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July 26, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:29:03
1418 Sunday Call-In Show 26 July 2009

Two listener tales...

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Good. All right, so we're up.
I'm still looking for callers.
347-633-9636.
This is Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain Radio.
And for those who may be dipping their toe into the Freedomain Radio stream, which is the show, you may be interested in listening to an epic and, I think, very exciting, enjoyable, and, I think, quite funny debate that I had with...
The 2004 libertarian presidential candidate Michael von Badnarek at Drexel University in Philadelphia on July 5th, 2009.
I think, if I remember rightly, it is one of the few libertarian debates where cannibalism is openly discussed.
So you might want to look for that in the show itself.
And it is available at fdrurl.com forward slash phillydebate.
No underscore anything.
You can listen to the debates.
We're still wrestling with some of the video excitement.
Hopefully it will be up.
It's a lengthy debate.
And the to be resolved, or be it resolved, that was how much government is necessary.
I took the not-so-much-to-nothing viewpoint, and Mr.
Batnarek, a noted constitutional scholar, Was taking the approach that we need a small, constitutionally limited government.
And that, I think, was a very exciting and interesting debate.
I certainly had a lot of fun.
He's a very smart and well-read and erudite fellow, and I can be a giddy clown.
So it was a good match-up from that standpoint.
So I hope that you get a chance to check that out.
Hello? Hello.
Hi, how are you? I'm just wonderful.
How are you doing? I'm good.
This is Jeff. We met a couple times in the chat window, but I have a couple questions if you don't mind.
Not only do I not mind, I will give you a back rub for calling in, so lean forward.
Let me just work my digits. But please, go ahead.
Great. So I've read RTR a few times and UPB and a couple other things, and I'm really trying to implement them into my life as far as friends and family are concerned.
And I'm just...
I have a few questions about doing it with my mother because I'm really struggling with bringing up some of the things that I know you really kind of caution against bringing up history and arguing about things and people have different perspectives on What happened when you were a kid, you know, 20 years ago or 25 years ago?
And, you know...
Sorry, go ahead. No, go ahead.
Ah, yes. Well, as far as...
I really don't think that she knows that she...
Or I don't think she's conscious of...
Of course she knows, but I don't think she's conscious of, you know, the abuse that went on, the sexual abuse and...
The physical and the emotional kind of manipulation and withholding, things like that.
And I tried just to be in the moment and tell her how I felt about her and, you know, the anxiety that comes up every time she calls, every moment that I have to decide whether or not to press send.
I heard press sense, which I don't think was right.
Can you just tell me the last two words that you said?
Yeah, you know, I mean, basically she, without taking an hour to tell the whole story, you know, she's, you know, I think she's basically mentally ill, you know, my mother, and she is really borderline, you know, she...
Anything can set her off.
To be honest, I'm kind of terrified of her.
So the idea of bringing up history and talking about the things that she did to me when I was a kid, I don't exactly know how to do that and still kind of follow the Follow the advice of the book, which is to not go into, you know, history and not tell, story time, you called it, I think.
Okay, and look, I'm really happy to spend time on this, right?
Can you just tell me a little, because, I mean, you mentioned some really egregious and absolutely horrible things.
I think you mentioned sexual abuse in, among other things, that weren't so egregious.
Yeah. You obviously don't have to talk about any of this if you don't want to, and as long as you understand this, I'm not a therapist, I'm not trained or anything like that.
These are just philosophical perspectives or opinions that I have that are just my personal opinions.
As long as that caveat is understood, I'm perfectly happy to proceed and give you whatever feedback might be helpful to you, but can you tell me a little bit more about the complaints that you have about what you suffered as a child?
Sure, yeah. I mean, yeah, definitely trust me on it.
You know, I feel like I'm able to talk really frankly about it.
I've been in therapy for about a year and a half, and essentially, you know, I grew up in a family that was decently religious, Jewish, and kind of a larger family.
I had two siblings.
And I remember listening to a podcast with a gentleman that you talked to, and I had a lot in common with this guy as far as he was overweight.
I've been overweight, you know, struggled with that my whole life.
And you mentioned you had this theory about how the parents or the mother kind of takes a child and just kind of puts him in this place where, you know, I spent a lot of time at home.
I spent a lot of time kind of under her control.
So basically my whole life, you know, I've been overweight and, you know, never really had a girlfriend or any, you know, sexual experience to speak of.
And also kind of Never had any of, like, the important freedoms or the talks.
You know, when I was a kid, you know, your parents were supposed to talk to you about sex.
They're supposed to talk to you about, you know, credit cards.
And I remember, you know, before college, I had to, like, beg my mom.
I was desperate just to learn how to do my own laundry because...
Nobody even taught me that, you know, or how to cook land on meals or anything like that.
Basically, I think the philosophy was that we will do everything for you.
We will take care of you for the rest of your life.
And in exchange for that, you're not really allowed to live your own life or have any freedom.
And you're going to grow up and live where we tell you to live.
And be a lawyer like your father and never express yourself creatively or artistically in any way.
And you're going to take the classes that we tell you to take and play the activities that we tell you to play and go where we tell you to go.
Be friends with the people that we tell you to be friends with.
And if I ever broke any of those rules, if I ever broke any of them, I was terrified.
I was petrified of that.
You know, she was very withholding and passive-aggressive.
And... Like I said, you know, until about age 12 or 13, I was sexually abused as far as...
I know I'm kind of saying this matter-of-factly.
It's just because I've really worked on it with my therapist for a long time.
You know, she would, you know, invite me into her bed when I was a young boy.
And for a long time, you know, for years, you know, she would kind of...
Kiss me and touch me and be totally inappropriate with her youngest child.
She was calling me her bait.
Just so I understand, do you mean sort of genital contact or other kinds of inappropriate contact?
No, no, it wasn't genital.
I would say, no, it was above the clothes, you know, as far as I recall.
I understand that a lot of this Kind of can get buried and doesn't always come out completely.
But to the extent that I remember it, it was, you know, above the close, but it was very inappropriate.
A lot of, like, hugging and she called it snuggling.
You know, just where I was laying where my dad would sleep every night and kind of...
I think I almost knew even then I was taking his role.
I was, you know, fulfilling that and being, you know, because she didn't really have a partner, you know, who satisfied her in life, she chose me and I think your theory is spot on as far as she kind of made me into this person who It was designed to never leave her,
you know, designed to be terrified and be unwilling to and unable to escape.
And sorry to interrupt, but where was your father in this picture?
Well, he's always been very Passive.
He's always let her just completely control him and kind of similar to the way that she would always pick out my clothes when I was young.
They're 60 now and she still picks out his clothes and decides who his friends are and decides if he's going out tonight and if he can go on vacation or whatever.
You know, my dad...
I'm pretty unresolved about this, but I mean, I feel like he kind of abandoned me.
I think fathers are supposed to be there to defend their family, and nobody was there to defend me from her.
So, you know, he always worked.
I remember he always...
I would wake up at 5 or 6 in the morning, you know, he was never a very good sleeper or, you know, he has sleep apnea and all that and he would wake up and go to work, you know, at 6 in the morning and not come home until 6 or 7 and he'd always just be so exhausted and worn out and also he kind of set this kind of reverse example for me because I'm You know,
there was all this encouragement from one side of my family, oh, you know, do something safe, do something successful, you know, be a lawyer like your father and your grandfather and your uncle and do something that will make a lot of money that won't be hard for you or won't, you know, really challenge your creativity.
