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July 15, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:16:41

823 Sunday Call in Show, July 15, 2007 (missing intro)

Rational emergency ethics, donation haikus, abandoning fathers, and confronting mothers...

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	Alright, so that was sort of the brief intro to where we are and what's going on at the moment.
	I've started to do some research into places to get the book out, to get the book printed and distributed.
	There's some optional things which I can put together for marketing and so on.
	But I wanted to put out a book because I think that what I've written is so concentrated that I just don't think it's going to work as a podcast.
	A podcast always keeps moving, which is why I put tangents and jokes in and so on.
	But this is You know, like more syllogistic and I think it needs written format to be digestible, right?
	So that's sort of the format that I'd like to work on for this.
	I don't know if I'll do an audiobook.
	If I do, though, I promise Christina will read it because it sounds like you can get even more of my voice than you wanted.
	So that's it for the business of Free Domain Radio.
	If you'd like to sort of ask questions or have issues or Or comments and so on.
	Trollactivity is not too bad on the board.
	I just had one gentleman who was causing him nothing but trouble, but he went away relatively quietly.
	Other than that, I certainly welcome all the new members.
	And if you have any questions, did Christina help write the book?
	She did not help write the book.
	In fact, she kept tickling me while I was trying to write the book.
	So obviously it took a little longer than I thought, but actually, frankly, only a few minutes longer.
	No, she didn't help write the book, but she has certainly been reading it and has given me some great feedback, and so it's got some stuff that's got her input.
	So, okay, I leave the floor open to you fine gentlemen and gentlemenesses.
	If you have questions or comments, Kristina is here as well, and I'm sure that I would be happy to imitate her responses.
	None of this would be possible.
	The FDR stuff without her.
	That is entirely true.
	That is entirely true. Without this glorious creature, her involvement in my brain, FDR would, I think, be mostly a MeToo site.
	It would be like a Mises.com, but without any...
	Sorry? Sugamama?
	Oh yeah, baby. Yeah, we'd be like a Mises Lite.
	It would be like Mises without the academic credentials.
	So, like Mises.com.
	So, yeah, absolutely, Christina's influence has been, I am but a moon orbiting her psychological insight.
	So, she appears somewhat skeptical.
	Honey, put your top icon. There's no webcam, I told you.
	All right, so, I hope that people have come with some questions this week.
	Last week we had a very short show, which I just released to the Gold Plus members because it was highly advanced stuff about the...
	The true self, false self difference.
	So I hear somebody drawing breath.
	Do you have a question, my friend?
	Sorry. No breathing!
	You're teasing me now!
	As I said in the chat window earlier, please don't make me talk to my hand.
	We dated throughout my 20s and it's so over.
	The foreign woman.
	It's one of Christina's favorite lines from the God of Atheists.
	Sometimes it's about a young man.
	He says, sometimes he used his non-dominant hand to masturbate.
	It was like having sex with a foreign woman.
	And that was a line that she quite enjoyed.
	Of course, she thought it was a joke.
	And as I said, it was a good deal of my 20s.
	Alright, people. DanRod43.
	Could somebody invite DanRod43 to the chat?
	That would be excellent. I need a good question.
	I hope that's a quote for me because yes, I do in fact need a good question.
	It doesn't have to be a question.
	It can be a comment. It can be rank praise for all of the free time that you have seeping back into your life now that I'm not podcasting more than I'm breathing.
	So it could be just about anything.
	Just let me know.
	I'm sort of synthesizing stuff.
	Ah, yes. Well, it's interesting, you know, and this is one of the things that is a challenge with this community now, right?
	I mean, it's that there are...
	Even if somebody listens to...
	This is so embarrassing.
	Even if somebody listens to two podcasts a day, it will take them a year to catch up to where we're all at, right?
	And of course, by that time, we'll be a year ahead.
	And of course, this kind of stuff...
	I mean, there's a...
	At least for me, the way that it works in sort of personal growth is...
	You get a lot accomplished over the first couple of months, right?
	You sort of wake up.
	You dematrix and you get a lot accomplished in the first couple of months.
	Then there's kind of a stabilization that occurs, right?
	So you sort of hit a new plateau.
	It's like when you start going to the gym, right?
	You get a lot of stuff very early on.
	And then what happens is you sort of plateau and then you sort of have to push to get...
	And then after you break through the next thing, you get another plateau.
	So it is interesting to see the mix of more experienced and less experienced people in the realm of this philosophy that's going on in the board.
	I certainly do appreciate the patience and the kindness that you all are showing to the newer members, which is wonderful.
	And I think it's going to be really helpful and inviting.
	And I think that the policy of being a little bit less kind and accommodating has actually worked out quite well.
	And I certainly appreciate people's slight abruptness about that.
	Free will versus determinism.
	Like a plague, she is coming back.
	Are there any questions coming up on that chat window, sweetie?
	They're typing while I'm talking.
	Is that what they're doing? Can we close down this chat window so they can pay attention?
	Oh, I'm way beyond two podcasts a day.
	That's right. Eight hours a day.
	Eight hours! A free domain radio a day.
	Well, I've got to tell you, that's a pretty significant rewire.
	And I'm really thrilled about that.
	I mean, I just think that's wonderful.
	Wow. There should be a prize.
	Well, I'd like to put a prize out for the thousandth person who joins the board, but that seems kind of arbitrary.
	We just should have a... We need to put up a quiz.
	A quiz. And the quiz could be like number of tangents per podcast.
	Oh, wait, no. Infinity is hard to type.
	But... I thought the stuff last week about the split true self was amazing.
	Yeah, I mean, I appreciate that.
	I do find that it is quite exciting.
	Eight hours a day is two podcasts a day!
	You know what we should have as the ultimate premium section?
	It's the podcasts without tangents.
	I think that would be really exciting.
	Because as I've said before, Christine will say, Hey, what did your podcast on today?
	And after I've done like two hours of podcasting, I'm going to be like, Hoverlula, Hoverlula.
	And I'm like, literally two and a half minutes of recounting the podcast.
	So we'll have a synthesized podcast, the sprint podcast, the recaps of the podcast.
	I think that would be excellent. Actually, I did say that, I did see that there was a place, I think at 75 cents a minute, they will transcribe your podcast.
	Um... I wonder how they would spell, if it's a meteorologist.
	That's the intention to be able to see it before, yeah.
	So, yeah, it'd be like the learning program in the Matrix.
	Hello, it's the person who just joined.
	You're just a little bit loud there.
	We don't have a mute button, so if you could just turn your music down, that'd be great.
	Sorry about that. No problem.
	But yeah, I mean, we can talk a little bit more about the...
	Oh my god, what is that?
	Can you write with an accent?
	Yeah, I think so. I think so.
	Five minutes later. I know Kung Fu.
	I know Kung Fu and how to make tangents.
	So, yeah, we can talk a little bit more about some of this true self stuff if you like.
	I can tell you a little bit more about the book.
	Actually, no, I don't want to tell you any more about the book.
	I might as well just read it. But if you have any questions or comments, I'll just...
	Wait for a second, or otherwise we can go on with some more stuff about the true self, since that did seem to be quite helpful to people in the past.
	Oh, the symposium. Yeah, I mean, I will check onto that.
	At the moment we're looking at, what was it, the 25th?
	Saturday? 25th of August, which is a couple of weeks, I guess, what, six weeks from now?
	Seven? No, more than that.
	We are looking at August the 25th in Chicago, Illinois, looking for 15 people at $250 a head.
	And one person will be selected to provide a kidney just because, you know, we're looking through, vary the donations a little bit.
	And so I've got to just check because I'm working so hard on this book, but I will check the sign-up sheet that's on the board.
	If you are interested, please drop by.
	If we can hit the number, it's fantastic.
	We will come down and I will do a presentation...
	On the core thesis of the new book, and you'll get a copy of it, and you'll also get a copy of Revolutions.
	And I think Christina is mostly doing salsa and morangue lessons, and I will be doing mostly hip-hop.
	So I think that will be truly horrible.
	Actually, Christina is going to be doing a presentation on cognitive-based therapy, which is her approach to mental health, and it worked really well on me, because when she first met me, I was actually a chimpanzee.
	So it's really amazing what she can do With this kind of work.
	So, gangsta staff, yeah, that's right.
	So, do we have any... I'll just do a quick pause here in case anybody wants to break in.
	I know that you're not used to interrupting the podcast or waiting for me to take a breath.
	So, questions, comments?
	Hey, Steph, can you do a speech on self-employment during the symposium so I can write this off as a business expense?
	I absolutely can because it's sort of become exactly how I've become...
	We can talk about self-employment, which is really the masturbation of the business world.
	It's just a couple of hours.
	I don't want it to be Christina and I talking, because she tends to interrupt me.
	I don't want it to be just us talking.
	What I want it to be is a conversation, like a round table.
	We're not going to have 2,000 people there until next year.
	We might as well have a chat.
	Where we sort of have a round table and a discussion and we can bring sort of issues to the table and so on and talk, you know, like a Socratic forum, you know, like the way they used to do in ancient Athens.
	I think that's the best way for philosophy to work.
	And I can make beady and cold eye contact with people who don't ask questions, which I can't do in this forum, which is tougher.
	Will this be videotaped?
	Yeah, I think so. I think so.
	I don't know what we'll do with it, particularly.
	But I would certainly like to bring down a videotape and record what is going on for sure.
	Yeah, and for sure, I think what you want to do is you definitely want to take your student loans and spend it on free domain radio seminars.
	That is, A, not only is this going to be staggeringly educational and fun, but B, it's, you know, from the government back to me, which kind of works.
	In a very fundamental way.
	So... Business expense, yeah, absolutely.
	Right, right. All right, so I'll just leave a pause here.
	Questions, comments, issues, updates, feedback?
	All right. They're going to make me do it, aren't they?
	They're going to make me do the haikus. Yes, they are going to make me do the haikus.
	People, it's questions or poetry.
	It's absolutely up to you.
	Oh, I can take that silence.
	Okay, I have a question.
	Wait, somebody talking? I think we know a little bit more about what cognitive therapy is.
	Sorry, your question, you're just very faint.
	Was your question what cognitive therapy is?
	Yeah. Okay.
	Would you like to do two seconds on that?
	Cognitive therapy or cognitive behavior therapy, the two terms are interchangeable.
	Basically, the premise is that our emotions are a factor of our perceptions.
	So, a lot of people think that they have an emotion that just sort of appears or that they feel something in response to a situation.
	And it's true that it's in response to a situation or a memory or a thought, It's the perception and the interpretation that results in the emotion.
	And cognitive therapy essentially focuses on identifying what we call automatic thoughts, or very quick and rapid self-talk that we have that influences the way that we feel.
	We need to be aware of.
	The first is the thoughts.
	There are the behaviors.
	There's the physiological response as well as the emotional response.
	And cognitive therapy uses all of these in the context of the situations the individual is in.
	And when you get deeper into cognitive therapy, you look at assumptions, rules and assumptions, and core beliefs, which are basically the guiding forces of our automatic thoughts and our behaviors.
	So that's pretty much it in a nutshell.
	It's basically how we think affects the way we feel, and if we can access what we're saying to ourselves, how we are interpreting a situation, then maybe it's an irrational interpretation of a situation.
	Maybe it's a rational interpretation of a situation, but we need to take a look at what that self-talk is so that we can figure out if our responses are appropriate to the situation, and if not, where are we going wrong in terms of our own thinking.
	Does that answer your question?
	Yeah, if I get the idea that you're kind of trying to rational interpretations of your emotions is kind of a reflex, right?
	That you want people to have.
	Yeah, yeah. There's a thought that, yeah, but it's like they're reflexes, but they're not.
	I mean, the thoughts are reflexes.
	And the thoughts are reflexes based on past history and core beliefs.
	And so if we can access the thoughts, the automatic thoughts, then we can use the automatic thoughts to uncover the core beliefs.
	And then that's the nitty gritty of cognitive therapy in terms of the real The real work.
	We really need to help people challenge their own core beliefs.
	And these are things like feelings of worthlessness or believing that one is worthless or believing that the world is not a safe place or that other people can't be trusted, that kind of thing.
	So those things, those core beliefs influence the way we behave, which then in turn also reinforces the core beliefs.
	It's quite simple and yet quite complicated at the same time.
	But we start off by trying to access the automatic thoughts, which are things that are most accessible to us in terms of what's going on in our minds in a given situation.
	Interesting. Thanks.
	You're welcome. Honey, you just gave away the entire symposium.
	There was going to be that, but in bigger font on slides.
	It's going to take at least half an hour.
	Actually, about 40 minutes to go through it.
	Which is about the ratio of thought to time that is going on at Free Domain Radio.
	Do we have any other questions or comments at the moment?
	Ah, yes, we have somebody.
	Yes, my friend. Emergency ethics.
	Absolutely. Ogre.
	Ogre. Beep, beep, beep.
	Yes, but if you could give me a question, I'm only going to make those sounds for so long before you get tired of it.
	Oh, somebody asked on the board, the guy that I talked to, the 17-year-old guy who gave me a run for my money in terms of verbosity and being able to play like a master the 17-year-old guy who gave me a run for my money in terms of verbosity and being He, somebody said, well, can you talk more about family?
	And so on, which I really wanted to be able to do with him, because, of course, a Jewish kid with religious Jewish parents is an interesting thing, right?
	I mean, there's some interesting family dynamics that are going on there.
	Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, this was not going to be possible, and that was fairly explicit, so we had to stick to politics.
	And so we talked about his dad in another form with Ron Paul.
	Anyway, so... You mentioned that if one were hanging off a flagpole and you had to jump into someone else's window to survive, it would be okay.
