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Feb. 20, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:40:36
989 Anatomy of a Relationship Part 3: Projection

Mistaking the world for ourselves...

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Okay, so just to refresh our memories, this guy posted, I recently met a wonderful girl we've been dating for about two months, really caring, respectful, honest and open.
I've really been trying to apply what I've learned here at FDR to this relationship.
I've put in extra effort and have felt our communication is really open.
Recently I've run into troubles talking about religion and what happens when you die.
It's not that she is religious.
Her parents are, but she does have one belief souls carry on in the afterlife that I've become frustrated with.
It seems we can talk about everything and anything, but when this comes up, we, for the first time, got into a bit of an argument.
No yelling, it just got emotional.
I've recently purchased the RTR book, have been applying what I learned from before, and am feverishly working through it.
Blah, blah, blah. And anyway, so he...
She then wrote, My mother and this guy enjoy going to church, and I do not mind going with them.
I've never read the Bible, nor do I plan on ever reading the Bible.
I don't own one. It doesn't bother me that people I know choose to go to church.
It does not bother me that you choose not to go to church.
Going to church with my mom does not have any negative aspect in my life.
I go, I sit, I don't participate in the singing, I don't know what they're talking about, blah, blah, blah.
It bothers me that when I asked you what you thought if I went to church with my mom, how you felt, and you said you would be disappointed.
You said you weren't sure why, but you would be.
Well, I don't think it's right that you should be disappointed.
You choose to be an atheist.
You choose to think about how wrong and corrupt religion is.
I choose not to think anything about religion, whether it is good or bad.
It does not impact my day-to-day life.
It does not interest me.
I do not want to debate religion with you.
I can't defend myself when I'm thinking because I do not have any background info about the topic.
And I do not wish to read about it or educate myself about how good or bad it is.
It bothers me, really bothers me, that you call me inconsistent.
I think that is really rude.
Just because you believe everything has to be concrete, known, proven fact, and because I agree with some things, although I may have other ideas or faiths or beliefs about other things that are more abstract, Does not make what I believe wrong or inconsistent.
And then she talks about the...
But it's that section that bothers people, right?
She talks about people die when she goes to work and...
And he talks about life.
And I asked sort of what he liked about her.
And she's very thoughtful and she's fair.
She's very generous. She's honest.
She's open. She listens openly to his questions and so on.
And he loves to spend time with her.
She's patient and caring.
And he loves running to see her at the end of the day and so on.
So clearly there are some...
Objective positives. She's very thoughtful.
She does nice things for her. She does nice things for him and so on.
So that's why I sort of asked to see if there were any objective positive things that were occurring.
But in this particular area with religion, and clearly it's not about religion, right?
It's not? No, it's got nothing to do with religion because she doesn't care about religion, right?
It's my anxiety was definitely not regarding religion.
Right. I mean, nobody thinks that this debate with this girl is about religion, right?
Not exactly, no.
Well, what's it about?
Um... It's like, let's agree to disagree.
I don't care about any of it.
I'll just conform to whatever.
And then she gets upset that he's expressing his desire.
I don't know what he's said to her before.
You were right about that.
I don't know how he's presented it, how he's said anything to her.
He could have just said to her, religion is corrupt, and everybody who's involved in religion is evil.
We don't know what he said to her, right?
But he did say earlier that he's not very good at presenting these ideas, right?
Right, and I'm not either.
And maybe that's where my frustration is coming from, is that I'm not very good at confronting this type of tolerance-is-a-virtue type attitude.
Well, but that's not how you communicated it, right, Nate?
I mean, at least maybe you did in other situations.
It's not what I've seen, right?
How I communicated what?
Your feelings about this situation.
Well, I think I said that, but you had already left suddenly, so I don't think you even read that I said that.
Well, but you did say, you know, she's like Rachel and is corrupt and whatever, right?
I mean, that's what I thought, right?
I mean, you may have said other things, but that's not what I saw.
Okay. Well, you say, okay, like I shouldn't have seen that or didn't see it?
No, you did see it.
No, you're totally right.
I did say that.
I did jump to conclusions about what she's like.
I just meant that particular aspect of Rachel, this tolerance of it is a virtue.
This part that I really sort of hated the most and so much...
So much so that I wrote a whole freaking thing on it, on tolerance, that I just, you know, it's a very irritating subject, I think.
But do you understand, just from the outside, Nate, do you understand that it might, I'm not saying I'm right, but I'm just saying that it might look a little odd for somebody to be angrily denouncing someone with incomplete information for that person's supposed lack of tolerance?
What? Okay, I'll try that again.
I'm not denouncing her for a lack of tolerance.
I'm denouncing that tolerance is a virtue aspect of it.
I don't think tolerance is a virtue.
I'm so sorry. I misunderstood my mistake.
I do apologize. That's completely off-base then.
Scratch that. Take that out of the request.
Sorry, my mistake. The idea that tolerance is a virtue is an irritating subject to me.
When somebody puts it forward as a virtue, I get It's just something that's...
It's a big red button for me, I guess.
So you think that it was wrong of me not to banhammer you when you were waxing how wonderful Rachel was, right?
Like I should not have been tolerant of that falsehood, even though I was perfectly aware that it was not true at all and you were snowing us, right?
Wait, wait, what?
Well, a couple of months ago, more than a couple I guess by now, after you had broken up with the previous girlfriend, you then talked about how wonderful Rachel was, right?
Right.
And we talked about this before, right?
Okay.
Yes.
And you were not being honest with yourself or with us, right?
No. Right.
And I was aware of that, right?
And you were kind of defensive about it, right?
Very. Very defensive, right?
No, I'm not mad at you.
I'm just pointing it out, right?
Now, you'd already been in the conversation for over a year at this point, right?
You had... Lots of posts and some credibility in the conversation because of this, and you kind of went off the rails, right?
And for quite some time, and with a certain amount of falsehood and defensiveness floating around you, right?
And this, look, we've all done it, right?
I mean, I'm just pointing it out, right?
Right.
Do you think that I should have evicted you from the conversation for being false and manipulative?
False and manipulative.
of Are you saying that because she's being false and manipulative...
No, no, I'm talking about you.
I'm not talking about her.
I'm talking about you, right?
No, I don't. We'll get back to her.
We'll get back to beating up on this mystery woman, right?
But we're just talking about you for a sec, right?
For being false and manipulative.
I don't know. Well, I'm glad you did.
You are glad that I didn't, right?
Right. I'm glad that I didn't.
Right, but why is it that the forgiveness or the tolerance that was of great value to you is not something that you're willing to extend to this woman?
I think because I've...
Maybe this is that baggage thing, because it's never worked for me in the past.
What's never worked? As far as girls go, as far as women dating and these situations, this just seems like a...
The situation is so similar as far as just in the aspect of this...
The way she's putting herself for it is...
Being tolerant, not caring.
I don't really care about this.
It's just not a big deal to me.
You're making it a big deal.
Religion is fine.
I know plenty of nice old ladies who are religious.
I know she didn't say that.
Nate, why was it that I didn't kick you out of the conversation when you began lying and manipulating?
Hmm. And I'm not trying to pick on you, right?
I'm just like, this could be good for you, right?
Because this is a kind of humility that I have to go through on a regular basis just with myself, with Christina.
So maybe it's helpful, maybe it's not.
But if I had just focused on that one aspect where you were not living with integrity, in fact, you were...
This woman isn't actively snowing him, right?
She's not lying to him and manipulating him, right?
Right. Okay, so, and this is, again, just to hold the mirror up, right, which we all have to do.
So what you were doing, with regards to Rachel and the rest of us, was much worse than what this woman is doing, right?
Right. And you had less excuse, right, because you've been in the conversation longer, you were actively interested in philosophy and so on, right?
Right. Right.
So if I had extracted from the whole Nate extravaganza experience, right, the three-dimensional joyride that is Nate, if I had extracted that one behavior from you and judged you solely by that one behavior or by that one habit or pattern, what would I have done? Um...
Oh, I know this.
Well, what do I do with people who have no redeeming qualities in the conversation?
