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April 11, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:08:14

1637 Freedomain Radio Sunday Call In Show April 11 2010

Space aliens with coupons, a blind brother, and the sad tale of my early death.

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	The baby on the bus goes...
	The baby on the bus goes...
	All through the town.
	The rappers on the bus go...
	Boom, boom. Oh, the big CIA. The Bloods and the Crips and the...
	Good girl, that's good rapping.
	The Bloods and the Crips and the KKK. Yeah, good girl.
	We were just...
	Yeah, we did that one.
	Yeah, she's doing... She likes Where is the Love by the Black Eyed Peas, and they say...
	We've got the terrorists in the USA, the CIA, the Bloods and the Crips and the...
	Gay, gay, gay.
	Good girl.
	Because, you know, we're all about age-appropriate music.
	Down.
	Bye-bye.
	Love you. Bye bye.
	Oh, that wasn't so bad.
	Alright. Hey, we have a show.
	Freebird. Do Freebird.
	Play that song from Titanic.
	Freebird. That is the funniest joke I think that is going to happen today.
	Well done. Freebird.
	Oh man, that's good.
	I'm still working on We Will We Will Rock You with her.
	She won't do that one yet?
	No, not quite yet.
	Just saying it. What we do, we do some of it.
	The sign says, no stairway, dude.
	Fair enough. Well, hello everybody, and thank you so much for joining the Free Domain Radio Sunday Philosophy Call-In Show.
	And unfortunately, we did have a listener who had some questions about UPB. And I was going to call in, but unfortunately can't.
	So hopefully next week or perhaps during the week, I'm always keen to have questions of a concentrated philosophical brain-powdering nature.
	And so I must say that I have to tell you something at its personal.
	And it was a moment of self-revelation that was chilling and horrendous and powerful in its depth.
	The other day, let me preface by saying that I'm extraordinarily cheap.
	Like, I'm the kind of cheap guy that makes Scrooge McDuck look like Richie Rich.
	So I, like, you know, pry money from my cold dead hands.
	Except for Freedom Aid Radio, who is my philosophy mistress bitch, who I will lavish all kinds of attention on and money.
	But I'm very cheap.
	I don't like to spend money. That's what I'm saying.
	And, I mean, it comes because, I mean, I know why.
	I mean, I grew up brutally poor, like I remember...
	Trying to join a swim team and it was $7 registration.
	I was working two jobs at the time, but it was all going on food.
	I was 15 or so, rent.
	And I just had no money.
	I had to keep lying to them.
	Oh, I'll bring it next week or whatever.
	And they eventually just stopped pestering me, I think, figuring it out.
	I've been working since I was 11.
	I put myself through school with some help from grants and all that.
	But I'm just, you know, having really grown up on the poor side of the tracks, I'm just cheap.
	So I had this moment the other day.
	I was filling up the dishwasher and I remembered that the butter dish needed to go into the dishwasher.
	And so I opened up the butter dish and there was like half a thumb size of butter left.
	And I thought, I really don't want to waste this.
	And I reached out my hand and I was about to take That pat of butter and put it in my mouth because I did not want to waste it.
	I mean, is that World War II starvation levels or what?
	I didn't want to put it on anything because I wasn't hungry.
	I just wanted to eat chemically colored Animal fat.
	Because otherwise, you know, I might waste approximately one and a half pennies worth of butter.
	Oh, man. It was just a moment where I said, you know, I should probably relax the manacles on my wallet just a little bit.
	So, I just wanted to point that out.
	And literally, when I'm sweeping up and I see that Isabella dropped some food...
	There is that moment. You know, is it a 10-second rule?
	A 10-minute? Or can we stretch it out to 10 days if it's not too hairy?
	These and other philosophical questions can be discussed on today's Sunday show.
	So, eat it. You know you want to.
	See, you kinds of people don't help me.
	You people in the chat room don't help me.
	It's your survival instinct.
	I think that somewhere deep down in my genes is this belief that the ice age is coming and I better fatten up quickly so that I can survive the lean years.
	Anyway, I just wanted to say that it's why I never get ill because I have no limit on food.
	Wrap it in a Kleenex and put it in the fridge.
	That is also an approach.
	And I was cleaning out the car the other day and came from some Cheerios that I swear to God were so old, they were just hieroglyphics on the outside.
	And I was like, hmm, they don't really go off, do they?
	And I wasn't even hungry. That's the thing.
	But I can't waste three Cheerios that I found down the back seat of my car.
	Oh, man. Help me!
	It's just...
	Oh dear, oh dear.
	Anyway, I just sort of wanted to mention that because there may be other people who have challenges along these lines and you're not alone.
	So, I have decided to...
	Did I eat them? Actually, no.
	Actually, in both of these instances, I decided not to.
	But I think if I'd been slightly hungrier...
	Oh, and we went out for dinner the other night, and because I eat less now than I used to, The restaurant portions they give me are too big, right?
	And it's always a tough question, you know, like how much food is left on your plate?
	How little has to be left on your plate before it's just too embarrassing to ask for a doggy bag?
	You know, like if it's just a smudge of cream and a piece of broccoli, it's like, can you bag this for me, please?
	Because I don't know, I can sprinkle it on my coffee tomorrow.
	And that, you know, my threshold for asking for a doggy bag is pretty low.
	You know, if I can see anything on the plate, you know, scrape it and put it in a doggy bag for me.
	But I just thought that was...
	So yeah, I did actually ask for a doggy bag for like, I don't know, a couple of bites of food.
	And Christina was quite patient with me.
	She hid under the table.
	Am I a closet plate licker?
	I think that some mystery is important in our relationship.
	So let's not necessarily ask that, right?
	Yeah, when the waiter doesn't offer you, or when the waiter says, really?
	You know, you could just not tip me when they feel that bad for your level.
	Yeah, because now after 1700 podcasts, I feel it's important to have some boundaries in our relationship.
	Yeah. Now's the time to start erecting personal space boundaries.
	Ooh, Cheerios plus butter.
	That's right, Rob. That is good.
	We don't have containers that small.
	Sounds like me buying condoms.
	Anyway, let's move on.
	It's cold. Do we have any callers, by the way, just out of curiosity?
	Yes, Mr. Steph.
	I would like to speak to you briefly about aliens.
	Aliens? What kind?
	Steven Spielberg or Mexican?
	Well, it's sort of a long story.
	I'll try to make it as brief as possible.
	Right up front, I'm very skeptical towards the argument towards the government hiding aliens in underground bases.
	It's up to us to crack the case and reveal all these secrets.
	But I do have a friend who just considered this argument about the government hiding these aliens.
	She wants me to go talk to a very convincing person this evening.
	Sorry, I'm just having a bit of trouble hearing you.
	Let me make sure I understand. So you're saying that you have a friend who believes that the government has found aliens.
	This is sort of the X-Files Roswell stuff.
	Is that right? Absolutely.
	All right. And supposedly this guy has worked for the government and has been to these underground bases or knows somebody who has been to these underground bases.
	And so he goes on to give her all this elaborate information about all these bases and about all these things that he's seen.
	And she has to see these photos or any sort of empirical data.
	And once she asks for this information, it gives her, like, reveals these vaguely revealing photos of lights and everything else.
	And goes on to tell her that you have to be truly ready in order to actually see the further information or photos about aliens, you know.
	He talks about how Anybody that dives into this alien phenomenon without preparation may go crazy.
	And so my question is, how should I approach this guy?
	Because I see sort of a link between this type of conspiracy and religion.
	How you sort of have these secrets, or you have people just chasing their own tails, like dogs chasing their own tails, just going and wasting their time off of these issues.
	Right. Well, I'll give you a few of my thoughts about this question of aliens.
	I think it's a fascinating question.
	I have no doubt that there's intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.
	I think that's fairly indisputable, given the probabilities and the numbers of star systems and so on.
	I'm sure it's out there.
	300 years in human history, right?
	So 300 years ago, we'd have almost no technology in common with other cultures 300 years ago.
	300 years in the future, it's going to be the same thing.
	And that's a 300-year gap.
	And of course, the universe is, what, 20 billion years old?
	The odds that anything's even within 300 years of development are completely minuscule.
	And so there's not going to be any contact with aliens who are at...
	level of development.
	That's to me almost a non-possibility.
	The reason that I don't believe that there are any aliens buzzing around is quite simple.
	That there's no way to get interstellar technology and all that kind of stuff.
	I mean, the government's never going to produce it, obviously, because the government is just a massive consumption of everything.
	And the government only got to the moon because it pillaged a whole bunch of private sector engineers.
	And ever since then, NASA has just been twiddling its afterburners.
	So the government's never going to do it.
	The only way that we're going to get interstellar visitors is because they have got a stateless society and a completely free market system where the incentive to build these spaceships and explore is driven by free market enterprise.
	That's the only conceivable way that we're going to get visitors from other star systems.
	They're not going to come here in fleets of battle destroyers or anything because the government can't do anything that complicated, of course, right?
	And so the only reason that they would come here would be to trade.
	Because they're a free market system, they have no government, and so they have all of the unleashed human creativity and potential of natural-born traders, which is the least exciting horror film in the world.
	So they're only going to come here to trade.
	They're not going to come here to...
	Beam up residents of Alabama for anal probes, however fun a feature film that might be.
	They're not going to come here to hide behind clouds, dart out on dark and stormy nights, show their asses, and then vanish back into the clouds.
	They're not going to be here for that.
	They're going to be here because they're in a free market, stateless system, and they've come here to trade.
	In which case, they're going to come down here.
	You'll know that there are space aliens when holographic coupons land on your lawn for like 50 cents off space juice or something like that.
	That's how you know that the space aliens will be here because they will unroll a bazaar or a marketplace.
	There'll be an interstellar mall that they'll teleport you up to where you can buy all kinds of seriously cool shit.
	That's how you'll know the space aliens are here.
	They're not going to be lurking around.
	They're not going to be warlike or anything like that because if they're warlike, they'll have self-destructed long before they go to interstellar travel.
	So that's how we know they're space aliens.
	I'm going to wait for the specials.
	That's what I'm waiting for, for proof of alien life forms.
	But of course, the odds that they would have anything that they want to trade with us would be enormously tiny because of the disparity in development.
	They're going to be millions of years ahead of us or millions of years behind us.
	And I think space travel, for that very reason, Yeah, discount vacation packages, right?
	The moment that they'll fly me to Alpha Centauri if I sit through a presentation of a condo sale, that's when I know that space aliens will be here, and that's when I'll be comfortable with the facts.
	They won't hide, right? So they're not going to have anything to trade with us.
	So I think that the idea that the government's sitting on alien technology, the only alien technology that the government is sitting on is, you know, whatever black, evil, magic, juju's powers, Karl Rove's heart.
	That's the only thing that I think they're sitting on.
	Everything else is just made up.
	Right. So should I, when I talk to this guy, should I provide similar arguments that you have for this proof of God?
	Why do you want to talk to this guy?
	Well, I'm talking to this guy just because a friend, she wants me to talk to him because she's having her doubts as well and she wants to buy support.
	Is it that you want to get with this chick?
	Well, she's a friend.
	I mean, no, not at all.
	Okay, so it's not a romantic thing, right?
	And is she a friend because you value her intelligence or wisdom or rationality or virtue or courage as a whole?
	Yes. So her susceptibility to this sort of nonsense, is that a sort of isolated thing within her personality or is that more common to who she is as a whole?
	I think it's an isolated thing.
	I guess she's more of a relativist when it comes to things.
	It doesn't seem like there's a lot of issues that she really dives into that kind of intensity where you really can't prove it.
