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June 24, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:22:54
1401 Bad Boys Convo

Drawn to the rose-bearing darkness are we...

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All right, the Divine Missy, you have the floor about the boys who are very nasty.
I'd rather not talk about that, if you please.
No. Oh, the girl who is very nasty.
All right, so... Yeah, so your loins are pulling you off a cliff, I think is how it would probably be put most poetically.
See, that's...
I don't think that's the whole of it.
I think that's actually a symptom now and not a cause.
So the thing that I've...let me go back and give a little bit of context.
So since the last call that we had about my job, things have gotten very much worse.
So, you know, we found out that we're not getting our bonuses.
We found out that our health insurance is getting cancelled.
There was a three days delay in us getting paid, which we were told was a banking error.
Now, you understand that that's exactly what was predicted, right?
Yeah, exactly.
But you're saying it like it's a little bit of a surprise?
It's not a surprise.
What surprises me is that I still want to be surprised.
Because what I tell myself after all this happens is, okay, step back.
What did you expect?
Did you expect something different?
Right. And so I think there's a deeper reason to why I'm expecting something different.
And that's That's what I've been trying to get at over the past week or so.
And what's been happening is what generally happens when I'm being driven out of a place.
I'm not being driven out by anyone except me.
I don't know if that makes sense.
So I'll go on, I guess.
Wait, so when they're talking about the Nasty Boys?
That's another... Yeah, because we already did the work thing.
Let's talk about the nasty boys. Because it's probably a more interesting symptom to work with.
But anyway, if you want to talk about work, we can start there.
So, the nasty boys thing is one of the symptoms.
So, it's... I don't know how to go about talking about this without giving details, which...
Probably don't want to...
Well, I mean, sure, it's not only just shown up, you know, this year or something, right?
So it's to do with being attracted to men who are not necessarily the best for you, is that...?
But it...
I don't want to say it's different this time because it isn't, but I think it comes from a different place.
Um... So, I started feeling these things, I guess.
Which is how it generally starts off with, you know, I know a guy and I'm, you know, friends with him or whatever.
And then he... I start feeling really paranoid.
For example, like...
My god, so...
So this guy is like, he's talking with other people.
That must mean that, like, he has no more room in his life for me, and like, why doesn't he love me?
And it gets all horrible and spirals out of control, like, completely beyond the bounds of reason.
And so the first thing that I did was, you know, I sat down, and I had the first conversation that I've had in a year, almost a year, with My Miko system.
So sat down, it's like, okay, is it actually about this guy?
No, it's not about this guy.
Do I have any evidence that he doesn't like me anymore?
No. Okay.
So what exactly am I missing out on?
Is it his affection or is it some other affection from somebody else?
Okay, basically I drilled down to where it came from and it took me about 36 hours and I completely don't feel that towards this guy anymore.
So it went...
Sorry? Sorry, go ahead.
I just said right. So it went from, you know, the...
The first time I did this, it took me three years to figure that out.
The next time I majorly did this took me three months to figure it out.
And now it's taken me 36 hours to figure it out.
But yet, I still feel like I haven't made any sort of progress, whatever.
Right, because you like to not have the feelings rather than disarm this Yeah, and it's not even really attraction because it's not the guy that I want.
It's like so not about them, right?
Because it's like these are always people that if I was in my right mind I wouldn't pick.
Not necessarily because they're suboptimal or evil or whatever, but just because it's so obvious that it's not going to work out.
You know? Right.
Okay. Okay. So, I think that given all of the other sort of symptoms, I guess, that are around it, which is basically my Thinking of projects which are going to to get me out of America again and Doing things like or I've been feeling especially since the barbecue like I've been missing the the train to work Lots of days and I only arrive 15 minutes late because I get the next train right,
but it's kind of like all of this stuff is The man stuff and the turning up late to work stuff and the not giving myself any credit for what I've done stuff are all the things that normally precipitate my doing something totally wild and crazy to undermine or completely blow up any stability that I've built for myself.
So that's what I mean.
Yeah, it's the going to Russia thing.
So that's what I say when I say it's a symptom but not a cause.
Right. And, you know, just not to be too opaque, I mean, you were attracted to someone and you then talked yourself out of that attraction because you felt that it was not the fellow who was actually the issue but it was rather something else, right?
Right, exactly. And it's like Well, that affection that I keep missing and keep trying to find in other places that I know I'm not going to find it, well, where does that stem from?
And it stems from, I think, the same thing that myself Sorry, I'm sorry, you just gobbled up there.
If you could just try that again.
Oh, sorry.
So I think that the same, you know, searching for or trying to get or thinking that I will get affection in places where, number one, I know I'm not going to get it.
And two, I don't actually want it in that way.
Comes from the same era in my life as, you know, wanting to.
I'm sorry, Charlotte, you're really garbling it up.
Is that happening for other people or is that just for me that other people can not catch what you're saying?
saying?
Sorry, I just want to make sure I hear what you're saying.
Yeah, sorry, it's gobbling.
You're gambling for everyone, so if you can just see if there's anything else that's occurring on your internet.
Sure.
Go ahead, give it a restart, and just let me know when you come back in, and I'll put you back in.
Okay.
Okay.
*Death* *Death*
Just a spot. Oh, always.
I can't get these pans clean to the satisfaction of eagle eye Christina with industrial scouring pads, sand blasters and a hand grenade.
Some people just have that talent.
Oh, it's weird. Also, I do the dishes at night, like I do the night.
Chef Christine has gone to bed, and so I do the dishes at night when it's not quite as bright, and then in the cold light of day, it's like...
All right, let's try adding the C in again.
Where is... ...
Sorry, I'm just trying to figure out that the screen to add people is no longer there.
How exciting. And I can't add Charlotte because she thinks she's already in.
Of course. Can you mute her?
No, there used to be a list, but there should be a list.
I'm sure I'll figure it out. There should be a list along the top.
Of people I can add or who's on the call.
Information... What if you click on the chat name?
Yeah, I just tried that.
Display dial pad, sound settings, video settings.
Don't want the dial pad. Normally it's just along the top of the right.
I just tried clicking on the conversation.
It says I'm hosting it, but it won't let me add because it thinks she's already in, but there's no list to recall her.
It's normally just along the top of the screen.
Let me just try. Oh, there we go.
I just click on the very top. Alright, let's get it back in.
Okay, is that better at all?
Uh, still a little spotty.
Try again. Um...
Not sure what else it could be.
No, sorry, it's not working.
I can try calling a telephone or we can try it another time, but that's not going to work because I'm only getting every third syllable.
Okay. Alright.
Let's go old school.
