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July 11, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:56:06

1696 Freedomain Radio Sunday Show - 11 July 2010

A variety of listener comments, questions and issues.

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Time	Text
	Hi everybody.
	It is the 11th of July 2010.
	I hope you're having a wonderful, wonderful week and a wonderful day.
	I'm calling to you from the...
	It looks pretty much like my house is in a car wash.
	The deluge in Toronto is quite significant.
	I had to sprint out in my shorts earlier because hail was landing on the car, so I was waiting for it to be followed by frogs and possibly Pharaoh's eyeballs because it seems to be some sort of witchy winter curse to have hail at this temperature in July.
	It has been so hot, as Robert William says.
	It's hot in here. Damn hot!
	So hot in my shorts, you could cut things.
	And I've tried, but it still doesn't turn out that tasty.
	Like 40 degrees, 45 degrees with the Humidex.
	It has been just baking, and I like it.
	Although, I must say, it limits Isabelle's outdoor time just a little bit.
	But it's been really, it's been Greek heat.
	Yeah, but it's a wet heat.
	It's like living inside the lung of a man, living inside a tandoori oven in the sun.
	So, yeah, we did get some seriously heavy rain.
	But the good thing is, when you're too cheap to install a sprinkler system in your house, rain is a good thing because it means you have to spend a lot less time watering.
	And given the size of the property, watering is no small feat.
	So... I will recommend I was on Ernie Hancock's show and I unfortunately did not take the requisite perhaps 12 double espressos required to keep up at this level of energy if not value.
	But I met him at Porkfest and he's a big fan and he's been linking to FDR for years.
	And so I was on his radio show and out of that came another speaking engagement and the invitation to go on another radio show.
	So I hope that I'm doing y'all proud.
	I hope that you're enjoying the appearances that I'm making.
	I know that I represent the community perhaps more than most.
	So I hope that I'm doing you proud.
	The radio show is at FDR 1694.
	Close to 1700.
	Scary but true. And if there's anything that you think I could do better or differently, I'm always happy to hear.
	I'm always cautious about my self-appraisal of my public performances, so to speak, or my public interactions.
	So if there's anything that you think I can improve, I'm absolutely happy to hear it because I work for you and for philosophy.
	Not necessarily in that order.
	So I hope that you will check that out, 1694, and I'll be back on his afternoon show, which gets pumped out to even more radio stations.
	And now, also, just to remember, I'm going to date this podcast significantly, that if you want to come to the Freedom and Radio 2010 barbecue, I can't urge you strongly enough to come.
	I'm going to spend a minute or two just completely pimping the experience.
	I look forward to it every year.
	I have a fantastic time meeting everyone.
	I think you need to experience, even if it's only once in your life, I think you need to experience, if you're into philosophy...
	A place where you can go, where no question is offensive, where people don't get upset at curiosity, where there's honest and open and often very funny.
	I mean, listeners are very fast and very witty and very funny.
	I think it is a little slice of the future, I believe.
	It is a little slice of how the world could look.
	When philosophy runs things, the truth and reason and evidence runs things.
	And conversation ranges from just about anything you can imagine.
	We will absolutely have another karaoke night because I don't get to go to karaoke anymore except on the barbecue.
	So I'm looking forward to that.
	So I would strongly suggest that, you know, beg, borrow, buy or steal your way to get to the barbecue if you want to sign up.
	It's amiando.com forward slash FDR2010 and it's Labor Day weekend this September.
	You make your way up here and food and drinks are provided as our way of saying thank you, thank you, thank you so much for your support of Freedom Aid Radio.
	So come and eat and drink to your absolute heart's content and simmer In the benevolent, munificent jacuzzi of bubbling, well-salted and energetic philosophical conversation to mix more metaphors than a blender.
	So I hope that you will be able to come at least once.
	You should try it. I think if you try it, you will be able to come back.
	Yeah, people bring musical instruments.
	There's singing, there's guitar, there's cello.
	It's absolutely fantastic.
	So... I would really, really recommend that you give it a shot.
	Of course, I love to meet listeners.
	I've got a bit of a flow of listeners coming through who I'm going to be meeting up with.
	I absolutely love meeting listeners and having you all around to sit and chat with and interact with.
	It's a real joy and a real pleasure.
	I hope this is probably going to be the last year that we'll be able to have it At our house, because it's getting so big that we'll probably have to take it to another venue next year, but I would give it a shot.
	Please come, if you can, and please go to ameando.com forward slash FTR2010 to sign up, because that way we know how much food to order and how many drinks to get.
	All right. We...
	We have a show and the show is on and I don't have any big introduction.
	I've been working on some stuff this week.
	I'm continuing to work on a new book, which is a great deal of fun.
	And I am preparing another video.
	And I noticed that on YouTube, I think it was within the last week or two, I don't know exactly when, We passed three million views and that's of course just one of a few actually quite a few websites where I publish the videos although it is the bulk of the video views but yeah three million which I believe is about I mean if you if you put it together the largest most popular most powerful philosophical conversation in the in the history of the world 2500 years in the making and 25 years of preparation for me equates to about Eight and a half seconds of a Lady Gaga video in terms of the number of views.
	So you can either go through 2,000 podcasts odd and books.
	Or you can just listen to, I want your ugly, I want your disease, I want your...
	That's about it. That's about all you get.
	So the equivalence in terms of the world's value is there.
	But at least we're up to 10 seconds of a Lady Gaga video rather than zero seconds of a Lady Gaga video.
	So we will take the positive reception of the world when we can.
	So, let's have some questions, some interactions.
	You can type your questions into the chat.
	You can ping James the P, and you can ask to be called, or you can, sorry, you can call in.
	I just asked for the number in the chat room.
	You can call in if you only have a phone of Tele's, telephone, and I look forward to your questions and comments.
	Do we have anybody on deck?
	I just have one little follow-up announcement.
	And hopefully my audio quality isn't too bad right now.
	There are still either two or three, I have to double check, but two or three rooms at the group rate available for the FDR BBQ around Labor Day.
	We can always see if there are extra rooms available, but if, you know, there are two or three left, you know, there's a thread on the board.
	I'll make sure that it's, you know, linked up to the Amiando site.
	But, yeah, you know, I mean, Basically, you've got to let me know that you're interested and I'll give you the hotel information so you can reserve it.
	So just go ahead and find the post or go to the Amiando and link up there.
	Two or three rooms left.
	If there's more, we can always try to ask for more rooms.
	But just so people know, that's our block that we currently have reserved.
	And that's it for the bidness philosophy.
	So now we're open to conversations, questions, issues, problems.
	Somebody says, there has been a lot in the alternative press recently about the possibility or inevitability of a U.S.-led war with Iran coming at some point this year, possibly even leading into some kind of third world war.
	What are your thoughts on this and what do you think that peace, justice, loving people should do to counter this march to war or should do if and when war breaks out?
	I don't believe that there's going to be a war with Iran.
	I think that there is a consistent pattern in statist societies, and I'm not the only one to mention this.
	Some of the people that I've interviewed have talked about this, the economists and political scientists.
