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Jan. 6, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:44:07

954 Sunday Call In Show Jan 6 2008

The dangers of toxic FOO-GOO; defining a lover, and when to flee an argument!

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	Well, thank you everybody so much for joining us.
	This is the Sunday show, which is the January of the 6th on 2008, which always feels like it's in the future.
	Always feels like it's in the future, doesn't it, now that we're in 2008?
	I really feel that I should have a rocket pack instead of just middle-aged guy flatulence, but...
	We take what we can get.
	So, I hope that you're doing well, and thank you so much for joining us.
	I don't have a big introduction here, other than to say that, yes, ladies and gentlemen, we have topped 300,000 media views in December 2007.
	It's amazing what semi-new to-do shots of philosophers can do to bring in the morbidly curious.
	So, That's 260,000 podcast downloads, a bunch of thousand videos, a bunch of thousand blogs, and videos elsewhere as well.
	So, I very much thank you, or thank everybody, who has been part of the expansion of this conversation.
	And I actually realized, of course, that I haven't been tracking the videos in the other sites that I've posted to.
	There's another couple of thousand there.
	But needless to say, it's a fantastic, fantastic increase.
	And, of course, we can only thank not only the listeners like yourselves, but most importantly, what we can do is we can thank...
	The families of origin that people were spending time in around Christmas, who doubtless helped to propel people towards a philosophical conversation around personal liberty.
	So thank you to all the dysfunctional families out there who are pretty much catapulting people towards this conversation like inhuman canons.
	So that we can be grateful for and do what we can to help people out from this situation.
	Condolences to the People who are undergoing a certain kind of food-stalking at the moment.
	We've got parents floating around the board, parents handing out wanted posters for their children, and a bunch of other stuff.
	I heard from my mother, or rather, Christina heard from my mother for the first time in about eight years this Christmas, and I had contact from my nieces, which was pretty strange.
	So, it's just a It's where they cluster.
	Christmas is a kind of foo gravity well where sentimentality and hallmark moments combine with whiny demands and scary impositions.
	It's just something that we have to get through.
	It's sort of like, you know, if you're at a gym and you go to a gym regularly, January sucks because everybody's imagining that they're going to start regularly working out.
	It's just there are certain phases that are kind of tricky and sucky in the In the year and Christmas and Fooville tend to go hand in hand.
	So condolences and we're doing what we can to keep from raging Foo monsters and thanks so much to the listener conversations that went on this week.
	I've gotten some enormously positive feedback about them and thank you again for the honesty and courage that it takes to go through that kind of stuff.
	I know it's not easy but I hope it's worthwhile.
	I had a conversation yesterday morning, which has been posted at freedomainradio.com, and I guess volume 4, God help us, XML feed.
	And it was with Wendy McElroy, MCL... E-R-O-Y? M-C-L-R-O-Y. And with a gentleman named Brad Spangler at bradspangler.com.
	S-P-A-N-G-L-E-R. And they are two fellow anarchists, I guess.
	So we called it the Anarchist, or I called it the Anarchist Roundtable.
	And it's just been posted in the feed.
	And you may want to have a listen to that.
	It's basically a bunch of anarchists talking about Ron Paul and refuting, at least to the best of our ability, some of the positions that are taken by more of the sort of mainstream libertarians regarding the Ron Paul question or the question of political activism.
	So you might want to check that out.
	I've asked them to make it a bit more of a regular occurrence, and Wendy has replied in the affirmative.
	It's FDR 953.
	So hopefully we'll be able to make that at least once every couple of weeks.
	And, of course, naturally, it's a table without squares.
	It's the anarchist roundtable, which hopefully makes sense to all of us.
	And I hope that you will listen to that and give me your feedback.
	I'm also going to release it as a scintillatingly uninteresting video, which is just my side of the conversation.
	And since I'm shockingly quiet for some parts of it, you mostly just get to see a picture of me rolling my eyes and picking my nose.
	But, you know, depending on how it is that you define the word entertainment, that might be of interest to you.
	As far as that goes, that's pretty much it for the news other than to tell you that, sweet mother of God above, the real-time relationship book is now completed its second draft.
	I have one more To go through, and of course I'm going to read it as an audiobook which will take a couple of days because I'm experimenting with a wide variety of offensive accents other than just my natural one.
	So that will take a little bit of time.
	Christina's review has, she's about three-quarters of the way through, we're reading it together.
	And I've had some listener feedback from the Philosopher King group, which I really, really appreciate.
	It's been fantastic to get that kind of feedback.
	And thank you to the gentleman who's helping me with some of the food translations.
	And of course, thank you to the listeners who have kindly transcribed a number of listener conversations which are going into the back of the book.
	Actually, I didn't think it was going to be that great a book, but I must say now that It is.
	So that's good.
	It's good that I feel that way, and hopefully I'm not alone in feeling that way.
	So, that's it for the introduction and the orders of business, just all the normal stuff which future historians, archivists, and studies of intellectual philosophy are going to have to excise from the collected works.
	If you'd like comments, questions, issues, problems, rank, praise, and all that kind of stuff, that would be great.
	I think that we're pretty full for Miami, but if you're desperate to come or interested in coming, there is the Miami Symposium on the 18th of January in...
	Damn, where was it?
	Someplace down on America's penis near the...
	Oh, near the circumcision thing.
	Anyway, it's down there, and you can drop by.
	Just give me a shout. It's $125.
	And if you can't make it, don't worry.
	We will be taking full body casts of everyone who's there.
	So hopefully that will make up for it.
	So I leave it all open to you.
	If you would like to open with comments or questions, I am nothing, if not ears.
	I'll go, Steph, if no one else has anything else.
	You'll go to Miami? I wish.
	I wish I had the money. Speaking of foo experiences over Christmas, I wish my aunt had bought me a plane ticket to Miami instead of a plane ticket to where I actually went.
	Wait, wait. Sorry. You're going to start doing a foo story here, right?
	Yeah. Okay.
	And I'm going to do this very, very softly in the background.
	I'm just going to do the Jaws music.
	Okay, so just not.
	Anyway, sorry.
	I don't think my mother warrants any kind of musical introduction, unless, you know, it's one of those cymbal crashes or anything.
	Okay.
	I went to go and talk with Mother, and I asked her one of the big questions that had been bothering me for several years, ever since I was 12.
	You know, what does she actually think love is?
	Um... And sorry, did you get that from the Untruth book or was that just something cooking around in your brain?
	That was just something cooking around in my brain.
	Ever since I was 12, she never ever told me that she loved me until we actually moved out of my grandparents' house.
	And then whenever she would tell me she loved me, she would say it in such a way as though she expected an answer back.
	She tried to impose an obligation versus saying simply, I love you.
	And I asked her why that was, and she went into a whole big parade of Every story that she could pull up out of the family annals of indifference and general angst.
	And I'm sorry, those annals may be relatively familiar to you.
	In fact, they're probably carved on your very bones, but what does that sort of mean to those who would be less familiar?
	Well, generally it would be that my grandmother and grandfather never, ever, I mean ever, literally told their kids that they loved them.
	They never told each other, you know, in the hearing or sight of their children that they loved each other.
	They probably didn't.
	Right. Like, we are a functional freedom unit and we don't talk about no love.
	Right. So generally, you know, even if love existed, it wasn't talked about and it wasn't a thing that in our family you talked about.
	And she said that because we had been living with my grandmother and grandfather, even in private, she could not tell me that she loved me because...
	And then she couldn't figure out why that was.
	She kind of trailed off at the end there.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	She genuinely couldn't figure out.
	It's not just that love wasn't spoken of.
	Love was anti-spoken of.
	She was afraid of being attacked or mocked if she said those three ghastly words.
	I guess, but it's odd because even though my grandmother never told her when she was a kid, my grandmother told me often.
	That's cold. Yeah, it's pretty horrible.
	My grandmother never wanted kids and she ended up having five, so you can pretty much tell why that was.
	But we left it with mother where we just ended up having nothing else to say to each other.
	And then when I got home, she called me on some pretext, you know, asking me how I liked my aunt's mansion, which she knows that I don't care about any of that stuff at all.
	Well, I know exactly why she called me, but I'm not sure why she had to make it something so blatantly obvious.
	So I had the poll, you know, we need to take a break for a while, I'll call you, don't call me, letter written out.
	But my main question is, How do I overcome the inertia?
	Because I don't want to send it, not because I don't want to hurt my mother, because I honestly don't care about my mother anymore.
	I came to that realization.
	So I honestly don't care about her, but the thing, the reason that I give myself for not sending it is because it would be a great inconvenience to me when she finally realized...
	Sorry about the firetruck, it's New York City.
	When she finally realizes, hey, this is the last chance I've lost her, and tries to pull some things out of her trick bag.
	Yeah, no, absolutely, that is going to be, I mean, you push it to a head, right?
	You are basically putting yourself out there as saying, I'm not neutral, I'm not indifferent, I'm not going along for the sake of getting along.
	I'm now drawing a line in the sand, I'm setting a boundary and saying, I actively do not want contact, right?
	And that is in your, I'm sure, completely correct estimation going to provoke a kind of reaction, is that right?
	Oh yeah, it's not only going to provoke it from her, but it's going to provoke it from the rest of my family.
	Even though the rest of my family makes money and all that good stuff, they kind of use me as, I don't know, kind of like a prop.
	Like, my aunt is very successful, but she takes no pleasure in her own successes, and she sort of, in a way, lives through mine.
	So if she sees me getting rid of my mother, she's going to see me getting rid of her, which I want very desperately to do as well.
	And so it's going to be coming from all sides.
	Right, so the question, if I understand it rightly, is not how do I get rid of my inertia.
	The question is really...
	How do I, almost in a sense, get rid of my trepidation?