	Well, sure. Absolutely it would be okay.
	And I can't imagine that anybody would have a problem with that.
	I mean, I think you should pay for the...
	Like, if you have to kick the window in to get into somebody's apartment, yeah, I think that you should kick...
	I mean, to tell you what I would do is I wouldn't say, oh, well, this person's not home, so I'm going to drop to my death, right?
	I'd just kick their window in.
	I would go into their house, and then I would pay them to fix the window and for any other damage that might have occurred, and so on.
	But that is for sure, yeah.
	I mean, that's sort of the absolute thing, like, I cannot tell a lie, you know, in this whole thing.
	Somebody comes along and says, where's your wife?
	I want to kill her, right? And assuming that you like your wife and haven't hired the guy, then you don't tell the guy the truth, right?
	So where there's a situation of imminent danger, ethics can be not quite so absolute, right?
	And of course... I certainly don't have any problem with these as interesting theoretical questions, but...
	Oh, I'm just leading on to someone else.
	I'm just leading into something else. Sorry, you started the question.
	That's it. That's it. I'm just going to keep going.
	Onward! No, go on.
	Suppose you were attacked in the street by a knife-bearer of great skill.
	Okay. Well, no.
	no, they're talking about me.
	What I do is roll into a ball and cry like a little Japanese schoolgirl.
	And you're only...
	Okay, so let's see.
	We've got an excephalical question.
	Suppose you were attacked in the street by a knife-bearer of great skill, and your only hope of defense was to push a fellow to the ground and steal his pistol to cap the incoming knifer.
	Are you Indiana Jones?
	Do like the Asagai and pull out a bigger knife.
	Well, that's an interesting question.
	Again, I think that would be fine.
	Here's the situation.
	It doesn't mean that you wouldn't take sanctions for that thing.
	So let's say that kicking somebody's window in and jumping into their apartment with no inclination to steal anything whatsoever.
	Let's say that that was punishable by a $1,000 fine or something like that.
	So if I'm hanging from a flagpole and there's someone's window that I can kick in and get into their apartment, then what I'm going to do is I'm going to do that and I'm going to take the $1,000 fine.
	I mean, again, no single human being who's at all on the planet would ever press charges against you for kicking in their window if you were going to drop to your death otherwise.
	But, you know, if someone did, then you just pay the fine, right?
	So if you grab someone's gun...
	Then, because someone with a knife is attacking you and you grab their gun and shoot it, and then you hand it back to them, then maybe that's a thousand dollar fine for grabbing someone's gun and discharging it without their permission.
	Then you just... you pay that fine.
	Again, no human...
	I mean, if the guy's carrying a gun around, he's probably looking for a knife-wielding guy that he can shoot, right?
	So it's very unlikely that you're going to have to grab his gun, right?
	And so... Yeah, you just do it.
	I mean, you do it, and then if the guy presses charges, you pay the fine or something, if that makes sense.
	Whether it is okay to violate someone else's rights in order to protect your own from being violated, when is it okay?
	It's kind of hard to...
	No, I got that.
	I'm just looking at that. It's kind of hard to...
	Yeah, I mean, you can run away.
	But of course, see, this is the fundamental issue about this kind of stuff, if this makes any sense, right?
	The problem with the ethics of emergencies is it's like, how do you apply philosophy to a concentration camp?
	How is it that you're supposed to survive as a moral entity in a concentration camp?
	So, some guy has some food hidden under his bunk that he's been stealing.
	Can you steal a little bit of his because you're in the concentration camp and you're going to die if you don't get more food?
	So, if a guy's stabbing you or if you're hanging from a flagpole...
	But remember, philosophy...
	Oh, somebody just joined?
	The prisoners of the law?
	If you...
	Sorry, whoever just joined?
	You have a speaker with a microphone on?
	Can you turn your mic off?
	I'm getting an echo.
	Ah, good.
	Thank you.
	So, philosophy is about prevention.
	Philosophy is not about cure.
	Philosophy is not going to tell you exactly what you should do if you're in a prison riot.
	You know, and should you grab someone as a human shield if the guards start shooting at you and this and that, right?
	Philosophy is not really going to help you when it comes to should you kick in the window when you're hanging from a flagpole or should you grab someone's gun if someone's about to stab you.
	What philosophy will do is philosophy will say, don't go down the dark alley.
	Don't hang from a flagpole.
	Don't go to prison. Don't end up in a concentration camp.
	That's what philosophy does. Philosophy is the nutrition of mental health, right?
	So if somebody says, you know, what's the best way to treat somebody whose hand has just been bitten off by a shark?
	Well, it's not creating a dietary plan for their heart health, right?
	Because, you know, it's about prevention.
	It's not about cure.
	Particularly, right? So once you're in that situation, for me, I mean, this is just me.
	I'm not going to say that this is entirely true.
	This is just sort of what I think. If you're in the situation where someone's got a knife at you and so you're hanging from a flagpole and so on, then you've...
	Like, philosophy has already failed you if you're in that kind of situation, right?
	I mean, I've lived my life...
	I grew up in a really rough...
	I guess a pretty rough neighborhood for sure.
	Once I had a kid take my lunch money...
	And when I say kid, I mean about a four-year-old, and it was actually last week.
	But he looked tough.
	He had one of those little, what do you call them, those karate uniforms on?
	Right, and the kids that age, when they punch up?
	Anyway, we don't have to get into that, but, you know, I've lived in a society, lived in lots of different societies, and have never been in a fight, never had any fist fights, never been punched, I mean, never been beaten up other than within the loving confines of my own family.
	But there's just no need to get into these kinds of situations, right?
	So if you put people in concentration camps and have them hanging from flagpoles, then philosophy has already not done its job, right?
	It's like, you know, does the woman who's in an abusive relationship have the right to hit her husband on the head with a frypan so that she can get out of the house without him stopping her?
	Well, philosophy is designed to not get you into abusive relationships, right?
	Once you've been in an abusive relationship with a sociopath for 20 years, you know, philosophy can't really help you, I don't think.
	I mean, there's, you know, lots of people who say that it can and who go nuts trying to define the ethics of these kinds of extreme situations.
	But philosophy is about don't get into an abusive relationship.
	Philosophy is don't be in a section of town where people have guns and knives, right?
	Philosophy is about prevention.
	Stay home, go to karaoke. You know, that kind of stuff.
	It's about prevention. It's about helping you avoid these kinds of situations completely, right?
	So the ethics of the concentration camp and the ethics of these emergencies, the lifeboat scenarios and so on, if philosophy has done its job, there aren't any concentration camps, right?
	If philosophy has done its job, then there really aren't a lot of people with knives who want to stab you.
	And if there are, if they are, I mean, this is part of what I've been working on for the last week.
	Philosophy is a very fundamental form of self-protection because philosophy doesn't lead you down the road of getting into these kinds of dangerous and difficult situations.
	These things don't happen accidentally.
	I mean, for the most part. I'm talking about getting beaten up and things like that.
	This doesn't just happen randomly.
	This is the result of a whole series of decisions that you make in your life where you end up with somebody sticking a knife in your ribs.
	If I could have lived in all these different countries and gone to boarding school and moved 18 times and never been around anybody and of course I'm not a fighter by any stretch of the imagination.
	If I could have done all of that, never been in any kind of violent situation.
	I don't know anyone who's ever been outside of their family in any kind of violent situation.
	Even now, it's not that common.
	And in a free society, it would be even less common.
	We'd be watching a few episodes of this show, which if you get a chance to watch it, and you're close to my age, which is 40...
	Actually, even if not, but it's particularly relevant.
	It's called Freaks and Geeks, if you get a chance to watch it.
	It only ran for one season, I think back in 99, and they blew most of their budget on an amazing soundtrack.
	But it's a fantastic, fantastic show.
	And it really does talk about the strategies for...
	One of the shows has strategies about how to avoid violence.
	And a friend of mine, who sadly later died in a motorcycle accident, got across...
	My friend's name was Jamie, and the big guy's name was Sam...
	And they got into some fight or some conflict about it, and there was going to be a fight after school.
	And everybody was thrilled and excited and this and that.
	It turned out to be not much of a fight at all.
	But I had the same issue with a guy named David, who wanted to...
	I'm so ridiculous. What happened was, I was playing Defender, which was a great video game around in the early 80s.
	It was sort of akin to being thrown into a burlap sack with a hive of bees.
	And I was doing great in the game, and this guy wanted to play, so he unplugged the machine.
	So I called him a name which wasn't particularly pretty, and he got really upset.
	And he told his brother, whose brother was mad, and his brother was huge, and his brother was, you know, was going to get me, right?
	But you just avoid him, right?
	You just avoid him and wait for them to lose interest, right?
	You roll something shiny down the hallway and off they go, right?
	So, although it's scary, there's just no need to get into these kinds of things, or at least I've never found that to be the case.
	So the only person who beats me regularly now is Christina at ping pong, so...
	Can A coerce B to protect himself from C? No matter how hard you try, though, I don't think you can avoid some of these situations if you're an individual who is strong in philosophy, but many others refuse to do to be so.
	Maybe I can rephrase the quandary that I think even you could get into.
	No matter how many responsible decisions you make, I'll type it up when you finish.
	Oh yeah, no, that's great, that's great.
	As far as the ethics go, no.
	I don't think that you have the right to violate other people's rights.
	Some uncharted and unclaimed territory.
	Just as you type it in, I'll just throw some other stuff out there.
	You know, it's like the line from the old Beretta song, right?
	Don't do the crime if you can't do the time.
	If I grab someone's gun, then I just have to pay the consequences.
	Now, if I do kick in someone's window because I'm hanging from a flagpole, then I have to pay restitution for their window.
	I mean, that to me seems reasonable.
	Because it's not the person's fault that I'm hanging on a flagpole out of their apartment.
	They're not responsible. So, I don't think I get to shoot someone because someone wants to pickpocket me.
	But I think that you violate their rights with full knowledge that you're going to To take the consequences, right?
	So here's another example which might help.
	So some blackmailer comes along and kidnaps Christina, and he doesn't look like George Clooney, so she wants to come back.
	And he says, you know, give me a million dollars, right?
	So I go and steal a million dollars, right?
	Well, I'm going to go and steal the million dollars, if that's the only way that I can do it and no one can help or whatever.
	But then I'm going to go to jail, right?
	Or I'm going to pay back the guy the million bucks or, you know, some reasonable sum, like, I don't know, more than I could afford, like 50 bucks or something.
	But I'll just, like, I'll do it, but it's wrong to do, but I'm going to do it because my value, like, I'll take the restitution problem, I'll take the jail problem, I'll take the DRO's hating me from here to eternity problem, Because I want to get my wife back.
	I'm going to do it, but it's wrong for me to do it, right?
	Because whoever I steal the money from, it's not their fault that my wife got kidnapped, right?
	So they have every right to get the money back from me, and what I did was wrong.
	I'm going to do it. My philosophy just says there are consequences, you know, and it says it's wrong to do it.
	It doesn't mean that you're never going to do it, right?
	It just means that if you do it, it's wrong, and you have to make restitution.
	I just wanted to...
	Oh, did that answer your question?
	I mean, it cannot answer your question, but...
	Yeah, you don't have the right to do it.
	Because, of course, the moment that you say you have the right to violate other people's rights in a moment of need, we're back to the damn welfare state, right?
	And the military-industrial complex, and we have a government, so...
	Yeah, absolutely. You don't have the right to do that, but there are certainly situations under which I would do it, for sure.
	You just, you know, it's still wrong to do.
	You just make the lesser of two evils.
	Oh, hello.
	Whoever joined isn't crackling.
	Sorry, whoever's joined, again, I don't have any mute, but you've got a hell of a crackling going on.
	You must be adjusting your mic or moving your mic or something like that.
	Are you typing? People who are typing with their mic on, we can definitely hear that.
	Yeah, where's the chat box for this conversation?
	I don't see any...
	What's your username?
	Mine's Tyrone Melchiori.
	Okay, Tyrone, Joey's running it.
	I don't have the ability to add you, but I think that Joey does, so...
	You can send your contact details to Joey.
	Is it this quiet for everyone else?
	I'm just having trouble hearing it.
	I'll turn my mic then. Oh, thanks so much.
	My ears explode. How's that?
	That's great, that's great.
	When you were talking about the situation where you're put in, you know, the situation where someone's got a knife in your face or someone's kind of robbing you at the point of a gun, it kind of seems like at that point the rules have kind of changed a little bit.
	I mean, if you kind of just narrow down the universe where it's just you and this guy and the rule is people with guns now get to take your money.
	I mean, sort of applying Universal principles of morality doesn't seem very practical to me.
	And like you said, it's true that to get yourself into a situation like that, you must have made some mistakes beforehand.
	It just doesn't seem rational to me to start upon universal morality to a situation where the rules are just obviously not universal in nature because this person is Right, right. And certainly the principles of self-defense would kick in there, but do you have the right to grab someone else's gun to defend yourself and so on?
	Yeah, I think you're right. I think that you can apply universal principles of morality and still it would be something that you would do because you're going to take the lesser of two evils, which we do all the time, right?
	So you will grab someone else's gun to defend yourself, and then you should pay them some restitution for grabbing their gun, right?
	You're renting their gun, right?
	In a sense, right? The same way that you're renting the woman's apartment when you kick in her window to get yourself out of the flagpole situation.
	It's just an after-the-fact kind of payment.
	Right. Because, I mean, it doesn't make the moral laws...
	It doesn't make them arbitrary, right?
	Like, it's still... I mean, wrong in a universal sense to use violence, right?
