
Yeah, for sure. I mean, when we're abused, for most people when they're abused, they lose the capacity for empathy.
They become hostile, defensive, aggressive, and can't cooperate with people.
Because the moment they let down their guard, which is what cooperation is.
Cooperation is vulnerability. The moment they let down...
They can't go up to a group of kids and say, can I play?
Because that's being vulnerable.
And every time they're vulnerable at home, they get attacked.
So what they do is they just run up and grab the ball and run away.
Because they can't come up and say, can I... Can I play?
Because then they're open to rejection and of course they've been so much rejected at home and so much attacked at home.
They don't have that capacity, right?
Or you never bother asking.
I'm sorry? Or you never bother asking.
Yeah, that's right. Or you become the, you know, as we all know, the sort of hyper-introverted black hole kid, right?
It's like, you know, I'm under the covers with my secret friends, the hand puppets, and we can play.
So, yeah, I mean, I do think...
Now, I may be projecting...
I was a pretty gentle kid, a very gentle kid, so I may be projecting more of my own personality, and maybe I'll get some, I don't know, lumberjack, linebacker kid if I have kids, but...
My general belief is that, you know, if you're affectionate and positive and listen and interact...
Because there's such an enormous lack of interaction with kids in society.
I mean, kids are like...
Lord of the Flies is not something that takes place on an island in the middle of nowhere.
I mean, it's amazing.
We had some people over...
Every damn playground is like that.
Yeah, it's total. I mean, it's just jungle.
It's a complete jungle. And parents...
My neighborhood. I live in a predominantly...
Well... A predominantly black neighborhood.
And I had seen a comedian last night, I think it was, talking about how he hates his kids and he would, you know, you white people don't beat your kids enough.
And the whole audience was laughing at this and I couldn't, I just couldn't laugh at that.
I mean, the rest of his routine was great.
It was really funny, but that section of it was just really irritating because, you know, here we have Ron Paul talking about 85% of black people being into crime, and these people are saying, well, you white people don't beat your kids enough.
Right. I mean, where do you think that the problem's coming from?
Right, right. If you watch parents with their kids, what parents do with their kids is they manage them.
And they will tell them, go do this, go do that, go play here, go there, we're getting this, get your shoes, do this.
They manage them the same way that a shepherd manages sheep.
They don't actually In general, and I'm totally generalizing here, but this is just my experience of what I've observed.
They don't just sit down and interact with them, or they'll play a game with them, but they don't actually just talk and listen.
There's not a whole lot of just talking and listening.
I see this continually.
Children grow up incredibly isolated in the world, and managed and entertained, but not spoken to and listened to.
That's 100% true from my experience.
My brother's kids are all like that.
And they can't have a conversation with you, right?
I mean, it's like... My niece is like this.
You can't actually have a conversation with them because they have very little attention span.
They're either hyper or distracted or...
And it's not ADHD or anything.
I mean, to me, it's just... But they don't relate to anyone, right?
I mean, I can sit there and I did...
I was just saying... We had some friends over two Christmases ago and they brought their...
I guess, 18-month-old kid or whatever.
I sat there with an hour, passing toothpicks back and forth to her.
So she'd pass me a toothpick, I'd say thank you, and then I'd pass the toothpick back to her.
I had a great time, right?
But I mean, the parents are like, are you bored?
Because we can do something else with her.
It's like, no, to me, this is what you do to interact with kids.
I mean, you talk and you listen, whether that's verbal or not.
I thought you were supposed to plop them in front of the TV and shut the door.
You wouldn't believe how many toothpicks you can get up an 18-month-old's nose.
It's really quite remarkable. They're still looking, I think.
Well, you figure out what they want to do, and then you do that.
Yeah, that's another important thing, too.
I mean, to give kids a voice about what it is they prefer.
I mean, how are we supposed to tell them, you know, decide what you want to do in life, but they've never been able to decide what they want for dinner.
I mean, anyway...
We could go on all night about that kind of stuff.
And, you know, again, I'm perfectly aware that I'm going to get six million emails from parents saying, oh, yeah, you wait until you have kids.
And I'm perfectly happy to, right?
I mean, I have had some experience with them and been one myself, but certainly happy to be corrected by reality if my theories prove to be complete kumbaya nonsense.
So, wait, there's this...
This is hitting on something that sounds like a problem I'm having is figuring out what I want to do With my life, if I want to do something new, and I have friends that just don't know what they want to do, like my friend Mark and Rachel.
They're doing things that are not bad.
Mark has a degree from Rice and he's a tech writer.