Oh, the redeeming, okay.
We ban them. Yeah, of course.
So if I had said, I don't care about the rest of Nate, I don't care about his intelligence, I don't care about his affectionate nature, I don't care about his language skills, I don't care about his earnestness, I don't care about his thirst for knowledge, I don't care about the courage he's shown in the past, I'm just going to focus on this one thing that he's doing that is false and manipulative and throw everything else out the window.
Then I would have banned you, right?
Right. So what you're doing is you're focusing on one thing that she's doing that is less egregious than what you've done with less excuse, and that's all you're seeing.
Okay. Right, because you haven't said one thing like, she's really kind, she's really thoughtful, she's really wise, she's really open-minded, she's really open-hearted, this guy is really happy, they run into each other.
Like, you haven't You haven't talked about it.
There's no context here, right?
There's no personality with Floor.
There's just big honking Floor, then nothing else, right?
Right. It's a very disturbing red flag, I guess, but I guess I'm not paying attention.
There's no context, right?
Right. No context for the red flag.
Right. Look, obviously I don't agree with her position.
Obviously, right? Right.
But she's not calling him names.
He's not punching the wall.
Right? There's no verbal abuse.
She's not threatening him.
She's not making ultimatums.
She's standing up for what she believes in.
Is what she believes in correct?
No. But she's not doing it in an abusive manner.
Right? As far as we know, yeah.
Well, wait a minute. Come on.
You can't pull that cloud card now, right?
Because you weren't saying earlier, there's a red flag as far as we know, right?
You were pretty damn certain about that.
So you can't pull out that cloud card now, right?
Yeah, Greg did the same thing.
Yes, he did. It's a great trick, but honestly, I mean seriously, right?
All right. I mean, based on the information that we have, right, she's not calling him names.
She's not threatening.
She's not using ultimatums.
She's not lying to him.
She is standing up for what she believes in, right?
So why am I so afraid of that?
Why does that get to me, just that one little...
Why am I feeling this way?
Well, let's just pause for a second before we sort of thunder off to the next topic, right?
And I wasn't trying to put you down earlier.
It's just that I have made, like seriously, I mean, I could have said to Christina, well, you're not an atheist, so I'm not going out with you, right?
But we went out with a Jewish friend of hers.
I was talking about how great Israel's occupation of the West Bank was.
After I met her, I was talking positively about the Iraq War.
So, what right would I have to say to her that she fails the 100% purity test of truth and honor and integrity when all she did was believe that there was some higher power?
I was the one running around talking up war.
It's the humility of knowing that we're all falling short, right?
Right. And that doesn't mean that we're all equal.
It doesn't mean that everybody is equal, right?
Again, you know, there's saltwater and then there's freshwater and there's gradations, but it doesn't mean that saltwater and freshwater are the same, right?
But there is a humility in knowing that we all have the capacity to make mistakes, right?
Right, and you stepped her through that logic, I guess.
Right. Right, right, right.
And I was still in contact with my family at that point.
Really? My brother, yeah.
Oh, your brother, okay.
Yeah, so look, there's lots of things, lots of mistakes that I made, lots of things that I did that were inconsistent, that were, I mean, I didn't know.
I wasn't an anarchist. I didn't know what I didn't know.
I was doing the best I had with the knowledge that I had, right?
Yeah. And it's a journey, right?
It's a progress, right?
And this woman has a lot of good stuff, right?
She's not religious, right?
She has accepted, as far as I understand it, his...
And I think he's not got a relationship with his family.
And she's understood and accepted that, right?
And she does deal with death after death every day.
And that's hard, right?
She may have never heard anything to do with atheism whatsoever.
But this conversation that she's having has zero to do with atheism or religion or philosophy or anything like that.
Well, it has to do with her family, as you were saying before.
Sure. Sure.
It's going to blow up her whole thing.
Right, so he's trying to force her, right?
He's trying to force her into, as she feels it, he's this guy who may have been ranting about religion in a way that is scary for her, right?
We don't know. We don't know, right?
Maybe he's spoken about it very reasonably.
I don't think so. Because he's pushing the debate that she's not comfortable with, right?
Right. Right.
And he hasn't yet gotten that it's got sweet fuck-all to do with religion.
So he's obviously not that sensitive in this area.
He's pushing his agenda, because he wants to dot the I's and cross the T's of the ideological checklist, right?
Right, that checklist you were talking about on Sunday...
Yeah, he's not saying to her, because he's ground his way through RTR, and I hope he's doing it now, but he's not saying to her, okay, when we talk about religion, what do you feel?
Because I sense you get really tense, right?
And I don't know why. I know I'm getting tense, and I don't even know why that is, right?
But tell me, right? Tell me what's going on for you, right?
it will very, very quickly and easily get to the fact that she's just not going to confront her parents on this.
Right.
So it's not...
Stepping her through the logic of religion is not so much important as getting to the bottom of what she feels.
Yeah. Max was an atheist.
Do you want to date him? No.
And he's a man. And plus, I think he has boils all over him.
I believe he did have lots of pustules and carbuncles, unfortunately.
But, I mean, this ideological checklist is not helpful, right?
Because it's alienating. It's cold.
Right.
It's not dealing with the real issues.
Wow.
I think this sheds sort of a new light on my new other extreme of standards that I've written up.
Because now I'm kind of resistant towards even...
Look, it's what I've always said.
The first virtue is honesty, right?
Right. First virtue is honesty.
If that is granted, all else follows.
Honesty. Now, she doesn't have the intellectual clarity or the emotional freedom to think clearly about religion at the moment because clearly she's living a double life.
And her parents are living a double life, right?
Live and let live. We don't even agree to disagree.
We don't talk about it.
When we come to your house, we don't go to church.
When I go to your house, we go to church, right?
So the first virtue is truth.
And the truth isn't getting someone to say, I don't believe in God.
Religion is corruption.
That's a conclusion.
The first truth is, what do you feel when we're talking about this?
That makes sense.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I mean, otherwise you're saying to somebody who is in a foreign country, we've got to get to Islamabad and not letting them look at a map.
Of course they're going to push back.
I don't know how to do it.
I can't get there. And we all have that, right?
We all have that. I mean, it took, what, six months for you to go for a meeting, Rachel, to not go and marry Rachel?
Yeah. These guys have been going out for two months?
Two months? So the humility thing is what you're getting at?
It's something to think about.
I guess I have issues with the humility thing there.
I don't know what to...
Well, I think that you're actually a very gentle person, myself.
And I mean that in all the positive, wonderful glow, right?
It's the thing that gets me through when...
In the same way that I'm kind of a gentle and warm person, which gets people through some of my dickishness from time to time, right?
But in the same way, right?
So some of the stuff that's difficult for you, I think that you're a very warm, caring, empathetic, and gentle person, right?
Myself, right? That's just my experience of you.
I think that you get scared, right?
And you mentioned earlier that you're scared of this situation, right?
And that's the important thing, I think, right?
Because the RTR is not, are there red flags in this relationship from these people I never met?
I mean, who cares? Who gives a shit?
That's not going to affect your life.
you might as well be studying rainstorms on the dark side of Jupiter's moons.
Because if you make it about them and their relations, I mean, who cares?
Nothing to do with you.
The important thing is your process, right?
Because you can be as judgmental as you want and say that she's this, that, and the other.
If they're happy, what's it going to do to them?
Nothing. But it's going to have an effect on you, right?
And your capacity to find love.
Yeah, I think it will.
I mean, the moment I smell anything bad, I'm going to have full DEFCON 5, right?
There's no levels of DEFCON, right?
You know, it's like full alert.
Auga, auga, right?
Then that's going to interfere with your ability to find love, right?
Yeah, see, if I'd seen a red flag like that again, I would have run.
Right, right.
And that would be to imply...
See, this is the UPB thing, right?
That would be to imply that you are perfect.
Right? The moment I see a smidgen of error in somebody else, I will leave because I have no error.
That does imply that.
Said position may include the era of vanity, right?
Right. Oh.
And you don't want that standard, right?