	But this is something that she has considered.
	Everything else, it seems like she's really on track of not being irrational with making her decisions on it.
	Right. Well, I mean, if you want to, and of course you know your friendship infinitely better than I do, I would not get drawn into this conversation with the woman.
	What I would say, you know, this is a general note, so I hope that you don't mind if I give a relatively short speech.
	I think it's very important when someone has a kind of intensity to their beliefs and when she's sort of saying, you've got to talk to this guy, he's got the proof.
	That's kind of an intense thing, right?
	It's not like, you know, I like Patagonian art and you don't.
	It's like, so what, right? But it's like, no, you've got to go and talk to this guy.
	He really is into Patagonian art.
	He'll show you all the best stuff and you'll change it.
	There's a kind of intensity to that interaction that you would be wise and I think a good friend would To not ignore, right?
	So I wouldn't fall into going to talk to this guy and debating the proofs or disproofs of this now or the other.
	What I would say is to my friend, I'd say, well, you seem to be very intense about this.
	Can you tell me why this is important to you?
	And don't get sucked into running around whether this stuff is true or not.
	And this is a very, very important thing to ask people as a whole.
	Why is this important to you?
	So somebody's like, the government is helping the poor and this and that, and you've got to pay your taxes to help the poor.
	You can argue about the poor, and maybe that's fine, but...
	I think a far more important question is, why is this so important to you?
	And you will find out, you will find out something deep and emotional and intimate and I think important about your friend just by asking that question, why is this so important to you?
	What emotion, what thoughts, what history, what feelings are driving your intensity in this area?
	And I think that's an important thing.
	You can ask that about the truthers, if you want.
	Like, why? Why are you so invested?
	What does this mean to you that it's so important to you, that you spend so much time and so much energy dealing with this?
	Now, I mean, of course, people get asked the same thing about me, and I mean, I've given answers before, and it's not really about that, but...
	When people particularly have something that's non-empirical, or even more particularly when they reject empirical or rational arguments, the belief system is serving an emotional need.
	And dealing with the belief system that is serving an emotional need, as if it is derived from some reasoned evidence and argument, is irrational.
	If somebody has a belief system that is irrational, Then don't deal with the rationality because the rationality doesn't apply.
	And you can watch The Bomb and the Brain Part 4 for the science behind this.
	People will invent ideologies to deal with particular things in their history.
	And until you can deal with the actual source of the belief system, there's no point.
	In fact, it's counterproductive.
	To try and argue with someone about a belief system that is serving a deeper emotional need.
	Unless you can connect with them on that deeper emotional level, the arguments are simply going to go nowhere.
	Because you are missing the purpose of the belief system.
	And it's not because she's looked at all the objective evidence and reluctantly come to the conclusion and so on, right?
	And, I mean, I say this just because, I mean, I've had sort of three or four major revolutions in thinking of my life, and I was brought up very religious, and I remember as a very little kid being enormously religious and believing in gods and all that, in God and so on.
	And then I sort of gave that up for atheism.
	And then I was a mild socialist in my early to mid-teens.
	And then I gave that up for objectivism.
	And then I gave up objectivism for what I would term philosophy as a whole, which is, of course, one of the results is anarchism.
	And if you haven't gone through these revolutions in belief where you have compared what you think to what is actually provable and rational...
	Then you can't be sure if you haven't gone through one of these revolutions in your life.
	And we're all, almost all of us are raised with lies and nonsense.
	And so you have to go through these revolutions to get any sense of empirical reality.
	If someone hasn't gone through this, then for sure, for sure, with a virtually 100% certainty, the beliefs that they have are serving some emotional need.
	And to argue at the surface level of beliefs...
	It's like trying to fish by shooting a bullet across the top of the waves.
	You're just not doing anything that is productive.
	So I would just ask, why is this important to you?
	What feelings do you have around this?
	Where do they come from? Talk about what is really going on rather than the surface effect of what is really going on.
	Does that make any sense?
	That makes a lot of good sense, definitely.
	I've already made a commitment that I would go down there, so you suggest me just listen to what he has to say and then ask him her questions after we talk to him.
	I would not go down to listen to what this fellow has to say.
	I would say I'm not going to go to listen to what this fellow has to say until I understand why this is so important to you.
	Because, you know, don't get sucked into it's about the facts.
	You know, deal with what is driving the person emotionally.
	And then, you know, if you find out that, you know, through whatever, you have more respect for these.
	But if there's a lot of avoidance, if there's, well, it's just important because it's important.
	Like, if there's no self-knowledge about the intensity of the beliefs...
	Then there's no point chasing the beliefs, because without self-knowledge, we can never be objective.
	And so don't even go down the road of looking at facts until you have found out why this is so important to her.
	And that's going to deepen your friendship a hell of a lot more than going to listen to some guy talk about space aliens.
	Thank you very much. You know, that's definitely something I'm sort of getting caught up in doing is sort of looking at the facts and not really looking at what lies beneath all of these sort of assertions and beliefs.
	And that's something that I'm going to have to work on myself is to be more in tune with these further things that are actually causing these sort of assertions and beliefs.
	Yeah, the number, and I appreciate that, and I certainly wish you the best of luck with that conversation.
	I think it will be a turning point in your friendship, if not your relationships as a whole, which I think would be wonderful.
	But there are very, very few people in this world who have gone through the rigorous and sometimes ghastly and always exciting self-challenge of reasoning from first principles with evidence.
	And casting aside all prior prejudices and scar tissue and nonsense that people have told and stuff the government schools have said and stuff the priest has said and stuff the parents might have said.
	There's very few people in this world and I take it as like if I meet that person it's like meeting a guy with two heads.
	Sort of literally right.
	But there are very few people in this world who have actually reasoned their beliefs from first principles.
	And even those of us who have done so are still susceptible to confirmation bias, are still susceptible to the fallacy of sunk cost, like I've sunk a lot of energy into this position and therefore I don't want to.
	Turn it over. And those things aren't bad.
	Confirmation bias isn't bad.
	It's inevitable. You just have to be aware of it.
	The fallacy of sunk cost is not always a fallacy.
	I mean, I've sunk a lot into reason and evidence.
	I don't think that's a bad thing.
	I think that's a good thing, right?
	So I think that it's really important to be very skeptical.
	And whenever people have that peculiar intensity and they want you to do stuff...
	Then I think it's really important to say why.
	And this is true for people who listen to this show, right?
	If they say, if they're really, really intense about this show and they really, really want, I think it's important to say, well, why am I so intense about this show?
	Why is it that it's so important for me to share philosophy with other people?
	That doesn't mean that it's bad for you to want to share philosophy with other people.
	I hope not, because I certainly do.
	But it's really important to know why you want to do it, so that it's not sort of a desperate drowning man clawing at people trying to get their attention, which my guess would be more scar tissue than an objective desire to help people understand stuff.
	So it's just, you know, the self-knowledge about why you're doing what you're doing, what are the thoughts and feelings driving any intensity that you're experiencing, Why is that occurring for you?
	I think is really, really important to know.
	And knowing it doesn't mean that it's wrong.
	It doesn't mean that it's invalid.
	And it doesn't mean that anything you're saying is wrong.
	But just knowing that will change who you are and your relationship to philosophy.
	And that's a very good thing.
	You can never ask why it's so important for you to donate to FDR. Somebody just posted, why is it so important for me to donate to FDR? That is the one area where self-knowledge should be avoided with mace and tasers, I think.
	Just keep donating.
	No, it is important.
	It is very important. I don't want anyone to donate.
	Any penny, a penny to FDR out of a feeling of guilt or obligation or a have to or a should or some sort of ethical imperative, right?
	You donate to FDR, I hope, out of love and not out of love for me or love for FDR or even love of philosophy, but love for the good that philosophy can do in the world.
	Love of your fellow man, love of your fellow women and hope for the future.
	That's why I think. You know, why do you light a beacon on a lighthouse, right?
	So that ships don't go into the reefs and into the rocks.
	Not because you love fire, not because you want to look cool in firelight, not, you know, because you want to help people.
	And I think that's why, I mean, that's, I think, a good reason to donate.
	And I certainly would not want anybody to give me a penny out of obligation or guilt or anything like that.
	Somebody has asked, what do I think about the unconscious meaning and symbolism behind UFOs, and especially creatures like the atypical alien gray?
	I was terrified seeing those things in books and movies as a kid, and they still creep me out, their appearance, magical powers, etc.
	I think I know now why, given my history, but I'd like to hear your thoughts.
	Well, I think that I can't say anything better than...
	The guy who wrote A Candle in the Dark.
	Billions and Billions.
	Who's that guy? Carl Sagan.
	Carl Sagan wrote in The Candle in the Dark.
	He's got a whole chapter on this.
	He believes that it is dim...
	And this is not a diagnosis, obviously.
	It's just what he argues, that it's a dim and distant memory of childhood sexual abuse that is recast as aliens probing my ass.
	You know, I mean, I hate to put it that indelicately, but that's his theory.
	I would... I don't know enough to know whether that's true or not, and I don't even know that he did or does.
	Oh, I guess did. But I agree with you.
	Those silent, staring, almond-eyed, glowing-faced, naked, knobbly-elbowed space aliens, they're pretty freaky, and they're androgynous.
	They're sexless, right? I think they are pretty creepy, and they are pretty creepy.
	And I definitely would look at, you know...
	When kids are very young, they distort the human body naturally.
	And I've mentioned this before, but in one of Alice Miller's books, she talks about Henry Moore, who is a sculptor, that he drew enormous legs and feet and tiny heads and bodies on women.
	And he wrote in his autobiography that he would spend hours after hours after hours as a kid rubbing...
	I think it was liniment oil into his mother's feet.
	And so for the rest of his life, he replicated these bodies that were basically a child's view of a mother seen from where her feet are looking upwards.
	When you see children draw...
	People, the first thing they do is they draw a circle with two legs.
	They don't get the torso.
	And the reason for that is that children have these enormous heads.
	I mean, Isabella can't even reach the top of her head.
	She's starting to learn how to wash her hair.
	And she can't reach the top of her head.
	So she knows she's a lot of head.
	And she looks down. She can see her legs, right?
	But she can't see her torso.
	She can't really look down and see her torso.
	So she doesn't have a mental image of her torso.
	And, of course, she uses her legs to walk around.
	And she uses her arms to grab things.
	So a kid will draw a circle, eyes, and a mouth.
	They won't usually draw the nose to begin with because they can't see their own nose, right?
	And, of course, they can't see their own eyes, but they know they have eyes because of eye contact with others.
	And they'll draw a smiley face with legs and arms, because they use their arms, they walk with their legs, they can see their arms and legs, and they can't see their torso very well.
	So when you see a distorted body image that is common within mythology, Then I would actually first look to where in childhood that perception would occur that someone is like that.
	And of course the fact that aliens are nude, the fact that they're expressionless, it is creepy.
	The fact that they seem magical and the fact that they seem to appear at night and the fact that If you've experienced that, you feel intense frustration because nobody else will believe you.
	That, to me, all strikes as child abuse, whether it's sibling or parent or other, I don't know.
	But that's where I would look first, which is not to say that there's any kind of truth behind that.
	That's just the first place that I would look for that kind of stuff.
	Sure, if somebody would like to share an episode of childhood, I'm happy to hear.
	Hi, Steph. Can you hear me?
	I sure can. This has been bothering me a couple of days since my mother started calling me.
	And yesterday I crashed my car.
	I crashed into another car.
	It wasn't a big deal, but...
