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Nov. 22, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:58:04

1514 Sunday Show Nov 22 2009

Two dreams analyzed, one dream destroyed...

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	Well, thank you everybody so much for joining us just after 4pm, Sunday, November the 22nd, 2009.
	This is Stefan Molyneux from, oh, you know it, Free Domain Radio.
	A few bits of news and bidness, and then we will get down to the meat of the matter.
	Inside the fluff sandwich of my intros and outros, the new website is almost ready to roll, which is why most of my technical people have been massively avoiding me all weekend.
	And we hopefully will be able to go live in that in the next couple of days, but boy do we have some fantastic features for you.
	Let me just give you a quick rundown of the juice that is involved.
	Well, we have a nice juicy Full text searches of all that you can imagine.
	On the home screen, we have latest blog posts.
	We have latest podcasts.
	We have latest videos. We have a multi-user blog, which I'm going to start soliciting articles for.
	And I'm going to submit those to a general review from people on the site.
	And those that get the most thumbs up will be...
	I will read them out once a week as a podcast series.
	We have a map where people can put their location so that if you're all interested in philosophy and want to find people nearby, you can do that.
	It's proportional width to the screen, which is, I think, very nice.
	You can browse by media, by calendar, by category.
	You can do full searches, and it dynamically tells you as you type what hits and what doesn't.
	And that's some nice and juicy stuff right there.
	And let's just see.
	Let me remind myself what other juicy von Goodyvils we have.
	Oh yeah! There are events, so when I have a call coming up that's an open call, then it will be published in the events page.
	You can download the events to your local reminder system, so you'll be reminded them.
	Or you can sign up for an email reminder, so that the system will email you if a call is coming up that you wanted to listen in on or join into.
	And that's, I think, pretty cool.
	So there's lots of good stuff.
	In the new website.
	And I hope that you will check it out when it goes live this week.
	And, of course, feedback is always welcome.
	It is a work in progress. If you have not donated in a little while and you felt that the new website was good, as I think it is, it was not the cheapest thing to put together.
	And if you would like to chip in, that would be beyond appreciated.
	Freedomainradio.com. And I guess it'll be the donate along the left-hand side, along the top.
	Which will be very helpful.
	I also did a little video intro that's being spruced up by one of our graphics wizards to Philosophy.
	It's about a minute, which will be available as well.
	It's in the About page.
	So, that's cool.
	Less obtruse and more pressing information.
	We have in the Molyneux household small words from the Isabelle.
	She has, over the last few weeks, she's just been going through this Language spurt.
	This language rocket ship trajectory.
	She now says a ball because we have this massive exercise ball which is in the living room.
	I guess the formal room or whatever which is empty.
	And we bounce her and the ball around and she's completely thrilled with that.
	And so she knows the word for ball and oh yes she knows the word for egg which is quite exciting.
	She can spot an egg from about 4,000 miles and then she jumps up and down and says egg She knows hands.
	She's pretty good with ears, both ears.
	In fact, when you say ears, she will grab one.
	And then she will wrench your head like a fireman opening a fire hydrant so that she can get to the other ear.
	Because don't you know it, if she doesn't, apparently the world will end.
	So that's all pretty cool.
	And so we have words.
	And she's not quite walking, at least.
	She can't do more than take a step or two without walking.
	Without toppling, particularly, of course, as you can imagine, when I tackle her.
	But she's just delightful and wonderful, and we hope that we'll post some videos.
	I'm sorry, I've just been so busy over the last 10 days or so with this website that I haven't had a chance to post any videos, but I will because you all should see it.
	She's just staggeringly cute and completely delightful and wonderful.
	Though she is going through a phase where she...
	Absolutely hates, hates, hates being on the change table.
	And so we have to put on this little Cirque du Soleil show with hand puppets and fireworks and so on in order to keep her distracted while we do the nasty business of parenting.
	So that is quite a challenge.
	And she's getting pretty strong, right?
	So when she doesn't want to do something, you certainly know about it.
	But... I've also discovered that there's a library down the road which has a children's area.
	And I didn't know this, of course, because what am I doing hanging out before I have kids at the children's area?
	But there are all these toys and stuff like that.
	And it's pretty neat.
	She quite enjoys it, though.
	It's a little bit bewildered by some of the other children.
	It always seems like Lord of the Flies with other kids, at least for me.
	So I find it a bit of a challenge that way.
	But, you know, keeping her safe is number one.
	And so I just sort of roll around on the floor with her, which is quite a lot of fun.
	So that's the news from there.
	I have developed, I think, an absolutely excellent argument for anarchy, which I won't go into here, because I'm trying to come up with short videos.
	And the Money Is You video is actually going fairly viral.
	It's not doing too badly as far as that goes.
	But it's a damn good argument.
	It's even better than the one that's in Everyday Anarchy, which is that the state is proof that anarchy works.
	But I will work on that this week.
	Once the website stuff cools off a little bit, then I will get to work on that this week.
	And so, anyway, that's sort of the news and the weather.
	I've pretty much been buried in web coding and wrestling with vendors to get their controls to work.
	But I'm very, very pleased with the website and the way it came out.
	Nice, rotating menus all over the place and all that kind of good stuff.
	So, if you have a chance to look at it, I did post the link on the message board.
	I would appreciate your feedback if you have any.
	So, So that's it for me.
	I think that let's turn it over to the Borg brains of the outfit and to hear what is burning through your brains these days.
	And I would be more than happy to hear questions, comments, issues, problems, suggestions.
	Sprechen Sie, you.
	Oh yeah, sorry, I forgot to mention that we do, if you're listening to this in the chat room and you want it, To call in using a phone if you don't have Skype or any of that kind of funky stuff, you can do so.
	I will give you the number in just a sec, but before you do it, if you could ask James to keep an eye, because it rings on the server, so he's just got to keep an eye and answer it there, that would be excellent.
	The number is 315-876-9700.
	That's 315-876-9705.
	If you'd like to talk and you have no the Skypey, then we can do it that way.
	Steph? Yes.
	Hi. Hello.
	I have a question for you.
	Uh-huh. And unfortunately, I didn't really prepare anything so...
	But see, I had a dream last night involving trying to keep my reputation clean.
	I was in a place where I didn't know anyone there, but the people were kind of out to sabotage my reputation.
	And there was this one person I went to for help.
	I'm sorry, just before, and I have no problem talking about the dream, but I know some things about your life that are not general knowledge at the moment, and I'm not sure if we can do that without referencing those things.
	Okay, I wouldn't mind a few things.
	So we can go ahead.
	I just want to, because I don't want to sort of not bring the knowledge that I have to bear, though, of course, I'll keep it all as abstract as possible.
	But I just wanted to remind you that I may need to touch on some of those things without being anything specific, if we're going to do the dream, which I think would be a lot of fun.
	Okay.
	All right.
	So what was the dream?
	Okay.
	The dream was I was sort of at some kind of camp or something.
	I remember that I was like sliding down some kind of waterfall slash slope slash I don't know.
	It was kind of like a river or something and I was with some other people and I was on grabbing their hand and we were all kind of sliding down the hill.
	And that was kind of weird.
	And all of these people...
	Something happened where some people started spreading things about me that weren't true.
	And then just talking trash about me and I became concerned with my reputation.
	And I went to someone for help.
	And I was telling them...
	I was trying to tell them what was true.
	But their face kind of changed.
	At first they were normal, but then their face kind of changed into something like they had this predatorial look, like, mmm, fresh meat kind of thing.
	And... And as soon as that occurred, I started telling them all kinds of things that were not true about myself.
	All kinds of weird, just outlandish things.
	And I was getting frustrated because these things weren't true.
	And I thought, oh man, now I've really screwed up my reputation.
	I was feeling really embarrassed and frustrated and stuff.
	But then I talked with Bob about it.
	The question that arose was, why do I even care about my reputation with such people?
	So I mean, that was the dream.
	Right. Okay. Okay.
	Good. Good. Interesting.
	All right. Standard disclaimer, this is just my silly opinions over the internet, but that's not accredited.
	This is just, you know, fun, random, creative look at dreams.
	So that having been said, let's look at the dream.
	You're going down a waterfall kind of slope river with some other people and you're grabbing their hands.
	Is that right? Or everyone's grabbing each other's hands?
	Well, yeah, everyone is grabbing each other's hands.
	We're like holding our hands.
	We're laying side by side or something.
	Right. So it's sort of like...
	I'm trying to think.
	It's like whitewater rafting, but there's no raft.
	Or is it that wild or is it more sedate?
	Yeah, it's a lot like whitewater rafting, only without the whitewater.
	So there's a kind of danger, right?
	Because, I mean, whitewater, I've been...
	I mean, actually, when I was...
	I guess when I was CTO of the company that I co-founded, we took all of our employees to a weekend of whitewater rafting after we had a really good year.
	And it's pretty intense.
	It's pretty, like if you weren't in a canoe or a raft, I guess, it's kind of dangerous, right?
	I mean, there's rocks and you can smash yourself up and you could, you know, one bonk on the head and you can drown even if you're a good swimmer, right?
	It is. You know what I should also add?
	The slope, it was smooth.
	And the water was very thin.
	And there were also piles of dead leaves around.
	So I mean, it's a different...
	So it wasn't dangerous then?
	It was more like a water slide?
	Yeah, it was kind of like that.
	But you know, I would say it was more dangerous than...
	Yeah. Okay, so in between, sort of where you're trying to avoid rocks and dying and, you know, a safe water slide, it's somewhere in the middle, right?
	Right. Okay, okay, great.
	And then, so you're all grabbing each other's hands, and why are you grabbing each other's hands?
	To keep from sliding toward the side, like horizontally, and like, I don't know.
	It's an important question, right?
	Because there's lots of reasons why you would do it, right?
	You might do it out of delight to want to share the excitement of the ride.
	You might do it because you're terrified.
	You might do it because somehow you think that if you're all together, you're safer.
	But as you say, if you drift off towards one side, is it that the ride would be over and you want to stay on it?
	Or is it dangerous over there?
	Why is it that you wouldn't go off to one side?
	Well, I did let go of their hand, and that's when I, I mean, this is what I know, like, when I let go, I kind of, I was backsliding by myself, and I think I landed in a pile of dead leaves or something, or I hit it or something. The only problem is I don't remember what happened after that.
	I'm sorry, I want to make sure I understand the sequence because at some point they start lying about you.
	Was that after you hit the leaves?
	That was after, yeah.
	After I hit the leaves, something happened that I just don't remember.
	Was it a different environment when you found out that they were talking about you?
	Because they would go sailing down this...
	This water slide or whatever it is, so you wouldn't hear them necessarily talking about you.
	Was it a different environment when you found that out?
	Yeah, it was a different environment.
	But it was the same people?
	Yeah. It's a great dream.
	It's a great dream. Alright, I'll tell you what I think.
	This is a silly opinion time, but I'll tell you what I think and you can tell me if it makes any sense.
	Okay. It would seem to me that since you have taken a break from your family, that the group all going down this dangerous slide, this waterfall, maybe your family, you've taken a separation, right?
	So you've kind of peeled off.