	The pattern is that when the fiscal bullshit of statism has run its course, and we're very close to that as it stands, When the fiscal bullshit of statism has run its course, when, as Margaret Thatcher once pointed out, socialism doesn't work because you always end up running out of other people's money.
	They've pillaged the rich, they've pillaged the poor, they've created the super-rich to bribe themselves with the government, that is.
	They have pillaged future generations, they've pillaged foreigners, and they are on their last legs fiscally.
	There is an enormous temptation To start a war, to attack another country, or to provoke an attack from another country.
	And the reason that people do that is because there is going to be a catastrophic decline in living standards because of the fiscal slaughterhouse of statist policies.
	And how do you get people to accept a drastically reduced standard of living?
	Well, you get them together under the guise of the You get them together under the guise of an external threat and that external threat then creates the magic spell called sacrifice wherein people are encouraged to tighten their belts for the common good and this is how societies deal with At the end of statism,
	the last throes of a particular statist incarnation, whether it's democracy or fascism or communism, whatever, is that they will always try and provoke a war.
	We saw this, of course, at the end of communism.
	I think Russia spent, what, 10 years in Afghanistan, which was one of the factors that led to the collapse of the Soviet economy.
	Of course, this was the late Republic of In Rome, this was the British Empire.
	Whenever fiscal policies reach their incredibly and inevitably destructive ends, there is an impulse to start a war.
	I don't think that there's going to be an outbreak of war with Iran.
	There already is, there already are so many wars going on in the world and so many...
	I mean, to me, having a...
	Having a military base on foreign soil is an act of war.
	I mean, if China attempted to set up a military base in Times Square, that would be considered an act of war.
	And America has, of course, 700-plus military bases all over the world.
	So America has already effectively declared war on the world.
	There are two active wars.
	There are a large number of We're good to go.
	So there already is enough of a conduit to have all of that stuff going.
	I think that it would be tough to sell the U.S. population on Iran being a threat.
	So I think that what will happen is there will be...
	The way that I think it's going to work, and nobody of course can tell for sure, but the way that I think it's going to work is...
	The US is going to start withdrawing its troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, which is exactly what Al-Qaeda does not want the US to do until the US collapses fiscally.
	And so the US is going to start withdrawing its troops And Al-Qaeda is going to attack and cause large numbers of U.S. casualties either in Iraq and Afghanistan or perhaps on American soil.
	And therefore there's going to be an escalation of the war where the U.S. troops are already stationed and that's going to be why everybody has to tighten their belts and sacrifice for the common good and accept lower standards of living and so on.
	And this is going to fall fairly hard, I believe, on some of the elderly and some of the rich.
	It's going to fall on the poor, as it always does.
	I don't believe that there will be a draft, but there will be all of the usual big brother bullshit for pulling together for the common good.
	And you don't change horses in the middle of a stream and sacrifice and fighting America's enemies and battling for freedom, truth, goodness and virtue and all that kind of stuff.
	But this is how you're going to get people to make the sacrifices that are inevitable when you are at the stage of late empire.
	So I don't believe that there's going to be a war with Iran.
	I don't believe there's going to be a third world war.
	See, political leaders...
	Politics is a magnet for chicken shits.
	I'm sorry for all my swearing, but that's the kind of mood that I'm in.
	I've been doing research on national debts all day, or at least while Izzy was sleeping, in preparation for my conversation tomorrow.
	And politics is a haven for chicken shits.
	People who...
	who don't like direct confrontation but rather like using charm and empty narcissistic sociopathic charisma to manipulate the population as a whole who love to be manipulated so they don't have to take a stand for any kind of virtue in their own lives and so because politicians are fundamentally cowards Particularly, politicians who are interested in war, because politicians are essentially cowards, they don't want to put themselves in situations of danger.
	And there's no possibility that there will be a third world war, because, since the invention of nuclear weapons, Politicians cannot, the political class, the economic elite class can no longer count themselves safe behind the lines, right?
	So they don't generally go into the front lines.
	There are a few exceptions. For instance, Winston Churchill in World War I. But for the most part, the reason that you don't get nuclear war is because it would hit the class that profits from war and they don't want to die any more than you and I want to die.
	So there's not going to be a third world war.
	But there will be an escalation of conflict which will be used to sell people on their lower standards of living so that people will ignore the status policies that have killed the productive Western capitalist economies and they will say, well, we have to reduce our circumstances for fear of an external threat and that's how it's going to go down.
	Yeah, listen, I mean, don't get drafted.
	Just don't. I mean, I don't think there'll be a draft.
	And the reason there won't be a draft is that conscription doesn't work.
	I mean, the vast majority of soldiers who are conscripted don't shoot people.
	They shoot to miss, or they don't shoot their weapons at all.
	But they don't... They don't shoot to kill.
	It takes a very specific kind of personality to murder.
	And so they get the conscription.
	It's just a way of filling up a bunch of trenches with people who aren't going to fight in order so a few people who are kind of evil will actually do the killing.
	And it just doesn't really work. I hope that was a useful answer.
	Of course, I'm not claiming any prognostication, but that's what I think is going to happen.
	Yeah, I mean, what is going to have to happen Over the next 5 to 10 years to entitlement programs is unimaginable.
	It's going to be absolutely stunning what is going to happen.
	I think it is next year that a significant portion of baby boomers hit 67.
	You have to wait until you're 67 to retire in order to get the maximum benefits.
	And Social Security has been in the red, I think, since early this year.
	And when they all start to hit, for instance, up here in Canada, over the next few years, The proportion of retired to employed people is going to go from 20% to 27%.
	That is monstrous.
	That is monstrously high parasitism upon the old, upon the young.
	And the reason I say parasitism is not because I think that old people shouldn't get help if they need it.
	Of course they should. But it's a parasitism because the old people at the moment are the richest generation in the history of the planet and for them to pillage and rape the economic futures of the young after selling them into slavery through the democratic process of national debts.
	It's monstrous, monstrously unjust.
	My deal for the old people is quite simple and I may do a little video on this so I'll just keep it short.
	That might deal for the old people.
	You just ask them, hey, you always told us younger people that democracy put you in control of the political system, right?
	So were you in control of the political system?
	And if they say yes, then they say, well, okay, then you created a system that was unsustainable and I don't want to pay your bills, right?
	Unless, right?
	Unless you say sorry.
	Unless you say sorry.
	But if you were in control of the political system and you set up this ridiculous system where by the time you need all this money from the young people, you've already put them in debt, I think, in Canada per person.
	It's tens and tens of thousands of dollars, depending on how you calculate it.
	Some people say it's over $100,000 per person of total combined government debt and unfunded liabilities, similar in the United States.
	So you say to the old people, if you were in control of the political system, then just as you taught me when I was six goddamn years old, you're responsible for your actions and you have to accept the consequences of your actions.
	So if I showed up for a test and I hadn't studied or I'd forgotten when the test was, I didn't get to say, oh, sorry, I didn't study.
	I forgot when the test was. And people say, oh, well, that's okay.
	You can take it next week.
	Go home and study. They'd say, no, no, no.
	You, at 6 or 7 or 8 years old, have to be responsible.
	You have to be responsible for the consequences of your actions.