Let's chat it old school.
All right.
Let's chat it old school.
Let's chat it old school.
Try it coming.
Ah, there we there we go.
Okay, is that better?
Yeah, I'd like to order two pepperoni.
Sorry, go ahead. What, two whole pepperonis?
That doesn't sound like much to eat.
Two whole pepperonis, that's right.
Well, you know, girls got to watch this figure.
So, you were talking about that you feel that this...
A focus on getting affection is coming from sort of an old or historical place?
Yeah, it's coming from an old historical place, and I think that it comes from the same place as feeling really uncomfortable or feeling, you know, like I need to blow up any sort of It's the same thing with my mother.
She blows up, she plays nice for a while, but you know that the blow-up's coming again, so you may as well wait for it to erupt on its own, right?
Right. Right.
Just tell me, if you don't mind, tell me a little bit more about the desire for affection.
Tell me about the affection that you're looking for and what that means to you and what you need.
I think we all feel that, so I think we all have that desire.
I think it's very common and I think it's actually in a way very healthy, but I just wanted to know what you meant about it.
Sure, so this is actually It's not really an adult love that I'm looking for in the way that I think about what an actual healthy adult relationship would look like.
It's more like what I want is sort of support of the type.
It's like an unconditional love, right?
It's like, you know, It's really hard to talk about it because, you know, I start feeling really, really sad whenever I think about it and I can't quite put it into words.
It's just like, it's more a feeling that I want, I guess.
It's the feeling of being safe and being taken care of and not having to Go out and not really not having to do things for myself.
It's not being scared that if I fail, it's just me, you know?
Right, right. No, I totally understand that, but go on.
And so it's like, well, I don't think that An actual, like, adult relationship provides or should provide unconditional love in that way.
But not having had that before at all, it's kind of like, you know, why should anybody love me?
And further, like, if I see or if I perceive that affections being It doesn't even really have to be.
It's just like I go into absolute panic mode that generally results in mine throwing myself at people, which actually ends up driving them away and doing the opposite of what I desperately want.
So I don't know what else to say really.
Hang on, Charlotte. I think Steph dropped out.
I don't see him in the list anymore.
Oh, dear. I don't know if he realizes it.
Oh dear, it's sad to think that he's, you know, holding forth somewhere on the other end and we can't leave him.
Thank you.
Who've had, you know, crappy parenting feel that to a very strong degree, right?
A very strong degree to just get those kinds of resources.
And people will do a lot to try and get those kinds of resources from others, right?
So they'll try to, they'll make money and they'll, you know, spend it so that people will be attracted to them and then it's sort of a, or they'll, you know, try to be sexy or they'll try to be Athletic or they'll try to be famous or they'll try to be talented or they'll try to be whatever.
To have something that will attract people to them, that's not quite equal, right?
Right. And the one thing that I can sort of say, you know, with my...
Isabella's almost six months old now, is that, man, I can tell you a couple of things.
The first thing that I can tell you is that people who hurt children...
Are completely scabby freaks of nature.
I didn't get what freaks these people really are until I became a parent.
The very idea that I would do something to hurt Isabella, I mean, you know, that's not medically necessary, right?
It's completely mind-blowing.
I was just this morning, I was climbing the stairs, and I was kissing her cheek, and I was sort of hiking, and I was getting her to get ready for her nap.
And I was just thinking, like, okay, so my brother had a younger brother, right, me, and he looked at this little baby and thought, hey, this is a great little baby to be cruel to.
I mean, I didn't even understand just how completely freaky that is.
You know, let alone my mom, you know, hitting kids and bullying kids.
It's so completely bizarre.
They're so helpless and they're so dependent.
And they're so needy.
I mean, the amount of resources you have to pour into a child, literally, they're holes without a bottom.
And I like that.
I really, really like that.
To be that generous, to give that much.
It's really, really quite a pleasure.
But she needs so much.
She needs everything from us.
And the idea of using that as some sort of ego, power trip, bullying, or something like that, it's so incomprehensible to me that I am much firmer...
In the defu unrepentant abusers than I ever was before.
Much firmer. Because they are such unredeemable, evil freaks of nature that there simply is no possibility of having even a remotely non-toxic, non-abusive relationship with them.
I just sort of wanted to mention that up front, right?
That becoming a parent has just made it all the more horrifying that parents would Would ever treat a child abusively.
It's just, they literally are an opposite species to us, right?
So I just sort of wanted to mention that up front.
And sorry, if you're not talking, if you could just mute yourself, I'd really appreciate that.
I could just hear typing. So that's the first thing that I would say.
And just to put that in relation to your own mother, I think is just really, really important to understand just what a contemptible How sick, you know, necrotic freak of nature she actually was and how there was never any possibility of extracting anything other than, you know, venom, shit, and awful from her soul.
So you do have this huge chasm of unfilled expectations and legitimate and genuine needs.
And that's a reality.
That's nothing to be ashamed of.
I'm not saying you are, but it is nothing to be ashamed of.
of, it is perfectly natural.
To have had to try and navigate and extract nuggets of nutrition and distracted affection from abusive parents is like spending your life like a nimble pickpocket in a highly dangerous police state or an Islamic state where they cut your hand off for stealing, right?
It is incredibly stressful.
It is incredibly splitting.
It is incredibly exhausting, right?
Yeah.
Definitely.
So the needs that you have, they are all...
Perfectly healthy. If you didn't have those needs, if you didn't feel those needs for affection, for someone to take care of you, for someone to make everything better, for someone to literally kiss the boo-boos, and I know that sounds diminutive, and I don't mean it that way, because you are left with these incredible, unfulfilled, nearly bottomless needs, and it's damn good that you feel them, because if you didn't, you would act out, right?
Yeah, definitely. So that's the first thing that I will say.
The second thing that I will say is you will never get these needs met.
Yeah. Right?
We know that, right? It's hard to accept, but we know it.
Right, exactly. And that's, you know, that's the thing that I told myself, which pretty much made the, I don't know, the It's not quite right to call it lust, right?
But that's what I told myself.
It sort of made it go away this time.
Infatuation may be a reasonable word.
Infatuation, I guess. Yeah, it's like, you know, I know that I have this, and I know who I want it from, but it's not going to happen, you know?
If it could have happened, it would have happened back there, but it couldn't even happen back there.
It never could have happened back there, and it never will happen in the future.
And in order to avoid the pain of that loss, of that genuine loss, of this tragedy of an eternally hungry childhood that so often leads into eternally hungry and devouring adulthood, right, of obsession and chaos and, you know, infatuation and lust and distraction and drugs and sex. infatuation and lust and distraction and drugs and sex.