	Or, I guess another way of putting it would be, how can I find a long-term benefit that is going to be large enough to help me surmount the short-term and discomfort of the active tifu,
	right? Yes, because, you know, I know now that I want to get rid of them, and I know why I want to get rid of them, and I know that it's time now to do so, but I think that I need a bigger firewall than the one that I have now, lest I give in, frankly.
	And tell me what you mean by firewall.
	Firewall is sort of, um...
	And you've got to forgive me for putting it this way, but I've just read The Fountainhead again.
	Their trying to get me back is going to affect me in some way, obviously.
	It must. But...
	There's...
	The things that they used to say affected me, you know, all the way down.
	So there needs to be a barrier to where what they do affects me.
	And obviously I need to feel this, but only affects me down to a certain point.
	Right, right. So at the moment they...
	They kind of have their fingers deep in your spine, so to speak, right?
	Yeah. And you're hoping to find a way that they will not have, like, I don't know, fingers only in your skin, not in your spine, is that right?
	Right. I mean, personally, I don't think that's possible.
	I don't think it's possible to...
	I mean, the reason why defooing, if the relationship is dysfunctional and unrepairable, then defooing, it seems to be essential because...
	We're simply too imprinted with our parents and our interactions and our history and our childhoods.
	There's no way. I have not seen my mother in eight years or talked to her or had any letter or anything.
	But if I saw her right now, just looking out the window here, if I saw her walking down the street towards my house, my stomach would seize up.
	I would get sweaty, clammy, I'd feel nauseous, sickened.
	Like the physiological response would just be so enormous that it's beyond my control.
	There's simply far too much imprinting that occurs.
	I mean, basically, if you've had a difficult or unpleasant or challenging family life, it's fundamentally post-traumatic stress disorder.
	I mean, it is imprinted upon your very neurological system.
	If I heard a recording of my mother, then I would feel the same kind of nervousness.
	Hell, I was even listening to a Doors song the other day, where Jim Morrison shrieks, you cannot petition the Lord with prayer, and it sounded so much like my mom almost dropped my weight to the gym.
	I'm 41 years old, and this is almost a decade since I've seen her.
	It's like saying to a soldier who's been in war for 20 years, well, you can't be nervous about loud noises.
	It's not out of something that we can control.
	It is very much down in our autonomic nervous system.
	We can't manage it, we can't control it, we can't diminish it, we can't train ourselves out of it.
	It's like trying to unlearn English.
	You just can't do it.
	You may not speak English for 10 years, but if you grew up with it, But if you speak it, you can't pretend that you don't understand it, because you'll still remember exactly how it goes.
	And this is why there's no middle ground with family.
	There's nothing in family where you can say reasonably, I'm going to put this in the middle distance, right?
	They're up against you, breathing in your face, or they're gone.
	There's nothing in the middle that I've ever experienced or I've ever heard about.
	It's one of the few relationships in life that we simply are going to respond to, like it or not, positively or negatively.
	And I view that as a very positive thing.
	If you've got a great family, it means you'll be loyal to the end.
	But where it has gone wrong, where it has gone awry, there's no way to put it in the middle distance.
	It is either working great or it's a disaster.
	There's no middle ground with family.
	And that's why, if it's not working, there really is no alternative.
	So I would just say you can go through it.
	Remembering, of course, that if you don't, it's going to have to...
	Sorry, we'll continue.
	I just tried... The internet went out, which only seems to happen with...
	Skype in conference calls.
	It doesn't happen when I'm doing one-on-ones.
	So I just called up tech support because I couldn't get it to restart.
	And they're like, oh, I think it's your router.
	It's like, oh, come on. You know, give me a break.
	It's the cable modem that goes out, not the router, right?
	Anyway... I used to do tech support, and whenever it's the router, it's not the router.
	It's not the router, yeah, right.
	Of all of the things that are occurring between me getting data across the cable app into the internet, I very much doubt that it's my router.
	Because if it was my router, it would happen not when I was on conference calls, right?
	Anyway, sorry, what did you hear me up to?
	The last time I heard you, you mentioned that if you saw your mother walking down the road, you'd go into some vaguely pan-European conniptions.
	Yeah, and I don't think even vague.
	There's no middle ground with family.
	So you're either having a great time or it's a total nightmare.
	At least this has been my experience and certainly if there are other people around who've had a different experience, I'd love to hear about it.
	But this is why I talk about this whole DFU thing.
	Because, I mean, if your relations with your family could be kept at some sort of mild, non-trigger, happy kind of level, then it would be much more tempting to just go and do whatever you do to get past, you know, see them a couple of times a year and, you know, grab some inheritance when they hit the dirt.
	But unfortunately, it just doesn't work that way.
	Because we're so imprinted and we have PTSD from negative family situations and it's so imprinted upon us that when we're around our family, all we're doing is we're managing our neurobiological responses.
	It's like some guy who was in Vietnam for six years going to see some Vietnam movie, going to see Full Metal Jacket or something.
	He would spend the whole movie managing His neurological responses to seeing all of that combat and all of those sounds in his face.
	And you can't decouple that.
	You can't decouple that interaction.
	You can't undo it. I used a metaphor, which I'm going to rescue from internet hell, which is that it's like if you don't speak English for 10 years and then you're in, you know, some place in Bangkok or something and you hear somebody speaking English, you're going to hear it.
	And you're going to understand it.
	You can't unlearn a language that you...
	Grew up with and grew up speaking.
	And in the same way, we can't unlearn reactions to our family and the reactions if the family situation was negative or difficult, frustrating or violent when we were growing up.
	It's imprinted and we can't undo it.
	And that's why family is in your face whether you like it or not.
	And you can't undo your reactions to your family.
	And that's why you either have to fix the relationship or get rid of it.
	And you can't fix it.
	I mean, I say fix it because, you know, there may be families where the parents are well-meaning and, I don't know, I'm working in a largely science fiction realm here, but there may be families where Just a little bit more sort of communication might change things or whatever, but for the most part just the families seem to be negative and exploitive and difficult and destructive and there's no managing that.
	There's no way to not react to that or respond to that in very strong...
	It's down below the level of emotions, right?
	It's down at the level of sensation.
	I can talk myself out of being irritated if something's irritating me irrationally, but I can't talk myself out of the pounding fear that occurs when I see my family.
	It's like trying to talk myself out of it hurting when I cut a finger off.
	There's some things that philosophy cannot reach in terms of self-management.
	Physical pain, you know, neurobiological responses, that kind of stuff.
	In the realm of sensation, which is the realm below emotion, philosophy can't do anything, right?
	I mean, I don't give myself positive self-talk if I go to the dentist and have to have a cavity filled.
	I'm like, you know, me so full of Novocaine, I can't feel my past, right?
	So that's just a reality that we have to deal with.
	So looking At how your life is going to be on the other side of that after you go through the rough patch of getting your family out.
	And it's a long-term process.
	It's never quite done until they're dead.
	Can you shut the door on the way out?
	I think somebody said, can you shut the door on your way out?
	So maybe that was somebody's family.
	I don't know. We'll figure it out.
	But looking at how your life is going to be without that constant reactivation and re-stimulation of these negative responses or negative sensations that occur down at the base of your spine, it's a beautiful and relaxing place to be.
	And that's the only thing that I can suggest as a light at the end of the tunnel to get you through that.
	I guess that's what I quite haven't figured out yet, what it's going to be like after they're gone.
	So, I'll work on that.
	Thanks. Well, unless somebody else has a yearning-burning question, I'm more than happy to talk with you a little about that, if you'd like.
	Joey and Greg? I don't think they donated this week, so go ahead.
	Just kidding. No, let's spend a minute or two on that if you don't mind, because it's all well and good for me to say, you know, there's this great goal and lash a whole bunch not going to be particularly compelling, which is going to make it a lot harder, right?
	Yeah, well, one of the things that I've been gradually stepping down the level of interaction with my family, this trip to St.
	Louis is the first time that I've seen any of them in the flesh in almost two years.
	Wow. And sort of making me have a lack of motivation is that, you know...
	Off of my accomplishments Despite her being a very sad, horrible old maid who uses me like a parasite She sends me alms a couple of times a year She's the only one in the family who's happy to talk to me about anything going on in my life Just so that she can get more fodder for her If the family's doing well,
	I must be great too Um, and mother, you know, she calls me up every week and a half and spends 20 minutes on how horrible her life is but won't hear any of my suggestions because she doesn't want to make her life better.
	So, and then the rest of them I don't speak to except on Christmas, so if I can get over My aunt's stuff and just provide a, not particularly receptive, but at least listen to my mother rabbit on for 20 minutes and not get too annoyed, then it's alright.
	I don't have to speak to them for another week and a half.
	So, it's hard to see.
	Right. You know, I wouldn't be feeling the annoyance that I feel, and it's just whenever I walk in a room with my mother, I just see her, and I get preemptively annoyed.
	And it's the same whenever she calls me on the phone.
	So I would get rid of that sort of, that well of annoyance and just general displeasure that she makes me feel.
	And I would stop having to kind of feel sorry for my aunt who has nothing and no one.
	So yeah, I would get those people out of my life.
	I'm sorry, can I just back you up for a second?
	Yeah, back that thing up, alright.
	This is the danger of being in these kinds of relationships, is that you constantly get infected with other people's mythology, right?
	And I know that you didn't mean this wholly seriously, but you said, my aunt, who has nothing and no one.
	Right? Well, she has people that she keeps in her steely grass to feed off like a vampire, of which I'm one.
	Well, but...
	Yeah, when I say she has no one, she doesn't have any normal relationships.
	Well, but when you say she doesn't have any, I'm not sure...
	If I say, I just don't happen to have any money, when the reality is, I haven't earned any money.
	That's very true.