	And thinking, and I haven't gotten this to a therapist yet.
	I have to meet my therapist next week.
	But I remembered something that happened to me About the time I was learning to speak, I think I was three or two years old.
	My mother and an uncle of mine were trying to feed me some fruit, a mango.
	I had never eaten it before.
	And they were pushing it into my mouth.
	My mother was holding my hands.
	I didn't want to eat it.
	I heard you on a podcast say that after two years old, the kids, they won't try new stuff.
	I'm not sure if that's right or can you...
	Sorry, do you mean new food?
	Yeah, new food. I don't recall saying that, but I don't think that's essential to your story.
	So can you continue? Okay.
	The thing is, I didn't want to taste it.
	I didn't want it.
	And they were pushing it into my mouth, and it was hurting me.
	And my uncle was yelling at me, and he was my sister's youngest brother.
	And I don't know why he had such control over her, but he was the one making her help her, having me eat the fruit.
	And they pushed and they hurt and they kicked me around for it.
	And after a while...
	Sorry, what do you mean by kicked you around?
	Slap me on the hands and on the face.
	Because I didn't want to eat fruit back then.
	I only wanted milk and things like that.
	I guess it's because I learned to eat that as I was younger.
	And wouldn't accept new food, I think.
	I guess. I don't know. Well, actually, it doesn't matter why you didn't want the fruit, right?
	It doesn't matter why.
	You could have just been in a bad mood.
	I mean, it doesn't matter why you might have seen a fly on it earlier.
	I mean, it doesn't matter why you didn't want the fruit.
	I mean, what matters is that you were...
	Attacked for not wanting to eat the fruit, right?
	Yeah, but here's the thing.
	This is really horrible.
	This is really, really horrible. I mean, up until now, I would see something like that, and I would really get angry, but what comes next is the big thing.
	Sorry, you mean when you would see something like that as an adult, like you would see parents trying to force their kids to eat something?
	Yeah, it would be horrible, but...
	The thing that hit me, that got to me yesterday is what happened next, about a week or a month.
	I don't remember how long after the episode.
	But this uncle of mine, he brought a cow's head to the house.
	A boiled cow's head.
	Everybody would step away from that.
	It was a gross, horrible thing that he brought.
	And he started eating that in the house.
	We lived in a hut back then.
	We were a really poor family.
	And a bunch of people lived together in a house.
	And mostly women, an old ounce of mine.
	And he brought this thing into the house.
	And everybody got scared and disgusted by it.
	And he went for me.
	And I got really, really, really scared for that.
	And I thought he was going to do the same thing to me.
	And I'm not sure what happened.
	Sorry, what do you mean he would do the same thing to you?
	He would make me the cow's head.
	He would feed it to me forcefully.
	Right. I thought he was going to do that.
	I don't quite understand what happened, but I flipped.
	I became somebody else.
	It's like I was...
	Siding with him and making fun of my aunts and my grandmother and my mother for not eating the cow.
	And I ate the cow's head with him.
	And it's like I was somebody else.
	I was like him that day.
	Like a monster, I thought.
	As bad as he was.
	I don't know if you understand what I'm trying to say.
	I think I do. Go on.
	And now I believe it was an escape.
	It was a way for me to survive the attack.
	I didn't want the attack to happen again.
	But through the years, I think it has happened to me in situations I would flip like that again.
	And yesterday I was listening to a rap radio song from a rapper.
	I don't know. I wasn't paying attention to my driving, and I crashed into a car.
	The whole week I've been thinking about that episode.
	I didn't remember why.
	I was trying to understand what went on.
	And after I crashed, boom, it got to me.
	That cow's head thing.
	And it's been in my head ever since.
	And I'm just dying to get into my therapy and talk about it.
	And I thought about sharing it with you.
	Right, right. Why do you think you crashed the car?
	I think I have a couple of values that I'm not leaving, and I think I've got a couple of things confused, but I'm not sure.
	Look, this is around the philosophy of accidents, and there are three General philosophies of accidents.
	One is that nothing is an accident.
	In other words, God plans everything and there are no accidents in life.
	Everything's faded, everything's determined, and everything happens for a reason, which I think is complete nonsense.
	The other is that accidents have no relationship to psychology, that everything is completely accidental.
	Like if you crash your car, it's never because of anything else.
	And I don't believe that.
	And I think that a more balanced view is to say that it's not always the case that when you have an accident that it has a psychological cause.
	This is all just my opinion, right?
	But it's a damn important thing to explore nonetheless, because if it does...
	Have a psychological cause, then you better figure it out before whatever is happening escalates.
	And I remember reading in Jung many, many years ago, gosh, 20 years ago almost, that Jung had a friend who was a mountaineer.
	And his friend, I think it was a friend or a patient, and the patient said to Jung, I keep dreaming that I'm climbing this mountain, and I'm climbing this mountain, I'm climbing this mountain, until...
	I climb straight into the sky and vanish.
	And Jung said, you better figure out what is going on with you because you're going to do something very stupid and very dangerous when you're mountaineering.
	You have a death wish at the moment.
	And Jung writes that, sure enough, within a month he had taken a plunge from a mountaintop and died.
	Now, is it apocryphal?
	Is it a real story? I don't know, but it stuck with me because I have found within my own life, and I can't speak to any objective or rational principles here, and certainly no professional opinion, but I found in my life that the number of accidents that are purely accidental are very small.
	Some of them are. Some of them are, like I tripped recently and I cut my thumb on some plates when I tripped on the dishwasher.
	The dishwasher lid was open.
	That was an accident. I was in a happy mood and it was just, you know, it was out further than I thought.
	That was no big deal.
	But there have been times where I have been involved in accidents where I'm quite sure, like once when I was driving to my therapist, when I had something very big to talk about, I was driving out of the parking lot and I took a turn, a turn which I had literally done 500 times before I took a turn and I took it too sharply and I scraped the side of my relatively new car The Volvo, actually the one that's in all the videos from early on.
	I scraped the side of my car against a pole.
	And was it related to the fact that I was going to go and see my therapist and I was distracted by all of that?
	I believe that it was.
	Because it certainly never happened again.
	And I've never been in a car crash.
	And so I think it's really, and they say this of course, don't drive when you're upset, don't drive when you're distracted, don't drive when you've got a lot going on.
	And I think that's very important.
	So I think that it's very important to...
	A, don't drive if you can avoid it until you get a chance to talk about this with your therapist and work it out.
	That would be my first suggestion.
	B, if you do drive, you have to pay extra careful attention to what is going on.
	And the reason that I asked that is that the two things that you talked about are acts of self-destruction.
	And by that, I don't mean, of course, that you have some self-destructive streak.
	But what I mean is that the act of eating a cow's head because you're terrified that you might be asked to eat a cow's head is an act of self-destruction.
	And I'm not saying it was an irrational act because, in a sense, it's like I would rather pull the trigger on my true self than have you shoot it.
	It's how we retain a sense of control in these situations.
	So I would say that that is an act of self-destruction.
	And, of course, being in a car accident is an act of self-destruction.
	The two may, of course, be completely unrelated, but I would be very careful about endangered situations while you're working through this stuff, if that makes any sense.
	Yes, it does. It does.
	Maybe something else I can share and ask.
	My brother, his birthday is next weekend.
	And I asked him to move in with me whenever he wanted.
	He's going to be 18.
	And my mother's been calling me since she hasn't called for about a year or maybe two years.
	She started calling me and I've been avoiding her calls.
	And I'm going through a lot right now.
	That may be it. I'm sorry, unless you just dropped.
	I didn't get a question there, but I'm certainly happy to keep listening.
	I'm going through a lot.
	I want my brother to come live with me.
	I think that's the house I grew up in.
	I know it's horrible. It's terrible, and I want him out of there.
	But, you see, my family's not the same with him that it was with me, and I'm not sure, and I don't know if it'll be better for him to come with me, but I extended the invitation, and maybe you can help me get some certainty on what I should do and how I should move on with this.
	Well, I can tell you for sure that I can't give you any certainty about that, and I don't think anyone else can.
	I might be able to ask some questions that might help give you some certainty, but I don't think anyone can give you that.
	So, it's your concern that your brother is not in a healthy environment with your family.
	He might be in a more healthy environment living with you, but you're sort of ambivalent about that.
	Is that right? Yeah, sure.
	I know he's going to be better off living with me, but he's got a condition and And he grew up with them and they haven't been the same parents with him than they were with me.
	They take better care of him than they did of me.
	But what does he want to do?
	I'm sorry? What does he want to do?
	He says he's going to come by from time to time and spend some time with me.
	And he doesn't know what to do.
	But I know my father is very influential in him.
	Very manipulative and I don't know if he gets us straight.
	I don't know if he sees them for what they are.
	Right. No, listen, that's a hell of a situation.
	And look, I obviously don't know any details.
	And if it's okay, I'm going to bypass the details because I don't think the details are going to help in terms of the principle of helping.
	And I think what you're asking is a very powerful question.
	So let me spend a minute or two with some thoughts and then you can tell me if I've completely swung and missed the ball that you're sort of pitching.
	The question is, to what degree can we help other people?
	When we know better, when we know better, let's say that you are in a position that you know better than your brother.
	I mean, maybe you are, maybe you're not.
	But of course, I think you probably are if you go into therapy and you're studying self-knowledge and philosophy and so on.
	I would assume that at least at some level you're in a position.
	Better position to see and to know.
	Of course, right? If you go to nutritional school, then you're in a better position than people who've never gone to nutritional school or read anything about nutrition to figure out what you should eat.
	I mean, that's sort of a given.
	So let's say that you're in a better position or you're in a position to help your brother and you know better in many ways what is best for him at this moment.
	Unfortunately, that doesn't matter.
	I mean, if that mattered, there'd be no such thing as alcoholism.
	Because everyone around the alcoholic says, you shouldn't drink.
	Everybody around the smoker says, you shouldn't smoke.
	Everyone around the drug addict says, you shouldn't do drugs.
	Everyone around the sex addict says, Tiger Woods, get off my girlfriend.
	Whatever, right? So the amount of good advice that remains unheeded in this world is I genuinely and genuinely believe is what powers the sun itself.
	Right? Good advice that is unheeded is the oceanic currents of powering human society or unpowering human society.
	So the fact that you know better than someone how he should live his life or the choices that he should make means Almost nothing.
	Because it doesn't matter what you know.
	It matters what he will accept.
	And telling someone something doesn't really mean much.
	Yeah, otherwise, you know, therapy, right?
	Therapy would be two sessions, right?
	Tell me your problems, here's a list of what you should do, go do it.
	But as we all know, who've been in therapy, and even those who avoid therapy know it too, because they avoid it for a reason, they know that We know that to be helped is a very time-consuming and difficult and involved process.
	And that's when we're paying to go to therapy and investing time and money into it.
	Right? I mean, the relapse rate for people from the advice that they receive is about 99.9 infinity percent.
	So even when we're highly motivated to change and highly motivated to grow and paying thousands of dollars and putting hundreds of hours into our therapy, it still takes years, right?
	I mean, is that a fair statement?
	Yes, it is. So, I have a few rules of thumb, which may be helpful to you.
	Maybe they're not, but... I try not to be more invested in someone's change than he or she is himself or herself.
	I'll just use the masculine because it's your brother.
	I try not to be invested in anybody's growth or change or enlightenment.
	I try not to be more invested than he is himself.
	And so if I'm talking to someone, and this happens sometimes, I had a whole bunch of conversations where people say, oh, I really want to talk to you.
	And then they just don't talk to me during the conversation.