And it is so – in order to avoid just that simple agonizing loss, you know, the needs that weren't fulfilled that never will be fulfilled that we just have to find a way to grieve, right?
Because once you grieve them, then you don't need that from others, right?
But in order to avoid that grieving, because it feels like a grief that will swallow us whole, because when we were children, if we had grieved that, it would have absolutely swallowed us whole.
But in order to avoid that necessary grieving, we imagine and we hope It's almost like trick other people into investing resources into us by distracting them with our skills, our talents, our abilities, our bodies, our intelligence, our creativity, all of the goodies that we possess.
We kind of want to dangle them in front of people like bait so that someone's going to become obsessed with us and fill in all of those gaps and voids that were left by crap parenting, abusive parenting.
Right. I mean, you know, when I realized that again, because, you know, I've come to these conclusions before, right?
But when I realized that again, man, that was one of the suckiest 36 hours that I've gone through.
But, you know, there's still, like, so much more down there, right?
Because it's when...
It's sort of the big one, I guess, happens and I do stuff like, you know, move to another city within three days of deciding to do it or like go to Russia or whatever.
It's like there is so much stuff that I don't feel that I can or don't want to believe that it's true that I have to grieve for that, you know, I literally, I run away.
Sure. Now, why do you do that, do you think?
And I understand it, at least I think I understand it, but why do you think you do it?
What does the running do to help with the fantasy that the need can be filled somehow?
See, the thing is, it doesn't actually help.
I mean, it's... No, no, I know it doesn't.
Sorry to interrupt. I know it doesn't help, but why do you have the fantasy that it will?
What is the thinking that produces the fantasy that it will help?
Part of it is a me plus thing.
So it's sort of, you know, I'm going to go away and I'm going to, you know, learn all these languages and start up all this stuff and have all, you know, these wonderful adventure stories to, you know, proffer to, you know, people that I meet.
That's part of it. Right, so you then become interesting, sorry to interrupt, you become interesting because you went to Russia, you did these things, you taught here, you wrote a novel and Set in Italy and you went to Italy to write it and that makes you somebody worth talking to.
Is that right? Yeah, exactly.
That's only part of it.
And sorry, the sad thing is that you know that the people who would be interested in you only because of that are exactly the same people who have unfulfilled needs, right?
Yeah, exactly. And it's the same as the men thing, right?
It's like I'm trying to go out and get this stuff again from people that...
I, if I was in my right mind, would not choose.
Right, right. Sorry, I interrupted you.
I do apologize. Please go on. No, that's all right.
The other part of it, you know, I know that there's really got to be something else because it's not just that.
that can't be just that, but I'm having a hard time like putting my finger on it. - With putting your finger on what else it might be?
You think it may be more than just that?
Yes, I think so, but I'm not sure what else it is.
All right. And since we've talked about this before and you feel that there is something more, which I'm going to completely accept as a valid possibility, we'll find out if there is or if there isn't, then I could ask you some questions which I think might be helpful.
In figuring out what else it might be.
Does that sound like a good course of action?
I don't want to turn off the other aspects of the conversation that you were just talking about, but I'm happy to ask those other questions.
No, I think that questions is the way to go because I'm sort of at a loss at the moment.
Sure, okay. Well, there was a podcast conversation probably about 14 to 16 months ago, I can't remember exactly, or maybe that's not even that accurate, but it was a question in which I asked the first of two, I guess, really important questions to do with philosophy.
And the first was the question that I asked back then.
I think you were in on the call, but I can't recall, and I'm sorry if I've got that wrong.
And the question was, what percentage of your conversations are honest, or what percentage of your interactions are honest during the day?
Were you in on that call, or did you listen to it afterwards?
Um, I vaguely remember it.
I either listened to it or was on it.
But, yeah, yeah, I remember that.
And, you know, people started off quite optimistic, and then we were like 5%, 10%, or whatever, right?
Right. And that's, you know, again, well, sorry, not again, because you haven't heard this.
I was just talking about this with someone about his resume, right?
You can't manage what you can't measure.
You can't improve what you don't have a statistic or any kind of, even a sort of gut-level statistic about.
And so when people really thought about it, they were coming up with like five or ten percent of my interactions during the day, really honest, right?
So let me ask you the second and subsequent, though, in the long run, more important question.
And I don't mean this to be provocative, because it's a really tough question to ask and to answer, but tell me what you think.
What percentage of your day Charlotte, do you feel you act in a noble or a virtuous manner?
Well, given that most of the day is spent working to make such people money, very little of it.
Well, that's a very honest answer, but tell me what percentage would you say?
And you can say percentage of the week if you'd prefer or whatever, right?
But it's an interesting question to ask, right?
Because this is supposed to be our dedication, right?
It's to virtue. And again, I ask myself this like almost every day.
Well, how did I do today, right?
I mean, because it's important, right?
This is sort of what I quit my career for and dedicated my life to.
It's like, well, how am I doing, right?
It's sort of an important question to ask.
Exactly. I mean, the only times...
That I can think of myself as acting in a virtuous or noble manner to the extent that I do or can is when I'm talking with one of you guys, and not always completely then.
So I would be surprised if, you know, it was 5% of my week.
I would be surprised if it was that high.
So, 5%? You would be surprised if, right?
So, give me a more, like, that's not quite an accurate answer then, right?
Perhaps 2%.
All right.
And can you tell me what would constitute that 2%?
And, you know, I'm sorry to ask you this question, because I know it's not an easy question, of course, right?
And it's a question that everybody really should Definitely.
And, you know, I was actually thinking about this on my walk tonight.
It's like you said in the last call that, you know, you're really happy with yourself if you can put 50% of your values into practice every day.
Oh, man, I'm dying.
If I do that, I'm top of the moon, baby.
But anyway, go on. But I hadn't really considered it from this angle.
So, The noble or virtuous things I can think about is I try.
I don't always feel that I do a good job, but I try whenever I talk with anyone on FDR to be as honest as I absolutely can to give feedback in the moment or to ask questions to help people Get through, you know, whatever stuff they're working with at the moment.
And, you know, every night before I go to bed, for example, I try to, if they're willing, I try to have a chat with my niece and I write down, you know, whatever they say and whatever I think, which isn't always flattering.
Again, it's, you know, just that trying to be honest thing.
But that's not very much of my week, of course.
Sorry, you said you have a chat with your...
Was it Muse that you said, or was it some other word?
With my ecosystem. Oh, right.
Okay, sorry. I just wanted to make sure I understood what you were saying.
Okay. All right, so your time on FDR, and, you know, just to back that up, I must say that...
