Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

May 4, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:38:15

1054 Sunday Call In Show May 4 2008

An even keeled Mecosystem? fierce friendships - and defooing from the dying...

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	All righty. Well, everybody, thank you so much for joining us.
	It is the 4th of May of 2008, and it's a Sunday call-in show.
	One or two items of minor business, or as we say down here in the hood, fitness.
	And then we'll continue on with the questions.
	So, first and foremost, there is a free new book that is out there.
	I must tell you that I am not one.
	I can't necessarily toot my own horn unless I've eaten Mexican.
	But this audiobook, I really do give it a listen.
	I worked quite hard to get what I consider the right tone to the book, which is calm but passionate but inviting but certain.
	And I played around with a lot of different ways of approaching the reading, and I actually think that I bagged it, so to speak.
	So it is available at freedomainradio.com.
	I've also thrown it into the feed.
	Why?
	Because I'm not paying for the bandwidth on this one.
	It's on my Box account.
	So you grab it, download it.
	There is a lower quality.
	Quality feed, which you can get a hold of at freedomainradio.com forward slash free dot html.
	The audio book is 200 megabytes and the lower quality one is 50.
	I did actually record it as a result of several complaints from listeners.
	I recorded it constant bitrate so that people who have older mp3 players will not find that fast forwarding and rewinding and bookmarking doesn't work.
	Now... I can't imagine why that would be an issue because it's just about four hours long and I can't imagine why you wouldn't listen to it in one sitting.
	And when I say sitting, I mean sitting and blindfolded while massaging an FDR logo on your T-shirt.
	So I don't know why people would need to come back to it, but just in case you have some sort of stroke, this is available to you.
	Thank you again to the donators.
	I didn't put out my normal whine and complain at the end of last month, so I'm going to do it now that if you haven't donated for a while, just be aware that your donations are now being used to fund book outreach programs because all of the books are now free, so I've lost some income from there.
	I think it's worth it to get the word out, but it does mean that I have to lean a little bit more on the donators, so if you could be so kind as to throw a few shackles my way.
	If you haven't in a while, I would really, really, really appreciate that.
	Just so you know how it's all going.
	I finally figured out a way to track the book downloads because they're not on the FDR server.
	And since I posted the video a couple of hours ago today, we've had over 200 downloads of the Everyday Anarchy book.
	I think that's pretty damn good for a couple of hours, and it is your past, present, and continued generosity that makes this all possible.
	We are firing the canon of truth into the fat belly of culture.
	So think of that in slow motion, and who wouldn't pay for that?
	So thank you so much.
	Two other seminar-related or symposium-related issues.
	The first is that – and thanks very much to Greg Gauthier who managed to stitch together a really great-sounding audio version of the Miami Symposium.
	The Miami Symposium was in January of 2008.
	There was a little over 20 people there if I remember rightly.
	And if we count the MECO system, it was about 3,500, although unlike the next one, we didn't charge per MECO system character for the last one, although the next one is on the MECO system, so that will be the case.
	But – so the Miami Audio is available to me.
	It's a really, really good conference. I'd really recommend that you get a hold of it.
	It took quite some work to put it together, so we can't hand it out for free.
	It's $25 for five and a half high-quality audio of real-time discussions of the real-time relationship, a short introduction, Q&A period, a number of role plays to do with...
	Work and family and romance.
	The highlight of the day, of course, is Christina doing a fabulous presentation, which is tangent-free and caused me to actually break out into hives in various unmentionable places.
	But do get a hold of that.
	She did a fantastic presentation.
	On the theory behind cognitive psychology.
	So if you're interested in psychology or working in therapy or interested in doing that, it's well worth listening to.
	It's only $25. It's a bit of a monster download because we want it to be as high quality as possible, but you can get a hold of that at Freedom Aid Radio.
	Actually, I don't think you can right now.
	It's on the board, but I'll throw a link up on the page after the show.
	So grab a hold of that if you can.
	It's a good preparation. The next symposium is going to be August.
	What was the date again? 25th?
	You can type that in the window, Jay.
	It's going to be in London, England, in August of 2008.
	And we have, I guess, a fairly exciting pricey model going for it in that it's going to be pay what you can.
	We will take aluminum, pop bottles, kittens, whatever it is that you can come up with.
	That would be fantastic.
	So, the suggested price, it's going to be a two-day symposium, is $250, which is basically Miami Times 2, but it's going to be a two-day symposium on the theory and practice of the MECO system, and guaranteed, if you have any problems working with the MECO system concepts, after the symposium, you will need to be pretty if you have any problems working with the MECO system concepts, after the symposium, you will need to be pretty heavily medicated in order to have it not work for In mostly brown paper bags and Smarties candies tins.
	So, it's going to be August 23rd to 24th in London, in the entire city of London.
	It's going to be a murder mystery.
	Find it if you can. Those who can will, of course, be working with the Daniel Boone aspect of their ecosystem, which will be great.
	So, sign up for that if you can.
	It's going to be on the board. We'll post more details as they're forthcoming.
	We're looking at a couple of different venues.
	Wembley Stadium, of course.
	You should have some legroom.
	And failing that, we're going to go to either a hotel, as we did in Miami, or, which I think is a very interesting idea, we're going to go to Jake's Place.
	And if that doesn't work, we're going to go to a university where we'll have dawn rooms and all of that kind of stuff.
	So that should be – we can get a classroom and all that kind of stuff.
	So I hope that you will be able to join us.
	It's going to be a two-day extravaganza.
	Meet fellow listeners.
	Find out if I'm not just a voice in your head, 50-50, let's say.
	So I'll certainly be bringing Christina and my ecosystem, Christina's ecosystem, which is mostly composed of American gladiators and thongs, will be there.
	And so it should be quite a show.
	So that's it for news and the weather for the Free Domain Radio ecosystem, I suppose.
	So thank you very much.
	There have been, I think, about 2,000 free book downloads, which I consider to be just fantastic.
	Again, the more that you all cough up your hard-earned dollars, the more we can fire this stuff into the cultural stratosphere, and the more quickly it will spread.
	So if you can...
	Dig deep a little. That would be fantastic for me so that I can stop knowing my deal.
	So, that's it for me.
	If you have questions, comments, issues, problems, the show, as always, is for you.
	I have a question, sir.
	It's about something that I read by Harry Brown about investing.
	And I just wondered what you thought about it.
	Basically, I haven't really had much in the way of savings for a long time because I started my own business but I recently sold my business so I do now have some savings.
	I read a very interesting book by Harry Brown which is called Failsafe Investing and he talks about all the ways in which the government can Basically interfere with the economy and what you can do to sort of secure your savings if you like.
	To cut a long story short, he's got a sort of theory about where you should put your money to keep it safe, which is basically supposed to cater for any economic circumstance that could arise.
	In other words, if there was massive inflation, then you have some of your funds in gold and if there was a recession, then you keep some in cash and so forth.
	That's not the important bit about it.
	The bit that is interesting is that one of the things that he recommends is that you should buy long-term government bonds, which is basically lending money to the government.
	I completely understand two arguments around this.
	One would be to say, The whole currency is basically a shell game and you're basically securing yourself against anything that the government could do and it's like a state of nature.
	You're essentially acting within the context of a status coercive system.
	But there's another argument that says, yeah, but this is basically lending money to The Mafia and that seems pretty distasteful and wrong.
	Now, I've never bought any bonds and I haven't done this yet.
	Obviously, we could get into a long discussion about whether or not that is economically a beneficial thing to do and I think that's uninteresting.
	Let's just presume for a moment that Harry Brown was right and that this would be a good investment strategy.
	And just deal with the moral question, which is, you know, is this a sort of coercive state of nature thing or is this actually a personal moral decision that would be, you know, effectively you not acting in coercion because you would be voluntarily, you know, lending to the government?
	So I just wonder what you thought about that.
	No, that's certainly a very interesting question.
	My expertise in investing is pretty minimal, but if I remember right, because Harry Brown had his own show on investing and he was quite an expert.
	Yes, yes. He basically wanted to do this whack-a-mole thing with your portfolio so that no matter what happened,
	there would always be some part of your portfolio that was gaining, even if another part of your portfolio was taking the hit.
	Is that right? Exactly.
	And the idea would be that you periodically rebalance.
	So let's say that there's this hyperinflation like the 1970s.