	But when you're in a situation where the other person you're interacting with completely does not respect those rules, it would be like trying to play a monopoly with someone, making up their own rules as they go.
	Wow, is my brother still playing Monopoly?
	That seems kind of weird. Anyway, sorry, go on.
	Yeah, but I mean, you get my point, right?
	You're not in a normal situation, so the normal rules...
	I mean, it doesn't change what the normal rules are, and they're still true, but you can't play by them and expect to...
	I expect to get out of the situation with your head still firmly attached to your neck.
	Right. I mean, if you can take an extreme example like you're starving, right, and there's an apple cart that you're starving, and there's an apple cart sitting around, and the guy's maybe gone for a, you know, he's just left a note that says, don't steal my apples, and he's gone to get, I don't know, gone to the washroom or something.
	And if you don't eat the apple, you're going to die.
	Well, what are you going to say?
	I am a Sean Chinaco capitalist.
	Property rights are absolute.
	So I'm just going to quietly expire here in the gutter.
	No, you're going to take the apple.
	You're going to take the apple. I mean, it's knowingly disobeying the rules for a pretty good reason.
	Absolutely. And then what I would do, right, is I'm going to knowingly, I'm going to take the apple because I'm not going to die.
	Right? I mean, because that's, oh, property rights.
	I'm going to take the apple.
	It's wrong for me to take the apple.
	It's not this guy's fault that I'm stopping to death.
	It's wrong for me to take the apple.
	I'm going to take the apple.
	And I'm going to take my chances.
	And what I will do, and I guarantee that I will, is that when I get back on my feet, I'm going to go back to this guy, and I'm going to be his apple customer for the rest of my life, and I'm going to give him a thousand bucks for that apple I stole.
	I guess the principle is knowingly obeying the rules isn't always necessarily a bad thing.
	Well, people will always choose to disobey rules for varyingly good and bad reasons, right?
	It's just that the rules still exist, right?
	I mean, you can cheat at chess, right?
	I mean, you can break the rules if you want.
	You know, it's just that you don't want to do this in a case of emergency, right?
	So to take a ridiculous example, if I were playing chess for Christina's life and I knew that I wasn't going to win, then I'd cheat, right?
	Because it's like, yes, I will absolutely do that.
	Simply because I'm in that situation, right?
	But the whole point, of course, of philosophy is to get you to not be in those situations, right?
	I mean, it's like the whole point of medicine should be to not have there be a war, right?
	Not to figure out how to better treat people on the battlefield, right?
	But if you want people to be healthy, don't figure out how to treat them on the battlefield, right?
	Figure out how they're not to be at war.
	And that's what I think the point of philosophy.
	Great. Okay.
	Excellent question. Thank you.
	Well, I don't know that the ethics are subordinate to the situation.
	I mean, I'm still violating ethics by stealing the guy's property, right?
	It's just that, yeah, I'm knowingly and consciously going to do something wrong.
	I can't then complain about the consequences, right?
	So if the guy catches me and takes the apple back and calls the DRO cops or whatever, right?
	I can't then say, no, what I did was not wrong.
	I'll say... Yeah, what I did was wrong and I'd do it again.
	So take me to a jail and give me an apple buffet or whatever.
	But of course, these kinds of situations are pretty artificial because nobody ends up starving and there's an apple cart.
	What happens is people make a whole bunch of bad decisions that lead them to that particular situation.
	So they get addicted to drugs.
	They maybe don't tough it out at home and end up living on the street.
	They just do all of these bad, bad things.
	Sniff glue or whatever it is, right?
	And I have a lot of sympathy.
	A lot of these people are pretty young when they make those decisions.
	But that's not the end result.
	You don't just sort of one day wake up and you're, oh my god.
	Now I'm starving and I have to steal an apple, right?
	I mean, that's a series of whole other decisions that are not, let's just say, not optimal, right, that lends you in that sort of situation, in which case jail may be the best place for you, right?
	I mean, a sort of reasonable jail with rehab and so on might be the best place for you.
	I'm sorry, go ahead. Did you hear that voice too?
	I'm so glad. Oh, I'd hate it for that one coming back.
	Man, oh man. All right, so...
	So maybe apply the idea of integrity, sayeth the listener, to the knife attack.
	If self-preservation from violence is principle number one, then your coercion of the pistol owner is essentially the responsibility of the knife attacker.
	Yeah, I mean, I could see that.
	I could see that. But again, there's no human being alive who would press charges against you if you grabbed his gun to save you from a knife attacker.
	I guarantee you there is no human being alive who would say, okay...
	I have a gun, right?
	I have a gun. You just look at the principles of the situation.
	I'm walking around with a gun.
	That's a silly sentence for me to say.
	That isn't an RPG launcher in Unreal Cinema 2004.
	I'm walking around with a gun.
	Why am I doing that? Because I know that it's maybe a shifty neighborhood and I should have the right for self-defense.
	I approve of the principle of self-defense.
	Why? Because I'm carrying a gun, right?
	And I would be more than willing to use that gun for the sake of self-defense, right?
	So if somebody grabs my gun and uses it for self-defense, am I really going to object to that person, fundamentally on principle, using a gun for self-defense, even if it's mine?
	Has it done any irreparable harm to my gun?
	No, they're kind of designed to be fired, right?
	Or at least brandished. What is the cost of a bullet?
	I don't know, 20 cents, 15 cents?
	So... What have you done to the guy, right?
	I mean, you've done nothing bad to the guy whatsoever.
	No one is going to... They're going to say, dude, well done, you know.
	I'm going to frame this gun.
	It was used to, you know, to plug a bad guy or whatever, right?
	So, there's just, like, no one's going to get mad at you for that, right?
	No one's going to be... I don't...
	Like, I've got to kick a window in so I don't drop to my death.
	No one's going to press charges.
	They probably wouldn't even ask me to pay for the window.
	I certainly would, but no one's...
	I mean, people are nicer than that, right?
	So... To some degree, there has to be a complainer for there to be immorality in action.
	I'm not talking about in theory or in a pure world of platonic ethical rules, but there has to be somebody who's complaining in order for there to be what we would call an ethical problem, right?
	So that's the difference between me dropping hot wax on my nipples and then doing it by surprise the bartender where we go For a drink on occasion, right?
	He would complain, at least he certainly did last time.
	So, there's just a difference there.
	I also think it's useful to remember that the rules exist to serve us.
	The ethical rules exist for the benefit of mankind.
	You don't serve the rules, you know what I mean?
	We're not slaves to the rules, but the rules are there for a good reason, for our own benefit, right?
	Well, for sure, yeah, yeah, for sure.
	I mean, like medicine, right?
	Medicine is there to help you get better or to not get sick or whatever, right?
	So, yeah, for sure, for sure.
	The rules are there to benefit us, right?
	And that's why, if I'm going to die, like, rather than die, I'm going to steal an apple, right?
	Yes, I'm violating property rights, but, you know, I'm violating basic self-esteem if I just let myself die because I don't want to offend someone who has an apple, right?
	There's self-esteem that's involved in this as well, which is I'm going to make a decision...
	To violate an abstract moral rule in order to save my life, right?
	I mean, and that's a priority too, right?
	Because it doesn't make much sense to preserve the property rights of an apple and kill a human being, right?
	I mean, that just doesn't really make that much sense, right?
	And again, I know there's a slippery slope argument here where you get back to the redistributive welfare state and so on, but that's why these ethics of emergencies are invoked.
	I'm not saying by you, but yeah, I mean, there's a hierarchy of value as well, right?
	About I wouldn't. I mean, if I was the apple cart owner, I mean, what kind of cosmic asshole would I have to be to press charges against someone who stole an apple because he was about to die?
	I mean, wouldn't you just feel the most incredible kind of sympathy?
	I mean, if you're driving some UN truck in Darfur and there's some kid who's like skin and bone, who's like running by the truck and is reaching in to grab a few handfuls of food, are you really going to say, well, that's it, kid, you scurvy little thief off to the brink with you?
	People just aren't like that.
	They are when they're in the government and they don't see the violence and they are when they're in the army and they've been indoctrinated, but...
	Human beings in general, I mean, you're going to be touched by that, right?
	I mean, like the scene in Les Miserables where Jean Valjean steals the priest's candlesticks to make some money, and the priest says, no, I gave them to him, right?
	I find, just in general, people, when they're personally in ethical situations, rather than, ah, those goddamn wetbacks, go back where they came from, right?
	When it's abstract and when the government gets to do all the violence and, you know, ah, those damn hippies, they, you know, shouldn't smoke the drugs and so on, because what happens?
	Well, they just banish from your neighborhood and go to some gulag that you never see, right?
	Where they meet up with very aggressive and well-oiled cellmates.
	So, you know, but when people are actually in that situation themselves...
	They don't pull the trigger.
	I mean, they don't. The reason that the government is so dangerous is that it abstracts all the violence away, and other people do it out of sight, and there's no particular personal cost for your opinions, either financially or viscerally or anything.
	So, people say, well, let's get the illegal immigrants out of the country.
	It's like, okay, you quit your job, right?
	You become some elite ninja who's going to round these people up and send them back over the border.
	You put your life in your hands when you go up to these people.
	You see the horror and fear in the children's eyes as they're ripped from the arms of their mother, like Elias was.
	You do all of that, and then maybe you have some practical right, in a sense, to hold that opinion.
	But what happens is people just say, ah, the damn wetbacks, you know, like, let's take all 10 million of them and round them up and ship them out.
	It's like, because you don't do it, right?
	Someone else does it. And you don't even pay for it.
	Everybody else pays for it.
	I mean, everybody and you, right?
	So that's, of course, what's so dangerous.
	But when people, like, when you don't have the welfare state, but you have a guy with an apple cart, things are very much different.
	There's a humanity, there's an interaction, there's sympathy, there's empathy.
	You look into somebody's eyes, right?
	That's very, very different from, we should pass some law and you just never get to see the consequences and everybody else bears both the emotional cost and you should just share the financial cost with everyone else.
	And it never accrues to you.
	There's no bill. As we've talked before.
	Hey, for the Iraq War, here's your $50,000 bill.
	How many people are actually going to be for the Iraq War if it's going to cost them $50,000?
	But people can just say all of this crap when they don't actually have to do it.
	And I don't mean you by this, of course.
	Sorry, minor rant. I think I'm done.
	See what happens when I don't podcast?
	I don't know when to stop. Oh, no, wait.
	I don't know when to stop even when I do.
	Sorry. They went on a tangent.
	No tangents allowed. No tangents allowed.
	All right, so... Any other questions?
	It's haiku time if you're not.
	Haiku time. Haiku time.
	All right, can I take the seat for a second?
	Don't worry, nobody's going to interrupt the haikus.
	I'm going to do these haikus in Japanese.
	Just a quick question.
	Oh, look at that. The haikus come out and suddenly we get a question.
	Yes, go on. Was there a specific topic for the day or was it just kind of...
	The topic is you, baby.
	You are the topic. No, I just started off with a little bit of business, freedom in radio business, but no, no particular topic.
	Whatever you like. All right.
	It's nice that this must be a new listener thinks there's topics.
	Anyway, okay, so we had some wonderful donation haikus that were posted on the board that I'm going to share with people, and if you've seen these, perhaps you will still like them.
	All right. So somebody wrote, I believe Steph needs to change his donation marketing style.
	This is from the pitiful, like a baby ocelot kind of plea for money.
	So I believe we should band together and write some good old-fashioned haiku.
	And so he came up with one which I think is good.
	Hat in hand. No smile.
	Checking PayPal every day.
	I cry. Kitten tears.
	I think it's very, very good.
	Excellent, excellent. And here...
	Somebody else came up. Need to eat.
	Real bad. Philosophy pays poorly.
	Kidneys, I accept.
	Nice. Very, very nice.
	And here's some more. I need money now.
	Christina wears the pants and skirts are expensive.
	Yeah, that's funny because that indicates that there was a point where you didn't wear the pants.
	Anyway. FDR is broke.
	The wife is bringing in cash separate bank account.
	Oh, sorry. I didn't mean to read that one to you.
	Why'd I quit my job?
	Podcasts for broke-ass students going back to work!
	Very good. Truth is great and all, but my teeth are falling out and I need new shoes.
	Give to FDR. You don't need fiat money.
	I'll take care of that. Premium content.
	I tried to attract the crew.
	Need sexy webcam.
	Very nice. Dreaming of eating.
	Canada is expensive. Christina eats moose.
	Electricity, mice, gerbil and metal wheel.
	Good podcast power.
	Water flows through roof buckets and pans.
	Getting full. Eating my own shoe.
	Ah, very nice.
	Once, a software exec, gone full-time, now Steph knows why Buddha lived on rice.
	That's very good, yeah. Steph needs your money so he can bring you freedom.
	It's a good deal. Can't help but agree with that.
	So that's very nice.
	I certainly do appreciate it.
	Dreamy, dreams of cash, filling up my bank account.
	Too bad, it's all fake.
	That's very good. I'm not sure exactly why William Shatner is so heavily involved with haiku reading, but there it is.
	So, anyway, that's something that I wanted to just mention.
	Now, for those who are having a DFU conversation, in the chat window, I'm feeling so left out.
	I cry kitten tears. Did you mention DFUing?
	Yes. Yeah, I'm actually going through a bit of that right now.
	Can I just interrupt you for a moment?
	I do appreciate that you're being diplomatic.
	I don't think there's any possibility to go through a bit of defooing.
	Oh, okay. So I'm just saying, it probably is a little bit more exciting than what you're saying.
	I'm sorry, go ahead. Okay, so I've mentioned this before on the board.
	It's basically that I have a Extremely religious father, which is really weird because he wasn't always like that.