And I'm sorry that we didn't get much of a chance to chat while you were up here for the barbecue, but your contributions that I saw were uniformly great, and you were perfectly charming and...
Positive and fun company, so I just wanted to thank you for that.
Oh, thank you. I appreciate that very much.
Okay, and so you've been involved in philosophy for how long?
Oh, good Lord.
Well, I first read, well, the first time I read Aristotle because I didn't understand any of it, but the first time I read Rand, I was like, 11.
So, you know, for 12 years or so, I've been, you know, studying philosophy.
Right, okay. And FDR, two, two and a half?
Coming up on two, yeah.
Coming up on two, okay. So, 10 years, sorry, 12 years, you said, and again, and this is not to say, and, you know, it's not all divided into pre and post FDR, but certainly...
FDR, you know, the aim is to really put traction into people's lives with these ideals, right?
So that we don't sort of reel at the shrugged and say, well, if John Galt ever knocks on my door, I'll seriously consider quitting because we know that's not going to happen, right?
So we have to try and put it more into real practice, right?
Yeah, there you go. And actually, his hair is more brassy than copper.
Anyway, sorry, just kidding. That's awesome.
But no, there wasn't very much traction at all before I joined FDR. So I don't even really...
Right, but that's, I mean, it's an interesting question to ask, and, you know, sometimes it's not an easy question to ask, right, because, you know, we all have those inner catapults aimed directly at our foreheads, you know, self-attack demons on the loose, right?
But it's an interesting question to ask and say, okay, well, I've now been studying this for over a decade, right, 12 years, done some therapy, been involved in some pretty Personal conversations, found a community of like-minded thinkers, and with all of that effort, I'm hitting my values 2% of the time.
Right. Yeah.
That's what I mean when I say it's a really...
And look, just to be kind, and not even kind, but just basically fair, I don't think I was even hitting 2% when I was your age, so, you know, good for you, right?
Yeah. But it is an interesting question, right?
Because we say... Reason equals virtue equals happiness, right?
And so if we're only hitting virtue 2% of the time, or only hitting, you know, and again, it's not like I'm saying you're evil 98%, but obviously I'm not saying anything like that.
I'm just talking about, you know, the real good glow of virtue.
If we're only hitting that 2% of the time, then we're obviously not being as rational as we'd like, because if reason equals virtue, then we should be hitting it more than 2% of the time.
And if reason equals virtue equals happiness...
Then, by God, we are not setting ourselves up for a life of happiness if we believe there's only one route to get there and we only take it 2% of the time, right?
Right, exactly. So tell me what you think of what I'm saying.
Because it's a big question, right? And you just happen to be the happy guinea pig wandering into this section of the maze, right?
But tell me what you think of that.
Because it's a little startling to think of it that way, isn't it?
Yeah, I mean, that makes a lot of sense.
I mean, given that You know, a lot of these, a lot of the environment that I'm in that I've put myself in is basically, you know, anti-rational.
It's like, well, I'm not really setting myself up in the broad sense for being happy, but I'm not even setting myself up in the sort of micro sense in the part of my life that's just me.
For happiness, right?
Because I'm lying to myself quite a bit at the time.
I'm not being, you know, not having integrity with myself.
Sorry, just to clarify, when you say that you're lying to yourself, do you mean that you're consciously lying to yourself?
Because that certainly wasn't my experience the last time we talked about your work.
I mean, you genuinely seem to believe these things about your work, and it wasn't like...
I didn't get any sense of conscious dissembling on your part.
No, no, I'm not...
I'm not consciously lying to myself.
What just popped up in my mind is it comes to the same, but I guess it doesn't.
No, it really doesn't.
I mean, there's sins of omission and there's sins of commission, right?
And it's important to distinguish between the two, right?
So, you know, obviously there's stabbing a guy, and then there's not stopping someone else from stabbing a guy, and then there's not spending the rest of your life wandering the streets hoping to stop people getting stabbed, right?
Which is Not a very productive use of one's time, right?
But there are these different levels.
Now, I think that where we all fall short is where we have these values and we think that there are these exceptions, right?
So we think of it in the realm of the state and of God and of the families and, you know, we listen to these podcast conversations.
They're like, oh my God, that's terrible, right?
And then we go to work with irrational and abusive people and we don't make that connection, right?
Right. And that we all do.
And we all... Again, maybe there's someone in the conversation who doesn't, and if so, I'd love to ask tips, right?
But we all do that. Yeah, really.
If so, too. Yeah, if so, you know, you take the mic and I'll sit at your knee, right?
So I'm happy to do that, right?
So we all think that there are these exceptions to these values that we practice in the abstract or we sympathize with other people in the abstract, right?
But then when in our own personal lives, it becomes...
You know, matching the values to reality becomes like a game of reverse magic, sorry, reverse magnet push-along, right?
Or kind of like trying to grab that slippery bar of soap, right?
Right. That makes sense.
And as you're saying this, I'm thinking of some of the stuff even now that it's like, okay, like we've come to these conclusions before.
We know that I do like the Me Plus thing and all of this.
It's like, Really?
There's no exceptions.
I've been trying to make quite a few recently.
Yeah, we all do.
We all do because it's pretty grim, right?
And to get that there are no exceptions, right?
I mean, it's just pretty grim because it clarifies life a little bit too much for our tastes sometimes, right?
It's like, really?
I have to live this all the time?
Damn! Right, and I used to do that like, oh, maybe this troll will go away, right?
If I don't act, right?
If I just hide here, right?
Right, so that's an important benchmark to have, right?
And the reason that I'm pointing this out is...
Is that if you believe that, you know, reason equals virtue equals happiness, and you're only meeting your own standards of true virtue 2% of the time, which I think is a really honest, I don't know what the real answer is, but I think it's an honest place to start, then either the equation reason equals virtue equals happiness is wrong, which is important to know, right?
Because otherwise, you know...
We're applying ink to clean the spot, right?
Which is not going to work, right?
Unless it's invisible ink. No, no, Steph, don't get this wrong.
Right? But we have that problem because we are not acting as if we believe that, right?
And whenever there's this disparity between what we believe and what we're doing, we either need to change our actions to conform to our belief or we need to reassess that belief and change it to conform with our actions.
In my opinion. Because I think that the split...
It's really crazy-making.
Yeah. Now, I also wanted to point out something just before we move on, right?
Because you're a lot happier, in my experience, than you were two years ago, right?
Yes, much.
I mean, there's no comparison, really.
Right. And I would say that's because, again, in my opinion, in my experience...
You were doing anti-rational things two years ago, and you're doing few, if any, of those now.
So you're plus 2%, but that's a lot better than minus 25% of whatever it was before.