	Right. Right.
	And when we separate from disruptive or dangerous or abusive groups...
	There is, of course, a tendency for those people to trash talk us, right, to badmouth us, to spread slander or whatever, right?
	Yeah. And do you know why they do that?
	They're butthurt. I'm sorry?
	They're butthurt. I don't know how to...
	Well, they're resentful about it, about me leaving.
	They're resentful about you leaving.
	Okay, go on. Um...
	And perhaps they're also afraid of what other people might think of them, because I left their own reputation, so maybe they'll want to screw with my reputation.
	To offset anyone being curious about what actually happened, I guess.
	Yeah, I think that's certainly some of it.
	Sorry, go on. If they can make me sound like the bad person or just something like the black sheep and I left because I'm crazy or something, then they can maintain their harmony or something like that.
	Yeah, no, I think those are all excellent answers, and I'm not going to say that mine is any better than those, but my take on it would be something like this.
	I mean, there are lots of reasons, and I think everything that you say is true, but I think fundamentally when someone, like, let's imagine that there are a bunch of women who know each other, right?
	They live on the same street or whatever, and they all have abusive husbands, right?
	Husbands who cuss and drink and, you know, maybe hit them and put them down and control the finances and And, you know, attack their, you know, fat, lazy, ugly, whatever, right?
	Put them down and so on, right?
	If one of these women, you know, has the courage, the moral courage to attempt to work things out, but with the understanding that abuse is not to be tolerated in personal relationships.
	Abuse is not to be tolerated in any relationships, but the only ones that we really have control over are our personal relationships.
	And so, this one woman She decides, you know, goes to see a therapist and does all the right stuff, right?
	Tries to work it out, goes to see a therapist, but can't make any progress and simply will not live the rest of her life being put down.
	And so she leaves.
	She just leaves. And she tells her friends, of course, right?
	Whatever, right? Now, it's a little easier sometimes to figure this stuff out when we put ourselves in someone else's shoes.
	What are her friends who are still in the abusive marriages, what are they going to feel?
	They will talk trash about her?
	No, I asked what they're going to feel, not what they're going to do.
	It's easier, right? It's easier to talk about what they're going to do, but we're trying to understand the motivation.
	I think that's what the dream is trying to tell you.
	Sorry, I heard you wrong.
	They'll feel anxious. Right, and why?
	I think. And...
	Okay, so if this lady leaves, but they all stay...
	No, no, we don't know that they're staying yet.
	We just know that they know she's left.
	Okay. Can you recap?
	I'm sorry. No, no problem at all.
	It's a tough one, right? So there's 10 women on the street.
	They're all in abusive marriages.
	One woman... You know, tries to work things out, goes to a therapist, can't fix things, is not going to spend the rest of her life being abused, sits down with this woman and says, I'm leaving my abusive husband, I've got the kids, I'm going here, I've got this, I'm going to get alimony, I'm going to get child support, I'm going to build a new life, I'm not going to put up with this one more day.
	And then she gets up and she leaves.
	What is the emotion in the room of the other nine women?
	Uh, well, kind of surprised, I would say.
	Like, uh, it's kind of being, like, stirred out of a sleep, but not quite awakened.
	Stirred out of a sleep. That's a beautiful phrase.
	That really is. Stirred out of a sleep.
	No, that really is. It's a beautiful, beautiful poetic phrase.
	It's beautiful. Stirred out of a sleep.
	It's a little more than stirred, I would say.
	It's like electrocuted out of a sleep, or jolted a cattle product, hazered out of a sleep, right?
	Right. So what do they feel?
	What do they feel? Okay, so they're startled and then what?
	It depends on how they They take this.
	Right. I would say that they're going to pendulum between two poles of emotions.
	I'm talking for nine theoretical women, which of course is what some bald guy in Canada can very easily do.
	But let's pretend that I have some idea what I'm talking about.
	And I think that they're going to swing between two pendulums.
	And you can think of two hands, right?
	One is a fist, and one is open.
	And the fist is rage, and the open hand is hope.
	And when you have been beaten down for a long time...
	And you see a crack in the prison wall.
	You see light coming in, illuminating the dust in your cell.
	You see somebody's made a break for it and you see a hole in the wall and you hear the guards coming and you don't know if you should run or you should stay.
	You feel hope and you feel terror and you feel rage.
	And part of you wishes that there was not that hole in the wall so that you wouldn't have to make the choice.
	Because if you choose to stay in the cell, you now know that you have chosen to stay in the cell rather than have been unjustly imprisoned.
	Right. Yeah.
	I can see that.
	Okay. Now, it's my belief.
	It's my opinion. It's a strong opinion.
	It doesn't mean it's true. It's my belief.
	It's my opinion. That the reason people attack those who leave is so that they have an excuse for staying.
	Right? If there's a hole in the wall and somebody's made a break for it, then the people who choose to stay, who don't choose to take a break for it, the people who choose to stay have to build a new prison.
	And that prison is called slander.
	Attack, abuse.
	Yeah. Right?
	Right. Because the old prison is no longer a prison because there's a hole in the wall and somebody got out, right?
	So it's not a prison anymore.
	So what are they going to do if they want to stay in prison?
	Which some victims do, unfortunately, right?
	They have to build a new prison.
	And that new prison is attack, slander.
	Right. Right. They're no longer victims.
	Yeah, they're no longer victims.
	So they have to become victimizers in order to create the new prison, right?
	Right. And so when you...
	Oh, and there's one other thing, too.
	There's one other thing, too, is that people who get away, there's no such thing as a clean break in a relationship that I've ever heard of.
	I can imagine there's no such thing as a clean break.
	It doesn't happen. We go, and we have to keep going back in our minds to pick up the things we left behind.
	Right? Right. Like, we all think about failed relationships, or relationships that have ended.
	Romantic, friendship, family, even professional work, whatever it is.
	So things that have not worked out, we think about those things for years.
	We never take a clean break and just, ah, I'm done, I'm gone, I never look back, right?
	We all look back, we all circle back.
	Right? The way that we leave Destructive relationships is like the way that a planet escapes an orbit, right?
	It just goes round and round and round and eventually, right, it gets out.
	But it never just breaks orbit and goes.
	We just make the orbit a little wider and then eventually we leave most of it behind.
	I mean, I to this day think about things that didn't work out for me 20 years ago.
	I'm not saying it's a big focus of my day, but it comes up from time to time.
	I just, I saw a, in the paper today, there's a play about Orson Welles, and a friend of mine from theater school, from like, dear Lord in heaven, almost 20, over 20 years ago, 22, 22 years ago, 21 years ago, 23, something like that, 20 years ago, give or take, is in this.
	And then when I went to go and see the producers of Melbrook's play, musical, he was playing in it as well.
	And so, you know, you think, oh, theater school, you know, what would life have been like as an actor?
	Should I have pursued it? I don't really think about it seriously, but it's hard not to go back in life.
	And I think it's healthy to go back.
	And we comb over things over and over again.
	And I think that's healthy because it is that combing over that makes the fertilizer for new soils, new growth.
	And so, when people badmouth others, they know that you're going to hear about it and they also know That that's going to want you to do what they desperately want you to do, which is to re-engage.
	Come back. Come back.
	Come back. Because if you come back, we don't have to leave.
	Because if you come back, leaving is silly, is a fool's game.
	So they want you to come back.
	I mean, it's hard to think that anyone would slander anyone if they knew for sure that that person would never, ever, ever hear about it.
	It would be sort of pointless.
	Yeah. But, I mean, I'm not talking about celebrities.
	I mean, in...
	Right? They want you to come back and the bad mouth...
	The bad mouthing is please come back.
	Please re-engage. Come back into the prison cell and tell us that there's nothing out there.
	And it's not a prison cell.
	Because that's what you do in the dream.
	They talk trash about you and you...
	Engage. Yeah. And when you engage, they win.
	In the dream, it tells you that explicitly, right?
	They get this predatory look.
	Ah, fresh meat. Right?
	And you end up lying.
	And I end up blamed?
	You end up lying.
	Because you said you started to make up all this stuff about yourself.
	Yeah, I did. Right?
	And I think that's what the dream is telling you about.
	That if... You re-engage with those who slander you.
	Then you will end up hollowing yourself out with falsehoods.
	That they will win.
	That you will be brought down like a baby deer before a pride of lions.
	They will feast.
	And you will vanish.
	Okay. Wow.
	You know, I'm...
	I'm in the position where I still haven't gotten a job, but it's very crucial that I get one before April so that I'm not faced with the option of going back to my parents.
	So, with that in mind, that's important to keep in mind.
	Right. Your parents...
	It doesn't matter whether it's your parents or not.
	The people who've bad-mouthed you in your life don't have to be in your life to continue to bad-mouth you because we internalize all of these alter egos, right?
	We internalize all of these voices.
	Yeah. Yeah.
	I wonder if the dreamer's talking about The internal voices or the external?
	Or both? Well, if you're not in contact with the people who verbally abuse you, then they're talking about the internal voices.
	Which are more powerful, right?
	We can get away from the external voices, but we can't get away from the internal voices.
	It's like there's a fire on our skin, and there's a fire in our heart that is consuming us, and we can put out the fire on our skin, But the real challenge is putting out the fire that is consuming us in our hearts, right?
	Right. We can walk away from a fire, we can put the fire out that's on our clothing, but putting the fire out in our hearts, living with some soothing, calming coolness in our lives when we've grown up in a situation of abuse, that is the real challenge.
	Yeah. And of course not recreating things.
	The fire on the skin to distract yourself from the continued fire in the heart, which means not getting into abusive relationships again.
	It's a bit of a tangent, but I mean, there is something that I wanted to add.
	While you were talking to me about my dream, what came to mind was the references I put on my resume and my job applications.
	I did word processing for my mom and my aunt was a boss at a daycare and I worked for her for a few weeks.
	And I put them on my resume.
	And Bob was telling me that it's not a good idea at all because they will trash talk me.
	I figured that if I put please don't call then Then my future employers just wouldn't call and I wouldn't have to worry about that.
	But I want to know what you think about that.
	Look, I mean, I hugely sympathize with that.
	That's a tough situation for sure.
	That is a tough, tough situation for sure.
	I would put down the work experience, but I would not put down the reference and say, don't call.
	Because that's just going to raise more questions than it's going to answer, and in this kind of economy, the fewer questions that are raised, the better.
	I would put down the experience, and if somebody says, you know, why can't I contact this person?
	They'd be like, oh, I'm not in contact with that person anymore.
	I don't have any good way of contacting them.
	The company has disbanded.
	You know, whatever. Anything that you need to say that's just going to have that, you know, because the experience is real, but the references aren't going to be objective, right?
	Right. That would be my suggestion.
	There's ways of just...
	And again, I'm not saying bald-faced lies or anything, but there's ways of sort of easing your way through that question and just say, you know, unfortunately I can't give you references to companies suspended or, you know, I'm no longer in contact with these people and I don't know how to get in contact.
	They moved to Australia. I don't know.
	Whatever, right? But, you know, I'm no longer able to be in contact with these people or whatever, right?
