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May 2, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:34:31

1653 Freedomain Radio Sunday Show, May 2 2010

Common myths about self-knowledge, misconceptions about my video 'heroism part one', and how family secrets escalate, and the mad arrogance of religion and statism...

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	All right. Well, thank you everybody so much for joining us.
	It is the 2nd of May, 2010.
	And of course, as always, a massive thank you to donators, subscribers, and...
	Other people who share the good word of philosophy, I hugely, hugely thank you for your enthusiasm and excitement, the emails, the conversations, and the support.
	It is just a wonderful, wonderful thing to be around such fantastic and amazing people.
	So, that's my brief insight or thank you for today.
	We will not start with a comment from me, which I guess I'm saving for a podcast, but instead jump straight into if The peoples, i.e.
	use, have any questions or issues or comments or anything you would like to chat about.
	You can join the show at Free Demand Radio in the chatroom.
	You can ping Mr.
	James P. in the chat room if you do not have the Skype, and you can call 315-876-9705, or if you have Skype, just let him know, and he will add you for, I think, the price, and the price is a lower back row.
	So, flex up your hands.
	So, I'm all ears.
	If you have comments, issues, or questions, please unmute yourself, and I am happy to hear it.
	I have a question. Sure.
	Can you hear me okay? I sure can.
	Great. So this is HKW from The Forums.
	Yes. And I'm reading this book that you may have read.
	It's called Self Therapy, A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Inner Wholeness Using IFS. That's Internal Family Systems.
	That's the Richard Schwartz stuff.
	Yeah, it's written by this guy about the Schwartz stuff.
	Right, right. I think Mel Blank talks about Mel Brooks' The Power of the Schwartz, I think.
	So that's great. Go on.
	Sorry, I haven't read his stuff.
	I've only read the more technical one, but I haven't read the self-therapy one.
	Great. I'm fairly comfortable with his theory, so go on.
	Okay. So one of the notions that he has early on in the book is sort of these different qualities that the true self has.
	And he lists four of them.
	And three of them I recognize right away as being very reminiscent of the sort of true self that you describe.
	And then the fourth one was...
	It didn't remind me so much as what you were describing, so I was wondering if I could bring it up and you could tell me whether it is in line with the way that you think of the true self or not.
	I think that's a great question, so please go ahead.
	Okay, so just really quickly, the first one is about the self being connected and feeling naturally close to other people and connected to your other parts.
	The second one is about the self being curious.
	And the third one is about the self being compassionate.
	And the fourth one, I'll just sort of read this section really quick, and instead of trying to give my own summary, it says, the self is calm, centered, and grounded.
	This is especially helpful when you are relating to a part that has intense emotions.
	intense grief or shame for example can be overwhelming if you aren't grounded in the self and protectors will avoid a part that has emotions like this at all costs but when you are centered in the calmness of self there is no need to avoid a part with intense affect you remain in self while the part shows you its pain
	the calmness of self supports you through the difficult work of witnessing and healing this part and that's the end of the section um my So, take it away.
	Take it away. Okay, let's go through these in a list and I think this is really great stuff that you're bringing up and I'm certainly not going to speak for Dr.
	Schwartz naturally, but I can certainly give you my own perspectives on these.
	So the first one, if you can just remind me what the first one was?
	The first one was that the self is connected, specifically that it naturally feels close to other people and it wants to be connected to your other parts.
	Yeah, I mean, I have trouble with the naturally feel connected to other people because that seems like a bit of a blanket statement to me.
	I would say that the true self feels open to connection with other people, but I don't believe that it feels naturally connected to other people because that is to imply that only one side of the relationship needs to feel connected in order for that connection to occur.
	So I would say that there's a receptivity So to me, it's sort of like if you have a store and it's open for business, then you are open to trade your goods for money or whatever, right?
	But that doesn't mean that you're going to just give away your goods to whoever comes into the store.
	And I think that that standard is very important to have.
	I'm always a little bit concerned, and again, I know we're taking a short phrase, but I'm just giving you my particular thoughts on it.
	I'm always a little bit concerned when There's a kind of sluttiness to the true self.
	I find, at least my true self, it's very discriminating.
	It's not out there in knee-high Spock boots with the fishnet stockings, swinging your purse, chewing gum, and yowling for sailors in the moonlight.
	That's not my true self.
	That's me, but not my true self.
	I'm always a bit concerned when there's this idea that when you're connected with yourself, you're automatically going to be connected with other people because that indicates, in a sense, that you're broken and everyone else is available for connection.
	The only reason they're not connecting is because you're broken.
	And I'm a bit concerned about the self-esteem implications of that.
	So I would say that when you're connected with yourself, your store is open and you are available to trade values, so to speak, with others.
	But in my experience, the majority of people in this world are not traders, but looters, so to speak.
	And so I think it's important to keep that discriminatory aspect of things.
	So that would be my first thoughts.
	And I don't want this to just be a monologue.
	I mean, what do you think about that?
	Oh, man, I totally agree.
	And I, you know, I hadn't thought of that at first, but I, when I was reading it, I did feel a little bit uncomfortable with the passage.
	And now I, you know, you mentioned that that's exactly why I felt uncomfortable with it.
	Because it's kind of ridiculous to say that you, there's like this, this pure center of yourself that you just need to tap to tap into.
	And all of a sudden, the world turns into sort of butterflies and rainbows.
	Yeah. You know, it's always sort of struck me.
	It reminds me, you know, in every cheesy science fiction movie, and the fifth element with Bruce Willis comes to mind, that there's some emblem of power, and the end of Indiana Jones is sort of like this too, right?
	There's some item of power, and when you grab it, electricity courses from the sky through you and leaps to everyone next to you, and there's all these CGI and all of that sort of stuff.
	And it looks like you're being attacked by some shape-shifting multi-dimensional blue snake that's attaching its fangs to everyone around.
	And that seems to be what people think of when they are, I'm finally connected and so I'm going to be so close to other people.
	And I think it's necessary but it's certainly not sufficient for intimacy with others that you are close to yourself.
	I just don't think it happens that magically.
	I think that is in a sense I think people swing from isolation to what is, and I use of course these terms in an amateur sense, but what technically in psychological terms is called fusion, which is… If you've ever known someone like this, it's like, I met this great woman online.
	She's perfect.
	She gets me.
	We're going to move in together.
	I've already got her cat tattooed on my ass.
	She's just the perfect person and it's like their second date.
	You might want to hit the old brake sleds there, little fella, before you end up in the old age home wondering what the hell happened to your life.
	So I'm a bit concerned when people go from isolation to this rampant, almost promiscuous connectivity.
	I'm a little bit concerned about that.
	There is a psychological state that seems to be able to be induced, either through electricity or certain kinds of seizures, where people feel a kind of oneness with everything.
	You know, it's the old joke, you know, what does the Buddhist say to the hot dog vendor?
	Make me one with everything! But there is that kind of feeling and I don't think that's real.
	I think that real intimacy It's not something that just happens, like you touch someone, like there's that idea of instantaneous love, which is just wanting to cram the naughty bits together, more or less.
	But there's this idea that you connect with someone and you...
	Real intimacy is something that requires a lot of self-honesty, a lot of honesty with the other person.
	It can be difficult at times.
	There are even things in my relationship with my wife I find difficult to share.
	Even now, right? If I'm feeling vulnerable or insecure or something, but I make myself do it because I respect our relationship and it's the foundation of what makes it work so well.
	So I think it's sort of akin to working out, right?
	You have to go to the gym and it takes a long time and you have to keep working out in order to maintain your health and so on.
	And that to me is what intimacy is like.
	It's not this magical electric connection.
	So those are my thoughts about the first one, but let's move on to the second unless you have more to add about that.
	No, I mean, I guess if I go to the barbecue, I won't be showing you my lower back tattoo of Mr.
	Whiskers, but that's okay.
	You know, all that does is make me wonder where the tattoo really is.
	That's all right. Let's not go there.
	So it's not on your lower back.
	As you were talking about that, it reminded me of the podcast they did about loneliness recently.
	I mean, I can totally see how someone would sort of read this passage who has had a sort of lonely existence and they're like, oh, I just need to get in touch with my true self.
	But, you know, in reality, there are some people that you don't want to be connected to necessarily.
	Yeah. Well, I mean, all you have to do is spend 10 minutes on the internet to go like, wow, there's a lot of people here I really don't want to be in touch with in any level whatsoever, right?
	Was it you who posted this that you felt somewhat anxious about coming to the barbecue?
	I can't remember if it was you or somebody else.
	Yeah, that was me. Well, listen, I hope you can come, and I mentioned that.
	I think you'll be pleasantly surprised, right?
	Because the theory is that the way that people connect is through shared values, and not any shared values, but, you know, rational and empirical and philosophical values, that that is what allows for people to connect, right?
	So we can only meet in reality.
	So I think this is not going to be like any social gathering that you've been to before.
	I mean, I look forward to it from the beginning of the year as I look forward to each of these shows just because it's so great to be in a group where everybody has rational values.
	I mean, I really think that it's important.
	I think it was the second barbecue.
	A woman came. She drove for 13 hours, I think, and she had social phobia, and it was really, really, really tough for her to come up.
	Within half an hour of coming, she was relaxed, she was laughing, and so on, and she's been coming up ever since.
	This is somebody who has social phobia and finds it really, really difficult, and so she did, of course, an amazingly brave thing with that condition.
	I wouldn't underestimate the power of shared rational values in terms of making you feel connected and relaxed.
	The only shame of it, of course, is that it has to end because we ought to get back to our lives.
	I would invite you to try it just because I think it will really raise the bar in terms of what the social connection is for you.
	I totally appreciate that.
	Maybe it doesn't have to end.
	Maybe we could start a sort of free igloo colony project.
	Absolutely. They have it in New Hampshire, so it's just a little bit colder in Canada.
	So the second...
	Yeah, go ahead. No, go ahead.
	Sorry, so yeah, the second one that's listed on here, I don't know if you still want to go through the rest of them, but the second one is that the self is curious, and let's see, I don't want to have to read the whole thing.
	You know, being curious about what makes other people tick, and the inner workings of your mind, and...
	I think I get the idea.
	I am definitely a big fan of curiosity, but I would probably – again, we're just going with the words, not with the man's ideas, because this may all be explained in a different context.
	But just based upon these words, I'm a big fan of curiosity.
	But you know what I've never heard a psychologist talk about when they talk about curiosity is the phrase, I wonder if you're evil.
	Because to me, that is part of curiosity.
	When you think about people, I wonder what your moral standing is.
	I wonder if you are dishonest.
	I wonder if you are manipulative.
	I wonder if you are destructive.
	I wonder if you are abusive.
	I wonder what my experience is being around you, if that's really negative and horrible.
	And so I think curiosity is a great thing.
	But I've never wanted to be – there was a phrase, and I can't even remember who wrote this.
	I'm sure it was a French philosopher, but I could be wrong.
	Where the philosopher said, or the thinker said, nothing human is alien to me.
	And that kind of anthropological broad-mindedness, I do not consider a virtue.
	I do not consider healthy.
	I absolutely guarantee you that there are things that are human that are incredibly alien to any virtuous person, just as virtue is incredibly alien to an immoral person.
	So, for instance, let's just talk about this with Christina last night.
	I read an article about they've done fMRI scans of people who are obviously bullies or cruel people or whatever, sadists perhaps.
	And they found that when people are shown videos of other people getting pretty drastically hurt, their pleasure center lights up.
	Now, I don't know if you've ever watched those, you know, funniest home videos.
	You know, there's always, you know, some kid with a tetherball or whatever, and it goes around and, you know, whacks the dad in the net or something like that.
	And, I mean, I literally feel queasy in my nether regions when I see those.
	If I see someone steps on a rake and it goes up and whaps themselves in the face, it stings.
	I can't watch those things where some guy swings out over the river and then falls in the rocks.
	I feel it. I feel it in my back.
	I tense up. I think that my mirror neurons are perhaps a little overdeveloped that way.
	I really feel that in other people.
	And I think this is one of the reasons why I've never been able to be violent or never able to be cruel that way.
	Because I feel so strongly the other person's discomfort.
	Now, one of my great struggles in life has been to turn that down a little bit, right?
	Because bad people feel discomfort when you are virtuous.
	And I've had to turn down other people's discomfort at what I'm doing that's good so that I can function and do the right thing.
	But I feel such a strong sense of empathy and oftentimes too much sympathy when I see other people.
	I literally have to sort of physically brace myself if I know that I'm going to see something cruel, and that's why I gave up seeing violent movies, I don't know, about 15 years ago, whatever.
	And so I guess if you look at the fact that I feel I don't know for sure, but there's a scene from Marathon Man, which has haunted me, where Laurence Olivier is playing a sadistic dentist who drills through Dustin Hoffman's front tooth.
	I watched that and my legs are curled around six times and my toes are going into my heel like some sort of Japanese Geisha girl from the 19th century.
	To me, I'm cringing.
	Oh, I can't bear it.
	When my daughter went in for her injections, I feel a great deal of sensitivity towards other people's pain.
	And so the idea that you could take pleasure out of watching somebody get hurt It's completely unthinkable to me.
	It's a complete reversal of cause and effect.
	That is human. That is alien to me.
	It doesn't mean I don't understand it at all.
	I mean, I've written characters in novels who are sadistic, and I've played one of my stellar roles in theater school was as Cornwall in King Lear, who has a rather ghastly scene where he gouges out, glusters eyeballs, shouting, out, out, vile jelly!
	And I played that.
	I think at least I got some good reviews fairly convincingly.
	So I can sort of understand it at an abstract level, but I can't even remotely experience it at a physical level.
	So there are things that I'm curious about, you know, sadism and evil and so on, but they are alien to me.
	And, you know, as I've been sort of being a parent and seeing people who are harsh or cruel or even dismissive or, you know, ignoring their There are kids.
	Every single time I go to the playground with Isabella, if there's any kid around, the parents are off texting or on their phones or whatever, and the kids glom on to Isabella and I, because I'm down there in the sandpit playing with her, and I end up having to run this little babysitting camp for all the time that I'm out there.