Right. I was thinking that same thing earlier.
It's like, okay, well, you know, that 2%, but yeah, I've actually come up like 27 points on the scale, you know?
Exactly. Exactly. Exactly.
Right, so I think that's really, I think that's an important thing to recognize and to respect within yourself, that that's a huge turnaround to do in two years.
A huge turnaround to do.
Yeah, and that's one of the things that I don't usually do is, you know, look back, having, you know, climbed thus far, however far this is.
I don't really look back and say, Well, you know, good show.
I've caught in a year. Right.
It's like you say, well, I'm only going to the gym twice a month, but two years ago I was doing crack.
You know, it's still an amazing thing, right?
We don't compare ourselves to, you know, I don't know, Angelina Jolie's gym regime of four hours a day or whatever, right?
We sort of say, well, compared to two hours, because it's a journey relative to the starting place, right?
Right. So, my question is, What is your...
Because you love courage and virtue in a very romantic way, in an artistic way, and in an abstract way.
And I don't mean that's the only way that you love it.
But this is my very strong experience of you, Charlotte.
That you love the knights in shining armor, the Medicis, the guys with the white plume on the high mountain with the trusty steeds.
You love that stuff, right?
The Renaissance heroes and the people who stood up against The irrationalities and conformities of their time.
You love those guys, right?
Yeah, definitely. Right?
I mean, if you could snap your fingers and, I don't know, go there as Catherine of Aragon or something, you'd be pretty seriously tempted, right?
Pretty seriously.
Right, right. And so, you love these things in the abstract.
Your rational faculty loves them in the abstract.
And yet the actions that you take are not in conformity with the values that you hold.
And again, I say this because I'm in the trenches with you, right?
I certainly, I think I'm a pretty good person.
You know, I think that I'm a good person.
I'm a pretty good person.
I think I hit my values a reasonable amount of time.
I obviously hope to improve and increase and so on.
I think I'm a pretty good person.
But I'm not, you know, I would not say that I am a, I'm certainly not a perfectly moral man by any stretch of the imagination.
And I actually would view that kind of perfection as a kind of prison.
So I say this as someone who also I do not meet my values all the time or even close to all the time.
So I'm not levitating on any high mountain by any stretch.
I just wanted to sort of point that out.
I'm really in the trenches. I need the ammo passed to me as well as passed the ammo to others.
Yeah. But there is that gap, right?
There is that gap, which means that, I mean, logically, there's a couple of possibilities.
Either you don't believe the reason equals virtue equals happiness, or you believe that 2% virtue equals 100% happiness, or something like that, or the maximum amount of allowable happiness.
Which is fine, right?
And that's certainly a possibility.
The equation might be incorrect, right?
I mean, and we might need to revisit it, of course, as all things.
If it was incorrect, I would probably be happier.
Right. Well, no, you wouldn't be, because if it was incorrect and you thought it was correct, then you wouldn't be happier, right?
Right, if you think smoking is good for your emphysema, right, you're going to be healthier than somebody who doesn't, right?
You're unhealthier than somebody who doesn't, right, so...
So that's a possibility that the equation is wrong and we should slip into nihilistic hedonism or some relativism or whatever.
We should just cast aside these nutty rational values and just go with the flow, go with the herd, join the masses, dissolve into the collective goo and get all those goodies, right?
Because there are lots of goodies for doing that.
So that's a possibility, right?
That conformity outstrips rationality when it comes to happiness, right?
Because we are social creatures.
We like to Get along.
We like to get ahead. So the equation might be wrong.
Maybe there's more happiness than conformity.
Maybe. I don't know.
That's a possibility, right? Something we always have to consider.
So that's one possibility, which is that you don't really believe it, and so you just do it kind of grudgingly, or it's a kind of masochism, you know, like you like to feel superior and alienated and different from people, and so you've picked this philosophy to blah blah, fence yourself in, all that kind of stuff, right?
Yeah. That's one possibility.
Now, the other possibility is that You do really believe that reason equals virtue equals happiness, but there is a block in the way, right?
And the block would be a number of things, financial, social, psychological, whatever, right?
Or a lack of comfort with the degree of happiness that you sense might be possible with a higher adherence to your highest values.
Right. Because happiness is something like, it's like, did you ever see The Princess Bride?
Once, yes. You did.
Well, Wallace Shawn plays this really funny guy in there.
I've learned two things in my life.
One, never get involved in a land war in Asia.
Two, right? And anyway, so he does this poison game with someone where they switch poison glasses and so on, right?
And anyway, so they both drink it, and then Wallace Shawn dies.
And he says, ah, but they were both, just before he dies, he says, ah, they were both poisoned.
How could you survive? And Carrie Elba says, ah, it's because I spent a lifetime...
Developing an immunity to such as the myocaine poison or whatever it is, right?
So it doesn't matter if you feed it or whatever, right?
Right. And happiness is like that.
You have to spend a lifetime adapting yourself to it because it is a rare and for most people it is a very rare and transitory experience and we're trying to build it as a castle we live in full of glowing bricks, right?
And so we have to acclimatize ourselves to it.
So you're like, well, I do believe it, and I'm working my way towards it, but I don't want to short my circuits by grabbing too much too soon.
Yeah. And, you know, someone said to me at the barbecue, it's like, well, we're all reg-amateurs of being happy.
It's sort of like, I know in the abstract, like, how to be happy, but I don't know how to live as, like, a happy human being.
I don't. Right, right.
Right, and so much of what is portrayed as happiness in society is just a kind of shrill, shrieky, you know, the woo girls, right?
Woo! Right.
I mean, it's the kind of stuff that a lot of the people that I work with are going after, right?
You know, it's the huge wealth and the fast cars and the, you know, hot chicks.
Yeah, that's the happiness on steroids, right?
It's that happiness on steroids.
It's that high fructose cheerleading tequila nonsense, right?
Yeah, pretty much. Right, right.
And that's not, you know, that's not happiness in my opinion, but it certainly paints a compelling portrait, right?
Sure. I mean, to those who, you know, can't achieve actual happiness, I guess, you know, cheerleaders and money is a reasonable facsimile.
Right, right. So, the other thing is that you hold these values, and other possibilities, you hold these values of truth, honor, integrity, virtue, or whatever it is, right?
And of rational living.
You hold these values, but...
You hold them in order to punish yourself, right, for not achieving them?
Yeah, that's an insane level of masochism.
It's actually a very sane level of masochism, because it's about the best masochism.
That's high-quality masochism.
That's like grade A, prime A, government USDA-inspected masochism.
That's a very sane form of masochism.