	Don't say that they're family or anything like that, but that would be my suggestion.
	Most places that you go, like when I started temping, which is, I guess, what you're looking to do, They don't care so much about the work experience.
	What they do care about is your competence with particular packages.
	And back in the day that I was doing it, it was WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS, which was way back in the day.
	But what they did was they put me through a test to say, well, what keystrokes do you do to format and print and all this kind of stuff?
	And how do you save in different directories and all that?
	How do you create backups?
	So if I knew that stuff, then...
	They didn't really care what my actual work contacts were, because everybody's got to start somewhere.
	So if you can pass the word processing test, again, if this is all still the way it's done, which I'm sure it is, then it doesn't really matter so much that someone's going to vouch for you.
	Okay. Okay, that helps.
	Now, I just want to make sure that, because we've got some people who also wanted to Who wanted to have questions?
	And we've done two for you. I know that we could go further in the dream, but I think it's a good place to start.
	Let me just take a pause, if you don't mind, and just ask if there's somebody else who wanted to come up with, or who had questions, who was waiting, because I didn't want to...
	I'm trying to sort of slice it up a little bit more evenly, this cake, if that makes any sense.
	Okay. Well, thanks, and that was excellent.
	I'm glad to hear a dream again.
	I just find them absolutely fascinating.
	You know, the pattern... Making of our minds and this wisdom fountain that is deep down in the central cortex of our brain that sprays all of these amazing artistic, novelistic images up to help us is really, really, it's an amazing horse to ride and I'm very glad that you're taking them seriously.
	Seth, I do have another question, but I mean, if anybody else has questions right now, I'll let them go.
	But if it's okay with you later on, I'd like to ask another question.
	Yeah, if we have time, absolutely.
	I'd be happy to listen, but I know that there were some other people who contacted me beforehand saying that they wanted to ask some questions, so if those people or one of those at a time would like to step up, this and now would be the time.
	All right, thank you. Thank you.
	Hi there, Steph. Oh, hey, how's it going?
	I'm pretty good. Good, nice to hear from you again.
	Yeah, thanks. It's been a very long time.
	I've been quite busy lately.
	My life has been pretty busy with trying to do a lot of social activities, you know, because I'm used to being an introverted person, just kind of staying home.
	So I've been trying to go out and do all kinds of interesting things, like I have a poetry meetup and all these other social activities.
	And somebody suggested that, since I'm single, that I start up a singles club.
	Have you ever heard of this? A singles club?
	I mean I've heard of singles clubs but they come in a variety of formats.
	What were you thinking of? Well, we don't have a lot of those down here so I had to do a little bit of research and I'm still trying to come up with how to organize such a thing and what I really wanted was something where I can attract You know, people who are emotionally mature and eventually want long-term relationships and so forth.
	And, you know, not just kind of people who are just looking to go to bars and get one night stands and stuff like that.
	And it's some difficulty because I've never done this before.
	And what were you thinking about in terms of the format, the content, the locations?
	Is it sort of like you would get together to do stuff that would be, you know, like bowling or archery or, you know, whatever, that would be sort of fun for people to do, but would also give them a chance to sort of interact so it wouldn't just be like, let's go play volleyball where you can't really talk, but it would be something where you would have time to chat and meet people?
	Oh yeah, absolutely, yeah.
	I want something that's very social and hopefully kind of natural.
	Get people together and give them options to play games or something and maybe once in a while go out to eat at a restaurant together and play games where people might get a chance to casually share something about themselves.
	I'm hoping through that people will develop friendships and eventually maybe even deeper relationships from that, if that makes any sense.
	Sure, sure. Now I understand.
	Lingerie parties, all that kind of stuff, right?
	For the guys. Yeah, absolutely.
	Right? Some beer.
	Yeah, no, I mean, I think that's interesting.
	And what would your goal in doing that be?
	Well, certainly for myself, I'd like to meet somebody through that because I'm not having any luck in any other areas.
	And, you know, I certainly would like to help other people because I am kind of a helpful person.
	Would you join one first to find out what you liked or didn't like or would you start your own first, do you think?
	Well, unfortunately, there's not any close to where I live that I could join.
	Otherwise, I would just do that first.
	But I think this might be something I might have to start because there's just not that kind of thing around here.
	Wow, you found a chilling vortex of market failure.
	It's all over. There is no such thing as the free market.
	Okay. No, that's good. I mean, if you want it and it's not there, it's not a bad thing to provide.
	I mean, I certainly looked for philosophy shows before I started Free Domain Radio and I couldn't find any that I thought were good.
	So it's okay.
	I mean, if you can't find something, other people might be as well.
	I think it's a challenge.
	I think it's a very good challenge, and I think it's a particularly exciting challenge for somebody like yourself, who is to say you've got more of a history of introversion.
	Right. Right.
	I tell you this. I tell you this from my experience.
	Again, it may match yours, it may not.
	One of the reasons that it's tough to meet someone to date, someone to have a relationship, a romantic relationship with, is that we're all afraid of rejection.
	And rejection is a sort of constant fear of human beings.
	And it's not a bad fear to have.
	I mean, people who aren't all afraid of rejection are kind of crazy, right?
	So it's a good fear to have.
	But I would say that the rejection that you're likely to face in Dating is much less than the rejection you're going to face when trying to organize people to do something.
	At least that's sort of been my experience that it is a real challenge.
	You know, lots of people will say that they want to do stuff, that they want to help, that they want to, right, this, that and the other, right?
	But, you know, when it actually comes to doing stuff, people always seem to be just that little bit too busy or whatever, right?
	And so you have to develop a bit of a thick skin when it comes to organizing stuff for people.
	I mean, a totally minor example, and there have been some people who've really helped, but lots of people wanted to help out with the website thing, and I'm like, hey, let's have a conference call, and here's the roadmap and all that, and no one showed up.
	I mean, other than a couple of people who were already helping.
	So lots of people want to, and they'll express interest, and that's a misleading signal.
	It's sort of like having a business plan where you say, If everything I sell is free, what will the demand be?
	Well, if it's free, the demand is going to be very high.
	But as soon as you actually ask people to pay some money, then the demand mysteriously tends to dry up quite significantly, right?
	And so when you're asking people to do stuff in a particular context, lots of people will be very enthusiastic because it's free to be enthusiastic.
	It doesn't cost you any time. It doesn't really cost you any money.
	But then when you actually are asking people to start doing stuff, That's the real challenge.
	Don't be misled by people's enthusiasm and then crushed by their lack of actual interaction, if that makes any sense.
	That would be my sort of suggestion.
	Although I will say this, that if you do pull it off, and I'm sure that you can, you're very intelligent, resourceful, and a nice fellow, then it will be a very huge step forward, I think, for you.
	Not to sound at all like, you know, pat, pat, good boy, step forward, whatever, right?
	I mean, just to be encouraging.
	I think it would be a good step forward to you.
	And I also think it would kind of put you in an alpha male position as the organizer of this group.
	And I think that will be positive for you.
	Yeah, that's great.
	And Yeah, I mean, I'd be happy if I could just set it up and just get, you know, just a handful of people that, you know, we all find something, some value in it.
	And, you know, I mean, I do take that part of Free Domain Radio that says, you know, be a beacon of light for other people, and I try to do that.
	Right. And my suggestion would be, for the first meeting, bring probably, I would say, two to three people Women's outfits.
	Because if it turns into a complete circle round sausage fest, you're going to have to eeny, meeny, miny about who's going to end up being the women for the night.
	And that's something that will be very eye-opening, I think, for a variety of people in the meetup.
	Yeah, definitely. And nothing too comfortable.
	You know, all spandex-based and high heels.
	That would be my suggestion.
	Then it can be a really revealing exercise in many ways.
	And we can find out who's Jewish, who's not, all that kind of stuff.
	Right, right. Yeah.
	And as far as, I mean, I'm no organizational genius, as anybody who's worked with me knows, but I will say this, that the only thing that I've been able to do that has really, really worked is you just grit your teeth and you just keep frickin' doing it like it's happening.
	You just keep doing it like it's actually happening.
	And eventually it just happens.
	Eventually it just happens.
	People are very resistant to new things, right?
	Because new things can, you know, they don't often work out and people don't want to get involved in something if it's just going to fizzle out.
	You know, like let's do a wiki of Q&As for free domain radio.
	Wee!
	You know, everybody spends, you know, a weekend doing it and then it fizzles out and that weekend was wasted, right?
	So people don't want to do stuff where it's going to fizzle out.
	They don't want to get involved.
	They don't want to invest energy where it's going to fizzle out.
	The stuff that works is the stuff where you just keep freaking do it like it's happening.
	And then once people get that it's not gonna fizzle out, then they will end up recognizing that their time is not gonna be wasted.
	You don't want to get seven guys to show up at a bar or a restaurant and then never see them again.
	Because they all, oh, I get my hopes up, I'm going to dress up, maybe I'll meet someone, and then they get disappointed.
	But you just have to keep pressing on like it's actually happening.
	Like, hey, I'm podcasting from my car, but by God, this is going to be the greatest philosophical conversation the world has ever seen, and I'm just going to keep doing it like it's happening now.
	And eventually it starts to happen, right?
	But if people sense that you are not committed, then they will not get interested.
	And the way that they'll try and figure out whether you're committed or not is that they will come and they will go.
	And they will be interested and then they will not.
	And they want to see whether you're taking your drive from their commitment.
	Because then it's kind of circular, right?
	They want to see that you have a drive that is independent of their commitment.
	And once you have that drive, they will commit.
	But if you're going to sort of take one step and wait for everyone to kind of Join behind you, and then you'll take the next step.
	In my experience, that stuff doesn't work.
	But if you just, you know, I'm just going to push my way through this wall, and the next wall, and the next wall, and the next wall, and it's going to happen no matter what, then people get that.
	I think they sense that, and they will come along.
	Like, you're a strong current, and they just find it easier to swim in that current than oppose it after a while, but they really have to get that it's a strong current first.
	I hope that this is not too metaphorical and actually is somewhat helpful.
	Oh yeah, that's very helpful.
	Yeah, that does make a lot of sense.
	I like that a lot better than the way I usually approach projects, which is trying to, you know, intellectualize everything and try to figure out every step ahead of time, which I just end up talking myself out of it because I can't figure out everything before I do it.
	You know, I just got to just actually do it.
	Yeah, I mean, when I was younger, this is going to sound all kinds of, you know, Man who are.
	But one of the things that I found was a better way to ask a woman out, because the usual way of asking a woman out is to go up to the woman and say, you know, would you like to go for a coffee?
	Would you like to go to a movie? Would you like to go for dinner?
	You know, would you like to go out with me?
	And that becomes sort of like a yes-no thing.
	And it's, you know, I've often thought about it, just how tough it must be on the side of the The women, right?
	Because women have to shoot down like 20, 30, 40, 50 guys sometimes a night, right?
	In order to end up meeting someone who they're interested in for whatever reason, you know, good or bad or indifferent.
	And so, you know, women have to, you know, kind of get a little cold shell, right?
	Because they have to, I mean, particularly very attractive women, they've got to sort of radiate this chill.
