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Nov. 16, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:39:32

1210 The Guardian Article - Sunday Call In Show Nov 16 2008

Hey, we finally hit the mainstream!

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	Well, thank you everybody so much for joining us.
	This is just after 4pm, Sunday, November the 16th, 2008.
	And as you may or may not know, we had our first mention, I guess more than a mention, but a front page article in the live section, I think it was, of the Guardian newspaper, guardian.co.uk.
	So I'd like to read the article and a set of responses.
	Oh, I guess a short article response that I put together.
	And we can talk about that or any other topics that people are interested in.
	But this is, I guess, fairly exciting in many ways.
	To get an anarchist or a philosopher interviewed by the mainstream media on such a volatile topic is obviously quite exciting in many ways.
	So this is the...
	This is the article, and then we'll just talk about a brief response, and then we'll open it up.
	So the article is entitled, You'll Never See Me Again, and the subheading is this.
	Barbara Weed's son, Tom, 18, cut himself off from his family after getting drawn into a controversial online community.
	She has not seen him since.
	Kate Hilpern reports.
	And this is Saturday, November 15th, I guess it was published in the UK. One Wednesday afternoon in May, when Barbara Weed's 18-year-old son Tom was right in the middle of his A-levels, he abruptly left home.
	Dear family, said the note he left on the doormat, I need to take an indefinite amount of time away from the Pam family, so I've moved in with a friend.
	Please do not contact me, Tom.
	He has not been in touch with any of his relatives since.
	But Tom is not a missing person.
	His family know roughly where he is.
	It's just that he won't talk to them, and they suspect he never will.
	He got hooked in by an online cult, Barbara says.
	The website convinces vulnerable people that they should hate their parents and should leave their family.
	Even the wording of Tom's letter is from the website.
	Its founder says, the letter should buy you 6 to 12 months before your family come looking for you.
	And that will give you time to get used to living without them.
	Barbara did not wait that long.
	Quote, She worked out that if she ordered a cup of tea, he would have to listen to her for about a minute.
	She told him that if he ever wanted to come home, he could.
	Quote, He just looked at me, shaking his head, as if to say, you fool.
	What baffled Barbara was how a website could have such a dramatic effect on an ordinary family and in such a short space of time.
	Barbara and her husband already had two sons, Nick, two, and John, four, when their youngest, Tom, was born.
	Quote, I adored Tom, says Barbara.
	Nick was the mischievous one, and sometimes I did get cross with him.
	But I didn't need to get cross with Tom.
	He was such a joy to be with, and had long, serious conversations with everyone.
	I always thought he would be the last one to leave home, that at age 40 he might even still be here, which is ironic.
	The boys were so close in age that they all played together.
	Barbara took them to parks, playgrounds, theater shows, and alternate towers, and even though money was tight, there were family seaside holidays every year.
	When Tom left, this is Barbara's quote, when Tom left, John said, but we had a great childhood.
	By the time the boys reached adolescence, family life had become more dispersed.
	My sons each had computers in their rooms, and we all had such different schedules that family mealtimes didn't happen anymore.
	Also, Tom was vegan and wanted to cook for himself, so I just gave him money to buy food, and he just got on with it.
	By September 2007, his brothers were at university, and Tom had found a girlfriend.
	Quotes from Barbara.
	It's as if you wake up one morning when your children are teenagers, and you realize that practically the only time you talk to them is when they're going to the fridge, says Barbara.
	But then there are moments when they do things, like give you a necklace.
	The necklace she is wearing was given to her by Tom after a summer holiday.
	Tom and his girlfriend, meanwhile, had become increasingly interested in an online community called Free Domain Radio, FDR, which invites discussion around philosophy, politics, and personal freedom.
	Unbeknown to Barbara at that time, a key topic of the site, whose members seem to be mostly in their teens and twenties, It's the idea that ultimate personal freedom can be gained by cutting yourself off from any involuntary relationships, i.e. your family, and entering into completely voluntary ones, i.e.
	your new mates online.
	This is a quote from one member to another.
	I think once you get these corrupt people out of your life, you will for sure have enough room for all these new awesome virtuous friends in the world.
	For members unsure about such drastic measures, there are podcasts with titles such as, But My Parents Were Really Nice.
	And there is a chat room in which members discuss how so many families are unjust.
	There is also a Sunday call-in show in which the website's founder counsels callers.
	Often the subject is leaving your family.
	Barbara recalls Tom and his girlfriend looking forward to the Sunday call-ins and spending more and more time on the FDR website.
	This is a quote from Barbara.
	By November 2007, Tom's behavior had noticeably changed.
	Quote, He wasn't spending time in his room just because he wanted to be with his girlfriend or on the computer, but because he didn't want to be with us.
	One night he blurted out that when he left home he wouldn't come back and that I would never see him again.
	At first I thought he was talking about university, that he wasn't coming home after that, but I was puzzled by the bit about never seeing him again.
	He responded that we had no relationship and that it was over.
	Barbara says she tried everything.
	Persuasion, negotiation, compromise.
	But Tom didn't seem interested in communicating merely in throwing accusations.
	For instance, that his brother John and me were fond of laughing at him, which wasn't true.
	I began to notice that he was interpreting all family interactions as abusive.
	We did our best to be a happy family.
	Knowing what I do now about the website, I think Tom was being convinced by the online community that he had been cheated because he didn't have a perfect family upbringing.
	But who does? We really did try our best.
	Then one day in May this year, when Barbara got in from work, Tom had gone.
	She read the note and was devastated.
	For a moment, she wondered if he had run away with his girlfriend, who has also since cut off her family to devote herself to FDR. But she and Tom had recently split up.
	Then Barbara thought of the website and began to investigate.
	She quickly found references to something called Defoo, the name the website gives to ridding yourself of your family of origin, FOO. Then she came across Tom's thoughts posted on the site during the months leading up to his own decision to Defoo.
	Trying to think practically, Barbara topped up Tom's mobile phone.
	Quote, I was worried he hadn't even organized where he was going to live.
	And the following day she phoned Tom's school, fearful of him quitting his education as hastily as he had family life.
	The school said he seemed fine.
	The next week Tom's brother Nick waited at Tom's school all day to see him, but Tom wouldn't talk to him.
	Another week passed There was the exchange at the cafe, and besides catching a glimpse of him at a local festival and once on his bike, Barbara has not seen her son since.
	Quote, In the early days I burst into tears all the time, she says, but now that some time has passed, she tries to keep things in perspective.
	Quote, He could be floating down a river dead, but he's not.
	He could be somewhere that I don't know about, never sure if he's alive or dead, but he's not.
	I have to keep reminding myself that as far as I know, he's well and happy.
	In some ways, Barbara feels relieved that he has left this town where she lives and where Tom was born and brought up, and gone away to university.
	Quote, I was dreading it, but it is so hard knowing I could see him any time.
	Also, I know he is starting his new life now.
	Every parent wants their child to be happy, to do well, and that's what he'll be doing.
	So that's great. I just wish I could be part of that, that I could give him another 50 pounds when his student loan runs out, or that I could celebrate his successes with him.
	The Cult Information Center, which says that several people have been in contact recently about family members recruited into cult-like organizations via chat rooms or other online means, recommends that families try to keep up some form of contact.
	Quote, So I sent Tom a text message to wish him luck at university and to tell him I'm thinking of him, says Barbara.
	I don't know if he would have read the message or just deleted it when he saw it was from me.
	Because Tom's new, quote, family is online, Barbara has, or at least until recently, been able to see what he is up to.
	It's how she knew what A-level grades he got, and it's how she knows where he's at university.
	Quote, I spend far too much time on the site, she admits, logging on as soon as she gets in from work and often not switching off her computer until the early hours.
	It's a bit like he's sitting at the next table.
	I hear everything he's saying, but I'm not in the conversation.
	This month, however, the chat room has been restricted to members only.
	I can't go in as a visitor anymore, she says.
	I've lost the only remaining glimpse I had of him.
	I don't know how he's feeling or if he needs help.
	Stefan Molyneux, the founder of FDR, who attracts many people to his website through YouTube, tells me that he simply reminds people, quote, that our family relationships are voluntary.
	And you should really work, if you're unhappy in those relationships, to improve the quality of those relationships.
	But to remember that they do remain voluntary.
	And that gives people the motivation, I think, to try to improve them.
	But if you can't improve them, and we can't change other people as we all know, For sure, you should have the option to disengage.
	Molyneux, a 42-year-old former actor and IT worker, assures me that what he calls defu is actually quite rare.
	And although he and his wife, both of whom have defu'd, are expecting a baby in December, he says on the website, Deep down, I do not believe that there are any really good parents out there.
	The same way, I do not believe there were any really good doctors in the 10th century.