	And I really do feel, call me crazy, but I really do feel that a moral standard that is applied to a 7-year-old might equally justly, if not more justly, be applied to a 70-year-old.
	You're old. And so if they say, yes, we were in control of the political system, then I say, well, I'm sorry.
	Actions have consequences. If you supported a political system that did nothing to save for your retirement but blew the money on whatever social programs and government perks it wanted at the time, well, actions have consequences.
	And so there's no money.
	And if you were in control of and supported this political system, then I'm very sorry, but you're going to have to rely on charity because actions have consequences as you all taught me when you were teaching me at the age of seven.
	Now, if they say, no, we had no control over the political system, the political system got out of control, and it has been decades since we've been in control of it, then I'm much more sympathetic.
	Because then we can say, well, we need to replace this political system with something else.
	Because if we're out of control of the political system, then it's no longer just, no longer represents and reflects the will of the people.
	And so we need to change it.
	And then we can all sit down, young, old, middle, aged alike, and start planning out-of-state the society.
	And then I'm actually perfectly happy to fund the retirement of older people because at least they will have fessed up that the system sucks, that it was out of control, that it was used to pillage.
	I mean, just the last thing I'll say, just because I want to make sure that I get this off my chest before we get to the next question, if there is one.
	I mean, all of the entitlement programs that went in in the 60s and 70s were all funded by debt.
	All funded by debt.
	Do you know how ridiculous that is?
	Canada socializes, communitizes the entire healthcare system.
	And it really is free.
	It really is free. Because...
	Everybody who got that didn't see a corresponding increase in taxes to pay for it.
	Because you can't pass government programs if you raise taxes to pay for them right away.
	Because then people just say, well, this is pointless, right?
	I used to pay 500 bucks a year for a doctor, and now I'm paying $1,000 a year for socialized medicine in my taxes.
	So let's stop it. Let's not do it.
	Let's roll it back. The only way it works is if you defer the cost to the next generation through debt financing you borrow.
	To bribe the existing population and then shaft the people in the next generation with the bill.
	And the people in the next generation inherit a much more degraded system Than the one that was initially socialized.
	Because when you socialize a private system, you get all of the work ethic and organizational structure and resource allocation that exists that is driven by market demand.
	You socialize that, it actually looks like what people want.
	A generation later, it's completely changed to reflect what the bureaucrats want, to reflect what the ugly sold sociopaths want.
	And so you end up being stuck with a bill and a much worse system, which is what I think the younger people have every right to be royally pissed off about in the world today.
	So yeah, if they say, hey, we were in control, then it's like, well, as you taught me when I was seven, actions have consequences and you have to accept the results of your actions, which is that you supported a system that didn't put any money aside for you.
	So I'm sorry, but actions have consequences.
	This is called accountability and responsibility.
	And if they say, well, no, we don't have any control of the system, then great.
	Let's sit down, put our heads together, help the old for their honesty and their recognition of the limitations and immoralities of the existing system, fund them to their heart's content, and work out a better system.
	But, of course, neither of those things is going to happen.
	I have a question.
	Sure. Wondering if there's any particular value in having an RTR conversation with one's parents if one has already decided to defoo from them?
	That's an interesting question.
	Is this you?
	Yeah. All right.
	And again, if you could just move your mic away, you're breathing into it, which is creating quite a rumbling sound.
	I'd appreciate that. And have you had RTR conversations with your parents prior to making this decision?
	No. It's been pretty clear that my experience and my thoughts and feelings aren't really valued and will be attacked in some way.
	I haven't really had to have those conversations to get that.
	I'm sorry to hear that, man.
	I really am. I really, really am.
	Okay, let me ask you this.
	When you think about taking a break from your family, do you feel that you have a doubt about the wisdom of that course of action or do you feel that you have a significant degree, if not a complete degree of certainty about that decision?
	For me, I see pretty much all sunshine and rainbows for once I get out and I'm separated.
	And I've been mostly living apart from them for much of the past three years.
	But it's more the separation process that I've got anxiety about and ambivalence.
	Can you tell me more about what you mean?
	Well I guess I had made a post on the board about it but I was just kind of wondering like I guess I kind of want to do it right so to speak even though I know there's not a one correct answer and I wanted to I guess I didn't want to,
	like, run off into the night without a word if there was something of particular value that I would be missing out in if I would go back and have particular conversations with them.
	And I wouldn't plan on going back if I just, once I leave, so it's kind of now's my chance to have whatever conversations with them that I need before I leave.
	And what conversations do you think that you need?
	Well, I know I was just kind of wondering from those who have been through that if there's anything that I might be missing out on if I did that or if I left without having a particular conversation with them about it.
	I guess to kind of reassure myself that there's nothing that I'm missing or if there is something that I might miss doing that just to...
	Perhaps go back or go there and get it if that's of value.
	Yeah, I mean, no one can say for sure, of course, right?
	I mean, there's no one who can tell anyone else any kind of certainty about these situations.
	I can tell you my thoughts and my experience, and it may have some use to you, but again, the final decision obviously rests with you.
	Do you think that would be helpful?
	Yeah, yeah. What I found was that I had conversations with family members where I attempted to discuss the problems that I had and hopefully I was hoping to get to the chance to ask for changes in behavior from people.
	Really according to their own standards, not even particularly my standards.
	Like everybody will say, you shouldn't yell, you shouldn't call names, you shouldn't write all that kind of stuff.
	And so I was just asking people in my family to live up to their own standards of behavior in their interactions with me.
	And... I didn't even get that far.
	I mean, I didn't even get to anyone admitting that there were any problems, let alone that there could be some way to resolve them.
	Now, in my experience, if I couldn't even get people in my family to admit that there were problems with the past or with the present, then for me, it would be irrational to anticipate that That behavior will change, right? I mean, I've always heard and I'm sure you've always heard that, you know, the first step is to admit you have a problem, right?
	That's the first step in solving a problem is to get that you have a problem.
	And in my family, and it's just my family, my experience, but in my family, I couldn't even get people to admit that there was a problem.
	That anything negative had happened.
	That any problems had occurred.
	I mean, my family is fairly extreme when it comes to this kind of stuff.
	And nobody would even talk about there being a problem.
	And so for me, given that I was not going to continue with the relationship, and I use that word very loosely, I was not going to continue with the relationship as it was, as it stood, as it was.
	So in order for the relationship to continue, I needed changes.
	But because people wouldn't even discuss, wouldn't even admit there were any problems, and they wouldn't even admit that there were any problems that I might have in my head, right?
	Because some people will say, if you come to them and say, well, I have a problem with X, Y, and Z, they can say, I can see how you might feel that.
	I don't agree with you, but I can certainly understand how you might have experienced it that way, if that makes any sense.
	But in my family, we didn't even get that far.
	It was just a blank, glassy, stone-faced, you know, icicle curtain wall of denial.
	There was nothing. And so, for me, the way that I got closure in the decisions that I made regarding my family of origin was that I tried my best, and I've always suggested this to people.
	You try your absolute best to connect, to talk about the issues that you have, to try and find some way to move forward in a relationship that is improved, that is, you know, where you have a voice, where you have some standards that are, That are objective, that are valuable, that are not esoteric standards necessarily.