	I can't understand what's more important on the World Wide Web than your child who wants to play with you right there.
	I mean, there's just things that I don't understand.
	I'm curious about them, but I think that the judgment is too often suspended in that sense.
	Great. I don't have anything to add to that particular one.
	Does it make any sense?
	Yeah, yeah, it does.
	I think I agree with what you're observing about it so far, definitely.
	Thanks. The third one is that the self is compassionate, and you already talked about that quite a bit, but...
	But for the most part it talks about sort of nurturing yourself and your own parts and how once the true self nurtures the parts and that they can sense the compassion from the self that they feel safe and cared for and want to open up.
	Right. Now, I mean, and that to me is very interesting.
	That to me is a very interesting distinction.
	Because my relationship with the aspects of myself is different than my relationships with others.
	Although, both are subject to UPB. So I'll sort of just touch on this very briefly, because I think it's a really important, important topic.
	And I'm sorry, I've got this Mika system convo that I've just finished doing an introduction to, so I'll try and send that out tonight or tomorrow.
	But... I do not allow the characters in my head to be abusive towards me because that's a UPB thing, right?
	Now they can say I'm being an idiot and I'm not listening to myself and so on, and that's to me sort of more of a chiding, but they can't get abusive.
	They will sometimes swear in frustration or upset or anger, but not at me.
	Okay, so I don't allow that. But at the same time, I don't have a choice about whether or not the people in my head influence me or have an effect on my behavior.
	We're all locked in the same brain, right?
	So we're all roommates.
	We're all home all the time.
	We rarely sleep all at once.
	So I think reasonably have to find a way to get along with the various aspects of myself.
	And I think that Dr.
	Schwartz would probably agree with that.
	So there's no de-self, right?
	Now, you can, of course, but my relationship with other people out in the world is different because those relationships are optional, right?
	So the relationships with myself, I mean, they're sort of optional in that I can always choose to reject and disown and repress and ignore and attack.
	But that obviously is not going to work, right?
	Like in the same way that I can go walking through the woods, rub myself down with honey glazed marinade and then poke with a sharp stick any grizzly bear I find.
	I can do that.
	I just would rather not.
	So with myself, I do think that what he's talking about is very important.
	But that is very different from other things.
	So the aspects of myself, I can have some interaction with.
	They can't hit me.
	And I find that they respond to the rules of no abuse fairly well.
	But real people in the outside world don't fall into those categories.
	Those are voluntary relationships.
	And I also find that the negative or sort of harsh aspects of myself are imprints of other people in the real world.
	And I found that those imprints of other people who are harsh have become much less harsh now that I don't have abusive people in my life.
	It's sort of like...
	It's like a wax impression under a hot sun, right?
	That wax impression, if you've got sort of a bowl of wax out in the hot sun, you can put an impression in and it's going to sit there, but a couple of hours later it'll be gone because the sun will have softened and melted it.
	And so what I found was that when I was in contact with harsh or abusive or destructive or dissociated personalities, that it was like continually re-impressing that soft wax with the same imprint and it got deeper and it got stronger and it got more permanent.
	But when I no longer had those impactful and destructive personalities in my life, things began to soften, things began to normalize, because there wasn't that constant re-provoking.
	It's like any scab that you don't pick at is going to heal, and destructive personalities for me were picking at scabs of my soul, and I found that I could not heal while I was in contact with those personalities, because there was a constant re-traumatizing of my system, so to speak. And so, that to me was distinctly unhealthy.
	And it made my ecosystem that much more unbalanced when I was around those personalities.
	So I found that my ecosystem becomes much more conciliatory, much more positive, much more, I mean, still aggressive sometimes and still harsh, but has a lot of great things to say.
	But that has diminished.
	In that I've gotten those destructive re-imprinting personalities out of my head, so to speak.
	What was it? There was a Big Bang Theory recently with Will Wheaton, the guy who was the annoying kid on Star Trek Next Generation.
	He was making fun of the tall, skinny Asperger's guy.
	He said, you know what that means?
	I'm living rent-free in your head.
	In other words, I've gotten in your head and I'm messing there and I don't have to do anything.
	And that's sort of what happens, right?
	When people are around you, if they're destructive, they end up taking residence in your head, becoming part of your ecosystem, and they get stronger and stronger with every interaction.
	And that's not something that you can deprogram or manage, to me, without not having those destructive relationships in your life.
	So that was sort of my experience.
	But I think what happens is, Psychologists may look at what occurs inside the head and universalize that to outside, right?
	So I have to deal with the mom in my head because she's there.
	And I think they then say, well, because you have to deal with the mom in your head, you have to deal with your mom in the world.
	But those two things are very separate for me, right?
	I do have to deal with the mom in my head because she's there, and I'm there, and she's not going anywhere, and she also, the mom in my head, has a great deal of value for me.
	However, the mom in my life, that's a whole different kettle of fish, right?
	So I think it's easy to, I think it can be the case that when you only introspect, without the benefit of philosophy and ethics in UPB, when you only introspect, you can then mistake the necessity of relating to aspects of yourself and then say, well, that then extends to real people in the real world, the necessity of interacting with them.
	But the second is, I mean, obviously and empirically just not true.
	So I just wanted to sort of mention that aspect of things.
	I had a couple of thoughts about what you just said.
	Yeah, please. So two things that I noticed about that was different from what I've read in the book so far, and I haven't read the entire book, so maybe he gets into it later.
	But the first thing was that it seems like if you're going to be sympathetic with your parts that are harmed, then It's certainly good to sort of listen to them and express sympathy and stuff like that.
	But if they were harmed by your environment in the first place, then to be completely sympathetic with them, you sort of have to remove them from that harmful environment because otherwise you're just kind of half-assing it.
	So that's sort of how I would interpret what you said about that.
	Yeah, I can see that for sure.
	And then I also noticed that you talked a lot more about negotiation with the parts rather than just focusing on sympathy.
	I think probably he focuses on sympathy at first because it's a good place to start, but I think you're probably right that negotiation is something that you need to work into the game plan eventually.
	Yeah, yeah. To me, the difference is, like, once you've eaten the food, like, let's say you're overweight, so you've eaten excess calories relative to what you burn off, and so the weight is on you, and you have to deal with that weight, and that's an empirical fact in reality.
	But that's not the same as saying that then you have to eat more, because that's external things to you, right?
	So there's stuff that's already part of your system, which is the excess food you've eaten before, or the deficient exercise, or both.
	But then there's the food that's out there, and you have to have a sort of different relationship to those, I think, and stop eating more, and then deal with what you've already got.
	And that, to me, is the difference between relationships in the outside world versus the ones that have already imprinted on my mind that I have to deal with internally.
	Right. So there's one more quality if you feel like talking about it.
	I do, yeah, for sure. I find this stuff fantastic, so I appreciate you bringing it up.
	I'm happy to hear that.
	So the fourth and last one, which is the one that I understood the least, I guess, was that...
	The self is calm, centered, and grounded.
	So there's this idea in the book that you want to, as much as possible, stay in self.
	It's a little bit Zen-like.
	It's this idea that When you're in touch with a true self, that things don't bother you, that they sort of bounce off of you.
	And I really didn't understand that quality.
	Yeah, look, I mean, I think that's a fucking great topic, and I really, really appreciate you bringing that up.
	There is a myth, and I'm going to be unabashedly speechy here, and I'll obviously ask you what you think, but there is a very, very powerful myth in society that to not be bothered by immaturity or viciousness or whatever, to rise above it, to take the high road, to not let it bother you, that that is somehow the...
	The meridian of maturity.
	It is the highest zen-like state where you sort of float in your lotus position above the world like a kite loosed from its moorings, float above the world, noting with sadness or regret or perhaps the dishonesty and viciousness and ugliness and violence in the world.
	And, you know, attacks against you.
	You don't let them bother you.
	And to let them bother you is somehow immature and it's engagey and so on.
	And I think that is a terrible, terrible, terrible idea.
	And I think it is a desperately unhealthy ideal or goal to have.
	I've certainly never been able to achieve it.
	I've never wanted to achieve it.
	That seems to me to be dissociated and insane and like a ghost among the ruins of evil in the world.
	That just does not seem to me to be healthy at all.
	And the question I always ask when you have an ideal like this that just seems so counterintuitive and counter-rational and is also not even remotely UPB, who does it serve?
	Well, if you can get the most moral...
	And the most intellectually powerful and the best communicators and those who are the most interested in wisdom and truth and philosophy and virtue and goodness and courage and all that nobility, if you can get those people to not get angry about the evil in the world and not rise up to fight it, well, who does that serve?
	Well, it only serves the evil people.
	That is an ideal invented by evil people, so that they can rule the world unimpeded by the virtuous temper of the good.
	And I just think it's a desperately...
	It's an excuse for cowardice, because I think that good people do need to fight.
	I accept that from comic books, for sure.
	I really do accept that good people need to fight bad people.
	And I think that rising above and not letting it bother you and applying this gooey, dissociated, kind of, treacly, you know, when you understand everybody's history, you just can't get upset with them and so on.
	Well, I think that's not...
	That's not a good standard.
	I think it's a kind of cowardly standard.
	And again, it's not even close to UPB, which I have a significant problem with.
	Because, of course, if acceptance and generosity and tolerance and all of that is a virtue, then what about those people who do the exact opposite?
	Surely you should find a way to get through to them or correct them or whatever, right?
	And if you can't, then they're sort of like enemies, right?
	And one will leave the room alive, so to speak.
	So I really, really dislike this idea that there's this Zen tranquility and so on that we need to get to where the evils of the world don't bother us and we simply shake our head with sorrow.
	No, I think that is not healthy.
	And also, I think that is not...
	To me, virtue with righteous anger is a very powerful force for good in this world.
	And this kind of dewy-eyed Buddhistic acceptance of immorality is not...
	Is not healthy and serves only to turn the world over to evil.
	You know, if all the good men and all the good women and all the powerful thinkers end up observing the world from their dissociated Zen Nietzsche mountaintops, then all they're doing is turning over the world to the jackals and the predators.
	and that does not help the helpless children who need them.
	Yeah, I mean, I would...
	I don't know that I have anything to add to that.
	I think that perspective makes a lot of sense.
	It kind of highlights for me the importance for those who are interested in philosophy when they're exploring self-knowledge to keep the philosophical stuff in mind because a lot of the people who have sort of laid out the groundwork for self-knowledge haven't so much considered the philosophical aspects and so like the interview that you did with Sorry,
	I forgot his name. That other therapist who just retired recently.
	Oh, Daniel. Daniel, yeah.
	I think it's certainly useful for me, and I bet it would be useful for some other people just to keep that in mind, that when they're going through the psychology stuff, to keep in mind that not every psychologist is a philosopher, and so you need to...
	You need to kind of balance what they have to say.
	Right, and I agree with almost everything that most psychologists would say about relations with the self.
	But, I mean, you're right.
	They're not philosophers any more than I'm a psychologist, right?
	But unfortunately, they tend to take that which you would use to deal with yourself and universalize it to dealing with others.
	And that's just... It's just empirically not the case that your relationship with yourself, which cannot be evaded or escaped, it is fundamentally and qualitatively different from your relationship with others, which are optional, right? A relationship with yourself is statist.
	It is not voluntary.
	You're all chained together, but your relationship with others is anarchic.
	And it is very, very important not...
	Not to confuse the two.
	And I also do understand, you know, I think where psychologists are coming from in this.
	You know, so they see people who may be chronically angry about mistreatment, right?
	And this is why I think that forgiveness becomes important.
	Also, of course, a lot of people get into psychology as the result of There was a good article last week in the New York Times about antidepressants and so on by a guy who was a psychiatrist, a sort of medicating psychiatrist.
	And he said he got into psychiatry because His mother committed suicide.
	And his father was a psychiatrist.
	And he was talking about how she didn't have any resources and no one could help her and blah, blah, blah.
	And it's like, dude, your father was a psychiatrist.
	No wonder you're medicating people.
	Because you haven't dealt with your own trauma, right?
	And so because they haven't dealt with their own trauma, they end up with this dewy-eyed forgiveness so that they don't have to take a stand against that which was done wrong in their own lives, right?
	So this is just my theory. I don't know the guy, but this is sort of what I thought about it.
	So... I think it is a real challenge.
	Anger is a great challenge for self-knowledge.
	Anger is so often associated with abuse and destructiveness, right?
	So abusers are obviously angry.
	I was at the park the other day, and this woman, like who was 250 pounds, literally charged down her three-year-old son, like came at him like some monstrous buffalo, just charged, you know, yelling at him, just charged him down until I said, whoa, right?
	And So she was very angry, right?
	And he would experience that anger as overwhelming and destructive.
	And so the things that you see when you see this kind of parenting is you see a lot of anger, and the kids experience this anger as huge, as overwhelming.
	And so anger becomes a problem.
	And then when people feel that they're getting angry, they feel like they might turn into an abuser.
	But anger is much more subtle and much more challenging than that, right?
	So if you reject anger, then you reject protection as well, and you reject virtue.
	Because if you can't get angry, then you can't...
	I don't think you could really be virtuous.
	Or at least you can't really be effectively virtuous.
	And yet people fear that if they get angry, they're going to get locked into chronic and abusive rage.
	But that's not the case.
	Ownership for your own anger is maturity.
	The projection of your anger onto the actions of others.
	So this mom would say, well, you made me yell at you.
	I have to yell at you because...
	That you don't listen otherwise.
	I try saying it nicely and then you don't listen, so I have to yell at you, which is to make other people responsible for your anger.
	And that's when anger turns rancid, when it's not owned by you, but it's supposedly owned by the actions of others and you're simply a helpless respondent.
	That's when it escalates. But when you own your anger, it is a very, very powerful thing and a positive thing.
	Right. Well, thank you for all your comments.
	It's going to really help me get through the book and be less confused about how I'm feeling about some of the passages, because I know there will be some more of these themes.
	And I haven't read the whole book, so I really hope that I haven't misrepresented what Mr.
	Schwartz and Early have to say.