	And if you can fight your way through it, that's the dragon you have to get through to get to the maiden, right?
	The pretty maiden is the chill that they have to exude in order to keep the lesser warriors away, so to speak.
	But what I found was less stressful for me, and therefore I think a more positive way of asking a woman out, was instead of saying, I would like to take you to a movie or whatever, is to say something like, I'm going to go and see this movie on Friday.
	Would you like to come along? In other words, I'm going to go and do something.
	Would you like to come along?
	That, in a sense, is just like, I'm going to go do something, and it would be great if you were there too, rather than I'm going to do something if you want to do it with me.
	And for some reason, and there's probably good reasons that are not on the tip of my tongue, I found that a whole lot easier to just say, I'm going to go and do this thing.
	It would be great if you would come along.
	I'm going to go out. I mean, one of the women that I ended up dating shortly before I ended up meeting Christina and getting married, I was dining alone because I lived alone and I was eating alone at a Japanese restaurant.
	And this woman also sat down, a table or two over.
	And I just said, I mean, I can't remember.
	I said something really stupid. I thought she was very attractive.
	She had a great sort of ear to her, and she was a very nice person, it turns out.
	But I just walked over and says, hey, I'm eating alone.
	You're eating alone. Do you want to eat alone together?
	Or something like that. But it wasn't like, do you mind if I join you?
	It was more like, you know, we're doing this thing.
	Would you be interested in doing it together?
	It's sort of less pressure, and it's more lighthearted than...
	A sort of brinksmanship, yes, no.
	And again, I just, you know, I'm going to have this, you know, instead of would you like to join a singles group, the singles group is meeting on Friday, would you like to come along?
	Like, this thing is happening, do you want to be a part of it?
	And that I've always found to be much more...
	It generates more enthusiasm, because it gives people this freedom.
	Their yes-no doesn't make it happen or not happen, because you're going to go and see the film, whether the woman comes along or not, but it would be better if she came along, rather than her yes-no is or isn't going to make this happen.
	So if you call up ten people and say, do you want to join a singles group?
	They're like, eh, I don't know, right?
	But if you say, there's a singles group meeting on Friday, would you like to join?
	That's sort of a different thing.
	And so, it's going to happen, would you like to participate?
	Is the way that I've always found to get momentum behind things rather than would you make this thing happen with me, if that makes any sense.
	Yeah, that certainly does.
	Yeah, that's what I'm hoping the singles group would be there.
	It would be a way to, you know, have that natural icebreaker type thing and people are already got something going on and people just come in and then kind of move on to the next step, you know, okay, let's get to know each other now that we've broken the ice.
	I'm sorry. I really do apologize.
	It's most rude. I just wanted to check in the chat room and someone posted something long.
	And I completely didn't hear that last sentence.
	Could you just repeat it? I do apologize.
	Oh, that's great. I was just saying that I was agreeing with you and that, yeah, I was hoping this group would be something that would be the natural icebreaker there and already in place and people are already doing something, so...
	Once people join, they can move on to the next step, which is get to know each other.
	It's just that initial ice-breaking stage that's kind of confusing.
	Right, right, right, right.
	For sure. And there are ways to structure gatherings so that people have a way to sort of get to know each other, right?
	And the cheesy version of this is like those corporate retreats.
	Where, I think as Dilbert says, you have to build an intergalactic bridge using nothing more than a leaf and a bee's wing or something like that.
	You have these sort of games or these structured things, right, where it's sort of enjoyable or whatever, that people can get together, they can immediately be in a structure.
	And that's better for people who have a tougher time making conversation with people.
	Because, you know, making conversation with people can be really tough, right?
	I mean, it is a bit of a skill, and a lot of people don't have it for a variety of reasons, the natural or environmental, I don't know.
	But I think it's better if you sort of say, you know, people say, well, what's going to happen here?
	It's like, well, you know, we've got this set of quizzes that people are going to sort of You know, you're going to ask a random person a particular question, and you can come up with a bunch of questions, right?
	You're psychologically very adroit.
	You can come up with some questions, or just pick them, you know, that would be sort of fun or funny questions or whatever.
	And the people are then going to ask them, and that kind of stuff can be more, you know, it's like spin the bottle for adults kind of thing, or truth or dare, right?
	Like you can come up with a structure that, you know, people can mingle a little bit, but it's not like they have three hours of making small talk with each other, but there's going to be some kind of structure.
	That is going to help people to get to know each other.
	And you have to be careful that the people who are really funny don't end up dominating stuff.
	So you have to make the questions, not just sort of funny questions.
	But I think if people come in and there's a kind of structure, then that can really, really help.
	Right. Yeah. Well, that was very helpful.
	I'll keep everybody updated on it, and I will certainly work on it and do my best.
	Yeah, and look, if people out there, I mean, this is a community of some phantasmagorically kaleidoscopic skill sets.
	I'm always completely stunned when something really obscure comes up and someone's like, oh, I've been doing that for 400 years or whatever, right?
	I am Christopher Lambert.
	So if anybody listens to this, they can contact you.
	I think that's really helpful.
	There's ways to get people interested, especially using social networks, like Facebook or whatever, geographically specific locations.
	I think that could be really helpful.
	So if anyone has an experience with this kind of stuff, I think that would be great to have some calls with some people and lean on their expertise.
	We always have this idea that we have to reinvent the wheel, and it's generally a very bad idea.
	Yeah. Thank you.
	You're very welcome and pleased to keep us posted.
	And did you get feedback on your paper yet, your master's?
	I guess I got some feedback from my professors.
	I mean, everybody at my university likes it, even though it didn't turn out the way I could.
	I wanted it to, you know, I mean, it's a small university, so I mean, I wasn't able to do everything experimentally I wanted to do.
	I was trying to send it to Lloyd DeVos, you know, but it's kind of one of those things, you send it to him, and he's like, well, it didn't open, so that was frustrating.
	Oh, if you'd like to send it to me, I can put it on as a website page, and I can send it to him from there if you'd like, because then that's a can't-miss thing.
	Oh, absolutely, yeah.
	Right now, I'm just trying to spread it out to anybody who would be interested in it, and hopefully somebody will replicate my study one of these days and do something with it.
	That'd be great. Yeah, no, it's good, and I'm glad that you got some positive feedback.
	Did you get a mark?
	Did you want to talk about that? I'm just kind of curious how that shook out.
	I got an A-plus on it, and I already got my master's degree.
	Hey! Congratulations!
	Thanks. Right now I am teaching psychology at that university and fixed a start at a second college, just teaching psychology at the moment.
	Wow, that is fantastic.
	That is fantastic. If you ever end up taping one of your lectures, just send it to me.
	I mean, just for my own personal consumption, I'd like to hear how it goes.
	I think it's absolutely fascinating.
	I love listening to psych lectures.
	There's some great ones from Alison Glopnik.
	But if you ever did do that, I'd love to hear them.
	Absolutely. There's just one college I'm working for now.
	They've got this great web course system where you do the online course thing, and they give you the option to do podcasts if you want to, and I'm really looking forward to taking them up on that offer.
	Oh, yeah. Well, that would be great.
	Do keep us posted. I'm sure that you have some great material for people to listen to.
	And, you know, kudos and congratulations.
	A master's is a tough thing.
	It really, I'm sure it's not as tough as a PhD, but a master's, I certainly found, was a great challenge.
	And an A-plus is a significantly great mark.
	So, I mean, it certainly is better than the mark I got on my master's, which means that I'm now filled with rage and resentment.
	But hope. Actually, no hope, because I'm not going back.
	But congratulations.
	I think that's just fantastic.
	You should be, and I'm sure you are, enormously proud.
	Thank you very much.
	You're welcome. All right.
	Do we have...
	Do you have more questions for people?
	Do not make me speak in an outrageous French accent.
	Because it's tough on the throat.
	I will do anything to stop you from speaking in that accent.
	Fair enough. I think that's quite wise.
	I've been wanting to ask you this for about two weeks, but since it's another dream, I know that you probably don't want to do two in the same thing.
	So I can wait till next week if you want.
	No, no, hold on.
	I mean, if nobody has any other questions right now, I'm happy to do another one.
	I sort of miss the dream things because I find them just completely fascinating things to perform wild speculations on.
	But if anybody else has a non- Dream thing.
	I did get a question, a sort of more technical question in the chat room.
	What is your take on the question, can induction be justified?
	And I think induction can be justified if the woman is having a real trouble getting labor to start naturally.
	But anyway, we'll come back to that.
	He didn't want to talk about it.
	So let's just pause for another second in case anybody had another yearning burning.
	and if not, then we will go straight into the dream.
	Going once.
	Going twice, eh?
	Eh?
	Eh?
	Okay, go.
	Thank you.
	Lovely. So just for a bit of context, I've gotten...
	Let me turn Skype sounds off.
	I've just recently gotten back into therapy again.
	I got a recommendation of...
	Someone who's, you know, going for their masters.
	So they're doing therapy as part of getting their doctorate.
	So I'm getting therapy at a reduced rate, which is lovely.
	So I had this dream the night before I first met this woman.
	And it was actually freaking me out a little bit on the phone because she sounds wonderful.
	And when I met her later in the day, she was wonderful.
	However, she's a relatively young woman, which, you know, given my thing with women, was a little bit weird.
	Sorry, just you and I are a little bit far away of age.
	Sorry, there's a lot of echo here. Do you have a headset?
	I don't.
	Oh, yeah, no problem. Is she, like, in her 20s or her 30s?
	Because... Relatively young probably means slightly different things to you and I, so I just wanted to get a bit more of a sense of that.
	She's maybe...
	I would say that the upper bound in her age is probably 32.
	She couldn't be any more than that.
	Alright, okay. So the night before I met her, I had this dream, and this is what I wrote down in my journal.
	I'm on a playground with a lot of other adults.
	The first day, because the dream's broken down into two days, I climb up a piece of equipment and my fear of falling, which I do have in real life, psychs me out and completely prevents me from climbing down from this high playground equipment on my own until somebody...
	Oh, sorry. I'm sorry to interrupt.
	I normally will listen to the whole dream, but I want to make sure I get this up front.
	You say that you're on a playground with lots of other adults.
	Is it an adult playground? No, it's a kid's playground, but there are only adults around.
	Are the adults playing or standing around?
	Some of them are playing and others are just standing around in little groups.
	And is it an adult playground like a kid's playground but bigger or like an adult playground like, I don't know, the Playboy Mansion?
	No. It's like a kid's playground.
	It has everything that my elementary school playground had, but it's just a little bit bigger.
	It's kind of scaled up for adults.
	Okay, got it. Thanks. Okay, so the second day, I meet up with a woman.
	She's very young, about as young as I am, and she's very beautiful, and she appears to be I'm scared of heights.
	So I show her some progressively harder tricks on the playground equipment, and we go through the day progressively higher and higher each time.
	She runs off and brings back some of her other friends.
	Meanwhile, since we've climbed up to this highest part of the playground, I am just completely Frozen on top of it, and I'm very scared to climb down.
	I was fine while she was with me, and while I was showing her how to basically play on it.
	But once she left, I was just terrified.