	Everybody has to be an anarchist and an atheist.
	What I mean is just the basic standards of decent human interaction.
	Respect for the other person, even if you don't agree, listening, accepting other people's viewpoints, working to improve things that are problematic.
	And to me, these aren't even big philosophical issues.
	These are just the basics of human relationships.
	So, because I couldn't get any admission of problems from my family, and I was not happy at all.
	In fact, I was very unhappy with where the relationships were at.
	I had to just look at that and say, well...
	There's no... And this was after months and months of working on it.
	I said, okay, there's no chance of change because I can't change them.
	I can't change them.
	I can tell them that I'm not happy and I can tell them that I would prefer for things to be different and I can say what I would like, but I can't change people.
	They can only change themselves and in order to change themselves, they have to admit that there's a problem.
	Even if they only think that problem is within my mind and we have to work on it from that perspective, But, so I had to say, well, this relationship is miserable for me.
	I'm not happy. I'm not fulfilled.
	I'm not visible.
	I'm not treated with respect.
	I'm not listened to and so on.
	So I'm really not happy with this relationship.
	If it's not going to change, do I want it in my life?
	That's really what it came down to for me.
	If there had been movement towards change, if there had been some sort of acceptance that there was problems.
	And, I mean, the problems that I was talking about were significant violence, emotional, physical brutality.
	I mean, these weren't, you know, well, I stubbed my toe and got mad at you when I was seven and therefore, right?
	I mean, the stuff in my family was...
	I mean, it was...
	It was illegal stuff, right?
	I mean, beating kids' heads against the wall.
	I mean, it was stuff that was actually not legal.
	It was criminal behavior. And so it wasn't that subjective a thing that was sort of just in my head.
	I don't feel respected and there's no evidence for it.
	I mean, there was very specific things that I had problems with.
	And those things were not admitted as even having happened, let alone needing to be fixed or discussed.
	And so I got closure just by really saying, I'm not happy.
	Things need to change. And the first thing that needs to change is we need to start dealing with this stuff that happened as a family.
	We just need to start. We need to put it on the table.
	And we need to start talking about it honestly and openly.
	We can do that with a therapist.
	We can do that individually.
	We can do that collectively.
	But we need to do this stuff.
	Because I'm just not going to continue this cycle of lies and repression and violence in my family.
	I'm just not going to do it. Because I knew then, even back then, I knew I wanted kids.
	And I also knew. That I don't have the right to expose my daughter to abusive people.
	I don't have that right.
	I don't have that right.
	It's not my choice to make any more than I have the right to let her walk along the edge of a high wall when she's 18 months old.
	Because it's too much danger, right?
	And so I hope that this is somewhat useful.
	If you are miserable with the relationship, If you genuinely know, and I think there is a stage where we can know these things, if you genuinely know that things aren't going to improve, And if you also have experienced or genuinely believe that attempting to improve things will make it worse.
	Because if you just kind of freeze in a relationship and you don't bring up what you want, you can kind of get by, right?
	You can kind of get by like a ghost can get through a house, right?
	You can kind of get by. But when you actually start to bring your needs, your preferences, and some reasonable basic ethics to a relationship, it changes everything.
	Then it's do or die.
	Then it's make or break. Then the relationship either gets better.
	Or it gets worse. You know, it's kind of like if you're in the woods And there's a bear snuffling around you and you freeze and the bear doesn't leave.
	Then you're kind of, you're frozen.
	It's not getting, the situation's not getting better and it's not getting worse.
	And then as night falls and you get thirsty and whatever, right?
	Then you need to make a break for it.
	And if you make a break for it, you're either going to get away or you're going to get eaten.
	And that's not a great metaphor for family relationships.
	But what I mean is that if you start expressing your preferences and desires and bring the real you to the relationship, Then it's either going to get better or it's just going to get worse.
	But it doesn't stay the same because you're no longer self-censoring.
	And so, yeah, if you feel that it's not going to get better, if you believe that it's not going to get better, if you have every piece of reason and evidence that it's not going to get better, and it's miserable, then to me, the choice is clear.
	Again, everyone obviously can make their own decisions when it comes to that.
	But that's how I approach it.
	And that's why I do say, talk, talk, talk.
	If you're done, right, if you're clear that at least for the time being, and it sounds like this has been the case for the past three years, you said, If it sounds to you, like if it genuinely feels like it's done and done and done and you don't have any desire to continue the relationship, at least for the time being, then I'm not sure what value a conversation would have.
	And the last thing I'll say before asking you sort of what you're thinking about all of this is that there is held aloft above families and some other things as well, but just talking about families.
	There is held aloft this belief That in order to move forward in your life, in order to get closure, in order to get completion, in order to unlock your heart to love and happiness and all of these things that can be good in your life, that you need to get something.
	You need to have something from your family, right?
	Like this stereotype, which is that if you're estranged from your father, when your father is dying, you need to go and talk with him on his deathbed so that you can resolve things, so that you can forgive, so that you can move on, so that you can do all of these kinds of things.
	I don't believe that's true.
	I'm not saying it's not true.
	I'm just saying I don't believe that it's true.
	And I don't believe that people gain value because they're dying.
	I also don't believe, and I'm old enough now that a number of my friends' parents have died, I also know that the deathbed does not change people.
	You don't turn into a different person.
	On your deathbed. Your heart doesn't melt.
	You don't get a different brain.
	You don't get a different relationship between your amygdala and your frontal lobes.
	You don't become a different person.
	You don't switch from man to woman.
	You don't become three feet taller.
	Bald men don't regrow their hair.
	You don't become a different kind of person when you're on your deathbed.
	And so this idea that floating above your family of origin is some sort of key to your future that they have to grant you.
	And in order to get that, you have to find some way to connect with them.
	I think that's a mirage.
	I think that's an illusion.
	And I have always talked about, from my experience, that my life, when I... And although it was really hard, and of course, the hardest thing I've ever done was...
	It was separate from my family of origin.
	And I always recommend, you know, don't do it without the consultation of a good therapist.
	And you've heard all my spiels about that.
	But it was the best decision.
	That I made. I mean, second only to marrying my wife.
	It was the best decision that I made in my life, which is again, it's not for everyone, but I can certainly speak from my experience that my life improved enormously, enormously.
	I became me.
	I became who I am. Because I was living by my values.
	And of course the fundamental value that I live by is the non-aggression principle.
	And it applies to my family as much as it applies to everyone else.
	Sorry for the long speech.
	I hope that that's of some utility to you.
	Yeah, it was useful.
	I know, I guess, dividing from that into what I've seen, that kind of, I think, lays the path for me.
	My family's pretty well shown me already what happens when we bring concerns to the table that don't even necessarily implicate anyone in particular as being at fault.
	The result was not fun and not something I'd like to go through.
	It was just a complete stonewalling silence until we moved on as if nothing happened, which was horrifying.
	Right. I'm so sorry.
	I'm so sorry. And just, you know, to give you two sacks of not, it's not around forgiveness, but just sort of an understanding is that What we talk about here, and I mean, we're not the only people to talk about it, but it's a fairly prevalent place to talk about it.