	I'll come back on and I just wanted to mention that this should not be taken as an analysis of Richard Schwartz's thought.
	This is just thoughts that he has had that we're talking about in a more general context because I certainly would not consider myself an expert on his thinking.
	So this is just thoughts about these kinds of perspectives which are very common in society, right?
	Totally. The only thing that...
	Wait, you said one thing that I... I know it was just sort of a passing comment, but you said the self or the ecosystem is a sort of statist environment, and I would more compare it to sort of like maybe siblings during childhood, where it's not...
	It's an involuntary situation, but it's not necessarily violent, whereas a statist relationship is inherently both Violent and involuntary.
	That's a fantastic correction.
	Your way of putting it has some limitations in that siblings can go away and you can be separate from them.
	But you're absolutely right, of course, and that's a much better way of putting it.
	It is not statist because it's not coercive.
	The fact that you are who you are is not a coercive situation.
	So yeah, that's a much, much better way of putting it.
	Thank you for correcting me on that.
	No problem. All right.
	Thanks a lot. All right. Thanks, man.
	And I hope to see you at the barbecue.
	Cool.
	I guess while we're waiting for the next caller, and just interrupt me if you're ready, there's been some interesting feedback on my favorite video to date, which is the Heroism Part 1.
	And I sort of wanted to clarify a few things, and I did post these on the video themselves.
	Certainly some people love it and some people hate it, which I guess is not bad.
	But it's interesting that this element of conspiratorial approach, and I sort of wanted to mention a few things about that, and maybe I'll snip this out and post this on YouTube at some point.
	But it's tough to use the word evolved, right?
	So I say that these mythologies, which have been around for thousands of years, have evolved to help emasculate the masses, to separate them from true heroism.
	And there's an interesting thing that comes up whenever I talk about art in my shows.
	There's an interesting perspective that comes up, which is the question of conscious intention.
	And I think it's worth talking about.
	I think it's worth thinking about.
	I certainly don't believe that conscious intention Intention is necessary.
	In fact, I think it's very rare when it comes to art.
	And I think also, to some degree, when conscious intention is present, art becomes bad, right?
	It becomes, you know, propagandistic, it becomes oversimplistic, and so on.
	And so, I think that conscious intention is not necessary, which is not to say that there's not still intentionality.
	So, for example, if you've ever seen, I think it's a David Attenborough You can find it on YouTube.
	It's a pack of chimpanzees hunting a baboon, I think, and they end up eating the baboon.
	And they do all these strategies, right?
	So they move ahead, they encircle him, they try and box him in, they chase him up trees to corner him and so on.
	And there is a real intentionality to them.
	Now, nobody would sit there and think, you know, like, you know how in those war movies there's always some gristled old guy who sits down and, you know, with a stick, you know, puts X's on the beach and says, now you go around here and you go up the middle and so on, right?
	We're going to outflank the guy and...
	Nobody thinks that the chimpanzees have a book of plays for catching baboons.
	But nonetheless, what they're doing is very instinctual and it's very intentional.
	It's not consciously intentional any more than when the crocodiles gather to eat the zebras who have to cross the river.
	They're not sitting there saying, well, you know, it's two days until the zebras get here, so we better pack up our little crocodile suitcases and head on up the river to eat them.
	But nonetheless, they end there at the right time.
	So... There can be strategy and dominance and there can be very sophisticated and complicated hunting patterns and so on.
	Without conscious intention.
	I mean, bird's migration.
	You could sort of go on and on, right?
	But there's so much that can occur in nature that is intentional without being conscious.
	And art, to me, falls into that category, right?
	So when I did the movie review of Avatar, people said, well, I don't think that James Cameron had all that in his head when he was doing the film.
	And it's like, well, of course he didn't.
	Of course he didn't. Because he's not a philosopher, right?
	So no, you don't have to have conscious intention.
	And the word designed is challenging here.
	I don't think that there's any cavemen who figured out the best way to tell stories to keep their human cattle lowing relatively contentedly in captivity.
	But human beings have an instinct for human ownership exactly the same way that chimpanzees have an instinct For eating baboons, or I guess chasing, catching, and eating baboons.
	There is an instinct for these kinds of things.
	So designed is not a conscious design, but these stories have...
	And I didn't want to use the word evolved, because evolved has a positive connotation to it, or at least a morally neutral connotation to it.
	And so I really didn't want to use the word evolved.
	If I say these stories have evolved that way, Then it sounds like it's progress in the same way that we assume, or at least I believe, that a human being is superior to a tapeworm in terms of complexity, and I'm certainly happier to be a human being than a tapeworm, especially in my driveway after a heavy rain.
	I didn't want to use the word evolved.
	I didn't want to get into a whole description of how the unconscious shapes artistic choices based on prior values and propaganda and family.
	You can't do that in a seven-minute video that attempts to put forward a startling and unusual theory of mythology.
	So I think that it's the problem with this kind of communication.
	I'm not going to change the video.
	I did post a slight clarification underneath it.
	I'm not going to Change the video.
	And the reason for that is not because, you know, could it be better in some way?
	I'm sure it could be. I'm sure it could be.
	But if I make it better in that way, then I have to make it longer to explain what I mean by evolved versus designed, conscious intention versus unconscious intention.
	To explain that even in as concise a manner as possible in a way that would be understandable to people would actually make the video probably three times longer.
	And it would be a real diversion.
	So when you have seven minutes to present a theory, there's always going to be stuff that people can quibble with.
	Of course, because it's seven minutes, right?
	People quibble with UPB, and UPB is, what, 14 hours or 12 hours or whatever.
	So I wouldn't worry too much.
	If people get upset or people recoil or people get bothered by something, that's fine.
	There's no way that you can answer questions as extensively as possible Without people criticizing you for something.
	Because if people are emotionally bothered by what you're saying, they're going to criticize you, but they're going to ex post facto, right?
	As Bomb and the Brain Part 4 talks about, they're going to ex post facto justify it.
	So, I mean, UPB has lots of examples and is therefore longer.
	And so what do people say about UPB? There are too many examples.
	But if there were too few examples, then people would say, well, it doesn't cover this.
	So, I mean, you understand that there's just no way to please everyone.
	And when you come up with something which says...
	If your fantasy life of heroism is robbing you of heroism in the real world, that's going to be upsetting to people.
	That is going to be upsetting to people, and people are going to react to that, and people are going to get upset with that, and they're going to find something in the video that's going to allow them to justify their feelings.
	Right? And...
	Of course, you know, people could just ask, you know, can you tell me what it is that you mean by design?
	I think that's interesting.
	They could also, if they sat down and thought about it, right, they could say, I very clearly say, right in the middle of the video, when Pan starts dancing to Billie Jean by Michael Jackson, I say, these stories have remained essentially unchanged for thousands of years.
	So clearly they can't be designed because we don't have cavemen, you know, with sticks saying, okay, we put this hero here and we make sure we extrapolate the mythology to there so that the human livestock don't get restless and we strip them and then we hand this down in some secret codex handshake with Dan Brown symbols all over the place for thousands of years.
	So when I say the stories have remained unchanged for thousands of years, that is evidence, clear, clear evidence that it's not designed.
	But people don't want to, they get upset and they want to act out and then they'll say it's because of the video, right?
	That's the externalization.
	Of anxiety. And the other thing, of course, is that people will extrapolate and will say, well, Steph is saying that watching movies is immoral, right?
	And it's like a ridiculous load of nonsense.
	It says nothing of any sort like that in the video.
	And, of course, I've done reviews of fantasy films.
	I did reviews of The Matrix.
	I did reviews of V for Vendetta.
	I've done reviews, of course, of Avatar and District 9.
	I mean, I've done tons of reviews, and everybody knows that I watch movies, and I watch science fiction, and I've done reviews of Star Trek.
	So, of course, I watch these things.
	I mean... And how on earth could it be, since evil or immorality is the initiation of force or fraud, how could it conceivably be that watching a movie is either the initiation of force or fraud?
	So, of course it's not immoral, and even people who should know better have reacted in that way with no sort of self-curiosity about why it bothers them.
	But I think it's just important to recognize that people will be upset when you point something out.
	And they will dismiss it. And they will act as if you are acting aggressively against them.
	And you get all of these nasty comments.
	That's inevitable. If you get a chance, you should watch the...
	I think it was in January. Jon Stewart...
	I had George Lucas, you know, the man who has a beard where his jawline should be.
	But he had George Lucas on his show.
	And he was saying, you know, well, how come some people like the first series and then some people like the second series and some people really like the third series and they hate it?
	And he said, does it bother you?
	And he's like, ah, no, no, you can't listen to people like that.
	I mean, there are some people who say the first series sucks.
	There are some people who love Jar Jar Binks.
	There are some people who hate the Ewoks.
	You can't listen to any of that.
	You just sort of have to follow your own integrity as a storyteller and blah, blah, blah.
	Now, I mean, I'm not saying that I liked the last bunch of Star Wars films.
	I think I gave up. In fact, they were just too bad.
	Too little soul. But it could also be just because I'm older, right?
	I mean, I first saw the Star Wars films, I guess, in 1977.
	I actually had the LP, so this dialogue is engraved in my brain.
	And it was funny, when I was doing research for the Heroes in Part 1 video, I saw some clips from Star Trek, and I was like, oh my god, I know this dialogue like the back of my hand.
	It's embarrassing. But, yeah, just so you understand, right?
	I mean, people will get upset and they'll say, well, there's no proof of this, right?
	It's like, well, there is actually proofable and testable statements in there.
	And if people feel that I'm suddenly calling them immoral for watching fantasy films, well, of course, that's a ridiculous thing to say.
	It doesn't have anything to do with What I'm talking about, to me, you can watch Mafia films.
	You can watch pro-status propaganda all you want.
	The important thing is just to be aware, to be aware of what it is that you're watching.
	I mean, you just need to be aware of what's being sold to you, and I think you can enjoy it as much as you want.
	Alright. Well, that's it for my brief rant about that.
	If you would like to questionsy, commentsy, we have some time, my friends.
	Oh, the barbecue. Well, I'm still working on that because I'm still trying to figure out if I'm going to Porkfest or not.
	So, sorry to be annoying, but we're still trying to figure that out.
	Hello? Hello.
	Hello. Hi. Hello.
	Am I coming through clearly?
	Yeah, it's great. Okay, brilliant.
	Thank you. It's just a quick thing.
	I posted on the board About a week ago, last Tuesday, about an incident that's obviously happened in my life.
	I don't know if you've read it.
	It's about my wife and I, we eloped.
	And I recently told everybody, everybody found out.
	And I just wanted to tell everybody and obviously yourself that there's been a very positive outcome from it.
	And I'd just like to thank everybody who was involved in answering my questions.
	Now, let me just sort of see if I can catch myself up to speed.
	Was this where you were talking about that you were upset with your parents about their attitude about your elopement when they found out?
	Or was that a different thread?
	Yeah, it was basically my wife and I, we eloped.
	We wanted to keep it secret from everybody, mainly because we were very young and everybody would feel that it was too soon.
	And so we wanted to keep it to ourselves for the time being until later, at which point we could kind of Discredit any bad feeling there might have been about us being married so young.
	When my father found out, he was very upset because in general we were always quite honest with one another.
	I mean, we usually have a very good relationship.
	I'd say we're almost...
	Sorry, I'm getting a little bit emotional here.
	No, no, that's fine. Listen, I'm not going to disagree with you, but you understand that it's a bit confusing, right, to hear I kept the love of my life and my marriage and all that from my father, but we're close.
	Yes, yeah. And look, I'm not saying you're not, right?
	I'm just saying that from the outside, that doesn't quite fit.
	It's like, I love my wife so much that I'm having a secret affair.
	Yeah. Well...
	And I'm just curious what you mean when you say that you're close.
	And again, I'm not disagreeing with you.
	I'm not criticizing. I just like to sort of understand that a little bit more because it doesn't fit together in my head.
	I guess it's kind of hard to describe.
	I mean, in many senses, we're a lot more like friends than we are father and son.
	You know, we kind of hang out together.
	I used to work with him and I used to enjoy it very much.
	But I guess this was just something that I felt I couldn't go to him about because I knew what he would feel on the matter, that he would feel that it was too soon and he might try and...
	of marrying so soon.
	And that wasn't really what I wanted.
	I didn't really want to have to kind of do that right up in front of his face.
	Does that make sense? Well, I can certainly understand that if you're doing something that you feel that someone is going to criticize you for, that there is a desire to hide that, right?
	I'm just curious what you felt the long-term impact of such a thing that you could not possibly keep secret was going to...
	to what sort of effect that was going to have on your relationship with your father or your parents, I guess, in the long run?
	I guess...
	What I really, really wanted was for them to not have...
	Any negative opinions about my new wife.
	I didn't want them thinking that, oh, she's convinced him to marry him so young that perhaps there is something not quite right there about her.
	I didn't really want that kind of suspicion about her because she is fantastic.
	She is the woman of my life.
	I didn't want my decision to marry her so young to basically give her a bad reputation within my family.
	Alright, and do you mind if I ask some questions?
	Sure, sure. So you were dating this woman for a while and then you guys decided to get married, is that right?
	Like you asked her or she asked you?
	Yeah, I just turned to her one day and I just asked her out of the blue and she was overwhelmed.
	And your parents knew that you were dating this woman?
	Yes, yes they were.
	And what were their thoughts about her?
	They liked her.
	They'd only met her a small number of times and hadn't had a huge amount of time to get to know her before I proposed.
	And what was your primary fear about telling your parents, I'm going to marry this girl, this woman?
	That...
	Because they hadn't known her for very long and hadn't gotten to know her very well.
	That... They might see this as some kind of, I don't know, like a...
	I don't know.
	I guess my absolute worst fear was that they would think she was some kind of succubus who was here to drain my soul.
	Right, okay.
	Yeah.
	And that's not obviously the image I wanted to give them about her.
	What image do you think you've given them by eloping and keeping it secret?
	Yeah.
	No, and I don't mean of your wife.
	I mean of you.
	Yeah. Well, when I talked to my dad about it most recently, he was very upset that I lied to him.