	I think you got something there, just based on the tone of your voice.
	What was the difference for you there?
	Well, the tone of the difference is I guess that she doesn't have any joyous, loving relationships in her life because she is the type of person and her non-personality and her way of being is such that she isn't going to ever attract anyone who I would...
	Yeah, so we were talking about the question of have things versus earning things.
	So you said she doesn't have people in her life because she's a noxious evil vampire who drains people of their very life force, something like that?
	Yeah, something like that.
	And you made a sort of brilliant insight and my reply was that she doesn't have what I would consider any normal relationships because she is not the type of person and of the quality that would attract any such into her life.
	Well, again, that's sort of a passive way of putting it that may only be somewhat helpful when it comes to understanding your aunt.
	It's not that she doesn't attract good people into her life, I would suggest.
	I would suggest that the reality of it is more that she actively drives good people out of her life.
	life, would that be fair to say?
	Hello?
	Sorry, I didn't hear that last thing, but I think I got your saying that she actively drives any quality people who come along out of her life.
	Yeah, I mean, what I would say is, I mean, and if you doubt that, then all you need to do is be a person of quality around her and see what happens, right?
	Right. Which you are, right?
	So if you are a person of quality, then you reason with people, you treat them with respect, you ask to be treated with respect yourself, you call them on their hypocrisies, and you hope and expect that they will do the same for you, and so on.
	So that's called being a person of quality, and if you feel any kind of sorrow...
	Sorry, go ahead. I'm sorry, you're right, you know, she has this sort of negative force field where I don't feel that I can be any of those things around her.
	Right, right, right, right.
	So that is a big problem, right?
	So it's not that she, and just say, you've got a kind of passive voice when you talk about your family that I would suggest is not good, not healthy, is a problem, right?
	Because the reality is that they viciously attack good people and drive those good people out of their life, and if they can't drive them out of their life, then all they will do is try to attack them, right?
	And corrupt them and undermine them and this and that and the other, right?
	Yeah. It's true.
	You don't say that a cancer just doesn't seem to have any healthy cells, right?
	I think your Skype has a negative force field too, Steph.
	Did you, were you not able to hear that last question?
	I didn't hear that last question, no.
	Well, you don't say that, you wouldn't say something like if you were an oncologist, you wouldn't say a cancer just seems to lack healthy cells, right?
	Right. You'd say, well, a cancer is virulently attacking healthy cells, right?
	Right. So...
	Yeah, I guess the whole line I've been getting from them for years is, you know, we're not as good as you, so come down to our level.
	I guess it's another degree of the same thing.
	Yeah, I mean, it's very easy to, and this is, you know, I'm not accusing you of any of this, but this is the socialist thing, right?
	So a socialist will look at a poor person and say, that person has no money, right?
	Yeah. But that's the kind of language that is very important to break down and to understand.
	Because people will look at, you say, oh, spinster aunt and so on, and say, well, she has no quality people in her life.
	But if you have no money, then it's because, again, assuming that you're able-bodied or whatever, right?
	If you have no money, it's because you've decided to do things other than earn money, right?
	You're not victimized by having no money.
	And, you know, don't be fooled for a second.
	The secondary gains that your family get by attacking good people are highly, highly advantageous to them, right?
	So your aunt, if she were to say, gee, you know, I've been a kind of virulent, nasty, cancerous social person my whole life, if she were to look at that now, she'd throw herself off a bridge.
	So what's happened if people don't have quality people in their life?
	All that's happened is they've made choices which have resulted in them driving away good people and further corrupting bad people.
	Right. I should mention also, just as a very amusing side note, that she's a high school administrator.
	And she's been doing the same thing to kids all her life as well, which I guess is another reason why she should jump off a bridge.
	Okay. Now tell me why it is that, sorry to be such a nasty guy, but tell me why it is that you would approach that with a humorous slant.
	I only address it as a humorous aside to keep from feeling the full weight of despair that that statement should engender.
	Okay, and what would be the problem with feeling the full weight of that despair?
	Because this is a woman who has terrorized and frightened innocent children for decades, right?
	Right. Right, so obviously that's not funny, right?
	And again, I understand the defense, and I'm not sort of trying to, you know, jump down your throat or anything, but I'm trying to point out why it is that you should not see your family, right?
	Right. And this would be a good example, if I understand you correctly, and I just want to, you know, this is just my reaction, is that...
	Your reaction, which is portraying it as something like a humorous or an eccentric foible, you know, like she likes wearing big floral hats even in the winter or something, isn't that cute?
	But this is a woman who tyrannizes children, which is, you know, very frightening to children, and it's going to inflict, you know, lifelong fear of authority in them and so on, right?
	Yeah, and it does go back to a defense, you know, in my family, the...
	The common defense is to put each other down by seeing who can make the wittiest barb in response to any innocuous thing that's said.
	So I guess that just comes naturally to me to fence things off with humor.
	Well, sure. And let's pretend we'll put on some slow-moving Barry White in the background.
	We'll turn the lights down low, and you and I will talk like we're on a first date, okay?
	How's it going? Baby.
	And so I'm the guy sitting across the table on the first date.
	And you say, yeah, you know, my aunt, she tortures children.
	Right? Now, if I'm a good guy, what's my reaction to that going to be?
	I think you're...
	Sorry, go on.
	Yeah, if you're a gentleman good guy, your best mate's going to call you on your Blackberry and you're going to walk outside and never come back.
	Well, yeah, because if I'm a good guy, I'm going to say, look, this is a very nice woman, she's articulate, she's intelligent, very pleasant speaking voice, and I'm sure ravishingly good-looking, but the problem is that if I hear that you laugh at the suffering of children, and again, I don't believe that you do in any way, shape, or form, I know this is just a defense, Then what's going to happen to me is I'm going to say, oh gosh, okay, so what if we have kids and they have problems?
	She's going to, you know, make light of it.
	What if they run into a difficult teacher or a bully?
	She's going to make light of it.
	And so obviously this is a nice woman and this is her defense, but she's not conscious of it.
	And she's also not conscious of the effect that laughing about the suffering of children as a defense, right?
	She's not aware of how that lands to somebody with real empathy, right?
	So she lacks empathy for herself.
	She may, in fact, she will inevitably lack empathy for me and my kids.
	And however nice, intelligent, wonderful, and gorgeous this woman is, this is going to be too much work, right, for me to...
	She lacks a certain kind of sensitivity and she's defending the indefensible using humor, right, which can be a very tough thing to...
	You know, if somebody sort of says something, I always feel like a jerk, you know, like, hey, that's not funny.
	I feel like one of those dour feminists or something.
	Hey, that's not funny, right?
	But this is the price that you pay for being in touch with your family, right?
	Which is, not only do they drive good people out of their life, but the danger is going to be that because your defenses are constantly being re-provoked by being in contact with your family, the high likelihood, almost inevitability, is going to be that you are going to unconsciously drive good people out of your life.
	And that's the real tragedy, right?
	Right, and I guess that's why I've been working on this stuff for so long that I haven't tried to meet anyone or do anything because I still feel like I have this boat anchor kind of dragging me back from any kind of meaningful interaction with anyone.
	So the question is, and I understand that this is an emotional topic for you, but the question is, How do you benefit from that?
	You know this idea of the secondary gains, right?
	Like your mother, right?
	She calls up and complains about how terrible her life is and how bad, oh my hip, and all this kind of stuff, right?
	But of course, her secondary gain is the feeling of helplessness, self-pity, and dragging other people down from any kind of happiness, thus reaffirming her own Fundamental dysthymia or depression.
	So there's strong secondary gains in that kind of stuff, right?
	So what it means is that you're holding on to your family despite a lack of pleasure in the interaction because it gives you something.
	It gives you some sort of benefit or excuse or allows you to avoid something that makes you anxious.
	Does that ring a bell at all?
	Yeah, and you know, I can even name what it is.
	It sounds really horrible and vicious now that I'm saying it like this, but I think one of the things that I get is just looking at them all and they're all Very, you know, horrible.
	I guess one of the things that I get is, I got out of there.
	Look at me, you know, I'm so much better than them, or at least I'm not like that.
	But the fact is that I haven't quite gotten out of there, have I? No, you haven't, and that was an excellent dodge of saying the horrible thing that you didn't say.
	What horrible thing was it that I didn't say that I take pleasure in their pain?
	Well, I think that...
	I don't get the sense that you're sadistic myself, right?
	I mean, that's just sort of my impression.
	Maybe you've, I don't know, maybe you're chewing through the hind leg of a cat as we speak.
	I don't know, but I don't get that sense, right?
	I think you're more of a dog person.
	But... What happens...
	Okay, let's just go through that portal, if you don't mind.
	So we go through the portal, and you're six months after you have last had any contact whatsoever with your family, and you don't anticipate talking to them ever again, right?
	Obviously, that's kind of...
	Relaxing, in a way, like in a kind of fundamental way.
	You don't have to dread these calls.
	You don't have to manage your own responses.
	You don't have to try and manage all their craziness, right, and their intrusiveness and all that kind of stuff, and the intrusive sensations, which always are evoked in us by intrusive people.
	That kind of relaxation is going to lead you or leave you more open and more ready for a different kind of relationship with people than the ones you've been having, right?
	So what does that feel like?
	When you sort of put yourself six months forward after that, what is it that makes you anxious then about that?
	To tell you the truth, I'm not sure, because the way that you say it, it seems like, you know, what I've always been wanting, you know, the freedom to go on and not have this boat anchor dragging behind me.
	So I guess it doesn't make any sense to me then, except for the fact that I can't just go through a portal and emerge six months from now.
	Right, right. So it's the six-month transition.
	But you said something earlier, and maybe I misunderstood it.
	You can correct me, of course, right?
	But you said something earlier.