	Like I can remember him being, what's that word?
	Oh yeah, sane. And now he's just completely lost his mind.
	And it makes me really sad, but I kind of cut him out of my life.
	And why would someone do that?
	I just don't understand why someone would just completely give up on reality like that.
	Well, I mean, my father did the same thing.
	My father was an agnostic when he was younger, and then he became heavily religious, like core Anglican writing treatises about God's ineffable will and purpose.
	Can you tell me a little bit more about your dad and your history with him, and then we may be able to theorize to some degree about why he got it.
	He was an artist.
	I guess he still is. He was a painter.
	He was a musician, actually a pretty good one.
	He was pretty popular in Toronto for a while there.
	I'm pretty sure he had no religious leanings, at least when I was conceived and for the first probably fourteen years of my life.
	But he wasn't really around from the age of about five on.
	He took off to the States, to Colorado, and he had a pretty bad drinking problem.
	And then he joined AA, and you know how in AA there's those 12 staffs and one of them is admitting there's a sky ghost?
	Yeah, surrender yourself to a higher power, right?
	Exactly, exactly. Slavish obedience is the solution to slavish obedience.
	What they want to do is switch addictions to something more profitable, but go on.
	And basically it was just sort of his brother, his younger brother actually, which is kind of weird, but his younger brother actually, I think, egged him on.
	And I was religious for a little while there too.
	I was probably about 13 years old and I got told that I was going to hell.
	You keep believing in evolution and all this stuff.
	And I really, really tried to I actually believed the stuff and I failed miserably at it.
	That's an interesting use of the word failure, but I think I know where you're coming from.
	As a Nazi, I was just terrible.
	I'm a terrible, terrible Christian.
	I've read the Bible probably twice.
	Well, that's your problem.
	You can't be a Christian and read the Bible.
	That's not going to work. I was rooting for the devil.
	But, I don't know, for some reason, my dad, he sort of just went with it.
	So what did he do in Colorado?
	What was his story out there?
	How long was he there for? Well, he's kind of like a carpenter-slash-artist.
	He's a framer and he does lots of artwork, like oil paintings.
	I don't know how he made money.
	He can make money.
	I mean, give him some tools and he'll do something and earn money, right?
	So I'm not really sure what he was doing out there.
	Probably construction. He was probably supervising a work site or something.
	I'm sorry to interrupt. Was he in contact with you at all during this time?
	Yeah, I mean, we would talk on the phone and stuff.
	Of course, I mean, I would hardly call it a relationship.
	It was more of just like, Desperate, you know, him desperately trying to stay in contact with his son.
	And why did he go to, sorry to interrupt again, why did he go to Colorado?
	I have no idea. Like, seriously, I have no clue why he did that.
	I guess he was just trying to escape or something.
	I mean, I think they knew each other.
	My mother and father knew each other.
	It can happen.
	Christina and I only knew each other for six months before we made the decision, or actually I ran out of money.
	It can happen, but it's not common for sure, but go on.
	Yeah, yeah. I have absolutely no idea.
	I guess that would be a good question to sort of ask him.
	I don't know if it would be possible to get a straight answer.
	It seemed like he had started a contracting company building houses.
	I went and lived with him for Probably about two years.
	He was just becoming more and more religious.
	I don't know what it was, but it's time to leave.
	I'm so sorry to interrupt you. I just lost the time frame a little bit there.
	He goes to Colorado when you're five.
	You talk with him for a while.
	Did you go to Colorado? Did he come back?
	I don't think I ever, no.
	He wouldn't come back to Toronto.
	I would go out and visit him.
	That was a big fight that my parents really had as well.
	Me coming out to visit my dad.
	He would want me to come out and see him.
	And my mom would be, no, no, no, you can't.
	And what were your feelings about going to visit him?
	Oh, through all of this, I just, I don't know.
	I kind of went into my own little world.
	Sure. Well, I mean, all these petitions are being made.
	And nobody's asking you, right?
	Exactly. Nobody's saying, what are your feelings about it?
	What are your thoughts about it, right?
	I made a hobby of reading the encyclopedia.
	That tells you how toys and hats was in my childhood.
	Oh, I'm so sorry. I did go out and visit him.
	And I would go out during the summers, right?
	So I'd be here for the regular school year.
	And then I'd be shipped out to the South United States for the summers and spend with my dad.
	And then when I was about fourteen, I became, quote, too much for my mother to handle.
	So I was sort of permanently shipped to the United States to live with my dad.
	And I did for about a year and a half.
	And then I just, you know, I came home and I'm like, this is it.
	I'm getting away from these people.
	So I got really good at math and science.
	And now I'm, you know, I work as a cook at a really nice restaurant and I'm studying software engineering.
	Wow, that is fantastic.
	How old are you? 21.
	Dude, you are like a hero.
	You may not know, but just from this vantage point, what you've done is just fantastic.
	So few people just desperately hang around, hoping that they're going to get a few scraps of affection or love, or they can't make that step.
	So just A, fantastic and congratulations.
	It's an amazing, amazing thing that you've done.
	Thank you. As to why your dad...
	When you would go and visit him, it's kind of weird.
	What happened... So you'd be at school in Toronto in the winter.
	You'd have all these friends, right?
	And then you wouldn't get to see them in the summer because you'd be shipped off to Colorado.
	No, and that always made me...
	That sucks! You know, sad and pissed off.
	Because, I mean, like, you know, I wanted to spend the summer with my friends.
	Of course, you know, part of me was going, oh, this is good.
	This is good for me. This is what everyone tells me is good for me.
	So it must be good. And, of course, now I realize that, no, I mean...
	I mean, thankfully, though, I still...
	I have actually... I still do have the same friends that I knew while I was a kid.
	Because we all grew up in the same neighborhood, right?
	I still talk to them. But, you know, I didn't get a chance to sort of have a vacation or have a time off.
	It was always, you know, it was always that altruistic, oh, you have to go see your father.
	You know, that was always the tune.
	Right. No, I mean, it's...
	Your dad left later than my dad left when I was too young to remember him even being there.
	And when I was in boarding school, when I was six, we had to write letters to our parents.
	And so I'd write, Dear Mom, and then I'd write to my dad, Dear Tom.
	And people would get upset with me and say, no, you have to write Dear Dad.
	It's like... Oh yeah, the same thing happened to me in school.
	Yeah, it's like, what are you talking about, dear dad?
	And when I was older, even when I came to Canada, I'd say, my ex-dad lives in Africa.
	And people would say, well, what do you mean your ex-dad?
	Is he dead? No? No, but then he's still your dad.
	It's like, what are you talking about?
	That word doesn't mean a guy who had sex with my mom.
	That is not dad.
	That's just, you know, sperm donor.
	I mean, he had as much connection with me as your average sperm donor with a weird and guilty conscience.
	So I totally understand that feeling that there's just not a lot of sentimentality attached to that kind of relationship.
	What's his life been like over the past, I guess, was he drinking while you were out there when you were a kid?
	No, I think that I only really started going out to see him.
	I mean, I definitely, when he...
	My parents split up and then he stayed in Toronto and just kind of wallowed for a while.
	And he was drinking heavily then.
	Man, that was...
	It was a whole lot of fun going to see him when he was drinking.
	He was just basically...
	I mean, he's definitely not a violent drunk or anything like that.
	He's just a complete bored of the era.
	Yeah, drinking empties people out, right?
	It hollows them out. It turns them into just empty people.
	Yeah. And then he went down south.
	I mean, eventually he ended up in New Mexico, right?
	So that's where I actually lived for a while.
	And once he sobered up, That's when I sort of really started seeing him more often.
	And then when I was about 13 and he'd been sober for, you know, I think maybe a couple years, like two years, that's when I went down.
	And, you know, I started seeing him for a long period of time rather than just conversations on the phone with my mother in the background.
	Right. And of course, would it be fair to say, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but would it be fair to say that there was always a kind of awkwardness about this?
	Oh, for sure. Oh, yeah.
	Are you kidding? No, no.
	I don't ever want to say my experiences are exactly the same as other people's because we're all different.
	But for me, it was weird because there's this word called dad that's supposed to have all these emotional connotations.
	And then there's this guy who's pretty much a stranger who's really kind of awkward and weird.
	And it just never made any sense to me.
	I've got to think that it's about as weird as the first night you spend with your wife if it's an arranged marriage and you've never met her before.
	It was kind of weird, you know?
	And there's just no connection without people being there.
	There's no spiritual bond with someone called dad.
	I mean, you're either there and you're putting the time in or you're not.
	And if you're not, then it's just weird.
	It's like you're... I was just saying this to Christina in another context when we were walking today.
	It's kind of like you're in a play and you're the only one who knows it's a play and everyone else thinks it's real life.
	But you kind of have to just go along with like, okay, whatever, right?
	Yeah, I like that.
	Yeah, I don't really know what else to say, but that's basically my D.C. story.
	Well, I certainly commend you again.
	I mean, it's a very tough step, and I mean, for what it's worth, it sounds like you did the right thing, because it sounds like your parents treated you like a fucking potted plant, if you don't mind me saying so, right?
	Which is like, yeah, let's ship them over here.
	Hey, let's ship them over there.
	And I, you know, I don't ask the potted plant if it wants to be turned towards the sun, right?
	So you were kind of treated like an inert possession, if that makes sense?
	Yeah. I was torn between two hardcore Catholic factions.
	The Sicilian on my father's side, and you had the Irish on my mother's side.
	So there was all kinds of just nasty skeletons in the closet that no one had dealt with, and they got dumped on me, which is the trend, right?
	So, as to why your dad is becoming religious, I'm going to just throw a couple of ideas out and you can let me know.
	Yeah, that's what I really want to know. Sorry, it's not easy to do it if I don't have any info, but I'll throw some stuff out there and you can let me know what you think.
	Sure. Your parents sound like amazingly disorganized people.
	Extremely. Right? Like, oh, you're going to call...
	Let's have a living. Two months, let's have a kid.
	Oh, I'll stick around for a couple of years.
	Oh, I'm going to go to Chicago. I'm a musician.
	I'm a carpenter. I'm a this. Like, just...
	I'm going to drink. Now I'm going to go into AA. Like, just chaotic and disorganized.
	And by that, I don't mean, like, maybe your place was neat and all this and that, but just kind of fundamentally not reliable people.
	Yeah. That's exactly how I would describe it.
	Right, right. So, when you...
	When you are that way...
	It's okay when you're young, right?
	So you can be kind of like the cool, rockin' carpenter guy moving around.
	Yeah, my kid comes to see me in the summers, and then I drink, and then I... You can do all of that when you're young, right?
	And it's kind of cool in a way.
	It's kind of like the devil may care.
	I'm a rolling stone, you know, that kind of stuff.
	It can be perceived. I don't think it is cool, right?
	I mean, especially if you've got a kid. Well, no, but...
	But it can be perceived as cool.
	The problem is that...
	Life is long.
	Everyone sort of forgets. Life is short, for sure.
	We should seize the day. But life is long.
	If you're going to live for 80 years...
	How old is your dad now?
	Fifty-six.
	He's got, probably, statistically, at least another 20 to 30 years to go before he's going to die.
	That's a long time.
	I mean, that's a long time.
	Longer than I know. Yeah, longer than you've known him, right?
	Longer than you've been alive. So that's a long time.
	So being a freewheeling, cool musician guy in your 20s is one thing.
	It doesn't really work so well when you're in your 50s, right?
	Yeah. So it's sort of like a woman of...
	A woman of 20 can wear shorts and a halter top and look good.
	A woman of 55, the peach has been left out in the sun a little bit too long for that, right, so to speak.
	And so, with your dad, he disliked structure because structure was rules, right, and structure was discipline, and structure was he had to do stuff, right?
	And he didn't like that, right?
	I don't think so. Right.
	I mean, just judging from his actions, right?
	And so now, what's happened is he's not remarried, is he?
	Actually, yeah, he kind of called me and he is remarried.
	He just sort of randomly was like, oh, by the way, I'm getting married.
	And I posted this on the board.
	I have to laugh, even though it's not funniness that I feel.
	It's not humorous. He chose to get married on my birthday.
	Oh, right. And I had to call them and be like, do not do that, please.
	And that was partially because of the comment that you made, because it's true.
	I mean, it was just completely overshadow it.
	And it was like, well, that's not fair.
	Right. I was first, right?
	I mean, that's really... I kind of got dibs on that day.
	Now, is his wife religious?
	Yeah. I don't even know her, but apparently she is.
	Right. Now, religion...
	Religion is like the government, in that it looks like structure, but it's really total chaos.
	And this is the commonality that I'm going to try and have a chance for you to look at it, just to see if it works.
	I think I see where you're going with this.
	Religion is like a structured and distorted mirror of just whatever the hell you want.
	If you're an angry guy, you can read the Old Testament and there's justification for you to be angry.
	And if you're like a I don't know, some weepy girly man.
	Then you can look at the New Testament and picture Jesus' dewy tears rolling down his divine cheeks or something, and you could be that guy.
	So, in the same way that I make the argument that the government is really what people think of as anarchism, religion is a pseudo-structure, but it is in fact fundamentally incredibly chaotic, because it's just whatever you want it to be.
	That's why whenever there's religious power in the world, Everything just gets really hysterical and crazy and aggressive and violent because it's fundamentally, it's pure chaos.
	It's just whatever people want.
	It's a bunch of confusion.
	Yeah, it's a bunch of confusion, but you get to pretend that it's absolute.
	It's a lazy man's philosophy, right?
	And it's a disorganized man's philosophy, right?
	It's the fast food. Great, yeah.
	Yeah, I can hear a little background noise too, but I think people can still hear, so we'll just have to sort of go on.