	I mean, that's a big one, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	And I understand, I'm not criticizing, I'm just pointing out that it's a big thing to keep from your parents, right?
	Yeah. And I'm trying to...
	And again, I sympathize.
	I really do. I'm trying to understand.
	I mean, it's sort of an...
	In my opinion, right?
	It's sort of an unrepairable thing to do to your parents.
	In other words, how are you going to...
	You might have four kids and they don't know.
	You know what I mean? How are you going to get their trust back and regain the intimacy that you say you had before when you've kept something like this from them?
	That's what I'm trying to put myself in your parents' shoes.
	My daughter goes and gets married and doesn't tell me.
	I mean, that would just be so shocking to me, that she felt that she couldn't talk to me about it, that she felt I was going to be so hostile or judgmental or negative, that she would just have to hide it all from me and come up later.
	I don't know.
	That's some serious stuff between you and your parents that has nothing to do with your wife.
	Yeah.
	And I'm not saying it's their fault or your fault.
	Not that what I would say would mean anything.
	I'm just some guy on the internet. But that seems to me that's where you need to go.
	I mean, if you want your parents in your life and you're close and so fantastic, right?
	I think that you all really need to sit down and figure out what happened in your relationship that this became something you could do.
	For fear of the consequences of honesty, right?
	Because you obviously want an honest relationship with your parents.
	I think everybody does, just as we want an honest relationship with everyone.
	And if you have people in your life that you're close to and you have that connection with, particularly a deep and historical connection like obviously parent-child, if you have people in your life and you have as an option...
	To lie and withhold things so fundamental from them, I think that's not a good position to be in.
	Do you know what I mean? To me, it's like, you know, be honest or don't have people in your life.
	But I would say don't have people in your life where you have this kind of permission to do this.
	Because that's kind of like having a relationship, but then opting out of the relationship when you feel it's not convenient or positive for you to have those standards, if that makes any sense.
	Yeah, that just makes sense.
	And you understand, I'm not saying, you know, bad dude lying.
	I'm really, I'm not saying, I really sympathize with the situation that you're in.
	But, you know, if you're going to have them in your life, you need to have that commitment to be honest, to not do anything like this again.
	To just, like, have it as a no-kidding rule.
	Like, you're never going to do something like this again, because I think without that commitment, I just, I can't see how your relationship with your wife and her relationship, because obviously she participated in this, right?
	Yeah. I mean, she had to.
	She didn't call her parents and say, I don't know, my fiancé is crazy.
	He wants to elope and I'm not going to have that and blah, blah, blah, right?
	So she obviously participated with this.
	So now you have, you know, whereas before there was potential antagonism in your head, in a sense now you have antagonism, right?
	Because your fiancé was fine with keeping the secret and you were fine with keeping the secret.
	You know, I can't tell you, and nobody can tell you what to do, but I can tell you what I would do in your situation, and, you know, you can take it for what it's worth.
	First of all, I try and figure out what happened in my relationship with my parents that I felt I had to keep this from them, or where I felt that this was a reasonable thing, right?
	Because, look, there are going to be people in your life who are going to criticize what you do.
	It's going to happen.
	You can't lift a goddamn thumb with this finger without 10,000 people saying to you it should be a, you know...
	A finger. You should do this, not that.
	It's a terrible font.
	I hate the cover of that book.
	Everybody is a critic.
	The moment you take a breath in, people scream at you that you should be exhaling.
	That's just natural when it comes to being alive in this rather tortured planet that we live on.
	But if you have as a standard, because this is a UPB thing, whatever we do becomes our standard.
	Philosophy is what we do.
	It's not what we think.
	It's what we do. And so if I were your wife, I wouldn't have allowed the elopement.
	Because I would say, well, if you can keep something this important from your parents, then you can keep something this important from me as well.
	And I don't want you to have that standard.
	And if this means we've got to sit down with your parents and work for six months to convince them that it's going to be a good match, then we will do that.
	But I don't want to have our marriage founded on you keeping something so important from people that you're close to because that can happen to me, right?
	If they do it with you, they can do it to you, right?
	Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I hadn't thought about it that way.
	And I'm not saying your wife has, but it's there, right?
	It's like, and I'm not equating the two, right?
	But, you know, marriages that start on infidelity end in infidelity, because there's just that breaking of trust is the foundation.
	And your marriage began with the deception of the people who...
	You're closest to, right? And now, that is a principle that your wife has seen you execute with regards to your parents.
	That is not going to help your marriage in the long run, and that's, you know, my...
	I'm sort of trying to bend every effort I can, and not to chastise or, oh, bad.
	I mean, fuck that. That doesn't matter.
	That's not helpful in this situation.
	What I think is important is that I don't think it was the right thing to do, not for some abstract moral principle of honesty, though I think that's important, but fundamentally because...
	Your parents are still in your life and you have this lie that has probably broken their hearts quite a bit, right?
	Your wife is in your life who has participated in a lie that broke your parents' hearts probably more than a little bit.
	And I think that you want, obviously, your marriage to succeed.
	You want your relationship with your parents to succeed.
	And I think that what you need to do is say, bad decision to keep everything from everyone.
	And apologize. And just try and figure out...
	And your parents have some...
	I'm going to put a whole onus on you.
	Your parents have a responsibility and role in this as well.
	Because they raised you in such a way that you felt you couldn't come to them with this.
	So I'm not saying it's all you, bad...
	Again, that doesn't matter.
	There's no point assigning moral responsibility to relationships that are going to continue.
	And if you can continue this, fantastic.
	But something happened in your relationship with your parents where you felt that eloping and secrecy was...
	A positive solution.
	And clearly, of course, it's not.
	Because they're going to find out anyway.
	They're still going to be in your life.
	You're going to be married. And now, any suspicions they may have had have been replaced with suspicion and heartbreak that is fully confirmed, right?
	And your wife is going to have trust issues with you because you have kept such an important thing from your parents.
	And that's going to fester. I believe, what do I know, right?
	This is just my theory. It's my opinion.
	It's not even a theory. It's just an opinion.
	You can get rid of it if you think it's nonsense.
	But it's the trust issues with your wife that I think are going to be the most important in the future.
	If she knows that you can keep incredibly important information separate from those who have a hell of a lot longer and deeper relationship with you than she does, how secure is she going to feel in your honesty and integrity with her?
	Yeah, that makes sense.
	That does make sense. And I hope you feel like I'm not trying to sort of...
	No, no, I totally understand where you're coming from.
	I mean, when it finally all came out, I've never felt so horrible, such guilt.
	It was really horrendous.
	And I did say to myself, like you said, I will never do anything like that again.
	Right. And I think that you need to make that commitment to people in your life.
	But more important, because commitments are kind of empty, right?
	Like everyone who smokes says, this is my last cigarette, right?
	Every day. Right? So the commitment is important.
	But I think that, you know, getting to the root of how this became...
	It may not be primarily to do with your parents.
	Maybe some teacher, some priest, some other authority figure where lying and deception and so on was the only way to survive.
	But in some way, this became a viable option for you.
	And, oh, I'm just telling you, keeping big secrets from people in your life that you're close to is a miserable path to go on for the long run, for sure.
	I really want to try and turn you away from that path.
	That particular road.
	You know, it is that short-term hit of getting away from a confrontation, but the long-term effects are pretty disastrous, as I've seen.
	Again, I'm not... I'm no predictor, right?
	This is just what I've seen in my life.
	but secrets are a kind of cancer in relationships.
	I mean...
	It's...
	It is...
	I mean, when I think back at it, I can't understand what it was I was afraid of.
	Not really. Not properly.
	I just had this kind of...
	Well, and sorry, if you could have understood what you were afraid of, then you could have talked about it, right?
	Yeah. Right?
	You weren't avoiding your parents.
	you were avoiding some knowledge within yourself.
	Yeah.
	I know that's really oblique and probably not very helpful.
	No, no. But as you say, when you look back...
	There's many things I don't know about myself.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah. Some knowledge you're avoiding things that you can't see or whatever, right?
	But the reason I think that we need to have commitment to these annoying values, like just honesty no matter what, the reason why we need to have those commitments is so that we can also figure out Where our own resistances are, right?
	So if you avoid something that's really difficult for you, that's the right thing to do, right?
	Which in this case I think would have been to talk with your parents and, you know, for you, for your parents, and most importantly for your relationship with your wife to say, no, no, no, look, I have a commitment to honesty in my relationships.
	I can't do this to my parents, and I'm never going to do it for you, right?
	That would do it to you. That would, I think, that to me is the most important thing to come out of this, right?
	But by avoiding doing that, you avoided figuring out what your resistance to it was.
	And so, you don't know why you avoided it so much, if that makes any sense, right?
	Yeah. You know, if we take a big detour around the graveyard because we think there might be a ghost there, what we never find out is whether there's actually a ghost there or not, right?
	Yeah. And I think you need to know what it is within you, the thoughts or the feelings that are within you, that make this a viable option.
	option because if you don't know that, you're missing a very, very important part of self-knowledge, in my opinion.
	It's a difficult one because, I mean, there's...
	I mean, I've decided that after this I am going to seek, you know, some form of therapy just for my personal, to understand why it is I did this and what it is I thought I was going to get out of it.
	Does that make sense? Oh yeah, sure.
	And look, certainly you knew what you were going to get out of it, which is an alleviation of anxiety in the short run, right?
	I mean, the short-term gains are pretty clear, right?
	Yeah. But, of course, you know that it's laying the foundation for significant challenges down the road.
	Yeah, I mean, I can't tell you, of course, what it is, right?
	And in conversations with you, in conversations with your wife, right?
	The other thing, too, is that it could be secondhand avoidance, right?
	So maybe she was really anxious about it.
	Maybe there's something in her own family history where there were predatory succubi who stole the lifeblood of innocent men or whatever, right?
	Maybe she is a witch. No, I'm sorry.
	Maybe you did these things in her history.
	Maybe you were helping her avoid her anxiety and going along with whatever may have been going on consciously or unconsciously for her.
	It's complicated, right?
	Obviously a decision like this has a number of factors that all have to come together.
	Your parents may have been in a bad place.
	Your wife may have this anxiety she's unaware of.
	You may have some anxiety that comes from your parents or other authority figures around honesty and openness.
	A lot of things had to come together.
	And I think you really need to know what those things are.
	Because otherwise, you'll just try and brute force willpower it.
	You know, like, I'm going to make a commitment to never...
	But if you don't know what the causes are of your behavior, you can't make any commitments to change it.
	Yeah. Like, you can't say, I'm going to make a destination if you don't have a map or any directions, right?
	Yeah. Yeah. I think the most obvious thing for me is that it's probably...
	I've always kind of had trouble with stuff that's talking about things that are very personal to me.
	I can talk about all sorts of things, but stuff that's very...
	My personal thoughts and feelings are something that I have trouble...
	I have trouble communicating.
	Just because of all sorts of things.
	My parents divorced and all this sort of thing.
	Your parents did divorce? Yes, they divorced.
	I'm sorry to hear about that. I was just reading this the other day.
	It's a book called Nurture Shop, which I'd recommend to everyone.
	The best predictor of a child's relationship with peers as a child and in the future is his parents' relationship with each other, not his parents' relationship with him, not his mother's or father's relationship with him, but their relationship with each other is the best predictor of how our relationships are going to go, is our parents' relationship, not anything that happens with us, but what happens with them.
	And so, were secrets a big problem in your family?
	Did your parents separate as a result of secrets that were kept or was it something else?
	It's never been clearly explained to me because I mean, Well, that's a secret, right?
	So, doesn't that seem like a secret?
	Yeah, I believe it's to do with my father's fidelity.
	But... It's one of those things that nobody really wants to talk about.
	I guess it's quite painful for a lot of people.
	Well, then I think I know what you're doing.
	And do you mind if I give you one of my nonsense theories about what you're doing?
	Sure. Well, I think that you are trying to get your parents to understand what it was like to grow up without knowledge of very important things.
	And to continue to be in the dark about what happened with your parents' marriage.
	Right? So I think that you're mad at your parents for the secrecy.
	And I think that you want secrets to come out in the family.
	And I think you then kept a secret which could not be Concealed, so that would come out, so that your family would talk about secrets and concealment.
	When you just said that, that gave me a very, very weird feeling.
	Go on. It was kind of like...
	Like a real sinking sensation in my gut, when you just said that.
	Tell me, what was the feeling like?
	What did it seem like? What did it feel like?
	I mean, was it a good or bad feeling?
	Was it... Oh, it wasn't a good feeling.
	Right. No, it was...
	Yeah, I think you might have been onto something there.
	I might have been onto something?
	Well, let's hope so. Let's hope so, but go on.
	Yeah, I mean, nobody has ever really talked about what happened.
	I mean, obviously, at a young age like that, something like that is quite a devastating thing.
	Oh, it's not quite.
	I mean, it's massively devastating, right?
	I mean, your world falls apart when your parents get divorced.
	It doesn't mean that it's always the worst thing in the world in terms of the alternatives or whatever, right?
	But it is completely devastating, right?
	It is completely devastating when that happens.
	I mean, all children, I believe, really want to worship their parents.
	They really, really want to worship their parents.
	And when your parents end up in a situation like that, I think that really does sort of smash up one of the most fundamental religions of the world, which is parental worship, which I think it's really want and need.
	Yeah, I mean...
	It's...
	Yeah, I mean...
	Also, at the time, it was a very shouty breakup.
	It wasn't, you know...
	It wasn't amicable.
	Yes. Yeah, there's no such thing as a civil divorce.
	I think that's a complete myth.
	Divorce is a brutal, ugly, vicious, destructive situation, which doesn't mean that it's more destructive than all the alternatives, but it is savagely brutal on everyone involved.
	And you can see this.
	I mean, the health effects of a divorce for men in particular can last for decades, like physical susceptibility to illness and early mortality.
	The effects of divorce are like a pack a day smoking.
	I mean, that may be too strong.
	but definitely it's the same as a smoking habit.
	The effects of divorce are worse than physically, are worse than not getting married in the first place.