Because that will cause you to self-attack, right?
You don't want to have that standard of perfection.
You just don't want to have it.
I know it's tempting, and I know it relieves anxiety in the short run because it lets us climb the mountain and view the heights of our own imaginary perfection, but you don't want that standard because if you've got a standard called perfection, you're going to end up...
I mean, other people aren't going to be that affected by it, but you're going to end up clubbing yourself half the day, right?
Right. I would.
And I do. Sure.
I know. I know.
And you're also going to get paranoid, right?
Because if the standard is perfection, and without perfection, not only will you not have any affection, but you will actually attack.
What that means is that if you meet somebody, and they start to become interested in you, you start to become interested in them.
The worst part is not how you'll be scanning them, but how in your mind's eye they'll be scanning you for any kind of imperfection, right?
How does...
why?
How does that...
Well, if you put forward the pyramid, everything we do is UPB, whether we like it or not, right?
So, if you put forward the standard that says, I'm going to attack anybody who shows the signs of imperfection, right?
Then you will also be anticipating attacks when you show imperfection, right?
Oh, right, right. Oh, yeah, I know that feeling.
I bet you do.
I bet you do, right?
Yeah, I know that feeling.
I mean, you've been perpetually attacked by women for falling short of a standard, right?
Right. Right.
So, don't do that, right?
Because it doesn't feel good, right? No, not at all.
Right. So if you have empathy with yourself for that and realize that you, like me, like everybody else on this call, like everybody else in this conversation, like all the millions of people to come in this conversation, we're struggling to get ourselves out of the quicksand of history.
We're struggling to evolve.
We're struggling to improve, and it's a hit-and-miss situation.
It's the forward-back-sideways-trip-do-si-do, right?
Right. Right.
Sometimes their teeth, it feels like, right?
Yeah, because right now, my first instinct or normal reaction to what you just said and to what we were just talking about It's to say, why is this so hard for me?
Why can't I seem to get past these little...
That's probably holding up myself to a standard perfection and then just browbeating myself back down into not being able to meet it.
Right, right. And of course, well, so the question is, what were you scared of, right?
Right. I was scared of a lot of things.
Sorry, I mean in particular with this woman's email, or whatever it was, however she communicated this to him.
Right, so you're reading through this and you're going, huh, huh, and then it's like, Defcon 5, right?
She's got this tolerant thing and it's like, ah, right?
I believe that you're right when you say that that emotion is fear, first and foremost, right?
Right. Right.
And with that fear, it's overwhelming to the point where context evaporates, right?
For sure, that's what happened.
Now, when you were with Rachel, and there were obviously good times, right?
I mean, there were obviously times where you had fun and so on.
Didn't you feel that when she got upset with you, There was no part of her that remembered you were a good guy.
Right. There was no part of her that remembered that.
Right. So, this is called splitting, right, psychologically, and you can look it up.
It's a worthwhile thing to look up.
I'm prone to it, too, right, so I have to kind of watch this myself.
But it's something called splitting, right, where somebody's a really good person until they scare you, and then they become a really bad person, and we have to control them.
And we have to beat them and we have to bully them and we have to assert our superiority over them because they scared us.
Right. And when they scare us, they're not a good person who made a mistake.
They are now an evil person who wants to do us harm.
They're like a tiger in the room.
And then when we assert control over that person, and we bring them to heal, and we grind them down, and we reassert our own superiority to them, then they turn back, and it's like two days later, everything's fine again, right?
Yeah, that doesn't last very long.
No, it doesn't, because then what happens is you do something that scares her, and then suddenly you're just this bad guy, right?
I mean, this is why people use these unbelievable names in their relationships, right?
Asshole, slut, bitch, whore, whatever, right?
Because in that moment, they genuinely believe that the woman they married, that they went on their knee to propose to, that they...
Bring them a moon in the sky.
They genuinely believe that that woman is a bitch.
They genuinely believe that that guy is an asshole.
There's no context anymore, right?
It disappears. Yeah, there's no subtlety, there's no nuance, there's no...
It's just like, bam, they're bad, or bam, they're good.
And when they're good, they're wonderful.
And when they're bad, there's nothing worse.
So why would I feel fear?
Based on just given what you just said.
I mean, why...
She said...
It's the...
I don't want to come to any conclusions here, but I... Well, what was the feeling, right?
Where did it originate in your body?
Were your hands shaking?
What was the physical sensation when you got to that part that triggered the fear?
That pressure in my chest, the...
just sort of like frustration...
It's like a frustrating fear.
It's the same feeling I sort of sometimes get with certain trolls on the board.
Right. But it's more...
It's like the fact that it's coming from a female and the fact that it's coming from somebody who's saying something very familiar.
It's a very familiar fear.
Well, now, is your fear of her or for him?
Well, rationally, it can't be of her, because I don't even know her.
I don't know.
I'll probably never run into her.
Well, we're not talking rational right now, right?
We're just talking about what your subjective experience was, right?
I don't think it's of her or for him.
I think it's of...
What do I do when I encounter that again?
And how can I possibly...
You know, I just want to get him.
Get him?
Get her. Like, her.
To expose her. Right.
Or... Or, uh...
Oh, to punish her.
To hurt her.
No, no, no, no.
Not that bad. No, I don't mean, like, I don't know, I don't mean pull her finger off or anything, I just mean, you know, like, to wound her emotionally or whatever, right, because she's going to wound him, or, again, I don't want to put words in your mouth, I'm just trying to follow what it is you're saying.
No, no, no, not that far either.
Just sort of corner her in logic, I guess.
Oh, so you could end up getting her to admit that she'd been inconsistent, and this is, of course, what we all want to do with the trolls, right?
Right. To corner them, and it never works, right?
No. No, never.
They just change the topic. They go off in a huff.
They storm. They slam. They pull an Annie.
They pull a whoever, right?
They just go, right? Right.
They will never give you that, right?
No. So, if she is a bad person, this woman, I don't know, I don't think she is, but if she is a bad person, then he is completely idealizing her, right? Right.
Kind of like I did Rachel.
Gee, I hadn't thought of that.
that's interesting go on so then he'd be setting himself up for a possible lifetime of abuse right Thank you.
Right, so maybe it is kind of a...
Well, it is really scary when you genuinely believe that you love someone and they're the most wonderful woman in the world, and then they turn out to be kind of dangerous and scary and nasty and whatever, right?
Right. You know, it's like you go to sleep with L. McPherson and then you wake up with Dom DeLuise, right?
It's like, what?
And now we're back? Dom DeLuise.
Feel free to Google that if you're under 30.
Right, yeah, yeah, sure.
Yeah, I like him.
But that's scary, right?
I mean, and there's lots of movies that play it.
That's the Sixth Sense kind of thing or the Fight Club kind of thing where you think it's one thing and it turns out to be completely the opposite, right?
Right. That's really disorienting.
That's really scary, right?
And you see this in vampire movies, right?
Like where there's this seductress, right?
This physical goddess or whatever.
And then you sort of go in to kiss her and she turns into this horrible hag with rotting teeth.
You see this. It's all over the place, right?
This is not an uncommon emotional experience for people.
Yeah, I've seen those.
So that's kind of like this...
Where that just comes out and it's like, oh no.
Right. It's like, oh no, big huge red flag.
It's all over now.
Same as before.
And that makes you paranoid for the next time, right?
Very. Very. Right, right.
Sorry, that was just somebody who wanted to come in.
I didn't know how I was going to deal with that in the future, I didn't know how I was going to, because this is just so outrageously common, especially with women.
I'm not trying to be...
No, for women it's common with men, but from our perspective it's common with women.
Well, it is, because the tolerance thing, you know, I guess maybe I've seen it with men, because Mark was that way too.
I'm not saying it's not common, I'm not saying it's not possible with men.
It may not be exactly the same, but it's not like women have all these princes to choose from either, right?
Well, I'm just kind of going based on both your, yeah, that and based on your slavery, your first, I think one of your first slavery podcasts, you were answering Anne, I think.
The smooth things over thing, the conformity is a lot more common with women.