	Molyneux, whose Canadian home also hosts member get-togethers, brings up the word cult before I do.
	It's the furthest thing from a cult, he laughs.
	First of all, I don't charge anything for what I do, and cults isolate people.
	What I'm talking about, what I strongly suggest to people, is that they should get closer to the people they're with.
	And of course, cults don't suggest people to go to therapy to deal with their issues.
	Critics, parents, predominantly from America and Canada, where most members come from, Say people do pay.
	There's a $10 monthly subscription fee and you get special levels of access according to how much more you donate with $500 buying you the status of philosopher king.
	And that defu proves that FDR does isolate people.
	The only people members get closer to are each other and by the time people go into therapy it's probably too late.
	They've already decided that they were abused and persuade the therapist as such.
	Some FDR members have indisputably horrific childhood stories.
	Some were beaten, others sexually abused.
	To cut off their parents may well be their only hope for happiness.
	But if you consider people of Tom's age who invariably feel their parents don't understand them, and couple this with a youthful thirst for neat philosophical answers to life's problems, then you can see both the attraction and dangers of FDR. Tom won't talk to me when I track him down.
	This is the reporter, of course.
	So I try to get a sense of his story from the website.
	I'm particularly troubled by a live call-in show from April, one month before he left home, in which he aired his very passionate views about animal rights, only to be convinced by Molyneux that he is the one being treated like an animal and abused by his father, and by Barbara because she is his mother and she didn't leave his father, and for even having Tom at all.
	Now, let's be clear, Tom does say that he is frightened by his father's mood swings, which sometimes cause him to throw things or shout at the cat, but the conclusions Molyneux jumps to, his manipulation of the conversation, is chilling.
	The American parents who talk to me do not want their names printed, and Tom's ex-girlfriend's parents won't talk to me at all.
	The advice from cult experts is that when a parent attacks or criticizes a cult, it may drive their family member further away.
	I discover this for myself when I see Molyneux in the chatroom telling Tom.
	She, Barbara, misses having a victim around and so she's using the media to victimize you.
	Totally evil.
	Barbara is unfazed, saying that things had already reached rock bottom the moment Tom left home.
	Her marriage has since broken down and the only good thing that has come out of all of this is her relationship with Nick.
	Quote, We used to talk in terms of, I've got post for you, or can I have some money?
	Now we show affection, and we're really talking, she says.
	Molyneux tells me that defu is not inevitably forever, but most members seem to see it as absolute, and in one of his podcasts, Molyneux says that people who do return to their family risk being seen permanently as unstable.
	Some people do manage to leave FDR, however, and I point out that Tom is only 18.
	Barbara takes a deep breath.
	Tom is very strong-willed, much like I am, she says, and when we set our minds to something, we can do it.
	He is capable of just not coming back.
	The only time she doubts this is in her dreams.
	Quote, Sometimes I dream that Tom is standing in front of me, smiling, and I feel happy and peaceful.
	But then I wake up.
	So this is the article itself that came out.
	I mean, the first thing that occurred to me was just this very tough for Tom, right?
	I mean, I haven't seen the paper, but I hear that there's a huge picture of Tom as a child and his mother staring sadly or whatever.
	And this is all without Tom's permission.
	And of course, he's explicitly identified.
	There's first names, there's last names, there's the town he grew up in.
	And so all of this, of course, is very much against Tom's wishes.
	So I have a lot of sympathy for Tom because this is not what he wanted, of course.
	So having said all of that, people have sort of asked me what my thoughts are and they've shared their thoughts.
	So this is a sort of little thing that I wrote.
	Okay, I'll just read it.
	So I said, how to escape a controversial online community, just close your browser.
	I have already expressed my regret about how this article may affect Tom.
	Putting that aside for the moment, here are some of my thoughts.
	I am glad that the article is out.
	We had to gain media attention at some point, and now is as good a time as any.
	I'm especially pleased that the concept that family relations are voluntary and should be enriched and deepened if at all possible is receiving such wide exposure.
	There are particular biases in the article that I think are worth examining.
	The most striking thing about the article is that the entire case against FDR is based on the hearsay of one aggrieved mother and entirely off-the-record anonymous sources.
	The reporter did not choose to interview any other members of Barbara's family.
	For instance, Barbara reports what her younger son is supposed to have said about his childhood, but the reporter does not actually talk to the son directly, which scarcely seems like a difficult thing to do.
	Furthermore, she does not interview Tom's father or say that he refused to be interviewed or talked to any extended family members.
	Of course, Tom did not wish to be interviewed either.
	Now, I'm no reporter, but it seems likely that you would need at least one corroborating statement when dealing with an aggrieved party.
	Otherwise, it's just hearsay.
	Since the presence or absence of significant family problems is the most essential question in this entire matter, not lifting a finger to verify the facts is highly significant.
	Since the younger son lives at home, it would have simply been a matter of Kate saying, please put him on the telephone so I can ask him a few questions.
	Once you get beyond the mother's stories about how happy her family was, some striking facts do emerge.
	The father had significant mood swings, was verbally abusive and aggressive towards animals, and threw objects when he was angry.
	The family no longer ate meals together and had not for some time.
	Family communication was almost non-existent, as Barbara says later regarding her new relationship with her other son.
	Also, the marriage was close to ending when all of this was going on since it has ended recently and that does not happen overnight, particularly in a lengthy marriage.
	Furthermore, and most significantly, Tom literally burst into tears during our conversation when talking about how terrified he was of his father.
	And you simply cannot fake or be manipulated into that kind of deep emotion.
	These facts indicate significant family problems, which at the very least should cause any reasonably objective or curious reporter to investigate the matter further, particularly if you are making the rather startling claim that the only significant problem in the entire family unit is some podcaster from Canada.
	After Tom said that he intended to leave the family, he did stay in contact with his mother, since she says that she tried everything, persuasion, negotiation, compromise, And so on.
	And yet, the content of what is being discussed is never mentioned.
	What is being negotiated about?
	What is the content of the compromise?
	What is the compromise itself?
	Then, the mother says, but Tom didn't seem interested in communicating merely in throwing accusations.
	For instance, that his brother John and me were fond of laughing at him, which wasn't true.
	This completely denies Tom's genuine experience of his family and Calls him an outright liar, thus throwing accusations at him, which is not quite the same as trying everything to come to a compromise.
	The reporter then shifts from talking about FDR to talking about the Cult Information Center, as if the two are related in some unstated way.
	The CIC reports that, quote, Several people have been in contact recently about family members recruited into cult-like organizations via chat rooms or other online means, and recommends that families try to keep up some form of contact.
	This statement could be associated with any website.
	It is not specific to FDR in any way.
	If the CIC had tagged FDR as a cult, doubtless this would have been mentioned.
	This is just a transparent form of guilt by association.
	Now, What has the net effect been of Tom's absorption into a cult?
	He's not begging for a loose change at the airport.
	He's not shaved his head.
	He doesn't wear bedsheets.
	He's not been charged any money.
	He's not been tattooed with the FDR logo.
	In fact, I haven't seen him around for months or had any interactions with him at all.
	The net effect is that he's doing fine at university.
	And I wish him the best.
	The sum total of this cult accusation is that I showed him deep sympathy when he burst into tears about his family, which was a real surprise to me during a call-in show.
	I will always show sympathy for the child over the parent.
	That is not specific to FDR, but would be any compassionate person's approach to this kind of psychological pain.
	I was pleased that Kate included this quote from me.
	Steph simply reminds people that our family relationships are voluntary and you should really work, if you're unhappy in those relationships, to improve the quality of those relationships.
	But to remember that they do remain voluntary.
	And that gives people the motivation, I think, to try to improve them.
	But if you can't improve them, and we can't change other people as we all know, for sure you should have the option to disengage.
	There is no reasonable therapist, psychologist or psychiatrist in the world Who would fundamentally disagree with such a statement?
	If people have a problem with this basic reality, then they have a problem with psychology as a whole.
	A little later, an interesting switch occurs about money.
	After quoting my statement that I do not charge money, Kate responds that critics say people do pay, which is not the same thing at all.
	I do not charge money, but people who are grateful for whatever help, insider wisdom they get from the site do donate if they want.
	If receiving voluntary donations is the same as charging people for goods, then the Heart and Stroke Foundation is actually a competitive business and should cancel its charitable tax status.
	Towards the end of the article we see an interesting argument from Adjective.
	Kate writes, Tom does say that he is frightened by his father's mood swings which sometimes cause him to throw things or shout at the cat.
	But the conclusions Molyneux jumps to his manipulation of the conversation is chilling.
	So, when Kate listens to a sensitive and hurt young man sobbing about his childhood and his terror and humiliation in the face of his father's rages, the only thing that chills her is my side of the conversation.
	That to me is impossible to comprehend emotionally.