	Then your gold rockets up in value and then you buy stocks and everything while it's all dirt cheap and then you know the stocks rise and so you buy gold and whatever and he had an interesting argument which was that the way that the market works that when there is a sort of leverage that whichever one is rising goes up higher than the ones that gets trashed by inflation or whatever it is the government's doing so you effectively get to keep The idea of it is that it's not necessarily that you're trying to beat the market and get some type of amazing speculative return,
	but it's a way to have a stable and safe investment.
	I think it's a really clever system that he worked out, but it does involve putting quite a lot of money with the government.
	Yeah, I mean, because there's no way to beat the market.
	There's simply no conceivable possible way.
	I mean, there have been endless studies done on that.
	Economists are unanimous in this, just again for the non-investee geeks out there.
	You simply can't. It takes, for instance, when a new piece of information hits the wires, it takes an average of 8 to 10 seconds to be reflected in the price.
	Right? And so you just can't get a trade done that quickly because everything's automated and of course you've got all this information you don't have.
	There's insider information you don't have.
	There's simply no way to consistently Right, absolutely.
	So that's just a bit of background for those who don't know much about the investment world and that's probably about as much as I know.
	My situation also, by the way, is that I don't really know much about the investment world either.
	But it strikes me as being a very rational approach to say, well, let's not even try to predict the market.
	Let's just basically predict. Work out a way in which you would be pretty much safe whatever weird stuff could happen because you just can't predict it.
	Right. No, that's right. I think there are a couple of things that I would talk about with Harry Brown where he's still here, and I'm sad, of course, that he's not, but...
	I think there is a lot of grey in here.
	I mean, as we know, in general, you can't avoid interacting with a statist system, except by going to live in the woods, and even then, you'll face the risk of being turfed off your land if the government finds you, and all that kind of stuff.
	And so, nobody who's saying, to me, is going to take that course.
	And if they do, it doesn't matter, because they'll never hear this, right?
	It doesn't have any effect in society at all.
	But... If you buy any kind of government bonds, sure, you're funding things like the war on drugs, you're funding the miseducation of children and this and that and the other.
	However, I think that the argument could easily be made from the other side, which is something like this, which is the more money you give to government, the faster they will become bankrupt.
	Right, yeah. I remember one of your first podcasts was kind of along the same lines.
	Right, and we know for sure that it was the war in Afghanistan that broke the back, and it would have happened sooner or later, but it happened sooner rather than later, that it was the war in Afghanistan that broke the back of the Soviet Empire, which resulted in a fair amount of freedom for them, right?
	So that is a, I think that's a fairly important thing to sort of understand from that standpoint.
	Yeah. So we have the problem which Harry Brown I don't think faced quite as much and I don't know where his investment advice went to later on in his career.
	But we do have the problem that I think it's a little bit different when you're at war than when you're in peacetime.
	And I don't know if he changed his investment strategy when – because he obviously was around after 2003 when the war started.
	To me, there's a little – and this is no particular – there's no objective thing.
	It's just an aesthetic thing for me that I have a tougher time giving the government money when there's a war going on, if that makes sense.
	No, I do understand what you mean.
	Although, when the war isn't directly on, you could say that there's still the prison systems and the schools and everything else going on too.
	Right, and that's why I say it's not an ethical black or white situation.
	To me, I would have a bit of a tougher time.
	Now, of course, if the theory that quite a number of people have about bin Laden's motives and Bin Laden himself says that this is or was, I don't know if he's alive or not, was his motive, is that he drew the US into Iraq so that he could bleed them dry financially so that they'd have to withdraw from the Middle East.
	And of course, you know, he spent 200K to do 9-11 and the US has spent $2 trillion responding to it.
	It doesn't take long to figure out how that math works out no matter how big your economic empire is.
	So I think some very intelligent people who have been trained – because Bin Laden and these guys were all trained by the CIA to fight against the Soviet empire with the express purpose of breaking their back financially.
	That's where he learned it. So these kinds of people have done a lot.
	To do research to figure out how best to harm the American Empire and the way that they figured out the best way to harm the American Empire was to get involved in a war and the same thing is going to happen to England as well.
	So in that sense, the war is considered to be a way of accelerating the end of the empire and what does that do?
	Well, that's going to be a little bit unknown but there could still be an argument to be made that Even buying bonds during wartime is going to be something which helps accelerate the destruction of the state or at least a rapid change in the composition or makeup of the state, if that makes sense. So, I mean, there's no way to predict the future.
	I don't think that there's an argument for morality to be made from this.
	I think you could go either way on this.
	But it's...
	It's different to me from signing up for the military.
	And I'm not so entirely sure that long-term government – I mean, this is my completely amateur nonsense opinion, but I'm not entirely sure that long-term government bonds, if the government is going to go through this kind of problem, that long-term government bonds remain quite that safe an investment.
	I know that they weren't that way in Germany after the First World War.
	Where the long-term government bonds ended up going quite poorly.
	I actually feel pretty queasy about investing in long-term government bonds for two reasons.
	One is the issue of simply the government bonds, but the other is that You know, it does really look like there's going to be some pretty horrible inflation and those are not going to be a good thing to have under those circumstances.
	But I just sort of, I mean, leaving that aside and the whole sort of is it a good investment, I was more interested in just the kind of moral question.
	And so are you saying that There could be an argument from consequences about whether or not you invest in bonds because it would either help to bring down the government or not.
	Do you think there is a simple question of whether it's right or wrong to buy bonds just on the face of it because they are government bonds?
	Well, it's tough to say. I mean, do you then not involve yourself in companies that are part of the military-industrial complex or those companies that supply those people or any companies that may have any involvement in the prison system or who may deliver telecommunications or electronics equipment to government surveillance groups, whether it's military or civilian?
	To me, that's a – and I'm not saying there's no difference between the two extremes, right?
	But it is – if you're going to go down that road, at some point you're going to have to draw an arbitrary line and say, I'm comfortable here but no further, right?
	Right, right. And I don't know – I think there's a way of doing that objectively, if that makes sense.
	Well, that's sort of where I was – that's what I was thinking as well because – If you don't buy long-term government bonds, then what you would have to buy if you wanted long-term fixed interest would be long-term corporate bonds and the only people that you could get those from would be the big corporations that no doubt are getting a large proportion of their revenue from government contracts anyway.
	So would that really be a significant...
	It all seems pretty muddy to me and I just wondered whether or not There was a clear principle dividing line in there, but if it's not, if it's just a sort of, to a certain extent, a grey area that you have to decide your own aesthetic preference on, then, well, that's fine.
	Then, you know, I can work that out.
	But I just wondered whether you thought there was any objective way to just sort of draw a clear line through there.
	Right. I don't think that there is.
	And of course, you could say, I mean, I think you could also make a good argument to say that...
	It's actually better to give money – if I had to choose to give money to the army or to McDonnell Douglas, I would absolutely give it to the army.
	No question. I mean there's not even – because the army will waste it.
	Whereas McDonnell Douglas' private cooperation is much more efficient, right?
	So dollar for dollar, you're getting less destruction by giving money to the army where it's just going to get looted and misdirected and wasted.
	But if you give it to McDonnell Douglas, they're going to be very efficient at producing these killing machines and so on, right?
	Yeah, that's a good point.
	So it's really tough and it's really complicated to try and figure this stuff out.
	I'll tell you one other thing too, which again, just my opinion, but I don't think that rampant inflation is ever going to hit the Western economies.
	I just don't think it's going to be the case.
	Rampant inflation does hit places like Zimbabwe and Mexico and other sorts of places.
	But the only reason that the rampant inflation really hits those places...
	It's because everybody expects that once the inflation hits a certain ceiling, the IMF is going to come in and bail everyone out, which of course is what it does very regularly.
	So that kind of – you print lots of money and the IMF comes in and gives you more.
	So it's actually a kind of weird investment from these tin pot dictatorships and Mexico and other sort of places.
	If the U.S. were to start to have significant inflationary pressures, though, there's no IMF that's coming to bail out the U.S. So that's just not going to—I don't consider a huge inflation.
	It's not something—it's a problem that's very well known in economic circles now.
	I mean, it's important to remember that until the 1960s, or I think it was late 60s or early 70s, There really was no empirical evidence linking the overprinting of money to inflation.
	Now that there is, it's quite a different matter.
	And so now that that's well known, the moment that the U.S. starts to hit a real inflation, there will be an adjustment that will bring it back down because everybody knows that the IMF is not going to come running to the rescue to the U.S. or England for that matter.