	So this woman and her friends come back.
	It turns out that the woman wasn't actually afraid of heights.
	She was just pretending to, to get me to climb up with her.
	So the woman and her friends are actually acrobats, And they begin to do tricks like, you know, standing four high on each other's shoulders.
	One of the tricks that really terrified me is they're sort of standing on each shoulders three high.
	And the top guy just pulls out a couple of wine bottles, reverses them on his shoulders and has the other woman do a handstand on top of the wine bottles that are standing on his shoulders.
	By this time, I'm still sitting on top of this very high playground structure.
	My palms are sweating and I'm completely terrified that this woman is going to fall, which is making it even harder for me to climb down off of the playground equipment myself.
	So the tricks end and all of the acrobats leave except for the one young man.
	So he looks up at me and he realizes that I'm stuck.
	And he asked me, you know, are you okay?
	And when I say no, he says, well, wait, there's someone coming.
	And he keeps talking to me to try to get me to calm down so that I don't fall.
	So then, and this is possibly the weirdest part of the dream, Penn Jillette walks in.
	Who knew? So he comes up to me and he asks, you know, are you frightened?
	I say...
	You know, yes, and I start to say something about something like a story that I heard in one of those little videos that he did.
	But he talks over me, like he interrupts me and launches into some sort of story about his son and, you know, going to pick him up from school to spend the day together.
	He isn't rude about talking over me.
	In fact, he's just trying to Talk me out of basically my freak out.
	Finally, and this is no Greg, he has both a son and a daughter.
	So finally, in the last part of the dream, a sort of fat acrobat and his fat wife, who looks kind of like someone that I knew when I was a teenager, show up.
	But somehow, I'm already on the ground, and I'm looking around for pen, but I don't remember climbing down from this high thing.
	And I woke up after that.
	Excellent dream. Alright, so let me just make sure I understand it.
	So you're in this daycare, and you said it was the second day.
	So the first day you're just playing, and you have this fear of falling, which you also have in real life.
	This young and beautiful woman comes, she says, I'm scared of heights, and you're like, I'll teach you how to not be scared of heights, is that right?
	Yeah, so I told her that I would teach her how to play on this thing and kept, you know, going higher and higher with her.
	And did you tell her about your fear of heights?
	No. Uh-huh, okay.
	So that's important, right?
	It's not bad, right?
	It's just a dream, but it's important that you didn't tell her something that was true, right?
	That you feigned a kind of confidence that you didn't have.
	And it was interesting, but I didn't even...
	I didn't feel the fear of heights when she was with me.
	You know, we were climbing on these things, and I didn't feel it.
	I wasn't scared when I was with her.
	No, I think you're right.
	I mean, I think that's very important.
	I think, well, I'll tell you why I think that might be the case, but you climb higher and higher, and then she goes and gets her friends, and then you're frightened because you don't know if you're going to be able to get down, and it turns out that this woman's an acrobat, and her friends are all acrobatic, and then They start doing these tricks and you're terrified that she's going to fall and then there's this guy.
	And what was the bit about the wine classes?
	I just sort of missed that.
	So the last trick was, you know, all the acrobats are standing on each other's shoulders and this guy just from somewhere brings out a couple of wine bottles.
	And the last trick is that this woman who I had been playing with would do a handstand while sort of being balanced on the wine bottles on this guy's shoulders.
	Right. That's quite a trick.
	And then the guy ends up talking about, like, are we going to help get you down and that kind of stuff?
	Is that right? Everybody, all the other acrobats leave.
	And then he looks up at me and, you know, he asks me, are you scared?
	And when I say yes, he says, you know, hold on, there's somebody else coming.
	And then Penn Jillette comes, is that right?
	Yeah. He's the big one, right?
	Yes. Okay. And he talks about picking up his kids and this and that, and then you sort of, you end up back on the ground.
	Yes. Right.
	All right. Well, do you have a theory about what the dream is about?
	I have a couple of theories, neither of which kind of seem to fit.
	So there's the...
	I've gotten a couple of emails recently from people who have listened to podcasts that I've done with you and have emailed me saying, like, thank you for putting out these things.
	They've really helped me.
	And it seems like, you know, I've gotten this feeling sometimes that, well...
	How am I helping anybody?
	So it feels like my trying to show acrobatic tricks or how not to be afraid of heights to somebody who's already an acrobat, I've kind of felt like a fake when people have sent me those emails.
	Right. That's the only thing that I could really think of, honestly.
	All right. Well, I will tell you that it's not so much the case now, but certainly when you and I first chatted, I really got the impression that I was trying to teach Queen Bordechia how to ride a chariot, and it was a ferociously challenging task, because you weren't the most coachable person in the world when we first met.
	Now, I mean, you have enormous courage and intellect and perceptiveness, which, you know, makes...
	It makes it an exciting challenge, but you weren't the most coachable person, right?
	I mean, you certainly had times where you got mad at me and so on, which, you know, is all perfectly fair and valid among friends.
	So I think that you had, as a way of protecting yourself from the childhood that you had, You're quite intimidating, right?
	And you are intimidating in that you are...
	I mean, if you remember the trip to New York and what happened to the poor security guard, right?
	I mean, you have... At least you had, right, a temper which was intimidating to people.
	You have a vast and deep breadth of knowledge about some pretty interesting things, right?
	The Medici's and Florentine in the 16th century and so on.
	But you have...
	A great deal of verbal acuity.
	You have a very funny sense of humor.
	You have a temper or had a temper.
	I don't know if you still do. But that, I think, comes across to people as quite intimidating.
	And I'm not saying that you're a bully at all.
	I'm not saying that you try to intimidate people.
	But I think that you come across with a great deal of assurance and expertise.
	And I felt, certainly early on when I knew you, that that was not...
	Not the full story, right?
	Confidence like that to me, given the history that you had, could not be the full story.
	And one of the challenges of going into a therapy is the challenge of vulnerability, right?
	Which is, I am going to give somebody...
	I'm going to open up my heart.
	I'm going to let them get up into their wet, red elbows and rummage around to their heart's content, right?
	And that is a seriously difficult thing to do to people who've grown up with difficult or abusive histories, right?
	Because vulnerability in the face of an abuser is like going, you know, when you're strapped down in the torture chamber and you say to the torturer, you know, no, it doesn't hurt when you do this, but it really hurts when you do this.
	They're like, hey, thanks, because that's my goal, right?
	So vulnerability is a real challenge.
	And so I think that when you were going to see this woman, and you were very enthusiastic, right?
	As you say, you talk to her, she sounds wonderful, and she did turn out to be wonderful, this therapist, which I think is fantastic.
	I mean, this is, you know, you hear lots of bad stories about therapists, but it's great to hear a good story about a therapist, and that's what people should be holding out for.
	And so the thing that's interesting to me is that when you are coaching people, Someone else your own fear vanishes in other words when you put yourself forward as a false expert your own fear your own anxiety vanishes and I think that and I'm not sure right obviously but I think that that's that's an important thing in your life because when you go to see a therapist you can't put yourself forward as an expert right because you're in the therapist's office which means you're saying I need expertise that I don't have I need a view of myself that I don't have I need coaching that I cannot provide and For myself,
	if that makes any sense. It does, and that was the first thing I asked her.
	Well, she asked me, you know, why are you coming?
	And what I said back to her was, I've gotten as far as I can without somebody else to help me, I think.
	So that was definitely something that had been on my mind the few days previous to my go.
	Right, and I think it's important to remember that when a therapist asks why you're coming, I think the only appropriate response is to say to your therapist, how do you feel about asking me why I'm coming?
	Anyway, we'll come back to that. So there's a kind of interesting set of non-honesty in this dream, and I don't mean dishonesty, because you're not actively lying to people, but there's falsehood by omission in this dream.
	Right, so... You don't say to this woman...
	You portray yourself as an expert on how to deal with the fear of heights, although you are afraid of heights.
	But in a sense, by pretending that you're not afraid of heights, and by telling this woman...
	I'm an expert in this.
	You actually do overcome your fear of heights, but the problem is you end up in a situation where that fear comes back even more strongly.
	You put yourself in an even more vulnerable position.
	So a position of false authority puts you really high up on a flagpole with a fear of heights where you're frozen, right?
	Yeah. And I think that's important because of your education, your intellect, your verbal skills, all of the things that are genuinely and deeply impressive about you.
	You can come across with a huge amount of expertise, but if you're not honest about your vulnerabilities, you will end up in very scary and vulnerable situations where you do not have control.
	In an attempt to exercise false control over your fears and over somebody else's behavior, you end up in a situation where you're paralyzed, frozen, and have no control.
	You're on top of this and you can't even figure out how to get down.
	Right. That makes sense.
	I think another thing that's interesting about the dream is that the woman is kind of evil in a way.
	I mean, that's a strong way of putting it, but you're pretending to be an expert and she's pretending to be an amateur, right?
	Right. And you see how in the dream there's this beautiful reversal.
	I mean, this is like an O. Henry short story, you know, where the guy goes out to get the comb for the wife and the wife goes out to get something for the husband and she's cut off her hair to get him the thing and so she can't use the comb anymore.
	I can't remember exactly how it is. It's one of these reversals that always goes on in these O. Henry stories.
	But this is a beautiful reversal.
	You pretend to be an expert and you end up in the position of a paralyzed amateur.
	And she pretends to be a paralyzed amateur and then reveals herself to be the actual expert that you're pretending to be, right?
	Right. And that reversal I think is really important.
	And I think what it says is that If you manipulate, and again, I'm not saying that this is conscious, right?
	But if you manipulate in your life, you will bring manipulators into your life, right?
	So if you come across as an authority when you actually are not an authority, i.e.
	climbing heights, whatever, right?
	If you manipulate other people, you will draw manipulators into your life, right?
	Because if you'd have been honest and said to this woman, I'm terrified of heights too, I have no idea to do it, she might have said, haha, I'm an expert, here's how you do it, or whatever, right?
	But because you weren't honest with her and you were kind of using her to manage your own anxiety and feel stronger yourself, you ended up under her power, frozen on the top of this structure, right?
	Right. And they end up really kind of taunting you, right?
	Because this woman knows that you were not telling the truth earlier about your level of expertise in dealing with heights.
	She knows that because you're huddled up there and they're doing all these tricks in front of you.
	It's like they're taunting you. Right.
	And I'm just getting, you know, I mean, it must have been obvious to them, you know, on my face that I was getting more and more, like, completely terrified.
	And one of the things that I didn't write down in my journal, but I'm just remembering is when I was sitting on top of this thing, it was like, no, no, don't do that.
	Like, don't do that.
	You're going to fall. To them, right?
	Yeah. Yeah. Right.
	So the interesting thing is that you're still bossing them around, right?
	I mean, that's amazing.
	They're the acrobats.
	You can't even climb off a high thing, and you're telling them how to be safe, right?
	But you don't know how to be safe.
	You're still focusing on what is dangerous to them without focusing on what is dangerous to you, right?
	Which is to pretend to have an authority that you don't have.
	Right. And I mean, it is obviously...
	I'm completely, completely ludicrous by that point, because I'm not actually talking about them, right?