	Even if there were clear criticisms of how I handled this emotional eruption, surely the more chilling aspect is the behavior of the father throughout Tom's childhood.
	There is no proof of my manipulations, of course.
	And the fact that Cates finds the conversation chilling is perfectly meaningless.
	It's a mere statement of subjective experience.
	If I say that I find the theory of evolution chilling, clearly that contains no truth statements about its contents.
	Also, it would have been very easy to include a link to the podcast itself, or at least provide the podcast number, which was not done.
	Which seems very strange, especially when we remember how Alec Baldwin's verbal attack on his daughter was so widely distributed.
	The media loves to reproduce truly chilling audio clips like 9-11 calls, tape recordings with bad people and so on.
	It is a shame that she did not give her readers the chance to easily find the podcast in question and come to their own conclusions.
	The podcast number is 1037.
	I do stand by my statement That I believe that there are no really good parents.
	I think that until a rational proof of objective ethics is more widely disseminated, parents have little choice but to substitute will and punishment for genuine and reasonable moral authority.
	If I have criticisms, which of course I do, at least I strain myself to the utmost to provide better solutions.
	And of course saying that there are no really good parents is not the same as saying there are no good parents at all.
	I also stand by my statement that it is wrong to use the media in this way, to insult, degrade, attack, and humiliate your son by implying that he is weak-minded, hysterical, defensive, aggressive, irrational, susceptible to cultism, a liar, and so on.
	And to not only provide a first and last name, but also the town he grew up in, which is a complete non sequitur in the context of the story itself.
	There is an even more essential question, though.
	Why is this article being written at all?
	Is it because FDR is some monster child-eating cult that is laying waste to families across the world?
	Of course not. Did the reporter find this story and then go looking for a parent?
	That seems highly improbable.
	The most likely scenario is that Barbara contacted Kate with her complaints about FDR. Why would Barbara do this?
	Why would she subject her son to this kind of article with all that it implies about him?
	Is it because she believes he is in a cult and wants to help him?
	Of course not. She is fully aware that the CIC instructs parents not to attack the quote, cult.
	Is it because she wants to warn other parents about FDR? If that were genuinely her goal, she would have demanded anonymity in the article to protect her son.
	And suppressed all personally identifiable characteristics about herself or her son.
	This she did not do.
	Furthermore, it was clear to both women that Tom did not want the article to be written or published.
	So what is the purpose of the article?
	The likely net effect is that Tom feels hurt, frightened, angry, and exposed.
	Seeing a childhood photo of yourself splashed across a popular newspaper and your mother bringing every complaint and accusation against you to the attention of millions of people and on the internet permanently.
	This is an exercise in humiliation.
	The fact that I suggest Seeing a therapist to people with a great deal of emotional ambivalence does not exactly support the thesis that FDR is a cult.
	This fact is summarily dismissed in the article.
	Quote, by the time people go into therapy it's probably too late.
	They've already decided they were abused and persuade the therapist as such.
	The idea that a website Can implant false memories in people so permanently that they would completely fool a trained therapist is pure nonsense.
	Therapists are trained to assess, probe, and evaluate and are not easily misled.
	Okay, the only other thing that I wanted to mention was this ridiculous idea that people can somehow be imprisoned in a website As Kate puts it when she is attempting to comfort Barbara at the end of the article, scarcely indicating impartiality or objectivity, quote, Some people do manage to leave FDR, however, and I point out that Tom is only 18.
	It's hard to imagine how an educated and intelligent person could conceivably make the statement that it is hard to leave a website.
	Freeing yourself from the, quote, grip of a website is as easy as navigating to another website or simply closing your browser.
	Overall, and again this is all despite the harm that it does to Tom, which I can't help.
	Overall, I'm very pleased that some of the core ideas that we talk about here have been accurately quoted in the media.
	Of course there is a fair amount of Bias and manipulation in the article, but to me it is so obvious that it is impossible to imagine that it fools many people.
	And those who are fooled by it would be very unlikely to benefit from exploring philosophy anyway, so no real harm has been done to those who remain so frightened by hearsay that they will avoid exploring the truth.
	So, sorry about that lengthy intro.
	Obviously, I've had my say, and Tom's mom has had her say, and the reporter has had her say, so I'm more than happy to entertain any questions or objections or criticisms or comments that anybody may have, and thank you for your patience as I delve through this topic.
	I don't know if someone's trying to talk, but if they're not, then I just had a comment to make.
	Please do. Well, it just seems to me that basically the sum total of this article is that there's a woman in England who's not happy about her 18-year-old son making his own decisions in life.
	When it boils down to it, basically, she says in the article that she imagined he'd be around, I think she says until he would be 40, or something like that.
	And so, basically, he's simply making his own decisions about his life, and she doesn't like it.
	And that seems to be all there is to this article.
	Well, I mean, obviously she's not going to put it that way.
	I mean, she is obviously hurt by the decisions that he's made, and I certainly do sympathize with that.
	I mean, it's obviously not what parents want is for their children to separate, and it's certainly not what anybody wants.
	It's a very difficult, unpleasant, and painful decision to have to make.
	So, clearly she's not a big fan of the decision that he's made, and...
	To me it would have been more productive because she actually was in the chat room.
	Both the reporter and Barbara were in the FDR chat room at one point.
	I was hoping that Barbara would talk to me about the complaints that she had about the website or what it is that I was doing.
	But unfortunately she didn't.
	I came into the chat room and she left immediately.
	So I didn't get a chance to talk to her.
	Obviously, she would rather talk to the reporter, who clearly is sympathetic to her, than she would be to talk to me.
	And it's not that I'm entirely unsympathetic to her at all, right?
	I mean, but I never got a chance to have a conversation with her because she vanished as soon as I came into the chat room.
	I certainly do understand that it's a very difficult thing for a parent for this to occur.
	It is a very painful decision to make for children and of course it is something that shows up very large in the radar of the philosophy conversation that we talk about here.
	As I've talked about, we've had About 80,000 to 90,000 parents of people involved in FDR have been, I guess, affected by FDR, of which there have been about 20 family separations, so it's completely tiny statistically.
	And yet, of course, it's highly visible in terms of what is upsetting for people, because it is an upsetting topic.
	It is a difficult, unpleasant, non-standard choice to make.
	So I would just say it's probably a little deeper than any choice, but this choice in particular...
	Is really hard for the mother and I don't think she's handling it too well.
	No, I totally appreciate that.
	I was actually referring to as a piece of journalism and I understand how difficult it is for the family, for the mother concerned and also obviously for Tom.
	But what I meant was if you were going to seek out If you look at the actual facts of the story, that's really all that this story has at its root.
	It's essentially a disagreement about whether or not one person wants to continue speaking to another person.
	And that is, obviously, for the people involved, a very difficult situation.
	Just as a piece of journalism to go and find that story, I think that when you boil it down to what's really going on, it's not the kind of story that you can imagine a journalist waking up and going to look for as a piece of amazing, important news given all of the other things that happen in the world.
	Right. I mean, I think that's, clearly this was not something that, FDR is a cult, let me go find a parent.
	I mean, that's ridiculous, right?
	But I think in a larger context, this is a battle that has been fought many times before.
	And this is just a particular frontier, and of course it's not just FDR. There's a whole book called Divorcing Your Parents.
	It's been around for quite some time.
	It's not a new concept.
	We didn't invent anything or whatever.
	But this battle has been fought.
	Around involuntary relationships.
	I mean, obviously, slavery, and again, I'm not equating families with slavery, I'm just talking about some of the concepts.
	We have, you know, slavery is an involuntary relationship, and serfdom was an involuntary relationship where you were bound and bought and sold with the land.
	Wives throughout history have not usually had the right to own property or had equal legal status, to say the least, in the law.
	And the whole purpose of feminism from Mary Shelley onwards was to talk about how relationships between men and women should be more voluntary.
	That a woman was not your property, was not obligated to spend the rest of her life with you no matter how you treated her, right?
	Because in the past marriages were arranged and in many cultures they are arranged, right?
	Which is an involuntary relationship.
	And the idea of reminding people that relationships are voluntary, that we're not bound to serve other people's needs for the rest of our lives, is not a new concept.
	We're just applying it to something which is startling for people, because it's something that we often forget.
	That children do not ask to be born into family relations, which does not mean, of course, and I'm just trying to be clear here, I'm not saying that family is slavery, but clearly it's an involuntary relationship on the part of the child.
	In the same way that an arranged marriage is an involuntary relationship on the part, usually, of the woman.
	Though it can be for the man as well.
	That doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with it.
	That is a natural thing.
	I mean, our child, the child that Christina and I are within weeks of having, is not choosing to be born into this family.
	I'm very aware of that, which means that I should be Extra, valuable, nice, positive, loving, and whatever, right?