	So this sort of chaos and confusion that's going on with your dad has not been solved by AA and it's not been solved by religion, right?
	This is just another way of being chaotic and confused and it's not cool to do it as a musician and a carpenter anymore so now he's got to be religious.
	So basically it's fundamentally the other thing that occurs in the realm of religion as well is that he is going to get forgiveness and absolution for everything that he's done, right?
	Your parents treated you like crap.
	And that is something that really preys on people's conscience.
	I mean, I'll just mention this really briefly.
	But I know that you feel that your parents didn't notice you.
	I can totally guarantee you that you loom very large in your parents' minds.
	Right? What they did to you as a child looms Very large in their mind.
	I believe that it's probably one of the reasons why your dad was drinking, and I also believe that it is definitely the reason that he has turned to religion.
	It is guilt out of what he has done that he can't undo, right?
	So earlier we were talking like, if I break someone's window, I can just buy them a new window and give them a hundred bucks, and they're probably relatively satisfied, right?
	Nobody can go back and pay you attention as a child again, right?
	That's never going to happen. You never get to have your childhood again.
	You never get to have those developmental hurdles again.
	Like if I have a kid and I don't feed my kid and my kid gets brittle bones, it doesn't matter if he gets lots of food later in life.
	He's still going to have brittle bones for the rest of his life, right?
	So there's challenges that as children of these kinds of chaotic families, we're going to have physiologically and mentally for the rest of our natural lives, right?
	And that can be a real boon.
	Like it can make us very strong and it can make us very capable.
	It's not what we would choose, but we can make some great stuff out of what happened.
	But what your parents did to you and didn't do to you, which was consult you and listen to you, looms enormously large in their minds.
	And it certainly has been my experience looking at both my parents and other parents that I know.
	The second half of your life is...
	The consequence of the first half of your life.
	So if you do the first half of your life well and you try and be a good person, you try and do the right thing, you don't have to be perfect, then the second half of your life is one way.
	If you do really crappy things like don't listen to children and abuse them through neglect or you drink around them or you just cut them around like a potted plant, the second half of your life is entirely conditioned by what you did in the first half of your life.
	And so if you want to understand where your parents are, I think, I think it's very important to understand that what they did to you was absolutely unconscionable.
	They can never go back and fix it.
	There is no 10 million dollars that they could give you that would make it okay.
	And that is something that they will never be able to escape for the rest of their natural lives.
	And that's why it's such a good thing that you have.
	That's a solid theory. I like that.
	I'm going to have to think about that some more.
	These theories work better if you don't think about them too much?
	Just kidding. Well, this is recorded, so you can have a chance to listen to the rant again if it makes sense.
	But yeah, I mean, they're going to run to religion because they're not going to get any forgiveness from you or reality, right?
	Or their conscience. It fits the evidence, right?
	Like what you're saying definitely is making some connections.
	So there's a good chance that it's correct, I think.
	Well, thanks. Listen, I really do appreciate your honesty in sharing this.
	Thank you. I know that a lot of people are going through these kinds of questions, at least, and your honesty will be very, very helpful for them.
	I think somebody's listening to us on a cell phone in a mall.
	I think I can hear a food court in the background, haven't you?
	Is there anything else that you wanted to add to that?
	No, not really. I have plenty to chew on.
	Yeah, thanks so much.
	You're very, very welcome. Thank you so much for sharing your story.
	All right. Do we have other questions?
	Do we have other questions, eh?
	Mary? We are looking for questions, eh?
	Hi, Steph. I will do a French accent for as long as it takes.
	Yes, go ahead. Yeah, this is Beau, man.
	The guy from the forums that grab you the thread regarding sexually aggressive male versus the nice guy.
	The player! How are you doing, man?
	Doing good. I finally was able to get this thing to work.
	I'm very good. I wanted to take you up on your offer, and I decided that this might be a pretty good idea.
	Excellent. My thing is regarding the post was mostly just because I got a lot of feedback.
	I was like, oh my god, I don't know what I'm going to do with all this stuff.
	It was kind of overwhelming.
	I don't know how to really react to most of that stuff.
	Right. I mean, I think it's fair to say that you unwittingly lashed yourself to the Free Domain Radio food cannon, right?
	You're like, hey, somebody went off and I'm suddenly missing a midriff.
	So, sorry, go on. No, I mean, so, my biggest issue was, I mean, we started going from, like, regarding my mom and stuff.
	I mean, that was a really big one for me was, you know, I... I can understand the evidence you're presenting, but I can't make the connection between mom being somebody that was an evil person versus somebody that's just been maybe somewhat confused.
	I don't know. That's a hard part for me, is trying to figure out how to get that connection.
	Right. And sorry, just let me give a two-second recap, because this is going out as audio, and there are some listeners who aren't on the board, actually about 95% of them.
	And if you disagree with anything, of course, just let me know.
	But Beau was somebody who joined the board, and welcome, of course.
	And he began talking about his mom, that he has a very close relationship with his mom and this and that.
	And then I felt, or at least I thought, in the content of Beau's post that That there was some stuff to do with his mom that seemed to me a little bit, maybe even more than a little bit, on the selfish side, right?
	So she remarried, I won't put out any particular details, but she remarried a guy who was a drinker and was a music player and so on.
	And so I began to sort of question this idea that you have a close relationship with your mom and this and that.
	I didn't use the term evil and I wouldn't use the term evil just because I don't know enough about it.
	I can't remember if the term evil came in from someone else or whether that's what you got out of what I was saying.
	It's what I got. Right, right.
	I didn't mean to use the word evil.
	I certainly didn't mean to imply the word evil.
	But if you'd like, I can sort of toss out a way that you could approach that to sort of figure that out if you'd like.
	Absolutely. Okay.
	I mean, the way that I work with it, and, you know, this could be right, it could be wrong, but it certainly has been helpful to some people, is that, you know, my mom, you know, full disclosure, right?
	I mean, you may or may not know this, and certainly people love it when I talk about my mom again, but my mom was abusive and so on, but she was never abusive when she was in public, right?
	So, you know, if there was a cop standing there, she wouldn't, like, hit me, right?
	So... Obviously, she knew that it was wrong and she was able to control her behavior.
	If my mom was schizophrenic and she beat me up in front of a cop, then clearly she would not be in control of her behavior.
	She would not be morally responsible for what she did.
	But my mom was able to keep this kind of stuff going.
	Now, I'm not equating your mom with my mom.
	I'm just talking about the principle, right?
	But if this has remained secret, if your stepdad or your mom, if this never occurred when there were other people around, then they logically would have had the capacity, like logically you can understand, they would have the capacity to know that it was wrong or at least know that detrimental consequences would accrue to doing this in front of people.
	And also you would know logically that they had the capacity to control people.
	their behavior because they were able to do it in situations where they wouldn't have been able to get away with it, so to speak.
	Well, when I see their reactions to anything, because, I mean, I do bring them up on things and do ask them, you know, why they did that or this, and it's like they have no comprehension that what they did was wrong in some manner.
	Yes, I'm sorry to interrupt you.
	I'm sorry to interrupt you, and I will let you...
	I really do apologize for interrupting you.
	That's what this question is designed to elicit.
	Obviously bad people, and I'm not saying your parents are bad, I'm just saying, obviously bad people are not going to say, oh yeah, I knew it was totally wrong, I'm just sadistic.
	They're not going to do that to children, especially adult children that they don't have any kind of power over anymore directly in terms of being your parents.
	So that's the question, right?
	You know whether or not they understand ethics by whether or not they ever committed abuse when other people could see and there would be consequences.
	Because if they hit it, if I hide the body, I know that it's wrong, right?
	Gotcha, okay.
	Yeah, that would definitely be a good question.
	Well, but you know the answer to that, right?
	Yeah, I know that they wouldn't be able to say anything, because I couldn't logically equate that to something that hurt me or that hurt my brother, and they wouldn't ever admit it.
	But I'm assuming that they did...
	Not abuse you guys in situations where they could have been witnessed or caught or whatever, right?
	Oh, yeah, of course not.
	Right, so they knew that it was wrong and they took great care to hide it.
	And of course then, you know, if you ask them, they're going to give you the thousand-yard stare, of course, right?
	Because they don't want to be asked those questions, right?
	But that's just the defense.
	You have to keep drilling into that.
	And you know me, I mean, or if you don't, I might as well tell you that My particular thing is, like, sit down with your family and ask these questions.
	And don't just take a thousand yard stare as an answer.
	Just drill in and say, well, help me understand what the heck was going on.
	I sometimes get accused of this culty thing, but I'm really all about sit down and talk with your family, right?
	I mean, talk with them, ask them questions, dig into your family history.
	Like this last guy who, I'm sorry, you just missed a guy who was talking about his dad.
	His dad moved to Colorado when he was five and he has no idea why.
	I mean, that's astounding, right?
	And families have got time to talk about the news, the weather, the sports teams, but they never talk about the actual decisions that were made that really affected people.
	Hmm. All right.
	Well, I don't know.
	I mean, I might be just giggling and stuff that I can't comprehend how to approach the problem because, to me, it would be very, very scary to ask my parents any of those questions.
	Why would it be scary? Um...
	It would just be something that would just be very, very tough to ask.
	Maybe my brother could, you know, be able to chime in a little bit on this.
	I think he's listening, too.
	But, you know, for me, I wouldn't be able to just ask them those questions without feeling like I'd be completely offensive to them, that there'd be something wrong with who I am because I'm asking these questions, or something I couldn't control or don't have enough self...
	You know, I couldn't deal with it, so I had to ask these things.
	Because, I mean, I was never really in this position of power there, but I did make some kind of neutral position.
	So, to me, it would just be kind of those things where, you know, I would lose the good son or respectable son position if I asked those questions.
	And what would that mean? Well, no, because I've always been kind of right in the middle there, and I've always kind of been on good terms with both of those guys.
	For a lot of reasons, I mean, especially growing up.
	But now that I really don't need them in a capacity of, you know, supporting me anymore, I just don't know.
	I'm still stuck on the old idea that, you know, I should make sure to keep them happy so that my brother is going to be okay.
	Keep them happy so that way I don't have to deal with more of the issues and just placate them some.
	I mean, I don't know. That's a tough one for me.
	Is that a principle that is universal in your family, that you should always act with sensitivity to other people's feelings?
	Yeah, for damn sure.
	I mean, that was mom's big thing was, you know, to make sure that when you say something or do something that you don't willingly injure somebody else.
	But in the course of that, it also makes it so you, anytime I approach an initial situation, I can't just throw stuff out there.
	I always have to do the analysis behind the scenes to ensure that what I'm saying It won't be received in a negative, nasty, or strange manner, especially if it's the people that I care about.
	That's the real tough one.
	Sorry, I just want to step back a second.
	I just got a little bit baffled there, and perhaps you can keep this up.
	So I'm sorry, I just want to make sure I understand something.
	So the principle in your family is that you should always act with sensitivity towards other people's feelings, but as far as I understand it, at least your brother suffered through quite a lot of verbal abuse in your family.
	Is that correct? Yeah, I'd have to say so.
	So... I'm just sort of, I'm missing how this is a principle, right?
	Because, I mean, if the principle is you should always act with sensitivity towards other people's feelings, how is it that your brother ended up being verbally abused?
	Yeah, now that you just said that back to me, yeah, now I can smell the BS coming off of that pretty quick.
	Don't worry, we're not live on any radio station.
	You can say MF if you want, I don't care.
	Yeah, that's kind of a tough one.
	Well, it's a tough one emotionally, right?
	Logically, it's not a tough one, right?
	Like, if the slave masters...
	And I'm using a ridiculous analogy here, and I apologize, but...
	If the slave masters say, you can never raise your voice, and they scream that at the slaves, then clearly there's a problem here, right?
	There's a manipulation, right?
	If the rule is...
	You must always treat other people with sensitivity and by you I mean the children and other people I mean the parents.
	Right? Then this is not a principle anymore.
	It's a tactic. If you don't follow the principle, it's not a principle.
	Right? So if your brother was treated like verbally abusively and your mother did not jump in to say, oh no, no, no.
	Our principle in this family is we always take into account other people's feelings and we're sensitive towards other people's feelings so nobody gets verbally abused in this household because that's counter to The ethic, right?
	If the ethic only comes out when she's the one being questioned and not even abusively, like when you go to her and you say, Mom, help me understand these things in my family, you're not abusing her.
	You're not calling her a witch with a capital B. You're not making outlandish statements about her ethics or character.
	You're just asking questions.
	That's not abusive, right? So if the only person who's bad is the person who asks reasonable questions and not the person who verbally abuses a child, I've got to think that's a kind of confused ethical standard.
	Yeah. Shoot, you know, now that I'm thinking back to it, it applies to pretty much everybody outside of my stepdad.
	I mean...
	Yeah, of course.
	And even, I think it's within the family, because I remember her railing my dad, like my real dad, a bunch.
	You know, bad provider, can I do this and that and that and this.
	I mean, granted, even my stepdad gets pissed off when she started talking like that, but...
	Yeah, I can see now there's kind of that really screwed up method of thought, because I didn't really comprehend it like that.
	Right, so again, I'll take another extreme example.
	Like, if I'm beating the living crap out of a kid, and then what he does is he pulls on my earlobe, and I say, hey, hey, hey, what are you laying a hand on me for?
	We don't do that in this family.
	Like, clearly, there's a kind of self-serving distortion there to, I think, an ethic.
	Yeah. I think I have something to add.
	Do we have another Bo?
	Is this Bo Mach 2? This is Bo Junior, Sean.
	Bo Junior. I'm sorry.