	But just in terms of the people who will be in power at that point in the US and their self-preservation, when they are significantly running out of money, inflation is easier than raising taxes.
	So what do you think they'll do?
	If they don't have the option of going for a sort of If they don't have the option of going for a kind of hidden taxes through inflation, they'd have to do it more in your face.
	Or just, you know, go bankrupt.
	But that would obviously undermine their own power.
	So, what do you think will happen?
	Well, that's a big, long question, but my short answer would be that there's no such thing as the government that wants to survive or to continue in its current form, at least not for those people who have power, right?
	So if you look at somebody like the Bushes or the Clintons, I mean, they've made their millions or hundreds of millions of dollars out of the system.
	If the system goes fut, it's like, eh, well, you know, so all I made was $200 million, right?
	That's not the end of the world for a lot of people, right?
	Right, but isn't there always a latest Clinton or a latest Bush in power who's trying to make their bit before everything goes under?
	Well, sure, there is, but what are they going to do when they run out of money?
	If they start printing more money, the inflation will hit.
	Now, of course, the Fed has stopped publishing the amount of money that's going into the Right, lot of money from it if that makes sense like a double money supply all that happens is within a two days
	the US dollar goes down by half and you've only you haven't gained anything right right so the market is so sensitive to the problem of inflation And again, it does happen in these third world countries.
	But again, it's just because it's a great way to get paid by the IMF or the World Bank or whatever.
	But in the US, it's really hard to pull that same scam because markets and the success of economics and getting this idea across of inflation being a result of inflation of the money supply.
	It's really hard to make that kind of money.
	What's going to happen is they're just going to I mean, they're just going to – they're going to try a bunch of stuff, right?
	When the wall hits, right?
	They're going to do what they usually do, which is they'll start to shut down essential services in the hopes of rousing the population into popular indignation, right?
	So they'll – They'll say, well, we have to close down the schools for a day a week because you know there's just no money.
	Because that's what they always do is they screw the consumer in the government in the hopes of rousing the population to demand X, Y, and Z or to accept higher taxes and so on.
	But at some point, they will just hit the wall and then there will be a great sudden and virtually silent collapse of the vast extent of the state to the degree that it's grown.
	They just have to hack down Absolutely bunches and bunches and bunches of things.
	Right. Okay, well, excellent.
	Thanks, Steph. That was really all I wanted to ask about that.
	Right. So how was that for a virtual non-answer?
	Was that relatively vague? Well, I think, you know, I was just wondering whether or not there was a clear...
	Line that I was missing.
	And if not, then that's fine.
	I think it is pretty much as I thought.
	But I wanted to make sure that I wasn't missing a completely obvious one.
	Right. And if there's other people out there with more knowledge, obviously, than Jake or I, feel free to chime in.
	But, no, I mean, I would look after your own interests and your own family, first and foremost.
	I think that I wouldn't spare too much thought, right?
	Like, Christine and I just paid our taxes.
	We're both self-employed, right?
	Right. Probably I was a bit too shell-shocked to beg for money last month.
	So we wrote a hideously large check out to the government.
	And that's really unpleasant, of course.
	But since then, I've just stopped thinking about it because I don't want to give them more than I have to.
	So I have to give them my money, but I don't have to give them my peace of mind and my happiness as well.
	And so in the same thing with the investment, it's like I wouldn't spend too much time worrying about what you're investing in because the system itself is so corrupt.
	I mean, there may be certain things, you know, Joe's House of Torture Delivery Systems for the CIA, maybe not.
	But it's like there's a lot of hidden taxes on what we do.
	And thinking about how to be slightly less corrupt in a highly corrupt system is just another kind of tax, if that makes sense.
	No, it does. And I've just marked off Joe's House of Torture from my list, so I definitely won't...
	Bob's House of Torture, on the other hand.
	Okay, thanks. Thanks, man.
	All right. And if anybody has more to add to that, I know that that was a roundabout discussion.
	It's the road to nowhere.
	But if anybody else has any other comments on that or other questions, feel free.
	So I have a quick question on the Miko system.
	Arr! I've been mulling this one over for a couple of days, and I'm not sure where I fall on this question, but a number of the...
	The self-conversations I've had in my journal have absolutely no identities at all.
	It's just sort of like a black box where I slip questions in and answers come out.
	Or like a big cloud.
	That's God, but go on.
	He's found Jesus!
	He looked behind the couch.
	Sorry, go on. Oh my God, I'm tuned into God.
	Quick, should we invest in...
	No, sorry. But, I mean, a lot of the answers I get back were questions that come...
	Follow-up questions that come out of that cloud.
	I mean, they obviously have different...
	Moods or attitudes or competing strains of thought about them.
	But they don't really have a fixed character identity.
	And I'm wondering if that's sort of like...
	I mean, is that...
	For this to work, is that really a necessity?
	I mean, do they have to be...
	like...
	actual...
	people that you're talking to?
	Or could it just be like an inner dialogue?
	Well, let me ask you this.
	Is it working?
	It seems to be working better than...
	Then, um, the other approach I was taking, which was to try and follow more along the lines of what you were doing and, um, and some of the other folks were doing on the board, right?
	Which was to kind of give them, give all these different, um, competing strains of thought, um, um, Various cartoon character visages or whatever.
	I don't know.
	That never worked for me. So I just started asking and waiting for an answer.
	And stopped trying to worry about which person this was.
	And it seemed to It seemed to work a lot better for me.
	But I'm not sure if...
	Right, because the results I'm getting are not the same kinds of things that I'm...
	I'm seeing in some of these other mecosystem conversations, so I'm just...
	Well, I mean, for me, if it's working for you in that way, the ecosystem is such a new idea that I don't think that anybody's got the market cornered on how it should work.
	So the character thing has seemed to work insofar as it liberates a certain amount of wisdom.
	And self-conversation within the mind.
	That has worked. If what you're doing is working for you, then that's just another, I guess, layer of the cake that we can add, right?
	Which is that this is an approach that works as well.
	Right. Well, I was thinking about that yesterday, too, and it occurred to me that...
	You know, because how you talk about it as sort of an anarchy of the self, right?
	Right. If there were one way to do this sort of self-conversation thing, that would sort of be like saying that the DRO model is it, and that's the only one way that it has to be after the government falls.
	Right? Sorry?
	So what you're saying is that you've got in touch with your evil side.
	Sorry, just kidding. Go on.
	Yeah, of course.
	But you always call the DRO model just sort of an example of how things could be in a stateless society.
	Greg, Greg, Greg, Greg, Greg, Greg.
	That was back at the beginning when I was reasonable.
	Before the power went to my head.
	No, I mean, yeah, of course, that's exactly right.
	And whatever, I mean, I think that the self-conversation stuff is really helpful.
	If it doesn't help you to call them, you know, Minnie and Goofy, then, and the black box works for you, I think that's fantastic.
	And yeah, I mean, then we'll add that as another way of working with it.
	I mean, it's not how it worked for me, it's not how it's worked for other people, but somebody's always got to come along and screw up the theory, and generally that person is you, so...
	No, that's great.
	We'll put that in the mix as another way of approaching it.
	Okay. Because of how many other people that are doing this are using the character model and having success with it, I was afraid that maybe I might be doing something wrong.
	Like, thinking it's working and it's not.
	Now, the character model was working to some degree with you, but you were getting a lot of aggression, right?
	Yeah. Yeah, and I can't get out of...
	I can't break...
	I'm in a standoff with this character, and I can't...
	I seem to escape it, so I've sort of retreated into this black box where I just start asking questions on paper and answering them.
	And sometimes the answerer becomes the questioner and vice versa.
	Right, right. Well, I would stay open to the other way of working, but certainly if this is the way that's working for you at the moment, I don't think there's anyone who can say, no, that's wrong.
	I mean, you need more, I don't know, little girls in tutu telling you what to do.
	So... So, no, I mean, if it's working for you, I think that's great.
	I think it would be interesting to see if this phase is a phase which leads to more characterization or whether this is the way that it works for you.
	To me, it would be very interesting to see, and I don't know what the answer to that is.
	Yeah, that's a good question.
	Because I wasn't sure if this was an answer to the problem or whether I was just trying to work around the problem, right?
	Yeah, I mean, at some point you're going to have to face up to the angry guy, right?
	I mean, at some point you're going to have to be bigger than your angry guy.