	To the child. Because he didn't choose.
	Didn't choose to be born. Didn't choose the family he was born into.
	So, in the past, it was considered like if the man married you or you got married to the man, the woman, you couldn't divorce.
	You couldn't divorce, right?
	No matter how badly you were treated, no matter how upset you were, no matter how hurt you were, no matter how abused you were, and I'm not saying I know any of this for sure with this family, right?
	I'm just going off the information that was provided.
	But, of course, the whole idea behind feminism was, no, you're not obligated to stay with your husband if he treats you badly.
	And that's even more of a voluntary relationship in the modern West than a child's relationship with a parent, which is, as I said, involuntary.
	So, if women are allowed to divorce husbands that they don't like, which, of course, is a good thing, right?
	And it's a right that we would all be loath to see go away, would be a terrible thing, right?
	If wives...
	Are actually encouraged by feminists, rightly so, to leave abusive relationships or to leave relationships where, even relationships where they're unfulfilled.
	If we grant that right to voluntary relationships like marriage, how is it that we would deny it to an involuntary relationship like a family?
	We're not born here to be the servants of other people.
	We're not born here to be embedded in relationships that give us no pleasure, that take pleasure away from us.
	But it's startling and alarming for people when this, whenever this principle gets extended, this principle of voluntarism, whenever it gets extended to new areas in society, people freak out, right?
	And this is not the first time.
	I'm sure it won't be the last time.
	So I think that that's why it's causing sort of an uproar, right?
	Because in the same way that feminism did, in the same way that getting rid of serfdom did, in the same way, you know, in England in the 19th century, when they extended the vote to everyone, you know, this is the worst thing ever, right?
	Whenever you extend these principles of participation and voluntarism within society to new groups, it's really, really upsetting for people.
	And so in the historical context, you know, this is a...
	A tiny little thing in terms of, oh, it's an article, it's not a big trial by philosophy or anything compared to Galileo and Socrates.
	Not to put myself in that category, but it's not the same thing.
	But I just sort of wanted to reinforce that this is nothing new, right?
	This is merely the extension of a voluntarism and respect for a voluntarism in relationships, which we don't normally think of them, but which we have to, which is parent-child.
	Yeah, and even in the context of our society today, What's happened in this family is that one person has taken a decision without being insulting or abusive or anything like that.
	They've just taken a decision.
	They don't want to speak to another person.
	It's interesting that in terms of the facts of the matter, that's all that's happened.
	There's no crime, there's no violence.
	Tom hasn't hurt anybody physically or anything.
	he's just chosen to do, you know, he's just chosen to make his own plans for himself.
	And so I think, you know, that sort of gets lost under all of the general accusations and insinuations in the article about sort of untoward things going on.
	I think it's really sad that Somebody who clearly has had a very difficult situation in his family and has made a difficult choice about what he wants for himself, is having that situation, which is nobody else's business, classed it all over newspaper.
	Right. And to take a way of looking at it that will be a little less shocking for people, but which the same principles, if not more, apply.
	If some woman who's desperately unhappy in her marriage goes to a feminist website, and maybe she comes from a culture where it's unthinkable to leave your husband, right?
	And she's just desperately unhappy, bursts into tears on the website, talks about the things that she's endured in the marriage, which are very ugly and unpleasant.
	And if the feminists then say, but you can leave your husband, Who in the world, who's got any sense whatsoever, would say that this is a destructive and corrupt feminist website for reminding a woman that her relations with her husband are voluntary and that she can leave him if she's desperately unhappy?
	I mean, it would be crazy!
	Can you imagine? Just substitute that, right?
	Yeah, absolutely. Put the National Organization for Women.
	Put now.com instead of freedomainradio.com and put Tom as, I don't know, some Indian bride who had an arranged marriage.
	I mean, who would think that it is abusive for someone to remind someone that relations are voluntary?
	But of course, it's hard for us to see.
	It's hard for us to reproduce these principles In new areas, right?
	Because we're just so conditioned to think in certain ways.
	I'm so sorry you were about to say.
	Yeah, and I was just going to say, you can think of it, if you imagine that article with a man's photograph and the headline, You'll Never See Me Again, and the photograph, the sort of subheading was, Bob says that one day his wife left him and she said that she would never see him again.
	And then, you know, there's a long article about Bob's complaints and he's so unhappy, and then he found out That his ex-wife had actually spoken to a bunch of other people who'd also had difficult marriages or been thinking about these issues.
	And those people talked to him about his decisions and the thinking that he was going through.
	If you imagine the article in those terms, and if it was written all from Bob's perspective of how upset he is about the fact that this wife has left him, even though there is strange facts in there about clearly it was not a happy marriage, then it would just be kind of ridiculous as an article.
	But because the family is seen differently, then if somebody makes a legitimate decision to say, in a completely If a non-violent and non-nasty way just decides to say, actually, this is not for me,
	I want some time to myself, then that is considered to be, oh, amazing and completely a wild and outlandish choice to make and must have been led astray by some terrible forces on the internet.
	Imagine if a reporter, like the phone rings, right?
	It's this guy calling up and he says, I want you to write an article because I'm angry that my wife has initiated a trial separation from me, right?
	Because she found a family on the internet and burst into tears about how miserable she was in being married to me.
	And they said, remember that you can always have a trial separation.
	Can you imagine the reporter says, yes, I will get right on it and talk about how this website that said to your wife she can be with you voluntarily or not is a cult.
	The reporter says, I'm all over it, and also, why don't you give me a big photograph of your wife, and I'll put that right on the front of the article.
	Right. Right.
	I mean, we would clearly see that as destructive and a horrendous thing to do, but again, it's hard for people, because when these principles, and I mean this with sympathy to people, right?
	It's shocking. It's shocking.
	The same way, when these principles that we accept in other areas are applied to areas that we're not used to, it feels shocking.
	But if we put it in this kind of context, it's clear just how crazy this all is.
	Actually, I think the comparison you made to wives in the earlier 20th century and the 19th century is actually directly relevant because I know in history of feminism classes that I've been in,
	I've read primary sources of newspaper articles where they basically trash the reputation of a wife who's left her husband, where the husband would basically call a reporter and they would destroy the wife's reputation after she left the husband for most likely abuse, you know, they make up whatever. So there's a direct historical precedent for this sort of thing.
	That was really all I wanted to say, so I'll hand it over to someone else.
	I'm a little curious why, well not a little curious, a lot curious, why something like this would even get published.
	I mean, even if you consider the idea that it's, you know, It's got sensational elements and that maybe they had a slow day or something.
	It just seems to me like you were saying, JC, the other night.
	Newspapers get phone calls from disgruntled people all the time.
	Why this and not something else, right?
	Well, we may never know for sure, right?
	I mean, probably never will know for sure.
	But, I mean, fear-mongering is, I mean, I did a whole video on all the media scares I could think of in three breaths, right?
	Fear-mongering with regards to there are creepy things or creepy people out there who are going to do destructive things to you beyond your control.
	You know, this common household cleanser will cause your cat to explode.
	I mean, this kind of fear-mongering that goes on is pretty staple to the media, at least mainstream media, though it also occurs in alternative media sources as well.
	But this idea that random disaster can strike you with no warning and for no reason, right, is a very popular theme within the media, right?
	So he might accidentally click...
	Your kid might accidentally click on freedomainradio.com and despite having a wonderful relationship with you and a very happy childhood, he's just going to balk.
	It's that scary.
	It's that random, you know?
	Like there's some website... That I would click on that would just make me divorce my wife, who I love desperately and devotedly and worship the very ground she walks on.
	But there's some website out there which, if I click on it, I'm gonna leave my wife.
	I'm just gonna wake up one morning and say, I thought it was a fantastic marriage.
	I thought I loved her.
	But no! You know, it's not.
	It's horrible, you know, and then I'm going to be so...
	This website is going to do such a mind trip on me, it's going to reprogram my brain to the point where I can convince even a trained therapist that my marriage is bad, when up until yesterday I thought it was...
	I mean, this is not sane, right?
	This is not a sane response to a situation.
	And nobody could conceive...
	I mean, in the same day on the website, on The Guardian, there was a feminist that they interviewed who said marriage is prostitution.
	Right? Now, does anyone seriously imagine that if someone goes to read an article called Marriage is Prostitution, that they're going to just say, oh my God, I thought I loved my husband, but I hate him and I'm going to leave him.
	And then people would say, oh my God, this feminist is running a cult.
	I mean, this idea that some information, some new information, some new perspectives, some rational arguments, some philosophy, some psychology, some God help your sympathy...
	Can change your history completely and rewrite your personality is crazy.
	It's just nuts. We don't know why other than scaring people works.
	Yeah, that seems to be the case.
	But, I mean, I think it's really good that it was picked up and blogged about and stuff, even if FDR was not exactly portrayed accurately.