And then I would see my father come home every night and he'd be miserable and Sometimes he'd talk about how he really only wanted to be a marine biologist, but, you know, when you have a family to support, you have to be serious about your aspirations, he told me.
So he basically abandoned his dreams and married, you know, my mother, you know, who is just a complete monster.
And they kind of live a really loveless life.
You know, marriage is convenience now, and she's just totally reliant and dependent and obsessed with her children and her grandchildren.
My sister has a daughter.
And spends most of her time, you know, trying to control other people and control the lives of the people in her family.
And I guess destroy them.
Right. I mean, the first...
I don't mean to interrupt, but I just express incredibly deep sympathy for the history that you experienced.
I mean, it really...
I mean, to be...
Exploited in that way by your mother, as you describe, to be untrained, to be untutored in the ways of the world.
It's more than a dereliction of duty with regards to parenting, as far as my perspective or opinion goes.
So I just really want to express an incredible deep sympathy for that kind of history, because I understand that it It puts you so far back in terms of trying to catch up to being an adult, right? You have to invent so many things, discover so many things that should have been taught to you intrinsically within your familial situation, but wasn't, right?
And so you're so far back relative to where you want to be or where you could be If you'd had a positive and helpful and healthy upbringing.
So, you know, kudos to you.
I mean, massive respect and props to you for, you know, going to a therapist, for getting the help, for digging into this kind of history, for trying to, like, turn your life around.
Because, right, it's not...
I think if I understand what you're saying, you're saying it's not too late for me, but I have to deal with certain things in order to get where it is that I want to get to in life.
I assume that you want to have a life that, you know, maybe it involves having your own wife and kids if you don't already and so on, right?
So I just, you know, people don't see this and it's really tragic.
They don't see how many people are left behind in this kind of way.
How few people get on the lifeboats out of the Titanic and how many people are stuck on the deck sliding into the icy water left behind to disappear with a gurgle.
And the fact that you're struggling to swim and get out is, I think, incredibly admirable.
And people who've not had this kind of history...
I shouldn't say they don't understand.
They find it hard to understand just how much work it is to try and sort and figure these things out if you haven't been taught them.
If you've been taught them, then it's like, well, why is English hard to learn?
We speak English easily, right?
But if you have to learn it from another perspective, it's really, really a tough multi-year project.
And those who speak it natively have a tough time understanding how tough it is to learn these basic life skills.
Of negotiation and empathy and boundaries and self-respect.
So I really do commend you for the work that you're doing, the therapy that you're pursuing.
It's fantastic. So I just wanted to sort of, to give you that up front.
And I think that sometimes is missing when people hear these kinds of stories.
I mean, I really do understand, I think, just how far behind the eight ball you started.
And I think it's just incredibly admirable how much work you're putting in and how far you've come.
Thank you, Stefan.
And, you know, you're absolutely right.
I do feel, you know, Way behind, you know, like there's a marathon going on and my alarm didn't go off until I was, you know, almost 25 years old.
But I'll say that, you know, I was really miserable and unhappy, you know, even in therapy and totally without any sort of guidance or anywhere to go until I came across Freedom Maine and the amazing community of people there And also the books,
especially real-time relationships, which made me realize, you know, that because I was so rejected and abandoned and just belittled and tortured when I was a kid that I didn't even know,
but I had been surrounding myself with people who would, in effect, kind of do the same thing emotionally.
You know, friends, employers, everybody kind of around me in everything that I was pursuing.
I didn't realize that it was a cycle that I was living over and over again because it was like I was addicted to that.
It was the only type of relationship that I knew That terrible codependent thing and I kept feeling that until I realized how to be honest and how to stop lying and I read real-time leisure ships and kind of worked up the courage to start finding out if my friends were really people who wanted to know the real me,
had the curiosity That I have about other people or whether they are, you know, manipulators or, you know, just generally people who suffered the same things that I did.
Yeah, I mean, that is a grueling process to begin to bring principles, philosophical and objective principles, into your personal relationships.
It is a very, very difficult and grueling process.
A thought popped into my mind just while you were talking, and I was listening, I promise, but the thought popped into my mind.
I just wanted to share something.
It may sort of strike you as relevant.
And the reason that I say that I think I can understand is that I was raised a In an environment where there was no tutoring.
I was really left to my own devices for a good deal of my childhood.
What popped into my mind when you were talking about being unprepared, and I think this is where I think I can really empathize, is that I used to...
I mean, I was a latchkey kid, right?
My mom worked, and so I would go...
I would often go to a friend's place after school and so on, and then go home sort of around suppertime.
And I think I was around 13 or whatever, and it was a very, very bleak and dark time in my family life, right?
I mean, my mother was... Going through the last throes of a mental collapse.
And I remember that my friend's father was a doctor and he took me into his study one day and he basically had to explain to me I don't know how to put it in a non-bald way or non-stark way.
He basically had to explain to me that I had body odor, that I smelled, that I needed to start using deodorant or antiperspirant.
Because, you know, when you're a kid, you don't really smell.
But after puberty, right, you get man glands and you get all of that kind of oogie stuff.
And so, obviously, you need to pay more attention to your personal hygiene at that point.
But that's something that...
I mean, I thought about that for years afterwards, off and on, and I talked about it in therapy when I was in therapy.
That is the level of unpreparedness that can occur for children who are not raised with the kind of instruction that so many people take for granted.
I didn't even know that I smelled.
He said, I didn't want to be that character in Peanuts, if you're old enough, right?
I mean, Pigpen, right?
I didn't want to be that guy.
So I'm glad that he brought it up.
And so when I sort of look at...
The incredible Lord of the Flies lack of instruction that I received within my own family growing up, that sort of arc that took me to all the way through university, undergrad, grad school, a career in business, being a software executive, traveling the world, and then doing this philosophy show.
I mean, I really do get a sense of the enormous distance That it takes to invent yourself when you've not been trained.
And there's real disadvantages in that.
Obviously, you and I know and many other people know exactly what those disadvantages are.
But there are also enormous advantages when you get to invent yourself from the ground up or when you get to discover the truth and reason and reality and principles and ethics from the ground up in that you don't have carved into your soul, so to speak, the general cultural bigotries and prejudices so to speak, the general cultural bigotries and prejudices that so many people take for granted.
You actually get to think about things from the ground up.
And I think that you can build your house on much firmer ground than those people who inherit.
Shaky houses from their ancestors and think that they live in something solid because everybody else is there.
So there is a real downside and I really wanted to empathize and sympathize with that.
But there is an upside to it as well, which is that you do get to build a pretty clean, lean and authentic self out of the rubble because you don't have the illusion that you're in a house and no matter how shaky it is that you've just inherited and been taught is right by those who came before you.
So... In the sort of Pandora's box metaphor, right, you open the Pandora's box and 12 million devils come flying out and we know what all of those are based on those kinds of history.
The hope at the bottom of the chest, the hope and the positivity that can come out of that is...