	Because, I mean, it's obvious to me at that point that, like, they are acrobats.
	Like, they're not going to fall.
	So I'm not actually, even though I'm addressing them, I'm not actually addressing them, if that makes sense.
	Right, and... You also, this is, I was saying that there's this falsehood throughout the dream.
	You're also not, like, look at all the options you could have done, right?
	When she climbed down, you could have said, wait, wait, wait, I was only, I wasn't really honest.
	I'm not an expert. I'm actually quite frightened to be up here, right?
	You didn't fess up, so to speak, right?
	Right. When she comes back and she's a gymnast, you didn't say, Wait a second.
	Okay, I didn't tell the truth about my fear of heights, but you sure as hell didn't tell the truth about being a gymnast, so why did you do this to me?
	Right. Right, so there is a kind of self-censorship, a silencing of the self that goes throughout this whole dream, right?
	Yeah. And even the solution, see, I'm always wary when solutions magically appear and you don't learn anything.
	Right? In dreams. I'm cautious about this in my own.
	Because, because you don't know how you get back down to the ground, right?
	Right. It's, you know, like magic Penn Jillette shows up and then, hey, suddenly, what?
	How did I get down? Right.
	That's not a good sign. What the dream is telling you is you don't know how to get yourself out of a situation of falsehood.
	Right. Right. And that's really important.
	Because if you don't know how to get yourself out of a situation of falsehood, the only thing that you can do is just kind of keep ignoring things and hope that everyone else will ignore it until it kind of goes away magically, you know?
	Right. You know, like if you...
	I don't know, I've always had this nightmare that...
	Not a nightmare. I've always had this thought, you know, that I'm going to put some video up there.
	I'm completely unconscious.
	I end up picking my nose.
	Or something. I don't know.
	And I post a video and I haven't thought of it.
	I'm so listening to something or whatever.
	I just picked my nose or something like that, right?
	And imagine if I was showing this, you know, to a group of 200 people, right?
	And right up there, I'm digging for gold right up to my eyeball, you know, up to my elbow, right?
	And let's say that that showed up there, right?
	Like the penis clip in the children's film in...
	In Fight Club, right?
	What would I do? Would I stop the film and say, oh my heavens, that's really embarrassing.
	I can't believe that I have, you know, sorry for that huge image of me going up to my elbow trying to massage my brain through the, you know, fields of boogers.
	Would I stop? Or would I just sort of keep going?
	We just have to ignore the whole thing and just continue like nothing happened, so to speak, right?
	I mean, I generally would probably stop and say, okay, well, that was embarrassing.
	I can't believe that. Do whatever, right?
	Right. That's interesting because a couple of days before that, I think it was Rich and I were talking on Skype about Or on Twitter about something or other.
	And I said, you know, somebody asked me a question.
	I said, you know, well, I don't know.
	Or it was something where I didn't know the answer.
	And I said that I didn't know.
	And then, you know, I got this tweet back immediately.
	Oh my God, Charlotte doesn't know the answer to somebody.
	Somebody call the newspapers.
	Or something like that.
	And that... I mean, honestly, actually, that really hurt.
	Because, of course, it's, like you said, it certainly makes sense where that comes from with my past, right?
	But it's, anytime somebody says something like that to me, it's like, you know, I'm honestly not trying to make myself out as the Authority on everything.
	Like, I know that I do sometimes.
	I'm trying to work on it, though.
	Because that's never a comfortable place to be, right?
	Because it's not only a lie, but it's also like holding yourself up to this standard that is impossible for anybody to me is incredibly uncomfortable.
	Right. No, and I mean, look, I... I sympathize and I'm perfectly aware that I could put on a sort of dazzling show of metaphors and wit and crazy allegories and horrendous sexual references and it would not be a conversation with people, right? I could put on that sort of blazing show and But what I want to do is to engage people.
	And that means not approaching it as an authority, right?
	To say, this is my theory. I don't know.
	I'm an amateur, right? This is just my opinion.
	Because I want to engage people and get them to think and to want to learn rather than to give them information or provide things that I think are important.
	True or important or whatever.
	And that's my concern at the end of the dream.
	At the end of the dream, there's no moral to the story.
	And if there's no moral to the story in a dream, the dream is telling you that you're not getting something very important.
	Because there is no moral, right?
	There's not a satisfying story.
	If this were a short story, or whatever, right?
	A fantasy piece, then the person would say, well, wait a second.
	What do you mean it just ends like you're just standing on the ground?
	That doesn't make any sense, right?
	The dream is telling you that you don't know that transition, that you don't know how to back out of a false situation that you've gotten yourself into.
	And there is, of course, only one way to back yourself out of a false situation that you've gotten yourself into.
	Right, which is to be completely vulnerable again and say...
	Hey, you know, I've said all this stuff, and I was just...
	I was completely bullshitting you.
	I'm sorry. Right.
	Yeah, it's like, hey, remember that fork in the road about, I don't know, three months back?
	I mean, you know that thing where I said that?
	I mean, I remember when I was getting my job in the daycare.
	I mean, I was desperate for money, and this was actually one of the better-paying jobs around, because I was...
	My brother and I were putting ourselves...
	Well, living...
	We're paying our own bills and all that, right?
	So I was only 15... And I had to...
	And I found out halfway through the interview process that you had to be 16 and I wasn't going to be 16, I don't know, for another eight months or something like that to get this job.
	And I mean, I was in a state of nature.
	I don't feel bad about it. I mean, society wasn't giving me anything.
	For me, it was like better than shoplifting, which was my earlier way of dealing with it.
	But... So I was just like, what do I have to say to get this job or whatever?
	And it turned out. So I just lied.
	And of course, I looked older. I always have, because I had a high forehead back then and all, right?
	But I ended up having to go for a chest x-ray.
	Apparently, that's law. And then the chest x-ray, they put my date of birth there, right?
	And I said to the woman who was hiring me on my fourth or fifth interview, I said, listen, here's my chest x-ray.
	You know, there's my date of birth.
	I lied about it, but I really, I really, I need this job and I also want this job.
	I really like kids and kids, they warm to me and blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
	And she was fine with it.
	I think, you know, sometimes that kind of vulnerability with the right kind of person, it can be really, really productive and helpful.
	And so I got the job and it was a lifesaver and it kept us in rent and food for quite some time and got me out of school 20 minutes early every day as well because I told them I had to leave to get a job because I was paying rent and Teachers are all like, okay.
	Because, you know, they care so much about their students.
	But those kinds of situations where you just have to say, look, I lied.
	And here's why.
	I'm really sorry. I won't do it again.
	Like, it's a vulnerable position to be in.
	Because when you've got the goods on someone, you know, when someone has done something wrong to you, that gives you a lot of power over them.
	Right? When someone says...
	I did wrong to you.
	I lied to you. I cheated on you.
	I did X, Y, and Z. It gives you a lot of power over them.
	And how people use that power is often not very good at all.
	Not very good at all. And certainly we've had a lot of experience in that, you and I, right?
	And others in this conversation, that when you confess a wrong to someone, they can hold it over you for a long, long, long, long, long time.
	And so I don't think you know how to back out of that blind alley.
	And I think the dream is telling you that your only strategy is to focus on other people and not bring up any reality in the situation.
	Like, I'm stuck here.
	I'm frozen. I'm terrified.
	I lied to you earlier. Why are you lying to me now?
	Why are you all doing these tricks when no one's paying you?
	Why are you all showing off to me about how confident you are in terms of heights when I'm shaking up here on the top of a flagpole?
	Right? You can't say any of those things.
	You can only be frozen.
	And pretend that nothing's happening until somebody eventually comes along and pretends that nothing's happening and then you're magically down again.
	But that's nothing that you've learned from the dream.
	And again, because you're very intelligent, I would assume that this is just due to a blind spot from history.
	Yeah, totally. Wow, this has been incredibly helpful.
	Thank you so much, Steph. Oh, you're very welcome.
	It's a great dream. Bring them on.
	It's been months since we've done dreams for a variety of reasons, but I find them fascinating.
	I think that they're hugely, hugely important, especially the ones that are really vivid that you remember.
	So thank you for bringing it up.
	I really appreciate that. Thanks.
	All right. Let's see if we have any other questions.
	And if not, we can go back to our original female caller.
	Hello, Steph. Hey!
	I wanted to call you because I've been having a lot of trouble recently.
	Oh, what's up? I've been kind of turning into a jerk, if I can put it that way.
	You can put it any way that you want, Steph.
	Please go. Okay.
	Uh, I've been, uh, like, I can tell you at work, uh, I don't have a very good job.
	I push carts right now, which I guess pays the bills.
	But, uh, like, I'll be at work, and, um, the little cart-pushing machine or whatever can only hold so many carts, and, like, somebody will be bringing me up a cart, right?
	And, uh, it'll be like, um, I'll get angry at them, right?
	And inside, you know, I'll be fuming and stuff like that.
	Because it's like they could put it in the cart crawl or whatever because they're closer to it.
	And they decide to be helpful or whatever.
	And they start bringing it to me and I get really mad at them.
	And sorry, when you say carts, do you mean like shopping carts at a grocery store?
	Yeah, that's right. Okay, got it.
	So let me just make sure I understand it.
	So it's your job to gather up these carts and make sure that they don't sort of wander off into the parking lot or into the God knows where.
	But when people are wheeling the cart to you, you feel angry at them because, well, we don't know why exactly, but you feel angry at them when they sort of try to sort of, quote, help out by bringing you the cart.
	Is that right? Yeah.
	If they knew the whole situation, they'd know that it wasn't actually helping me.
	And so I get mad.
	Sorry, why is it not helping you?
	Because the cart pushing machine that I use, it can only hold so many carts, and if it's full, like them bringing me another cart, I just have to reject it or something like that.
	Right, right, right.
	Okay, so they think they're being helpful, but they're not, and you feel very angry at that.
	Yes. Now, as far as jerk things go, and you keep it inside, I guess you're not bringing down the thunderous curses of Zeus upon their foreheads, but as far as the jerk-o-meter go, I'm not sure that they register much above half a percent, but maybe there's some more that you'd like to talk about.
	Also, there's some people at work, like...
	They are kind of like the co-workers.
	Some of the co-workers, one in particular, she's very pushy in her niceness, kind of.
	It's like I don't like her that much.
	But she's pushy in her niceness, like I can't seem to get away, you know?
	And I've started to, like, I pass her by and not talk to her at all, and stuff like that.
	I don't know, I'm not putting it very clearly, I think.
	No, I think I understand it.
	It sounds like you have a pit of darkness that is called forth by perkiness and happiness.
	So to speak. Happiness in a sort of relativistic sense.
	And look, I understand that.
	There are those kinds of Pollyanna fixed-grinned teddy bear.
	They wear these puffy sweatshirts with teddy bears on them.
	And they can bring the darkness out of just about anybody sane.
	So I think it's sort of...
	Yeah, that sounds something...
	That has some resonance, yeah.
	Okay. Was there more that you wanted to talk about?
	It seems, one other thing about it, it's not just happy, it seems fake in a way.
	It seems fake in a way?