Nothing as silly as, you know, cutting yourself in the arm.
You want to get high values that you never quite match so that you can torture yourself with your immorality.
That's quality masochism.
That much the Catholics know, right?
Yeah, there you go. That's like Spanish Inquisition equality.
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.
Absolutely. So, that's another possibility.
Again, I'm not saying...
I don't have any particular thoughts at the moment about which it is, but these are some possibilities as to why you would have these values.
And it's not that you don't meet your values.
And again, I'm using absolutes here, though it's unfair, but just to, you know, keep it short.
It's not that you don't meet your values, Charlotte, that is the problem, in my opinion, because nothing in particular is a problem if it's conscious in this area, right?
Right. So you said you were thinking about it, which I think is great.
But I don't think that you thought, oh, you know, it's 2%.
I wonder why do I have this gap between my values and my practice?
Right. And because it's not conscious, that's where the real danger lies, in my opinion.
Actually, that's more than my opinion.
The stuff which is unconscious is where the real danger is.
Because the stuff that is the most unconscious is building a road towards a future that we really don't want.
Because if we wanted it, it would be conscious, right?
Right, exactly. So, it's the degree to which we are not aware of the gap between Our virtues and our actions.
That's the part that is, I think, really worth focusing on.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
So, why is it only 2%?
Or rather, to be more precise, why is it unconscious that it's only 2%?
It seems like It seems like that there are, you know, a lot of reasons, right?
Because it seems like there is so much inherent in that being virtuous and in that achieving happiness, right?
It's like I'm holding myself down, not consciously, but I'm holding myself down at a level where This is hard, but I don't think I can articulate this correctly, but it's the devil I know, I guess.
And that's not nearly all of it.
Sorry, the devil you know being your behavior or the environment that you're in?
You know, the environment that I'm in and how I behave in that environment, both.
But if it's unconscious, sorry to be annoying, as always.
If you're saying that if this is part of the unconscious reason, then it...
Sorry. Let me...
Rebooting. Reformat reboot.
Restart the question, sir.
If it's the environment that you know, I don't know that you know it, right?
Because you don't say, like when we talked about your work, you didn't say, well, you know, this guy was abused as a kid and he hasn't processed it, so of course, but this is what I'm stuck with and so on, right?
You genuinely... Didn't get that part, right?
Or is the environment you know the environment that you don't know in terms of it being unconscious and conforming?
Is that what you mean? I think that's pretty much it.
Okay, okay. So if you are drawn to not act out your values, if you're drawn to not act your values, then you will be drawn to environments that make acting your values impossible, right?
Right, and I think that that It has some evidence behind it because ever since you've pointed these things out and it's become conscious, for the most part conscious, of watching the ways in which it is impossible to act out my values and in which the people where I am act out the opposite of what they say are their values.
I've become more and more unhappy.
Sure. Well, you've become more and more aware of your unhappiness.
I'm not sure that you would become more unhappy.
Right, right, that makes sense.
You're like someone coming off the painkiller saying, I'm experiencing more, I have more pain.
It's like, no, you're just experiencing it.
Right, right.
And sorry, go on.
No, no, I just want to say, I was saying, I'm not...
Well, I'm sure that that's not the whole of it, but I don't know what else it is.
If I knew what was unconsciously holding me here, then it wouldn't be unconscious.
Right, right, right.
Okay. I'll just give you two seconds of my own sort of experience transitioning out of the working world to FDR because it may be...
I think there are some parallels.
It became, I mean, abundantly evident to me in the past few years of my business career that I simply could not...
I could not practice my values in the business world.
I just couldn't. Not to the degree that I wanted to.
And those values weren't, you know, honor, integrity, and, you know, standing up for, you know, that which is right.
It wasn't just that.
It was even just the basic honesty.
You know, if I had to go to another business lunch where my boss was going to tell me the same goddamn story he told me on the last two business lunches without even noticing that he told me them before, and I couldn't say, why do you do that?
Do you just not notice that other people have heard these stories before?
Like, are you just a tape recorder?
You know, the kind of stuff that I can actually say at FDR, right?
Right. Like I just, I could not, and I tried, but I could not get real conversations going in the business world.
And it wasn't like I wanted to spend the whole day talking about, you know, feelings or whatever, right?
But where it came up, you know?
I just couldn't get those conversations going.
Yeah, and that just hit so many bells because it's like the thing that I've been thinking about for years.
You know, two years. We had part of this conversation last May.
It's like, I am so done.
I don't know if I'm done with IT or done with business in general.
And I figured out that it's not just IT. It really is like the corporate world altogether.
And one of the things that I've been hesitating on, one of the parts of my happiness that I've not been going towards is all of these ideas that I've always had for You know, going out on my own and all these ideas that I've had, I haven't taken any steps towards them because it's like, that's amazingly, amazingly scary, but it also...
Sorry, have you been going out in the business world on your own?
Yeah, or even just, you know, like getting a little money together and figuring out And taking time not to run away, as I did in going to Russia, but taking some time to just figure stuff out.
And that, you know, it scares me, but when I think about it, it's like, like, what would make me happier?
Nothing. But I've not been going towards it.
In fact, I've been going away from it.
Right, right, right.
So, when I began to sort of really get That I simply could not continue in the business world.
Because, I mean, I got so many, you know, when I started going into the family stuff, you know, I obviously got a lot of flack for it, right?
But the reason that I went into the family stuff, Charlotte, was because that's what people wanted to talk about.
And I knew that I could not continue in the business world, and I knew that if I continued to talk about the blueprint for a state, the society, and DRO constitutions and this and that, I might get some listeners, but people wouldn't really get engaged.
Right. Right.
Because you listen to a bunch of Sunday shows.
I mean, people want to talk about their lives.
They don't want to talk about abstract philosophy as much.
At least not now, right?
In the past, that was the case.
Not now. Right.
And so for me, it's like, okay, well, I can't practice my values in the business world.
I can't maintain my self-respect in the business world.
Mm-hmm. I can't be the kind of man that I want to be in the business world, so I have to go to FDR. And so I'm going to do whatever it takes to get FDR to work, and if that means talking about people's bad childhoods until I'm 90, that's what I'm going to do, right?
Right. Because that was the only chance that I had to live the kind of life.
And so I did it, and I took whatever flack I took, and I got, you know, ditched by the libertarian community, right, and so on, right, for obvious reasons.
And... You know, I made my way alone and, you know, among the slings and arrows of outrageous scorn, rejection, hostility, and sometimes downright abuse, I built a life that, the only life that I could live, a reasonable or at least satisfying amount of my values.
But I got that I could not continue at 2%.
I could not.