	What we talk about here is pretty unprecedented.
	I mean, the idea that, I mean, 200 years ago, the idea that a woman could separate from an abusive husband was unthinkable.
	Unthinkable. And when the idea was introduced, everybody who introduced it got, you know, attacked and mad and so on, right?
	And the reason for that is because it seems very unlikely to me that your parents did what you're doing with their parents.
	And their parents, it's very unlikely, did what you're doing with their parents.
	Which is to say, I need to treat this relationship with the respect of all of my relationships.
	I have to have a UPB standard for my relationships.
	I can't have much, much higher standards for my voluntary relationships than for my involuntary relationships.
	Surely you should have higher standards for your involuntary relationships than your voluntary relationships.
	They should at least be equal, but the involuntary ones, you should have much higher standards of behavior.
	I have higher standards of behavior for my interactions with my daughter than anyone because she has no choice about having me in her life.
	She has no choice. She didn't choose me.
	She didn't choose to be born.
	She didn't choose this family. And so I have to have the very highest possible standards in a sense to compensate for that lack of My wife can leave me.
	My daughter really can't.
	And so that's where I need to have my highest standards.
	The idea that these UPB standards would apply to the family and the family of origin first and foremost and only then to others is a very new and obviously to some people quite a troubling idea, though philosophically it's ironclad.
	It's incontrovertible philosophically.
	That at least the standards of behavior should be equal.
	I think the argument is very strong that they should be superior for involuntary relationships.
	And so, when people treat their children badly, it is in some ways, in some very fundamental way, it is because It is not considered a voluntary relationship, or not that it will ever be a voluntary relationship.
	So if it's just never possible for adult children to not see abusive parents, what that does is it allows people to treat their children worse.
	It doesn't cause, it doesn't force it, but it allows them.
	Like if your wife could never leave you, then if you were an abusive husband, you'd have much less limits on your behavior.
	And so, in a sense, what you're doing is unprecedented in the mindset of people.
	And so, in some ways, they may, in a sense, have no fundamental context for what it is that you're doing.
	And that doesn't, for me, mean forgiveness or anything, though it may for you, but I think that's an important thing to understand in terms of where your parents are coming from.
	Right. Thanks. Thanks for your time.
	That's really helpful.
	I'm so happy.
	And again, you don't have to get into it here, but please, please, please, please do see a therapist.
	I'm looking into that right now.
	And again, please, please accept my very deepest sympathies.
	It is a... It is a desperately difficult, desperately sad, and desperately hard thing to go through.
	And I just really, really wanted to extend my deepest, deepest sympathies to you for that.
	Thanks. All right.
	We have time for a question or more.
	Did I miss a question in the chat?
	Yes. I had a question about the APA virtues that you performed in FDR 1685.
	Yes. You said that the APA virtues would be how freedom would be spread.
	I was wondering if you could explain more examples of that.
	Well, so for instance, one of the topics that comes up quite a bit is, do you intervene if you see a parent mistreating a child?
	And there are times when I think you absolutely kind of have to.
	Obviously, if you see a parent beating a child in public, then you have to intervene.
	And I don't mean by that that you intervene like you throw yourself in unless you're big and appropriately scary, but you would call the cops or you would find something.
	You have to because that to me would be like looking at a drowning kid thing.
	And then there are times where it's, you know, some parent snaps at their kid like, oh, Johnny or something like that.
	And that may not, that's not exactly ideal parenting, but I don't think that you need to rip off your, you know, reveal your Superman costume and go in because that, I mean, that could just be a short-tempered parent who's having a difficult day and they may apologize later.
	That's a bit, but those two extremes are fairly rare.
	So the question is, right, I mean, when do you intervene?
	And another question, of course, is if you genuinely believe, right, this basic equation that I've talked about for many years, which is that it is incompatible with love for someone to advocate the initiation of violence against that person,
	right? Through my support of state policies, even after it's clearly explained to me, I support the use of violence against you, that I think you can't Reasonably put those two things together.
	I love you and I support the use of violence against you for disagreeing with me.
	I think that is...
	When it's put that clearly, it's hard for people to disagree, though it is very tough in actual relationships.
	So another question is, how long do you attempt to get someone to see the gun in the room Before, you say, okay, now they clearly understand they're advocating the initiation of force against me for disagreeing with them.
	That is very much against my values.
	If I'm going to hang on to these values, I have to recognize that this person is acting with great hostility towards me, with greater anger and destructiveness towards me, and maybe I want to not see this person or have this person in my life.
	Now, how long do you work to persuade someone?
	I don't think it's fair to say, you know, read this article by Steph and then give them five minutes after they've read the article and say, right, are you an anarchist?
	No, I'm out of here, right?
	I mean, that to me would be unreasonable because it takes time to reevaluate one's core beliefs.
	So, how long do you invest in attempting to get somebody to see the violence that they're advocating against you?
	There's no clear answer to that, I think.
	It's an APA thing.
	It's an instinctual thing. So, you know, the way that freedom spreads, in my opinion, is that...
	You know, you're trying to turn a ship, right?
	You're trying to turn a supertanker.
	You throw a great anchor over the side.
	The anchor catches in something on the bottom of the ocean and that is what turns the ship around or sinks it.
	Hopefully it turns it around, right?
	Hopefully it turns it around. And so the way that You change and bring freedom to the world is through integrity to principles because in any conflict between two positions, the more consistent position will always win if it's presented and portrayed with all seriousness and consistently and with integrity.
	And so those things are APA. You know, how long Do you hang on to relationships where the person is now openly and consciously advocating violence against you?
	There's some answer, you know, probably, certainly more than five minutes, probably less than five years, right?
	But when? And how do you approach people and how do you talk to people in such a way that you inspire them towards virtue?
	Rather than bully them away from vice.
	I mean, these are all challenging questions.
	And they're not around...
	They're not these flagpole questions.
	They're not these, you know, there's three guys in a boat, who do you eat first questions, because those are things that we never encounter.
	There's not, you know, do you open up minions of the state when they come to collect their...
	I mean, we're not going to do that. And almost nobody does that.
	And that's not a part of...
	And I'm glad that they don't do that.
	That is not something that we face when it comes to ethics.
	What we do face when it comes to ethics and spreading freedom is how do we bring integrity to our personal relationships without appearing as a closed-minded bully but also with sticking to our principles.
	Well, those are all very complicated and challenging questions and I believe the answer to that lies in the unconscious.
	It does not lie in the conscious mind.
	Libertarianism is hyper-conscious as a philosophy.
	And philosophy, generally, Western philosophy is hyper-conscious.
	Eastern philosophy is hyper-unconscious, right?
	Without understanding that it's the unconscious because it's around mysticism.
	And mysticism lives in the unexplored unconscious or in the gap between the clarity of consciousness and the infinite processing power, it seems, of the unconscious.
	And so libertarianism historically And Western philosophy as a whole has been hyper-syllogistical, hyper-rational, and has not hooked into the power of the unconscious, in my opinion.
	And the people who have hooked into the power of the unconscious tend to be anti-philosophical.