Yeah, that's true, but men have their own thing, right?
Men have their own issues, right?
Of course. It's not better or worse.
It's just different. Men have physical intimidation.
Men have punishing through emotional withdrawal and distance.
Men have avoidance mechanisms like golf.
Men have all their own things which torture women, right?
So it's six of a half a dozen of the other.
It's just that there tends to be some patterns on either side.
Right, and this is just a pattern that I see, and in my case, I'm a man, and I'm heterosexual, so my challenge is with women.
Right, so then the question is, since, in a sense, what happens is, this vampire nearly killed you, right, when you went into this castle, and here you see this guy skipping up to the castle with a bunch of flowers in his hand, right? Right. No!
Don't read the doorbell!
Right? Like the dream, right?
You can't...
Whatever you do...
Right? And you're like, well, if love leads off a cliff...
Then not only am I going to watch all these guys, like lemmings, piling off this cliff, but given that I want to fall in love and want to have a romantic relationship, that means that I'm torn, I'm tortured, right?
Because then I'm going to fall in love, idealize the person, and it's going to be like...
I'm going to pull their mask off, and out's going to come the Crypt Keeper, right?
Right. I'm afraid of myself, too.
There's all kinds of fear.
Anxiety and dread that's going on through that, right?
Because obviously this is the story of your dad fundamentally, right?
It is? Yeah, look, he must have loved your mom in his own mind at some point before they got married, right?
He must have thought she was a good person.
I mean, nobody says, yeah, she's the most evil human being on the planet.
I can't wait to give her children.
Nobody says that, right?
Right. So he must have gotten on one knees with tears in his eyes to propose to this woman that he's just thought was the most wonderful person to spend the rest of his life with, right?
Right. And then, cryptkeeper out, right?
Right. So this is the story that's tightly knotted up in your history, right?
I wasn't completely...
I never really thought about that.
Well, now that you do think about it, I'm not saying that this is...
It resonates, for sure.
You lived this, right? You lived this.
Well, yeah, I lived with the terror of a woman for most of my childhood.
Right, and way back in the beginning of your own personal history, I guarantee you, you idealized your mother as well.
Yeah, I remember that. Right, for sure.
We all did. We all did.
I remember being in boarding school when I was six and crying for my mother because I wanted her to comfort me, right?
Right. So yeah, we all idealized our moms.
I mean, that's biological attachment, right?
We have to, right?
So what I'm saying is this process of idealization followed by horror is very common, right?
Right. It happened to your dad.
It happened to you with your mom.
And frankly, though it had nothing to do with your responsibility, it happened with your mom and with you.
Right? Because nobody has babies and says, I can't wait to torture and frighten and bully them.
Nobody does that. They all have these images, right?
Right? Like the kids are going to be bringing mom burnt toast and runny eggs for breakfast and they're going to be jumping up and down for Christmas and they're shining faces and we're going to take them to bargaining and we're going to take them to Disney World and everybody's going to be laughing and it's going to be fun and I'm going to get the little booties, right? Everybody has those visions of parenthood, your mother included.
That's why they have children.
Idealization followed by horror, right?
Right. That's exactly...
That is quite a pattern.
Yeah, that's why we have Jesus Christ and Satan, right?
Idealization and horror.
Sentimentality is the flip side of brutality.
Idealization followed by horror.
You put them on a pedestal and then you attack them.
Huh. So all I'm saying is that if you can understand that this is a very...
I mean, that's why I felt sort of irritated at the level of the conversation.
And it's not your fault.
I mean, I was participating at that level too, right?
But that's why I was kind of irritated at the conversation earlier.
Because this has so nothing to do with what we were talking about.
And at the same time concerned, right?
Insofar as if you can't plumb this richness within yourself, right?
This duality, this complexity...
Maturity is context, Nate.
Maturity, and I'm not saying you're not mature, I'm just saying maturity is context.
So maturity is saying, I have good in me, I have bad in me.
I have maturity, and I have good childishness, and I have bad childishness, pettiness and all that.
I have love, and I have Not love, right?
I am very affectionate, but I can also be cruel.
That is all of the ambiguity and the richness of the human soul, right?
And maturity is context, the same way that biology is context, right?
Biologists don't say, if the dung beetle does well, life is doing well, right?
It says there's a balance, there's a context, there's a whole ecosystem, right?
All right. Because if we don't get the complexity, then we have nothing to balance anything with.
We become like a bureaucrat trying to run a free market by fiat, by order.
We just make mistake after mistake and things get worse and worse and worse.
And if I get that I have the capacity for cruelty, and sometimes I have the impulse for cruelty, and sometimes I am, in fact, cruel, then if I completely say, well, I'm just a good guy, gee, I'm a philosopher, I'm a good guy, therefore I can never, that would never happen, right?
Then any time I'm cruel, I can't own that in myself, so I've got to project it into the other person.
Other people end up paying the price for our repression, right?
For our lack of self-acceptance.
For us saying to ourselves, I have to be 100% pure, 100% good, 100% right in order to be worth anything.
And the moment I fail that standard, I'm worth nothing.
But if you say, well, I am complex, I am deep, I am rich, I am sometimes contradictory, and I have, as we talked about in the last couple of Sunday shows, I got me some voices, right?
I've got me some disagreements, right?
Well, then we can own the things that we do that are good and that are bad.
And then we don't sit there and then say, well, anytime something goes wrong, it's completely the other person's fault, right?
Right.
Sorry, last thing I'll say, then I'll turn it over to you, buddy.
But that's why, when I was saying earlier, that you pulled one thing out of what this woman was doing, with no empathy as to why she was doing it, and you expanded that or inflated that to cover her entire soul, right?
Yeah. Yeah, I did.
Then, all of the good things she was genuinely and really doing, making him happy, the thoughtfulness, the consideration, the openness, the kindness, the honesty, the directness, even standing up for what she believes in, which I think is a good thing, all of that for you then became manipulation on her part that was designed to screw him up, right? Right.
That's not context, right?
So, no, it's not.
But... I'm trying to resist fogging here.
Okay, well let me just say one other thing while you work on that.
I love that I can be cruel.
I love that part of myself.
I love that part of myself that can be an asshole.
I love that part of myself.
He's got a seat at the table, that son of a bitch, right?
Actually, I'm a total son of a bitch, but that's more biological.
But I love that part of myself that's cold and calculating and cruel, because I tell you, it's gotten me out of some scrapes in the past.
Now, I don't want that guy to be the only guy running the ship, right?
Because that's not going to be good, right?
Right, that bad guy has been running my ship for a while with all the self-abuse type stuff going on.
Well, yeah, I mean, that's not you, right?
The self-abuse is not you.
This is part of what I talked about in the second half of the convo that you haven't listened to yet, so get around to it.
That's your mom. That's your dad.
That's not you. We don't benefit from attacking ourselves.
We do benefit from being cold, cruel, and calculating at times because there are times when that is needed.
Right? Right.
But we never benefit from self-attacking.
That's just something else. See the standard of 100% perfection and anytime you fail you can be attacked?
That's not your standard.
No kid would ever invent that standard.
That's a truth of abuse that your parents have, right?
Your parents set up these standards which say you have to be perfect and if you fail we get to fuck you up any way we want, right?
But that's not got anything to do with perfection or standards or improvement.
That's just abuse, right?
That's just how people abuse as they set up standards which nobody can consistently achieve and they keep changing them.
And then they just attack for failing to meet these supposed standards, right?
Yeah, they had a lot of standards.
That my brothers, or at least they would act like my brothers met them.
But that's part of the abuse, right?
Yeah. I had this girl I went out with, I won't go into any detail, I had this girl, I lived with her, and she had these, you know, she always thought, she said, Steph, you're messy.
You left a cup on the counter, you're messy.
She'd get mad at me, right? And sometime after we broke up, I went to pick something up from her place.
It was a total mess.
A complete and total pigsty.
Clothes on the floor, cups all over the counter.
So clearly, this standard called Beneath was not a standard that she believed in and practiced and found me deficient in.