	You said, I've been doing this for so long that I've avoided other kinds of relationships.
	By that, did you sort of mean romantic relationships?
	Yeah, I mean, romantic or even friends.
	I mean, I have a couple of friends, but they're, you know, all around the country.
	I don't have anyone that I know here.
	Oh, well then, sorry, this is obvious from the outside, and you can tell me if this is not at all right, because obvious doesn't mean right.
	It just means what jumps into my mind.
	But isn't it true, then, that you would just be avoiding rejection?
	Yes. Okay, that was way too easy.
	Let's go back and try it again, and I'll try it in Spanish.
	Well, because one of the things that I keep telling myself is, well, I don't know where I could find anyone like the kind of people that I want to meet.
	That's not exactly true.
	It's not true that you don't know where to meet people that you might want to meet, right?
	I have a few ideas of where I could find some, yes.
	Yeah, there's some wonderful people in robes at the airport, there are synagogues, there's lots of places, Dungeons and Dragons conventions, comic book stores.
	Yes, I'm thinking of rejoining the Catholic Church.
	Well, that'll get you married pretty quick, for sure.
	Now, let me just jump back for a second, too, unless you had something more that you wanted to add to that.
	No, no, let's jump back through the portal.
	Okay, no, we're jumping through a different portal now.
	Stay with me. Roll with this one.
	So when I said, undoubtedly gorgeous or something like that, what was your reaction to that?
	When you said, what?
	I'm sorry. Earlier on when we were talking about, you know, obviously verbally intelligent, acute, you've got a lovely voice, and I said something like, undoubtedly gorgeous or something like that.
	What did you respond with? I said, oh please.
	Right. Okay, so what were you trying to tell me there?
	Could you repeat that?
	Sorry. What were you trying to tell me there?
	The great disease in my family is that we are all overweight, and the one person, I mean literally one person out of 35 who is not overweight is anorexic.
	She went completely the other way.
	Um, so, no, if you want conventionally good-looking, yes, I'm cute, no, I'm not, like, drop-dead gorgeous.
	Okay, so you feel as if you were to resolve these family issues, and you were to get out there, as the phrase goes, that would cause you great anxiety, right?
	Because you don't feel physically attractive because of weight issues, is that right?
	Right. And it's odd because I look at my family and I look at people on the subway and I realize in the back of my head that they're the exact same size as me.
	But in the front of my mind it's, oh my god, how could she have let herself go like that?
	I have a horrible double standard.
	Oh, don't we all?
	Don't we all?
	No, listen, we all have body image issues.
	I mean, the media is killer and there's all of this.
	I mean, I understand all of that and I really do totally, totally sympathize with that and feel for that.
	It's a very, very challenging situation, particularly for a woman, even more so.
	You know, men can have a bit of a gut and still feel they're sexy.
	Women, you know, their toe swells up a bit and they feel like a Zeppelin, right?
	I do fully understand that.
	But of course, the way to solve that is not to avoid it, and this is nothing that you don't know, right?
	But what's on the other side of the foo thing, of defooing, It's saying, okay, well, I've got some bad people out of my life.
	I would now like to invite some good people into my life.
	However, if I have weight issues, then I'm going to feel less confident about that.
	So then the issue would then come to tackle the weight issues, and most particularly for the issue of health and all that kind of stuff as well, right?
	But it would seem to me that...
	Is it fair to say that there's a fair amount of male avoidance in your family?
	Could you repeat that last question?
	I'm sorry. Would it be fair to say that there's a fair amount of male avoidance in your family?
	Like you got a spinster aunt, I can't remember if your parents are married or whatever, but the women in your family, do they like men?
	Um, no.
	There's only...
	Well, there are two couples that have gotten married and stayed married.
	Like I said, my grandmother had five kids.
	And the one couple that have gotten married and stayed married is my uncle, my full-blood uncle, and his wife, and then my youngest aunt and her husband.
	And they both have the same relationship that my grandmother and my grandfather did, which is an absolutely horrible, shrewish woman and a man who says nothing but brings home the bacon.
	Right, so it's the balls on the plate.
	So, no, generally, there's no love for men.
	Right, so men are considered a regrettable economic necessity, right?
	Right. Okay.
	And now, is there any respect for masculinity even in the abstract?
	Or is it just, you know, men, you know, you grab their balls, you put them on frappe, you take their money, you put up with them, and you nag them, right?
	They're just like, you inherit an ungainly, smelly St.
	Bernard, and unfortunately you're living in a small apartment, but you have to keep it?
	Is that the approach? I didn't hear much of that last thing, but I think I got your main question.
	With my vampire aunt and my mother, I think they actively dislike men.
	The third unmarried aunt, my other aunt, loves men, loves everything about them.
	I should say that she doesn't love men so much as she constantly flings herself after the worst assholes in the world.
	So, do they respect normal, stable, upright men of the sort that I would want to meet?
	No. Well, yeah.
	I mean, the guy who beds sluts does not love women, right?
	Oh dear, I think we're getting some sync issues.
	Are you still there? Yes, yes, I'm still here.
	I can't hear you. The man who serially goes to bed with women does not love women, right?
	Right. And in the same way, this sort of boy-crazy, hungering after the trashy men, there's not a woman who loves men, right?
	There's a woman who dislikes herself, right?
	Right. She just...
	Now, do you know if there's any history...
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Sorry? Do you know, sorry to be so blunt, but do you know if there is any history of sexual abuse in your family?
	No, not that I know of.
	Because antipathy towards men, combined with significant and multi-generational weight issues, is often, again, I'm not trying to plant anything, it's just statistically, it's often correlated with problems of sexual abuse.
	But of course, one of the ways that we try to make ourselves more attractive to other people, one of the reasons that we have to do that, is that we like Those people, right?
	So I like my wife and therefore I don't want to gain weight, although I certainly could if I stopped going to the gym five times a week, but I love my wife and I want her to find me attractive, so that's one of the things that gives me a motivation to sort of stay healthy or stay relatively not chunky or whatever.
	And so, in a sense, the love that we have for ourselves and the respect that we have for ourselves in our bodies has a lot to do with the love and respect that we have for men or women or whoever we're attracted to.
	To me, I mean, it's not...
	The guys I know who are the least healthy are the bachelors, right?
	That's why married men live forever, right?
	We're like zombies who can't be killed.
	Wives are like human shields, again, they just bring down the guy with the scythe just by glancing at him, right?
	So, I would say that the antipathy towards men that's in your family is heavily rolled up with the body image stuff, right?
	Oh, yeah, absolutely.
	Right, so if you get out of this toxic, man-hating coven, then you can start to figure out the goals that you can put together to try and attract the kind of man that you want.
	I mean, who wouldn't want to be in love in a monogamous, stable, happy relationship?
	I mean, that's good stuff, right?
	But the toxic man-hating stuff that's floating around in your hellish matriarchy is doing great damage to your motivation for improving your weight or your health, right?
	I suppose.
	I don't know if there's as clear a connection, at least not one that I can see between me and them.
	I mean, I don't have their...
	Well, I haven't inherited their hatred of men.
	I've certainly inherited some of the body issues, yeah.
	Well, but would you say that you, I mean, would you say that you love the idea of men or you love masculinity in the abstract?
	Um, it's...
	I don't know which one is more the answer.
	I mean, I've wanted the same sort of husband since I've been 13.
	You know, the stable, dependable guy that, you know, we're kind of like two parts of the same hole, I guess.
	That's the complete wrong metaphor, but...
	I'm not flinging myself after horrible men or stewing in some proto-feminist pod of hatred.
	Okay, got it. So tell me what it is that you mean by stable and dependable.
	I just want to flesh out, and I think this is going to be very useful, but obviously we hope so.
	Flesh out for me the kind of guy that...
	Give me his traits, the kind of guy that you're looking for.
	Well, I guess emotionally mature, by which I mean doesn't have any lingering issues, horrible any of the things that have marked by which I mean doesn't have any lingering issues, horrible any of the things that have marked a lot of marriages in Any issues like that.
	Just a guy that thinks, as I do, that has the same sort of interest in history, philosophy, and things like that.
	A guy who's going to support himself.
	I don't know, I don't really have a laundry list, so it's hard to...
	You've been working on this since you were 13, right?
	Yeah, well, I met a guy of exactly the sort of description that I'm giving you.
	So it's all kind of based on that.
	Right, so he should not be an alcoholic.
	He should have a job.
	Right, he basically shouldn't be a bastard.
	Right, non-bastard. Non-bastard, that's important.
	Non-bastard.
	He should have some interest in history and philosophy, right?
	Yeah, well, not so much history and philosophy as, you know, he should have a mind that is able to think analytically about something besides beer and NASCAR. So, non-bastard, non-idiot.
	Okay, got it. We're defining things just a little bit in the negative here, just so you're aware of that, but that's okay.
	That's okay, right? So, non-alcoholic, non-bastard, non-retard, let's say, non-idiot, right?
	What else? We should be happy together.
	I mean, you know, when I see him, I want a huge smile to come across my face.
	I want to, when I'm with him...
	Wanted to be nowhere else but with him and talking to him, and I wanted to connect and have him feel about me likewise.
	Right, right. Okay, got it.
	I mean, that's stuff about you too, right?
	It's not about him, right? Right, it's about both of us.
	Okay, so what else? Um, what else do you want?
	Well, what else do you want?
	I'm already married. What else is it that you want?
	You're going to laugh at me for saying this, but having dated a guy who's been shorter than me and the mechanics don't freaking work.
	It's not just the I can't wear high heels thing.
	It's that the mechanics don't work.
	He's got to be taller than me.
	Taller, okay. To answer a question in the chat, I'm 5'9", so it's kind of hard.
	Non-idiot, non-alcoholic, non-short.