	So I'm like, okay, so there's nothing for us to talk about, and we stop talking, and there's no podcast.
	Because I'm not going to...
	If somebody wants to ride a bike, I'll show them how to ride a bike, but I'm not going to run beside them and move their legs and move their arms.
	I'm not going to be more invested in someone's commitment than that person is themselves.
	It's crazy.
	If your brother is heavily invested in change and growth and knowledge, I think fantastic.
	Be there as a resource.
	But you can only ever help people as a resource.
	You cannot help people by telling them what to do.
	You cannot help people by taking over their lives.
	Because what that does is it disempowers them.
	It makes them feel like they can't make a good decision without you.
	It makes them feel like they're incompetent.
	The important thing is not that you're right.
	but that your brother is motivated to pursue a lifelong process of self-knowledge and growth and learning and intimacy and empathy and virtue and all of the good things that we talk about here, right?
	What do you think?
	I'm thinking how angry I am.
	My parents are... Throwing so much dirt to cover what they've done and to create these characters that they're playing from a brother and he can't see.
	And I know he's not happy there, but he feels like he has to be there because they take care of him.
	Well, wait a sec.
	How do you know that your brother can't see it?
	Because it's there. Well, I understand that it's there, but how do you know that he can't see it?
	Like, you mean that he's incapable of seeing it, that he's completely blind, that he doesn't have the intelligence to process what is going on around him?
	Well, he sees who they are, he sees that they're playing characters, and they're not honest, and they're not themselves.
	But he doesn't see, he cannot see he wasn't there, he cannot see who they were, who they are hiding.
	Behind the characters.
	Let me be skeptical, right?
	So I'm sure you're right.
	But what is the evidence that you have that he can't see?
	Because can't see is a very powerful statement.
	And I try to be annoyingly precise in this area.
	Can't see.
	Right? So someone is colorblind.
	They can't see differences in colors that are the same shade.
	They can't. That's a physical impossibility.
	Somebody who's legally blind cannot see a plane flying overhead.
	They can hear it, but they can't see it.
	And the bird flying way overhead, they don't even know it's there.
	Unless they have sonar.
	So when you say he can't see it, that is a very powerful statement that it is impossible for him.
	He lacks an organ that you possess to perceive these things.
	Let's put it like this.
	You know that there are things that our unconscious can block so we can stay alive, right?
	Oh, of course. He has this condition.
	He has diabetes and I think he blocks out a bunch of things because he feels that my parents are what keeps him alive.
	And I think they play that.
	They play that for him.
	They play that role. He doesn't follow precisely the rigors of his treatment.
	He doesn't inject himself the insulin at the right time.
	They have to constantly remind him.
	I think they make him dumb.
	So he has to rely on them.
	For staying alive, so that he doesn't go away from them, you know?
	Why does your brother have diabetes?
	I'm sorry? Why does your brother have diabetes?
	I mean, because, I don't know, there are two kinds as far as I know, right?
	What do I know? But there's the kind that you get from genetics, and there's the kind that you get from your lifestyle, right?
	He got it when he was 8 or 9 and back then they say it's genetic and they say it's a virus in the milk and they say a bunch of things.
	Okay, so it's genetic. I was just curious about that.
	Alright, so he's got this condition and he's had it for 10 years and you say he's not doing his health regimen, right?
	I'm not sure it's genetic.
	We had very rough times back then in the family and he missed a lot of sleep back then.
	And I personally, I think that was the cause.
	Emotional stress. Yeah, I mean, I don't know the science behind that.
	But I mean, as far as I know, overweight, inactivity.
	But I think at that age, it would have to be pretty significant.
	And I'm just curious, right?
	But you're saying that now, 10 years after he got the illness, he is not following his regimen, right?
	His insulin and exercise and diet, right?
	Well, he exercises, but sometimes he eats sugar and he shouldn't, candies and he shouldn't.
	And sometimes he forgets to inject and he spends the night in the hospital.
	And he's like a baby and he's 18, you know?
	Because they've made him that way.
	He's very immature when he's at home.
	He's not that way when he's with me.
	But when he gets back, it's a kid all over again.
	Right. Right, and I mean, of course, the stakes are very high, right?
	I mean, he could lose circulation to his foot, and he could lose circulation to his eyes, and, you know, so he could...
	I mean, there's some significant health risks associated with the non-management of diabetes, so it's pretty high-stakes poker, right?
	Yeah, left on the...
	Life and death. Oh man, that is a tough, tough situation.
	That is a tough, tough, tough situation.
	I've gotten him here.
	I've gotten him to meet my friends.
	We talk. I am open and honest with him.
	He avoids the topic of my parents when he's with me, but he sees the methodology, the willingness to self-knowledge.
	You understand? Yeah, I know.
	Of course. Yeah, yeah. Now, sorry, sorry, let me just ask you this, though.
	Is he committed to, like, is he aware that it's a problem how he's managing his health or not managing his health?
	Like, does he say that is a problem, right?
	Yeah, but it's something like a bad habit that has the kid, you know?
	He downplays it.
	Yeah, like, oh, it's no big deal, so I forgot.
	Everyone forgets stuff, right? Yeah, like that.
	Like it's a set of keys, not insulin, right?
	Yeah. Alright.
	And has this always been the case for him since he was a kid?
	Oh, at the beginning, it was my family who took care of him.
	The doctors told them they shouldn't, that they should help him become self-managed.
	And they did, to a degree.
	And after that, whenever I started having problems with my family, now that I think of it, I think he expresses it that way, I think.
	And is he the youngest sibling?
	Yes, yes. And is it fair to say that your parents' marriage is not terribly close?
	They split. Right when I did food, they split.
	I lived in separate houses.
	Now they're back together and they have my brother with them.
	They've been together for a couple of months.
	Right. Well, look, as you know, I'm in no way competent to make any To say anything that's factual about this situation, all I can do is share to you some of my thoughts.
	Which don't mean anything, it's just some guy talking on the internet.
	So I will tell you what I think, and then you can tell me if it's at all useful to you.
	Alright? Okay.
	It has been my experience that...
	People act out and cause other people to feel that which they cannot feel themselves.
	So if your brother feels stressed and angry and frustrated and helpless, but he cannot process or will not process those feelings, then the likelihood is that he is going to act in a way that is going to make those around him feel what he cannot or will not feel, which is actually occurring for him.
	So if he feels angry, Frustrated, helpless, paralyzed, self-destructive, then he is going to act in such a way that everyone else around him is going to experience the feelings he won't process.
	And so he's going to act in a way that is going to make you feel stressed and helpless and frustrated and all of that.
	Does that make any sense?
	Yeah, I do that a lot.
	We all do. I think it's a human condition.
	This is why self-knowledge is so important, so we don't have other people hold the hot rocks of our deepest feelings, because it just burns them when it's us who have to deal with it.
	So that's one aspect.
	Forget about where your brother lives.
	That doesn't matter.
	What matters is that he is able to deal with his feelings, if this theory is even applicable, which you can find out through talking to him, that he can deal with his feelings and stop provoking those feelings in other people.
	We all know about passive aggression.
	So passive aggression is when somebody is angry, can't express it, and what they do is they'll do things that are annoying to other people until other people lose their temper.
	That's natural for people who don't have self-knowledge.
	When things get to this level of intensity where somebody's health is genuinely at risk, it could be, at least this is the first place that I would look, just as an idiot amateur, this is the first place that I would look.
	I would say, what part of my brother feels like he's dying to the point where he has to risk death to communicate that to others?
	That's the first place that I would look.
	The second place that I would look, and this would be more just for your own knowledge, because I don't imagine that you could have anything to do anything to change this, It has also been my observation and experience that marriages in trouble will hang on to the children.
	So parents whose marriage is in trouble very often will not want the youngest child to leave home.
	And it's not just marriages.
	Moms who are lonely, dads who are lonely and needy, they will hang on.
	To their kids. Because kids are prefabricated company.
	Right? Yeah, that's what's going on.
	You don't have to earn your relationship with your kids.
	Right? They're born.
	You're there. You spend years together.
	It's not because you love each other.
	I mean, hopefully you do. But if you don't, you still have to hang out together.
	It's socialized relationships.
	Right? It's not free. It's not voluntary.
	Right? And so sometimes parents will hang on, particularly to the youngest kid, rather than deal with loneliness or alienation that they may be experiencing as adults.
	It gives them something else to focus on.
	And we all know, this is a pretty well observed fact, that when children see their parents fighting, often the children will cause a problem to stop the parents from fighting.
	To have the parents redirect their attention to the transgressions of the kid.
	If you ever want to make a kid hurt himself, hurt some other kid, drop something, break something, just start fighting with your spouse in front of them, and it's just a matter of time.
	So it could be that this is an extreme form of that.
	Again, these are things to talk out with your brother, and these are things to talk out with your therapist.
	But these are the things that, if I were in your shoes, I would approach the problem from these angles and find out if there was anything to it.
	Yeah, you're right. While you were thinking, I was imagining my mother cooking and doing all these things and trying to entice him and thinking that it's a battle for him.
	I can imagine my father also pulling all the tricks he could.
	I don't know if my brother did tell them, but he probably did and he has probably brought it up.
	I don't know. Because that's why my mother is calling me.
	And I can imagine a battle being fought over there, trying to win him over.
	And for me, it's like a nightmare imagining him between those monsters.
	I see them as monsters.
	And he can't see that thing.
	It breaks my heart.
	It makes me nervous.
	It makes me anxious.
	Right. And the important thing...
	See, the important thing is not that you feel nervous and anxious.
	I mean, that's important for you.
	Right? The important thing is not that you feel nervous and anxious.
	The important thing is that he begins to feel nervous and anxious.
	Does that make any sense?
	Yeah, sure. And whenever we try to take over other people's decision-making process and say, you've got to get out, you've got to do this, you've got to do the other, what we're saying to them is that they can't make the decision for themselves and we're taking over the conclusion.
	The important thing is not the conclusion.
	The important thing is the process.
	Because let's say your brother listens to you and he moves out and he dutifully moves into your house and whatever.
	He hasn't learned anything.
	He hasn't changed.
	He hasn't grown. He's just done what you want him to do without comprehension.
	We might as well just whisper the answer to a math problem into kids' ears and think they've learned something.
	All they've learned is how to write down the numbers that we've told them to write down.
	They haven't learned how to do the math.
	And I think that...
	And I completely hope I sympathize and, oh, my heart goes out to you.
	What a difficult, difficult, horrible situation.
	And there could be 60 million different ways of trying to deal with it.
	I'm only sharing with you the way that I would approach it.
	But... The important thing is that your brother begins to feel the things that he obviously is not feeling.
	Somebody who's not managing his or her own health is not making sensible, irrational decisions and is in fact endangering himself.
	And he needs to feel whatever is blocking him from acting in a rational and self-protective manner.
	He needs to feel that.
	And whatever you can do to help him to feel that, which is about focusing on him, not focusing on your frustrations or what you think he should do, it's focusing on him, him, him, him, him.
	Because you don't want to be someone who tells him what to do, like your parents.
	Someone who says, you have to do this, you need to do that, you need to take your medication, you need to move out, you need to see this about the family, you need...
	No. That, I guarantee, I don't know what to do, but I'm telling you that won't work.
	You need to find a way to get him to take his own feelings more seriously, to be curious about what he is experiencing.
	And if you can do that, everything else will flow from that, from his own self-awareness, from his own curiosity about himself.