It was something she invented that she could use to attack me.
Huh.
Right, so these are just tools that people use to abuse us, right?
It's not our values.
It's not what was good for us.
It's not what we invented. It's just what is inflicted upon us, which we then have to internalize to get some sense of control in that Simon the Boxer story.
But that's not you.
Who would wake up one day and say, you know what I could do is I could go skating or tobogganing or I could go play baseball or I could invent all of these rules that are going to make me feel really shitty for the rest of my life.
What should I do with my day?
I want Like all these rules that I have to fulfill.
I have a long list of things that I'm supposed to be doing.
Right, right. And you know how you know that they're self-abusive?
How? Because you're not doing them.
Oh, that's true, right?
If I say, well, I want to run a media empire by the time I'm 50, right?
And I'm not taking any steps towards it.
You know, that's just a setup, right?
Just a way for me to feel that I failed.
If I say I should brush my teeth and I actually brush my teeth, then that's a standard.
It's not self-abusive.
Because you know that having these standards, these rules, they don't motivate you, right?
No, I'm not motivated by that.
You just get this stabbing anxiety that you're not meeting your goals, right?
Right, like this clean out the garage thing.
I mean, I've had that for way too long.
Yeah, I guarantee you, if you were hit by a bus tomorrow, your dying thought would not be, if only that garage had been clean.
I could die content.
I don't need a priest, I just need a cleaner And then on my gravestone I would say, his garage was clean Right. I mean, that's all nonsense.
We know all of that, right?
We know all of that. I just throw that shit off my list, right?
And I say, you know what? I'll do the garage if and when I want to do the garage.
If and when. If and when.
But I also work empirically, right?
So, for me, like, if I have a list that says clean the basement, if I haven't cleaned the basement in three months, I take it off the list.
Because clearly it's not that high a priority to me.
Clearly. Yeah, you know what's a high priority?
When I want to take a shit, I go to the washer.
I don't just sit in the computer.
Well, unless I'm on a webcam, right?
And I'm talking, right?
But that I know is a high priority because I got it done, right?
Right. So you can work empirically and say, what is it that I'm actually getting done?
Well, that probably has something to do with my priorities.
Right? So we always want to give ourselves orders, but we've got to listen to what we're doing as well, right?
Meet ourselves halfway.
Because we are complex.
We are an ecosystem.
I mean, because it's so funny when you think about it that we're so dedicated to having no central authority, but all we do is give ourselves orders, right?
Yeah, that is quite inconsistent.
Yeah, and you're very into a stateless society, but you're kind of a tyrant, right?
I'm a total asshole.
Well, no, you have that aspect to you, right?
What, to myself, yeah.
Well, not just to yourself, Nate.
I mean, you're tyrannical towards this woman, right?
Oh, right. Yeah, I've got this standard...
So, it's not a standard.
You've got to reframe the language.
You've got an excuse to abuse.
It's such a...
I mean, the type of red flag that went off, it just seems like it's got to be pretty corrosive and seeping all through everything she does.
Wait, I know I'm totally backtracking here, but let me just take this little route here.
It just seems like this would affect everything.
That she does?
Yeah.
Everything that she does.
Right. And so that would be Right.
Right?
Right.
So, because none of us is perfect, and there's no such thing as perfect health, but there's still a difference between health and cancer, right?
So we can have pockets of imperfections, we can have pockets of irrationality, and we can survive as moral human beings, right?
Right. I mean, nobody's 100% honest.
And even if you are 100% honest in your conscious mind, that doesn't mean that you're always going to be telling the truth, because you might find out later that your motivations were bad, right?
And you didn't know, right?
Oh, right. There's no 100% truth.
It's impossible. There's limitations in language.
There's limitations in mutual understanding of the word's meanings.
There's limitations in self-knowledge.
I mean, when I said there are some redeeming qualities to the Iraq war, I was being completely honest, but just not truthful.
Completely honest how?
Well, I genuinely believe that there was, and I was speaking what I believed honestly.
Okay, so...
Like, if I've got the map backwards and I say we should go east, I'm honest, I'm just wrong, right?
Right. That's a good metaphor.
So, perfect honesty is impossible, right?
It's like perfect intimacy.
What does that mean? We beam into each other's bodies?
I mean, I don't even know what that would mean, right?
Do we puree our brain and put them in the same milk jar?
I don't know, right? It would be like Coneheads.
Sorry, you just kind of ground out a little bit there.
But yeah, they touch their heads together or something, right?
Oh, right, right.
Right, so these perfect things doesn't work, right?
It's not real. Wow, I really have a heist.
Sorry, the only good beach is a perfectly flat beach where all the grains of sand are the same.
It's like, well, all you're saying is there's no such thing as a perfect beach.
Right? Well, I was just saying, I never realized what the ultra-high standard of perfection I seem to have.
It's more pervasive than I thought.
It is. It's bigger than I thought.
It is. Of course it is, right?
And once you get a sense of how big it is, you can begin to be more gentle with yourself and with other people.
Because if you don't see it, then you act it out, right?
Because then it's just like gravity.
It just is. It's the world.
It's not my thinking. It's the world, right?
Withdrawing our projections from the world and owning them ourselves is...
It means that we can't spray all the stuff we don't like about ourselves onto other people, so to speak.
We have to own ourselves as an ecosystem, and that's mature, I think, and responsible selfhood, so to speak.
But again, these are not high standards of perfectionism, Nate.
They are excuses for abuse.
Because as soon as you say high standards and perfectionism, then you're giving them a positive quality, which they don't have.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Like we don't say, I have high standards and I'm a perfectionist when it comes to strangling people.
Right, so you don't want to have high standards.
You don't want to say, well, I have high standards and I'm a perfectionist when it comes to attacking myself and other people.
No, I don't. You're saying it's not a high standard of perfection.
It's an unreachable or irrational standard of perfection.
No, it's not an irrational standard and it's not perfection.
What? Irrational is morally neutral, right?
My dreams are irrational.
I don't use my dreams as an excuse to abuse people.
Or at worst, it's aesthetically negative behavior, right?
But it's not abusive, right?
So an abusive standard of...
You're saying it's not perfection, though, either.
It's not a standard. It's not perfection.
It's not a virtue. It's not an unreachable goal.
It's not a standard. And do you know why?
Because it always changes, right?
Right, it always changes.
It always changes. We apply it here, but not here.
We apply it to this person, but not to ourselves.
Or to ourselves, but not another person.
It's a constantly shifting and changing and darting demon which allows us to unleash our negative feelings and emotions on other people.
Well, how does this...
How does this...
I don't understand how this blends with...
Being morally wrong.
I don't see how all this fits together with morality.
What do you mean? Maybe I'm just totally...
No, no, you could be right.
You could be totally right.
Maybe this is where you fall to the ground, which is great.
We'll find something else. But I just didn't follow the logic.
Well, like, you're saying that to have this kind of standard of perfection is, or not perfection, whatever we want to call it, the standard of something.
This excuse to abuse, I guess.
Our standards are now an excuse to abuse.
So how do we have standards if it's...
If standards are this kind of thing that we use to abuse ourselves with.
Well, because, and this is why you can't use the term standards, right?
Because you can have moral standards, you can have standards of integrity, you can have standards of truth, you can have standards in a contract that you adhere to.
Those are objective, they're rational, they're achievable, they're voluntary, they're mutually understood, right?
Right. Right. So we don't want to call this...
Yeah, but those are standards, right?
Like the width of a railroad track is a standard.
Blu-ray is a standard, right?
Inventing mythologies that allow us to, quote, justify our attacks on ourselves and other people, that's not a standard.
What is that? It's an excuse to abuse.
Huh. Huh.
For instance, for George Bush, let's go geopolitical, George Bush says to Saddam Hussein, you need to admit to the fact that you have been developing weapons of mass destruction or we're going to invade you.
Is that a standard?
No. He's going to invade anyway.
Because if Saddam Hussein says, yes, I have these nuclear bombs, then he's going to say, well, sucks to be you, you've now violated your UN charter, you've flouted, and he's going to invade, right?