	Okay, go on. Like this one woman is like, it's a grocery store, right?
	And I know you've talked about this before, like there's a lot of like child abuse going around the place, right?
	You mean around grocery stores or just in general?
	Around grocery stores.
	Like, people bring their kids there, right?
	And they don't treat them very well.
	That certainly can happen, for sure.
	And a lot of the people that work there, in the break room, they talk about it like that, right?
	Oh, like I saw this mother who was dragging her kid or whatever, right?
	Yeah, and about themselves, too.
	Like, what they did to their own kids.
	Oh, right.
	Okay. And it's like this nice woman or whatever, she'll...
	I don't know how conscious she is of it, but it's like she comforts those people and stuff like that too.
	And the people who bring me the carts, it seems like they're the kind of people that are afraid to Not be helpful if you see them, you know?
	Like if you don't look at them, sometimes they'll not do anything because they feel okay.
	But if you look at them at all, it's like now they have to bring the cart to you or something like that.
	Because they're afraid that you might, you know, so they're not actually sort of doing it for the sake of being good, but they're doing it because they feel obligated or they're afraid of something negative you might say or a thing because if they don't do it, is that right?
	Yeah, something like that.
	All right. Can I ask you a related question?
	Okay. You're a long-time listener, if I understand this rightly, right?
	Yes. Now, FDR podcasts are not for the intellectually weak or the faint of heart, for sure, right?
	As not the case particular to anything I do.
	It's just that any genuine, real rubber-on-the-road philosophy requires a staunch heart and a deep mind.
	So, what do you do in pushing carts?
	Help me. Step me through that, right?
	Well... I took this job because I didn't have a job for a while and I was out of money.
	But I've been in it since May or so, and I haven't gotten another job because I'm not sure exactly.
	It's like I'm afraid to go for an interview or something like that.
	I want to get a job in programming or something like that, computers.
	Or IT or something.
	And I'm afraid to go for an interview.
	It's like I'm stuck in...
	Menial, like there's a lot of jobs at grocery stores and like cart pushers like the lowest one kind of.
	Yeah, yeah. And before I worked at like, it's like a night cashier at a gas station and stuff like that.
	It's like I'll choose the most, the worst position possible in like menial job land or whatever.
	Yeah. Right.
	I think that's the real question, because if you're asking how to fix people who work in your grocery store, I have no idea.
	And I don't know if that would even be possible.
	And I don't know that you would be able to come across as a great authority while you're out there being a giant human magnet pulling carts together, right?
	Because they're just not going to have a lot of credibility with people, if that makes any sense.
	That makes a lot of sense. Right.
	So you won't be able to change your environment, at least from where you are, in terms of the people there, right?
	Right. But I think that the more important question is, why are you pushing carts?
	And look, there's nothing wrong with pushing carts, right?
	I mean, you might be sitting there saying, well, I'm thinking up the great American novel while I push my cart or whatever.
	That's totally fine. And look, I've had probably more than 12 lifetime share of menial, crappy, stupid jobs, you know, from the age of eight onwards.
	But I think...
	You're too smart to be pushing carts, right?
	So the barrier is something historical and something emotional, in my opinion.
	And I think that's...
	I don't know what it is, right?
	And we can talk about it if you like.
	But rather than saying, how can I enjoy pushing a cart better?
	I don't think that that's a question that can really be answered sensibly.
	I think the question is, how can I not be pushing a cart, right?
	Right. Yeah, I think that would be good.
	Right. Now, in terms of, like, when you were a kid, so when you were a kid, children absorb an enormous amount of their future from the expectations of their parents.
	And it's not firm and fixed and continual and permanent, or it's not like you get stuck in a train track, but it definitely is a tendency, like a gravity well or a strong current.
	Mm-hmm. What possibilities or options were open to you?
	And they can be completely hypocritical, right?
	I mean, your parents can be pushing cards saying the really great thing in life is to be a doctor or whatever, right?
	The one thing that...
	My mother did a lot of things wrong, without a doubt.
	Very wrong. In fact, frankly, illegal.
	But she did not limit my mind in terms of potential.
	And she was very proud of the significant intellectual history of her family.
	Like her brother won a national prize for poetry and wrote, you know, very well-received books.
	And her father was a great poet and writer.
	And I think one of her uncles was a philosopher, right?
	So definitely, you know, the German-Irish philosophy tangents seem to have sort of collided into me in a hopefully productive way.
	But she was very, very clear on the creative, artistic and philosophical nobility, so to speak, that she came from, you know, in this sort of Jewish-German thing.
	And so when I wanted to be a writer, or when I wanted to be an actor, or when I wanted to do all of these various things...
	Like I started writing my first novel when I was like 11 or 12.
	It was called By the Light of an Alien Sun and it had gripping scenes where people kissed in zero gravity and all that.
	Just great, great stuff.
	And actually it was read out to the class.
	The first chapter was read out to the class by my English teacher who got rather embarrassed at my clumsy, youthful attempts at eroticism.
	But anyway, we'll get into that another time.
	But she did not give me a sense of limitation in terms of where my intellect could carry me.
	It was never like, you know, hey, Shakespeare, how's that writing coming, you idiot?
	You know, it was nothing like that.
	She was open to and positive about what I could achieve in terms of intellectual or artistic or creative abilities.
	And I say that just to point out that, you know, some of what I've been able to achieve is the result of that, right?
	Some of what I've been able to achieve has come out of that.
	And so the reason I'm asking you this, or sorry, the reason I'm telling you this is because I'm sort of curious as to what were the expectations of, and all parents have, right, have expectations for their kids, but what were the expectations of you and are you fulfilling them where you are?
	The expectation, like my dad, he always used to say, like, you can get a job as a sports star.
	Not to me, but to my brother, because he was more athletic one.
	But you can win the lottery.
	You can, I don't know, do all those things like become a businessman or something.
	And you can make lots of money or something like that.
	That was his thing. And when I did the computer programming stuff on my own, it's like, I wouldn't say that it cut into class or homework time or whatever, because I didn't want to do the homework anyway.
	But it's like I was banned from it and stuff like that.
	I'm sorry, you were banned from what?
	Using computers, basically.
	By who? By my father.
	And how old were you? It happened repeatedly, but it started like fourth grade, so I don't know.
	And why were you banned from using computers?
	Because he thought it cut into my...
	He thought that was the reason why I wasn't doing my homework and things like that.
	Oh, like get off the damn computer because blah blah blah, right?
	Yeah, something like that.
	Because, I mean, a lot of parents, particularly for those of us who aren't 12, a lot of parents can't differentiate between...
	Playing on a computer and learning on a computer, right?
	Right. That's important.
	I remember being kicked out of a night school computer class because somebody thought I was playing a game, but I was actually programming the game.
	And I tried to show them the code and all that, but they're like, no game playing in here.
	Get out. I was like, but I'm learning.
	Right? But I think that's...
	So if he didn't understand the difference, then he may have thought time on the computer was, you know, you're playing or it's a waste of time or whatever, right?
	I'm not sure if he thought that.
	It was more like, in order to succeed at all in life or something, I have to get good grades.
	And he went into a lot of detail.
	Later on, he told me specifically to go into the Naval Academy and stuff like that.
	And it's not necessarily that he cared what I was doing on the computer.
	Maybe he thought it was.
	Because he banned me from the library, too, when I was learning there.
	So he banned you from the library?
	Yeah. Okay.
	And what was his rationale you're playing at the library?
	Because it was supposedly that was what I was doing instead of homework.
	And he was all about, you've got to do homework and stuff like that, you know?
	And he'd beat me and stuff for not getting good grades because of my homework and stuff like that.
	That was a big point of contention for him, I guess.
	And when you say he would beat you, what do you mean?
	Like he would spank me pretty hard and it really hurt.
	Like bare buttocks?
	No, it was closed on but bent over the couch or something like that.
	And how many times would he hit you and would it be red?
	Would you have marks? Yeah, I'd definitely have marks and it would be like 10, 12, I don't know.
	It depended. And how long did this occur for?
	From, like, fourth grade on to, like, he stopped eventually, like, ninth grade or something, I don't know, eighth grade.
	You don't, it's not a criticism, I'm just pointing it out, but, I mean, as a long-time listener, you bring this up as if it's the detail, you know?
	I know. What do you anticipate that, or what did you anticipate my response would be, or will be?
	Something about I'm not feeling it?
	No, I mean in terms of the beatings.
	That it's horrible?
	Do you think it's horrible?
	Yes. Do you feel that it's horrible?
	Not right now.
	And why do you think that is?
	I have a thought that it's something to do with the job or whatever that I'm in, like the child abuse and stuff that I see and stuff like that.
	And I kind of like, in order to deal with it, I kind of shut it out a bit.
	Well, not a bit. Right.
	And let me ask you this.
	This is not a leading question.
	I'm just genuinely curious.
	Do you think...
	That your father beat you because he wanted to do your homework, or for some other reason?
	For some other reason?
	Right. And do you know why we know that?
	Because if he cared about the homework, like, I don't know, I guess he'd probably figure out that the beatings weren't working after several years of doing it and then not working.
	Well, not several years, right?
	Yeah. Not several years, right?
	Yeah, that's kind of exaggerating it a bit, I guess.
	Just to take a silly example, right?
	If I want a goldfish, and I want my goldfish to live, and I keep sprinkling salt into their water instead of food, and this goes on year after year after year, and I ended up killing hundreds of goldfish, and then I said, well, I fed them salt because I wanted them to be healthy.
	Would anyone believe me?
	No. No, that I would buy goldfish because I wanted to kill goldfish.
	And I would feed them salt because I wanted them to suffer before they died, right?
	Because if someone is doing something for year after year after year and not achieving the intended result, then they are achieving some intended result.
	It's just a different one, right?
	Human beings do not act randomly and they don't act completely pointlessly, right?
	That's true. So it's more like an excuse, right?
	Right. In fact, if you had started doing your homework, it probably would have been, my guess, who knows, right?
	Probably would have been something else. I think so.
	Now, was your father also himself a very disciplined man who did a lot of things that he didn't want to do?
	As far as, like, getting a lot of stuff done in life, you mean?
	Well, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of stuff in life that is, you know...
	Even in this advanced, pretty cushy Western society, there's a lot of shit you've got to do that's just not that much fun, right?
	You've got to go to the dentist, you've got to do your taxes, you've got to get your car oil changed, you've got to keep your house clean, you've got to do your laundry, you've got to keep up presentation, you've got to exercise, you've got to eat well, you've got to, you know, there's just a lot of stuff that is maintenance crap, and it's dull, and it's not exciting, right?
	So was he, because his contention was that you should do You should do your homework because it is important to make sacrifices and do things that you don't want to do every day for hours, right?
	Because kids get homework hours these days.
	Every day you need to spend hours doing things that you don't want to do for the sake of the greater good of your life, right?
	And did he do that?
	Did he show you by example how productive it was to do lots of things that you don't want to do?
	In order to get the things that you want?
	No. And how do you know that?
	Well, the house was a mess a lot of the time.
	I mean, if there was a house, I mean, the house was a mess.