	Okay, got it? Non-short, yeah.
	That's pretty much it.
	Alright, so there's nothing else that you are particularly, that sort of would be a criteria for you, right?
	Yeah, I wanted to be six to have red hair, green eyes, a job making at least $150,000 a year.
	No, I don't do that.
	Okay, no, that's fine, that's fine.
	Okay, um...
	There's no way, if you don't mind me saying so, there's no conceivable way that that's going to be enough motivation for you to lose weight.
	No conceivable possible way in this or any other universe is the description of what it is you're looking for Anywhere close to enough motivation to lose weight.
	Yes, I've found that.
	Sorry? Yes, I've found that in the past.
	And this is part of what has happened by you being in contact with your family, is that your expectations have been lowered so abysmally that Your motivation to do anything is not there, right? I mean, you're not going to swim oceans and climb mountains to find a guy who's not a bastard, right?
	I might swim oceans and climb mountains, but no, not to find a guy who's not a bastard.
	No, you wouldn't, right?
	Right. So, the question is, what is going to make you swim mountains and climb seas, which, you know, is impossible, but let's just say that's the standard that we want to have, right?
	What is going to be the shining goal that is going to give you the motivation, right?
	I mean, somebody says, you know, run across the city and I'll give you five bucks, you're going to say, like, forget it, right?
	Somebody says, run across the city, I'll give you a million bucks, you're lacing up your sneakers, right?
	Depends across which part of the city.
	Such a quibbler, isn't she?
	Oh my god!
	I submit there's no part of the city you would not run to get the million dollars because you could hire bodyguards, right?
	Right. I'll hire someone else to run it for me with the proceeds and the million dollars.
	Hey, don't make me come over there.
	Don't make me come down this pipe.
	But you see what I mean?
	Like, if you have a goal that is rewarding enough, you can do anything.
	You will do anything to achieve it, right?
	Yes, fine. I want a guy who, when I see him, I envision him standing on a mountaintop with his cape floating back in the wind.
	Well, look, the thing that you haven't talked about in your criteria is virtue.
	You're right.
	I was thinking about it.
	I didn't talk about it.
	Right, right. So you didn't say, I want a guy who's courageous, I want a guy who's honest, who has integrity, who is somebody I can admire, who is brave.
	You haven't said anything about anything to do with that.
	You haven't said, I want a hero, and I'm going to settle for nothing less.
	That would be the cape stuff, yes.
	Fuck the cape! The cape is not a hero thing.
	Standing on the mountain, that's just the cover of an Ayn Rand novel, right?
	I mean, talking about real hero, right?
	Not a comic book guy, right?
	But, you know, the gentle courage, you know, because some guy shows up on a first date with a cape.
	What are you going to think?
	I couldn't hear that last bit, but if we're going to a fancy dress party, a cape might be, no, I'm just being an idiot.
	But somebody shows up, you know, it says, meet me at the top of the stairs, and he's standing there in a banana hammock and a cape.
	What do you think? What are his personal qualities?
	What? I'm telling you, if you're not sure how to evaluate somebody standing there in speedos and a cape on a first date, then we need to go right back to the beginning and start again.
	I'll get the kind of man that my mother wanted me to marry.
	Right. So what I'm saying is that if losing weight for you is like running across the city, then you need to set up a goal that makes it worthwhile.
	Because if you're running across the city to get a guy who doesn't drink and isn't a bastard and isn't an idiot and isn't short, then you're not going to get up out of your couch and run across the city.
	It's just not enough of a goal to get you motivated, right?
	You have to have a goal that is so staggeringly great and wonderful and irresistible that you would do anything to get there.
	Yes. So if you set your sights on saying, I'm going to find a hero who is going to dazzle me and blow my mind, and who I am in fact going to dazzle and blow my mind, then you will get ready for it, like somebody who's training for the Olympics.
	If you want the gold, then you'll train.
	So if you say, well, I want to win a race, so I'm going to race against three-year-olds, then you don't need to do any training, right?
	Very true, yes. But if you want to win a race against the best runners in the world, those jet-packed Nigerian guys who run with no shoes, then you're going to have to train like hell, right?
	Yeah, yeah. So if you set your sights and you say, I'm going to have the most glorious marriage with the best conceivable guy in the universe, and we are going to just be the most amazingly virtuous, levitating, glowing couple, that's something that you will work out for, right? Absolutely.
	I wouldn't think, though, that I would want to make him specifically my motivation.
	Right, and whatever bait I have to be to get this person, I will be, right?
	Turn on the Jaws music again.
	She's circling. There's a fin in the water, right?
	But seriously, this is around the goals that we set.
	And when we're around petty, destructive, mean, depressed, pulled down, put down, tiny-brained, claustrophobic, nothing people, we can't have any goals other than, I hope you don't hit me.
	That's the price of hanging around.
	Yeah, you can't even get that in our family.
	You can't even get that in our family.
	You can't even get that, right?
	You can't lift your head to look up to the stars when you're stuck in a swamp with these nothing people, right?
	Didn't hear any of that last bit, but I agree with whatever it is you said, Steph.
	Excellent. Well, I'll look forward to your donation then.
	Just rewind it to hear the sum.
	I hope it's not going to be too staggering.
	We did mention it earlier, and you might in fact have to run across the city to get it.
	But so, does that sort of make any sense?
	Like, that's the real cost of spending time with your family, right?
	Yeah, I think that's actually motivating.
	Both to do a yoga tape and to send those letters saying, you know, fuck off you bastards.
	Sorry if this has made your iTunes rating completely go through the floor.
	Oh, listen, don't worry about that.
	It's gone before.
	Yeah, okay, well, you might want to run that whatever letter you're going to send.
	You might want to run it by some people on the board, just because there's people who've had experience in doing it in a slightly less inflammatory way than, you know, the aforementioned phrase.
	But this is the cost.
	Your life is diminishing and whittling away into...
	Little or nothing, as long as you're around these people who will pull you down.
	You don't ever feel elevated around your family.
	You always feel defensive and diminished, right?
	Yeah. Oh, and if there's anyone out there who knows a guy like Howard Rourke, send him over to me in about two years when I'm thin.
	Well, you may not have to wait that long, but we'll certainly put the call out.
	Well, thanks. I really appreciate that.
	I know that was a long chat, but I did want to really sort of pursue that one because I know there are a lot of people out there who are like, eh, you know, it's a call every week or two.
	It's a little bit of time at Christmas and Thanksgiving.
	It's not the end of the world. But in order to really explode into our true potential, we've just got to take away these people who weigh us down, who hollow us out, who we constantly just bring us down and drag us down into this nothing swamp of tiny or negative expectations.
	There's just a massive cost to being around these people, and that's what I wanted to sort of point out.
	So thanks. I really do appreciate that.
	Well, well done. I'm sure you didn't get much of the gobbled message on my side, but hopefully you'll get a chance to listen to it again.
	Okay, so if anybody else has other questions, sorry that I took so long with our fine lady, but this is something that I think applies to a variety of people, because I think there are two single guys and a single girl in Freedom and Radioville.
	So, whoever would like to speak next?
	That's Christina Wolf, down the last of my orange.
	Thief! Thief!
	Howdy there, Steph. This is Joey here.
	Greg and I were having a conversation the other day.
	I'm a graduate student in applied psychology, and I'm getting ready to do my master's thesis.
	I couldn't figure out what to do it on, and after Greg and I talked about it, I thought I could probably do a thesis on some psychological principles of universally preferable behavior.
	Cool. Sorry, I thought you were going to go with how to make it not look like a cult.
	But sorry, go on. Yeah, we were just trying to come up with some ideas on how to do that.
	And one example we could do is take a small aspect of UPB, like moral consistency, and see how people react when you put them in situations where they get inconsistent moral instruction and so forth.
	And I just thought I'd bring this up and bounce some ideas around.
	Yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting.
	I mean, there's ways to relatively objectively Test for depression or dysthymia, which obviously would be very helpful.
	I think it would be interesting if you could set up an experiment wherein you could measure the relationship between false moral justifications and depression.
	And I think those two are highly, highly correlated, but that's just sort of my gut.
	So if you set up an experiment where someone did something slightly less than ethical, and then you interviewed them afterwards as to their reasoning, the degree to which people admit it to doing something slightly negatively ethical versus the people who justified it or attacked or whatever, I think would be inversely correlated to depression.
	But, I mean, that's just sort of one possibility.
	Because a comparison of two things would be very interesting because you already have a theory that would explain why.
	But when people make up mythologies about their own behavior, they lose control.
	Their locus of control vanishes, right?
	In the same way that you have no control over your environment if you have the religious approach that, you know, you kill a goat to get the reins.
	You obviously have no control.
	You only think you do. So I think where people come up with a lot of mythology...
	Seeing if that is correlated to an increase in depression, because depression is about the locus of control not being within your own sort of mind or your own life, I think that would be kind of interesting stuff to do.
	Is that the sort of thing you were thinking of, or was it something else?
	Yeah, that's where I was kind of going.
	I was just trying to come up with some just general psychological things that are in UPB, and so I got to A whole bunch of things to work with and a lot of ideas that I can use.
	I'd really like to get a thesis like this published, you know, and get this kind of thing out there.
	No, that would be great. I mean, I think it would be absolutely fascinating.
	It's always great when you have empirical evidence for philosophy, you know, in the same way that you have empirical evidence for the virtue and value of the free market and volunteerism in terms of economic productivity.
	It's just fantastic when you can get those kinds of physical correlates between ideas and feelings.
	So, I mean, if I can help at all, just let me know.
	I think it would be a very interesting thing to try and find a correlation between.
	Okay, I'll definitely keep you in touch with it.
	I think this is coming up pretty soon, about a couple of months, so I'm going to be trying to get ready for it, so I really appreciate it.