	They tend to be, you know, Bertolt Brecht and very left-wing, even Matt Damon, those kinds of guys, very left-wing thinkers.
	And so, how do we spread freedom?
	Well, we spread freedom by hooking into the power of the unconscious and doing all of this tricky balancing act of aesthetically preferable actions rather than UPB, which...
	If the gods are kind to us, we will never encounter a UPB situation, right?
	We will never encounter a situation of third-party self-defense.
	We will never encounter a situation of opposing rape, either personally or...
	Hopefully, we will never, ever encounter those situations.
	What we will encounter is the infinite complexity of moving people's perspectives from bigotry to reason, from historical inertia to future clarity.
	And that is where the unconscious comes in because the unconscious will help you with APA in a way that your conscious mind simply can't reason out that quickly.
	What do you mean by the unconscious exactly?
	I mean, if you're thinking about it rationally, isn't that conscious?
	I'm sorry, can you just repeat that last bit?
	What do you mean by tapping into the unconscious?
	Because if you're thinking about it rationally, isn't that a conscious process?
	Well, so for instance, I believe that dream analysis is an essential part of self-knowledge, right?
	So if you have a vivid dream and you may have heard me working with people, and hey, I'm happy to do dreams again if people want to bring them back.
	I quite enjoy that. And I think it's a useful examination of what goes on in terms of self-knowledge.
	I think that looking at trying to understand the root causes and root thoughts behind your feelings, trying to understand the degree to which your history has shaped Your reactions to things, trying to understand your dreams, trying to understand the larger and deeper picture of your life rather than looking at the detritus of the everyday.
	Scientifically, I mean the reason that I talk so much about the unconscious is that scientifically it has thousands of times more processing power than the conscious mind.
	And that does not mean that the unconscious is always right.
	I think that's very, very important.
	The unconscious and the conscious mind are a relationship.
	You don't throw your conscious mind into the sea of the unconscious and call that self-knowledge.
	Neither do you focus only on the conscious mind and reject the unconscious as irrational garbage and call that self-knowledge.
	It is a partnership. They are two aspects of knowledge.
	It's like saying which light is better, a laser or sunlight?
	Because laser is very focused light and sunlight is very diffuse but lights up everything.
	Which light is better? Well, it depends.
	Sunlight is not going to do much to correct your vision.
	A laser will do a lot to correct your vision.
	Sunlight isn't going to do much to read a Blu-ray disc.
	A laser is going to help you quite a bit in those situations.
	So neither light is better or worse, right?
	Say we only have sunlight or we only have lasers.
	Well, lasers aren't going to help you if you want to walk through the woods.
	You'll be waving that laser pointer around and stumbling around, right?
	You want to have light to be able to do that, diffuse light.
	And for me, the conscious mind is like a laser.
	It has very specific and precise goals and characteristics and capacities.
	The unconscious is more like sunlight.
	It's not focused, but it lights up everything.
	It lights up everything. Even if, right, if we look at what I'm doing right now in talking to you, and what I'm doing right now in talking to you, how much of this is coming from my unconscious and how much of this is coming from my conscious mind?
	Well, the majority of it is coming from my unconscious, right?
	So I'm pacing back and forward in my study.
	I'm gesticulating in my gay Roman way.
	I am breathing.
	I am noticing things that are occurring in my body.
	I have a little bit of sweat under my armpits because thinking is hard work.
	I am not consciously Deciding every word that is coming out of my mouth.
	I am not consciously deciding when to breathe in order to make the words come out of my mouth.
	I am not consciously shaping my throat and my teeth and my lips and my mouth in order to make these sounds.
	I'm not doing any of that.
	But it's all occurring because the unconscious is about 90 to 95 percent Of what it is that I'm doing.
	Now I've trained myself to hopefully be a decent communicator in these areas in the same way that an athlete trains himself to hit a ball or bounce a ball or swim or whatever, right?
	And so when it comes time to the actual competition, The athlete has trained himself to the point where he can do it without much conscious focus.
	So because I have consciously worked very hard to improve my communication skills over the years, consciously worked very hard to achieve self-knowledge, consciously worked very hard To get the fluidity of thought and expression that hopefully characterizes at least some portion of my communication because I've worked at that for 25 odd years it happens fairly fluidly now and that is a partnership of the conscious intention of attempting to improve my communication skills and the unconscious talent ability and repetition which trains the unconscious to make it more automatic so even in terms of communicating To you right now,
	it's mostly unconscious, but that is because of my conscious intention to improve my speaking capacity over time.
	And so it's a partnership, and that's what I'm sort of suggesting.
	Okay, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
	Okay, that's about all I have.
	Good, because I could go on, but I don't want to if it makes sense.
	I don't want to oversell if it makes sense to you so far.
	So to train your unconscious, you just do it through repetition and through just practicing self-knowledge?
	Well, yeah. I mean, so for instance, if you want to be a singer, right?
	I mean, the first thing you do and it's a – anybody who likes to sing, it's a grueling process to actually hear yourself.
	The first thing you do if you want to be a singer is you record yourself singing and you play it back and you say, does this sound nice, right?
	And then if you notice that you don't hit this particular note or this is a little pitchy or this is a little wobbly – Then, you know, you maybe go to a singing teacher and you learn your diaphragm breathing and you learn your throat relaxation, that you don't tighten the throat to get to the higher notes, but you relax into your whole body and so on, right? And then you continue to practice and you continue to tape yourself and listen back, right?
	So consciously you're saying, okay, well, I didn't hit this note.
	I can hear that. Although, of course, it's your unconscious that's processing that.
	And so consciously you say, okay, well, I'm going to go to a singing teacher or...
	At the very least, I'm going to change the way I think about notes so that I can come in slightly above the note.
	So it sounds like I'm coming in slightly above the note, which means I'm going to hit the note and so on, right?
	So you're going to have a conscious plan based on your conscious goal and action of recording yourself singing and playing it back and so on.
	And so it's that combination of...
	And you're doing that in order to train your unconscious so that when you become a singer and you go out in front of an audience and you sing...
	You're passionately connecting with the music and you don't have to think about, am I hitting this note?
	And you don't have to think about, where am I putting my hand?
	And you don't have to think about, you know, are my balls itchy?
	Did I trip, right? Is my shoelace untied, right?
	You want to just be connected to the music, connect with the audience, right?
	So when I gave my speech in Porkfest, I must have practiced it probably a dozen times and I had to adjust it on the fly because my time was shorter than I thought.
	But I was doing the speech. I was really focused on connecting with the audience.
	I wasn't really thinking about what the hell do I say next?
	You know, or am I holding the mic too close?
	Because I, you know, through karaoke and so on, I've done a bit of work with microphones.
	I have some idea of how to work with them.
	It's a bit of a drag to have a handheld one, but it really is about that.
	And when I was doing the debate on agnosticism, because I've consciously focused on putting these arguments together, and of course I've listened to that.
	I'll give you one other example.
	And sorry, do we have anyone else who's got a yearning-burning question just now?
	Going once. Alright, I will give you another example of how the unconscious can help you advance the cause of freedom in a way that your conscious mind cannot.