	It's still good.
	I mean, people have been coming in.
	I mean, new people. There are a few people in the chatroom even listening to the feed.
	Yes, hello to the new people.
	I do appreciate that you have come and been curious and open about what we talk about here.
	And it's so funny, too, because...
	It sometimes can be hard for thinkers to get clearly represented In the mainstream media.
	And this is true of, you know, any sort of reasonably intelligent or educated thinker.
	So I really do appreciate that people have overcome, well, most people, there have been a few people who've been less than complimentary posting on the board, but I really do appreciate the people who've come in and said, because we had, you know, an eightfold increase in new visitors since this article came out, and the majority of them, vast majority of them, have been curious and open, very intelligent, asked perceptive questions, and I really do appreciate that.
	I hope that the answers are somewhat satisfactory, at least as a possible way of looking at things.
	This is why I wouldn't want the article out because of the effect on Tom, but if it is out, I hope that we can make the best of a challenging way of presenting it.
	But it was such a caricature that it's hard to think that people would take this caricature seriously or imagine that As the earlier caller said, a guy deciding to take a break from his family is evidence of a cult or some sort of mind control influence through Java or something.
	Please install this module in your frontal lobes and I will reprogram your history.
	So I do appreciate people's openness and curiosity in this.
	And again, if we have any new people, you can...
	Type your questions in the chat window.
	I can also add you to Skype if you have a Skype ID. I can also call a telephone, though not a British one because philosophy is not always the best made profession and I don't have an international calling.
	So if anybody else has questions, comments, issues about this or anything else, I mean if we're all done with this topic, I'm more than happy to move on.
	If anybody else has anything that they'd like to talk about or more about this, feel free.
	Maybe I will say.
	Can you hear me? Uh-huh.
	I was wondering how far this taboo is going.
	I mean, if the parents are divorced and remarried and maybe they divorce again and remarry again.
	Would it be required to keep seeing everyone?
	How strong is this taboo?
	I couldn't tell you anything obviously factual because it's just a gut sort of sense.
	It just seems to me, it's not so much who you see in the family.
	It does seem to be that, you know, family is everything.
	And remember, of course, it's a Judeo-Christian society in the West.
	And Christianity has always been, you know, it's one of the Ten Commandments, right?
	Honor thy mother and thy father. Just because they had sex.
	And so... There is this cultural imperative, which is that you owe something to your parents.
	They fed you, they sheltered you, they did everything for you, they gave you the shirt off their back.
	So now you owe them until the end of time.
	And that to me is not...
	A relationship, right?
	If that's the foundation of the relationship, is obligation based on involuntary history, well, that's like saying, well, we have to obey every government because of the social contract alone, which is just a made-up thing, right?
	So I would say that if we look at this kind of thing in the context of marriage, again, which is an infinitely more voluntary relationship than children, we would say, well...
	We would never say to a woman, you can't leave your husband because he's paid bills for a while, right?
	And therefore, he now owns you and you can't, right?
	So I think that generally what it comes down to culturally is you owe your parents, and if your parents say you should do X or you should see so-and-so, disobeying them, with regards to that, it's like disobeying It's like a really bad thing, right? So I would say it's more the commandments of the immediate family, particularly parents, than it is objective, if that makes sense.
	Well, I had a question that just wasn't related to this.
	Sure, I just want to make sure that if anybody else has anything to say about...
	This article, or any quote aftermath, I don't want to sound too dramatic, right?
	It was just an article. And, you know, hey, an anarchist got interviewed in the mainstream media.
	I think that last happened with the Decembrists, as someone mentioned earlier today.
	So that's not bad either.
	So I have no problem going on to another topic.
	I just want to make sure if we have anyone who's still formulating thoughts about what we've been talking about.
	Someone has asked, is any exposure good exposure?
	I don't know. I mean, as a philosopher, I'm always hesitant to put out absolute statements.
	I don't think that every exposure is good exposure.
	But I think that there was no way to get into the mainstream media without this kind of slant being put on things.
	And so I'm relatively content With that, and again, the quotes that were out there were, I think, pretty reasonable.
	I mean, I think that, again, it's me, so what do I know about looking at myself?
	But it seemed like the quotes that were from the site were sort of little islands of reasonableness in a sea of manipulation.
	But again, that may just be me.
	But I don't think that there was a way...
	We weren't going to get any mainstream media sympathetic to what we were doing.
	There's no way that I would be interviewed about my views on politics or religion or anything like that.
	And so it was going to be through something like this that we were going to get some sort of exposure in the mainstream media.
	And I think it was about as good as it could conceivably be.
	So I think as far as this goes, it was, again, with the caveat that it's Tom's life that's most affected.
	It is a net positive.
	Do you see this as any kind of an indication of what to expect in the future as well, or is one example not enough of a trend?
	Of what you mean? I mean, just in terms of...
	This encounter with the media and how, well, frankly, how much worse it could have been.
	Is it safe to use this as a sort of measurement of what to expect from the next encounter?
	Because invariably, there will be another one.
	I mean, unless something drastic happens and you suddenly go away, right?
	I think that you're right.
	By the by, I went to go and see a movie with Christina.
	And, oh, we brought the baby too.
	We had to go and see a movie called Role Models.
	Which is funny.
	I mean, it's coarse, but it's funny and it's actually got a very warm heart to it.
	So it's a recommended film.
	And this is no spoiler, but in the middle of the film, the protagonist, Paul Rudd, he's sitting at a table and there's some pretty ugly parenting going on.
	And he basically turns to the parents and says, well, of course he's not happy with parents like you, right?
	And they're like, what?
	And he says, of course he's not happy with parents like you.
	And it's amazing because literally everyone in the theater, everyone who was sitting near the middle, everyone in the theater did the same thing.
	They went, ooh, right?
	Because everybody knows what an explosive thing that is, right?
	To... To speak the truth, to power within the family, right?
	It's a very, very difficult thing to do.
	I've been doing it for a while. It doesn't get a whole lot easier, right?
	So it's hard. If this idea of honesty and courage takes root in speaking the truth to power within the family...
	Speaking the truth to power to politics means nothing, right?
	The Daily Show is great, but does not do anything to slow government power.
	But where we can actually have an effect in terms of speaking truth to power is...
	Within family environments.
	And I myself have screwed my courage to the sticking place at times and confronted parents who are treating their children badly face to face, like in public, and attempted to bring some calm or some perspective to the situation.
	It's not easy, right? I mean, don't do it alone.
	Do it with Dobermans and padded arms.
	But, so, if we can redefine courage to include speaking the truth to power with the family, right, and remembering that children are involuntarily there and, of course, completely helpless and dependent upon the family, then I think that there will be more questions and issues around this.
	And it will gain momentum, but, of course, and it is, you know, it's the old thing.
	Like, you go to a doctor and the doctor says, where does it hurt?
	And that really I think is the role of an ethicist or a philosopher, right?
	Wherever the most sensitive and contradictory spots are within society is where we need to focus our efforts and our energies, right?
	It doesn't take A brave moral soul to say that women are equal to men.
	It's something we have absorbed as a culture, and rightly so.
	But it does, I think, still take, unless I'm a complete fraidy cat and it's easy for everyone else, it does take a certain amount of willed courage to speak the truth to power with regards to parenting.
	If this is something that is understood, like if people look at These analogies or metaphors that we talk about with regards to children and wives and involuntary childhood versus voluntary marriage.
	And they say, well, yes, if this was a woman who had gotten away from what she perceived of as an abusive husband and was then humiliated in the press in this way, I would consider that to be very retrograde, to say the least, if not downright immoral.
	If people can get that and they can begin to extend the human empathy that we all feel towards this situation of power with regards to children and parents and we can open that up, right?
	Marriages have become better once they become voluntary.
	The whole purpose for what I'm doing is to improve the family as best I can to whatever small degree I can to improve the family by making it voluntary rather than to do anything to bring it down.
	So if that becomes more generally accepted or understood as a perspective that's worth exploring Then, I think more stuff will come up about this.
	But I think it's really hard for people to think in this way.
	It certainly is for me and was for me for many years and still sometimes is.
	And of course, remember, it really comes down to advertising, right?
	If you look at The Guardian's readership, is it young, hip people on the web?
	Well, no. It's true of no newspapers that I know of.
	So appealing to the audience, people who are scared of the internet are not those under 30 or under 40 even.
	So I think if there's a sort of brave constituency of people who want this kind of information then the advertising and the shows will skew towards trying to receive it.
	That's why I don't have any advertising because I don't want to be hampered by that.
	I think it's going to take a while.
	I'm certainly not expecting any follow-up calls from this article, right?
	Because if you've seen where it's been posted, the comments have been explosive, right?
	I mean, this is a Krakatoa of a social vein to mixed metaphors.