	But, you know, that may resolve itself this way, or this may be a way of gathering strength for that assault, right?
	But you have to take down Isengard at one point, right?
	And if you don't have enough Ents yet...
	Anyway, so... But certainly this would be the way to go.
	I mean, it's a dance, right?
	I mean, sometimes you lead, sometimes you follow.
	Yeah, that makes sense. Okay.
	Well, thanks.
	Okay, thanks, man. It's a great question.
	And we can do another one.
	Hey, Steph, it's Rich.
	Hey, how's it going? Good.
	I just had a couple interesting dreams last night.
	I wondered if you had some time for some dream analysis.
	I sure do. Go ahead. But first, tell me what happened yesterday.
	Let's see. I Let's see what happened yesterday.
	We had a good morning.
	Afternoon, I should say. We woke up around noon, went to lunch, Colleen and I, and had some good talks and talked about how our relationship is improving and why it might be improving.
	And then she had that conference call with you later about her friendships.
	You were there too, right?
	Yes, I was there too.
	Right. And then...
	Oh, yeah, and we also did talk about my mom for a bit in the afternoon.
	You people? Oh, it's in the afternoon.
	Okay, got it. Okay. Yeah, yeah.
	So, I had two pretty vivid dreams, and they were both somewhat related since they both had to do with my foo.
	In the first stream, I was like hiking up a mountain with my dad.
	And it felt like it was like years in the future for some reason.
	And for some reason I've allowed him a brief period of time to contact me.
	And we're just kind of silently walking up the mountain.
	I'm sorry, I just lost a little bit of track of, you said you allowed some time for him to contact you.
	Is that in the real world or is that in the dream?
	This is in the dream. Okay, sorry, go ahead.
	It's as if years later, for whatever reason, I decided to get in contact with him.
	And so we're walking silently up this mountain side by side, and he's acting sort of dejected and sad.
	And he kind of starts to talk casually about what's been going on in his life since I left.
	And he tells me that my grandmother is dead, and His mother.
	And they have used the inheritance to restore her favorite restaurant.
	And in reality, my grandma's been dead since I was 15, so this was kind of odd to me.
	And so, in the dream, I'm kind of curious as to what restaurant they used this inheritance money on.
	And we leave our trip to go back down into the town I was born in.
	To check out the restaurant they were restoring.
	And my mom is there as the head waitress.
	And I realize it's a restaurant that we used to go to.
	We frequented with my grandma when she was alive.
	And then my mom walks up to me and tells me that the restaurant would be out of business without the help of the family inheritance.
	And I lean over and I whisper to her and ask her, are you guys in the black yet?
	Meaning... Meaning, were they able to turn the business around and make it profitable?
	And she whispers back to me and says, no, we're still in the red, but that's okay.
	We have plenty of inheritance.
	And I ask, is it at least improving?
	And then she rushes away to go serve somebody their food.
	And then after that, that dream ends.
	And I don't know, should I go into the second dream or...
	Yes, please. Okay.
	And then the second dream, which I think I woke up and then fell back asleep and had this dream.
	In the second dream, I've decided for some reason, this is in the future again, and I don't think it's like the same scenario.
	For some reason, this is like a completely new reality.
	And I've decided to go back to my house and be completely honest with my parents and sisters and And try to save them.
	You know, I had this kind of heroic vision of saving them from the mire that they had put themselves in.
	And this is set pretty far in the future again.
	But what's weird is they live in the house that I lived in between the ages of 9 and 16.
	And it's a house that's always in my dream.
	I never dream about any of the other two houses we lived in.
	It's always this one house that happened, you know, in my pre-teens and teens.
	I arrange this meeting to meet with them, and then I talk to my dad face to face about it first.
	For some reason, I go to my dad first and have him prep the family for my arrival.
	He seems kind of worried and sad, as if he can sense that it's going to be a hard conversation.
	I'm nervous to see my mom and sisters after all these years, and I wonder how my sisters are doing.
	Suddenly I'm sitting in my old room preparing what I'm going to say.
	Then right before I have the meeting with them, Colleen appears next to me with a laptop and asks me to talk to you.
	And I talk to you and you ask, why would you want to be honest with sadists?
	They'll eat your heart for breakfast.
	You defood, man.
	What are you doing going back to that torture chamber?
	And I realize what you say is true and become very scared and wonder how I can get out of the situation.
	I'm for some reason in this old bedroom, which is at the back of the house, and so I can't get out of it without going through the front door.
	Am I still on?
	Yeah. Oh, okay.
	I just hear people dropping.
	Okay. I'm in my old bedroom.
	I can't escape, and I know the only escape is through the front door.
	And my shoes are out there, and for some reason I'm kind of fixated on I have to go through the front door to get my shoes so I can run away.
	And then finally I just decided to abandon the shoe idea, and I escape out through my window.
	And that's when I woke up.
	Right, okay. Okay, and what are your thoughts about this?
	Um... I'm not really sure.
	I mean, it's like I'm not processing something about my defu is what I'm thinking, and I wonder why I keep in my dreams going back to talk to my parents.
	It's almost, I don't know, it seems almost cautionary to me, and I'm not really sure, because in reality I don't want to talk to them.
	Right, right.
	Now, the first thing that struck me with regards to your second dream is you said, went back to my house.
	Oh, yeah, I do use that language.
	Yeah, that's not your house, right?
	Right, no, it's not.
	It never was your house.
	Right. But that's important, because you didn't say, like, I went back to the house where I lived as a kid, or I went back to my parents' house, or I went back to my family's home, or it's like I went back to my house, right?
	Yeah, I'm actually reading over the journal entry, and I did put my house.
	No, I know, and that really struck me.
	And that kind of linguistic tick, so to speak, is an indication that you're seeing it from your parents' perspective.
	So just looking at the second dream, you're going back to save your sisters, is that right?
	Well, I kind of want to save the whole family, it seems like, but yeah, particularly my sisters.
	And I've actually been talking to Colleen about that lately, how I kind of desire for my sisters to become free themselves, and yet they've made no effort to contact me, so I don't think that they would have any interest in listening to me.
	Right. I mean, when people don't have anything positive to offer, they start working in the realm of negative economics, which is the idea that I am not someone who's going to bring positive things to your life, but I will tempt your vanity with a salvation fantasy, and that's what I'll have to offer you.
	Yeah. Does that make sense?
	I'm a little confused about it, so no, it doesn't make full sense to me, but I mean, I see myself doing that a lot, where I kind of go into the Salvation Fantasy mode.
	Alright, alright.
	Now, I'm going to not deal with the content of the dream just now, but what I'm going to do is I'll just touch briefly on my side of the conversation that happened last night, because I think that was the significant thing that occurred for you.
	Oh, okay. So, I'm not going to mention anything about your side of things, but we were talking about friendship, and I don't know what's going to happen to this.
	It may be a premium, it may be not, or maybe nothing.
	But I was talking about how I've had this friend for a long time, And I sort of ran out of patience for a long variety of reasons.
	And he called and for the first time in like 30 years, I didn't call him back and I haven't heard from him since, right?
	And the reason for that was that I wasn't being manipulative.
	I genuinely didn't feel like calling him back.
	And I guess part of me was just curious to see, you know, what's the barrier here?
	Like, sorry, what's his level of effort?
	What's his level of effort or energy in this friendship, right?
	So when he was depressed, Christina and I would spend hours talking to him.
	We'd call him and see if he was okay. Christina spent quite a long time finding a therapist for him and so he never went or whatever, right?
	So that was our sort of input into the friendship and this guy...
	I called, left a message. I didn't call him back.
	And he's never called me back, right?
	So it's like, it's okay.
	We were talking about it last night. It's okay in your relationships to say, you know what?
	I'm sick and tired of peddling for two people.
	I want you to win me over.
	I want you to invest something in this relationship now for a change.
	And what we find when that happens, of course, is that the other person doesn't invest back into the relationship.
	And that's just empirical facts that we need to work with.
	We always need to work with the With the facts.
	And it's not like a love test or a friendship test or anything like that.
	It's like, you know, I'm going to follow my instincts if I don't feel like calling back.
	And I was comparing this to, you know, like if Christina ever decided to leave me, she'd be like trying to walk down the front driveway with a great deal of difficulty because I'd be clutching her ankle and sobbing in a very manly and heroic and noble way.
	Yeah. It would be something that – because she's so absolutely necessary to my happiness and my joy in my life that I simply wouldn't – I would ferociously guard the happiness within our marriage.