	So care enough about himself, and value himself enough, When I have a conversation with someone, and hopefully this is the case with you too, I don't always achieve it, but I always want the person to come away feeling stronger, feeling empowered, feeling that there's a possibility or an option or something that they can do that's different or better or more useful or more powerful or more helpful.
	You can't make him do anything.
	You can't Give him a conclusion and think that he's learned anything, but you can just sit down and ask him questions.
	What do you think? What do you feel?
	When did this feeling first come to you?
	What is it like for you when this happens?
	What is it like for you when that happens?
	Don't tell him. Ask him.
	Ask him, ask him, ask him.
	When he becomes curious about himself, when he becomes slightly more friendly with himself, when he begins to value himself more by being curious about himself, then he will begin to save himself.
	But we don't dive into an icy river to save a man three days dead.
	Why would we? There has to be life.
	There has to be the potential for life for people to take extreme action to save themselves.
	And that would be my suggestion, just to keep asking him questions.
	Don't tell him what to do. Just keep asking questions.
	You can share your own feelings, of course, but share them as your feelings.
	I feel this about the situation, but it's nothing to do with what you should or shouldn't do.
	I'm just sharing with you what I feel, but what do you think?
	What do you feel about things?
	If you can light that fire within him, there's nothing that he can't do.
	If you can't light that fire of self-regard and self-curiosity within him, I don't think there's much that anyone can do.
	Yeah, I agree. Did you start agreeing like 15 minutes ago and I didn't need to say all that?
	No, you're right.
	You get really...
	I'm probably feeling what he's feeling.
	I'm probably imagining in my head what he's going through and what horrible situation it is for him and maybe that's why I'm getting so anxious and Yeah, and you want to change his situation perhaps to manage your own feelings, and I don't think that's focusing on him in the way that will light him up.
	Yeah, I agree. You're right.
	It's about acting out for my own comfort, because I feel bad for him.
	It's not bad that I do that, but it's not productive.
	No, in fact, it's good that you feel that you want to help him and you want to care for him.
	I completely agree with you.
	And it's terrible to be in this situation.
	But to know that, I think, gives you options.
	That is important to know that that's what you feel.
	But he should not have to change so you feel better.
	Nobody should have to change so someone else feels better.
	They should want to change for their own desire for happiness.
	Sure. Thanks.
	Oh, you're welcome. And keep us posted, or at least keep me posted if you get a chance.
	I'd love to know what happens.
	But yeah, just listen, listen, listen, and that's the best advice I can give.
	Thanks, Al. All right, man.
	Thank you so much for sharing, and I hope that you drive safe.
	Drive safe to your therapist appointment.
	Yeah, I'll do that.
	I won't drive because I'll have the car.
	Being repaired. Wow. Oh, good.
	Excellent. See, now you just did a little bit to make yourself safe.
	So much the better. So much the better.
	Thanks. All right.
	Somebody has asked a question regarding the phenomena of making others around you feel what you are unwilling to process.
	How does this manifest if you don't really have other people in your life to project onto if you live alone and mostly stay at home?
	I don't know.
	I don't know. I would assume that if you're alive and a human being, that you have some people in the world who care for you, or at least who claim to care for you.
	And if you don't see them, then you're making them feel something by not seeing them.
	Right? You're making them feel rejected.
	You're making them feel alone.
	You're making them feel confused.
	You're making them feel alienated.
	And, I mean, making them feel, you understand, it's just a colloquial use of the term.
	So I would look into that as what is being communicated, what is experiencing.
	Oh, and somebody who, I think, cured himself or herself of diabetes, though, type 2, I think, Has also mentioned it would be important for Victor to learn to manage his brother's diabetes, too, if the brother moves in, like a course.
	And I can only assume that that's true, since I don't know that much about diabetes, so absolutely.
	So there are a few other, and please interrupt me if you have a call, or type it into the question, but since we're waiting for the next call, these are a few of the other principles that I have about diabetes.
	About helping people. Yeah, don't get more invested in helping people than they are in helping themselves, because all you do is you try and take over their lives, make them feel less competent, less efficacious, and will just end up exacerbating whatever problem you're trying to help them solve to begin with.
	That's the first thing.
	The second thing is don't shield people from consequences.
	Don't shield people from the consequences of their actions.
	I think that's really, really important.
	And that can be one of the hardest things to do.
	So if somebody's doing something stupid and they show up to work drunk, they get fired, they have no money, it's like, I'm not going to lend you money.
	I'm sorry, but I offered to help beforehand.
	You didn't want the help. You said you were going to do this.
	You've got negative consequences.
	If you're not going to learn through reason, you have to learn through experience.
	I mean, the reason we focus on reason is that it helps us avoid the pain of having to learn through Through experience.
	But do not shield people from the consequences of their actions.
	That, I think, is very, very important.
	Adults, I'm talking children, you must continually shield from the consequences of their actions.
	And I think that is very fine and that is very healthy.
	So I think that's important.
	People change.
	This is my thoughts and experience.
	People change when they run out of options.
	When shit just doesn't work so badly in their life that they just change.
	And this is true for me as well.
	Certainly was true for me.
	I didn't go to therapy because I had a scintillating vision of how wonderful my life was going to be in the future.
	I went to therapy because I couldn't sleep.
	I didn't know what the problem was.
	Now, it was through a huge amount of work in therapy that I began to emerge into that.
	But people change when the stuff that they do doesn't work.
	And if you help the stuff that they do continue to work when it shouldn't, all you're doing is delaying their growth for the sake of your own anxiety.
	And look, it can be very tough and it can be very horrible to watch people who are suffering as a result of their own choices.
	There's no other way.
	If they're not going to listen to reason, you have to let them learn from experience.
	Or accept that you're enabling, that you're simply continuing the pattern.
	So don't bail them out.
	Don't do this, don't do that.
	And I think that's been something else that's been very helpful.
	I also try to avoid getting into situations where people will give me their problems to solve.
	Right? That's, you know, that's tempting, right?
	You can sound, I guess, all kinds of smart, and people can go, hey, thanks, or whatever, right?
	But I feel very strongly that if people have not gotten from a conversation with me a principle that they can apply to other things, then it has not been a successful conversation.
	I mean, it just hasn't been.
	Again, that's like, what's the answer to three times three?
	It's nine. Well, what if you taught someone?
	Well, a series of magical statements that have no correlation.
	You say this, someone says nine, it's quote correct.
	So I always try in my conversations to give people a principle rather than a solution.
	To give people a methodology rather than do this, do that.
	And I think that is very, very important.
	Principles in power. Answers, disembowel.
	Okay, that might be too strong a way of putting it.
	Yeah, disempower.
	I mean, you strengthen people's capacity to live rationally and happily if you give them a principle, which they can use to solve one of many problems.
	But if you give them answers...
	Then all you're saying is that you have to come to me for answers and you can't trust yourself and there's no way to reproduce what we're doing here without me.
	It is a kind of Self-important grandiosity, which we all have, and we all want to be the smart person who says, do this, do that.
	But I try to, and I'm not always successful, but I really strive to not tell people what to do.
	I mean, first of all, it's a ridiculous thing, because I can't tell people what to do.
	I can talk into a microphone on the internet, and I can't tell anyone what to do.
	I mean, I can't even tell myself what to do.
	Half of my day is, don't fart, don't fart, and suddenly I'm jetting along like the Jetsons.
	Right? So, I think it's really important to just...
	You can't. I mean, you can pretend that you can tell people what to do, but you can't.
	You can't tell people what to do.
	So, I don't even try.
	I think that you can appeal to their reason, but I don't think that you can...
	You can't tell them.
	It's a fantasy, right? And if anyone says, tell me what to do, it's a trap.
	What they're doing is they're setting you up to take the blame when it doesn't work.
	Right? So don't even fall into that trap.
	You know, should I take this job?
	No way. I'm not telling you that, even if I have a strong opinion, right?
	Because if you take the job and it doesn't work out, you're the one you told me.
	You know, or whatever.
	Should I leave this girl or whatever, right?
	All right.
	Someone has asked, could a death wish be something that somebody else feels about you, wanting you to die, like a parent or someone strongly embedded within you?
	I am not an expert on death wish, though it is a pretty good song by the police.
	Yeah, de Maus makes an argument that it is murderousness on the part of a parent that creates the death wish in the child.
	He's no psychologist, but the man has some good references and he's well worth reading.
	So, yeah, no child is born with a death wish.
	No human being is born with a death wish.
	And it's not just DeMoss, but a lot of people have theorized this.
	It's actually in The Sopranos that the mom of Tony Soprano is just a murderous, see you next Tuesday kind of woman.
	And that's fairly well depicted in that sort of literature, that it is the murderousness often of the mom that results in a death wish.
	But I'll just touch on this briefly, but you might want to listen to a podcast that I just pushed out.
	And I'm sorry that I haven't been listening to these on the board.
	I will do this after the show. A podcast that I just pushed out called...
	What was it called?
	Oh, it was called Something Intelligent.
	Oh, that's right. It was called The War...
	And it's about when you have opposite moral principles from people, it's win-lose, and it is a battle to the death.
	And we can't help but be invested in the other person's failure.
	So I would say that when you are around people that you have opposing moral principles, relativism versus absolutism, statism versus voluntarism, The virtue of hitting your children versus the vice of hitting your children.
	The universal ban on violence or the selective moral approval of violence.
	These are all opposing moral principles.
	Honesty versus, quote, politeness.
	And boy, if there's one word I would scrub them or language, it would be politeness.
	I love that word. Politeness and appropriateness.
	It's just a way of keeping ugly secrets about ugly people quiet so they look better.
	But... I would say that it's so important to be aware of when you have opposing moral principles to those around you that you're alert and aware to the fact that it is a grim fucking battle to the death, whether you like it or not.
	It is a win-lose, and they want you to fail.
	And it's not like you want them to fail, but if they succeed, you're going to fail.
	And so it is a win-lose.
	And I think that's really important to understand.
	I think Death Wish comes out of that, an extreme form of that as well.
	Alright, we do have time for another call or typed questions in the chat room.
	If... Steph, what is your point of view in dealing with people with mental disorders?
	My mom has bipolar.
	Well, I... I don't know.
	I don't know. Mental disorders is something that...
	It's a very, very tricky term.
	It's a very tricky term because it is still very much up in the air where the mental disorders are genetic or chosen.
	Right? I mean, and you all heard this recently.
	When I was reading about psychology when I was younger, it was simply gospel that schizophrenia and psychosis do not respond to talk therapy.
	They couldn't find a biological course, but it was considered that it had nothing to do with how you thought.
	It had nothing to do with evasion or abuse or history.
	It's just whammo, blammo, too bad, 18, you get schizophrenia, your life is screwed.
	Now, there is a success rate of upwards of 80% for talk therapy in schizophrenia and certain forms of psychoses.
	Talk therapy! It's like chatting a cancer out of your body, for Christ's sake.
	It's deranged.
	So, it is a tough thing to talk about mental disorders.
	I... I mean, I can't give anybody any advice on how to deal with mental disorders.
	You know, my mother certainly has her fair share, if not her fair share for a small Mesopotamian nation.
	But I just...
	I couldn't do it.
	I couldn't do it. There's something about mental disorders that to me is infinitely harder to deal with than a physical disorder.
	So it depends.
	It depends. Something like dementia, which is...
	I mean, that's just tragic.
	I mean, what hit Ronald Reagan later, or perhaps even during his pregnancy, his presidency, that is just genuinely tragic and horrible stuff.
	And, you know, I think if you love the person, then you care for them out of the memory and you grieve.
	And, I mean, that's just wretched, you know, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, Alzheimer's in particular, and other forms of degenerative brain disorders.