Don't get me wrong, part of me would have loved to, right?
Because I was making some good money back then.
I had cool travel, went to China.
I put up at a five-star hotel in Paris to do presentations for a week.
I was flown to Beijing. It was good stuff, man.
It flew all over the United States, stayed in $400 night hotels.
It was damn fine stuff.
It was the rock star life of a businessman, right?
There you go. It's the closest you got to cheerleaders and fast car stuff.
Absolutely. As far as the business world can provide glamour, I'm being flown.
Even the last job I had, I've flown down to New York, did presentations, went to see the Bare Naked Ladies at Radio City Music Hall.
It was a great couple of days.
Really enjoyable. But I realized that I could not get myself much above 2%.
Once I understood that, I knew that I had to build a different life and I knew that I had to do whatever it took to get to that different life.
I looked into going back to school for psychology so that I could join Christina in her practice.
I looked at getting involved in startups, venture capital funds to start up for companies, provide them advice on how to grow their business so I wouldn't get too involved and get into the politics.
I looked at a variety of things.
I also looked at, you know, if we had kids, maybe I'd just be a house husband.
I looked at a variety of things.
But what I really wanted was FDR. Because I also knew that I couldn't grow nearly as much without a community.
And so I worked to create that.
And the reason that I'm boring you with these tales is that In the same way that you have a fantasy that someone's going to give you, I don't mean this as a real fantasy, but you have a fantasy that someone is going to give you the love and attention and investment that you did not get as a baby and as a toddler and as a child and as a young woman, I think you have a fantasy, and this is where the real self-putdown is, I think.
This is where the real masochism is.
I think, as I've mentioned before, I think you feel that you're trying to get to normal.
And that your work environment is full of healthy people who didn't have this bad background, and you're trying to get out of the wheelchair to join people just walking around, right?
That was the thought.
That was most of the thought when I started, yeah.
But it's not the case.
What?
What?
There aren't these people out there who are as healthy or more healthy than you who've never had to go through rigorous self-examination, who haven't studied philosophy and psychology and human knowledge and history and literature and art for more than a decade.
right? There are not these people out there in the business world Who would feel comfortable with the phrase, I had a good conversation with my ecosystem last night.
Right? Right.
You're not trying to repair yourself back to normal.
The people who don't have, who have not processed their histories, and we come, no matter how good your family is, we all went to some shitty school.
Right? We all, we live in this irrational, anti-rational culture, with the caveat that it's the most rational culture ever.
That has ever been around, but it's still fundamentally relativistic, nihilistic, anti-rational, cowardly, bullying.
So the normal is effed up.
Yeah, normal is fucked up, for sure.
And so you outgrew these people when you were 13, for Christ's sakes.
Yeah. Did you see?
Yeah. And if you accept that in the same way that you need to accept that you're never going to get the love of a mother, the best you can hope for is to provide the love of a mother, which is a damn good curative, I can tell you.
Like, I'm exactly the dad that I want to be, and it's the best way to cure the ills of your own childhood is to give a happy childhood to someone else.
Right. So you can be a good mother, but you will never have a good mother.
Right. And you are not aiming...
To rejoin the herd because you outgrew the herd the moment you cracked Ayn Rand and recognized what it meant.
Right. And that's...
It's odd that you said that I kind of outgrew them when I was 13.
I guess it's odd because, you know, I've been...
I'm trying to keep myself in that place, right?
Because so much of the, you know, the desires and the me-plus and all the stuff that comes up, I mean, I really am.
That's where I keep putting myself back to, is the place I was when I was 13, basically.
But that's because you're not grieving yet.
Right. And I don't mean that.
Sorry, that's very glib.
I don't mean that you've never grieved, right?
Of course you have, right? But I think that you're still waiting.
As we all do. I don't know if you've ever seen the movie.
This is my movie reference tonight.
Did you ever see the movie Shadowlands?
No. Yeah, rent it.
It's a really good film. You might need to watch it twice.
I did. But it's a really good, subtle film.
Anyway, there's a guy who, you know, his mother died.
This is no spoilers. It's right at the beginning of the film.
His mother died. It's about C.S. Lewis, and it's a biographical film.
And also one of the great statements of atheism in modern film, which you'll see.
You won't miss it when it comes out.
But his mother died when he was a child, and he continues psychologically to wait for her to come down the hallway, and he's stuck emotionally, which is why he's never fallen in love before the start of the film.
And there are all these parts of us that stop, right?
Christina uses his terminology and psychologists do, you know, that there's, he stopped at around this age, right?
This is where his development was arrested, the age of four, the age of eight or 10 or 12 or whatever.
There's parts of us that just get left behind, you know, like a peasant falling off a train, except they don't even try to catch up, right?
There are parts of us that just get left behind and the early part of self-knowledge is circling back to pick up the wounded, the straggling, the left behinders, right?
Right. And your left behind is the grief.
And there was no way you could have processed that grief as a child.
There's no conceivable way it would have been absolutely suicidal to try.
Right. And so, but, you know, the childhood that you have, which certainly ranks into the top ten worst that I've ever heard, right?
Yeah. Yeah, it is the one with Anthony Hopkins.
Sorry, just somebody asked that. But, you know, you just had a staggeringly wretched, awful, abusive, hideous childhood.
And I'm not a religious person, but if I were, I would invent hell just for your mother.
I would. I'm not a vengeful man in particular, but there are some people I would be perfectly happy to see in my mind's eye roasted on this bit for eternity.
Your mother would be one of them.
But... The amount of loss that you suffered as a child was...
I mean, there's no words that can encapsulate it, just beyond staggering, the degree of loss that you suffered as a child.
I think that that's the grieving that you need to go to.
That is going to release you from 2%.
It's going to release you from the place where you're driven...
We're driven to recreate what we have not fully and deeply experienced, right?
And you're driven to recreate this loss...
And this unconsciousness and this desperation for the approval of bad people, I mean, for the very obvious reason that it's not processed for you.
And there's no way it could be yet, right?
You're only 23.
And that's an annoying thing to hear when you're 23, so I apologize for that, right?
And you're not a young 23 either, right?
But, you know, this is the last that we talked about two years ago when you first talked about some of your history of kleptomania and so on, right?
That you wanted the world to see your loss.
The world will not see your loss.
Only you can see your loss.
Yeah. And then, then I'll stop after this, I promise.
And then, you can design a life with the basic realities firmly in place.
Not unconscious, not distracted.
The basic realities... That you will not find happiness in the business world, in my opinion.
You will not find depth and richness in the business world.
You will not find satisfaction in the business world.