	And so I think it'll take a while before anybody is drawn to this topic because it still remains so explosive.
	Well, in that vein, in that context, though, what do you think it says about either the reporter or the paper or the social environment at large that your entire quote about volunteerism and relationships actually made it into the story?
	Well, the truth comes out.
	I believe. Like, you said, what if it had been worse?
	Well, in a sense, it can't get worse, right?
	And we noticed this from people who come to the FDR board, and there are very few of them, but, you know, one guy came and compared me to a pedophile and stuff like that, right?
	That's not a bad post because it's too ridiculous to be taken seriously, right?
	I mean, if somebody genuinely wants to correct me and if they feel that I've made an egregious error or I'm doing something that is wrong, Then what they should do is post something and invite me to have a conversation over Uvu, over Skype, over telephone, and they should, you know, patiently and hopefully with some kindness step me through the errors that I've made, right?
	So if the article had been, you know, just a total hatchet job, it wouldn't actually have been worse because it just would have been even less credible, if that makes any sense.
	I don't think that bad stuff can come out of it, and I think that those quotes were put in there because deep down we all know that it's true.
	We all know that relationships are voluntary, right?
	I mean, once they cut the cord of my child, right, he doesn't have to be around once he gets older.
	So, the same way that my wife can wake up tomorrow and say, I'm leaving you, right?
	And she's perfectly free to do that, and it's my knowledge of that voluntarism that Helps me remember that I should take nothing for granted.
	I should appreciate everything that she does.
	I should tell her how much I care about her.
	So that she wants to be here, right?
	The moment I start thinking that she's bound to me or has to be here or whatever, the quality of our relationship is going to deteriorate.
	So it is really my goal and desire to improve relations that causes me to remind people That they are voluntary.
	So, I think that understanding is probably why, like, who knows, right?
	I can't psychologize from a distance, really, but I would say, if I had to say, it's because that's true.
	And the truth will add.
	Oh, I have a question about something you mentioned earlier in this call.
	About five minutes ago, you said something about Standing up for children in public.
	And I know that topic's kind of been touched upon in past call-in shows, but it's been with sort of...
	Like, you were still talking about your ambivalence at the time of, like, if you stand up for the child, then does the child get it worse when they go back into the car?
	Or does it show the child that there are people out there who care?
	Like... Can you sort of maybe explain a little about how you've resolved that on the side of, yeah, it's good to stick up for the child in public?
	Yeah, I mean, it's an excellent question, and there's obviously no perfect answer, but I feel that if I try to approach the parent as A calming influence rather than, you know, what do you do into your child kind of thing, right? Which is going to cause humiliation and punishment and so on, right?
	And the first thing that pops into my mind when I say that is people are going to say, and it's a reasonable thing to say, well, Steph, that's not what you do with some parents like in this call where you were pretty judgmental about the parents and so on.
	But to me that's different because in this case the child is an adult and the parenting is done.
	Right, so the children whose parents I've talked to when I see maltreatment They can't leave, right?
	So there's a different kind of approach that I think that has to be taken.
	But when there is the capacity, when the parenting is done, and it's all over, the kid's 19 or whatever, then to me it's different because you can't go back and rewrite history and can't become better parents once your children have grown up because your job is done.
	So I think it's been trying to be firm but also non-confrontational, non-humiliating with the parents just so that they Get a sense?
	Because, I mean, look, parents don't want to treat their children badly.
	I mean, no parent that I can really think of wakes up in the morning and says, you know, I'm going to mess with my kids' heads and I'm going to hit them, I'm going to yell at them, I'm going to scare them, I'm going to control them, right?
	It just kind of goes that way because they don't do the work necessary to overcome their own histories and so on, right?
	And... Like, nobody wants a heart attack, they just don't feel like getting off the couch and going for a run or whatever, right?
	So I've tried, you know, where the children are still young and vulnerable, I have tried to reason with the parents.
	But when the parenting is done, and the child is an adult and free, then I don't feel that same need.
	Now, I mean, I certainly have talked to a lot of people, and of course there's no newspaper stories about this.
	Almost everyone I talk to, and this includes Tom, I suggest sit down and be honest with you.
	Your parents sit down and tell them how you feel.
	Sit down and tell them about your childhood.
	Sit down and tell them about your thoughts and your deepest emotions and what your experience of the family is and try and stay with them because I know it's a difficult conversation, right?
	So all of that stuff, and of course that's what was occurring, I'm sure, when Barbara was saying, well, I'm trying everything to compromise and this and that, right?
	When lashing out at him in a newspaper read by millions is, as I said, scarcely an example of that.
	So if that makes any difference, if the child is going to remain in an involuntary situation, I try to be less confrontational.
	If the parenting is done and the child is no longer in a vulnerable situation, then I tend to be a little bit more, you know, sit down.
	But remember, you have the option.
	But of course, the child who is young doesn't.
	So would you mind sort of like providing an example of your kind of firm but But not confrontational, basically assertive, as if you're talking to a parent, just because I'm trying to envision what that sounds like, and I'm kind of having trouble.
	Okay, I can talk about when Christina and I were going to an amusement park.
	We saw a father, like veins bulging, screaming at his children.
	In the parking lot. We were getting out of our car and, I mean, the children were just blank, white-faced, terrified, right?
	And he was screaming at them because they'd apparently been driving for 12 hours and the kids had been in a problem and the kids, I think, were maybe seven and nine.
	I think it was two little boys. And...
	I mean to me it's like okay so I don't do something and my day is ruined or I do something in my day may only be ruined right so so I I walked up to him and Again, it's a lot of adrenaline so I remember but it was something like this.
	I said whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa What are you doing and He kind of blinks, right?
	And literally, it is like seeing people emerge out of a fog or out of quicksand.
	Because they don't see them.
	They get stuck in history or habit or whatever, right?
	And he tried to sort of say, well, but they've been difficult in the car and this and that, right?
	And I said, but come on.
	Screaming at them like this?
	You know that's not what you want to be doing, right?
	That is not the kind of parent you want to be, right?
	And he tried a couple more things, but I just kept repeating that, right?
	Like, you know. Because they do know.
	You know that's not the kind of parent you want to be.
	They're frightened. You have a seven-year-old in a car for 12 hours.
	Of course he's going to be difficult.
	He's a child! Right?
	And... And so he did eventually stop giving me the excuses, right?
	He just sort of stared at me and I just said, look, I'm just saying you might need to...
	I said, I hate to interfere, right?
	And I don't like doing this and it's not fun, right?
	But you may want to look into some anger management because this is not the parent that you want to be.
	Now, I didn't add, and your kids might find my website when they grow up.
	I didn't want to put that in, right?
	But it's really just appealing to...
	Because, I mean, if it is the parent he wants to be, like he enjoys it, then he's just a sadist, right?
	And I don't know. I mean, I can't imagine that's common at all, right?
	So, does that help?
	That's the only approach that I was able to find that was helpful.
	Yeah, I mean, that's just tremendous, though.
	Hearing the... Like the whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
	That instantly just...
	I can just see the power of the assertiveness that was in that.
	Because it wasn't aggressive the way you just described it.
	It was just the truth, right?
	And believe it or not, I got this from an Anton Chekhov play.
	When I was in theater school, I was in a play called The Seagull.
	And there's a young... Constantine, I think his name is.
	There's a young, hot, blooded, bad writer, artist guy.
	And he erupts at some woman, screams at her.
	And there's a doctor in the play who's older and wiser.
	And he says to the young man, and it's an interesting moment in the play.
	The play is interesting, though, of course, it's Chekhov, so you want to open a vein sideways.
	But it's a good play.
	And anyway, so this young man erupts at this woman, I think it is.
	And the old doctor says, no, no, no, no, not the way, not the way.
	And I always thought that was, you know, like, it's a really firm kind of way of just saying, this is not the way.
	Because either the person's going to agree with you, in which case maybe he'll go to anger management or whatever, or he's not, in which case there's nothing you've done other than acquit yourself with honor in a challenging situation.
	So I like, that's the way that I've been trying to approach it, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, I mean, that's definitely, because this is unfortunately a common experience if we leave our houses, right?
	So it's definitely, I think, something that I'm going to try in my own life, because I mean, I see this, but because I agree that it's definitely a quitting with honor if it doesn't work, right? Yeah, you can't obviously control what the parent does, but all you can control is what you say, right?
	Right. Well, thanks for answering that.
	That definitely made sense.
	You're more than welcome. All right, Nate, sorry.
	I just want to see if there was anyone else who had any questions or comments about the stuff we were talking about earlier, or we can go in another direction.
	Well, that's interesting because Greg's question is kind of a segue into this, I think.
	And I've been thinking about this for a while now, for months actually.