	I think that's... That's just heinous.
	I lean towards with little scientific...
	not no, but little scientific...
	Back up. I lean towards that mental illness, particularly those accumulate later in life, that mental illness arise out of a misuse of the brain.
	And we all understand this when it comes to things like certain forms of arthritis, right?
	If you're a football player, your knees are shot, usually by the time you're 30, right?
	And may need to be replaced.
	I think Tom Wolfe wrote about that in A Man in Full.
	So we all understand that a misuse or an overuse of a particular joint or muscle can very easily cause significant chronic problems later on like arthritis or whatever.
	And I believe that we can enormously misuse the brain.
	And avoidance is one of the most fundamental misuses of the brain, right?
	So you get a thought or you get an impulse and you immediately say to yourself, that's wrong, that's bad, I can't think that, I won't think that, I won't feel that, I can't feel that, and you push it around you.
	I believe that that harms your brain.
	In the same way that lifting a truck will harm your back.
	It's a repetitive strain injury.
	It is a repetitive strain injury of the brain.
	And that has physical effects.
	And I believe that those physical effects can be mapped with some of the new MRIs that are out there.
	So I think that you can damage your brain and that brain damage can become permanent if you continually use your brain In the exact opposite way which it was intended.
	The brain is a unifying organ.
	It unifies, it synthesizes, it lines everything up, it rationalizes, it conceptualizes, it finds patterns, it finds consistencies, it finds logic, it finds everything that needs to line up, it tries to line up continually.
	And if you order your brain to split and to hold irreconcilable and opposite ideas, if you Do that 1984, double, triple, quadruple, 1940, 1920.
	If you triple-think your brain into holding all of these contradictory ideas, then you're doing the exact opposite of what the brain is intended to do, which is to rationalize and to synthesize and to conceptualize information into holes.
	So if you split it up and you say, well...
	Abuse is bad, but my parents hitting me was for my own good.
	Well, which the fuck is it, right?
	I mean, which is it? Violence is bad, but government violence is good, right?
	Hitmen are bad, but soldiers are heroes.
	Like, all the shit that we're supposed to swallow that just makes our brain fart sideways into our own brain is really bad for us.
	It's really, really bad for us.
	And in the future, they'll wonder how we got through the damn day putting one foot in front of the other when we held so many contradictory thoughts in our head.
	Or how about, my god is real, your god is mythological.
	I mean, come on, it's ridiculous, right?
	I'm a virtue, I'm virtuous because I'm Christian.
	Because I happen to be born to Christian parents.
	Well, then you're not virtuous, because it was just a coincidence.
	I mean, if you've been born to Hindu parents, you'd be a freaking Hindu.
	So, the amount of nonsense and contradictory, dangerous, brain-melting crap that we hold in our heads has a deleterious and negative effect.
	One idea good and one idea bad is like mixing nails into your cheesecake and having a good meal thinking, well, there's some cheesecake in there, so I should be fine.
	It's not. It's not fine.
	So I don't know the degree to which, and it may never be discovered in our lifetime, maybe yours, probably not mine.
	I don't know the degree to which bad thinking produces brain dysfunction later in life, but I think it's considerable.
	So I move more towards, if you have a brain disorder, my first thing is to look at the history of thinking.
	Was there a time when the person was less crazy?
	And what are the ideas that they held at that time?
	And if the ideas they held at that time were immature and emotionally repressive and contradictory, or if they were hurtful or harmful to other people, particularly children, I believe that a bad conscience is a snake that eats the soul whole and shits out nothing but discontent and rage and frustration and every ghastly, negative, horrible, entrapped, enslaved, hellish emotion that we can consider.
	So I think that some mental disorders are also merely the Macbeth effect of a bad conscience.
	And the lack of sleep that that engenerates, the defensiveness, the hostility, the split with the self, the lack of peace of mind.
	The brain is a muscle.
	You don't want to wear it out with contradictions.
	Your muscle can do a hell of a lot.
	Your bicep can lift a lot of weight.
	Your tricep can push a lot of weight.
	But if you try to move them both at the same time, you are going to fuck up your arm.
	And it's the same thing is true of the brain.
	You can do some great things.
	You can do the opposite things.
	You just don't want to do them both at the same time with split perspectives and mycosystem wars.
	That is going to mess up your brain.
	And that's my perspective.
	Someone has asked a couple of times, What is preferable, bad parents or no parents?
	I can answer that.
	I mean, that's such a wide range of things.
	I can tell you that from my own personal experience, living without a parent from the age of 15 onwards, was so vastly preferable that I wept with relief the day that she was gone.
	And never looked back.
	And when she came back to town, dreaded it.
	So I can tell you that for myself, no parents was infinitely better than that.
	Did I live alone at 15?
	No, I did not.
	I have an elder brother. And we also took in some roommates from some other troubled families.
	And we lived, four or five of us, in a two-bedroom apartment.
	And we all had jobs.
	Some guys had some savings.
	And we lived that way.
	And it was fantastic.
	It was fantastic.
	Yeah, and I was working three jobs.
	Yeah, I was working three jobs at the time.
	I worked in a daycare, I worked cleaning offices, and I worked as a waiter on the weekends.
	So it was a challenge.
	We didn't do anything like child emancipation.
	I don't think we even knew what that was.
	That's tough. But no, I mean, it was fantastic.
	I never looked back. And I spent a short amount of time living with my mom when I was 27, a couple of months, and that was it.
	So no, since I was 15, I was self-sufficient.
	And look, I don't recommend that.
	I really don't, if you've got any other possibilities, but we didn't.
	And so it was certainly the better solution for us.
	So anyway, I just sort of wanted to mention that.
	And, you know, to be honest, I mean, this is, while we're waiting for another question, that is, I mean, that taught me a lot about society, right?
	I mean, everybody knew that we were the house of lost boys, but nobody did anything.
	Nobody did anything. And this is, of course, true.
	I mean, this wasn't the first time I'd lived alone, when my mother was institutionalized, when I was...
	13, I think. 12 or 13, my mother was institutionalized for quite some time.
	We just worked jobs and struggled, and everybody knew.
	But nobody did anything.
	And this is why, to me, the welfare state is just such nonsense.
	People don't actually act to help children in dire distress within their own community when dozens or hundreds of people know, including the professionals who are treating my mom, who knows she has kids, who knows there's no extended family, because they do a history.
	So the idea that society gives a shit about the poor is just...
	It's ludicrous to me when you've actually been in the situation of needing things, and I was in that situation in two or three different countries over the course of 18 or 20 years, and not one person came forward for help.
	You just know that it's all just a bunch of pious, self-serving bullshit that people say that they care about the poor or care about children.
	I think that's just nonsense. Anyway.
	Well, thank you. I really do appreciate your sympathy.
	I do. It means a lot to me that you guys care.
	And it was... It was a very strange time.
	It was a very strange time.
	It was a time of enormous relief to have a house of peace.
	And I tell you, if I hadn't done that, I can almost guarantee you I never would have gotten into university.
	There was no chance of doing homework in my house.
	There was so much chaos and violence and destructiveness and ugliness.
	There was no chance to do homework there.
	I mean, it was just get home, get some food, try and survive, try and get out and go somewhere.
	You couldn't think.
	Your brain, and of course I know the biological reasons for this now, so many years later, you can't think when you're in that kind of environment.
	Your brain is full of random bees and brownie and static.
	You just can't think.
	Sorry? Yeah, it's fight or flight.
	You just continually, amygdala storms just taking over your brain the whole time.
	And so if I hadn't had those couple of years to hold my grades up, I never would have gotten into college.
	I mean, my whole life would have been different.
	So I really do appreciate your sympathy, but I tell you, I mean, I wish we could have done it earlier.
	Because, oh man, it was just, it was so sweet.
	You don't know the relief, you know, like, you don't know the relief that's there when you get an abuser out of your life.
	Oh my God. You know what it's like?
	It's like you're walking down the street.
	I mean, the only thing I can say, you're walking down the street and you're having a good day or whatever.
	And a freaking meteor blows up the sidewalk 20 feet away from you.
	And you look and you go, oh my god.
	Now the air tastes really sweet.
	And I'm so happy to be alive.
	Well, that's what it is.
	Doesn't make it worthwhile.
	But it's a sweet and beautiful thing to get that kind of peace and quiet and concentration.
	And it was really only there that my intellectual life began.
	Before that, I was just...
	A fight or flight, feed the dinosaur, field mouse, trying to live through the next day.
	Yeah, I had no past, no future.
	I was an animal...
	In the terror of the moment at all times.
	There was nothing to come.
	There was nothing in the past.
	It was just navigate the minefields of the moment.
	That's all there was. Try and survive the insanity and the danger and the violence of the moment.
	That's all there was. There was no self.
	There was no soul.
	There was no life. I had about as much self-awareness as a creeping vine.
	And I appreciate everyone's sympathies.
	I really do. It's a wonderful thing to see.
	For me, it was an absolutely necessary thing to do and very positive.
	What kept me motivated to press forward?
	That's a good question. I mean, it's...
	I always felt that I... I felt that I had a gift for the world.
	That I could bring something to the world.
	I felt that even way back then.
	I felt that I could bring some beauty to the world.
	And I thought that was going to be through art initially, through writing, through acting, novels.
	I thought that I was going to bring some beauty to the world that way.
	But I found that the world wasn't ready to see the beauty that was there.
	Until they could see truth.
	There wasn't much point writing a novel about the truth if people couldn't even see the truth.
	And so I continued to study and learn about myself and grow, and eventually I had this platform, this Megaphone, this lighthouse, to beam from.
	And that has been a completely beautiful and humbling and justifying experience to know that what I felt capable of at 6 and 16 and 26 and 36 came true later in life than I had hoped.
	But I'm glad that it didn't happen earlier in life because I had Wasn't clear enough in my thinking earlier on in my life and I would have spent a lot of time backtracking from positions that were untenable.
	So yeah, there was a light ahead of me.
	I thought to myself, you know, like this, it's a terrible metaphor, but there's those anglerfish that live deep in the ocean and they have those They look like bent fishing poles, the light ahead of them, and they use it.
	Of course, this is a bad metaphor because they use it to attract and eat smaller fish, so I don't mean it like that.
	But what I was capable of doing, what I was capable of bringing to the world, was like this annoying, and it nagged at me all the time, this annoying light ahead of me that I kept moving, and it kept moving forward.
	It was like, damn it, why don't you just leave me alone?
	Why don't you just leave me alone?
	I felt like I'd inherited...
	Socrates' demon or gadfly that constantly pestered him whenever he was doing the wrong thing.
	I was constantly drawn forward by that light and that possibility.
	And I mistook that for the world.
	I thought that I had to help the world, and that wasn't true.
	I had to help myself. But that's okay.
	It took me only 20 years to figure that out.
	Because, you know, I'm dumb.
	Yeah. Let's see here.
	Oh, somebody, sorry, just some facts about Alzheimer's.
	Smoking after age 65 increases your chances of developing Alzheimer's by 79%.
	Obesity in midlife makes you three and a half more times more likely to experience Alzheimer's.
	Diabetes twice as likely genetics account for only 25% of Alzheimer's cases.
	Chronic stress may quadruple your risk.
	I didn't know any of that.
	I'm assuming it's true. Somebody posted that, so I'm just putting that out there because we talked about Alzheimer's as a non-chosen thing, but to some degree, I guess it is.
	Yeah, you know, I just did the math today.
	It's pretty cool. Four million...
	Philosophy hits a year through FDR. Four million podcasts downloaded and videos viewed and books.