You will not find satisfaction, in my opinion, in the long run, in the business world even as an entrepreneur.
Because as an entrepreneur, you still end up dealing with irrational customers, right?
Right, exactly.
So, I don't know what the answer is for you.
And again, these are just my opinions.
Maybe you will. Maybe I'm completely talking out of my armpit and I'm way wrong, right?
This is just my thoughts, right?
And it certainly was my experience.
And I had more power in the business world than you've had so far, simply because I was more mature in my career, right?
I was a co-founder on the board, chief technical officer, chief marketing officer.
I had dozens of employees.
So I had more power and I still couldn't make it.
Right. And again, maybe you can.
This is just my experience, right?
So what life you're going to have if that's not an option is an interesting question.
Is it, you know, is it going to be a therapist?
Is it going to be a writer? Is it going to be whatever?
I don't know. But that is the interesting question.
If you accept that, it may not be possible to do it in there.
And, you know, that's...
I keep trying to take the shortcut, right?
It's like... But if I find what it's going to be, then I'll just go there.
And it's like, I don't have to do any of this stuff, but I have to do this stuff before I'll find where there is, I think.
Yes, you have to grieve, and then you can't figure out what life is like on the other side of that grieving process.
Because you don't know who you are until you get to the other side of that grieving process.
Sorry, I said I would stop.
Let me just give you one more thing, if you don't mind.
I hope this stuff is helpful.
Steph, you know that I drive you on to low-classity.
I'm used to it. Okay, good.
But is it useful? Because I don't want this to be my platform.
It's useful, okay. Isabella doesn't know who she is except through interactions, right?
I mean, this is something very fundamental which I didn't know before I became a dad.
She has a personality and she's born with a personality and so on, right?
Right. But when she drops something, she doesn't look at what she dropped.
She looks at me. Right.
When she sees something new, she doesn't look at it.
She looks at me. We took her to a swimming pool today for the first time.
Mm-hmm. We put her in the water.
She didn't look at the water. She looked at me.
Well, and Christina. Right.
That's awesome. I didn't know that.
She doesn't... And this makes perfect sense, right?
Because she doesn't... Let's say she sees an animal, right?
She doesn't know if it's a friendly dog or a dangerous wolf.
She has to look to me to figure out whether it's safe or dangerous.
Because she doesn't know, right? How could she know?
Right. So she wants your reaction to tell her what it is.
Right. Right. Right.
And that is a biological imperative in children who are just like, hey, I'll just eat whatever mushrooms are around, right?
I mean, eating is not the best example because she'll put stuff in her mouth without asking me.
That's inevitable too, right?
But for a lot of new things that she sees and experiences, she will look to me or to Christina.
Right. Not all, but a lot of them.
So she doesn't, in a sense, know what the world is except through us.
In other words, she doesn't really know herself.
Like, she doesn't know when she does something funny unless we laugh, right?
Yeah. She doesn't know if dropping something makes us laugh or makes us angry unless...
Not that it makes us angry, but you know what I mean, right?
She doesn't know how we're going to react to what she's doing until we...
We react to what she's doing.
Right. So she doesn't know what's good and bad, what's, quote, right and wrong, what's approved or disapproved, what's safe, what's dangerous, what's appropriate, what's inappropriate.
She doesn't know any of those things, so she looks.
And that's why babies recognize faces before anything else, right?
Right. And that's why babies are so susceptible to tones of voice, right?
Because they are navigating what is good, bad, safe and dangerous, right and wrong in the world But they navigate not through the world, but through people around them, right?
Right. We reach through our parents to the world.
We, in a sense, our parents are the puppets with which we explore the world.
Right. And thus, gain an identity.
Yeah. I mean, she doesn't have any other mode of judgment.
She can't. I mean, she doesn't have, like, a catalogue of experiences with which to judge.
So I guess she's holding them up.
Right. So she's, I mean, the ideal, of course, is that when she reaches for something dangerous, God forbid, right?
She's going to look for us and we're going to say no.
And she won't, right?
Because she trusts us or whatever, right?
And, you know, I think that's where the plan is going and so on.
And so her identity, who she is, what the world is, is not...
It's not objective. It is relational to us.
Right. Now you didn't get that.
Right. Which is why identity is such a challenge, right?
I didn't get that.
Most of the people on this call didn't get that.
This is why identity In my opinion, and this is new, right?
This new parenting stuff.
This is why identity is such a problem.
And such an opportunity, right?
Because we did not get the prefabbed identity of consistent parenting.
We get to explore.
We get to create. We get to grow.
We get to break through to something new.
Right. We weren't habituated.
Yeah. So, who am I really is That's scary, but that's also kind of awesome.
It is, for sure.
It is, for sure. But that's what I mean when I say it's hard to know who you'll be on the other side of the grieving.
Right. Right, because the grieving is letting go of, I will find my identity through other people, right?
Right. That's not possible anymore.
No, it's not possible.
That phase is way gone and will never return, right?
Yeah. Definitely.
I mean, the same with, you know, the windows for all of these things have gone.
Right, right. And so the bad news is there's a lot of grieving.
The good news is and then you can build what's right.
Right. But then you won't need to be found attractive to be attractive, right?
Right. The phrase that keeps going through my mind is, wow, this is going to suck.
Well, you're absolutely right.
It is going to suck. It is going to suck.
It absolutely is going to suck.
It's going to suck like going to the dentist sucks, right?
It sucks, but it sucks a lot less than the alternative, right?
Right. I mean, this is suckage in the short term.
You know, suckage in the long term is like, I don't know, turning out like mother, God forbid.
Well, no, that's not going to happen.
That's not going to happen because your mother never did what you did for the last two years, let alone ten years, right?
Yeah. But no, the thing that is going to, the fate which I can promise you will be worse than anything for you is the life of menial inconsequentiality.
You know, with the gifts that you possess, right?
It's the life of, you know, being a lonely woman surrounded by cats when you're 50 working a menial IT job, right?
Yes. Wondering where your dreams, your talents, your desires, your ambitions, your capabilities, your interests, philosophical, artistic, psychological, romantic, and historical, where it all went, right?
And that is not, right?
So you wouldn't become an abuser, but...
Right. But, you know, that vision, every fiber of my being is just repelled by that vision.
I know. I know. But that's where you'll be if you don't grieve.
And that's what I mean when I say it sucks a lot less than the alternative.
Yeah. Fine, yeah, for some grieving, Dan.
Right. I'll get on the grieve train.
You can strap me to the front.
Right. Yeah, please.
That's what it takes.
Wow, I really hate my mother.
I'm sorry? Yeah, I shouldn't laugh about it, but wow, I really hate my mother.
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