	So if you're in a debate, let's say you're in a public debate with someone and they're jerking you around.
	And let's say that anger is an appropriate emotion to being jerked around.
	I happen to think that it is. And by jerked around, I mean they're just changing their definitions, they're moving the goalposts, they're manipulating you, they're making fun of you, they're putting you down, whatever it is that they're doing that's, you know, destructive bullshit, sophisticated debating techniques.
	At what point do you get angry?
	At what point do the gloves come off?
	Your conscious mind, your conscious mind cannot answer that.
	Cannot answer that. If you get angry too soon, then you look volatile.
	If you don't get angry at all, I think you look uncertain.
	You look weak. You look like you don't really take ideas seriously at all.
	So, the question is, when do you get angry?
	And when you get angry, how do you express that anger?
	In a way that A, you know, establishes boundaries and so on.
	But B, in front of the audience, gets them to understand that you're being jerked around and you're appropriately angry without them thinking that you're an enraged lunatic, right?
	That is a delicate balance that really has to do with the authentic emotional experience and when the anger comes from the unconscious, expressing it openly and consistently and non-destructively, assertively, not aggressively.
	You can't plot that out in the conscious mind.
	That is something that is a partnership between the conscious and the unconscious mind.
	So when the anger comes, you don't just repress it.
	You have that fork in the road, right?
	Your conscious mind says, do I express, do I not express?
	Am I right in feeling this, or am I bad and wrong in feeling this is going to repress it?
	Well, your conscious mind is going to make that choice, but it's in the unconscious that the expression is going to come out in a fluid, passionate, and powerful way.
	And that's another example, I think.
	Okay, thanks for taking my question.
	Thanks, and I hope it wasn't my usual complete over-answer, but let's find out.
	Hey, Steph, I have, I think, a genuinely quick question for you.
	I have a genuinely non-quick answer, so that sounds like a good question.
	Great, I can't wait. So, I've really been enjoying the libertarian parenting A series that you've been working on, really great stuff.
	And I was wondering whether you've had any moments in the interviews that you've had so far where you felt that you didn't quite agree with the other person's take on parenting, like you felt that there were some slight philosophical differences in the way that you address parenting and the way that the other person does?
	You're totally trying to get me in trouble, aren't you?
	Yeah, I think I understand.
	I think I understand the question. And there were only two moments that I had thoughts about.
	One was when I was talking with Steph Kinsella, and he was talking about how he would say to his son, touch this hot pan, and his son would say, no.
	I understand where he's coming from about don't trust any authority, even me.
	But I wouldn't do that myself as a parent.
	I don't want my daughter to think that I might be Attempting to lead her into doing something that may be dangerous.
	I mean, obviously, I know he wouldn't let his son touch the hot pan, so I'm not saying that.
	But I personally wouldn't do that, though I don't consider that a particularly major issue.
	I just want that sort of trust and respect thing to go 150%.
	So I don't want to Yeah.
	Yeah. Yeah. That was something that we could have had quite a discussion about.
	And we could have, and maybe we will in the future, but this was a show about parenting, not about the ethics of Christian fables, so I decided not to dig into that.
	Right, right. Okay, that's it.
	Yeah, but I thought other than that, it was great, and I certainly have some more coming up, and I appreciate people's stuff, got some very positive feedback on that, and I hope that it really helps people.
	Awesome. All right.
	One more question.
	Hey, I don't really have a question.
	I just sort of wanted to...
	I'm going to chat a bit, just to sort of let people know, I guess.
	It came to me that I should mention it.
	I managed to do a successful local meetup with some people.
	And I just wanted to, you know, publicly thank the people that came by.
	And, you know, just to recommend that if you are sort of isolated, you know, it seems isolated, you don't know if people are around, just keep throwing the hooks out there because, you know, eventually, it seems, eventually, you know, someone will pick up the hook.
	You know, just sort of as an encouragement to people.
	And this is the first time that I've actually been able to attract people to a meetup locally.
	So just as a point of encouragement, I hope, for people.
	And I'm looking forward to the next time we get together.
	Yeah, I completely recommend that as well.
	Philosophy is a conversation.
	Philosophy is not a book.
	Philosophy, me to the contrary sometimes, is not a monologue.
	Philosophy is not a set of syllogisms.
	Philosophy It is a conversation.
	It is a conversation with yourself, and it is a conversation with other people.
	Because we only need philosophy, at least we only need ethics, because of other people.
	It is in the world that philosophy really lives, not on a desert island.
	Ayn Rand to the contrary, in my opinion.
	And so, given that philosophy is a social endeavor, In action, it should also be a social endeavor in theory.
	And the more you can talk to people about philosophy, the better.
	And I would really, really try to work that out.
	There is, of course, on the website, people who have signed up for the website are available.
	At least some of them are available on the map.
	And you might want to send messages to people through the website who live close to you so that you can...
	You can chat with them.
	I think that's really important.
	I mean, certainly the value of Free Domain Radio is in the conversation.
	It is not fundamentally in what I'm doing or what any individual listener is doing.
	Fundamentally, the value of the show is in the conversation, and that's something that I think you should avail yourself of as much as possible.
	I think there was a question that popped up there.
	Did you want to read that off?
	Should I read it off? Go for it.
	Somebody asks in the chat, why do people assume This seems like a very personal question, but I'll go ahead and ask it and maybe you can ask for some clarification.
	Why do people assume that after having either neglected and or abused themselves physically and or mentally, and as a result, need some manner of help, that they are then entitled to my charity?
	That's a good question. That's a good question.
	I mean, I think I have an answer for that.
	I don't know if it's true or not, but it's certainly the way that I think about it, which, you know, you can, of course, as always, take or leave as you see fit.
	But I don't think people have to be conscious of this, but I think it's a very, very important aspect of people's experience if they've been abused in their family or by their caregivers.
	There is a great challenge in society in terms of taking society's self-proclamations of virtue with any real seriousness at all.
	Because society as a whole and individuals in general will tell you That they're virtuous, that they're good people, that they're good providers, they're good family men, they're good family women, they're good brothers, they're good sisters and so on.
	And society as a whole has instituted vast multi-hundred billion dollar social programs with the express purpose and intention of helping the poor.
	Of helping the poor, of helping the disadvantaged, of helping the ignorant, and so on.
	That has been the goal of all of these programs, and it's really the foundation of the need for statism.
	The need for statism originally was to protect you from immorality, and when that was largely done as a result of improvements in parenting leading to far fewer criminals, then what did the state have to do?
	Well, the state then had to invent not protecting you from harm, but rescuing you from want, whether that want is knowledge or medicine or food or shelter or whatever.
	So it turned from the protection from a negative to the imposition of a positive obligation.
	And society claims, every society claims to be virtuous and every person in that society just about claims to be virtuous.
	Yet, yet, yet, yet, if you are a child who was abused, you have moved through this society where everybody is dislocating their shoulders from strenuously patting themselves on the back for their goodness so hard.
	You move through this society like a shark.
	Twenty fathoms underneath some swimmers.
	You move through the society being abused at home with the cries and sometimes the welts and bruises and black eyes of your abuse visible so often to people.