	Four million. Four fucking million a year.
	I mean, this is the biggest, most powerful, deepest, and richest philosophy conversation the world has ever seen, and I believe that the world is ever likely to see, because in the future, there will be free domain radio in the past.
	So it will never, ever be as powerful and as exciting as riding this glorious, terrifying, fiery wave the first time.
	And that's just freaking cool.
	And that doesn't count the board conversations.
	That doesn't count the myriad romantic relationships and friendship relationships that have developed out of people who've met through Freedom Radio.
	That is just fantastic.
	That is just fantastic.
	And that's taking into account the fact that I'm producing far fewer podcasts than I used to.
	And that will change, I think, relatively soon.
	But I just wanted to point out that that is some freaking cool stuff.
	And so since the show began, we're talking roughly 20 million exposures to significant philosophy.
	20 million exposures to significant philosophy.
	No, it's incredible.
	It's incredible. It's mind-blowing.
	I mean, hundreds of thousands per month, people dinging off philosophy shows.
	What a thirst for philosophies out there in the world.
	And we're still a relatively unknown show.
	I mean, that is fumbling.
	That is fantastic. And that is kudos.
	I mean, obviously, there's some to me, right?
	But the kudos is to you, just amazing, incredible, fantastic, genius, brilliant, exciting, scary, wonderful listeners.
	You know, your participation in this, if it was just me, it wouldn't be half the size of that.
	The conversations that I've had with people, the honesty, the vulnerability, the courage of That's courage, man.
	To go on a philosophy show and talk about stuff that's really deep and important for you, whether it's philosophy or relationships or whatever, that takes some serious stones, man, and by that I mean balls and ovaries, right?
	So it is the listeners, it is the technology, and the show is...
	The show is as great as people's desire for greatness.
	Freddie Mercury, eminent philosopher, once said that he couldn't sing any better than the enthusiasm of the crowd.
	And that is entirely true.
	I mean, if everybody was way behind what I was doing, I wouldn't be able to do it.
	I'd just be speaking a bunch of syllables that would confuse and baffle people.
	But y'all are so freaking smart that you get it.
	You get it. You get it. And some of you get it long before I do about stuff.
	And that is a beautiful thing to see.
	So, you know, thank you for your interest in philosophy and what you've done to support the show and to get it out there.
	It's magnificent.
	Oh yeah, someone had a question about a friend joining the military.
	Do you want to talk?
	Do you want to type the question? Do you want just general thoughts?
	Hello. Hello.
	Hey, Steph. Hi.
	I'm the one who had the topic about my friend joining the military.
	Hello. All right. My ceiling was on.
	Okay. So, am I still on?
	I'm having some minor technical questions.
	Oh, you sound great. I mean, I wish everybody's quality was as good.
	Okay, good. So, my friend is joining the military in, I guess, three days.
	And he has a bachelor's degree, so he's going to be...
	And he's relatively fit, so he thinks he's going to make it to special ops and not be, you know, a foot soldier in the middle of Baghdad or whatever.
	And I was...
	He had a Facebook event page where it was kind of like, come tell us what you think about me joining the military.
	And it's the...
	I guess what you would expect, but I was pretty upset by it that everyone's like, yeah!
	And stuff that's literally like, go get the bad guys and...
	Uh, so I had, uh, I gave him a call and I thought about an hour and a half and I was, you know, uh, like pretty much crying and like, don't basically don't, uh, do this.
	Don't go to a place where you can be killed or don't go kill people.
	And, uh, and talking about how it's messed up that no one is basically saying that to him besides me, who, I mean, we're not even that close of friends anymore.
	Right. And he said he's going to talk to me again.
	I'm not sure what day, but before he leaves.
	And I don't have much hope that I'm going to pierce something.
	And I have him go, my God, I didn't think about...
	It is killing people.
	And it's...
	I mean, from what I understand, and this is kind of what DeMoss talks about, but I think he's just suicidal, and he's full of rage, and he wants to kill people.
	I don't know how to talk about the underlying emotional problem to access that.
	I don't know what to do to convince him to not join, and I don't even know if I can.
	It's clearly out of my control.
	Yeah, but you don't want to have missed something that you could have said, right?
	You don't want to be like, hey, five minutes after he joins, oh, I know exactly what to say to get him to not join, right?
	Yeah, yeah. Well, do you want to talk more?
	Do you want a couple of thoughts? How do you want to proceed?
	I think I've given enough of what's happened so far.
	Some Steph thoughts are always helpful.
	Okay. Yeah, I mean, people kill to displace feelings of self-destruction, right?
	People kill to avoid suicide.
	The death has to go somewhere.
	Better others, right? I mean, you've seen that...
	That zero Kelvin of the human soul, which is the chatter of the helicopter pilots blowing up those people in Iraq?
	Yeah. That is a dead cold...
	Solless wreckage of a human soul that has become poison and slaughter and genocide and murder.
	And that is a whole chain of people who didn't say to these people when they were children, what's happening to you is evil.
	That is revenge against a world that will not intervene in the abuse of children.
	When you have a sympathetic witness, no matter how bad it's been, You will not end up like that.
	And it is the refusal of the world to be a sympathetic witness to these children, whether they're children or as adults, to draw a line in the sand and say, it was wrong.
	It was immoral for the world to at least begin to approach the standards that it holds up.
	In music, in sitcoms, in popular culture about the beauty and wonder and nobility and need to protect children.
	The moment society begins to approach 10% of the pompous and pious lies that it tells itself about its protection of children, then the world will be a peaceful place.
	But that is still a long way down the road, sadly.
	So I just wanted to mention that people end up wanting to join the military because nobody stood up and said, what happened to you was wrong.
	And adult relations are voluntary.
	I haven't changed that since before FDR. And the refusal of society to do that produces this kind of poison in the soul, where people are so angry at having been so betrayed by the hypocrites who are supposed to protect them that they become killbots.
	The generation kill swarms across the planet, and that's why every sympathetic witness that you can be to a harmed soul takes the murderousness out of the human air, To some degree.
	And that's the only thing that I believe works.
	Sympathetic witness. Moral certainty, moral absolutism, even moral outrage.
	And genuine sympathy for what they've suffered.
	That deactivates the kill switch in the human soul.
	And anybody who doesn't have the balls to do that can't So, that having been mentioned, of course, you can't be a sympathetic witness to what this guy went through as a kid.
	And I assume that if he's interested in the military, that it was not pretty, to say the least.
	So you can ask him how his childhood was.
	And ask him with the full consciousness and with the, I would say, the explicit statement, this is going to sound weird.
	This is going to sound out of left field, but indulge me, you know, for 20 minutes, right?
	What was your relationship to authority?
	How were conflicts resolved when you were a kid?
	We all know the answer to these questions, but it's important that he know the answer to these questions.
	How were conflicts resolved when you were a kid?
	What happened when you had a disagreement with somebody in authority?
	What happened when you were asked or told to do something that you didn't understand or agree with?
	How were your preferences treated?
	Were you allowed to develop your own interests?
	What was your father's or mother's relationship with authority?
	What is the historical weight or relationship with authority through either side of your family?
	If you don't know these questions, if you don't know the answers to these questions, as any human being, you can't do any good in this world.
	You can't until you know.
	Something about whatever formed you, whatever formed your parents, whatever formed your family environment, then you can't.
	You're just bouncing off history.
	You're like one of those little Newton balls that go back and forth.
	You're just reacting, reacting, reacting without thought.
	You are a machine. And soldiers are killbots, right?
	You have to be a machine to be a soldier.
	So at some point, this guy gave up and became an empty obedience robot.
	And if he doesn't get that, then the military will not seem weird, will not seem unfamiliar, will not seem brutal, will not seem sadistic, will not seem murderous.
	Because we were talking with the earlier caller about people act out against others what they cannot feel themselves.
	If you can't feel your own death, then you will act it out against others.
	I don't want to make this about my terrible childhood, but I remember my own death as a child.
	I remember the death.
	I remember what happened.
	I remember trying to escape from home at the age of four or so, packing up cookies, putting them in a It was a pillowcase.
	I packed up cookies. And I went out in the middle of the night.
	I opened the door. I was going to go out into the street at the age of four with some food.
	How desperate was I? How desperate was I that I would do that?
	That blows my mind to think about it even now.
	What the hell did I think I was going to do?
	Well... What I was going to do, what I was desperately hoping for, was that I was going to go out and find somebody who gave a damn that I was out in the street in the middle of the night.
	And that would not have happened.
	But I was hoping.
	I needed to find out whether that would happen.
	And I made it to the door and I made it out the front door.
	And my mother grabbed me and beat my head against the door.
	And I gave up. I remember that moment so clearly.
	I remember the taste of my own teeth and tongue and blood at that time.
	That's when I gave up and I said, well, I can't survive as an individual.
	I can't survive as a thinking being.
	I can't survive as a free soul.
	I can't. She's too big.
	She's too strong. And what was even worse than that, and my mother screaming and beating me, was that we lived in an apartment building and nobody came.
	Nobody opened their doors and said, stop that.
	Nobody called the cops and said, there's a woman beating her child against a door.
	Nobody said or did anything, and that was the moment of my death.
	Ever since then, it's been a Frankenstein resurrection, and I will never be somebody who didn't die, but I can be somebody with a new life.
	And I'm not trying to shock and traumatize people with this.
	I've talked about it before. But it was a last break for freedom with a savage attack that everyone in a very close-knit...
	I mean, these apartments had paper-thin walls.
	There were dozens of apartments on every floor.
	This was in the hallway, right?
	It was a central shaft, so everyone could hear.
	It was the middle of the night, so it wasn't like 2 in the morning.
	Because I remember waiting in bed until it was dark.
	So this was probably around 9, 10 o'clock at night, probably.
	I think it was in the fall.
	So people could hear.
	People could hear. And nobody did anything.
	And of course, when I think about that, that's when I said, I don't care what fucking price I have to bear.
	When I hear a child being abused, there is no way in hell that I'm not going to do anything.
	Because I know what it's like.
	I remember what it's like. Because I remember my death.
	I remember what it's like to have nobody say or do anything in the face of such a slaughter.
	And I, through this show, I don't.
	Draw back, though it costs me sometimes.
	I don't draw back from that.
	So, if this guy is not aware of what happened to him, and I can imagine it was much more extreme than what happened to me, then he's not going to be aware of this.
	He's not going to be aware of what he's acting out.
	That he can't experience his own death, so he inflicts it on others.
	He can't experience his own spiritual end in the hands of a brutal hierarchy at home, so he surrenders to a brutal hierarchy in the world.
	He feels so powerless that the only thing he can do to have an effect on this world is to point weapons at unarmed people or lightly armed people relative to his military, right? So that would be my suggestion.
	Focus on his history. And I'll just say one last thing, and then you can have the final word.
	I would also say to him this.
	If none of that works, I would say to him this.
	I would say, well, you realize that once you get into the military, you have no guarantee of being sent to a just war.
	No guarantee. So you can ask him, do you think that invading Iraq was morally valid?
	Because it was all lies, nothing to do with 9-11, no weapons of mass destruction.
	This was all well established by the UN years before they went in.
	They took this guy from Germany who had no connection, just wanted asylum, and took all of his babblings and spun them into these fantasies about weapons of mass destruction.
	It was all easily disprovable and was vociferously disproven by other intelligence agencies.
	Was that a just war?
	And if he says, yeah, that's a just war.
	It's a great war. Well, you know, bye-bye, right?
	That would be my... Because, I mean, then there's nothing to reason with.
	But if he says, no, I don't think that was a great war.