	And of course, since this conversation, since Free Domain Radio is such an essential part of my happiness, I am very fierce about guarding the protection and the sanctity of this conversation so that people feel like it's a safe and open environment.
	So I'm very fierce in guarding the perimeter of the conversation and making sure that the people who stay are people not perfect because Lord knows nobody is, but who are not malevolent or malicious or dangerous.
	So I'm very fierce in guarding that which is joyful to me.
	And so when other people in our lives, when we start to feel that they're just not putting anything into the relationship...
	But it's important to find out whether you really matter to them and if you don't feel like calling them back and then – like it's not like if Christina just left me, I go, oh, well, you know, okay, well, I'll just go back because it would – like I would not want to give up that level of happiness.
	So it's a good way of finding that out.
	That was a very brief – Aspect of what we were talking about last night and that's what propelled this dream.
	And so I'm going to spin a tiny scenario here and we'll see if we can, rather than work from the dream to the scenario, we'll work the scenario and see if the dream happens, right?
	Okay. Or if the dream makes sense.
	And this is a tough thing when people call me who are in relationships, particularly in this area, because I can guarantee you that you wanted to be able to do what I did last night, right?
	Yes. Tell me more about that.
	Well, yeah, I'd like to be able to help Colleen with, you know, figure out Figure out ambivalent situations.
	Okay, that's a great abstract way of putting it, but let's get a little bit more visceral, which would be something like, you'd like to be better at protecting her, right?
	Yes, yes. Certainly would.
	Because she talked to somebody else, obviously she talked to you, and then she talked to me, right?
	And she didn't get what she needed from the other people and from talking to you, right?
	Right. And so there is something – I mean obviously it would be great if you guys could do this more for each other, not because I don't enjoy doing it but because it's – if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, it's not going to do you guys that much good, right?
	Right. So because at the end of the second dream, Colleen finds that she's unable to convince you to not do it, right?
	Right. Oh, yeah, because she hands me over to you in the dream.
	Right, right. And so what this indicates to me is that you guys are not trusted authorities for each other yet.
	Yeah, I mean, I'd say we're definitely not all the way there with the trust yet.
	Right. And this is, again, it's no criticism because it's all just part of a journey of growth.
	But clearly, with the friendship that we were talking about last night, you had experienced enough negative things to have kicked up a fuss, right?
	Yes. And I don't know that you did.
	At least I'm sure that you didn't to the degree that clarity came along, right?
	Yeah, I mean, yeah, I definitely talked about that.
	What I thought about that friendship, but not...
	Yeah, definitely not to the degree that anything changed.
	Right. And so for you, it was like, well, it's not good, it's not positive, but hey, if it works for you...
	I mean, how did that work for you?
	I'm trying to remember when we were both involved in the friendship.
	friendship.
	I mean, how did it stay in Limbo Land, right?
	I'm not sure.
	Yeah, no. Quick!
	I'm moving up my Swiss dictionary to find my way out.
	But you kind of let it go, right?
	Because what happened was you ran into, I'm guessing, right?
	You ran into some resistance in your girlfriend, right?
	I mean, I don't think I ever got to the point where I said, this friendship is bad, you should reconsider it or anything, so...
	Why? I mean, reconsider it?
	Didn't you notice the negative effects it was having...
	Let me be annoying here. Didn't you notice the negative effects it was having on your relationship with Colleen?
	I was ambivalent about it, too, because, you know, I... I was in that friendship as well, so I was...
	I don't know.
	In the back of my mind, I just kept waiting for it to just kind of blow up and take care of itself.
	How did that work, do you think?
	Slowly. Well, and who suffered the most in that?
	Colleen. Colleen.
	Yeah. I mean, she's there, right?
	I mean, tell me if there's nothing... Yeah, she's here.
	Yes. Right, so it's like, who can be the human shield here, right?
	Hey, I know! I'll grab my girlfriend, right?
	And what I'm suggesting is that you need to be fierce.
	This is your home, and...
	We all in relationships have areas of absolute monarchical expertise, right?
	What do you mean by that?
	Oh, surely that phrase is clear.
	Just kidding. Absolute monarchical expertise.
	What's unclear about that? Good Lord.
	Well, so for instance, I mean, Christina is fantastic at knowing whether I need a jacket.
	Or she's great at knowing that February is not the best time for open-toed sandals.
	I don't know how much I cry, right?
	And she's fantastic at running the finance.
	She's fantastic at running the household.
	She's fantastic at picking out clothes that don't get me laughed at in the street.
	She's just fantastic at everything to do with the physical environment, whereas my expertise is around the emotional connectivity that we have, right?
	So if there's hiccups or problems or whatever.
	It's a division of labor that makes relationships that much better.
	We are all experts in each other's blind spots, right?
	And we can use that power for good or for ill, and you never use it for ill.
	But I'm suggesting that you might want to take up that sword for good, right?
	Because she couldn't see very clearly what you could see more clearly, right?
	Yeah.
	She actually did that with my most recent defriending.
	She was the one that kind of brought it to light for me.
	Right, and we need to be relentless in this kind of stuff.
	Fierce to protect the hearts of those we love, right?
	Like grizzly bears, right?
	I mean, why did I fundamentally turn against my in-laws?
	It wasn't because I found them particularly bad.
	It's because they hurt my wife.
	And nobody gets to hurt my wife.
	Nobody gets to hurt my wife.
	I am fierce.
	And nobody gets to hurt my listeners and the people I care about in this conversation, which is like all of you, right?
	Mm-hmm. So I'm fierce around that stuff.
	That doesn't mean that I'm always right, but it does mean that I'm always fierce, right?
	I just wonder why I wasn't in this situation.
	So you were talking about your mom right after this conversation.
	That we had last night. Oh no, sorry, before, during the day.
	Yeah, before, yeah. Right?
	Well, obviously you weren't allowed to be fierce there, right?
	Oh, absolutely not.
	And we associate this kind of fierceness with a kind of abuse, right?
	But it's not. In fact, it's the protection from abuse and exploitation, right?
	Yeah. And I think that you want to try and create that safe environment for Colleen.
	Oh, absolutely, I do.
	Right, but that means that you're going to have to not let her take the bullets in hopes that the sniper runs out of ammo, so to speak, right?
	Yeah, yeah. You've got to not lay low, right?
	I mean, good people, and you guys are great people, good people in the world have got to not lay low anymore, right?
	Mm-hmm. I mean, the evils in the world aren't going to blow over.
	Again, I'm not calling this friendship evil or whatever.
	The evils in the world, the things that are negative in the world, are not going to blow over without our acting.
	And that also is going to be the case within our personal relationships, right?
	Right. And when you're fierce in protecting those you love, as Christina protects me from reality...
	Reality. I'm running the emotions.
	Sorry, we'll come back. All right, she runs reality.
	That's a little different. Christina dials up physics.
	But because I'm fierce in guarding my wife's safety, and she has susceptibilities to exploitation, as we all do.
	I've been trying to work them, but I can't find a way.
	But other people can't. But she has susceptibilities to exploitation and she has ways of re-booing unconsciously and so on, as we all do.
	But I noticed that and I will not let it go until we have figured out what was going on.
	I think it was Friday.
	She pointed out that there was a spider on the ceiling.
	I, of course, screamed like a girl guide and hid under the couch.
	No. So I got up to capture the spider in a glass and I got a piece of paper from the counter to cap it over the glass.
	so that I could put it in the garden.
	And Christina was a little snappy at me when I went to go and pick up the glass.
	Sorry, to pick up the piece of paper.
	And we literally talked about three and a half hours about that moment and that instant and what happened to her.
	It had a lot to do with her family and her history and people taking her stuff.
	Even the book, which was sitting on top of it, had emotional resonances because she'd bought it before she met me and when she was feeling kind of sad and so on.
	So if that happens, I'm fierce in making sure that we stop, examine the hiccup, examine the problem, unravel it to make sure that the lines of communication stay open and free and uncluttered.
	I'm totally fierce about all of that sort of stuff.
	And I think that that would be something that would be of value to you.
	And of course, I mean, if you bring security to your woman, she's just going to love you all the more, right?
	Right. Because this was around, you wanted to rescue women, right?
	Yeah, that's...
	And then last night we were talking about that Colleen had something of the same impulse with regards to a friend, right?
	yes and you were contributing to that impulse in her, that quote reasonable voice that we talked about last night where she's like well maybe we'll sit down, we'll work it out, we'll this we'll that, right?