	You know, as a younger sibling myself, I just hate those kinds of terms.
	I understand it, but me and Bo joke about it, and I think we're comfortable with it.
	I think I've got a reason for why not just Bo is afraid to kind of talk to her parents about this, but why also I am.
	And I think that's because now that I kind of think about it, when I was younger during the divorce, I remember actually questioning my mom on many of these different problems in trying to understand the divorce.
	And granted, I was about six or seven years old at the time.
	And I remember that she would lash out at my dad.
	Sometimes I would say she had legitimate claims, and then other times I would say she's just trying to vent.
	And demonize our father.
	So I think that's kind of what I'm afraid is going to happen if we really bring this up to my mom, is that she's not going to really internalize any of this and instead just externalize it.
	So what you mean is she's going to lash out?
	Yes. Yeah, I mean, I think that the one thing that we do know in this life is our own parents, right?
	And again, this is an exaggerated metaphor, but nobody knows more about the masters than the slaves because we have to watch them at all times, right?
	Because they're dangerous and they're volatile.
	We have to map their movements.
	We have to be archaeologists and biologists and, you know, we have to be morticians.
	We have to really study these people.
	You absolutely know your mother and father down to the core, both your father and your stepfather.
	There's nothing that you don't know about them.
	That is relevant to the situation.
	So when you feel fear, I think that's entirely wise.
	I don't think it should rule your actions.
	I think that you need to have answers to these questions.
	And the fundamental answers that you need to have are around the ethics, right?
	I mean, the ethics of the situation.
	What is goodness? If goodness is treating people with kindness and respect and dignity, it doesn't mean always agreeing with them and so on.
	Then, how is it that the rule only applies to the parents?
	There's a fundamental problem that we have in society, right?
	In the realm of the state, it's like, how come only the government gets to collect taxes and go to war?
	And the parents, right?
	It's the same thing. If there's this thing called goodness that I'm supposed to follow, then why is it defined as something that only I have to follow and you don't?
	That's a very volatile conversation to have with your parents, and I totally understand that.
	It is terrifying. I had mine about eight years ago, so you guys are way ahead of me.
	But it is essential.
	I mean, you absolutely need to get to the moral core of your family because if you got taught stuff that was really bad, then it's going to plague you for the rest of your life, right?
	Like if your parents teach you that eating yoo-hoos and ding-dongs is the best thing in the world and if you touch a vegetable, you're going to blow up.
	Then you kind of need to know that before you get diabetes and your foot falls off or something, right?
	If you've got bad or contradictory instructions from your parents, maybe even we could say self-serving and hypocritical instructions from your parents, you need to dig in and find that out.
	And the fear is totally understandable, but you should still do it.
	Yeah, that's kind of like going against the 900-pound gorilla, at least in my mind.
	I mean, that invokes a hell of a lot of fear to even bring that up.
	I mean...
	Sure, but I mean, that's part of...
	I mean, she's not. She was, right?
	She was the 900-pound gorilla who had complete control over your environment and...
	who did highly inappropriate things like chewing out your dad whether he was there or not when you guys were very young in front of you.
	You do not burden children with adult problems and you do not badmouth a child's father when the children are around because she may have problems with him but that's got nothing to do with your relationship with your father.
	There's lots of inappropriate stuff where she just goes off and vents and I do get the sense and I'm sure I'm not far off the mark here When I say that she has a pretty acid tongue, is that fair to say?
	When she gets going, yeah, the niceness comes off pretty quick.
	Definitely can be. Right.
	But you guys are no longer dependent on her, right?
	She doesn't rule your universe anymore, right?
	So that sort of basic thing about, like, we all have to try and make that leap, and it's not the easiest leap in the world.
	But the real manhood comes from recognizing that you're an adult and you have the right to ask questions of the people who raised you, and if they don't answer those questions, there will be consequences, which is whatever you choose, but it's important to know.
	That's what confronting these fears is, because you don't want to live your whole life, and I'm not saying you do, but you don't want to live your whole life like your mom is still towering over you with a rolling pin, because she's not.
	She's just another adult now that you can talk to.
	Not saying that it's going to be easy, right?
	And I bet you it's going to be exactly as volatile as you think.
	But you can do it now and you can absorb that volatility because you're adults and not dependent on her.
	Okay, well, the one what if goes through my head is what if she starts doing the emo response and then I have to deal with this stuff for an ungodly amount of years.
	She'll always use, like, whatever I did as a kid, She'll like bring that up just when I need to not hear that.
	She's like, okay, remember that one time, you know, I did this and that?
	And you're like, oh yeah, give me a break.
	I was with a girl for five years when I was a teenager, and she would always bring up, she's like, oh yeah, I remember like that one you did this and that.
	I'm like, oh, God.
	You know, no matter how much I have or whatever I'm doing, it's like, damn it, mom, you didn't have to bring that up right now.
	That would have been great. Well, but I mean, I obviously can't pick up your sword for you, but the one thing that I can do that might help you sharpen it a little is to say, well, let's have a look at the principles here, right?
	So if I say to you, listen, you really suck at karate, I think it's only fair for you at some point to say, are you really good at karate, right?
	Because obviously, or do you know anything about karate, right?
	And that's a reasonable thing to ask to somebody who's putting down your skills and abilities, right?
	So your mom had a relationship with a guy that she ditched and she chewed him out and thought he was a total, at least it sounds like, a worthless, non-providing, deadbeat, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
	So that's not very good. Like you say, hey, mom, at least I didn't marry him and have two children with him.
	How's that for, you know, a greater success than you managed to achieve at my age, right?
	Because what she's saying is she's saying...
	I know! A great relationship, boy, and you just didn't have a good one, right?
	And, of course, it's not the case, right?
	Oh, and then you married another guy who's, yeah, he's got lots of money, but he was a drinker, and he abused Beau Jr., at least verbally, and terrorized the rest of the family, and you also called him a loser and a jerk at times.
	So, you know, this is the old thing where you might not want to be casting stones when you're in the old glass house, right?
	Yes. Yeah, that would be definitely the shocker for that one.
	But it's not unreasonable to say, right?
	I mean, you're not being mean to her.
	You're just saying, look, if you're going to put yourself forward as an expert, I have some questions.
	Yeah, that's actually kind of funny to me.
	That would actually be a pretty good line to drop on her.
	But, yeah, I think that, at least on my end, I'm going to have to come up with some pretty...
	I've come and think about that one for quite a while to figure out what questions I really need asked and make up a response so I can get Don't be shy,
	though. It can be really helpful.
	It can be a really helpful thing to do so that if you're going to go in for a big fight, you warm up, you practice, right?
	I mean, so to make sure not to win, right?
	You don't want to crush your mom, you don't want to grind her into the ground, but you want to be heard and you want to understand what the heck was going on in your family and why she made the decisions that she made.
	And she might come over and say, well, you know, I guess I've been ragging on you guys for stuff that I haven't really been successful at myself.
	And, you know, miracles happen, I guess, in the Bible at least.
	So, Maybe that can happen, but I would definitely suggest some kind of role-playing, some kind of preparation.
	Write down the questions before you go in so that you know what it is.
	You don't get totally sidetracked and distracted.
	Always go back to the principles, right?
	Because you're talking about, so she's going to start ragging on you about X, Y, and Z. It's like, okay, well, if this is now the topic that we can criticize each other's relationships, then this is now a mutual topic, right?
	I mean, you don't bring a knife to a gunfight, right?
	I mean, if it's going to be like, okay, so now we can start criticizing each other's relationships, I don't think that the effect that my five-year girlfriend had when I was a teenager had on you was nearly so great as the effect that your two marriages had on me, right? I mean, just in terms of being able to judge and the effect thereof, I mean, those are reasonable things to ask.
	Mm-hmm. Yeah, well, we're going to have to put up the gay context, but I like the ideal.
	So, yeah. I'll just say one last thing, and then I'll let you guys get role-playing.
	Leave the mic on. Absolutely. It could be kind of funny.
	But the last thing I say, tell me what you mean when you say years and years of this and that and the other going off into the future.
	Just tell me a little bit more about that.
	I just smell that anything that I'm going to say will be reflected upon and brought up almost like ammunition.
	Any time I have an issue that might reflect around that.
	Because she'll just keep that right in the toolbox.
	As soon as she needs it, boom!
	Nail me with something that I gave up or something.
	So that would be the one thing I'd be kind of worried about.
	Well, honestly, if she's using this kind of...
	Sorry, go ahead. Oh, sorry.
	I mean... I've been putting a fair amount of thought into a lot of this, and really, I've been thinking about my mom's hostility and Sasha, my stepdad's defensiveness, is that if really they are using these kind of tactics against their own children, I have no obligation to stick around if that's really what they're going to do.
	And since I can point that out to them without any negative recourse, I think she really is doing that.
	We're going to have to point that out and really talk about that because that's pretty volatile.
	Dude, she would flip her lid if you decided to tell her you don't need her anymore.
	Well, but if it's the truth, right?
	I mean, I warn everybody who gets into philosophy that it's going to be a bitch, right?
	I mean, I really do, right?
	But if it's the truth, right?
	You guys do not want to be in a situation where you're going to be subjected to verbal abuse for the next 30 or 40 years, right?
	Yeah. I mean, seriously, in all seriousness, you don't want that.
	You don't want to bring over your girlfriends, your fiancés, your wives, your children in the future and subject them to this, right?
	That's like putting arsenic on your cornflakes every morning.
	You don't want to do that. I mean, you want to have parents that you love and that you have some degree of parity and mutual respect with them.
	That's what this is designed to do, right?
	You plug into your relationships, you figure out if you can make them work.
	But you don't take evasion and second-guessing and you don't take being bullied, right?
	Because the fact of the matter is, you don't have to see your mom again for the rest of your life.
	I'm not suggesting that.
	But that is a fundamental freedom that you, as rational free agents, have.
	You can choose to exercise it.
	You can choose not to exercise it.
	But you don't stay in a relationship with someone because you're scared of them.
	Yes. Hey Steph, could I get some feedback on one idea I had on how to possibly approach my parents on this?
	Sure, absolutely. One thing I've been kind of thinking about is that I was listening to some of your other podcasts on this and I noticed that the thing that kind of hit a chord with me is that you should look at your parents and compare them to anybody else, any of my other friends. And even my personal relationships.
	And I remember actually even doing this with past girlfriends where I'd say, well, do I act the same around my girlfriend as I do around my friends?
	If I don't, then it's probably not a productive relationship.
	So in regards to this, what I've been kind of thinking about is possibly the way to kind of frame the conversation with my parents is to sort of say, well, I kind of want an equal relationship.
	I don't want this parent-child type relationship.
	I just want I don't need a parent, I need a friend now, and I'm more than happy to explore life with you if you want to be equal, but not with this type of hierarchical type thing.
	Does that make sense? Well, what I would say about that, I really do appreciate the ideal, and there's some stuff in that that I really like, for what it's worth.
	You have to like the relationship, not me.
	But what I would say is that You need to be honest with your parents about the things that you like and the things that you don't like.
	You need to be honest with the people in your life.
	Now, out of that honesty, if it is accepted and respected, and it's not always a three-point landing for sure, sometimes it's, you know, if you can walk away from the landing, it's a good landing, right?
	If you sit down with your parents in whatever configuration works, And you say, you know, this is the stuff I like.
	This is the stuff that I don't like.
	You know, I really don't like that you rag on my girlfriends.
	I really don't like the fact that there was this verbal abuse.
	And I really don't like the fact that we're not allowed to say boo to a mouse, but you guys are allowed to scream at us and each other.
	Like, I really don't like that.
	That seems really hypocritical because you have this value called let's be nice to everyone, But it only applies to people in terms of you.
	It doesn't apply with you in terms of people.
	And I really don't like the fact that you all hid everything, right?
	Because that means you knew it was wrong, and you could control your behavior, and I don't like the drinking, and I didn't like the bad-mouthing of our dad when we were kids, and I don't like it now.
	Like, when you get all of that stuff, right, and you start working through all of that stuff, if your parents can handle it, then what you will get out of that is a relationship of equality.
	I don't think you can say, I want a relationship of equality.
	I think you have to earn that, and you will inevitably earn it if you're honest with them, and they respect and listen and are willing to be self-critical and are willing to work through the issues in an honest and adult manner.
	Then you will get that, but I don't think you can aim at that.
	It's like saying, I want a PhD.
	It's like, well, if you go and earn the PhD, you just get it automatically, if that makes sense.
	That makes perfect sense.
	But it is going to take a bit more effort.
	Yeah, and the role-playing. Tape that and post it on the board.
	Again, we really want it. And we like it with accents and music, right?
	So whatever you can do with that would be fantastic.
	We can try to do you and do the English accent.
	Yeah, we've already had some of those, so I can see that for sure.
	Does that help? Is there anything else that you wanted to ask?
	It is absolutely like jumping out of a plane and hoping that someone's going to throw you a parachute halfway down.
	It's terrifying. It is terrifying.
	And it is essential. I had one more question.
	It does relate to this, but it's just kind of something weird that's been bugging me a little bit, and I'm not sure why it bugs me, and I'm not sure if it should bug me.
	Talking to Bo about the past of when my mom and my stepdad's relationship started, It seems that it's a possibility that that relationship started with an affair.
	And that kind of bugs me that the entire relationship they had was just an affair.
	You mean the relationship that they had before they got married?
	Yes. Before my mom divorced my dad.
	Now, do you mean before they divorced, like there's a two-year wait or a year wait, do you mean while they were still married she was having the affair?
	Well, the reason I... Sorry.