	And marriage is beneficial to one's health, but divorce is worse for one's health than if one had never been married spiritually.
	So it puts you in the worst conceivable category as far as health goes.
	It is brutal and savage on the children.
	It is just an unbelievably difficult and ugly situation.
	A situation to be in, particularly if you were aware of verbal abuse.
	Sorry, I shouldn't say verbal abuse, but you said shouty, right?
	If you're aware of verbal aggression between your parents, that is just catastrophic.
	Most children, in fact almost all children, would far prefer that a parent verbally aggress against them than against the other parent.
	We all will take those bullets for our family, and you can see this because children act out when their parents are fighting in order to get their parents to stop fighting, right?
	So there's the problem child who acts out, who diverts the parent's aggression from each other towards the child.
	That's a foundational survival mechanism because a child can survive being yelled at, but of course, biologically, if parents separated when we were Evolving, that was really catastrophic to the child in terms of survivability.
	So children will take the bullets of parental conflict.
	And if you saw that stuff occurring, that is very harsh, particularly at the age you were at.
	There's no good age.
	But divorce is just unbelievably brutal on families and children.
	So I just wanted to just give you my deep, deep sympathies.
	And if you don't know why, as an adult, I would be annoyed myself.
	And putting myself in your shoes, I would be annoyed because it's like, wait a minute, if you guys' marriage, like I'd say to my parents, if you guys' marriage was my template for adult relationships, And I don't know what went wrong, then aren't I kind of being handed the same potential for failure that you had?
	Like, if you crashed your ship catastrophically into these rocks that I'm now sailing around, and you don't tell me where the damn rocks are, then aren't I just going to smash up my ship?
	Like, why the hell don't you people tell me what the hell went wrong so that I have a better chance with my marriage than you had with yours?
	And I think that's what you're acting out by keeping this secret.
	That your family has an issue with secrets.
	And your secret coming out is a perfect opportunity for you guys to open the vaults.
	And I think that's what it's for.
	Yeah. Yeah.
	That makes a lot of sense.
	And I would take that opportunity, because I'll tell you, this is what a lack of self-knowledge does, right?
	And again, I'm not accusing you of a general lack of self-knowledge, and not even that that would be an accusation, but in this area where you didn't know...
	You very likely will continue to escalate.
	And what that means is you will keep more secrets from people until the issue of secrecy gets dealt with in your primary relationships.
	It escalates. This stuff escalates until it gets dealt with.
	And, of course, I hope that you will be proactive and try and figure this stuff out.
	You know, if you can get your parents into therapy with you or go into therapy yourself or just figure out what your relationship is with secrecy, it's so important.
	And that's why, you know, I don't say bad person for keeping secrets because that doesn't matter.
	What's important is to figure out the why.
	The why, the why, the why, and that gives you real illumination and can really bring you closer to those around you.
	I think that's what you're acting at.
	Yeah, I think you're right.
	I think you've...
	Yeah, you really illuminated that for me.
	Thank you. Oh, listen, I'm very glad, and I just wanted to really thank you for bringing that up.
	It's a very challenging topic.
	Obviously, it's not a fun thing to talk about, but I think you just did a fantastic job, and I really do appreciate the trust that you expressed by bringing this up with me, and I'm glad that it was of some use.
	Yeah, obviously all these things are very difficult to talk about.
	There's a special kind of heartbreak for children when they lose respect for their parents.
	There is a really special kind of heartbreak that I think is worse than just about anything.
	It's certainly the worst heartbreak that I've experienced in my life is losing respect for my parents.
	I don't think I've ever had anything that...
	Difficult before or since.
	And I'm not saying this is you.
	I'm just saying from my own experience.
	And it is something that really does need to be talked about with your parents.
	Again, I'm not saying you've lost all respect.
	I'm just saying that's my experience.
	I want to sort of translate my experience to yours.
	But I believe that divorce shatters the belief in the virtue and ability of parents.
	Because it is such an obvious failure.
	I mean, it may be necessary in the same way that cutting off your leg may be necessary, but nobody's saying it's good.
	But it is such an obvious failure on the part of parents, particularly when there are kids your age, that they just can't stick it out, that they had kids before figuring this stuff out, that they couldn't negotiate anything better, that they couldn't be more civil to each other.
	What happens in divorce is parents lose...
	Moral authority, and that is the worst heartbreak for children, in my opinion, is the loss of moral authority, because then what is revealed is the mere exercise of power in terms of getting children to conform.
	How on earth do divorced parents say to their kids, sharing is good, being nice to other people is good, having friends is good, right?
	Not yelling is good.
	Heartbreaking because children so much want to be good.
	Children so much want to love and respect their parents that there's a special kind of heartbreak in divorce.
	In my opinion and experience, I'm not going to claim this as an empirically proven fact, but if you do look up, and people are asking, has there been a podcast on divorce?
	No, there hasn't. My parents divorced when I was a baby.
	So I don't have any memory of my father being around, but they had a...
	Brutal and ugly divorce.
	My mother was still trying to sue my dad for money, you know, 16 years after they divorced.
	I mean, it was just ridiculous.
	He moved to the other side of the world.
	And there were secrets.
	There were secrets. And I will never know the story.
	The true story of my parents' relationship is the vaults there are, you know, they've just turned into stone mountains.
	There's not even a cave in there anymore.
	And that's why I think if you can't get that information clearly, and there's no guarantee if you ask the question that you'll get straight-up answers, right?
	But I think it's definitely worth pursuing.
	But you really need to know this stuff so that you can avoid these rocks in your own marriage as best you can.
	Yeah, you're right.
	Actually, my parents are going to be actually coming together to meet me in a month or two at my graduation.
	So I think that might be a good opportunity to talk to them both kind of privately together because they don't often.
	Yeah, I think so.
	They don't have to be together. And in fact, you may get more out of them separately in terms of the reasons for the divorce.
	You don't want them replaying out the divorce because that's just going to be traumatic again, right, for you.
	I mean, again, this is my, you know, my parents were together again, I guess it was about 10 years ago that my dad came to visit.
	And they were over at my place, and my dad was in the backyard, and my mom was in the kitchen, and I had to see them together, maybe except for my brother's wedding, maybe once or twice before.
	And it sounds funny, and it really wasn't that funny, but it was a little funny at the time.
	My dad had a cold, and one of my mother's continual complaints, apparently, about my dad was that he always had a cold, because he just didn't wash his hands enough or something like that.
	He blew his nose into his sleeve or something like that, right?
	And my dad was in the backyard and he sneezed, right?
	Now, bear in mind, this is 30 fucking years after they divorced, right?
	My dad sneezed in the backyard.
	My mom's head whipped up, you know, like a viper.
	And she looked at me and she said, you know, that's probably the same cold he had when we were married.
	You know, it's like, it's 30 fucking years.
	Is there not a statute of limitations on this stuff?
	But, you know, for some people there is.
	I mean, I'm not saying that's your parents, right?
	I'm just saying that that was sort of my experience.
	Yeah, I think you're right, actually.
	I think it would be better to talk to them individually, because it's less likely to recreate any...
	I'm telling you that, in my opinion, too, it would be good for your parents, right?
	I mean, the best thing that you can get out of something like divorce is to help your kids avoid the same fate.
	That's the only way that you can get something good out of that sort of situation.
	And if they can do that, I think it will give them some peace and resolution about that sort of stuff.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And I would also, again, as I always say, I would talk to a therapist about your experiences with this and secrets and all of that and the frustration that you may have had about not knowing what the hell happens.
	That's, you know, that's tough.
	I mean, how do parents say, be honest to their kids when they're keeping secrets themselves, right?
	And that's probably part of, you know, what's frustrating you and what's maybe compelled you to do these things.
	It's like, how do you guys like it, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Wow.
	I mean, if that were things like I'm thinking about that now and if that was my motivation for it, then I didn't that just makes me feel worse.
	Oh God, I just kind of feel worse.
	No, no, no.
	Please don't feel worse.
	Please don't feel worse. No, I kind of feel malicious.
	No, it's not. It's not malicious.
	It's not malicious at all.
	It's not malicious at all, but I guarantee, and this is why honesty is so important, it's the fundamental tool for self-knowledge, right?
	Because if you had gone to your parents openly and vulnerably about this, this would have come up, for sure, before you got married.
	The secrets and these issues, right?
	Because if your parents were complaining about secrecy or were complaining about being kept in the dark, Right?
	You would have felt angry.
	And if you'd said, I feel angry right now, you know, good old RTR stuff, real-time relationship stuff.
	If you said, I feel really angry when you guys are talking about the need for openness and I don't know why, and you'd kept on with that, right?
	Then you would have gotten to it, right?
	And you guys could have had a really electric and open conversation, hopefully.
	At least there would have been conditions that would have made that possible probably for the first time about these issues, right?
	But I really do sympathize with...
	I'm glad that I didn't see my parents divorce.
	I'm really, really glad.
	It was a... It was a true blessing.
	My brother did. And I think it did some seriously bad stuff to him.
	So I am very, very glad that I do not recall anything about my parents' divorce because it was not a pretty thing at all.
	And, I mean, if people are still angry about stuff 30 years later, imagine what it was like in the midst of that volcanic eruption.
	So... I think that I just wanted to express my enormous sympathy.
	I think it's certainly harder than what I had to go through in that realm, because really seeing it and also being kept in the dark, right?
	I mean, there are ways that parents can talk to children about divorce, even at the age of seven, that has some value and utility.
	But as you, of course, have found, keeping secrets just makes things worse.
	And if this secret has been kept for The length of, I don't know how old you are now, and it doesn't really matter, but seven to now, that is a long time for a secret to be kept, and that has a distorting effect on the relationship.
	And I really, really hope that you can open up these channels of communication and get some resolution and closure in these issues for you, with your future relationship with your wife, with your future relationship with your parents.
	I think that would be very, very important.
	Yeah, after I graduate and I get a job, my first thing to do is to get a therapist.
	Well, if you're in college, you might be able to get free therapy, right?
	There may be therapists through the student center.
	Yeah, the waiting list is about 12 months long.
	Oh, is it really? Right, so you'll either be better or not by the time you get to it.
	Yeah, so I would certainly recommend that.
	I mean, people complain about the cost of therapy, and I'm sorry.
	I mean, it is a significant cost, and maybe your parents will chip in if they have a mind.
	I think that's only reasonable.
	But there's nothing more expensive than a divorce.
	It breaks people's hearts, I think, for the rest of their lives.
	Because it's one of these...
	I mean, if there are kids, if you have a start of marriage for a year or two, I don't think that's the end of the world.
	But if you have kids, it is a heartbreak that I've not seen anybody recover from.
	And this is just my anecdotal nonsense.
	There's no truth to any of this.
	It's just what I have seen in a number of different circumstances.
	But you can smell divorced people.
	they have that heartbreak exoskeleton on them.
	They walk around like lobsters in full armor, just clanking and rustling and weeping from every joint.
	And I think that it is a special kind of heartbreak.
	And I can't urge you strongly enough to take whatever steps necessary to make sure that your wife doesn't absorb your lack of honesty with your parents to be something that could happen to her, that the secrets don't infect your marriage as they have perhaps infected your family of origin that the secrets don't infect your marriage as they have perhaps
	You know, do whatever you can to avoid getting divorced other than stay in an abusive relationship, but do whatever you can because it is a kind of irrevocable heartbreak in my experience.
	Yeah. I mean, the thing that I always kind of reconcile myself with was that it may have been horrible that they'd gotten divorced, but it could have been much worse.
	They could have stayed together. Well, sure.
	And in the same way, if you have to get your leg cut off, that's better than dying.
	But that doesn't mean that you don't grieve the leg.
	I mean, I have no doubt that my parents were better off apart.
	But that doesn't mean that there's not an enormous amount of grieving and heartbreak to process.
	And of course, as a kid, you don't know that.
	You have to process things as they occur, as they happen, in the sort of mental sequence that they occur in.
	So you have to think, I think, about what happened for you at the age of seven in this kind of circumstance.
	Not with the sort of emotional maturity and hindsight and so on of where you are now, but it's, you know, in a sense, it's the time machine.
	We have to go back to that little spindly body and that oversized head and figure out what our occurrence was at that time, right?
	Because that's what we actually have to deal with, is that perspective.
	And the maturity that we can layer on later, it's not unimportant, but I wouldn't use that as a way of saying, and therefore there's no grieving, because I kind of understand now.
	I think that kind of understanding can be a way of avoiding that kind of grieving.
	And if you avoid that, you are going to end up avoiding yourself because it's a huge part of you.
	You're also going to end up avoiding other people, which is going to be harmful to your relationship.
	So, you know, dive in, my friend.
	I think it's going to pay off in spades.
	Yeah, I agree.
	And spend time meditating on your parents' relationship with each other.
	You know, we always think about...
	Because kids, you know, we're kind of self-involved, right?
	So kids, we think about people's relationship with...
	With us, right?
	But it's so important to think about your parents' relationship with each other.
	That is so, so important.
	Because that is... I mean, this is not just my opinion.
	This is a pretty well-established psychological and scientific fact.
	That is our parents' relationship with each other that is a huge, huge predictor.
	It's the largest single predictor of our relationship with others as adults.
	Because we learn how to love from watching our parents love each other, not from them claiming to love us or actually loving us.
	And we spend a lot of time thinking about our parents' relationship with us.
	But it's very, very important when you get older to think about your parents' relationship with each other so that you can get a sense of what kind of ship you've inherited, what kind of storm you may be sailing in, and where the rocks might be.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I'll definitely take that advice.
	I think it's...
	It's something definitely that needs to be dealt with.
	Well, I appreciate that. And I just appreciate that.
	And I'm going to move on if that's right with you.
	And I hope that you will let us know or let me know how it goes.
	And I really do want to, again, just wanted to appreciate it.
	I know it's a tough thing to bring up.
	And, you know, to talk about secrets in a public forum is, you know, it's a tough thing to do.
	And I really just wanted to acknowledge you for doing that.
	I think that's a fantastic thing.
	And I'm very glad that the call has been of help.
	Thank you very much.