	That's the same thing that you're doing with regards to your sisters in the second dream, right?
	yes, yes and And she intervenes and, I mean, I talk to Steph and I, you know, give up.
	But the interesting thing is that you know exactly what I'm going to say, right?
	That means that you don't need to call me, right?
	Right, right. And she knows exactly what I'm going to say, which is why she says, call Steph, right?
	Yeah. But I'm actually completely unnecessary in the equation, which is sort of how it should be, right?
	Does that make sense? Yes, it does.
	I mean, if you know enough to call poison control and you know exactly what they're going to say, you don't need to call poison control, right?
	Right, right. So I think that if you sort of recommit to being fierce around protecting the stuff that Colleen is unconscious to, just as she will be fierce in protecting the stuff that you're unconscious to...
	Yeah, and I'd say...
	She's certainly fierce about protecting me, and I think I'm lacking in that area.
	You need to be like, literally, it's like the bullets bouncing off your blue chest, right?
	You need to have that level of commitment to protecting you.
	I mean, to call this a family, I'm perfectly comfortable with it.
	I hope it doesn't make you guys uncomfortable.
	But to protect your family members, your girlfriend in the future, your kids, whatever happens, your wife, you need to be fierce and don't back down from pursuing this.
	And it's horrible to do it sometimes, right?
	It's horrible because sometimes it happens for a week straight, right?
	And it's really tough.
	And I've certainly sat there going like, oh...
	Can I just let this one go?
	Oh, come on. I'll just let this one go.
	Just come on. Come on.
	What does it matter in the big scheme of things?
	Right? And then the ecosystem says, yeah, right, get in there.
	Right? And it pays off, right?
	It pays off. But I think that that to me was the major precipitating event prior to these dreams, if that makes any sense.
	Yeah, it certainly was. I mean, I went to bed five minutes after that call ended, I think.
	So that was definitely the...
	Well, that was nice because I think it was 10 minutes before the call ended, so that was...
	Now, again, we could try and fit all of this stuff in, and maybe it will work or maybe it wouldn't, but it seems to me that the dream is putting you back at around the age of 13 or 14.
	And because you say it's before your grandmother dies and she died when you were 15, is that right?
	That's correct. Right.
	And this is all about restoring the past, right?
	Because you're restoring a restaurant and you're going back to save your sisters.
	So the two dreams are founded around this fantasy that the past can be restored.
	And in both dreams, the past cannot be restored, right?
	Because the inheritance is being bled dry trying to run a restaurant that's losing money, right?
	Yeah, yeah. So that doesn't work, right?
	No, it doesn't. And going back to save your sisters is not going to work, right?
	No, I mean, I know that when I'm awake, but when I'm asleep, for some reason, I start to fantasize about saving everyone.
	I'm sorry, you don't know that while you're awake?
	No, no, I know, like, when I'm awake, you know, when I think about my sisters and think about trying to contact them, I know, you know, there's no point, because they...
	If they were interested in what I had to say, they would have already contacted me.
	Yeah, sorry. What I was saying is that we were just talking about this with regards to Colleen's friend.
	Oh, okay, okay. Right.
	That was a very dutiful, non-connected reply.
	Yeah, yeah, okay. Sorry, sorry.
	Sorry. So, what's the connection that's not being made?
	I'm sure Colleen maybe can jump in if she...
	Well, it's, I mean, the dream's kind of saying, you know, you can't do this restoring of the past with this, I mean, in regards to the friendship that I had, which is what I was wanting to do.
	Right, and the reason that he can't see the friend is because at some level he still believes in this fantasy of reversible situations that have gone on for a long time.
	Right. Yeah, yeah.
	Because the dream is saying, look, you can't change anything with your family, right?
	And if you can't change anything with your family, what chance do you have for the friends?
	That was...
	That strikes me as very familiar...
	That was part of the call last night, wasn't it?
	Yeah, we did talk a little bit about that, but I think your unconscious kind of wanted to sort of say, this is a principle that we need to get.
	In both these situations, restoring the past doesn't work.
	And for you, because boys become...
	Like, boys are fierce. I mean, just developmentally, they're fierce when they're very young.
	They go into a period of latency between sort of, you know, four or five to ten or eleven, and then they hit puberty and they get fierce again, right?
	And if the dream is talking about your life...
	And your grandmother being alive back in your parents' house when you were at this age, I think the dream is saying that your fierceness that arose during puberty and thereafter was highly opposed by your family.
	Yeah, yeah, it really was.
	And that's why the dream is pointing you in this specific period of time, right?
	And you want to reclaim that.
	You want to reclaim that fierceness.
	I mean, we... We don't want to give up her gold and just have it gone forever, right?
	Right. And she's going to, I mean, Colleen is going to rely on you to protect her in these areas.
	This is part of the interdependence, not codependence, but interdependence of romantic relationships.
	That we absolutely rely on each other to protect us in our blind spots, right?
	Yeah. We're like two people in a battle, back to back.
	You can't see behind you, but you need to know your back is covered, right?
	Yes. And fierceness brings opposition, right?
	You can see this with the trolls, right?
	Fierceness brings opposition, right?
	But the only other alternative is a loss of self-respect, right?
	Right. Because, I mean, deep down, hunkering down and just hoping it'll somehow work out is not something that's going to make you look in the mirror with clear-eyed pride, right?
	Oh, absolutely not.
	Yeah, I think of that and I feel embarrassed.
	Yeah, and it's totally okay to be pushy.
	It's totally okay.
	In fact, it's absolutely necessary to be pushy.
	To say, no, I still don't feel...
	It's just RTR with yourself.
	Say, nope, I don't feel...
	I don't feel this is resolved yet.
	There's something that's still bothering me.
	I don't know what it is. Let's talk about it some more.
	I mean, you guys are, you know, pre-marriage, pre-kids, you have the luxury of time to work on this stuff.
	And it is a wonderful, wonderful thing to do.
	It's challenging. It's exciting to work on this stuff within your relationship.
	But if you don't feel comfortable, if you feel there's something wrong, it's okay to be pushy and it's okay to be persistent about that.
	In fact, I would say it's more than okay.
	It's good. Right.
	Yeah. Okay, one last thing.
	The last thing that I'll say is that in RTR I talk about love being an involuntary response to virtue, right?
	Mm-hmm. And everybody, and this is my fault more than anybody else's because I don't talk about it in this context, but everybody talks about that with me in terms of other people, but it's not that case.
	That's not the case. Love is our involuntary response to virtue first and foremost in ourselves.
	Right. Because what it's going to cost you to not be fierce in the protection of the woman you love is pride, self-respect, self-love, right?
	Yeah, yeah. And that means that she's going to lose that too, right?
	Right. So you're taking a lot away from her.
	That's what I think. Whenever I feel like backing down from a necessary fight, I think, well, okay, well, I'll gain a moment's relief.
	But I'm going to be taking away some of my wife's love for me.
	And some of my love or respect for myself.
	And that just puts it in context and it's like, okay, settle up, right?
	Yeah, yeah. I'm fiercely guarding my own happiness when I do that.
	Because I'm Worthy of it and earn it, I deserve it.
	And the reason that this causes anxiety in me to be fierce is because it was impossible to be fierce when I was in my teens.
	Yeah, because you were attacked for it.
	You were bullied and abused and attacked one way or another, right?
	Yes, absolutely.
	Right. But now you're not in that situation anymore, so you're only doing it yourself now, right?
	Right. I mean, with all due respect to the after effects of the trauma and so on, right?
	But, you know, the defu is not just getting rid of your parents out there, right?
	The defu only starts when that happens, if that's what's necessary.
	It's getting rid of your parents in there, in your head, in your heart, right?
	Right. Yeah, yeah.
	And that was my biggest motivator to get into therapy because they just stuck around.
	Right. Right, right.
	So you just need to, if you're irritated by a social interaction, if something's bothering you in the relationship...
	Just be persistent, right?
	I mean, Lord knows you've seen enough examples of that with me in calls, right?
	And, you know, you can be open about the fact that it's annoying, the fact that it's inconvenient and all this and that.
	But still, right? That's what has to be done.
	I'm protecting the joy of the relationship.
	Yeah. Well, I'm ready to reclaim that fierceness.
	I, uh, I don't want to lose that.
	Get in touch with your inner piratitude.