And if Saddam Hussein says, I don't have any weapons of mass destruction, he's going to say, you're lying, and he's going to invade, right?
Right. So that's not a standard.
It's an excuse to invade. Oh, that makes sense.
And this need for justification is what people call standards, right?
So your mom would be in a bitchy mood, right?
And she'd come home, and she'd find something that you'd done, quote, wrong, right?
Right, or that I was doing at the time, like not doing something that she wanted me to be doing, or doing something that was too enjoyable, or something like that.
Oh sure, yeah. Absolutely.
No question, right? And so then she would unleash her anger or frustration or whatever on you, right?
Right. But the purpose was to find a justification to attack you, right?
Right. There was no standard.
No, there's no standard.
Fuck. Right?
I mean, how about the standard called being a decent mom?
Right? Because there was this guy who came up to the salon that we had, I guess, last year.
And, you know, he was saying, yeah, well, my dad was really tough on me and he bullied me a lot, but that's because he had such high standards and he was a perfectionist, right?
And I said, well, did your dad's high standards include being a good, kind, compassionate father?
Was that anything that he wanted to be perfect at?
And the guy just gave me that 20,000-yard stare, right?
Right. Like the woman I lived with who's like, you're a slob and that's bad, right?
Well, she just makes her stuff up because she wants to exercise power over me, right?
That makes sense.
We bully, right? Sorry, the last thing I'll say.
No one in the schoolyard comes up to the kid with glasses and just takes his lunch money.
They always invent some reason for that, right?
So I had a guy who threatened to beat me up in junior high school.
And what happened was, I was playing a video game.
God, I was like 11 or something.
I was playing a defender. I was playing a video game.
And I was doing really well, and his brother wanted to play the game and was getting impatient.
So he ended up I'm plugging the computer, the video game console.
This is, again, if you're under 30, you won't know what any of this means, but he unplugged the video game, and I called him a jerk, right?
Or something, I can't remember, it's a you jerk, or whatever, right?
And then I sort of stomped off in my huffy, younger sibling kind of way.
And this guy's brother then...
He said to me, you called my brother an asshole or whatever, I'm going to get you, right?
But did he really care about his brother's honor?
Was this a standard that he...
No, he was just a bully who needed an excuse, right?
Right, it's the whole bullying with argument for morality type of thing.
No, you can't have, people can't do anything without the argument for morality, right?
So these are not perfectionist standards of high standards, right?
They're just shit that you invent so you can hurt people or yourself.
It's justification for abuse.
It's the excuse for abuse.
It's amazing how people just, they use this constantly.
Right. This is the government, right?
This is the state. This is the state.
This self-abuse.
These ridiculous standards that aren't even standards.
as excuses for abuse.
Huh.
Like the...
I mean, all the way down to speeding tickets, you know?
Excuse to steal money, or extort, or to bully people over.
Personally, I hate speeders, so you're talking to the wrong guy about that.
There's a few things that the cops do that I agree with.
I wish they could just nuke from orbit the people who leave their cars parked in rush hour.
And when people go by me at 140 kilometers an hour on the highway, I want the cops to pull them over.
So you and I may have different perspectives.
Maybe you were going 102, or you were going 5% over the speed limit and got dinged, and nobody likes it.
But that's one of the few things they do that I actually don't...
That would be done in a free society, right?
But... But that's neither here nor there, right?
But all of this stuff is...
These things are invented to cover crimes, right?
It's the getaway car.
Right. It is the getaway car.
And I get away from myself.
Well, you get away with hurting other people, right?
So you get away with attacking this woman.
And again, we're just talking, this is obviously nothing egregious or anything, right?
But you get away with bad-mouthing this woman, so to speak, right?
And you say, well, but I have this high standard called integrity, right?
I have this high standard called consistency, right?
But that's just an excuse, because she scared you, so you attack her.
Oh, yeah, she did scare me.
Yeah, and look, I understand that.
I mean, to me, that would be crazy if she didn't, right?
Given your history and where you're at, of course she did, right?
But then you attack her and you say, well, it's because I have these high standards called integrity, right?
Consistent behavior, right?
But it's not true. It's not, I mean, it is true that you have a standard called consistency and so on, but you are using that to justify your attack on her, right?
Let me think.
Um.
I get scared when I see it.
Frustrated.
Annoyed.
So I come to a conclusion that she's not meeting my standard of...
There's a red flag.
There's a big red flag there.
Right.
Which is a pretty condemning thing to say, right?
Right.
And you don't sit there and say, well, Steph, who said run screaming from Rachel, has just told this guy that this may not be as serious a red flag as he thinks, right?
Right.
And obviously that's totally fine.
You can go against my judgment anytime, right?
But I'm not going to let that stand, right?
Like, we're going to have to have it out, right?
Because one of us...
Well, one of us is right, and, well...
Like, if she's exactly like Rachel, right?
Because who you're really, I mean...
I don't say who you're really consciously, right?
But what you're really doing is accusing me of egregious inconsistency, right?
Oh, wow. Because you say she's just like Rachel.
And Steph, you son of a bitch, you told me to run from Rachel, and you're saying to this guy that this might be something valuable here, right?
Yeah, you're right. She's just like Rachel, so you're acting...
Do you see how it spreads, right?
It does. You're not conscious of that, right?
No, I didn't even realize...
Well, I kind of...
It was only slightly...
Well, when me and Greg first talked about it, it was...
We did point out that it just seemed inconsistent.
But, yeah. The focus has got quickly moved to her, and...
Yeah, I see how that spills out, and...
It's like the Free Domain is a cult thing where that kind of indirectly says, well, you have no intellectual integrity or anything.
It's like an indirect attack.
Well, no. I mean, if you say she's just like Rachel, and I said to this guy...
There may be something really great here and you should keep exploring it, right?
Right. Whereas I fought tooth and nail to pry Rachel off your neck, right?
Right. Then clearly, if she is like Rachel, then I'm like totally not to be trusted, right?
So then maybe that's another source of my fear.
Well, I don't know that you would be that afraid that I'd be totally not to be trusted after this much time.
I don't know that that would be something you'd be really scared of myself, right?
Yeah, you're right. And with all the context in mind, I just, I guess, because I kind of knew that you're bound to have a good reason for all this.
Maybe I'm, I mean, and the reason ended up being that I'm, that it's all, you know.
Well, what you wanted, though, it's the same thing that Greg wanted, and you'll get to this later in that convo from yesterday.
But what you wanted was for me to point out that you've got this demon feasting on your neck, right?
Because I can't help but notice that you're calling me out as being wildly untrustworthy and inconsistent and hypocritical.
And again, I'm not saying you're doing this consciously or maliciously, but I can't help but notice that.
And given that I'm not those things, and that I did have good reasons for what I was saying, that's the old cry for help.
So, for instance, when Greg, of all people, when Greg says to me that I'm not judging a romantic partner for this guy,
guy, that I'm not judging a romantic partner rationally when Greg doesn't date and I'm happily married, you know that's not objective judgment, right?
Yeah, that's...
That has nothing to do with that.
It's nothing to do with... And this has nothing to do with me.
This is just any kind of expert, right?
I mean, if I'm in the room with Richard Dawkins and he says something about biology, I say, yes, sir, right?
Right. Right?
So this is about our fear of women?
Yeah, I think so.
I think so. But I think more in particular, it's your fear of yourself, right?
It's your fear of self-attack.
It's your fear of these excuses to abuse that you have had inflicted on you for so long that they've kind of got fastened onto you, right?
Like barnacles on a ship.
Right. That's pretty heavy stuff.
But that's what I mean when I say we relax into our futures, right?
You've got to just take these things off yourself and see what happens.
We know when we take all of these hyper-regulations and government controls and taxes and employment laws and OSHA, when we take all of that off a free market, what happens?
Things go a little crazy.
Well, people get anxious.
No, I'm talking about what happens, sorry, I wasn't clear at all, but I'm talking about what happens to the economy, what happens in practicality when we stop controlling how everybody uses their labor and capital.