So, I was not taught, or I was lied to, and now I can discover the truth without having to overcome a lot of bigotry that I accepted for many years.
And there is that straight line to authenticity and self-knowledge, if that makes any sense at all.
I'm not saying it makes it worthwhile or justifies it, but I think there is that glimmer of hope in the process.
Stefan, it makes perfect sense.
I mean, I'm just...
I know in a sense that I'm a victim and that I had no control over what happened to me when I was younger but in another sense I'm so happy and I have my drive back now where I just want to move on and live a happy and honest existence and I know now that the choices that I make are my own So I can either keep on reliving the terror that went on,
but much more preferably I'd like to move on and just to be totally honest, just get her out of my life.
Get her out of my life.
Make sure I understand that.
You mean get your mother out of your life?
Yes. Okay, go on.
And also, you know, slowly I've kind of begun to understand and ask how my sister feels about it, and I think at some point I'll ask my brother.
We're not terribly close, my brother and I, and, you know, I do want to get my father's feelings about it, and I, most of all, I'm looking forward to moving on and not feeling like I'm Stuck in that trap anymore.
And that's really why I wanted to talk to you is to ask, I don't really know if I need to make them aware or if that part of me that wants to make them aware of what happened is just kind of like the vengeance, you know, the gotcha, you know, like, look what you did to me.
I'm going to expose you and then feel better about it.
Okay. Right, right.
Do you want to talk more about that feeling of that impulse?
Sure. I'm not saying it's true or not.
I'm going to say it's a possibility, and I just want to make sure I understand what it is that you mean.
Sure. Well, you know, I know just from spending time with them relatively recently when my parents visited that I have...
The worst kind of anxiety and angriness just seeing them, just seeing their faces, you know, let alone seeing them call.
I'm wondering if part of my real-time relationship process with them that I need to do is to let them know Our history as I know it to be and not,
you know, the kind of the delusions that maybe they've convinced themselves of in order to live with the things that they've done and the things that they've not done with regard to raising me.
I don't know if that impulse that I'm having of needing or feeling obligated to tell them What happened in our history, I don't know if that's at all a useful thing or if that's just going to set off an argument that,
you know, I guess my worst fear or worst case scenario for me or for them, I don't know, is tearing the family apart and making somebody, you know, just...
So, off the wall nuts, like I'm afraid my mom will react when I tell her what I know happened to me by her.
So, you feel that if you talk to your mother about what happened to you as a child, that she might become unhinged or aggressive or go through some sort of breakdown?
Yes. Yeah, I have no doubt she will.
Otherwise, why would I feel so much terror at talking about it with her?
Well, I'm going to put forward a possible theory, right?
Again, not therapy, right?
But I'm going to put forward a possible theory about why you might feel such terror at bringing this up with your parents.
Go ahead.
I'm sorry.
I'm just – Shockingly, I'm trying to think of a good way to phrase it.
And again, it's just a possible theory, right?
you obviously can take it with all the grains of salt in the world look logically this is just a logical philosophical analysis So logically, either your parents know what they did to you or they don't, right?
Again, maybe there's gradations, but that's sort of the basic black and white, right?
If they don't know something, then bringing it up with them is almost pointless, if that makes any sense.
To take a silly example, right?
Let's say I'm some bird watcher, and I've always wanted to see a golden eagle, and I'm out there with you, and we're in the woods, and a tree branch falls on my head, knocks me out, and while I'm unconscious, a golden eagle flies past.
Now, you could tell me later, a golden eagle flew past.
You spent your whole life wanting to see one, and it just flew past.
And I would say, well, I don't know.
I mean, I guess it's kind of annoying that it happened, because I've wanted to see one for so long, but I was unconscious.
I was... Out.
Like, comic birds were flying around the lump on my head, right?
So if they genuinely don't remember, then bringing it up is not going to get you any kind of validation, right?
It's like turning to me after I wake up from being unconscious and say, what do you think of the golden eagle that flew by when you were unconscious, right?
I would say, I can't say anything about that.
And you'd say, well, I want you to tell me whether it was a golden eagle or not.
And I'd say, well, I was unconscious. I don't know, right?
So if they genuinely don't know, have no memory, can't recall, whatever, right?
Then you won't...
It seems to me unlikely that you will get what you want in terms of validation, understanding, and sympathy because they won't know, right?
Now, if they do remember...
I think that people who do wrong and particularly people who do or allow wrong to be done to children They suffer enormously, and it is a tragedy, the likes of which you and I can't even picture what happens to the soul of people who do wrong to children or who allow wrong to be done to children on a continual basis, for children to be terrorized or brutalized or aggressed against or whatever.
So this would be, I would say, again, my opinion only, on the part of your mother and your father.
There is a terror of exposure of the crimes, for want of a better word, becoming real, right?
And again, to take an example that is not in the same moral category, but if you're a counterfeiter and you are continually handing out these bills that are not valid, you are afraid that somebody's going to check the bills to see if they're real, right? Because then they'll find out that they're not and you'll suffer for your crimes, right?
So the fear that you feel About bringing this stuff up with your parents might not be your fear at all.
it might be their fear of you bringing it up.
Yeah.
Like again, to take the metaphor, if I'm a cashier, somebody just hands me a $100 bill and I say, "Oh, hey, I'm so sorry, I've got to do this." I just got this handy-dandy counterfeit detection machine.
I put it on the counter, and that person gets really stressed and anxious.
That's going to affect me, right?
I'm going to get kind of stressed and anxious, right?
Because the counterfeit is like, oh, man, they're just about to figure out that I'm a counterfeiter.
Then I'll call the cops. I'm going to be discovered.
They're going to find the printing press in my basement.
I'm going to go to jail for 10 years, right?
So that person's going to really freak out the moment I pull out that counterfeit detection machine to check their $100 bill, right?
Does that make any sense?
It does. And again, this is all stuff to talk about with your therapist.
These are just logical possibilities as to what may be going on emotionally.
It's very easy for us to mistake other people's feelings for our own feelings when we grow up in families without boundaries, right?
You don't even know, yeah.
Oh, I know. I know, brother.
I don't know your situation, obviously, in any level of detail, but I know that from my own experience.
True. You know, I just wonder, you know, she's very clever.
She's a very smart woman, my mother.
And... I don't know if she knows what she did was wrong, but...
Wait, wait, wait. Did she do it in public?
What's that? Did she do it in public?
No. No, she didn't.
So she hid it? Yeah, it was as hidden as a cat.
If you had brought it up in public at some family dinner, like Mom, the caresses you gave me last night in bed where I was sleeping in Dad's place really made me feel uncomfortable, would your mother have said, oh, that's interesting, tell us more?
God, no. Right, so again, this is just the logical reality of things, right?
That's one of the definitions, like if somebody commits a crime, and I'm not characterizing this, I don't have enough information, and this is something to discuss with the therapist, but if somebody commits a crime, the reason that you know whether or not they're morally responsible is they try to hide it or not, right?
If they don't try to hide it, then they're...
Like the guy who just cut the head off another guy in the Greyhound bus with everyone around.
Well, this guy's obviously just insane, right?
But if it was hidden and if you felt a great deal of restriction or you would feel a great deal of punishment about bringing it up, then clearly your mother knows that it at least is perceived as wrong.