I don't think he's all too happy with it.
But do you think that not knowing or not being able to figure out what you want to do with your life, does that stem from that same problem of not being allowed to determine what you want to do when you're Well, it's not just really young, right? I mean, I would say that if it doesn't happen when you're really young, it's not going to happen when you get older, right?
So, yeah, I mean, I think that's the case.
I would say that the best thing to do is to ask them and say, you know, what was decision-making like for you when you were a kid, right?
I mean, if they're like, what?
What do you mean? I mean, they told me what to do when I did it.
It's like, well, we may be onto something here, right?
I mean, because then the issue is that there's a lot of pain about having their preferences suppressed when they're kids.
And they've got to work through that, and then the other side of that is what they want to do with their life.
If they've retained enough of their true self and haven't inflicted the same abuse on others and all the other list of things that you need to do to get access to your true self.
But yeah, they'll find what they want to do on the other side of that.
My guess is that the people who have the toughest time to do it...
I was able to hang on to quite a bit more, I think, than most of what I wanted to do with my life just because I didn't really interact with anyone.
So it was a little bit easier.
But for the kids who are more social, more into sports, more this, more that, I think it was harder for them because they led much more structured lives and much more busy lives.
So I think that's a little bit different.
That's a very...
That's a very common practice now, too, is to cram kids into just about every possible activity you can so you don't have even five minutes to interact with them, let alone an hour to pass toothpicks back and forth.
It's ballet or archery or football or basketball or soccer or baseball.
Boy Scouts.
My brother's kids are in a thousand things.
Every three months he puts out a schedule and sends it to everybody.
So if you want to go to their things, you can go.
You can literally spend...
25 hours a week at events for his kids.
Right. These are kids who are going to grow up to take their cues from those around them, right?
I mean, peace and quiet and time for self-reflection is pretty important, but of course I'm guessing that your brother's family is not so big on that for some fairly obvious reasons.
Oh my God. Their house is a zoo.
It's in a constant state of cacophony.
I mean, I sound like I'm hyperbolizing here, but I am not kidding.
I mean, the running around and the screaming and the yelling and the, oh, we've got to be here and we've got to be there.
He's got four phone numbers, and at least two of them are busy all the time.
Wow. Yeah, no, I mean, my brother's house is a little bit like that too.
I mean, there's nothing wrong with getting stuff done, but man, it seems like a pretty hellacious way to live.
I mean, don't you get busy enough when you're an adult?
I just really valued not having to do stuff when I was a kid.
I mean, I sort of tried to stay out of everyone's way and get involved with as little as possible.
And when I was a teenager, I got more involved in sports and so on.
But yeah, there was a long time there.
You couldn't get my head out of a book or out of a drawing or something like that.
And I think that had a lot to do with...
Because I don't know how many people in my life have said to me, it's like, Oh, you've always known what you wanted to do and you've always been clear about your life's purpose and mission and goal and so on.
And they really envy that.
And I mean, I think that it had a lot to do with just not having a lot to do.
Yeah. I agree.
Well, at least having the opportunity to slow down for 10 minutes and listen to the voice in your head for a change rather than everybody else's.
Right, right. And the other thing, too, is that the reason that a lot of parents do this is because the kids wanted them to, right?
I mean, it's one of these things that feeds on itself.
Like, all the other kids are really busy.
So if your kids aren't busy, they have no one to do anything with, right?
So the only way they're going to get to interact with other kids if they are as busy It's sort of like this arms race of, like, packed schedules.
That's tough, but, you know, it's like, so, I mean, this is the lesson you teach your kids, right?
I mean, just because everyone's doing it doesn't mean it's a good thing.
Right. Exactly.
Well, that was about all I had.
Okay, good. Well, this is good, because everyone else has, like, refused to talk to me, so this is really nice.
This is actually... I got the guy in New Zealand flipping me the bird.
David hasn't responded to my invitation.
I'm waiting for a determinist to come on.
This has been nice.
Well, you should set up a calendar, actually, I think.
Let people...
People who are interested in debating you.
That is an excellent idea.
I think that's a lot better than chasing stuff around the board.
I will set that up. I have one, actually.
I bought a calendar for the web, so I'll be able to use that.
That's an excellent idea. And that way people can see the upcoming debates as well, and if they want to log into something more live and call in, that would be great, too.
There you go. Well, thanks, guys.
That would be really fun.
Yeah, that would be a lot of fun. People can bring their professors, and that would be excellent.
Thanks guys, I really appreciate it and thanks for staying up for the call.
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