Oh, well, then things, boom!
There's order, there's spontaneity, there's creativity, there's growth, there's benevolence, there's lower costs of overhead, there's increased wages, there's, you know, the poor lifted out of poverty, there's all of the beautiful things in the world that we, you know, in the same way that when we took the tyranny of the church and all of its excuses to abuse, right, like no masturbation, all that kind of crap, right, when we took all of that stuff off the human mind, we got science and medicine, right?
Right. And when we took the state off the market to whatever degree we did, we got all of the wonder of the free market that lets us talk now, right?
Right. So, what's going to happen to your personality if you take off these rules, right?
These excuses to abuse, right?
Because laws are just, as you say, and again, there would be some that would be common, like no murder or whatever in a free society, but 99.999% of laws are just excuses to abuse, to exploit, to steal, to whatever, right?
Right. So we know what happens to human society when we take off or we remove these abusive, quote, rules, right?
Except for speeding, is that it?
Forget the speeding. We know what happens to society when we take off these rules, right?
Right. So what's going to happen to you when you take off these rules?
I'm going to boom.
Yeah, you're going to flourish.
Flourish, yeah, that's a good word.
In the way that art and science and medicine and the economy and creativity and all of that juicy stuff, when we take off these excuses to abuse, these laws, regulations, taxes...
But the same is true.
We are society.
Each one of us individually is a model and a template of that.
And we can't achieve anything more in society than we are willing to achieve in ourselves.
You can't argue for anarchism and bully yourself with ridiculous standards, right?
You can't. That's why anarchism doesn't win.
Because anarchists look ridiculous.
Because we tell other people to be free...
And that not having a central tyranny is going to make the world free, but we're tyrants to ourselves.
And we're tyrants to other people.
Like the Ron Paul idiots.
Every clusterfuck in the world who piled onto me on those Ron Paul videos, if they gave the tiniest shit about freedom...
They would provide evidence.
They would provide reasonable arguments.
They wouldn't make Ron Paul look like a magnet for dingbats by piling on with all the stupid ad hominems in the world.
They don't care about Ron Paul.
If they did, they'd try and make him look a little bit better by not calling people names.
If those people aren't free, they're not even free to not be assholes, and they want to tell people how to be free in terms of society?
I mean, please, it's ridiculous.
Totally insane. Right, but it's the same thing.
We say, deregulate the market.
Fuck, we won't even deregulate ourselves.
What about the Simon the Boxer thing?
Like, when you were saying that when he goes out into this world where there's a free market where you have to learn to negotiate and all that stuff, he's going to get really anxious and he's going to get...
What about the anxiety that comes with all this...
Freedom. Well, it's tough, right?
But we need to be empathetic to the anxiety that other people feel about freedom.
But in order to do that, we have to have gone through it ourselves.
I try not to lecture women how to get through childbirth, right?
Right. Because I've never done it, and I'm never going to do it, right?
Right. I can credibly say to people, here's how a good relationship can work, because I have a good relationship.
I can credibly say to people, deregulation of the self causes you to flourish, because when I deregulated myself, I got FDR. I know that the deregulation of the self causes flourishing, which does not occur prior to, and occurs directly afterwards as a result of that deregulation.
So once I got out of the objectivist thing and the Aristotle thing and the following the rules of other people and being afraid to think for myself, once I deregulated that and started with a blank slate and had the ecosystem of myself and all the richness and complexity and blah, blah, blah, we got this, right? And this is pretty cool.
Yeah, that is pretty cool.
And that's why I can convince people about anarchy.
Because I am anarchy, right?
I mean, it's true, though.
I mean, I'm a representation of it in the personal, right?
Yeah, see, I want to do that.
Right, right.
But you've got to get other excuses to abuse, right?
And if you can't get rid of them...
Then all you do is don't follow them, right?
And what I mean by that is you don't trash talk people.
You don't get anxious and then get irritable and then put people down.
You don't feed that kind of stuff.
You simply act in opposition to what feels natural, right?
It's the opposite guy from Seinfeld, right?
Oh, the Seinfeld thing, yeah.
Every single instinct I have is wrong.
Then the opposite of every instinct must be right.
No, but in this area, right, given that, like, I know that I have the capacity to be irritable and short-tempered, right, so I just try to do the opposite.
That doesn't mean that the irritable and short-tempered part of me doesn't have a seat at the table.
It sure as hell does, and it saves my bacon at times.
But, you know, I always say, yeah, we have these instincts and we know, but that doesn't mean that we don't have to subject our instincts to the facts, right?
It's like, well, what are the facts? Right?
So when you get irritated, you look at the email and you say, okay, well, that part really freaks me out.
Well, why is that? Where's the curiosity about yourself?
As you can see, the curiosity that we explored tonight produced a lot of really good stuff, right?
Right? Right.
Whereas if you say the answer to why I'm irritated is that this woman is dangerous, you're just making up an answer, right?
As we can see, the reality has got nothing to do with that.
Yeah. Yeah. And the reality is much more cool than she's dangerous, right?
It's much more interesting.
It's much more rich. It's much more human, right?
Right. And it's much more liberating.
The truth does set you free.
It's the imaginary answers that keep you enslaved, right?
Yeah, every time.
Because, yeah... Wow, RTR is really hard.
Yeah, RTR is a bitch.
It totally is. It's really hard.
But look how great it is, right?
I mean, don't let me tell you.
How do you feel? Well, clarity.
Except there's the thing you were talking about with Rod a couple of Sundays ago.
The people that have a seat at a table, how do you know which guy is not you?
They're all you. Oh, I'm so sorry.
You mean like the self-attacking guy?
Right. Well, you do the Socratic method, right?
The only reason I ended up being decent at debating with other people is my endless debates with myself, right?
So when someone comes up at me and says, oh, you know, you did this bad thing.
It's like, oh, okay, well, let's hear the case, right?
So you did this, that, the other, it was bad, right?
It's like, okay. Is that universal or is that just a rule that applies to me, right?
Oh, it's universal, right?
It's like, okay, well, why are you just picking on me?
Are there not far more egregious examples of this elsewhere in the world or elsewhere even that I can have influence?
Why am I the one being raked over the coals here, right?
Like when people come launching at me and say, Steph, you're inconsistent and that's blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
And it's like, okay, so if inconsistency...
Is your big thing?
Would you say that Free Domain Radio is more consistent than, say, the Catholic Church, or is it less consistent than the Catholic Church?
Well, no sane human being could say that I'm not as consistent as the Catholic Church.
It's like, okay, so if inconsistency is your big thing, then you should be going to talk to the Catholic Church, right?
Not me. And I've made this argument before.
I'd be so far down on the list.
Your great-great-great-grandchildren wouldn't even get to me, right?
Right. So, when people accuse me of all these kinds of things, right?
You know, it's a cult!
And cults are really bad. It's like, okay, let's say it is a cult.
Right? Let's say that the donations that I survive on, it's the worst cult in the world, but let's say that it's a cult, right?
It's a cult that encourages people to talk to their family members honestly and openly.
It's a cult that tells people to go into therapy, and it's a cult where the guy is constantly asking to be corrected.
But let's say it's a cult, right?
And he reasons from first principles and subjects himself to reason and evidence.
But let's say it's a cult.
So this little cult with, I don't know, a couple of thousand members, far flung, no ashram, right?
We had like two conferences, or one conference, right?
This cult, which, this is, if you're so concerned about cults, even if we accept that FDR is a cult, is this the biggest and most dangerous cult?
I mean, what about the army?
I mean, are they not a bit bigger and more dangerous a cult than, say, this little philosophical club we got going here?
Or, say, the church?
Or, say, the government.
Or public schools. Wouldn't you classify public schools as a forced cult of indoctrination?
I mean, by any standard.
So it's just a matter of, like, when I get these attacks, whether they come from me or from other people, it's like, okay, well, let's put these in perspective.
Let's cross-examine them.
And you did this with yourself.
Of course, yeah. I do this with myself.
Constantly. Oh, okay. Sure.
I mean, that's how we figure out the truth, right?