	My brother was saying that the evidence that we sort of have for this and we've kind of talked and put some more pieces together to kind of piece together that my mom was kind of sleeping around behind my dad's back while my dad was still living with us And so being our main parent at the time is that there was this train set that we got for Christmas one year and we found out from a friend of our family that they were building this together in their basement prior while our dad was still living with us.
	So they were already having a relationship Prior to me ever finding out that Sasha was ever going to become a fatherly figure.
	Because he became a fatherly figure before they became married.
	Right. Sorry, that sounded too jumpy.
	No, that's great.
	I just want to make sure I understand what...
	Is your question, is that a reasonable thing to be bothered about?
	I suppose that's part of it.
	I suppose it's just, it bugs me because it feels like, I don't know, it seems kind of cliché, but, oh, this relationship was just kind of a lie, and you guys never told me, you were never honest with me about how the relationship started, and any time I'd actually ask my mom about anything like that, She would be really adamant to kind of shut me down or make fun of my dad.
	Steph and I just switched my mics.
	Can you hear me?
	Yeah, we got you. She's better at infidelity than I am.
	I need to turn your mic up a little bit.
	Turn my mic up a bit? Is that better?
	Yeah, that's it. For some reason, I don't pick up quite as well as Steph does.
	And the reason I would say that you're bothered by this is because I don't know what kind of standards your parents taught you about relationships and honesty and integrity, but there's a whole lot of lying going on here and a whole lot of behavior that doesn't have a lot of integrity associated with it.
	And I would say that you're bothered by this because you were lied to, they were lying to your father, they were lying to the community, they were lying to everybody, and, I mean, that's painful.
	That's just painful.
	And then I don't know what kind of moral absolutes they talk about in terms of loving relationships, people being honest, having good communication, being faithful in a relationship.
	I don't know what they tell you or what they tell other people or what they tell themselves about those particular issues, but my guess is that what they say and what they actually did are completely different.
	And that's what's bothering you.
	I would say that's valid.
	You would say that's valid?
	I would say so. Yeah, I mean, it's just been something that's been kind of boggling me.
	I'm just trying to figure out how I feel about it, honestly.
	I mean, I'm trying to figure out how big a deal it is, and it's just kind of bugging me in that kind of fashion.
	And again, take it for what it's worth.
	I don't know you guys.
	I certainly don't know what's been posted on the board about your family history and the problems that you're dealing with right now with your mom and your stepdad.
	But I would say that this is vital information.
	This is important information.
	This is bothering you because it's trying to awaken you to something.
	Something important about your mother's personality and about your stepfather's personality and about who these people are.
	How they present themselves versus who they really are.
	This is going to be hugely important for you.
	The two of you were talking with Steph about trying to have a conversation with your parents now to redefine the relationship, to sort of identify some of the problems that you had, This little piece of information is going to help you understand the responses that you will get when you confront your parents about some of the things that you guys experienced directly when you were growing up with these people or from these people.
	I can't tell you what that is, although I can hazard a guess, but I think that's for you guys to figure out rather than for me to give you the answer at this particular point.
	But I think it's important information, and it's going to be hugely helpful for you in terms of deciding how you're going to proceed in your relationship with your parents.
	Absolutely. I think we're going to have to deal with that in our role-play sessions.
	I think you're going to have to.
	Yeah, I'd say that seems to be...
	I mean, I think that's why it was bothering me and it just never...
	I needed somebody to kind of point it out to me that, yes, that really does mean something.
	You need to explore that.
	That's not just something you can brush off your shoulder.
	No, and if I could just hazard a guess as well, I don't like to too much give a prognosis before the interaction, but one of the things that I think this does give you a sense of with your mom is that She did something pretty wrong here, right?
	I mean, she had an affair while she was married to your dad, right?
	That's not good. I mean, it's not like, you know, burn at the stake evil, but it's not good.
	And what I've gotten from how you talk about...
	Sorry, what I've gotten from how your mom talked about your dad after it broke up was she was putting him down, right?
	Yes, yes. Right, so that may be a clue as to how your mom deals with guilt and bad behavior on her part.
	So wait, so she's guilty.
	So that means that she knows what she's doing is wrong.
	Like, that's something I'm wondering.
	Do they know what they're doing is wrong and just not care?
	Well, did they hide it? Did she hide it?
	I never heard anything about it.
	They never say anything regarding their own behavior, though.
	I mean... Not to my knowledge.
	Did she hide it from your dad?
	Yeah, I don't know if she really ever, you know, said anything regarding that, but I don't think she held him in a high esteem to really even want to disclose anything like that to him.
	Well, I mean, that may be a bit facetious.
	What I mean is, did she have the affair with your dad while he was still your dad, and did she say, I'm having an affair while you're still here?
	Oh, hell no. No, I don't believe so.
	I think Dad basically came around and figured that out of his own self.
	Right, so she hid that she was having an affair.
	That would be valid, yeah. Right, so that answers your question as to whether or not she knew it was wrong, right?
	How do people just continue on and pretend that nothing happened?
	How does it not just ruin the relationship that they're in now?
	How is it kept up?
	That's what I'm wondering. You mean how does the new relationship get kept up?
	Yeah, how does it survive under those conditions?
	Well, you're assuming that it has, right?
	I mean, just because people stay married doesn't mean that their relationship is doing well.
	Oh, okay, yeah. But let me just jump back for a second here because how your mom dealt or how your mom talked about with your dad Your mom did not behave honorably in the divorce, right?
	So people can get divorced, and they can be co-parents, and maybe it doesn't work out, and they get counseling.
	It's tough, but it doesn't have to be the end of the world.
	And people can decide to end a marriage, and they don't have to behave dishonorably, right?
	They don't have to do things that are lying and cheating and having affairs and so on.
	I'm not talking about your dad.
	He's probably got his own issues, but your mom, for sure, behaved pretty dishonorably I'd say both of us, but it depends.
	Yes. Very much so.
	Right. She didn't sit there and say, oh my god, I'm a Jezebel, I had an affair, I ruined this marriage.
	Okay, it wasn't the best marriage and I was going to end it anyway, but I did it really badly.
	I lied.
	She put your dad down, right?
	Well, to give you an idea of how she treated my dad during the divorce, I remember, there's a few traumatic times when I was six, and I call them traumatic times, definitely.
	I would come home, and I came home one day, and my dad was in cuffs, and my mom called the police to get him out of our house.
	And that's just giving an idea how...
	Oh, yeah, I remember that. And this is the woman who criticizes your girlfriends, is that right?
	Oh, yeah. Okay, but I'm just saying that she didn't behave on earth.
	Again, your dad, who knows, right?
	It doesn't matter, because we're just talking about your mom right now.
	Your mom did not behave honorably during the divorce, and she put your dad down, and she called the cops on your dad.
	And what does that tell you about how your mom handles guilty feelings?
	What, suppression?
	Or just kind of...
	I mean, I'm trying to think about it.
	Jeez. No problem.
	It's a tough question, and the funny thing is, it will be completely obvious.
	This is the funny thing about families.
	It will be completely obvious to you when you get it, and it's completely obvious to everyone else already, but this is the stuff we're not allowed to think about.
	I don't think I'm going to be able to come up with an answer to that one for a while.
	You're going to have to give me some time to chew on all that.
	No, I'll give it to you. No, because otherwise you're going to just feel even worse when you get it, right?
	So your mom behaved dishonorably in the divorce, and she verbally abused your father as a result, right?
	Yeah. So how does your mom deal with guilt?
	I would say poorly.
	Yeah, poorly for sure, but what does she do to your dad after she behaved badly?
	Demonize them? Exactly.
	So how does she deal with guilt?
	Blaming others? Yeah, attacking.
	So, this is important information for you to have when you go in and start to talk about stuff with your mom that's going to make her feel guilty.
	That she's going to be basically using the everybody but me tactic?
	She's going to attack.
	Okay. And there's no question of that.
	I mean, I'm not a psychic, right?
	But this one's pretty easy, right?
	If she behaved dishonorably with your dad, she behaved in a way that made her feel guilty, and I'm sure she did, there's no question of that, right?
	And then she responded by verbally attacking your dad, it means that she deals with feelings of guilt through verbal attacks, right?
	And so when you guys go in and start asking questions about your childhood, You know, it's going to be completely clear what she's going to do.
	And you need to be ready for that.
	And that's going to be really, really scary.
	Because, of course, this is why you don't know how your mom deals with it, because it's too scary.
	Because you do know, right, how she deals with this stuff.
	Yeah. It's going to be nasty.
	It is, but, I mean, you need to do it, right?
	Because if you don't do it, then you're just going to be inviting more and more people like this into your life, right?
	And you don't want that. You've got to break the cycle, right?
	Definitely not to that caliber.
	And of course, if you have kids and she's still a verbal abuser and your stepdad is still a verbal abuser, you're going to have all sorts of problems there, right?
	You just don't want to do stuff that's going to make you feel guilty, right?
	Because you know how you've been trained to deal with guilt.
	So you don't want to do stuff that's going to make you feel guilty because there's going to be that great temptation to deal with it the same way, which is not going to be good.
	Well, let me and Sean roleplay a bit on that, and we'll leave out the United, maybe some bongos or something.
	I don't know. We'll figure it out. Listen, I really do appreciate you guys calling in, and I really do appreciate your honesty.
	You know, you're doing some great stuff for yourself.
	You're doing some fantastic stuff for all of the other people out there who may have, let's just say, exciting parents.
	So, I really do appreciate that you're willing to share to this extent, and thanks so much for calling in.
	I just wanted to say one last thing to you, Seth.
	I just wanted to say thank you to you and Christina for your input on this.
	I really feel that just in this last half hour me and Beau are on the same page a bit more than we were before because I don't think we were really...
	I didn't really know Beau's intentions as much as...
	I don't think he knew mine as much.
	Yeah, just keep talking and keep going back to the principles, right?
	Just don't take instances of behavior, right?
	So if somebody says, you know, the principle of this family is we treat each other well, then you extract that principle and apply it to everyone.
	That's the beauty and the horror of philosophy, right?
	So I hope that that helps you. Thanks, Steph.
	No problem. All right.
	Do we have any other questions?
	Maybe not along involved topics, but if anybody had any last ditch.
	We did have one comment or question, which was, he says, Steph, I had a question.
	How much can we tolerate superficiality-based relationships?
	How much should we have relationships with people who don't share our values?
	Also, to what extent should we try to change their minds or just withdraw from them and look for other relationships?
	That is a big, long and involved topic.
	My basic suggestion in this realm is you keep asking questions of the people in your life until you know the answer.
	Right? To some degree, relationships are not based on the frontal lobe, but they're based on the medulla, they're based on the corpus, right?
	They're based on the core of the brain, the instincts, the gut, right?
	So, you know, if we see, I don't know, some hot woman, right?
	I mean, we don't sit there and say, ah, according to the calculus of her hip-to-waist ratio and the color of her hair and this and that, I think I'm going to feel lust now, right?
	What happens is your wife just slaps you.
	And so... It's instantaneous feedback in that sense.
	So it's the same thing with relationships.
	What we do is we keep asking questions.
	We keep talking about what's meaningful to us.
	It doesn't mean that you can't go out and have a movie and play Frisbee.
	That's great. See a movie and play Frisbee.
	That's fine. But you keep asking questions and you keep asking questions and you keep talking to people about what means something to you.
	And then you'll know when the relationship is working and when it's not.
	When it's not working, no amount of talk will resurrect it.
	And when it is working, right, no amount of reasoning is going to talk you out of it, right?
	So what happens is you trust your instincts, trust your gut, but focus on talking about what matters to you with people.
	And then you won't need to have a definition of when a relationship is working or not because you'll just know in your gut.
	Hey, Steph, I had something really quick to add to this, I think.
	Your mind. This is Rod, by the way.
	Yeah, got it. And this is something that when I had that deep conversation with my mom on the phone, it really was kind of an important part of that too, this superficiality thing.
	When I started trying to explain to her what I wanted from a relationship and how I wanted to share values with the people that I was in relationships with and stuff like that, She was just saying, well, it's fine that you believe all this stuff.
	I have no problem with that, but I just don't understand it.
	All the times that I've tried to bring up these important discussions for me, she would frequently just say things like, oh, that's too complicated.
	I just don't understand. Or when I would try to talk to my brother about it, then she would tell me, well, your brother just You know, those kind of conversations just make him uncomfortable and it'd probably be better if you didn't talk to him about that stuff.
	And, you know, the whole point that she was trying to get through is that I can have these beliefs, it's okay as long as I just kept them to myself kind of a thing.
	And of course, you know, it was really hard when I was going through this process of defooing to understand that that is a very hostile thing that she was doing because it seemed so You know, well sure, you can smoke them if you got them type thing.
	Whatever you want, that's fine.
	But it really does just, it's so, I don't know, there's something so confusing about it that when you try to reach out to touch someone and all you get is fog, you know?
	It seems like there's someone there, but it's just a vapor.
	And it's like, you know, the philosophical and emotional, I guess, nutritional value of these relationships were just like rice cakes, you know?
	It was form without substance, you know?
	Right, probably closer to polystyrene, but I think I said the packing foam or something, right?
	Yeah, because at least rice cake can keep you alive, sort of, yeah.
	Right, and I think that's quite right, and of course the way out of that, as I always talk about it, the way out of false relationships is to keep trying to connect.
	Right? Until you give up.
	Right? I mean, and then you have closure.
	Right? Because then you say, okay, well, I've done everything that I could.
	I've opened my heart.
	I've revealed everything that I can reveal about me.
	And the other person has dozed off again.
	Right? Or is still yawning.
	And I can see the sort of, you know, the list of groceries scrolling through their eyeballs or something.