That's just a logical consequence of hiding something is that you know that it will at least be perceived as wrong and you know that there's a vow of silence that you have to inflict upon your children.
Right? Otherwise, your mother would discuss it openly the same way that she would discuss the flowers she bought yesterday openly, right?
Yeah, you're right.
It was completely taboo.
I mean, we've never spoken about it, and she's never spoken about it with anyone else.
I can guarantee that.
And, sorry, I just want to make sure, because we don't have any other callers at the moment.
I think people are quite interested in this.
I'm certainly happy to keep talking about it, if this is alright with you, because I do have a couple other questions or comments.
Please go ahead, and I have a question for you at some point, but please.
My comments. I'm sorry?
You go ahead with your question, which is my comments, so go ahead.
Well, yes. So, as you know, I'm kind of beginning the DFU process and really strongly evaluating whether these are relationships that were ever voluntary.
You know, they weren't. Sorry to interrupt.
Sorry. I just asked you to talk and I'm just interrupting.
I do apologize. When you started talking, you were talking about your desire to sit down and talk about things with your parents and your considerations of that.
And if you say now that you're starting the DFU process, for those who don't know, this is a word, FOO is family of origin, which distinguishes itself if you're married from your current family.
And the defu is a word that is used to talk about taking a break from family relations, you know, certainly under my advisement, always with the care of a therapist, to take a break from family relationships, which would be like a trial separation in a marriage if there's problems with abuse or destructiveness within the relationship.
So just think of it as a therapist-supported trial separation, just for those who don't know what the heck that phrase means.
It's certainly nothing that I ever tell people or suggest that people do, but it is always adult relationships legally are voluntary, right?
That's sort of a basic fact.
So I wasn't... Because you started saying, well, I want to sit down and talk more on RTR and this and that, and now you're saying you're starting the defu process, and I just wanted to sort of make sure I understand the distinction between the two or what's going on between those two statements.
Yes. Let me clarify.
I mean, I guess until...
Relatively, you know, just a few months ago, I didn't even know that defu was a possibility.
I didn't know it was something that I could consider and never really had I understood that my relationships are a choice, you know?
I always felt like they were completely obligatory and if they ended for any reason, I would blame myself and I would do everything in my power to keep things the way they were to avoid that anxiety and introspection that came with the ending or, you know, reconsidering of a relationship.
So I guess what I mean is I'm looking very strongly at it and trying to make clear to myself and clear to my family that I don't feel chained to them anymore and I'm not I'm not anybody's emotional slave and I no longer feel like I must be a part of their cult,
so to speak.
And that's something that I've made clear to myself now and I'm in the process of...
I've spoken to my mother about it I'm going to begin to make clear to my family.
And I guess my question would be kind of going along with that, a big part of my hesitation is that for, you know, certainly during all of my life and then even my childhood and even after that and even after college,
I was in some way financially very entangled and dependent on them and you know I can say you know in all honesty that I have kind of lived beyond my means not racked up any kind of debt thankfully but you know lived in apartments that I couldn't afford on my own you know shopped and We've gone to grocery stores that probably are for people a few brackets,
a few tax brackets higher than I. And that's because you were getting some subsidies from your parents, is that right?
Yes, absolutely.
That was while you were in college, that's while you were in education, but are you saying that it also occurred after that as well?
Right, right. And thankfully I got a pretty good job out of college here in New York, and I've kind of built Some skills, you know, in show business here and I've really kind of been doing my very best to follow my passions and build,
you know, a life and a career for myself independent of them and self-sustaining and I'm very close to that, you know, very, very close to that and I've I realized,
you know, that I need to make some serious changes, you know, downgrade the apartment, you know, stop doing takeout ever, and things like that.
Not that I was some, you know, profligate spender, but...
I don't mean to chase you along to get to the point, because Lord knows I'm known to tangent myself, but if you could ask the question that's buried behind all of that, I would appreciate that.
I am really sorry for flogging.
Yes, so I don't...
There's a trust fund, okay?
So there's a trust fund with my name on it, and it's not giant or anything, but I kind of feel like it's mine, and I also kind of feel like they've held it over my head for kind of a long time, and I don't...
I'm conflicted as to whether it should just be, you know, cost of doing business with these really people who tormented me and just let that go or confront them about it and say, you know, if this is my money, then give it to me and I'm going to do with it as I wish and ask for that.
I mean, I don't... I'm struggling as to whether I feel like I have the right to ask for that.
And, sorry, is it your money or not?
I'm not sure I got that clear.
No. Well, I mean, it's a fund with my name on it that my dad set up, I guess, when I was a baby.
And there's, you know, some, you know, like there's, you know, a couple thousand dollars in there.
And, you know, I... I assume it doesn't mature when you're 60, right?
So why have you not received the money as yet?
Right. I think I'm not...
I think the way it works is that I'm not allowed to touch it until I'm 34, unless, you know, my father, you know, directs the...
Whoever is the administrator to give it over.
It's a couple of large, is that right?
A couple of G's? Oh, no.
A couple of K's.
Sorry. Yeah, okay.
Same thing. It's a couple of thousand.
I think it's like 19...
Yes. Okay.
I mean, obviously, this is a decision that no one can tell you, right?
I mean, this is not a cut-and-dried, you know, do I chop up a...
Cat with a meat cleaver, right?
I mean, this is not a cut-and-dried moral case, in my opinion.
I have never walked away from money where the situation, to my judgment, corrupt, and looked back with regret, not once.
And I don't speak flippantly here.
I mean, I was in a situation, I won't give any details, but I was in a situation where I was being offered a job $150,000 a year for three days a week work.
And I turned it down because for reasons which were not important but they were to some degree ethical reasons.
And I never looked back and said, man, I wish I had taken that ridiculously high-priced job.
I quit my very lucrative software career a little over two years ago now to try and scratch out a living on this crazy philosophical frontier wild west of the Internet.
And I have never once looked back and said, I wish I'd kept that job.
Now, I'm not going to say that was a moral situation where I was at before, but I'm just going sort of over in my mind about times when I've been offered a lot of money for some sort of compliance with something that I don't respect.
And... I can't think of a time where I've turned it down, where I've looked back and regretted it.
In fact, quite the contrary.
I've looked back at it as a singularly clarifying moment in those relationships.
And so that's my experience.
And certainly, as Dr.
Phil says, don't ask other people to substitute my own judgment for yours.
But I'll simply talk about my experience that I can't imagine...
That there's anything that I could buy that would...
Make it worthwhile to spend time with people who frighten and repulse me.
I can't imagine what I would buy that would make that worthwhile.
Because those moments of being frightened and repulsed are actually really unpleasant, would throw me back into my own history, would erode the significant and challenging process of going forward.
You've spent a lot of money on therapy, obviously.
I know it can be quite expensive, though I think it's a fantastic investment.
But I can't think that, you know, if you say that these people have this emotional effect on you, that there's anything that you could buy that would make that better, if that makes any sense.
It does. I really appreciate your opinion.
Money is just numbers, right? Money is just numbers in a bank.
It's just digits, right? Don't think of it as X amount of dollars.
Think of it as, what could I buy that would make it worthwhile to spend time with people who treated me in this kind of way throughout my life?