That's how we gain peace, right?
So even the assholes have a seat at my table.
They just have to bring some proof.
And if they don't have proof, then it's like, fuck you, right?
Get lost. And it's the same thing with the trolls, right?
And trolls come storming in.
It's like, okay, let's hear the evidence, right?
So if they don't have any evidence, then it's like, you know, life's too short, get lost, right?
Because clearly then they're working out some issue of their own, which they're not willing to be honest about and curious about, which means that they're just inventing rules to abuse me or my friends or my listeners.
And... I may have had to put up with that when I was five years old.
I do not have to put up with that when I'm over 40.
Right. You're free.
Yeah. So this asshole guy, this guy that tells me...
Well, it's your mom. It's your mom.
It's your mom, it's your dad, it's your teachers, your preachers, whatever, right?
The guy that tells me I'll be alone forever, I'll never amount to anything, not in those exact terms, but just sort of a...
That's your dad, right? That's the curse that is put upon you for disobedience.
That's exactly the same as the people who say, well, if you don't pray to Jesus, you're going to hell, right?
I mean, we don't make that up ourselves.
That's just some preacher guy, right?
You want to keep the parts of yourself that are yours, but you don't want to keep the parts of yourself that aren't, right?
Right. Like, you want to remove a bullet from your lung, you don't want to remove the lung, right?
No. So that's not me.
No, it's not you. You'll sit there in the mirror and say, what frightening personality can I make up for myself that's going to tyrannize me my whole life, right?
You would do that, right?
You follow the benefit, right? You do want to have part of you that gets angry so that you can push back at abusers, right?
You want that. That's healthy, right?
Right. But you don't want to flagellate yourself because you didn't clean out the fucking garage, right?
That's not you.
And setting up this world where if there's an inconsistency in anyone's behavior, you can just pile on them like a bunch of seagulls on a potato you can just pile on them like a bunch of seagulls I mean, you don't want that world.
That's not your world. That's not a world of benevolence and curiosity.
That's a world of excuses to attack, right?
You didn't make that world.
That's just a world that got inflicted on you.
So we all got scared and a little annoyed.
We felt something and then attacked.
Right, and you supported each other's stories, right?
Right. We at least all came up with the same story.
No, no, you supported each other's stories, and I could see that going on in the chat window, right?
Again, all due respect, right?
But you're supporting that story, right?
Right. Yeah, that kind of freaked me out, too.
Yeah, you're right about that. Yeah, you're right about that, too.
Nobody was putting the brakes on, right?
Yeah, nobody was saying...
Thank you.
Well, I think I got to that much, much later and realized that I didn't say how I felt when I read it and just left it at that.
Just sort of, why did I feel this way?
Right, right. And you can see Greg's post, which was like, teeth gritting RTR, which is not RTR, right?
It's an asshole, but I'm going to pretend to be curious.
Teeth gritting RTR is not RTR, right?
If it's teeth gritting to do RTR, what you say is, I really, really don't want to do RTR at the moment.
I really feel like I want to just attack you, right?
I mean, that's RTR, right?
But gritting your teeth and pretending to RTR is not...
That's just setting up a case, right?
Hey, I did ask you what was going on.
That's obvious to anyone who reads it, right?
But But yeah, so you kind of gather to each other, right?
You say, well, we all feel the same kind of thing, right?
But you also look into the group, right?
Because, again, this is a wide generalization, so it doesn't mean anything other than my observation.
But the people who've had the least success with relationships were the people who reacted in this way, right?
Right. Right.
Right. And the people who have had more success in relationships, whatever, didn't seem to react in this way, right?
That's interesting. Yeah, but so you've also got to be, you know, this is about the self.
Okay, well, what is the credibility level of the people who are agreeing with me, right?
Have they a success that I want or that I'm claiming to judge by, right?
So the person who has had a very successful relationship is saying there's enough reason to proceed, not necessarily without caution, blah, blah, blah, that's my suggestion or whatever, right?
And the guy who's never dated is up in arms, right?
And the person like you, who almost married the lunatic, is up in arms, right?
Other people who haven't had successful relationships are all up in arms, right?
But that's a clue. That's a clue.
That is a clue.
Yeah, that's kind of like...
Hey, Nathan, everybody at work says FDR is a cult.
Or they think that FDR is a cult.
And these are all people that go to church every Sunday and have these crazy husbands that do...
Do cocaine and cut them up with knives.
They don't have any credibility.
Pat Robertson says that Richard Dawkins is wrong.
And so does all of Pat Robertson's congregation.
It's like, yeah, got it.
That probably means he's right.
Exactly. And when the church gets up in arms about a book, then you know that book is good.
Even if it's defensive, it's still better than what they've got.
Right. But that's the danger of mythology, right?
And that's the danger of when people pile on to support a particular thesis, right?
right?
That's when you've got to be most alert.
What was the signal for that?
Like, when everybody piles on to a thesis, I...
Like seagulls on a potato chip, as you said.
I guess I just have to know how to watch out for that.
Well, I mean, it's a matter of self-examination, right?
See, the... There's nothing wrong with waiting for a day to post a response, right?
Post's not going anywhere, right?
FDR's not going to be transported to the black moon of Jupiter, right?
It'll be there tomorrow. There's no rush.
There's no rush. Or everybody will have forgotten about this thread and it'll be dropped to the bottom and it'll be like, why are you coming back to this?
No. This is the kind of nonsense that we say to ourselves, right?
But when you feel compelled to do something, don't do it.
I can tell you, at least once a day, at least, I will start writing a post, and then I will say, wait a second, why am I doing this?
If I don't have a good reason, I can't think of a good reason within 5 seconds or 10 seconds, I don't post.
Huh. Why do I feel compelled to respond to this?
Why do I want to respond to this post?
Because I can't keep up with them all, right?
Why is it this post, right?
And if it's like, well, because, you know, I've got a good reason because if it's like, okay, then I'll post, right?
I've written like a page and then just erased it because, like, forget it.
I don't have a good reason for this. I'm being defensive.
I'm whatever, right? Right.
Or say, well, tomorrow, will I still have the same impulse, right?
I'll post this tomorrow, right?
Now, if it's something I really want to post, then I'll remember it tomorrow, right?
Right. But if I completely forget about it, then I just save myself hours, right?
Of posting and responding, right?
Yeah, that's a lot to manage, and I can imagine the billion emails you get.
Right, and it's like, well, why am I choosing these ones to respond to, or these ones not to, whatever, right?
So, there's nothing wrong with waiting, right?
There's another way that you know that it may not have the best motivation.
If you're like, I've got to do it now.
I've got to, right? Then it's just anxiety management, right?
You say, well, how do I feel if I don't do this, right?
How do I feel if I don't respond to this latest post on determinism?
I feel like they've beaten me.
I feel like I haven't made my point.
I haven't driven them off. I haven't cornered them with my impeccable logic, right?
Well, fuck... You know, if they're not logical, I'm never going to be able to do that anyway.
A bunch of people. Yeah, let them have the thread.
Fuck, what do I care right now? You there?
Yes? Hello? Hello?
Yeah, we lost a bunch of people.
Oh, they just left? Well, it doesn't matter.
I'm pretty much done anyway.
I just wanted to sort of...
Yeah, I guess it's getting late, so...
Yeah, it's good to know what...
I'll compile this and send it around.
Y'all can have a listen.
I mean, there's enough in there, right?
We don't have to go two hours every time.
But yeah, I would have a listen over to this, right?
But just be patient with yourself.
Don't post because you're tense.
Don't post because you're frustrated.
Don't come and bag on people because you're mad or whatever, right?
Just, you can take your time.
Relax. It'll be there tomorrow.
No rush, right? All right.
You've got to get in touch with that inner Rastafarian voice, right?
Yeah, man. Yeah.
All right. Okay, man.
Well, I hope that was helpful, and I'll give you a chance to have a listen of it, and you can let me know what you think.
Extremely helpful, as always.
I'll have a listen for sure.
Alright, man. Talk to you soon. Okay.
Bye. Bye.
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