	Likewise, I very much appreciate the clarity you've brought to the situation.
	I'm very glad. Best of luck with your marriage, man.
	I'm glad that you found somebody to love.
	It's a beautiful thing. Oh, it is fantastic.
	It really is. All right, so we have time for another question, comment, or issue.
	Somebody has asked, if given the opportunity, would I be interested in authoring the volume on volunteerism for the Four Dummies series?
	Oh, I'm telling you, I would love to write more.
	If there's one thing that I miss in being a parent, it's having the time to write, but I just don't.
	I absolutely would be interested.
	I think that in a year or two I will be able to author some more.
	So I would be very interested.
	And I think we had a few other people who wanted to talk, and we can go a little bit over if people are very interested.
	I mean, it's your show. I'm here to help as best I can, so if you'd like to speak, go for it.
	Hello, Steph. I was wondering if you could help me with a problem that I've had for a long time now.
	I can sit in the kitchen.
	I've recently decided to move to Philadelphia, and I've been...
	I know you heard about some of the issues that have been coming up over email, but I had another one that came up today.
	Sure. I've been throwing away some of the books that I have in order to, I can only take like a couple suitcases and maybe a box with me on the train to go there.
	And you know, I've been stuck in this same town, it's a college town for about six years now, since the 2004 or so.
	And I was noticing when I was putting away the books, I felt kind of sad because, you know, I hadn't been really interested in some of the subjects that I used to be in high school and stuff like that.
	And I was thinking that it was something to do with...
	The teachers, like, I was able to actually get some sort of, I don't know, affection or something, or I felt like I was worth something or something because of their thoughts about me and stuff like that, and so I worked really hard to learn, like, physics and programming and things like that, and I was wondering if you could give me some thoughts on that or ask me questions or anything, if you I'm still trying to understand what it is that you mean.
	So when you were throwing away books of subjects that you were more interested in in the past, you felt a kind of sadness or nostalgia for the past, is that right?
	Yes, like I've kept them and I've hoped that it would come back, but it really hasn't.
	Sorry, what would come back? The interest in those subjects because I felt good when I was learning them and stuff like that.
	Right. Way back then.
	And they never have come back.
	Now, what's interesting is that you didn't talk about the subjects themselves, you talked about your relationship with your teachers.
	That's right. I know I was really interested in them.
	I learned it out of class.
	Even after high school for a while, I'd go to the bookstores and spend hours in them and I'd buy books.
	And I have like a couple bookcases full of books and stuff that I'm going to throw out most of them because I don't even read the stuff anymore.
	But I was feeling sad when I was doing that.
	And how old are you? I'm 30.
	30, okay. And what does it mean to you that these topics are not going to come back for you?
	Before, I mean, I don't know if it does now, but before it was really sad.
	I know I was really into them.
	I got a lot of enjoyment out of them.
	I felt a kind of really strong enthusiasm to learn them and to be good in them, and I enjoyed them.
	I got a lot of enjoyment out of them.
	And I haven't recently, though.
	I felt sad. Sorry, but when was the last time that you got enjoyment out of these subjects?
	Oh, it must have been like when I was seven years ago or something like that.
	As far as physics goes, programming, it continued afterwards because I would help people and I guess I would get people who would be happy that I helped them with it.
	And I would try to make things to impress people, I think.
	Right. So I would suggest, and I understand this nostalgia.
	I think I've done a whole podcast on that.
	I would suggest, my friend, that it is not the subjects themselves that move you, but rather the relationships that you developed because of the subjects.
	And what you miss is the relationships.
	Or rather, what you miss is why you needed those relationships.
	So, if you're genuinely interested in something, I love music, I have since I was a little kid, and I continue to explore new kinds of music when I can and that has sort of stayed with me.
	Now there are other things that I was into when I was a kid, like stamp collecting, which I have not continued.
	Because, I don't know, sexual maturity or something.
	It's more fun doing other things.
	So there are things that, you know, if you were very interested in these subjects, my guess would be that your interest in these subjects gave you relationships, gave you a community, gave you teachers, gave you mentors, gave you a way to connect with people.
	And when that did not continue to occur for you, When your pursuit of these subjects no longer gave you a way to connect to people, then you lost interest in the subjects.
	And when you are going back and looking at these things and throwing them out, I think, I'm guessing, this would be my first guess for all nonsense, but this is what I'm thinking, that you're thinking back to a lonely time.
	In your life, a time when you did not have a natural, organic, say, familial or friend-based connections.
	And so you had to have connections that were founded upon shared competencies or interests or abilities, and in a sense then weren't quite organic or intimate in that sense, right?
	So, I mean, to take a sort of stereotypical example...
	You know, there are guys who, you know, they get together because they like watching sports, right?
	You know, Thanksgiving, sports is on or the football game is on.
	And so they get together and they watch football.
	And they cheer and they drink and they make jokes and all that sort of stuff, right?
	They rib each other and diss the opposing team and so on.
	And then if these people all get together and the TV is broken, the satellite is down, the game has been canceled, I don't know what, Krakens have invaded San Diego or whatever, then I think they're going to feel a kind of sadness or isolation, right?
	They're going to feel a little bit like, well, now what do we do?
	All we can do is talk.
	And so I think that connections that are formed through a shared interest, not that my opinion means anything, but I don't think it's bad or anything, but I think when it's a substitute for something else, right?
	So when I was a teenager, in my early teens to mid-10 teens, about 15 or so, I played a lot of Dungeons& Dragons with friends.
	And, you know, I think about all those hours that we spent, sometimes, you know, half the night or whatever, right?
	But we weren't talking about our lives or our thoughts or our feelings or what was actually occurring for us or our hopes or our dreams, the future.
	We were fighting imaginary enemies with a Las Vegas-style gaming addiction, right?
	It's gambling. Dungeons& Dragons is a form of gambling, as I've talked about.
	Yeah. And when I think about that stuff in hindsight, it wasn't bad.
	It was fun. I was a dungeon master quite a bit, so it gave me good storytelling.
	It helped my verbal abilities, which were pretty good to begin with, but grew sharpened quite a bit.
	So I'm not saying it's a bad thing.
	But it came out of a time when we did not have the kind of connection where we could be together and interact without some third connector called Dungeons& Dragons, which wasn't actually a connector really at all.
	And I think that there was a sadness in all of that.
	And I think that's something that you may be thinking about.
	It's a lonelier time. Or lonely time in your life when you weren't getting the kind of connection that you needed from those around you.
	And so you had connections based on shared interests and abilities, which to me is not quite the same and in fact can be sort of an avoidant.
	Yeah, I think you're right.
	I feel a bit dissociated right now, but I was feeling sad when you first asked that.
	I was myself desperate for the approval of teachers when I was younger.
	I did have actually a couple of teachers who were kind of nice to me when I was a kid and, you know, had profound effects upon my relationship with authority.
	I had a camp counselor that I literally stayed up until 2 or 3 in the morning chatting with when I was kind of unceremoniously dumped into summer camp by my mom.
	I had a teacher or two Who was, you know, smart and curious and actually would share a few thoughts or even be remotely curious about what I was thinking.
	That kind of stuff, you know, when you have as lonely and separate an existence as I had when I was a kid, that kind of stuff is, you know, children are like cacti.
	You know, we can live on three drops of rainwater a year.
	I mean, it's a sad thing, but we can, right?
	And... So that's where I would look, is where was I emotionally during that time?
	And to put all of that stuff away is to let go of certain beliefs that you have about this stuff coming back for you, and that may be to expose the real reason why that stuff was so important for you to begin with.
	I remember throwing out my Dungeons& Dragons books.
	I remember throwing out old albums.
	I remember throwing out lots of stuff.
	And it's very sad because I think about all that time that I spent that I wasn't talking to people but rather, you know, staring ghostly orcs in the face, right?
	That was a lonely time.
	And that was the best we could do in the culture that we were in.
	Wow. Okay.
	Thank you very much for that.
	I think it will apply.
	It really clarified things for me.
	I hope so. And I do sympathize and empathize with that.
	It's a good thing to clean things out.
	I really think it's a good thing to clean things out because it does get you in touch with your reasons for still having certain things and for why it may be time to move on.
	on, so good for you.
	I think we had somebody else who wanted to jump in, and I'm happy to take another call.
	Oh my goodness, we might be ending on time.
	Da-da.
	Last call.
	Last call. Yes, Seth?
	Oh, hi. Hello. Hello.
	Hello. Hi.
	Hello. Hello, can you hear me?
	Check, check. One, two.
	I can hear you. I can hear you.
	Can you hear me? I can hear you, yes.
	Go ahead. Okay, good.
	Sorry. Yeah, yeah.
	I wanted to ask about a particular topic I've been Thinking about it a lot, I talked with you, it was a while back, and we kind of talked briefly about my relationship with my mother,
	but there's another relationship or another pair of relationships that I'm concerned with, and I feel like it's a slightly different situation, and that is with my grandparents, and that would be my mother's parents, and my The reason it's kind of an issue to me is because for a long time in my life,
	the most rational influence on me and my family were my grandparents.
	Now, my parents were Christians, and they used to take me to church and stuff when I was a kid.
	And the whole time, my grandfather had been an atheist.
	He had left the church a long time ago.
	And so every time we would visit, there was always kind of a tension between him and my mother because he not only wasn't religious, he actually just thinks religion is a pretty harmful thing.
	And he would always kind of challenge me when I would say that I was a creationist or something like that.
	And he just – he always kind of – I was there.
	He was very interested in philosophy.
	He would read a lot of existentialist philosophers to me when I was young.
	He would always kind of hone my skills when it came to questioning things.
	He always encouraged me to question things.
	So I've always had a very open...
	Oh yeah, sorry, I just wanted to mention that even more props to your granddad because that was being an atheist in a time pre-internet, right?
	When being an atheist was even tougher, so...
	So kudos to him.
	Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely.
	And the reason he originally did, I think, Yeah, and I think part of the main reason that that happened, just as a brief history, was that he used to belong to a church, and there was like a black couple that wanted to join the church, and the church wouldn't let them join.
	And he was pretty offended by that.
	So he – and he's not black, but he just – that was kind of an eye-opener to him, to the hypocrisy that was going on.
	And he already, I think, was already questioning it.
	And so, I mean, I'm obviously very much an atheist now, and me and him have a great relationship with each other.
	And what bothers me, I guess, is – see, he – I haven't really talked to him in person, at least, post-FDR. And he knew me back during the election when I was kind of like a Ron Paul-style libertarian, right? He's a Democrat.
	He's a big-time Democrat.
	And even though he didn't agree with me, he enjoys debating.
	He enjoys debating me on it.
	He's not mad at me for having different views.
	He does tend to tease about it, but I'm going to tease him back, so I guess it's pretty fair.
	But I mean I am a bit apprehensive honestly about pushing it farther than my previous libertarian leanings because at least when I was libertarian that way, I still thought that a government was good for certain things. I still thought that a government was good for certain And here's the big catch here.
	He is a retired judge.
	So it's – I'm thinking if I were to – even though he's very open and he's very old now.
	He's like 78 now.
	But even though he's very open-minded for his age and he's always enjoyed any challenges that I bring to him.
	I am a bit apprehensive about challenging his moral authority considering that he spent a lot of his life in pretty much state jobs.
	When he was younger, he was in the military stationed in Japan during the Korean War.
	He went to law school and later became a judge.
	Well, I don't think he was, but I think at the time it was pretty common that most people joined the military.
	And the main reason he did was because he didn't come from a really rich family.
	He came from a really small town farmer in rural Indiana, so he didn't have a lot of money for college, and it was a way to pay for school.
	So that was the main reason.
	He wasn't in combat. But he was definitely part of the military and stuff, and I'm just trying to imagine what that conversation is going to be like because I'm going to go see him again, and I have to have that conversation with him.
	I have to let him know where I stand now.
	Why do you have to have that conversation with him?
	And the thing is he's – well, because I value the relationship I have with him, and I don't want to just – it would be – I guess it would feel unfair for me to cut him off when I've had such...
	I mean, which, you know, until just I've understood more, I mean, I had always enjoyed my time with him.
	I always enjoyed our relationship.
	And I feel like this is going to be a tense issue to bring up.
	Well, the first thing I would say is that you don't have to have the conversation with them because philosophy is about choice, right?
	Right, but I… You can choose to have the conversation with him.
	I want to. I mean, I want to keep it.
	I'm sorry to interrupt, but the other thing that I would say is that there aren't only two choices, which is to confront him on the ethical realities of his life or to separate.
	I don't think that those are the only two choices.
	I think that that's kind of being in a corner.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	But I also, I don't really want to, I mean, here's the thing.
	We always have discussions.
	When I meet him, part of our relationship is that we always discuss the current political climate, and we discuss what's going on in the news.
	We discuss all these things, and we usually debate ethics and things like that, and it's going to come up.
	I mean that's just the way that our relationship is.
	It will come up, and I don't think – I don't think he will – I don't know.
	I don't know what he'll do. I don't know.
	Well, can I tell you what I think will happen just so that...
	I'm just...
	What do you...
	Yeah, what would you do? What do you think?
	Or if you want to roleplay or something.
	Well, let me just try telling you what I think will happen.
	And I can tell you my thoughts about what I think will happen.
	But this is how I think it's going to go.
	Look... Your grandfather was a judge.
	What that means is that he passed sentences and threw people into jail for non-payment of taxes, for drug possession, right?
	No harm, no foul, right?
	And for probably about a thousand other things that in a free society would in no way, shape, or form be crimes, right?
	Now, I don't know.
	Right. If he were to look back and see that he himself was a key part of putting innocent people,
	of initiating the use of force against lots and lots of innocent people, I'm sure that there were some guilty people, but lots and lots of innocent people, Of causing them to lose their freedoms, to be put into jails, to be beaten up and possibly raped, and to have their lives shattered and destroyed by the force of his gavel.
	You know, I've often thought about how...
	And I'm not putting your granddad into this category.
	I'm just sort of telling you these thoughts that I've had that popped into my head.