	So, for sure, you keep reaching out.
	The interesting thing, of course, is that if a stranger were to come up to your mom...
	And say to your mom, do you think that it's important that you should care about loved ones' values, right?
	Do you think that you should care about what your loved ones care about, right?
	I bet you a million bucks she'd say yes, right?
	Oh, right. And she was really good at cloaking.
	I mean, gosh, she was...
	She really is a kung fu master at this stuff.
	Because she would say things like, you know, it's just so amazing that you're able to understand all that stuff.
	And she would praise me to the heavens for being able to grasp all these things.
	Oh, isn't it so wonderful, but it's just nothing I can understand.
	Well, it was like everything that she was saying, You know, superficially sounds like, oh, I'm so proud of you for understanding this stuff, but really the underlying message was, just shut up, I don't want to hear it.
	Please stop talking about this, making mommy anxious?
	Right, right, for sure.
	For sure, and I mean, because what people will do is they will try and say, you are Chinese.
	So what they're basically saying is, well, if you called me up and started speaking Mandarin, I'd be like, well, that's cool that you can speak Mandarin.
	I can't speak Mandarin. I mean, I guess it's cool that you can do it, and I'm impressed, and boy, that's a tough language to learn, but you know what?
	I really don't speak Mandarin, so we can't really talk about it, right?
	And what they'll try and do is they'll try and put your values or your philosophy or your ethics or what really means something to you, they'll try and turn that into just a kind of talent or a skill or...
	You know, hey, so you can learn languages.
	You know, that's great, but that doesn't mean I have to learn languages and so on.
	But of course, then if somebody were to say to them, is it important that you really know the values of the people that you love?
	In fact, could you even love someone if you didn't know their values?
	And she'd say, well, you have to know the values, right?
	But then when she hears values, she's like, oh, that's Chinese.
	I can't speak that. Right.
	And there may be a way to break through this.
	You know, but we only have one life to live, right?
	And you can only beat your head against the wall for so long before you say, well, you know, I can't keep drilling in the desert for water, right?
	Maybe I'll hit some, but I know where the lake is, so I'm just going to go there.
	Right. Yeah, and like James just put up in the chat window here is that, you know, Mom says things like, well, you turned out alright, and I'm so proud, you know, I must have done something right because you turned out so alright.
	Well, you know, it's kind of like, I turned out okay in spite of the influence that you had on me, not because of the influence.
	You didn't make me any food, but I managed to scavenge some from the dump.
	That doesn't make you a good cook, right?
	Right, right. Yeah, and it's like when I was explaining to her my...
	I guess you could say lack of faith or whatever, you know, when I was just saying to her that I am not at all religious and I don't want to, you know, I just don't want that in my life at all.
	And she was like, well, you know, that's always been your choice.
	I never wanted to force anything on you.
	And I'm like, oh, great.
	So now I'm 31 and I'm finally finding this out.
	I didn't realize that when I was seven and you were dragging me off to Sunday school.
	You know, I didn't know I had an option back then.
	Yeah, I actually had that option back then to not believe in this stuff.
	Really? That's right now that I know that.
	Let me go back in time and tell my little buddy self that it's okay to ignore that crazy lady in Sunday school.
	You know, if you turn off the television and you turn off the radio, and of course don't turn off FDR, but if you find a really, really quiet place in the world, what you will find is an amazing tearing sound.
	It's a little tearing sound, and it's like...
	It's like waves on a beach just tearing or like putting folders in a box or something.
	And what it is, is it is the pens of billions of parents frantically rewriting history so that they can escape the consequences of their principles, right?
	The principles they inflicted.
	There's a reason that George Orwell came up with this rewriting history thing, and it didn't come from 1984.
	It came from his own family, if you read his autobiography, right?
	There's this constant rewriting of history at all times, at all times, and it is an insistent thing that occurs.
	It's an insistent propagandizing in history in families, and it occurs in governments and it occurs in churches as well.
	But, you know, this is what they say, right?
	So the horrible thing is that your mom says, "Well, I never wanted to force that on you." So she knows that's a value, but boy, when you were in her power, there was a different story being told, right?
	Well, absolutely.
	And, of course, you could then say that, well, I wasn't the one that was forcing you to go to church.
	That was your dad that was always hollering at you every Sunday morning.
	Well, you know, she didn't do anything to stop him hollering at us on Sunday morning, so...
	Right, right. And, of course, she was a Sunday school teacher, too, so, of course, you know, in order to appease, you know, mommy, you know, it's do what she likes and all that stuff.
	I didn't want to force it on you, Rod, but I made a damn good living forcing it on other kids.
	Yeah, well, I think it was all voluntary, of course, but it was, yeah, it was just kind of like a, it was kind of like a thing where that's what's expected of people, you know, they have to be good, pious people, so I'm going to go do that so that people think I'm a good person type thing, so...
	Right, and I think that's also what I get a sense of from Yaram is like just a kind of habitual ghost, right?
	Because I was talking earlier with the gentleman who was asking why his dad was religion or somewhat earlier than that.
	Religion really does hollow people out.
	Like it really does empty out the depth and richness of their experience.
	It gives them something. It's like heroin, right?
	It gives them a very vivid sense of experience.
	Or, if I remember rightly, Dungeons& Dragons.
	It gives them a very vivid sense of experience when they first encounter it, but it slowly eats them away.
	Sharon Stone said this about fame.
	She said, you think it's feeding you, but it's eating you.
	And that's true about religion as well.
	So people feel they're part of this grand tale and Jesus died for their sins and they sing and they dress up and they go to these pageants and they see guys in funny hats and it all feels very exciting.
	As the decades pass, it hollows people out because they're relating to something that doesn't exist.
	And if you value that which does not exist, you slowly stop existing yourself.
	Right. Absolutely.
	And I just wanted to add that whole part about the superficiality because, you know, that was one of the trickiest parts for me about my dephooning with my mom is that To just finally realize that I didn't have to put up with superficiality.
	That these, the weekly phone calls that I had with her that, I mean, you could almost set a clock by and they lasted 13 minutes and they contained absolutely nothing.
	And it was, I mean, it just, it finally just got to the point where I would, you know, kind of almost depress me to answer the phone on Sundays.
	And it was because of the superficiality.
	It wasn't that she was, you know, overtly aggressive or anything like that.
	And it was just like, The conspicuous emptiness of it all was just soul-destroying in the end.
	I couldn't put up with it anymore.
	You're such a nice guy.
	You're still such a nice guy to say it almost depressed you.
	It was completely soul-destroying and it almost depressed me.
	I have had a history with depression, actually, which is It's getting much better now, I have to say.
	It was amazing that once I got into this mindset of it's possible to be food, it wasn't like a completely foreign concept to me, I started to be very sensitive to how even short conversations with my parents could actually trigger a week-long funk.
	I wouldn't call it all out just Paralyzing depression, but it felt really awful.
	Actually, it recently happened on the 4th of July.
	Both my parents called and left voicemail messages for me, and they each used their own unique style of communication.
	Mom was the, why are you doing this to me?
	Oh gosh, it's awful.
	You know, why are you doing this to me?
	You know, what did I do?
	Or something like that. And of course, she already knows the answer to that.
	And then my dad's phone call was, don't you know how to pick up a phone?
	Am I going to have to come out there and crack you one?
	And when he says crack you one, yeah, he doesn't mean I'm going to come out there and crack you a joke.
	It means I'm going to crack you over the head, but you know.
	Oh, it's not omelets or anything, right?
	Yeah, no, exactly.
	And so it was just like, in one day, and the funny thing was, well, not funny, but I'd gotten a brand new phone And somehow in the transition between my old phone to the new phone, I somehow magically forgot that these two pending voicemail messages were from them and I was just checking out all the new features on my phone and I triggered the voicemail on this thing and I started listening to these things and it literally spun me into a week-long depression listening to those things.
	It was awful.
	That's perfectly natural and that's perfectly healthy.
	Because if it didn't make us sick, we would not have to cut it out of our lives, right?
	If we weren't susceptible to it, right?
	If we weren't susceptible to it, then defooing wouldn't be a requirement, for sure.
	But, I mean, that's entirely right.
	I mean, if Christina gets a message from her parents, she calls me a rat bastard who stripped her culture from her.
	No, sorry. It's the same sort of thing, right?
	I mean, it's terrifying. If the phone rings and it's her parents, her heart starts pounding right away, and it's terrible.
	But I know what you mean. There's a priority.
	Actually, it's just a memory came to my mind once.
	When I was a teenager, I guess early teens or whatever, right?
	My mom was just a terrible, terrible talker.
	And again, stones and glass houses.
	But she would literally have conversations where, like, I'd be reading a book in the next room and she'd just be...
	She's in the bath once. Like, I went to the mall for like half an hour, 40 minutes, go to the shopping or whatever, had a pizza slice, came back, still talking away.
	I just left quickly.
	I just left quietly, came back in quietly.
	It doesn't matter. Once you get that you're just not necessary to people, that they only want you there for their vanity and habit and as a sanction for what they did to you in the past like it never happened, it's quite liberating.
	Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's what I finally started realizing about these Sunday calls with my mom is that, I mean, I could literally write out a script of what the call was going to sound like, you know, an hour before the call and it would follow it perfectly.
	It would be, you know, What'd you do this week?
	Oh, this and that. And then she would say something kind of depressing about her life, and then it would be, oh, I miss you so much, and whatever, blah, blah, blah.
	And then, okay, goodbye. It was always the same, and it was just always a downer to me.
	Yeah, and you know what I could never understand about parents like that?
	It's like, God, where's your pride?
	I just like to call up your kids and whine, you know, oh, is there any oxygen where you are?
	Because I just can't seem to find any here.
	I mean, just, oh my God, the pride aspect.
	Oh my gosh, you were just channeling my mom right there.
	Hey, we both in there, you know.
	People are all the same when they have a false self, right?
	There's no individuation with the false self.
	People are just like templates, right?
	They're like that scene in the movie The Wall where the kids go into the...
	The machine that come out like the goo.
	I mean, we could all imitate each other's moms if their moms are not authentic and real, right?
	Because everyone becomes the same with the false self.
	Conformity is just a template.
	And what's so great about what you just said there is that the false selves do tend to take on these identical uniforms and stuff.
	Once you start getting it in these really core relationships, I think, like, especially with, you know, your siblings and your parents and stuff like that, if you can understand their false selves, it becomes so much easier to start seeing that in the rest of the people that you encounter, even the ones that you don't have much history with.
	Right. Because you're like, ooh, gosh, this is eerie.
	This sounds just like I'm talking to my brother or my mom or something like that.
	And you can just, you can really quickly get to the, you know, cut to the chase there on that stuff.
	Right, and the hardest thing is to give up the illusion that somewhere behind this false self is this teeming ecosystem of emotional richness, and I've just got to find a way to get through this door.
	There's a lock here somewhere, there's a word, there's a phrase, and you go, you know what, I'm trying to open a door when there's just a cliff, right?
	I mean, there's no door, and there's nothing behind it.
	Yeah, and that's definitely my white whale, I think, is that I just constantly think that I'm able to, you know, somehow I'm going to have the power to break through this It doesn't.
	We lose ourselves through conformity and definitely through harming children.
	I mean, there's nothing there anymore.
	Or if there is, there's effectively nothing there, right?
	So if you're drilling for oil, there may be oil 20 miles below the earth, but you're never going to get there, so might as well not be there.
	Okay, I've labored enough, I think.
	I wanted to expand on that a little bit.
	No, I appreciate that. And how's your business going?
	Everything alright? Oh, gosh, it's awesome.
	I am seriously loving life right now.
	It is so great. I hope that we can get a whole self-employed community here.
	It's fantastic, right?
	We just have our own Yellow Pages or something.
	And you know, people have mentioned In the past, they've enjoyed listening to the saga of Rodzilla, you know, on these Colin shows and stuff, and they've been saying that, like, wow, this is kind of inspiring and stuff, but, like, man, if anyone's considering this kind of stuff, and, I mean, if you have any kind of faith at all in your expertise in your field or whatever, give it a shot.
	It's so much fun. I mean, it is really great.
	It is. It is.
	And it certainly is true that if you're interested in philosophy and so on, Your patience with your fellow man will decline fairly precipitously, so it's sort of a one-way ticket to either the streets or self-employment.
	Absolutely. Yeah, no, it is so rewarding.
	I have to thank you again for all the help that you've put into making this possible because, my gosh, it's great.
	I'm so glad. I'm so glad.
	Oh, yeah, neat. And I just wanted to let you know that the check cleared right away on that big payment that I was due for my former employer.
	And you will be getting a nice hefty donation in the future, but before then I have to get myself into a place of my own.
	So when that's all settled and I'm, you know, waiting on my toes in my own new apartment, then you're getting another donation, all right?
	Well, that's great. I really do appreciate it, Radu.
	I mean, just send us the money whenever you can.
	We're fine. We can eat our own vegetables, and Christina's got some toenails that have grown.
	We'll be fine. You just take and do what you need to do.
	Do what you need to do for you, Rod, and we'll be fine.
	Just kidding. Yeah, I love you too, Mom.
	Just think if I can do it twice, that's all, right?
	It is Sunday after all, so...
	Oh, no.
	Oh, that is kind of funny how this has replaced my Sunday chats with Mom.
	Yeah, that's nice. A little bit more innovating, right?
	Well, listen, thanks. I'm going to jump off now because my stomach is growling like the bagels in a pit bull, so...
	So thanks everyone so much.
	I really, really do appreciate it.
	And have yourselves a wonderful, wonderful week.
	I will try to get back to podcasting relatively soon, but this book is a bit challenging to wrestle down.

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