Would a car do it?
A car makes it worthwhile to go and spend time with these people?
A really great computer system?
A couple of vacations?
What is it that I could buy with this money that would make it worthwhile to spend time with people that you have this emotional relationship with or this non-relationship, as you say, with?
Translate it into some stuff.
If I bought a really nice painting and I hung it on the wall every time I looked at it and said, okay, that means I've got to go see these people, would I say that's a good deal?
I've never been in that experience.
I'm not particularly materialistic.
I do like my creature comforts, but I'm not particularly materialistic.
I just can't think of anything that I could buy that would make that worthwhile.
But again, that's my decision, my choice.
That's just wanted to share with you because there's not a cut and dried issue.
I really appreciate the perspective, Sean.
Well, we have two other callers, if you don't mind.
I really do appreciate it.
I know that this stuff can be very, very tough to talk about, but I wish I could really communicate to you and to everyone just the view that I have a little bit as sort of the hub of the wheel, the degree of...
Just staggering, moving, and beautiful courage that I see with people who are getting into therapy, who are trying to bring real honesty to their relationships, who are confronting really painful and difficult things about the past.
Some of those families flourish as a result.
Some go through separation periods.
Some, it's a mess.
But I just, I mean, the amount of good that you're doing for the world and for your own future by attempting to bring your reality into your relationships with those around you, I just, It is such an incredibly beautiful and amazing thing to see.
And I hope that in all of the turmoil and difficulty of doing that, that you do take pride, the simple pride, in speaking the truth about your experience to those around you and allowing them to have the space to respond as they see fit and then evaluating things from there.
That is such a difficult thing to do, but it is, to me, the only way that the world becomes a better and more honest place.
Thanks so much. I wouldn't be able to do it without you and the community.
Well, I appreciate that, and kudos to you.
It's magnificent. So, I think that we do...
Oh, did they...
We lost our callers.
They did not have the patience. Or, everything was perfectly answered in my rambles.
So, we'll just wait and see if they call back.
Let me... Give out the number again.
I have it here.
It's in my copy-pasty.
The number, for those who want to know, is 347-633-9636.
All right. We have Aoun, it says, which I think is A1, as in A1 caller.
Are you on the...
Hello? Can you hear me?
I sure can. Steph, this is Sebastian from Costa Rica.
I'm going to make this as brief as possible because I'm on a phone call and I've got like two minutes left, so I'm just going to ask my question as quickly as possible.
Hello? Go ahead.
Okay. Yesterday I saw the other bawling girl with my girlfriend and after watching it, I felt a desperate need to dissociate emotionally.
And lately I've been just realizing that I can't take any stress unless it's a voluntary stuff where the 9 to 1 ratio of which you speak about of personal relationships is the same cortisol to Glutamine levels, you could say, to my adrenals.
That means that I've come to realize I can't live a life in which I'm not going to have a 90% completely stressful, relaxed, laid-back, enjoying life, atylaxia, happiness-type pace.
I can't pace myself to the rhythm of so much statism and the emotionality of And lately, it's like, am I trying to become some sort of Buddhist-associated type person, or am I just looking after my own well-being?
And it's becoming a really big dilemma for me because Because I'm finding that 90% of my life, or most things in the society we live in, are great stressors, and that's not what I want.
I want to grow, but I want to do it at my own pace.
So that was basically my question.
All right. Are you hanging up now?
Did you do your two minutes? I just want to ask you a question if you've got a bail.
I guess that's our answer.
Okay. So we've had the bungee splurge, and again, not quite as much fun as it sounds.
This gentleman, if I remember rightly, he said he was watching The Other Boleyn Girl, which I think is a movie with Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman.
It's important for me to know my tween goddesses.
And that there was statism and he found this to be difficult and unpleasant.
And when he's talking about sort of the 10 to 1 ratio, this is just a way of looking at it that I've heard about and sort of talked about with others that sustainable relationships that are positive and beneficial generally have a sort of 10 to 1 ratio of good times to bad times.
Like you can't have... 90% bad times and 10% good times and have that be a sustainable relationship.
And it seems to sort of float around.
Sort of what I've heard and talked about is, you know, 10 to 1, you know, good times to bad times.
And obviously if you can get it lower than that, even better.
And so he's trying to up his life happiness quotient to better than 10%.
And I think he was saying that it's around 90%.
That is tough.
And I can certainly understand that.
I wasn't sure that I followed, and you can type that in the chat window.
There was something about...
The Buddhist dissociation versus engagement, and I think you threw a Greek word in there from Aristotle's definition of happiness.
I think I got that.
If you could just type that last clarification into the chat window here, I'll just keep my eye on it, because I want to make sure that I answer that and not just some question of my own inventing, as I so often do.
While we're waiting for that to come up, if...
Oh, I'm finding I have to dissociate in order to keep myself from stressors.
I don't think that's a good idea.
I don't think that's a good idea. Dissociation, and again, not a therapist, right?
As far as I understand it, it's what happens when you find something to be overwhelming and you kind of detach with it in your own mind.
You go to some unconscious happy place or whatever and you're no longer sort of vibrantly engaged in the moment in life.
I think that generally it's really important to face up to stressors, to face them down and to find ways to improve those kinds of things rather than to sort of hive off from your own brain and go to your out-of-body experience, happy place.
That generally is not the most beneficial.
It can happen in the short run, right?
But I think it's not a very long-term beneficial strategy for dealing with these kinds of stressors.
I think you need to try and design a life for yourself where you have a minimum of these kinds of toxic stressors, whether it comes from a movie or whatever.
I mean, this is a movie about...
I think I saw it.
I did see it. Oh, yeah.
And I didn't watch the end.
I couldn't get through it.
I mean, the moment that I think there was a rape in the film or like in the moment that stuff starts coming up, I'm just I'm done.
I mean, I just I just don't want that in my head.
I don't want that in my life.
I just I don't I don't do that kind of stuff that happened for me.
I don't know. Maybe 15 or 20 years ago when Casino came out, they put the guy's head in a vice and cranked it until his eyes popped and I just walked out of the theater and I said, I'm just done with this.
I'm not going to watch this stuff anymore.
I'm not going to have it in my life.
I'm not going to have it in my head.
That's my particular strategy and it limits me to mostly things that I find on YouTube that my baby enjoys watching.
It's just not what I want to have in my head.
I don't want to rub my face in the cheese grater of other people's pathologies.
That's not my preferred way of doing it.
So I would just say to face the stressors and work to try and minimize your exposure to them is better than sitting there.
But you just walk out of the theater.
You are in a voluntary situation.
Nobody's forcing you to watch the end of the film.
Nobody's forcing you to imbibe things that you consider toxic.
I really would focus on just setting up a life for myself where I feel voluntarily free to engage or not engage.
And if I find things to be stressful or toxic to remember that we have the choice to be there or not, I think that would be my suggestion on how to approach it.
So I think we have room for another caller.
Let me give you the number again.
1-347-633-9636.
We have time for...
Perhaps one more call.
So I'm just going to sit here for 33 minutes until someone talks.
Okay, I'm not really going to do that.
But if you could call, that would be nice.
And thank you again so much for the callers who have brought up this stuff.