	You know, it's fairly common, unfortunately, for the police to try and get criminals into jail or get people into jail to meet their numbers, right?
	And they'll manufacture evidence and they'll false testify and so on.
	That's why you never want to get dragged into the legal system because then you're into a true Alice in Wonderland through hell riot.
	And so it's often struck me like what kind of freakazoid of a weirdo human being do you have to be where you know that you've lied to get people into jail, to hit your numbers, to get promoted, and those people are rotting in cells and you know that you've manufactured.
	Now, of course, you probably tell yourself, well, they were guilty.
	We just had to bend a few rules to make sure they were put behind bars or whatever, right?
	But to live with the knowledge that people are in jail because of your actions and those people have not actually initiated the use of force or fraud against anyone, I can't imagine if that lid were to be opened, even as a possibility, in your grandfather's mind, I can tell you that this would go, very likely, enormously badly.
	Explosively badly. Right, that's what, that's exactly, that's, and he's not, and here's the thing, like, if you can just imagine, I mean, again, this is my mother's father, a lot of the issues that my mom has with her own personality are effects of He was a much more enlightened and educated man by the time that I was born, by the time I came around.
	You mean that he was a harsh parent to your mother?
	Yeah, I'm sure he was.
	I mean, I wasn't there, obviously, but I understand that he probably was.
	I mean, he's just, he's the judge, right?
	He's the authority, right?
	He's the big man.
	It's often struck me that the people that we hand over...
	I don't know.
	As the beautiful treasures that they are.
	But when you look at prison guards and cops and soldiers and judges, the quality of parenting tends to be universally extremely poor, even relative to the average.
	And this is just another example of how we give guns to those who are the most traumatized and not to those who are the wisest, which is why society tends to get worse.
	Sorry, go on. Well, and I do want to say, in all fairness to him, if I were to be convicted of something, he would be – if I had to have a judge, he would be one that I would want.
	In all fairness, like for example, you mentioned things like he's put people in jail for drug laws.
	Well, he doesn't agree with drug laws.
	Now, I guess he could just override using his authority all the time.
	But the way he saw it, the way he always explained to me was, well, when you become a lawyer or when you become a judge and you get used to that job, you get kind of that occupational hazard where you trust the system.
	So he's not – even though he doesn't agree that it's good to put people in jail for smoking a plant, he has to carry it out because that's the oath he takes under the law, right?
	And he is expected to uphold the law, and he doesn't make the laws, right?
	Yeah, but he can quit.
	I mean, I think that's a bullshit excuse, frankly.
	I mean, that's a bullshit.
	Oh, well, they told me to.
	Come on. I mean, that's a ridiculous excuse for an educated man.
	Well, they told me that I had to put people in jail, so I guess I have to put people in jail.
	I mean, that's pretty pathetic.
	I mean, I would expect a judge to come up with something better than that.
	That's pretty sad because, of course, that's the Nazi argument.
	Hitler had his soldiers take an oath to serve the fatherland as well.
	I mean, that's really a pretty pitiful defense around participation in such a system.
	But nonetheless, go on.
	Right. Well, and I don't know.
	I guess I find it hard to...
	I don't know.
	I'm having trouble mixing my feelings about this and what...
	Because every time I'm thinking about what I want to say, the logic kind of pops into my head and I go, I don't really want to say that.
	But I don't know. I'll just say it.
	Isn't there something I... Can't I kind of grandfather him, so to speak?
	Because it's like even though...
	You know what I'm saying? I know morality tends to be harsh.
	Like, you know, if you miss the test and ignorance is no excuse, but given the time that he worked, that he lived in, it's, I mean, you know, I don't know.
	No, listen, I understand.
	I'm going to give you my advice.
	He has taught me a lot. I understand.
	And look, I really appreciate that this is a very difficult situation.
	There's lots that you respect about the guy.
	There's lots of value that he brought to you.
	And there are some moral issues that you have with him.
	So I'm going to tell you what I would do in your situation.
	No one can tell you what to do, as I always say, right?
	This is your choice. But I can tell you what I would do.
	I would not debate philosophy with my grandfather because I think what's really troubling you is not the abstract arguments, but it is the emotions.
	It's the feelings, right?
	So I think what is most troubling to you is the fear, is the anxiety, is the ambivalence that you have towards a man who brought some value, some great value to you in terms of his rational thinking in some areas.
	But, and perhaps, you know, through no massive fault of his own, because as you say, it's the times, and he may have never been exposed to alternative ideas, and, you know, most people can't reinvent philosophy from the ground up, so we can have, I think, some sympathy for this.
	I don't have sympathy for the, because I made a promise and they told me to, and it's the law argument, because even he would know that that's a very weak argument, because he's an educated man.
	In fact, it's a very corrupt argument.
	But I think what is really important in your relationship...
	Relationships with people, in my opinion, are not about finely woven intellectual arguments.
	Relationships with people are about opening your heart.
	And opening your heart...
	In my opinion, in this situation, would be going to your grandfather and saying something like, I'm really terrified to have this conversation.
	There's a huge amount of value that you've brought to me.
	I feel really grateful and positive and love you for the good things that you brought to me.
	I'm going on an evolution intellectually and philosophically that is causing me great anxiety with relationship to you because it's critical of some of the things that you've done in your life, which is not to say that I feel that you're a bad guy because you had time and circumstances, blah, blah, blah.
	But I'm really scared to bring this up.
	I really value our relationship.
	I'm afraid that my philosophical leanings are going to cause huge problems in our relationship.
	I don't want to lose it.
	But at the same time, I feel like I can't keep silent because we're always having these discussions.
	So I'm really in a quandary.
	And the quandary is not philosophical.
	That's exactly the thought.
	Yeah, that's exactly, that is basically the script of what I figured the conversation would begin with.
	And I don't see that.
	I don't see it. Here's the thing.
	I don't see it. I don't see how he would just like, oh, I never thought about it that way.
	Wait, wait. No, no, no. But that's the intellectual language.
	That's really good. You sure are.
	Don't get drawn to the intellectual arguments about that, in my opinion.
	I would not get drawn into that, right?
	Because the issue that you fundamentally have, he's not a judge now, right?
	So that's all done.
	What does it particularly matter?
	If he's retired, yeah. Yeah, if he changes his mind right now, I mean, so what?
	I mean, I hate to say it.
	To me, there's somewhat of an argument from effect here.
	You know, he's somebody who's massively invested into the existing matrix, right?
	Into the existing status paradigm.
	He's been that way his whole life, his whole career.
	Right, but he's around the infliction of state power.
	This is why I don't run around in hospital deathbeds saying, you all need to change your minds.
	There is no God and the state is bad.
	They're three minutes from dying.
	I know he's 70.
	He's not three minutes from dying or whatever.
	But there is, to me, in terms of return on investment, so to speak.
	Well, that's my point about your grandfather.
	That's my point about grandfathering him.
	I'd rather not like, ah, it's too bad for you that I had to get involved in this kind of conversation by the time you were nearing the end of your life.
	And we had this great relationship with your grandson, and now because of my principles, I'm just going to make our relationship that much harder.
	And that's not very exciting to me.
	Yeah, this guy was not abusive.
	What's you doing? He grades great values.
	He stimulated your thinking.
	And, of course, for many years, you agreed with him, right, about the necessity for a state.
	You disagreed about the extent, but you agreed with the basis.
	I used to want to follow in his footsteps.
	I used to want to be a lawyer and be a judge.
	I used to want to do the same thing.
	Right, so you could pull out the thermonuclear against me argument, you could do all of this, and I can almost guarantee you that you will end up with a big smoking crater where your relationship with your grandfather would be, because I think that for him to look back upon that which he is the most proud of, and say that this in many ways was shameful and dishonorable, although we can understand the lack of exposure to alternate...
	exposed judges to a lot of anarchist literature for obvious reasons.
	So this is what I would say.
	And if he keeps coming up with these arguments about politics, to me, it's perfectly valid and an honest thing to say is to say, I think that I know that I'm no longer a libertarian I have gone to a different place when it comes to politics.
	I think that we're not going to see eye to eye on this.
	There's a huge amount that I can talk about with you that I feel is enjoyable and positive and so on.
	News, weather, atheism, you know, whatever it is, family matters, the past, the future, and so on.
	There's a lot that we can have that's of great value.
	There's a lot that we can have conflict about.
	And I would really like to focus on that which has great value in my relationship with you.
	I think that if we go down this route of politics further, it's going to cause irrevocable harm to our relationship, which I don't want.
	Because there's a lot that's good in our relationship.
	So I would prefer it if we could, you know, stay clear of the politics and focus really on the stuff where there's agreement and shared values and so on.
	You know, if you value the relationship, and it sure sounds like you do, and I really appreciate you bringing this up, then to me, there's no such thing as a bad decision as long as it's conscious.
	Right? There's no such thing as a bad decision.
	I mean, when you're not initiating force of fraud, which of course you're not, right?
	But there's no such thing as a bad decision.
	You can choose to fence off a certain aspect of a relationship with people.
	I mean, we do it all the time.
	I mean, I know my grocer is not an anarchist.
	I'm still going to buy a head of lettuce, right?
	So we can fence off certain aspects of our relationships.
	You have to if you want to interact at all.
	As long as it's conscious, as long as you know that you're doing it.
	It's not repression if you're aware that you're doing it.
	And you say, well, okay, so I'm going to go see my granddad.
	We're not going to agree on this stuff, so I don't have to talk about it with him.
	It's not the end of the world.
	I mean, I don't have to agree with everyone about everything, and there's no relationship where everyone agrees on everything, right?
	Even I don't agree with myself on everything from day to day.
	So there's no relationship like that.
	So I would say, as long as you're conscious of making some restrictions in your relationship, you then don't even have to bring it up with them.
	If you feel that that is going to be, like if he's not a guy who talks about feelings at all, and from his generation, it probably wouldn't be number one on his list of topics, then you can say, well, I'm just going to let it roll off my back.
	That's an interesting aspect.
	Sorry, go ahead. Now, see, my grandmother, the woman he's married to, and it's actually – it's his – I guess you could call her my step-grandmother because it's my mom's stepmom.
	She's a psychologist, and she is constantly to the – And really to the irritation of people like my mother, she's constantly trying to get the family to work out their issues.
	I've been through some pretty intense interventions between my mother and my grandfather where they've really let it out on each other and things like that.
	And my...
	My grandmother is much younger.
	She's also been very close to me.
	She's also been pretty much educating me on philosophy and psychology ever since I was very young.
	Also very much of an impactful relationship in my life and my family.
	She was always critical of my family situation with my parents for various reasons.
	I do think that it would be...
	Here's the thing. She really, really loves me and appreciates me and really wants to have a really open relationship with me.
	And she wants to see the real me.
	I mean, she wants to know all the time.
	She's always inquiring, wanting to know what's going on with me, what I'm all about, what I believe, what my values are, all these things.
	So... Even though with someone like my grandfather, it's a little easier.
	And the way I was actually thinking about approaching it, if I was going to talk to him about it, was to talk to her first and be like, look, there's something I'd really like to be open with you both about, but I really especially don't think Grandpa's going to like it.
	And I am with her.
	I don't see how I can – just considering the amount of honesty I've had with her in our relationship, I don't see how I could choose to consciously not let her in on it somehow.
	I just feel like that would come out.
	Generally, if somebody's around me long enough, if somebody knows me long enough, then they pretty much get what I'm all about eventually.
	If they're the kind of person that I'm actually allowing myself to be around, On a regular basis, they're going to start hearing my thoughts on things.
	And that's kind of like my test, a litmus test, not the right word, not the right metaphor, but my test for who's going to stick around is how much they can take as far as What I'm saying.
	And the friendships that I value the most, the friendships that have stuck with me are the ones where I'm able to talk about things that I like.
	Like, for example, on Freedom Man Radio, or I get to talk about my values.
	Those are the relationships that stick.
	And the ones that can't get there, that can't go there with me, I tend to not call them as much.
	I tend to ignore them more.
	And I have that fear of...
	Of them being sort of beyond the pale, being too old, too propagandized, too much watching CNN, too entrenched in loving the president or whatever it is.
	I don't see with certain people that are older, the older people that I have relationships with, it's very tough to see that working out that way.
	That's frightening for me because I've never been at a point in my thinking where I thought that it was going to damage my relationship with somebody that...
	It usually was understanding pretty much anything I brought to them.
	And it's tough to think that I'm a part of some kind of intellectual change in the species that is so significantly destructive to old relationships.
	It's pretty heavy.
	It is heavy. And that's why philosophy comes with a massive warning label, right?
	It will cause massive explosions in your way of being.
	And I really sympathize with that.
	I've always tried to be upfront with people.
	And it is a great challenge.
	And I really, I got to tell you, I hugely respect philosophy.
	I really do respect that.
	There are choices in your relationships.
	If there are values that you have, that you share, as long as you're conscious of that, you can, at least in my opinion, you can steer clear of stuff that's just contentious for no point, without change, without growth.
	I would be honest, as honest as I can be, recognize that there is going to be explosions if you push the against me argument with a status judge.
	I mean, that's just going to hit the roof, right?
	So you don't have to do one or the other.
	You can do whatever you want.
	It's obviously a positive relationship.
	It's not abusive. There are differences in values.
	And of course, I think it's on your side.
	Okay, well, I have this question.
	Now, I'm pretty sure that that conversation would not work out to us just having a nice agreement or a nice discussion.
	So I'm wondering, because I'm tempted to, because I have this...
	I urge when I'm close to somebody and if somebody's, you know, if they're just, if I'm constantly having discussions with them and I'm just like biting my tongue, you know, like wanting to really just lay it out and it's, I mean, would that be kind of self-destructive of me to actually do that, going into it knowing that it's not going to work out?
	Wouldn't that be a bit self-destructive if I were to actually I mean, like, why would I have that urge?
	Why would I have that urge to, like, lash back out, right?
	Like, to fight back with that.
	I mean, that's a common...
	Well, because you get frustrated. I mean, this is natural.
	It's a natural feeling, right?
	You get frustrated listening to people stew status bullshit propaganda.