	Coincidence It just happens to have started, the question came up during the call with Tom and his father's treatment of animals and stuff like that.
	And with Greg's question here about yelling at children and stuff like that.
	Well, I have three cats, two of which I'm trying to find homes for so I can just sort of lighten the load.
	This morning I woke up and I had a crazy dream and I was sitting there trying to think what it meant.
	I was on the right track and I was thinking pretty hard about it.
	My cats tend to get hungry in the morning so they get up in the bed and whine and cry in my face.
	And I just was in the middle of...
	I was on a trail of thought.
	Sorry, so what you're saying is that they're actually quite similar to husbands?
	I don't know. I mean, they are.
	Sorry, go on. But the sound they make is just, you know, nonverbal.
	Well, of course, nonverbal.
	But just a loud whine.
	And I just get...
	A very strong feeling of agitation and irritation that they're interrupting my thoughts, you know?
	And I push them away and get angry and I think about it right after that and I was like, God, I don't want to do this to my kids, you know?
	Because, you know, there's going to be a stage where, you know, like whenever I... I have kids that they're going to go through a nonverbal stage and they're going to be crying for food or affection or something.
	I don't want to feel irritated or exasperated or upset that they're interrupting a thought process.
	I'm just wondering what can I do to figure this out and prevent that.
	Well, I mean, I think that's an excellent question.
	I think that all parents have that challenge, and it's not just parents, right?
	Everybody, you're doing something, and your lover or wife or husband ought to come home and interrupt, and yeah, there can be that irritation.
	The only way that I really know how to attempt to deal with irritation is through two things, you know, managing expectations and pattern recognition, right?
	Because if you say, morning is my time for thinking, right, when morning is the time for your cats to be hungry, then you have two opposing things, right?
	Right. Right, so if you say to yourself, morning is not my time for thinking, morning is my time for getting up and feeding the cats, and then I can think after that, right?
	Uh-huh. But if what you do is go into a reverie of thinking at a time where you know there's going to be an interruption, you're just setting yourself up for irritation.
	And the worst thing is that you're neither feeding your cats nor doing any quality thinking, right?
	It's a net loss for everyone.
	Right. But what if there's a third thought that comes in and it's like, oh no, if I get up and feed my cats, then I'm going to forget the dream.
	I'm gonna, like, forget parts of the dream that are really important.
	Okay, okay, no, that's an excellent question, right? So, let me give you a way that you could solve it, and I'm not trying to solve your problem, I'm just giving you ways to think about it, right?
	Right, right. You could get a little portable recorder with a headset, right?
	Or you can phone your own phone and leave a voicemail, right?
	while you're feeding your cats.
	Yeah, I already have a recorder next to my bed.
	I'm sorry? Yeah, apparently I've already come up with a solution.
	I'm just not using it.
	Right, and what I'm saying is that if you stay in this kind of null zone, and we all have it, right?
	But this null zone where you're kind of resentful, like, I want to remember the dream, but I have to feed my cats.
	Right? Right.
	That's, to me, a Simon the Boxer thing.
	Sorry for those who don't know what that means.
	This is from my book, Real-Time Relationships, available.
	For free on the website at freedomainradio.com forward slash free.
	But if that's what you're always getting, that must be unconsciously at least what you're aiming for, right?
	Whereas if you say, I must retain my dream and I must feed my cats.
	The way I try and break myself out of this situation is I give myself the million dollar question.
	And it was actually the $1,000 question before the recent financial meltdown.
	And I give myself the million dollar question, which was, if somebody said, Steph, I'm going to pay you a million dollars if you can solve the problem of wanting to record dreams and feeding cats at the same time, what would I come up with?
	A voice recorder.
	Or something. Storing cat food in my cheeks overnight.
	Putting the cat food in the room.
	You think I mean face cheeks? Anyway.
	Then you'd have a whole different set of dreams, right?
	Ferrets are attacking my rear.
	If I had a dime for every one of those dreams.
	But if it was a logistical problem which you were paid a lot of money to solve, right?
	Then you would come up with a solution, right?
	Oh, yes. Oh, yes.
	I kind of figured this would be a conflict in have-tos.
	I don't know about you, and this is completely nonsense, right?
	But... For me, mornings were the time of greatest irritation, particularly when I was in my early teens.
	Literally, when I would wake up, we were living in...
	We'd just come to Canada.
	We didn't have a place to live, and we were living with my uncle in Whitby.
	And I'd wake up, and literally, I would be like, I would be like John McCain's medulla.
	Like, I'd be grumbling to myself, like little Yosemite Sam and Quaaludes stuff coming up the stairs.
	Like, man, now I've got to say good morning to everyone, and I've got to sort of smile, and I've got to eat my food, I've got to go to school.
	Like, I was like a 90-year-old man trapped in the body of an 11-year-old boy.
	And mornings are challenging for people who have difficult families, right?
	Mornings can be really challenging.
	So if this occurs for you, particularly in the morning, right, then again, to me, it's always useful.
	Start early, start simple. What was my experience of mornings when I was five or six or ten or whatever?
	Is there anything left over from that?
	Irritating. I'm sorry?
	They were always irritating.
	Oh, so that can't be it. I wonder if there's anything else we could talk about.
	Yeah. That's too easy.
	That's too easy. Sorry. And now you're not even making me work with all our guests here.
	Yeah. Well, I think I already thought my way halfway through this.
	I bet you thought all the way through it.
	It's been months since this question came up, and I'm sure my unconscious was doing a lot of work.
	Yeah, and...
	Yeah, that's definitely the answer.
	Although, I mean, that's not the only time where my cats come in and whine, you know?
	I mean, you've heard them on the phone, so...
	But yeah, I just...
	So... I'm sorry, let me just back you up for a second there as well.
	How is the psychic cat helmet coming along?
	Because I remember you were working on that for a while, and it's great because you've actually figured out that they're whining.
	Because I'm telling you, if a million dollar idea is not how to record your dream and feed a cat, but the psychic cat helmet, which allows you to actually know the motivations of your cats, that's brilliant!
	I want to cut. No, seriously though, it's the way that people talk about these things as well, and not just you, and I do this myself as well, right?
	I mean, if I'm...
	You know, let's pretend that for a moment I'm not a perfect husband.
	You know, let's just go into that realm.
	This is the realm of the other universe where God might live.
	So if Christina comes in when I'm recording a video and says, hi!
	Right, because she doesn't know I'm recording a video or whatever, right?
	Then I can either be like, she just interrupted my video, or I can be like, I have a wife who wants to come in and say hi the moment she comes home, right?
	Right. And so, you know, it could be, ah, they're just whiny, right?
	But that automatically is going to predispose you to view it in a certain way, right?
	Right. So they're coming in to get attention from me because they want...
	Because they like you! Yes.
	Or the food. We don't know which.
	That's why you should blend the two with the cheeks thing I was talking about.
	But no, it's like, they like me.
	They are showing me affection.
	Could be. I don't know. Maybe they are whining, right?
	But what I'm saying is that...
	Because parents do this, right?
	And not to put you in even remotely the same category, but what I was talking about with Greg earlier, right?
	This guy was framing...
	This guy who was driving for 12 hours ended up at the amusement park.
	He was framing his children as their trouble, their whiny, their complaining, their whatever, right?
	As opposed to, well, what is the truth?
	They're bored, right?
	They're tired.
	They're anxious because their father is getting more and more angry, right?
	It's really hard to know what the emotional state of other people is.
	I mean, we get it kind of unconsciously, but it's hard to really be curious, and that's why I keep talking about curiosity in RTR, right?
	So, the moment we come to a conclusion We shape our own emotional response to a situation, right?
	Now, some of them, of course, if a wolf attacks me, I don't think he wants to play, right?
	I mean, if he's currently got my leg in its jaws, it's not playtime, right?
	So some stuff is not ambiguous, or some stuff is not that.
	But I think they're hungry.
	Not they're whining, but they're hungry.
	And think how you feel when you're hungry and if your food was dependent upon someone else, right?
	Right. Right. And of course, this tends to reduce it, right?
	So, your cats whine because you have trained them that they have to whine to get food, right?
	Yes, I have. Right, because you don't want to give them food, and if they whine, you will be like, fine, I'll give you food, right?
	Yes, I have.
	Whereas if you gave them food the moment you woke up and were affectionate, they probably would not be whiny.
	That's why Christina feeds them for two and a half hours.
	His cats have trained him.
	I'm sorry? Greg is saying, my cats have trained me.
	But I'm just saying that there's a kind of helplessness and a kind of perspective on this Cat interaction, so to speak, that I think can be modified quite a bit just by thinking about it differently and also by recognizing the role that you've played in creating this situation, if that makes sense, and finding alternatives, right?
	Right, right.
	Like this recording, so you don't have to have an either-or, right?
	Very, very, very true.