	You sound woefully underconvinced and I'm not sure exactly why that is.
	That's just sort of my...
	Do I sound that way?
	I'm enthusiastic about this now.
	I'm sorry. I don't know why.
	I'm not sure why I sound that way.
	I definitely feel a lot lighter.
	I was pretty tense when we first started into this conversation, but I started just like my mind started making these different connections with why I do let these things go on and on and on without speaking up and being afraid and tense but I started just like my mind started making these different connections with why I do let these things go Thank you.
	Yeah, and it has something to do with a kind of resentment of being put in the situation.
	I mean, it's a lot of stuff that's still clouded in with your parents' thinking, right?
	And this is the your house thing.
	That's where we sort of started from.
	So if you talk about this kind of stuff, being honest about our cowardice is one of the bravest things that we can ever do, and it's certainly something that I've had to...
	I do a number of times in my relationships.
	But just talking about, you know, like I fumbled here.
	And once you get what it costs you, then, you know, we floss because the alternative is completely idiots, right?
	Teeth infection, gum drots, whatever, right?
	So it's just getting a sense of the consequences off that, right?
	and Colleen has probably shielded you from the consequences of that, right?
	To say, well, you know, there was a bit of a respect dip as far as this went and it was involuntary and we need to talk about it and so on because she can't feel really great that you kind of let this go on, right?
	Right.
	So if she's honest with you about what it costs her, when this happens then it's going to be much easier for you to make a decision with all the available information okay okay well take some time to mull that over Yeah, I will. I will.
	This is something I've got to think over.
	I'm not quite feeling it yet, so I think there's just something else there that I'm not quite getting.
	Okay, well, mull it over and let us know how it goes.
	But I'm absolutely convinced that you have the fierceness.
	Otherwise, I mean, my unconscious doesn't taunt me with dreams of singing on the mat, right?
	Because that was never going to happen, right?
	But the metro, maybe, is a busker.
	But that wasn't going to happen, right?
	But where I have the potential, then my unconscious opens up the gap between where I could be and where I am.
	It doesn't taunt me with the impossible.
	It doesn't even taunt me with the improbable.
	It taunts me what?
	With the achievable.
	And so we know that you have fierceness because your unconscious is saying you lack fierceness in this area.
	And it wouldn't say that if you didn't, if you couldn't achieve it.
	All right. - Good.
	So... Alright, well, thanks very much.
	I appreciate that. It was interesting.
	It was a nice, different approach to take for Dream and Alice to go with the convo and see where it would fit in, but I'm happy to take another...
	What time is it? Yeah, we have time for another question if somebody wants to jump in.
	Thanks, Steph. You're welcome.
	Sure, somebody had a question about defuing the dying?
	Yeah, um... I do.
	Can you hear me correctly or alright?
	I sure can.
	Okay. I was just wondering, my dad is dying.
	He was really close.
	We would think we were going to lose him about...
	Six months ago, and I kind of got into what you've been saying a few months ago, a little bit after all of that, and he's still really sick.
	He's doing quite a bit better than before, but he's still really sick, and I was just wondering, how can you do that to someone who's dying, personally?
	Tell me what you mean. Is the question sort of like, how can you be so cruel because they're dying and this and that?
	Sorta. Sorta.
	Okay. I guess you don't have to go into much detail or any detail if you don't want to, but the issues that you have with your dad, what would they be in general?
	Um... I think I have quite a bit of issues with my dad that I didn't really bring up ever with him because, well, he does know some of them, but when I was very younger, he was very, before my parents' divorce, he was very mentally abusive, but he was sometimes, and I know sometimes this means he was, but he was physically abusive.
	Then when my parents divorced he stuck around for about three months and then he left us for about four to five years without saying a word or nothing like that.
	We didn't know where he was or what he was doing.
	Then after that when he came back he still held the biggest grudge against my mother to the point where if we didn't agree with him that my mom was the biggest bitch in the whole wide world Once he threw me and my brother outside,
	and I'm from northern Canada, outside without shoes in minus 40 degree weather to walk home because he just thought my mom was the most evil person in the world.
	I can't visit him because that's all he talks about.
	I just can't.
	I started talking to him more when we knew that he was in the hospital and his heart failure and yadda yadda yadda.
	Yeah, so I have very big issues with him, but I just, I don't know how to be so cruel to just tell him, you know, I don't want anything to do with you, especially that he's been trying to make inroads to have a relationship with me since,
	like, for the last few years since I moved away from home, but I just, I don't think he's a good person, and If anyone in my whole entire life, it would be him, I would say, is the most evil person I know.
	Right. Were you hearing the last little bit about fierceness?
	A little bit, yeah.
	A little bit like you heard some of it?
	I was. I was.
	I was listening to it, yeah.
	Okay, because I'm going to give you a sort of example of the fierceness now, if you like.
	Okay. All right.
	Let me ask you a question, because you've got, you use the word cruel in terms of not going to see your dad, right?
	Right. Well, I haven't seen him since for about four years, but I mean just talking to him on the phone.
	Well, yeah, but I'm talking about the defu is not talking on the phone, it's not going to see him, it's not, right?
	So you know all of that, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	I'm just saying, I just haven't seen him, but...
	So, your father was abusive to you for how many years?
	Well, I mean, my parents divorced until when I was 12, and I can't remember when I was a baby, and I'm sure he wasn't abusive when I was two days old, but I mean, I think, you know, the whole abandonment and then coming back and being a complete asshole was abusive too.
	Yeah. So... I certainly agree with that.
	So we're a couple of decades, right?
	Yeah. Okay.
	Now, let me ask you something, right?
	So let's say...
	And this is going to sound like a totally goofy mental exercise, but just bear with me for a second or two and we'll see if it helps.
	Right. Let's say that you were floating in the ether above the world before you were born and an angel came gliding up to you and said...
	You have a choice about the evils that you are going to suffer in this world.
	You have a choice.
	And you have two choices about the evils that you are going to suffer in this world.
	And you have to choose one or the other.
	And the first evil is that you will be physically abused, mentally abused, abandoned, thrown out to walk in bare feet, possibly losing your toes or your feet in 40 degrees below weather.
	Screamed at, put down, yelled at, pitted against your mother, and brutalized for decades of your life.
	That's choice number one.
	Choice number two is that one person might not come and see you when you're dying.
	Which would you choose?
	I guess I would choose number two, yeah, I would.
	Yeah, I mean, it's not even that hard a choice, is it?
	No. So don't bring to me the idea that you're being cruel at all.
	Because you're not.
	Because you were the victim of mental and physical torture, cruelty, abuse for decades.
	And you don't want to go and see your abuser.
	So the idea, if you're going to start putting out the word cruel and apply it to your action, which is passive, which is not going to see someone, not calling someone, you're not going over there and sticking chopsticks in his eyes or anything.
	You're just not going to see him.
	So if you're going to use the word cruel and how could you do this to someone and so on, When anybody would choose what you're, quote, inflicting on your father versus what the hell your father inflicted on you, I have no idea what scale of value you're using, if that makes sense.
	Right, right. It seems like you're just using the word cruel like other people will just call it cruel, right?
	Yeah. But not you, right?
	I mean, if you were locked in a prison for 30 years and got beaten and your prison guard lay dying, would you be like, oh my god, I feel so guilty, I'm not going to his deathbed and holding his hand?
	Yeah. I think that the card should exist and it never will, which is this.
	Good fucking riddance.
	Why does it hurt to think that I would do that to him, though?
	Like, thinking...
	Just calling him up and saying, you were an asshole and I don't want to talk to you.
	Why does that hurt so much?
	Well, because you've been programmed to not do this.
	Because what it does is it opens up the whole family shit pit, right?
	What's everyone else in the family going to say to you if you do that?
	I'm not saying you should do that.
	But if you did, what would happen?
	Well, I think my family would be so pissed off at me because when he did come back, he started playing child support and it helped me through university.
	And even though I told him I didn't want any of his money, he still gave it to me.
	I, like, didn't spend half of it, but, you know, you have to, you know, make do.
	So, I don't know.
	They would blame it on me and say, you know, you spent all of his money and call me cruel for that, too, for, like, spending his money and then refusing to talk to him.
	And I totally understand that.
	And look, I'm fierce with a thousand suns of sympathy burning in my heart, if that makes any sense.
	I feel for you.
	I really do. This is a terrible situation.
	But you realize the defu has only a little bit to do with your dad, right?