	Yeah, you might want to do... I mean, of course, the problem with experimenting ethically is the limitations, because it all has to go through an ethics committee, right?
	So what you might want to do is do a little bit of research and figure out what kinds of experiments have been done recently or sort of simulated situations have been done recently which have gotten past the ethics committee.
	Right? So that might be, you know, you can't, you can't do the, you know, if you push a button, the cat will live kind of thing, because you can't get, I mean, you can't do the Milgram stuff anymore, right?
	That stuff slipped in before all this stuff came about.
	But you might want to, so just so you end up fashioning an experiment that's going to get past the ethics committee, so you don't leave people too traumatized or whatever.
	Right. I mean, if the cure for depression is ethical integrity, that would be great.
	I mean, I would say you can prove that in one experiment, but if you could find a correlate between ethical self-justifications, false ethical justifications in depression or some other negative emotional state, that would be fantastic.
	You might want to grab a copy of the RTR book when it comes out, the real-time relationship book that has some other stuff that should be testable within relationships as well.
	Oh, absolutely. Well, thanks.
	Was there anything else you wanted to talk to about that?
	Just keep me posted as you go forward.
	Okay. That's all I have for now.
	I will keep you posted. Thank you.
	Oh, it's nice. Everyone's got really nice microphones today.
	How nice. All right.
	do we have anybody else who has questions, issues, comments, problems, suggestions?
	Hello?
	Hello? Hello, can you hear me?
	Yeah, a little fuzzy-muzzy.
	Okay, can you hear me now?
	Yeah, not bad. Okay, well this is Laura and I just wanted to thank everybody who supported me on Friday night and just really encourage anybody who is listening but is not active on the boards to get more involved.
	I was just overwhelmed by the supportive response from everybody and it just feels really nice to be a part of such a beautiful community and conversation.
	So I just wanted to say thank you.
	Oh, you're very welcome. This is a lady whose family member showed up and was browsing.
	I mean, it's terrible, and it's shocking, and it feels so invasive.
	I mean, you feel awfully vulnerable, right?
	Like somebody's pawing through your diary and going to publish it to people that it's all supposed to be private, or at least private from the Foo.
	I mean, it's a horrible, horrible feeling, so, you know, huge sympathy for that.
	Of course, it is enormously instructive, right, that that's how you feel, right?
	I mean, if Christine is browsing my posts, A, I'm shocked, but B, because, like, you don't have enough of my opinions already, but, you know, if somebody I love is looking at the posts, like, people on the board are looking at them, that's good, that's what I want, right, listening to the podcast, but If I knew that my family, I mean, I know they have, right?
	But I mean, if I saw, you know, my brother or mother browsing and we'd be like, you know, you just feel kind of creeped out, you know, like, I don't know if you saw that old movie, I think it was remade when a stranger calls, you know, there's this woman, there's this girl who's babysitting, and she keeps getting these phone calls, right? And they're like, you know, have you checked the children yet or something like that?
	And then it turns out, you know, the calls are coming from I'm familiar with the story.
	It was horrifying.
	It was just horrifying.
	I was just terrified and frightened and angry all at the same time.
	Horrible though those feelings are, they certainly do help with some of the stuff that we've talked about, right?
	Absolutely, yes.
	There's no clarity like Tara, right?
	Yeah, it's good to pay attention to that, I think.
	I'm trying to really reflect a lot on it, and the conversation that you and I had was so helpful.
	I think I've listened to it at least a dozen times now, but I just, you know, I really want to encourage people who aren't involved just to, you know, it can make you so much braver to have people who really care behind you, and I just, I'm really grateful for the community.
	So you've listened to it a number of times, eh?
	Many times. I was concerned about that because I'm very much concerned when people listen to the listener conversations over and over again that what they're going to figure out is that I then you can hear the little cracks in the background is that I'm actually cracked open fortune cookies one after another and just reading what's in there.
	That's why sorry towards the end of that conversation I did say to you no MSG which you found confusing of course just so you understand where that comes from.
	No problem. It's still helpful, you know.
	I enjoyed that joke myself.
	At least once a week I come up with a joke that I really do like, so that was good for me.
	I hope it was good for you too. And I guess we're going to be seeing you in a week or so.
	A week and a half? Absolutely.
	Yeah, I'm super excited. I'm really looking forward to my end.
	Yes, and thank you again so much for everything that you've done to help get this trip.
	God knows, without women around, I'm just farting in the wind, so I really do appreciate it.
	Well, that's no problem. I'm happy to help.
	I look forward to seeing everyone.
	Yeah, Christina was just saying she's looking forward to meeting you too.
	All right. Well, thank you so much.
	Was there anything else that you wanted to add with that?
	No, that's all for me.
	Just a quick thanks to everyone.
	Oh, thanks. And I think that the efforts are still underway from Bill and Greg to sort this out as we've talked about on the board.
	So we'll keep you posted about that.
	Thank you so much. You're welcome.
	Alright, was there anybody else who wanted to slither in towards the close of the show?
	Hello? Hello?
	I don't know if you can hear me.
	I can hear you. Oh good, good.
	Hey, this is the cheap mic that's built into my laptop.
	But if I lean over real close, it almost sounds good.
	If you could lean in just a little bit though, that would be great.
	I like it when somebody's breathing in my ear.
	Anyway, just wanted to give you a little technical update.
	I was able to secure the use of the Canon XL1 camera for the Symposium.
	So I will be bringing that.
	Oh, and that's really high resolution, right?
	Yeah. Well, it's not high def, but it is probably one of the better DV format cameras around there.
	Oh, that's fantastic. Anything that can help bring my pores to the foreground, I'm really, really pleased with, of course.
	Because YouTube's real kind, right?
	Because YouTube is like, it's so blurry.
	It's like, wow, he's 12, right?
	And then you meet me and it's like, my God, suddenly I look like Lance Engrickson or the guy, Ash, from the alien movies, the robot.
	Suddenly I'm staring into the moon's crater of mortality.
	So that's good.
	High resolution is great. Be sure we don't accidentally break it before you start using it.
	Yeah, I think what I'm going to try to do also is bring my DVD recorder so I can make DVDs live without having to copy the tapes.
	Oh, that's great. I mean, I'm going to bring down Greg's camera so we can, I think having two would be useful.
	That way we can maybe do cut scenes and stuff like that, right?
	That might be nice. So it's not so completely static.
	So, yeah, no, that would be great.
	I think that's, I really do appreciate that.
	And it's going to be great to have a record of this, our first, you know, I guess genuine sort of meeting that's not simply involved around eating food.
	Yeah, production values, what a concept.
	Yeah, no, shocking. People won't even know what's going on.
	All right, well, just wanted to give you that little tidbit.
	Well, fantastic. Thank you so much.
	I look forward to seeing you as well.
	Good, well, that was shockingly short.
	Anybody else who wants to jump in, feel free.
	Hey, Stefan, this is Seth.
	Can you hear me okay? I sure can.
	Hi, how are you doing? Listen, I've just started using the argument for morality with people.
	I live out in Phoenix and go to this philosophy meetup through meetup.com.
	And so there's a lot of discussions there that end up with me taking the, you know, voluntarist position on things.
	And I guess what I... I wanted to get from you.
	What's your experience been using this?
	What I've been accused of is my quote-unquote standard argument is that any law that I don't like means that I will get killed if I don't want to obey it.
	They kind of use that derisively to shove it down.
	Oh, that's just your Seth's standard argument that all laws mean murder.
	Have you ever run into any kind of objections like that?
	How do you deal with it? I find that argument for morality to be really quite effective, but it's also kind of emotionally draining because when people flat out say shocking things like, they want you dead, it's kind of a bummer, you know? It's disturbing.
	Well, sorry, was that the end of your question?
	I didn't want to cut you off before you...
	Oh, no, no, that's fine.
	I appreciate you being a listener.
	No, I'm just a little bit nervous.
	I'm kind of rambling here, but go ahead and respond.
	Rambling? Rambling! Sorry, that's actually, that's the entire business plan, right?
	It was originally about 60 pages, and then it's just like ramble and ask for money.
	So we kind of boiled it down.
	So you're totally within the business plan parameters, and thank you for that.
	Look, I mean, I know this is going to sound harsh, and it's not aimed at you, but if I had a kid, right, and the kid said, you know, geez, it's unbelievably painful whenever I put my hand on that hot stove, right?
	What would my response be?
	If you had a kid and it was unbelievable...
	You're chopping up on me, I'm sorry.
	Yeah, and my kid says to me, you know, Dad, it's so unbelievably painful every time I put my hand on the hot stove.
	Stop putting your hand on the hot stove.
	Right, so if you say, it's kind of draining negative and horrible when people look me in the eye and say...
	I think you should be thrown in jail for disagreeing with me.
	Or, when people trot out some sort of sad little quote argument, which is like, oh, this is just his standard argument, this is his thing, you know, like he likes vanilla ice cream and he likes this argument for morality with cherries on top and so on.
	I mean, that doesn't make you feel respected and listened to, does it?
	No, I mean, my position is, oh, you know, so if it's a standard argument, great, go ahead and refute the argument.
	Yeah, putting the word standard in front of an argument does not refute the argument, right?
	Absolutely not. If I say 2 plus 2 is 4, and somebody says, oh, that's just his standard equation, it's like, that doesn't refute anything, right?
	These are just cheap-shot rhetorical...
	It's like when you're arguing somebody who just makes it up, makes the...
	Crap ups to be polite as they're going along.
	And then you point out the contradictions.
	Oh, well, this and that.
	It's just so maddening.
	You know, once somebody's flat out looked me in the eye and said that, yeah, I should be killed for not paying taxes when I haven't lifted a finger to hurt anybody else.