I know that it's really tough, you know, and it is sort of interesting while we sort of wait for somebody else to call in.
It certainly was never my particular intention in starting a philosophy show to talk much about the family.
I did talk about a little bit of family experiences or thoughts.
When the question came up, why is it that people are resistant to rational arguments?
That's a very, very important question.
It really is the fundamental question of philosophy.
Philosophy has worked out a lot of really great rational arguments in its time, as has objectivism and libertarianism and other kinds of approaches to the truth.
But we really have made...
Almost no progress in getting people to surrender bigotry to reason and evidence or prejudice to reason and evidence.
And so when you're into philosophy, coming up with more answers that the general population isn't going to listen to, to me, is not a very productive use of your time.
It's like writing a great poem on the surface of a lake over and over and over again.
It doesn't last. It doesn't mean anything.
Nobody gets to read it. And so, after I began to put out ideas about, I mean, I started in pure anarchic libertarian theory about how society could run without a state, and it's got a lot of hostility, a lot of tension, a lot of anger, a lot of upset, and so on, and so it sort of became important for me to try and figure out why the theoretical pinnings of a state of society, why it might make people so upset.
So, that's sort of why we sort of ended up looking at the roots of irrationality, which for, you know, some people come from the family.
Alright, we have a caller, I believe.
Caller Alor, you are on the line.
Hello? Hello.
So, I have a question about being afraid of going outside, sort of.
Alright. I thought about it for a while.
I think it might have something to do with being afraid of being seen by people or something.
Like, I have a great deal of anxiety about just going outside and doing pretty much anything.
And it's mainly when I'm alone.
Like, when I go out with a friend, it's easier.
But I just...I'm not exactly sure why.
Oh, one thing I would like to put is, like, I defood recently.
And I was having similar problems when I was at my parents' house since I didn't want to go outside.
So that would be, if you have any questions.
Sure, I do. The first question is, are you talking to a therapist?
Hello? Hello.
I was just asking if you were talking to a therapist at all.
Yeah, I have a therapist.
I haven't really brought it up with them, though.
No, that's fine. I just want to, because, you know, anytime that there's a break from family, I'm just always nagging people to make sure that they're talking to a therapist, right?
So, I just, that's my own particular, okay.
And again, this is all just nonsense theory, so I'll throw it out there, and you can tell me if it makes any sense or fits at all, and if it doesn't, you can just discard it as another one of my gas bag theories.
Is that fair enough? Sure.
There is something that I think is very important to do with one's formative experiences, particularly family, particularly parents, but it can be teachers and priests and other people like that.
Correct. There is a worldview, in my experience and opinion, there's a worldview that people have about the world and people in it, right?
So, you know, think of your average, I don't know, nutbag socialist, right?
Who thinks that, you know, everybody who's in business is, you know, just wants to put children to work in salt mines and underpay their workers and they're like Mr.
Burns and Darth Vader all rolled into one.
They have a kind of world view of business, right?
And, you know, voluntary trade and so on, that it's all exploitive and the bosses have all the power and you see all this clichéd stuff in Sally Field movies and all this other kind of nonsense.
Sorry, ask someone older who knows that reference.
So, when we look around the world, we can see particular kinds of people who have worldviews, right?
So, you look at the more radical environmentalists who believe that the only way to save the planet is for people to die or stop reproducing or whatever.
They have a particular worldview about human nature.
We're all predatory.
We're greedy. We will rape Mother Gaia in order to have extra packaging for our iPods, and we just don't care about the future.
They have a view of human nature.
If you look at something like Catholicism, there is a view of human nature, which is that it's tuxified by original sin and Adam and Eve and Lucifer reigns in the world.
There's a kind of worldview about people.
What is human nature?
What is human spirit?
What are people like, basically?
I'm not saying that it proves anything, but you sort of understand that people have a kind of instinctual worldview or view of how people are in general.
Yeah, I can see that.
So would the question be, like, what is mine?
The question wouldn't be what is yours, because if you say that it happened when you were younger, my question would be what is your parents' view of people, of the world?
What is your parents' view of human nature?
People are just ex, right?
Jerks or stupid or...
I think they're kind of gross and, like, they look at them like peasants in a way.
I mean, not literally, but I get that sense that my parents would maybe kick somebody out on the street or sidewalk or something and make fun of them.
I know that's happened before, so...
Who was it who got kicked out on the street and your parents made fun?
Is that right? I just want to make sure I understood that.
I just missed that bit. Repeat that, please?
Sorry, just repeat the bit about someone kicked on the sidewalk and someone laughing at them.
Oh, no, no.
There was, like, my parents might pick out somebody on the sidewalk and, like, talk to us about, like, maybe how they look or if they made...
If they did something that was kind of odd, like, then my parents would, or one of my parents, depending on who they were, would kind of make fun of them.
And I mean, it was occasional, or they didn't do that all the time, but it did happen.
Right, and I, again, I don't want to talk about myself, but...
But I'm going to. So I guess I do, right?
But my mother felt that the world was full of people who would lie to you or take things from you or rip you off or whatever, right?
So she was always really fearful of being preyed upon, right?
I mean, so she had this theory that...
In the supermarket when we would go to buy our groceries, the cashiers would try and shortchange you because they would put it all into a big pool and they would then split it up at the end of their shift, whatever they overcharged.
As if any business would ever operate it that way.
So she had this particular perspective that the world was full of people who would just take from you.
And that they were predatory and selfish and greedy and this and that, right?
And it took some work for me to kind of...
Oh, I see. Okay.
It took some work for me.
Then I have an idea.
Yeah, please go ahead. Okay.
I thought about how my parents were talking to me about...
I don't know, this is when we were fighting a lot, but...
Something about them, like...
They weren't actively overprotective...
But occasionally, it'd be like, people on the outside are dangerous and want to hurt me.
Like, they would tell me I should be careful.
Maybe like around guys or something, you know?
Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, don't go out at night and everything.
And don't go out alone, right?
Yeah, right. Yeah, don't go alone.
And what kind of harm did you perceive that they felt would come to you?
Rape and maybe gangs or something.
Wow, so not just like somebody might, you know, shoulder you on the sidewalk or somebody might even steal your purse, but it was like...
Rape and gang rape and death and is it that kind of stuff?
Am I overstating the case or was that where they were coming from?
They didn't state it outright, but yeah, I think that's what they were implying.
And just so I understand, in what way did you feel that they were implying that?
I guess the voice and the way they looked It's not like they were super afraid of me getting, like what you said, shouldered on the sidewalk or anything like that.
And I remember that when it came to things like people taking my stuff, it would be my fault.
Like maybe if I left an item, like forgot it, and somebody took it, then that would be my fault.
So it wouldn't be like...
Look out, people are going to take things from you.
It'd be more like, look out, you're a girl, you're not, and maybe big men can come out and do harm to you, kind of thing.
Right. Yeah.
Now, have you ever read 1984?
No, I hear it's good.
Yeah, you should read it.
It sounds like it's out of date, but it's really not.
One of the things that, and again, just my experience, because I certainly don't want to tell you what your experience was, but my experience was that my mother was very afraid that there was lots of danger in the world, and of course that was communicated to me very sort of explicitly.
The world is full of danger.