	Yeah, it's coming everywhere.
	Hour after hour.
	It's frustrating and it's enraging at times.
	There's no question. There's no question that's a natural and healthy, I would say, reaction to it.
	Now what you choose to do with it is up to you.
	I don't mind lambasting somebody if there's an audience, right?
	I mean, I'll have a debate. You know, I had one with, I think, Jan Helfeld where I went into him fairly hard, particularly in the after show, because there's an audience and I don't want to appear to be...
	Anything other than I am, which is very much committed to reason and evidence.
	And courage in the face of what I consider to be some pretty nasty arguments about driving me into the sea with tanks.
	So I think there's an audience who can see a sort of moral passion in what it is that you're doing.
	I think that's great. I had the debate with Michael Badnarik at Drexel last year where I was uncompromising.
	I like Michael a lot more than I like Jan, obviously.
	I was uncompromising in attacking the position, though not the person.
	To me, there's an audience there.
	If it's one-on-one and there's nobody to see, then to me, that's sort of pointless.
	That's like punching one of those bouncy clowns, inflatable clowns, and calling it a boxing match.
	There's sort of really no point to that.
	I think that would be a waste of time.
	But yeah, if there are other people, then I think lambasting somebody who's full of nonsense is offensive nonsense, right?
	I think that's perfectly fine.
	But it's a natural feeling, I mean, to be frustrated with people plugged into the bullshit matrix and the fact that they're also often self-righteous and superior and, yeah, that's annoying, you know, that you're surrounded by people who are incompetent.
	In their thinking and incompetent people always feel superior to everyone else, right?
	Only through competence comes humility.
	And so, yeah, it's frustrating to be lectured to by idiots who are wrong.
	It's, you know, I mean, just take a look at any of the YouTube comments below any of my videos.
	I mean, I'm sorry, but basic understanding of history and you don't know philosophy and you think, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Okay, you just pump us away and go on with your life and I'll actually try and get some shit done in the world, right?
	So, yeah, I can understand it.
	And another question I have for you.
	I've got a short one, because I do have to go and eat.
	We're already over. Okay, okay. One more thing.
	Okay. The problem of arrogance, I don't know if...
	Now, what do you think of that accusation?
	I do know you've heard of, of course, it's not an argument, right?
	It's usually the kind of ad hominem, just sort of like, you're arrogant.
	What would you say arrogance is?
	And what would you say is the problem with it?
	Because I've gotten that accusation a lot.
	I think we all have. I would say, to me, philosophically speaking, arrogance is the claim for knowledge or abilities that directly contradict reality and evidence.
	That, to me, would be It would be arrogant because arrogance is placing opinion above reality, right?
	It's turning your opinions into a kind of God and placing them above reality.
	So, for instance, atheists are often called arrogant, which is insane because the Bible is full of all this contradictory stuff.
	Just to pick on the Bible, it could be any book, right?
	Religious book. The Bible is full of all this contradictory stuff, right?
	And you talk to some religious person, right?
	And you say, you know, the Bible says that atheists should be put to death, right?
	That's offensive to me, right?
	That you have a book, like the KKK manual for hanging blacks is offensive to black people, and the Bible is fucking offensive to atheists because it says that we should fight for death.
	So excuse me for not being too friendly to your fucking genocidal book that has been put into practice more times than I can count around killing me and my brethren.
	But then, of course, the religious person will say, well, that's not supposed to be taken literally.
	So in other words, the religious person is claiming to know what God means.
	Right. So I know, see, God wrote the Bible, so God wrote that atheists should be put to death, but he also said, turn the other cheek.
	And I know which one God really meant.
	In other words, I'm smarter than God.
	That, to me, is unbelievably arrogant.
	To know what God meant, to know what he really was all about, what parts should be taken literally, what parts should be taken metaphorically, what parts are figurative, what parts are commandments, right?
	And they even say, well, there's stuff in there that's from God, and there's stuff in there that comes in through man and translations and this and that.
	In other words, they claim to know exactly what God really meant, but was unable to coherently express in the Bible.
	They know what God really means.
	My God, it's one thing to say, I'm omniscient and I know everything.
	But it's another thing to say, I know better than the person who's omniscient and knows everything.
	I know better than God.
	Because God got all confused with the Bible.
	See, but I can set him straight. I know what he really meant.
	So it's saying that I'm omniscient about the guy who's omniscient but made mistakes.
	It's actually saying that you're smarter than God to cherry pick from the Bible.
	And that to me is mind-blowingly arrogant.
	In the realm of statism, of course, it's the same nonsense, right?
	It's saying that I know that there are people who can virtuously initiate the use of force and force people to do what they want, and it's a good thing.
	I mean, that to me is unbelievably arrogant.
	I mean, if I picked up a gun and said, you all better do what I say, or I'm going to shoot you, that would be considered insane, narcissistic, arrogant, destructive, right?
	Of course, right? But somehow when you translate that into the state and the monopoly force that the government represents, suddenly that's not arrogant at all, right?
	That's something else. And so, to me, religiosity and statism are both unbelievably arrogant and imposing philosophies.
	And, of course, because they're so completely the opposite of reality, they're immune to testability, right?
	Right. Where this guy was selling bogus cures for, I can't remember, multiple sclerosis and I don't know, these weird illnesses.
	So he was selling these cures.
	These two guys were selling cures.
	They'd take $40,000 or $100,000 and they would, oh, we're going to inject stem cells and make you all better.
	And there was no proof for any of that, right?
	There was no proof for it and what they did was nonsense.
	And so 60 Minutes corners these guys and starts to get an investigation because you see they're taking money To cure people of real ailments when their cure doesn't in fact work, right?
	And I thought, you fucking cowards!
	You fucking cowards!
	Why aren't you sitting down with a priest?
	Why aren't you sitting down with a priest?
	At least these people's illnesses is fucking real.
	The cure's bullshit, but at least the illnesses are real.
	Original sin isn't even a real illness, and you're selling a cure to an illness that doesn't even exist?
	You're selling something called heaven, which doesn't even exist?
	I mean, come on!
	How cowardly do you have to be to corner these two loser fraudster assholes who are making a couple hundred K a year and ignore the fucking Vatican sitting on 30 billion dollars?
	I mean, come on!
	How ridiculously cowardly can you be?
	I mean, you can't sell sugar water over the internet and claims it cures cancer, but you You can sell a confessional booth and you can sell holy water that rids you of imaginary sin because a talking snake convinced a rib woman to make Adam eat an apple 6,000 years ago in a place that never existed.
	That's all perfectly legal.
	Not only is it legal and you'll never be prosecuted for fraud, you'll get fucking tax breaks and you'll be a charity.
	I mean, that's just how crazy it all is, right?
	But that would be my sort of one answer to the issue of arrogance.
	Okay, well...
	And see, I agree with that, and that's the thing, is that I don't ever feel like...
	For example, when I'm listening to you, I don't ever think, oh man, he's being so arrogant.
	I don't.
	And people that...
	That I think are making rational arguments.
	I don't ever get that feeling, but I always – in my experience, people that are not rational love to throw that word out.
	They love to break you down with that word.
	It's not an argument, right?
	Right. Arrogance is not an argument, right?
	It's like saying, well, you're too tanned for me to believe what you're saying.
	Yeah. Oh, shut up.
	You can't think, so stop talking.
	Stop making noise with your breathing hole, because it makes the same sound in my brain as pulling a dead squid's tentacle off a fucking window.
	Yeah. I mean, we need to put together a list of non-arguments that I continually get.
	Like, well, you're arrogant.
	Well, you're just plain wrong, but I'm sorry you've misinterpreted things.
	But no shred of evidence or argument in it whatsoever.
	Right? I mean, it's embarrassing.
	It's like all you're doing is making...
	You know, it's like watching a whale surface and go through its blowhole.
	That's what most people's communication to me is about ideas.
	Not you, my listeners or whatever, right?
	Regulars, but... They're just making noise and you're just typing with your monkey paws and making noise with your monkey breathing hole.
	It's cute, but it means nothing.
	Arrogance is one of those words.
	It's just, he's arrogant, you know, or he's so full of himself.
	There's no argument behind any of it.
	It's just a confession that he scares me and I'm going to throw a magic spell called arrogance at him, hoping that it will stop him from making me anxious.
	But it's nonsense, right?
	I also think it has a particular kind of ingrained effect on me because that was a common sort of breakdown that my mother used to give to me when I was young.
	If she did something that I thought was irrational or something that I thought was unfair or that I could clearly see was hypocritical, and I would bring it up because I was a pretty...
	I mean, I would fight back as a kid.
	I wasn't really like a hider when it came to those things.
	I mean, I kind of realized early on that I could out-debate her.
	So what I would do is I would debate her about these things.
	And when she couldn't continue with the debate in a rational sense, she'd always pull out all the stops, right?
	She'd pull out the big guns, right?
	Like, you're arrogant. I'm the boss.
	I'm... It's...
	I'm right because I'm just in charge and that's just how it is or – and that was always – that was just – that was always the insult.
	It was always something like – it was always – oh, you just think – you just think the whole world falls around you.
	You just think you know everything. Oh, you just think – oh, you're young.
	You're young. You'll understand this when you get older.
	You'll really understand it. I can't explain it to you now.
	Experience is going to teach you otherwise.
	Get off your high horse. Stop being so heavy-handed.
	Stop being so arrogant. This is all embarrassing nonsense.
	It's just monkey blowhole nonsense, right?
	I mean, it's basically like watching a cat sneeze and thinking he's made an argument.
	It's embarrassing. And what it is psychologically, right, is very simple.
	It's that what's happening is that when you bring reason and evidence to people who are full of bullshit opinions, they begin to self-attack because they begin to see that they're nothing more than those inflated fart-based bubble fish, you know, that you see sort of puffing up in Finding Nemo, right?
	Right. And so they begin to see themselves and there's a self-attack.
	There's a self-criticism that occurs because they're fundamentally false and making up nonsense arguments and pretending to have knowledge when they in fact have only gasbaggery, culturally-based nonsense opinions.
	And so they begin to self-attack.
	And what happens is the hot potato lands on them, like a red hot potato, a red hot rock lands on them.
	And because they're so wonderfully courageous and noble and heroic, what they do is they throw it at you.
	Yeah. They're just making nonsense noises.
	And that, of course, is a lot of what occurs, right?
	And it's kind of pitiful in a way.
	It is kind of pitiful in a way.
	I don't mean this about your mom. I'm just talking about my sort of experience.
	It's pitiful in a way.
	It is a confession of falsehood, of impotence, of manipulation, of helplessness.
	And it goes all the way back to, of course, truly tragic cultural programming in childhood and the death of the true self.
	So, to me, I just view it as...
	You know, like there are those horror movies where somebody dies and then, you know, the hand comes up, you know, on the autopsy table because there's some nerve ending that's getting twitched or whatever, right?
	But they're not alive.
	They're just making movement, right?
	And that's sort of what the brain does when people come up with those kinds of arguments.
	They're brain dead, but there's a reflex action that's coming out called ad hominid bullshit, right?
	Which is, you know, it's just like watching a corpse throw up.
	It's not indication of life, but rather a final expiration.
	Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
	It is quite sad to me that that's not more commonly understood, that that's not just a part of general social interaction.
	I was at a social event last night.
	I hadn't been out in a while, so I just went to a party.
	Sometimes it is tough for me to carry on a conversation very long when it's always just...
	I don't know how to describe it.
	When it's not going anywhere, when it's not getting to the root of anything.
	When it's... You will have some uncomfortable social situations.
	You may lose some friends.
	You may have people look at you funny.
	You may get difficult and unpleasant emails.
	You may even occasionally get down on yourself.
	You may feel cursed with a third eye that sees the truth that seems to turn the other two eyes off and somehow that's all you can see, like putting the magic ring on in Lord of the Rings, right?
	And you may experience all of these upsets and you may experience all these difficulties.
	And the only consolation that I can offer you is that you will actually have a gloriously happy life.
	And it's the only way to get.
	That's the only consolation that I can offer you is that, yeah, people will look at me and people will bitch at you and people will try and bring you down and, you know, broken brain reaction robots will lash out at you with their imaginary whips, which won't ever hit you because it's all in their heads.
	And the only consolation to any of that is that you live a great fucking meaningful life full of love, passion, devotion and excitement.
	That is the only consolation that I can offer for that.
	I think it's a pretty good deal.
	In fact, I don't think there's a better deal on the planet.
	But everybody, of course, has their own values.
	But I think you understand what I'm saying.
	Oh, and I already have experienced that.
	I mean, I already know that's true.
	My own life, since being more involved in the conversation, has taken a lot of positive turns.
	I'm self-employed now.
	I make a lot of money doing my new business.
	Before that, I was just sort of like Sitting in my room, trolling the internet all day.
	And I was always on the edge.
	This conversation really kind of took – I mean I was already pretty much mostly there.
	I was just looking for a way to formulate it all into words and organize it.
	I already – even when I was just like 14, 15, I was even – because that was when I kind of started becoming more of an atheist, and along with that, I was questioning everything.
	I wasn't just questioning God.
	I was also questioning the whole concept of having anybody in charge of you without a rational reason to be in charge of you.
	For a long time. And if they have rational reasons, they're actually not in charge of you, right?
	Right, exactly. I've chosen, I've given them that authority or something.
	Right, right. Yeah, exactly. Well, listen, I'm going to have to stop because we're way over, but I really do appreciate you bringing this up.
	It's a great time, and I wish you the best of luck.
	If you get a chance, do drop a line and let me know how it goes.
	And I hope that your grandfather and you were able to work out some amicable, even with some areas that you don't go, some amicable way of moving forward.
	And do let me know what happens. Alright, wonderful.
	Thanks, Seth. Thanks, man.
	Thank you, everybody, so much for listening.
	Thank you for joining the conversation, and I look forward to seeing everybody.
	So far, the barbecue is remaining in September, Labor Day weekend, and that may change, but I don't think so.
	So I hope to see everyone there, and I may be going down to Porkfest, so I hope to see you there as well.
	And thank you, everybody, so much for all of your support.

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