	And this person actually told me that they thought it was funny that I would rather not pay taxes to support mass murder in the war and go to jail or risk that and being raped in the ass for it.
	They thought that the rape was funny, which I thought was pretty sickening as well.
	You know, what's also funny is the fact that you apologized for using the word crap and then came out with raped in the ass, but that's fine.
	I just sort of noticed that was kind of funny.
	I'll hang out later.
	Anal rapist, okay. So, look, I mean, but so how do you feel, like, I'm going to put on my Oprah hat here, right, which is big, curly, and fluctuating in weight, but how do you feel when these responses come back?
	You cut off at the end.
	How do I feel when those responses come back at me?
	Is that what you meant to say? Yeah.
	Well, I mean, it's It's just so shocking and disturbing is when you pin people down, you cut right to the core issue, and you find out their true moral nature, as you say, that People are really that crazy.
	It makes me a little bit fearful of the world around me.
	If so many people at their core are like this, then that's pretty disturbing.
	I feel like I'm in danger of living in a world gone mad and being caught up in the ever-escalating violence.
	You know what I mean? Let me just stop you there for a moment.
	I'm sorry to interrupt you, but this is such an essential point that I really want to just highlight it.
	Look, if people weren't trying to ram their shitty ass-clown theories down our throat all the time, then the evils of the world would make no sense whatsoever.
	So if we went to philosophy meetups, And we said, we used the argument for morality, you know, whatever it is, the UPB, and people didn't just react in strange, sick, culty, screwed-up, neurotic, destructive, insinuating, projecting, wildly irrational, pompous, superior ways, then the war in Iraq would make no sense at all, right?
	It's not that the world is mad because everybody's crazy.
	It's that the truth is that the world is mad, and therefore if people individually weren't mad, the world would make no sense.
	You couldn't have a war in Iraq if people weren't defending it using emotionally abusive tactics.
	The source of the war is the people around you who attack anyone who points out that it's murder, that costumes do not change man's moral nature, and so on.
	So, I know that staring into that directly is pretty horrible, but what you can do is take comfort, right?
	So if the theory is that everyone who drinks water from the well ends up crazy, and everybody in the town is drinking water from the well, then although it's unpleasant to look at the town and say everyone's crazy, at least you know that your theory, that it comes from drinking water at least you know that your theory, that it comes from drinking water in the well, is Yes.
	It feels like a step into crazy land to look at all the corruption that is around us.
	But actually, it is a step into sanity land because it explains why the world is the way it is.
	Because if the world were healthy but people were crazy, philosophy would make no sense, right?
	But since everybody's crazy and therefore the world is crazy, then philosophy makes perfect sense, if that makes sense.
	It does. I guess it's just coming to that realization, it's really alienating.
	It's tough for me to fight the alienation.
	I kind of feel somewhat desperate for relationships and human contact, and that's why your podcast has really been helpful.
	Gee, somebody else who kind of feels like I do, and it makes a lot of sense.
	I don't know. I mean, I... I don't want to sit here and lick your boots too much.
	I guess I can compare it to having intuitively felt something was correct.
	Say, for example, until I read Ayn Rand in my early 20s, I didn't really know how to articulate it.
	A lot of her writings gave me the kind of intellectual ammo I needed to be able to lay it out logically.
	Whereas before, I felt like I instinctively knew it to be true, but I didn't really know how to argue it.
	Okay, but tell me why it is that you want to fight the alienation.
	Because, you know, going back to this example, if you go out and debate with people who say, yes, I think you should be killed, or who roll their eyes when you make a logical argument and can't think, and are so pompous that they think they can think, and think that they've refuted your argument by putting the word standard in front of it, clearly that's just you putting your hand on the hot stove.
	So the first thing that you've got to do is to not put your hand on the hot stove, right?
	Correct. So, if you're out there and somebody says, yeah, I think you're dead, or they make some snide or snarky or bitchy comment about, I think it's okay to say, hey, you know, that was really kind of bitchy, and that was really, I don't feel good when you roll your eyes at me.
	I don't like that at all.
	I'm not saying you have to change your behavior.
	I'm just telling you what I think.
	And if they say, oh, isn't he so oversensitive?
	Oh, looky-dokey, oversensitive person, right?
	Then you say, okay, well, I guess you've told me everything that you need to know about how hot this stove is that I'm putting not my hand but my dick on because it's that sensitive for us, right?
	So I would just not deal with those people anymore, right?
	But so the alienation is actually trying to help you, right?
	Your fear is that the alienation is universal, right?
	That there's nobody that you're going to be able to talk to.
	Well, yeah, I mean, let me just put it this way.
	If I had to bring out the big guns of the argument for morality with everybody I knew in my life, I would be probably left with five people that I'd talk to.
	I mean, my girlfriend is down with it, and a few other people that I've met out here that are, you know, kind of like in the voluntarist, atheist side of things.
	But it's just, you know, well, here's the deal.
	See, I don't believe in, you know, it's my responsibility to change the world.
	However, when I do see these crap ideas spouted off, I feel like those need to be challenged.
	Okay, and I understand that, right?
	I understand that. But the problem is that you're putting on your running shoes, right?
	And you're getting your tennis racket, and you're going out there to play tennis.
	And then other people are just calling in an airstrike, right?
	You're not playing. You're not challenging anyone because they don't exist, right?
	They're just making up a whole bunch of crap, right?
	They're just... You might as well try and debate with monkeys throwing feces at you at the zoo.
	I mean, so then, I mean, we're not going to go out and try to introduce these ideas to the people that we know in our lives.
	I mean, isn't it kind of a...
	If this is a multi-generational educational project, Art, don't we need to at least try to spread these ideas with the people that we come into contact with our daily lives on an individual basis?
	Well, if you like it, yeah.
	I mean, if you want to, sure, but you're not obligated to.
	I mean, if it gives you pleasure to do it, then yeah.
	I mean, I happen to have a bizarre combination of both a great deal of sensitivity and a very thick hide, right, which is probably due to years of being in the sales trade.
	I have, so I can really very quickly sort of figure out whether people are worth conversing with, but at the same time, when they then fling poo at me, it doesn't usually, I mean, you know, once a month or whatever, I'll get mad, but for the most part, it doesn't bother me that much.
	So, for me, it's enjoyable to do what it is that I'm doing, but if you find it stressful or negative, then for a time, you should not do it, right?
	Because you should trust your emotions.
	There's no obligation that's out there that says, we have to do X, Y, we don't have to get out of bed in the morning, we don't have to eat, we don't have to breathe, there's no obligation that says we have to do anything.
	And you should really follow your instincts.
	You should follow your gut on this.
	I mean, in a way that Ayn Rand was not such a big fan of, I'm an enormous fan of following your instincts, right?
	So, your feelings are giving you these negative stimuli, like feeling despair, feeling alienation, feeling frustration, feeling anger.
	Your feelings are giving you very, very clear stimuli about your level of pleasure in a conversation.
	If you listen to your gut, then you will find that you will be able to sniff your way through the maze of people's feedback to find the people who are Worth talking to, right?
	Because if we recognize or remember that life is really short, and every minute we waste debating with somebody who can't think and, you know, just is a pompous jerk, it's time that we're not enjoying, it's time that we're not spending looking for somebody who's worth debating with, and so it's really just about a whole bunch of closing doors, right?
	There's a great Steve Martin bit I've quoted before that I remember from when I was a kid.
	Where he says, you know, the great thing about getting older is you get to close doors, right?
	So when you're younger, you have all these things that you, oh, maybe that will be fun to do and so on, right?
	But as you get older, you get this corridor, you just start closing off all these doors, right?
	So when somebody says, hey, let's go camping, it's like, sorry, we're closed, right?
	And that's what we need to do with debating as well, right?
	So, you need to follow your instincts.
	If you're not enjoying debating with somebody, you say, I'm sorry, I'm not enjoying this debate and I'm not going to continue.
	Now, I can guarantee you that the reality of the matter, the reality of the interaction, is that you genuinely don't want to debate, but you debate and continue debating because the other person wants you to continue debating.
	And why does the other person want you to continue debating?
	I'm sorry, could you please repeat that?
	The other person wants me to continue debating?
	Is that what you said? Yeah, so if you and I are debating, and I'm basically flinging poo at you, then clearly you're not going to enjoy the debate, but you keep debating.
	And the question is, why?
	Now clearly it's not because you're having fun.
	But you keep debating fundamentally because I want you to keep debating.
	Right? I'm sorry, Stefan.
	This is incredibly frustrating.
	I'm only getting about half of what you're saying.
	It's so choppy. Can you hear me okay?
	Is my voice steady? Yeah, I can hear you just fine.
	We don't have anything else running on the internet.
	I wonder if it's something that...
	Upstream on your cable modem, but I'm only getting like the other half words.
	Yeah, I mean, it's supposed to be a couple hundred K upload per second, so it shouldn't be too bad, but is anybody else?
	Sorry, if people can just talk in the chat window.
	Is anybody else having trouble hearing?
	Oh, everybody is.
	Okay. Alright.
	Yeah, so some people are getting it, and some people are not getting it.
	Okay, well, I'm so sorry. I know this is going to be frustrating, but I'll just have to say what I'm going to say, and then you'll have to hear it later, because I'm sure it's recording fine on this side.
	Or is it?
	Oh, now I can call. So, when you're debating with somebody, and that person is being a jerk...
	Then you feel frustration.
	You feel alienation.
	You feel anger. You feel humiliation.
	And so clearly you have no emotional motive to continue.
	You don't feel pleasure in it.
	You don't enjoy it.
	And so the question is then why do you continue to debate?
	Why do you continue to debate?
	Oh, we've got an echo now.
	And some people do.
	And some people do.