The danger is out there, right?
Right. This is a very totalitarian impulse, right?
So, for instance, in the Soviet Union, the citizens were always told that the capitalist West is about to invade.
There are spies among you coming in from outside.
The danger is outside the country, right?
And that's why we have to band together, right?
Right. Now, in my experience, of course, you know, my mother was saying, but the danger, I think this is a show all about my mom, right?
But my mother was saying that the danger was outside, right?
But the truth was that the danger was inside the house for me, right?
That's where the risk, that's where the violence was, was inside the house.
And in the same way, like, in Stalinist Russia, oh, the danger comes from the capitalist West, like, you know, some guy in Tupaccy, Joycey is, you know, mad about the Russians and is going to go and punch someone in Kiev, right?
But... The reality, of course, is that Stalin was saying the danger is coming from outside, but in reality, of course, for the Soviet Union, the danger was inside.
It was the NKVD, it was the secret police, it was the gulags, it was the concentration camps that were the danger, right?
So the danger was actually coming from inside the house, so to speak, but they would say that the danger is coming from outside the house, right?
Right. And so it could be that, you know, if you were experiencing tension or aggression or whatever it was that was negative in your parents' parenting, that they would say, well, there's all this danger outside in the world, right?
And in a way, that's sort of to take your focus off the danger that you may be experiencing inside the world, right?
Yes. Inside the house.
Because that's, you know, it sounds like that's sort of where the stressors were coming from.
Not from outside the house, but from inside the house, right?
Yes. But people will always want to focus on what's outside the house, right?
Yes. So, I think it's worth examining.
Well, obviously, you know, there may be ways that you...
I'm certainly no expert in this, but there may be ways that you can overcome some of these phobias with a more sort of short-term therapeutical treatment with regards specifically to breaking down phobias.
But I would look at the worldview that is inherited from your family, in particular from your parents, though it can be siblings as well.
Look at the worldview.
What is out there in the world?
That there is to be afraid of.
Did you get a chance to listen to the debate that I had in Philly a couple of weeks ago?
Oh, no. Not yet.
Well, when you listen to that debate, this to me is very interesting, and this is where I sort of part ways with libertarians quite a bit.
In that debate, you'll hear a lot of talk about guns and shooting people.
You know, like, I'd be comfortable with shooting people, but I don't.
Right? And that's why we need a government.
And, you know, when I was in New Hampshire, all these open carry guys, and I don't have any problem with gun ownership and open carries.
I think it's fine. But...
I can't sort of imagine the world that they live in where they sort of seriously think, would I be willing to shoot someone?
And that they've really thought about this and it's a real question.
Right? I mean, they're not going to have to shoot it, right?
I mean, it's not going to happen, right?
Okay, one in a million or whatever, one in a hundred thousand, but it's not going to happen, right?
Not to the degree that they sort of focus on whether their preparedness for it and all, right?
I don't know if these guys are like hoping to get mugged or something like that, pull a Bernie Getz or something, right?
I don't know, but... But to me, it would be interesting to say, well, what kind of worldview did you grow up with where you feel that a willingness or an ability to shoot people is really important?
What kind of worldview did you grow up with where you feel that there's all this threat out there that you need to manage with being heavily armed or whatever, right?
And you see this with the survivalists or whatever, right?
Like, I have to learn how to put my own toilet.
I'm sorry? Can I put something?
You should absolutely say it.
Stop talking. Okay.
You're talking about being heavily armed and everything.
I don't think that my anxiety is related to actually being hurt.
I think I'll just draw on what you said with being heavily armed.
If I want to go out, then I want to get ready and look as presentable as possible.
That kind of thing.
And I think it makes sense because my parents were very all about appearance.
And I went through a very long time criticizing my own appearance.
And so I know that When I go outside, you know, when I do, I start worrying about how I look and about how people are going to treat me and that kind of thing.
So, and really, it might be more of that.
So, maybe if your parents had, as you say, a minor habit, at least, of mocking people who looked imperfect...
That maybe you feel that that is a habit that lots of people have?
Yeah, that's probably true.
And I know that I've had some, quote, friends who did that to me.
So I guess it normalized it or something to be around people like that.
Right. Right. Yeah, they may not be close friends if they're mocking you for appearance things.
But, right, so, and this is something that, you know, if I can slip on my estrogen helmet for a moment, this is something that I think is a little bit more strong for women, right?
Like, guys can have other guys over and the place can be a mess, but if women have women over and the place is a mess, they feel very self-conscious, right?
Like, a lot of women feel that they have to, the place has to look really, you know, just right for other people to come over.
Things have to be presented and cleaned and so on, right?
Right. And I'm not sure where or why that comes from.
It seems a little tyrannical to me, you know, to use the word rather loosely.
But you may want to look at, like examine within your own mind, why your parents might have felt compelled to put down people who looked less than perfectly presentable, who looked odd or were doing something odd.
Because my guess would be, and it's only a guess, it provokes some anxiety that they need to put that person down.
right and if you can get to the root of that why that may have been occurring within your family then i think you can begin to understand that although there are people obviously who do that kind of stuff you know it's not really worth being that afraid of the world because there are those kinds of people who do that kind of stuff like that that's i think that's giving up quite a lot to some kind of snarky behavior like
Like, we don't want to end up living in a kind of personal prison and afraid to go out because there are people out there who are immature and put other people down.
That, I think, is surrendering something really good and important to something that is kind of small and mean, if that makes any sense.
Right. But I think it's why it may have occurred within your family or why your parents might have had that habit.
Right. And, you know, something to talk about with a therapist.
I mean, I couldn't even guess, right?
That would be a lot of involved questions and answers.
But I would think that would be...
That's where I would look.
And again, I could be completely wrong, right?
That's just the first place that I would...
It's really easy to ignore the worldview that comes down to us from those we grow up with in whatever capacity, siblings or parents or whatever, extended family.
But I think it's really important to say, in my culture, how is the world looked at?
In my family, how is the world looked at?
People who aren't like us are basically...
You know, X, right? And libertarians do this too, right?
People who aren't libertarians are basically sheeple or stupid or this and that and the other, right?
And I think that's certainly not been my approach, or at least when it has been.
I've apologized because it's not the right approach.
But I think it's really important to look at the worldview that you inherited, your view of human nature, your view of what people are like in general, because I think that's going to have a strong effect on how you move within the world and what you expect to come from the world.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Yeah, I like the idea of looking back on how my parents viewed the world and other people, too.
Yeah, I think there's a lot of really productive energy that can be put into that to differentiate habit from empiricism, right?
Because I find most people really nice, you know?
I really do, and I mean, I have a lot of opinions that people disagree with quite a lot, but I find most people are very nice.
Like, I get... 95% positive responses.
Now, the negative responses tend to be pretty negative, but, you know, that's fine too, right?
But I find that people are pretty nice.
People are pretty positive, right?
You know, we have this barbecue. We invite 40 people into our home and everybody's really nice, you know?
And when we go down to Philly or to New Hampshire and travel around, people are very nice.
They can disagree, of course, right?
And maybe they're right.
But my experience has been that most people are very nice.
That's the empirical experience that I have.
that's very different from the worldview that I inherited from my family, which was quite the opposite.