	I really like the example you gave with Christina, because that would be far more accurate, I think.
	Yeah, because my other option would be, so she comes home and doesn't come upstairs.
	Yay, I get to finish my video.
	Oh, my wife doesn't want to see me, right?
	Which is the more important one to me, right?
	Which isn't going to have a good effect on your video.
	Which wouldn't have a good effect on your video.
	No, it probably wouldn't.
	What you'd see is somebody did that video of the cartoon boxing glove on the extenders coming into the picture.
	You probably would see one of those for real, which would probably be quite startling if people say, wow, how did he do that?
	that his arms must be like really long so we just need christina to come into the videos and go hi more often i think Oh, yeah. You know, I did a video the other day.
	I can't remember which one it was.
	I think it was agnosticism.
	A long video and a difficult one.
	And towards the end of it, the phone keeps ringing, right?
	Oh, right, right.
	Yeah, you know the one, right? So what was happening?
	Well, I said to Christina, because I am pretty much Jabba the Hutt when it comes to this sort of personal motivation.
	I said to Christina, listen, can you call me at 10.30?
	Call me at 10 because I need to get up for X, Y, and Z, right?
	And I'd been up working really late, so I was sleeping in.
	So, of course, she phones, right?
	And I'd completely forgotten about this, right?
	And this is just The mind, right?
	And the interesting ways that it works.
	So I'd forgotten about it and I was like, Arrgh!
	Who keeps calling me? I bet you it's a telemarketer!
	Arrgh! You know?
	And then I realized that Christina had called me like four times, right?
	And then I'm like, Oh my God!
	Is there a problem? How's the baby?
	And then like, I'm literally, I'm like a soap opera compressed into nine seconds, right?
	Like it's a complete rollercoaster being me sometimes, right?
	Like everyone, right? Right?
	And then I remembered, Oh!
	Right.
	Right. I've been there, I think, many times.
	I spend entire days like that sometimes, right?
	So that's why I have the neurological system of an ancient tribe.
	It's burnt out like acid.
	But what happened?
	The phone rang, and I went through all this rollercoaster stuff, right?
	And so it's really what we think about these kinds of things that really has a big effect on what happens.
	Well, thank you very much.
	This is definitely helpful.
	It's going to prevent a lot of...
	I know cats are just cats, but children, I don't want to mess that up.
	Right, and I mean, it's good to practice on cats, and I'm not going to take that joke any further, but it is good to practice.
	You know, that's not a bad thing to work out before you have kids.
	Oh dear. Christina didn't get it for a moment.
	But then unfortunately she did, right?
	There's a film, I've mentioned this before, but this is an appropriate joke.
	There's a film, and I can't remember the name of it, With John Lovitz, who is a very good comedian.
	And Tia Carrera, I think, is in it.
	And he turns the light off and the room is pitch black.
	And then Tia Carrera, and there's a cat on the bed, right?
	And John Lovitz is like, oh, that's so good.
	Oh, that's so good.
	And she's like, uh, I'm over here.
	And then you hear...
	Which I thought was pretty funny.
	But anyway. Okay, enough animal abuse jokes and let's get back to you with the cat food.
	Oh, well, I think that all...
	That's run its course, too. Excellent.
	Yes, Simon the Boxer set myself up thing.
	Definitely need to...
	Yeah, so it's kind of like child-proofing the house, too.
	Like getting vases, expensive ming vases away from the area.
	Yeah, moving expectations away from what is actually going to happen, right?
	I mean, if I think that I'm going to write a book in the first couple of months after a baby is born...
	Then I'm setting myself up to not enjoy having the baby around, right?
	Right. If I think that I'm going to get lots of sleep when the baby is around, then I will be at Christina's office pretending to work.
	Sorry, she's still here. Then I'm just setting myself up to not enjoy that experience.
	Because I'm just setting myself up for the impossible.
	And if you wake up saying, The last five years my cats have been hungry in the morning, but today will be different.
	Then, of course, that's what I mean by pattern recognition and setting expectations.
	The pattern recognition is clear that if I could take on some big intellectual task, like writing the next in the Anarchy series, How to Achieve Freedom, which is going to be a monster work, if I say, well, I've got to get that done by next summer, then all I'm doing is setting a goal that is self-generated and That is going to cause me to view my baby as an interference, which is lunatic.
	Why would you have a baby and then set something up where the baby becomes an interference, right?
	Right. Expecting the impossible is setting yourself up for disappointment and just...
	Well, and crankiness, right? And frankly, you know...
	The baby wants that around, right?
	The baby doesn't want...
	I'm not going to sit there and in 12 years say to the kid, hey, remember how I was kind of cranky when you were a baby?
	But look, here's a book, right?
	Because the baby doesn't care.
	The baby wants me. Right.
	Right. You know, and I've talked about this, right?
	The baby kicks, right? When we say, we're trying to reframe that.
	It's like the baby's trying to hug us.
	The baby's reaching out rather than the baby is, you know, an angry kung fu villain or something, you know, which seems a little hard to sustain.
	Right.
	Yeah, that puts a lot more responsibility on thinking ahead and taking a broad look at your expectations and then Well, I would actually say it's also thinking behind Nate, too, right?
	Because that's what the pattern recognition is, right?
	Oh, right. Because nothing's going to be different tomorrow.
	They're going to come in there and whine, or not whine, rewording that.
	Beg for food. Beg!
	Oh yes, much better.
	Oh, begging! Well done!
	There's a growth spurt if ever I saw one.
	Let me just hose myself off.
	But here's the thing too, right?
	Let's say, and this is why I think it's an impossible situation, right?
	So, it's like the Oscar Wilde thing, which we talked about.
	I mentioned in the chat room earlier today about this Guardian article, right?
	The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about, right?
	And so, if the baby wakes me up for the fourth time that night, right, then I'm going to be like, I can say, and I probably will, I'm human, right?
	I'm like, ah, this is terrible.
	I can't believe the baby is crying again, right?
	But if I didn't hear from the baby for four hours, I would be terrified, right?
	Talk about it. So if your cats were eerily silent tomorrow morning, how would you feel when you woke up?
	Had I been run over?
	You know, did they go outside? They're dead!
	Right? Should have changed the key.
	Right. Right, right.
	So when the baby's kicking, it's like, great, the baby's doing fine, right?
	Because if the baby, it's always, oh, it's terrible, the baby's kicking, it's keeping me up, and so on, right?
	And when I say we, I mean, not me.
	And you don't want to get into those situations where it's like, if the cats are, quote, whining, that's bad, but if they're not whining, I'm worried, because then there's no good situation, right?
	You're just setting yourself up.
	Yeah, if the baby's crying, I'm frustrated.
	If the baby's not crying, I'm frightened.
	It's like, yay!
	I'm glad I signed up for this, right?
	Yeah, I think your experience with this is going to help a lot of people.
	Well, or it'll turn me into the biggest frickin' hypocrite on the planet, right?
	But we'll see. Hopefully it will work out.
	Or I'll set up an anti-FDR site and sympathize with all parents, right?
	We'll see. I hope that it will be the former, but you never know.
	Right. Well, thank you very much.
	You're welcome. Great question. I have a lot to consider.
	All right, I guess we have time for one more quickie, honey.
	No, sorry, we have time for one more quickie.
	If people had, if somebody had a relatively quick question, feel free to speak up.
	Yeah, nothing, Christina was saying, nothing's quite that quick these days.
	If you've ever seen a supertanker attempting to turn around in a bathtub, that's like watching Christina attempt to flip in the bed.
	There are actually cranes, a trapeze, and a pogo stick that she uses, which is leftover from earlier stuff.
	There was no mention of anarchism from the reporter.
	Sorry, I thought I had a moment.
	I just took a bite of something.
	I apologize for chewing in your ear.
	The reporter did not mention anarchism, but she mentioned the core principle of anarchism, which is voluntarism, which is that all relationships are voluntary.
	And should be voluntary, which would remind ourselves that they're voluntary.
	And that, of course, is a very important principle in anarchism and the fundamental issue that anarchists have with the state, which is that it's a coercive and imposed institution, which we don't need, which is actually bad for humanity as a whole.
	So no, she didn't mention anarchism, but she did mention the voluntarism, which encapsulates that.
	Alright. Well, thank you everybody so much for dropping by for this Sunday show, for those who are new.
	Again, I really do appreciate your curiosity about what's happening here.
	And we do have these shows at 4 p.m.
	Eastern Standard Time. Every Sunday, please drop by the chat room, introduce yourself, say hi, see if there's anything of use.
	Of course, the podcasts are all free, the books are all free, because I have the business sense of a sea sponge.
	So grab as much as you can, if you like, and see what there is of value for you.
	And thank you again so much for dropping by, and have a wonderful, wonderful week.

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