	I don't know. I guess he kept the cars running or whatever.
	I'm feeling confused or something.
	I don't know. My thoughts are scattered.
	Right. No, it's important.
	It's important. It's important to ask these questions because that's how we get to the core of what is actually happening.
	People who harm us will always come up with a reason why they've harmed us, right?
	They will always tell us why they've harmed us.
	So they're doing these things that are harmful, right?
	So he said, I wanted to teach you discipline.
	I wanted you to do your homework.
	I wanted you to learn that you have to do things in life that you don't want to do, right?
	But of course, beating a child is so fucking self-indulgent that it's hard to accept that anyone would say defer gratification while beating a child, because beating a child is the exact opposite of deferring gratification.
	It's indulging in rage and frustration and hurtful behavior.
	It is completely self-indulgent.
	So to expect to teach a child anything about self-discipline while being incredibly self-indulgent as an aggressive and angry parent is insane on every level, in my opinion.
	That makes a lot of sense.
	And that's why us, like, he's not going to be disciplined in the rest of his life.
	He's going to be self-indulgent.
	The place is going to be a mess.
	Because abuse, fundamentally, is pathetic self-indulgence.
	It's pathetic and immoral self-indulgence.
	But it is lazy.
	Abuse is lazy. It is not having the sternness with yourself to not act out against an innocent, your own frustrations and anger.
	It is lazy. It is self-indulgent.
	It is the opposite of deferring gratification for the sake of a greater good, which is why hurting children, yelling at them, beating at them, punishing them, teaches them nothing but laziness and evasiveness, self-indulgence, fear of consequences, anger to and fear of authority, and absolutely ensures their greater likelihood of getting stuck at the lowest rungs of society.
	Does that sort of make any sense?
	Yeah. To create a fear of authority in children means that children, when they become adults, have a great deal of difficulty getting over the hump of situations where they're genuinely and productively vulnerable to people in authority.
	Like the last call of a therapist, like yourself, with the idea of getting a job, right?
	It's got to be terrifying for you.
	Yeah. Because you have had carved into the very base of your brain This fear of authority.
	Yeah. And so going to a job interview is submitting yourself to a situation that is like putting your hand in a blender, right?
	Yeah, it is.
	So, I mean, I really...
	I know that I... But I really sympathize, hugely sympathize with the effects of this kind of violence.
	And it is violence. The effects of it.
	I don't know if you've gone to nosebank.net, but...
	It's really important because when we've gone through traumatic situations, we will so often internalize it as a character flaw.
	And why? Because it's always justified with reference to our character flaws, right?
	We are being beaten because we are bad, right?
	And so we internalize the effects of this kind of violence as a character flaw.
	Oh, I'm just nervous around authority.
	Oh, I can't concentrate.
	Oh, I have difficulties with that.
	Or I have these strange resentments.
	I must be a resentful person.
	I must be an angry person.
	I'm insecure. I'm this, I'm that.
	And it's all crazy. It's all crazy.
	You know, this is all pretty scientifically well documented that it has huge effects.
	Violence against children has huge effects on the brain.
	I mean, this is an extreme example, but if your father had broken your leg and it had never sat properly because it didn't take you to a doctor, and you had a limp, and you tried to run but couldn't, nobody would say, well, you're just too lazy to be a good runner, right?
	I mean, they could say it, but it would be insane, right?
	In the same way that we don't say to an epileptic, for God's sake, pull yourself together and stop shaking, right?
	It's embarrassing. Or we don't say to somebody with Tourette's, that's very inappropriate what you just said, right?
	Because we recognize that these are physiological disturbances.
	Right. And to my admittedly amateur understanding of the science, and you can listen to, I don't know if you've listened to this recent show that I did with Stuart Shanker, this professor of psychology and philosophy at York University, but read some of his stuff.
	I'll gather together and post some of these videos on the board.
	It changes who you are.
	Violence fundamentally changes Changes your brain.
	It changes who you are.
	The experience of violence from an authority figure as a child during critical areas and elements and sequences of brain development changes who you are.
	As surely as a badly set bone changes how you walk.
	Okay. It changes who you are.
	Don't take the ownership of a character flaw for that which is the result of violence.
	Okay. I know that doesn't wave a wand and solve it all, right?
	But I hope that it eases, to some degree, some burden in your mind.
	That it is not a character flaw that leaves you frightened to get a better job.
	It's not a character flaw that you're resentful of people who try to help.
	It's not a character flaw that you're hypersensitive to hypocrisy.
	And angry at hypocrisy, because I think we've just talked about your dad and some reasons as to why that might be the case.
	It is not a character flaw.
	That doesn't mean that you just sit there and say, well, hey, you know, this is the way that I am, and I have this limp, so I never need to go to physiotherapy, I never need to strengthen that leg, right?
	But you need to see it for what it is before you can change it, because you can't change something with the same thinking that caused the problem.
	You can't solve the problem with the same thinking that caused the problem.
	In other words, if abuse or attacks against you as a person causes this problem, then internalizing that to self-attack only exacerbates the problem.
	It is a continuation. It is saying, well, my dad's not hitting me, so let me do it myself, right?
	That is not going to solve the problem.
	That's why it's very important to put the moral blame where it is, which is on the parent, to be gentle with yourself, to accept that you have a different brain.
	It's genuinely tragic.
	I feel so sad about the degree to which people's brains are altered by this kind of violence.
	It is absolutely tragic and it is a sword through the heart of the world.
	It is a bare claw across the face of the world.
	The way in which people's brains are carved by exposure to these levels of aggression, it is unbelievably tragic.
	It is the absolute root of why...
	Everything from why there's wars in the Middle East, why there's extraordinary renditions, why there's torture in Guantanamo Bay, and why you, who have a brain half the size of a planet, are pushing a cart around in a grocery store parking lot.
	It is tragic.
	It is absolutely tragic the degree to which this has scarred the soul of humanity and continues to do so.
	But please, please, please don't do it to yourself when it doesn't have to be that way.
	If you read up on the effects of violence upon the psyche, if you read up on the effects of violence upon brain development, of trauma upon brain development, I think that you will find a space to be gentle with yourself, to be concerned with yourself, to be kind to yourself for the effects of what has happened to you.
	Does that make any sense?
	Yes, it does. Thank you.
	Anyway, I've done a lot of talking and I just really wanted to get that across.
	But I do want to sort of hear from you about what you think about what we're talking about.
	It's like I've, I don't know, I feel kind of self-attacking right now, I guess.
	I don't know.
	Thank you.
	Go on. It's like I, you know, I've been here for a while at FDR and stuff like that.
	And it's like I've heard all this stuff and, you know, I'm starting to say, like, and I still haven't done it or whatever, put it into practice or whatever.
	Right, but you understand that that inability to translate theory to practice is also a result of the violence that you experienced as a child.
	Oh, yeah. Do you understand?
	So to say, well, I know all of this stuff, but I haven't been able to do it.
	Well, as a child, if you were in a situation of repeated violence, as you say, for many years, Then you're going to have a huge degree of difficulty putting theories into practice because you're afraid of the violence.
	We can't put things from theory into practice when we're in a state of violence.
	It's like coming up with a business plan when you're in trench warfare in World War I. It wouldn't make any sense.
	It's like, I just need to get through the next goddamn 10 minutes or half hour or hour or beating.
	Yeah. It's what it's like, yeah.
	So, I hope, please don't self-attack yourself for not putting this stuff into practice because that failure...
	That lack of connection between theory and practice, that's a physical connection.
	That's a physical connection in the brain.
	That is not a matter of willpower or character.
	You can develop it, you can change it, but never, never, never, never by self-attack.
	You can't grow by self-attack any more than you can beat a child into doing his homework.
	Sorry, I'm saying... You can't!
	Sorry, I don't mean... I'm not yelling at you.
	I'm really just trying to be really emphatic.
	You cannot grow by attacking yourself any more than you can beat a child into being good.
	That makes a lot of sense.
	And any time you have that urge, which is...
	Even the urge to self-attack is not a character flaw.
	When you grow up with violence.
	And if you grow up with violence, you will have an urge to self-attack.
	Why? Because you've been attacked so often, you have to internalize it to feel like you have some control, to feel like you have some authority, to feel like you have some protection.
	You can do it to yourself. Because also, if you do it to yourself, if you self-attack, you are often less likely to be physically attacked.
	If you get mad at yourself, you're less likely to be beaten, right?
	Yeah, that happens, yeah. And your brain is trying to protect your body because the brain is plastic and can heal.
	The body cannot in the same way, right?
	Yes, that's true. So even the self-attack is self-protection and was healthy and was good and was useful and was essential to survive.
	It's just how you survived.
	And I think you should be respectful of how you did survive and I think you should honor the choices that you made to survive Because although it sucks to be pushing carts in a parking lot, it beats a lot of the alternatives when we as children are faced with violence that can get out of control, right?
	If we defy, if we defy, if we defy, what happens?
	What we all know deep down what happens, right?
	That it can really escalate.
	Yeah. So I would look upon my brain as...
	A broken leg that never sat and there's things that I can do about it.
	Rehab is painful, but I can learn to walk straight and strong again and I can be even stronger than if my leg had never broken.
	But I'm not going to blame myself for someone who broke my brain.
	I'm not going to blame myself for someone who broke my brain.
	I'm going to try and fix it. I'm going to be angry about it, but I'm not going to blame myself for somebody else who broke my mind.
	Because I can fix it, but never by self-attacking because that's what broke it in the first place Okay Thank you very much for this
	Listen to it again if you can. I mean, I'm sure you will, but listen to it again, you know, in a peaceful place, maybe in a dark room, holding someone's hand, you know, with gentleness, with curiosity, with a sense of wonder about how the future can be so different from the past, and with very, very gentle concern for yourself and your history.
	I think that's so, so important.
	The gentleness with ourselves as victims is essential.
	It's the only way to break the cycle of violence which is all around the opposite of gentleness.
	We have to We have to combat this with the antidote.
	We have to combat aggression, not with more aggression, not with more self-attack, not with more bullying of ourself, but with the exact opposite, with the exact opposite, which is the kindness and gentleness and curiosity that we tragically did not experience.
	We can bring it to ourselves and we can bring it in the future to our own children.
	That's how it all changes.
	Alright, I'll definitely listen to it.
	Thank you. Alright, and do keep us posted about About how that goes.
	And, you know, my sympathies again, but it's not about people helping you in a parking lot.
	It's so much deeper, and there's so many ways forward from there.
	But, again, just be as gentle as you can and move forward from there.
	Okay. All right.
	Thanks so much, man. And thank you, everybody, everybody, everybody, everybody, always, all the time, for your support, to the subscribers, to the donators, to people who've helped out with the website, to people who post all the wonderful stuff.
	On the message board, thank you everybody so much for participating in this most amazing conversation in the world, in my opinion.
	I think that's more than an opinion.
	The greatest philosophical conversation the world has ever seen.
	I think it is just magnificent.
	Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to speak with people.
	Thank you so much to the people who call in and provide such honest and open thoughts and feelings.
	I really, really do appreciate it.
	And have a wonderful, wonderful week.

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