Okay.
So was that at least, I hope that was at least maybe productive or something that would be helpful for you as a possible approach.
You can try it for 10 minutes and find it useless and then try something else, but that would be my first place to start.
All right. Thanks.
You're very welcome, and do let us know how it goes if you get a chance.
Okay. All right.
Well, I think... Hello?
Did somebody... We have another caller?
Another caller! Oh, you know, everybody waits until the end, and they bring up the really big and important questions.
What is time? What is...
They are magazines. Sorry, go ahead.
Hello, Scott. Hello.
Hello. Can you hear me?
I sure can. What's, uh, what's in your mind?
This is, uh, today asking from Costa Rica again.
Sorry about the rush.
I just went and I got another car.
I understand you had a question for me.
I'm sorry about that. Well, basically, I have one further question.
Do you think that disengaging from what would appear to be a 90% corrupt world and market and You know, we have a state religion here in Costa Rica, and Catholicism shapes a lot of the interactions, even if just second-hand through cultural biases.
But still, I feel like to what degree am I setting myself up against my own happiness or just well-being, if not happiness, considering the predominance of the state system here.
Maybe I used the wrong term when I said disassociation earlier, and I meant to say disengagement.
Okay. Because, you know, some people will...
Yes? Okay, I think I understand.
I hear you. You wanted to add to that?
I think I understand the question, and I think I have a response that might be helpful.
Was there anything you wanted to add?
No, just one remaining question.
I realized that among all the awful things that were present in the movie yesterday, I saw a grin in my partner and also in myself just when the guy had his head chopped off and I nearly cried because I felt like, what does that say about the situation?
I couldn't understand the reaction from both of us Even if it was just a split second when one of the characters gets executed.
And I was amazed and shocked.
And it wasn't until later talking to her that she asked me, why didn't you walk out?
You've done it in other movies.
And I couldn't understand it.
So maybe if you have a theory, I would be more than happy to hear what you have to say.
Thank you. Okay, I think he's off.
So we'll reconstruct a question that will be right up my lines of expertise.
Well, first of all, yeah, okay, so let's say, I'm not sure that it's entirely true, but let's say 90% of the world is still not enlightened or rational or evidence-based or whatever.
Well, do you disengage from that world?
No. No, you don't.
You can. This is just my opinion, right?
So I can't tell anyone to do anything, obviously, right?
But this is just my very strong opinion.
No, you don't disengage.
And do you know why? Because somebody got it from 100% to 90%, and it wasn't one person.
It was a whole load of people. We're just a little link in that chain, right?
Some group of heroes in the past, when it was way tougher...
To be rational and empirical and philosophical.
When people had to drink hemlock or got burned alive or get thrown in cages with lions to be eaten or amphitheaters, right?
Some group of heroes and heroines got the world from 100% irrationality to only 90% irrationality.
And they did that at a time when it was much harder and much worse to do it than what we have to do now.
So if you disengage from the world because it's only 90%, that just means that it's going to stay at 90%.
It's not just you and it's not just me, obviously, right?
But let's just take it in terms of UPB, right?
So if you disengage because it's only 90%, then it stays at 90%.
If you stay engaged with the world and you stay passionately devoted to virtue, truth, reason, empiricism, goodness and science and all that yummy stuff, virtue and integrity and courage and authenticity and self-knowledge and introspection and therapy and all that kind of good stuff, Then you can chisel that down.
You don't take the world as it is and say, well, it's 90%, so I have to disengage because it's 90%.
Well, why don't you work to bring the 90% down in whatever environment you have that affected?
That's, I think, the great courage.
You don't have to do it. There's no obligation to do it.
You're not necessarily a better person if you do it, but what you are is a more powerful person if you don't run away from the monolith of irrationality that we're I think we're good to go.
If we have that ability, have that desire, and have that capacity to pay it forward to the next generation, I think that is a very noble way to spend your life.
So I wouldn't just look at it as take it or leave it 90%.
I would work to bring that percentage down, and then within a couple of generations, we could have, I think, a pretty rational world.
And I think that would be wonderful for all living organisms on the planet.
So I hope that makes some kind of sense.
So I think, are we out of time, Mr.
J? Are we done like dinner?
What are we at? He'll type something nice for me, I'm sure, in just a moment.
Three minutes! Do we have any other callers?
With really short questions?
Otherwise I'm going to have to imitate my fax noise to do the answer.
Does anybody have any questions in the chat room?
I look. Talk low.
Okay. Anybody?
Anybody? No. Okay.
Well, what is upcoming?
Let's talk about what's upcoming.
We are trying out, and thanks again to Mr.
J for suggesting this to you, and I hope it's going to work out.
Thank you for your patience with the technical issues earlier on.
We're going to try a little bit of this video thing, and I certainly do appreciate having a call in number and getting the broadcast out that way.
That's wonderful. I'm still...
I'm so sorry it's taking so long.
I'm still working on the How to Achieve Freedom book.
It's a pretty important one and I really want to get it right.
And that's a lot of research, a lot of evidence-based stuff.
So it's not just as much of a ramble fest as I had before.
So I'm sorry that it's taking so long.
But it will get done this year, I promise.
And I hope that it will be long before the end of the year.
I have a first draft, but...
It's got a ways to go.
So if you want to read any of the other books that I've written...
You know, we've had...
I was just doing the numbers the other day.
I've had over 80,000 books downloaded.
You know, as far as philosophy texts go, I mean, it's not exactly Harry Potter, but it's not actually that bad as far as that goes.
You know, for 4 million podcast video views, we've heard 2 million video views all considered, and 80,000 books, 4 million podcasts a year.
There seems to be a little bit of a hunger for philosophy out there, which of course I'm completely thrilled about.
And I hope that it just continues to grow and people's interest in reason and evidence and right thinking continues to expand.
And thank you so much to everyone who has stuck by the show, which I guess is now in its third year and has helped make it the relative success that it is.
And so I wanted to thank everyone.
For that, for continued support, whether that's emotional, financial, time.
Yushin, I really just want to thank everyone so much.
There's an old Sandra Bernhardt video called, Without You I'm Nothing.
And I think that is quite true when it comes to communicating about philosophy in the world.
It's the listeners and the donators and those who invest time and energy in whatever form into this philosophical conversation that makes it come alive to the degree that it does.
And I just wanted to thank everyone so much for the opportunity to talk about philosophy around the world.
Probably close to 100,000 listeners off and on to the show since it first started.
That is the very biggest philosophy conversation that I know of in history.
And it's not because I'm such a gosh-down great philosopher.
I think I'm not bad, but it's really because the technology has made all of this so possible, and the quality of the conversation, as always, is entirely driven by the quality of the listenership.
And so I hope that you will look at At yourself as participating in a philosophy conversation, not as a listener.
I know that there's a lot to imbibe and people say, stop making more podcasts.
I'm doing my best. My daughter is really helping me not make more podcasts.
I will try to get out this week, Parenting Part 6.
Now that my daughter is seven months and one week old, I'll put I have the time and I think some energy to get some of that out.
So I hope you'll listen. Drop by at freedomainradio.com.
Thank you so much for watching. Thank you so much for listening.
Have yourselves a wonderful week and I will talk to you soon.
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