	Right. Because if you stand up for these values, and the money means nothing.
	The money means nothing.
	If that same angel said, you can take decades of abuse, but you're going to get a few thousand or tens of thousands of dollars afterwards, what would you say?
	I would say I'd rather work for it.
	Yeah, thanks. I can get a job myself.
	I'll be fine, right?
	I'll be fine. I'll not take the years of abuse and I'll take the couple of grand or live without it.
	You know, what do I care about? One Plasma TV worth of money versus decades of abuse, right?
	So the money means nothing.
	It means nothing.
	It's not restitution. It equalizes nothing.
	And it's not kindness and generosity because he didn't display any of that.
	But it's about your whole family system, right?
	It's about your whole family system.
	If you decide to do this with your dad, I'm sure and you're sure that you're going to get attacked by everyone in your family who feels unbelievably guilty about not doing anything to protect the children that In this environment, right? Right.
	So they feel horribly guilty, and then if you act in a strong and virtuous manner and say, no, I am not going to go and give comfort to someone who abused me.
	I'm not going to go and abuse him.
	But I'm not going to because I don't want to.
	I mean, I'm assuming that you don't actively want to go and hold this bastard's hand, but you're afraid of being attacked, right?
	I'm afraid that if I went over there that he would relentlessly continue calling my mother a bitch and a slut and a hoe and every possible word there is for my mother.
	Even if I don't think my mother's the greatest person, she doesn't deserve to be attacked like that every single moment of his life.
	It frustrates the hell out of me.
	Yes.
	Yes. There is no salvation at the door of death.
	You go through as you lived.
	And people's fantasy that there is a turnaround...
	People's fantasy that there is a turnaround at the door of death is partly what allows them to keep being bastards their life long, right?
	I mean, if parents knew...
	Hey, if I treat my kids mean or bad or abuse them or whatever, they're going to tell me to get lost when they become adults.
	Parents would be a little bit nicer, right?
	Probably, yeah. Well, it's the only hope we've got, right?
	We've got to change every family, but we can at least make it a little bit more voluntary, right?
	I don't think he...
	I personally don't think he'd realize how much...
	His abandonment felt to us.
	I think he's very selfish that he just doesn't realize what that did to us.
	Oh, I guarantee you he did.
	I guarantee you that he did, because you're not free to talk about it with the family, right?
	No. Right, so he knew that it was bad and that it was wrong, and the whole family knew it was bad and it was wrong, and exactly how destructive it was, because it's a taboo topic, right?
	Yeah. So you just have to go with the evidence, right?
	Last time me and my brother tried to talk to him about it, we got kicked out of the house in minus 40 degree weather, you know.
	Right. And I know that you've got a bit of a laugh because you're nervous, but it's seriously not the funny thing at all, right?
	No. Luckily, we knocked on the neighbor's door and they let us in.
	They called my mother to come and get us because...
	Yeah.
	It's far to walk.
	And you see you're still laughing about it, right?
	Yeah. Well, I'm almost crying, so...
	Right, but I'm not trying to dismantle or break you down emotionally.
	I'm just saying that it's important to be aware that the laughter aspect comes from your family and the crying aspect comes from you.
	Right. Because your family is like, ha ha ha, 40 degrees, wow, that was crazy, right?
	Yeah, pretty much, yeah.
	Whereas you were like, holy shit, I could have died, right?
	Yeah. Yeah. So, this is the conflict, right?
	That your family wants to minimize and ignore and attack the pain, right?
	Yeah. Whereas you, you know that your salvation is in feeling the pain, right?
	And acting on it. Not abusively, but defensively.
	Saying, I'm not going to put myself in a traumatic and difficult and destructive and unpleasant and abusive situation, right?
	I mean, if your family told you to stick your hand in the fire...
	You probably wouldn't say, well, I'm torn, because I don't want them to disapprove of me if I don't.
	It just... And then the other thing that really pisses me off is that he kind of did it to himself, too.
	And I don't...
	I don't know how he let himself become like that, but...
	You mean in terms of the sickness or...
	Yeah, yeah. That he's got now?
	Right. Yeah. He, uh...
	He, when my parents separated, he was always a very big man, but when my parents divorced and stuff, he gained, like, another extra 300 pounds, so he's, like, at least a good 700 pounds, and they amputated his leg because of gout, and it was, it's just horrible.
	Yeah, personally, I mean, this is easy for me to say, and I, you know, again, you know, nothing but sympathy for the situation, but I would avoid the situation like the plague.
	And you just, I mean, you have to brace yourself, and it is going to be horrible, because the family shitstorm that's going to brew over your decision is going to be significant and considerable, right?
	But you can always say, look, I mean, I'm not taking any calls from you people for at least a couple of months.
	I just need to get myself straight.
	Right, right. But you don't have to call up your dad and say, you know, you rat bastard, you know, listen, Stumpy, or whatever.
	You don't have to do any of that. You can just say, look, I need to get my head together.
	I know it's a difficult time, but I don't want to approach this right now.
	I need to get my head straight on a bunch of things.
	I'll be back in touch, and then just keep avoiding people.
	You can slither out the back door.
	That is a perfectly honorable way to get your space when you're in this kind of environment.
	Yeah. I was thinking about going to see a therapist since I've been listening to you guys and stuff and I think it would be a good idea.
	But I just, I saw one when I was a kid and I just don't trust them at all.
	I don't know how you find good ones.
	Well, you know, you wouldn't necessarily want to be prejudicial against all therapists because of someone that your parents chose.
	Well, my parents didn't have much choice either because I come from a very, very small town, so...
	Hang on one sec.
	Hi, it's Christina. I couldn't help but notice where you're from when I added you to the conversation, so I'm not going to give any of that away, but I do know that in your city there is a large community of registered psychologists.
	Again, registered psychologists is one way to go.
	There are social workers who are also registered who do in-depth psychotherapy.
	There are other types of counselors, some even who are unregulated, meaning they're not licensed, who do big It's just a matter of, you know, spending some time on the phone, five or ten minutes, seeing if you connect with the therapist, and going from there.
	Right. But definitely, for sure, there is, in fact, it is, the Canadian Psychological Association has their headquarters where you are, so that should be reassuring.
	Yeah. Thank you.
	And I think I can't recommend it highly enough if you get the right therapist.
	And you can trust your own feelings about that if you feel comfortable, if you feel good.
	But, I mean, you really are going through an incredibly difficult passage right now.
	I mean, certainly, I mean, Christine and I are both moved.
	And for what it's worth, you know, big hugs across the ice, so to speak.
	But I think that it will be a huge relief for you to have some help.
	In this situation, because it is, as you say, it's a small community, there's your family, there's the history, there's the entire thing.
	Well, I moved away, though.
	Oh, good. I moved as far as I could go.
	I tried. I think there's Fiji, but we can get back to that another time.
	I would have went if it would have cost the same amount than where I am right now.
	Right. Okay, yeah, for sure.
	And, you know, for what it's worth, there's a board, there's people on Skype.
	I'm sure we'll be happy to talk to you and people who've gone through similar sorts of situations.
	Just don't try and carry this load alone.
	That is a lot of work.
	And it is a very difficult situation that you're in.
	And, you know, my heart really does go out for you.
	It is just heartbreaking.
	All right. Thank you.
	You're welcome. And keep us posted about how it goes.
	And best of luck finding a therapist.
	Thank you.
	Bye-bye.
	All right.
	Who wants to follow that?
	All right.
	I'll just give it another second in case anybody had any other questions or comments.
	We can end on another note or we can end on this note.
	It's totally fine. If anybody has another question, we can talk about something else.
	All right. Okay. Well, thanks everybody for the call.
	Be sure to go past freedomainradio.com.
	I'll put something up after the show and sign up for the London, England, pay what you can, 250 suggested two-day FDR extravaganza.
	I think it will be an enormous amount of fun.
	Certainly, we had a great deal of fun.
	At the last one, and I hope that you'll be able to join us for the next one.
	And please be sure to pick up your free copy, complimentary copy of Everyday Anarchy, which I think is a very good book and will be quite interesting for you to listen to and also to send around.
	To other people as well.
	So, thanks everybody so much for a great show and thanks everybody for sharing so wonderfully.
	I just am completely astounded by everybody's courage and bravery in this conversation.
	We do have the meanest, leanest, kick-assiest conversation about philosophy that I think there has ever been.
	And I think that we should all be proud about what we're doing.

▲