	Oh, sorry. Did somebody just unmute themselves?
	Testing. Testing.
	Okay, that's better. So you keep debating, and the question is why?
	Well, the reason that we keep debating, in my experience, and you can let me know after you hear this whether it's the case with you or not, the reason that we keep debating is because we're afraid of being attacked and humiliated for withdrawing from the debate.
	And I have had this experience so many times that I can't even tell you.
	In fact, it just happened on the board last week when Somebody came by who was banned and started stirring up some shit again, right?
	So what happens is I'm debating with somebody and they start being a jerk or they start off by being a jerk or whatever.
	And I say, I don't want to debate with you anymore because I'm not enjoying it.
	And they say, ah, the reason that you don't want to debate with me is that I'm proving you wrong and you're just running away because your thief can't send any close scrutiny or examination and you're just running away because I'm right and you're wrong and you're just using some psychological bullshit to cover up your own insecurity and bad ideas.
	We all know that that's what's on the other side of refusing to debate with somebody because we're not enjoying it.
	People will always say, well, the reason that you're not enjoying debating with me, Steph, is that you don't like to be wrong and I'm proving you wrong.
	And so what happens is, because we're afraid of that occurring, or we're afraid of that response, then we stay in the debate.
	Why do we stay at the hotel with bugs all over it?
	Well, because we'll get shot for trying to leave.
	So it's emotionally more unpleasant to leave than it is to stay.
	Why do women stay in abusive relationships?
	Well, because the moment they try to leave, they're in great danger of being attacked or killed.
	So the reason that we stay in debates with unpleasant people is because we know that they're going to Attack us if we withdraw.
	So if you're sitting down with a bunch of people in a philosophy club that you have met and you put forward the argument of morality and everybody starts putting all this crap out, if you stand up and you say, listen, fellas, it's been great, but I'm really not enjoying this debate.
	I don't find that this is a respectful environment to discuss ideas, and you two have said that I should get shot at disagreeing with you, which I find highly offensive.
	And frankly, enormously corrupt, verging on evil, so I'm going to take my leave and disengage from this group because this is a bad, bad scene.
	Well, of course everybody's going to jump up and snarl at you for being a jerk and whiny and entitled and judgmental and, oh, I guess you can't handle intellectual debate.
	They're just going to start shitting.
	They're going to throw even more shit at you if you try to walk away from the cage.
	That's why we stay. And the reason that they do that...
	Is that they feel rational until we leave.
	Right? They feel like it's a debate as long as we're still debating.
	But the moment that we get up and say, this is just some sort of sick, foo, abuse cage.
	I'm not into this stuff.
	I'm actually into trying to figure out the truth in a respectful environment.
	Then they suddenly look in the mirror.
	You're holding up a mirror to them.
	And instead of seeing the glowing warriors of truth that they consider themselves to be, they see that they've got red asses and thrown poo.
	And they get mad at you for that, because that's the truth, but they want you to pretend that it's not.
	This is the sanction of the victim, slightly altered.
	So that's why we stay in these horrible debates, because these other people want us to stay there, because the moment we leave, we're holding up a mirror as to who they actually are.
	This is why we stay in families.
	This is all the way back to the original woman's question at the beginning of this call.
	Why am I sticking around?
	Because I'm going to be attacked if I leave.
	So I would say that your alienation, your frustration, your anger, your humiliation, they're all trying to help you.
	And the more you're afraid to leave a debate, the more you're concerned or fearful of being attacked because you're going to leave a debate, the faster you should get on your horse and get the hell out of Dodge.
	It's a bit of a counterintuitive thing, but it's absolutely essential.
	If the stove is hotter, then you should get your hand off it quicker.
	I'm sure you only got little bits of that, but that was sort of my response.
	Okay, hopefully you can still hear me okay.
	I'll just have to listen to that offline once you get the file up.
	But thank you very much. I'll go ahead and let the next person ask a question.
	Okay, well, we'll give it a shot for one more person just in case.
	But if the sound quality is bad, we'll just have to pack it in and pick up again next week.
	But go ahead.
	Hi, Steph. Hi.
	I've just got a quick question about going to therapy.
	I finally got on the waiting list, but it's with the NHS. I was just wondering what you thought, how the fact that it's state-funded, how that would affect the quality of counseling I get, whether I'd be rushed Out of it, whether I'd be expected to just be fixed up and then check back out of the world, which isn't quite what I'm looking for.
	Well, I mean, there's no question that funded stuff is going to be of low quality, but that doesn't mean that a piece of bread that's baked on a Soviet farm isn't going to taste as good as some nice fluffy Wonder Bread, but it doesn't mean that it's poison.
	So, I would do what I could to get as much as I could out of therapy.
	It may be relatively short, though I'm sure that will all be explained to you when you first get in there.
	But as we've talked about before, if you want to figure out as much as you can, as quickly as you can about the value of your therapist, then you just go in and you be as emotionally open as you conceivably can.
	And you tell that therapist everything about yourself as quickly as you can, right?
	Not necessarily in one breath.
	That's more my job. But... Go in and do what we've called the emotional vomit on the carpet, right?
	Just go in and talk about the stuff that's really on your mind.
	Don't hedge. Don't hold back.
	And just be as open and vulnerable as you can be.
	And that is going to help you.
	If it's the right therapist, it's going to get as much therapy done as quickly as possible.
	And if it's the wrong therapist, then you'll find out very quickly as well because their emotional reaction to your openness will be negative.
	So I would just go in and try to be as honest and as open and as vulnerable relentlessly, so to speak, as possible.
	Okay, that's really reassuring.
	Yeah, I didn't mean to hyperbolize it too much.
	Like, I'm not worried it's going to be of no use.
	Obviously, I'm just going to, you know, you get out of it what you put into it.
	But I was just a bit worried they might, like, take one specific thing from my childhood and say, I don't know, like, say, right, this is what we're going to fix in you.
	And then when we're done, you're out of there.
	Like, that's all you got. Well, but see, here's the thing, right?
	Even if you've only got six sessions, let's say, or ten sessions, then you can practice being assertive.
	So if the woman says, well, it's the fact that you, I don't know, really enjoy mating with emus that is the problem, and that's what we're going to work on to fix, then you can say, actually, it's not emus, it's zebras, and I want to work on that, right?
	So you can be assertive in your therapy session.
	If somebody tries to railroad you in a particular direction, You're in a safe environment, right?
	They're not going to attack you. They're not going to sue you, right?
	So you say, however scary it may be, you have to try to be assertive in that situation and even say to your therapist, I don't think that's the case.
	And if your therapist gets upset, then you can say, look, this is supposed to be about me.
	This is not about what you think is the problem.
	This is about what I think is the problem.
	And you're here to facilitate whatever it is, right?
	And maybe they'll toss you out, but at least you'll have had that experience of standing up to someone in a safe environment.
	Right, I see what you mean.
	I guess I might be acting on a few misconceptions about therapists.
	They might be a bit too controlling, but I guess it's in your control, really.
	Yeah, I mean, if they're controlling, then you say, I'm feeling kind of controlled here, and you talk about that, right?
	Therapy is the perfect chance to try out the real-time relationship idea, which is to just give people real feedback on your experience of interacting with them.
	Yeah, I get that.
	I get that. Okay. So would you think that the main thing to focus on would be about managing other people's emotions or getting others to manage my emotions?
	Would that be the first thing to sort of pick on, do you think?
	No, the first thing that I would do is when I sat down with a therapist, I would say, this is how I'm feeling right now.
	All right. You want to practice giving people real feedback about your experience of being around them in the moment.
	That's the most valuable thing that you can get out of therapy.
	So you sit down and you say, I am now feeling X, Y, and Z. Right, right.
	Okay. So don't go in with an agenda.
	You want to try and get used to living in the present, living in the moment, and giving people real feedback on what they're saying to you in the moment, right?
	I mean, this is a lot of what I'm doing in these listener conversations, is I'm listening not to the other person, although that is happening.
	I'm listening to how I feel about what the other person is saying, and if I feel something is odd or awry, then I'll go back.
	Like, I'm really trying to listen with my whole being, not just with my head, but with my heart as well.
	And that's a really valuable thing that you can get out of therapy is you don't go in there trying to control the situation or trying to manage the situation or I want to get X, Y, and Z. You go in and you say, I feel this, right?
	And then you just talk in the real time about your experience of being in that room and talking to that person.
	That's going to bring up all the issues that you ever need to deal with.
	Okay, I see.
	That really helps. Thanks.
	Thanks a lot. You're very welcome and keep us posted about how it goes and best of luck, of course.
	Yeah, sure I will. Thanks a lot, Seth.
	Thanks. Very welcome. Alright, so we can do one more, perhaps, just to welcome the person who's come in.
	Joey, baby. And, yeah, thanks a lot to Greg as well for doing the remix on FDR 500.
	It's gone up as a video, and you might want to re-download it.
	It's been remixed. He's working with the limited quality of the source file and, of course, the limited quality of the single, but I think that he has been able to come up with some really good stuff, so thanks so much for that.
	Alright, last question.
	Please.
	Alright, well I won't drag it out if it's not drag-outable.
	So thank you so much, everyone, for dropping by on this Sunday show.
	I really do appreciate it. It's wonderful, as always, to talk to you all.
	Happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy New Year!
	And I will talk to you in Miami.
	Yeah, so thanks again so much.
	I guess we're not having a show this Sunday, right?
	No show this Sunday. No show next Sunday, because I will be out of town.
	But the week after, we'll be seeing each other face-to-face for the big FDR top hole and baby oil orgy.
	So that should be a hell of a lot of fun.
	And bring your rubber duckies and your muse.
	Thank you so much. I will talk to you next week.
	The week after next week, not next week.
	Yeah, three weeks will be the show.

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