	I said, well, I would never want to put the moral health of my soul into the hands of a hierarchy capable of doing what it does in Iraq.
	Capable of Abu Ghraib and Fallujah and all of the other atrocities that have been committed.
	Why would you want to, like, you can't guarantee these people are going to point you at the guilty.
	Even if it were an appropriate response to point soldiers at the guilty, which I don't think it is.
	But even if we accept that it is, you have no guarantee that your superiors are never going to order you to do anything immoral.
	But you are surrendering.
	Your right of moral self-determination and you could be used as a tool of evil with no chance of escape and it's completely outside of your control whether that happens.
	And the only way that he can dodge that is to say that there's no such thing as morality, there's no such thing as right and wrong.
	If you have the gun, use the gun.
	In which case, I would say, well, there just goes another poison container out in the world To destroy the innocent, and there's nothing that I can do about it.
	But if there is a shred of honor and desire for moral self-determination, then that argument should have some effect.
	Anyway, that's all I wanted to say, so I'd like to leave you with the last word.
	This is a guy who...
	I just kind of watched.
	I think it's an understated thing, but through high school, you can just kind of watch.
	I've known this guy since he was probably five or seven, and we were close friends.
	And you just kind of watch people...
	He slowly degrade mentally.
	He's just gotten worse and worse and worse.
	And I remember in college, he's had something like four near-fatal car accidents.
	And I remember people would post on his Facebook page where he had pictures of him, like, oh no, your car.
	And he was like, wow, no one cares if I die, right?
	I just saw...
	It's like I'm paying you to prove my thesis.
	Sorry, go on. Yeah, exactly.
	And I talked about that on the phone call with him.
	I was like, I haven't been honest with you because it's really hard.
	But everyone I know, you included, seems to really be having a hard time and no one seems to be talking about it.
	And I... He wasn't ever a patriot.
	He went to college for a bachelor's degree in art.
	He's a fairly sensitive and very intelligent person.
	I mean, I didn't go direct what happened In your childhood route, and that's where I'm going to go.
	I kind of skimmed the surface of that where I talked about the current despair and the moral arguments that you're going to be killing people.
	Yeah, that won't help if that's what he wants to do, right?
	Because that'll be like, that's a perk, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	I mean, I don't think he's going to consciously admit that.
	Why do I want to kill people?
	Yeah, I guess we've got to go childhood.
	Yeah, I mean, look, to be frank, the odds of it helping are very low.
	But I think it's the only approach that has any chance.
	And if he has...
	And it won't stop him.
	I mean, even if he has some breakthrough, some big insight about, holy shit, you know, authority, brutality, blah, blah, blah, right?
	If he has some big insight, then just say to him, listen, can you delay it by a week or two?
	You know, just... You can talk with me, you know...
	Pay $200 to send him to a therapist if you have to, right?
	That's buying human lives for $200.
	That's a pretty good deal, right?
	But just ask him to delay it.
	Just delay. Just a little bit.
	Yeah, and you will be the only...
	A friend of mine is up here listening to the show.
	You will be the only person probably in his whole life who will ever try to help him make those connections.
	People don't understand how rare that is.
	People will actually sit down and try and help you make a connection between what's happened in the past and what you're doing in the present.
	That is so unbelievably rare that it's a now or never moment for him.
	Yeah. I mean, I got...
	What's insane is it's like he is not...
	This is...
	Like, this was not what I expected.
	Like, almost everyone I knew growing up, I knew what to expect.
	And they weren't, you know, positive outcomes.
	But I didn't expect him to go military until...
	I guess the car accidents were really obvious, that no one spoke up.
	It just had to... Well, sorry, we'll just go a little bit over here.
	Like, what do you know about him?
	How long have you known this guy?
	Since he was seven. And what do you know about his childhood?
	His dad, I think, is a violent alcoholic.
	I think his mom is passive-aggressive, kindness kind of thing.
	Well, you know, it stays for the violent alcoholic and exposes her children.
	We've been down this road before, right?
	Yeah. So, why is it shocking to you that he's...
	Got the capacity for this kind of violence.
	I mean, has he processed any of this?
	Has he talked about any of this?
	Does he even get what a brutal experience he had?
	I don't know, he doesn't.
	I mean, not at all. No, of course, right?
	Otherwise, he wouldn't be doing it.
	Yeah. Well, it's time for you to not be surprised by this.
	You've studied philosophy long enough, right?
	Right. I understand.
	I'm not trying to criticize you in any way, shape or form.
	And I am continually surprised by things that I reasoned out 20 years ago.
	So I say this with all sensitivity and empathy, but it was going to be this or something, right?
	All that unprocessed pain and anger.
	And not only unprocessed, but unacknowledged, invisible, right?
	That's going to go somewhere. Unfortunately, it's going to go into bombs and bullets to the innocent, at least, right?
	Right. Although the people in Iraq are probably not doing any more to help their own children with abuse either, so in a sense, they're not innocent either, right?
	Right. But just not directly to this guy.
	So, yeah, I would just try and awaken...
	Anything to do with what he experienced as a kid.
	Try and get him to see a counselor.
	Pay. If you can't afford it, let me know.
	I'll fund him for two therapy sessions.
	I'll pay. I mean, I couldn't think of a better way to spend money.
	But just, you know, say.
	And you can say to him, look, humor me.
	I'll pay. It'll take two hours of your life to go.
	Two hours of your life. What's the harm, right?
	I mean, let's just say there's a possibility that this might be a big mistake.
	Just take two hours. Go talk to a therapist.
	It's free. I'll pay.
	Steph will pay. Don't worry.
	Right? That's the most that you can do.
	Is to be honest and curious about what might have led him to this.
	To offer to pay.
	And again, if you can't afford it, let me know.
	I'd be happy to pay. That's the best you can do.
	If he's not going to accept any of that, then...
	Well, then it's over, right? Then the death won.
	Thank you. I'm not sure if I can afford it.
	Make the offer. Email me.
	I'll PayPal you.
	Just whatever, right? Just make the offer.
	I will be happy to pay for that.
	Okay. And I think what's weird about it is, like, it's not that it's unexpected.
	I think there's, like, the philosopher's procrastination, where it's like, oh, it will, like, get worse till becoming, like, just drink too much, and I'll have, like, a couple years, and then I can save him, and then I can save all these other people.
	Yeah. I feel like he'll not go if I make the push, because he was like, you're literally the only person who has even said boo to this, much less cried and basically asked me not to go and said, you care if I die and all that.
	So... Right, and I mean, you have to process what this is doing to your relationship, not with this guy, but to everybody else, right?
	So you have some heavy shit to process around the world that cheers this guy into thuggery, right?
	Right. So that's a challenge for you to work with.
	But, you know, I mean, it's like the whole show is coming together, right?
	Because what we talked about earlier, that you can't stop him from joining the military.
	Of course not. And you can't stop everyone from cheering this guy as he goes to shred his soul on battlefields of uselessness and murder.
	You can't. You can't stop him.
	You know, all we can do is put the fucking lighthouse up.
	We can't stop people who are determined to run their ships into the rocks, right?
	And we can't do anything about their passengers.
	all we can do is put the lighthouse up and say if you don't want to hit the rocks sail away and it is the helplessness of virtue it is the helplessness of virtue that we all have to struggle with All have to struggle with it.
	I struggle with it every day.
	It is the helplessness of virtue and the power of the brutality of history.
	You know, we are the fucking hobbits.
	You know? Lust in Mordor and the all-seeing eye of brutalized histories has got the ring.
	But we still have to fight, right?
	But it is the helplessness.
	But the fundamental and endless power of virtue that we have to live by.
	Because we know it. I mean, I know.
	I know how powerful it is.
	But I know that people with guns can force everyone to do everything.
	But people, since Socrates' time and before, who've been exhorting people to virtue and honor and integrity and self-knowledge...
	We're like gnats in a firestorm.
	We're just trying to find a way to get to another pocket of air to move on.
	We will win eventually.
	We will. And it seems ridiculous that we will, but we absolutely will because consistency wins in the long run always.
	Virtue and integrity win in the long run always.
	And sometimes it's a really freaking long run.
	But it is the helplessness in the moment.
	If you had a gun, you could get this guy's wallet in 30 seconds.
	But you only have reason and virtue And you can't do a damn thing to shift his soul, fundamentally, right?
	Yeah. And that's painful.
	That's painful. But you gotta try.
	For you, fundamentally, right?
	Yeah. I was kind of surprised by how I was scared to talk to him about it, and then once I did, it felt right.
	I think courage is almost centered around the last step before vulnerability, because I was just way more vulnerable during the conversation than I expected with him.
	Yeah, courage is the moment before.
	Courage is, you know, for me it was like when I went skydiving.
	The courage was dropping out of the plane.
	Once I was out of the plane, there was no need for courage anymore because I was just, don't die, pull the chute and come down, right?
	I don't land in a telephone pole or whatever, right?
	So the courage is all in the leading up to.
	Once you're launched, you don't need it anymore.
	I mean, and I agree with you. The courage for me was all taking the step to do this full-time.
	Once I was in there, I was like, well, let's roll, man.
	I mean, that's what I'm doing.
	That's what I'm doing. And so I agree with you.
	The courage is all in the anticipation.
	It's never so bad when you win.
	And as always, if you get a chance, let us know how it goes.
	Keep it all anonymous, of course, but that would be very helpful for me.
	And let me know if you need me to cover all of this guy's costs for a couple of therapy sessions.
	I will sell the kidney to do it.
	He leaves on Wednesday, so it's, I guess...
	I thought you said he was not signed up yet.
	No, no, no. He is signed up.
	He is signed up and...
	Oh, so isn't this all moot then?
	No, I think there's, like, I've known, there are people on FDR who were basically in boot camp and just...
	Oh, you can fake your way out or whatever at that point, or you can do some shit to get yourself out, right?
	Yeah, yeah. Okay, well, that's, look, okay, then it's worthwhile.
	Then at least get him to one therapy session.
	Or at least get him, someone who's posted, I don't know about this, lifeperson.com, or you can get someone who, give him a phone thing, anything.
	Get him to some mental health professional, hopefully who's had some experience with this, and, you know, even get him to one session or whatever.
	I think that would be important.
	Okay. All right.
	Thank you, Steph. Alright man, keep us posted.
	And thank you everybody so much for a very exciting, exciting show that started with me contemplating animal butter as a cost-saving measure and ended up with us hopefully saving some lives in the future by getting this guy some help.
	So I appreciate that.
	I appreciate all of your support.
	I hate to put the word out, but I'm going to because I have to be sort of financially responsible to this conversation if you do have any extra change rolling around.
	It's tax season and, of course, the two biggest sources of my donations are America and the U.S. that have been hit the hardest by the continued recession.
	So if you can dig a little deeper, I would hugely appreciate it.
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	My novel. The God of Atheists is available to Gold Plus and all sorts of goodies up there.
	So I really do appreciate that.
	I hate to be Mr. Send Me Some Shekels, but it has been a little dry recently.
	And I think it's a tough season for people.
	But the costs of the show continue, whether or not the taxes come rolling in or not.
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	You just go to freedomainradio.com.
	Forward slash donate. And it is much, much appreciated.
	So have yourselves a fantastic, fantastic week.
	And I had an interesting interview with a guy recently on net neutrality, which I will be posting up probably tomorrow.
	So thanks again for all of your support and helping me do all of that stuff.
	And of course, if you have any suggestions about the show or anything else to do with what we're doing, always feel free to drop me a line and I will be happy to take your suggestions.

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