	And you have moved through the society that claims so much virtue and has dedicated so much of its massive wealth and productivity To helping children and helping the sick and helping the old, helping the needy, because it's all so much about charity and virtue.
	And you see that everybody goes to movies and reads books wherein the hero overcomes incredible obstacles in his pursuit of I mean, when you're a kid, it's the superheroes.
	When you're an adult, it's other kinds of heroes, action heroes, thriller heroes, the Humphrey Bogarts and the Arnold Schwarzeneggers in certain films and these kinds of guys.
	That the heroes dodge bullets to rescue the maiden, that the hero climbs mountains and has sword fights in order to protect the virtue of the innocent.
	And so everywhere around you, you hear protestations of and portrayals of virtue and courage and integrity and nobility and goodness.
	And yet, and yet, and yet, and yet, no one does anything about your abuse.
	I mean, do you see why children who are abused So often grow up to be takers.
	So often grow up to be addicts or criminals or abusers themselves.
	Because, because, because it is wretchedly, abominably, fundamentally stomach-turning to hear the chest-thumping proclamations of infinite virtue from everyone around you who's not picking up the phone to call the cops when you're being abused.
	That virtue is a form of sick, hypocritical self-theater.
	Self-theater.
	Ah, up here in Canada, right?
	It's called Canada the Good.
	Canadians, oh, they're so nice.
	Canadians, they're so good.
	Canadians, they're so helpful.
	Well, I was abused.
	Physically, violently.
	In an apartment building where everyone could hear for many years here in Canada the good and no one did anything.
	My mom was institutionalized in our wonderful socialist healthcare system and nobody lifted a finger to help her kids who had to go and get jobs and take in roommates in order to pay the bills.
	Nobody. Nobody sat down and said, my God, your mom's not here.
	How are you guys doing? What can I do to help?
	Let's call social services.
	None of the teachers. None of the parents of my friends.
	None of my friends. No one.
	None of the caseworkers.
	None of the psychiatrists and psychologists that she saw.
	Not her doctor, who had her committed, and who was my doctor, and my brother's doctor too, and who knew all about our family situation.
	This is not about me, but this is just an example.
	The same thing happened in England.
	The same thing happened in Africa.
	It wasn't just one place.
	It happened among my rich friends.
	It happened among my middle class friends.
	It happened among my poor friends.
	And how the hell do you reconcile this?
	Everyone talking about, oh, we in Canada, we help the less fortunate.
	We help the needy. We help the put-down, the put-upon.
	And yet I sailed through society being mercilessly flogged and beaten.
	And no one lifted a finger.
	In fact, they all sided with my mother.
	And so, I'm not saying this is true for everyone.
	I think it is true for a hell of a lot of people who've gone through this kind of situation.
	But I think what comes out is...
	People look at society as utter complete, fundamental, Mariana Trench deep bullshit.
	That people don't really care about the unfortunate.
	People don't really care about the victims.
	People don't really care about the downtrodden and the beaten upon.
	That when they hear a kid getting beaten up, they just turn up their TV or they put on some headphones or they go out or maybe they even enjoy it.
	I don't know. I don't know.
	And so this is how you train a child to be a nihilist.
	This is how you train a child to be a taker.
	This is how you train a child to be a thief.
	Why do people steal?
	Why are they thieves? They are thieves and they steal because they were stolen from.
	People steal because they were stolen from.
	And what is stolen from children is the protection of the society that praises its own virtue so mightily.
	That is too busy composing endless operas and essays and novels to its own virtue to actually damn well do something to protect children from abusive caregivers.
	People lash out at society.
	People feel entitled from society because they have experienced the infinite bullshit Of supposed social ethics.
	And because they don't believe anything that anyone says.
	And because they're very angry.
	And there's a special kind of anger.
	I dare say we can call it rage.
	There is a special kind of rage that nestles in the human heart and lashes out like a viper striking out from a cage of ribs against those who fully understand virtue and fail to act upon it.
	That is a special kind of anger.
	A society that openly hates children and hurts them and does nothing to protect them, at least it's not hypocritical.
	But a society which says, oh, children are everything and tender and protect the children and stand up against the evil and do the right thing even though it costs you.
	And we admire the World War II soldiers for going without food and water for days and fighting and risking their lives and so on.
	But I'm not going to step in if I see a child getting abused.
	I'm not going to make a phone call if I hear a child being beaten.
	Well, these are people who have the virtues in their heads and do the opposite.
	And there's a special kind of rage that people grow up with about that kind of hypocrisy.
	And so when people who've been abused become addicted or who become criminals and so on, it's because their childhoods were stolen from them by the hypocritical indifference of those who claim that the highest virtue is courage in the face of evil it's because their childhoods were stolen from them by the hypocritical indifference of those who claim that the highest And so they feel entitled.
	I'm sorry.
	They feel entitled.
	And unfortunately, because they have seen hypocrisy practiced so widely in society, particularly when it comes to the protection of children, because they have seen that so widely, they swallow that jagged, bitter pill whole.
	And they say, well, if all is hypocrisy, if all is hypocrisy, if all is manipulation, if all is self-serving, hypocritical, moral bullshit designed to cover up your indifference to the suffering of others, Then by God, that's how I'm going to live.
	I am going to live in the same squalid, ethical, distorted self-reflection of virtue that society squats in.
	I'm going to live that way too, and I'm going to use statements of virtue to cover up my complicity in crimes against the innocent.
	And I'm going to take as I was taken from and I'm going to proclaim virtue and live the opposite because that's all that I experienced and that's all that I saw.
	And so that which has hurt you the most you then become because you can't see any other way.
	It is my hope that this conversation can open up another way.
	Mr. J.L., you have a question.
	Hey, Steph. Yeah, this is sort of on topic with...
	Can you hear me? I sure can.
	Okay, this is sort of on topic with the parenting thing and talking about some of this others.
	I'll just get to it.
	I was thinking about this for the last couple weeks, how a lot of children's movies are very sad.
	Right now there's one actually in theaters that's kind of popular.
	And I remember this as a kid, some of them being just, you know, you can name them, or the red fern grows, you know, stuff like that, fern gully.
	And I was wondering what you thought about really emotionally gripping children's movies.
	Do you think it's manipulative?
	Do you think it's saying, here's a situation, you should feel bad for this deer because her mommy died and stuff like that?
	Or do you think it's a good thing?
	Do you think it teaches children how to have empathy and something like that?
	Hmm. Hmm.
	Can you just ask a little bit more?
	I just want to make sure I get the full...
	It's a big question, and I want to make sure I get the full context, so if you could just talk a little bit more about it, if that's all right.
	Oh, sure, yeah. There's...
	You know, Toy Story 3 is kind of a sad movie.
	There's... My robot.
	Oh, like Finding Nemo, right?
	Where the mother is dead? Yes.
	Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, you know, some of those, you know, I wouldn't say are traumatizing, but when I saw some of them as a kid, you know, I remember them for a long time, and I was really sad, you know, when I was a little kid.
	But I look back on them fondly, so I'm thinking, you know, maybe...
	Maybe they weren't emotionally manipulative.
	Maybe they sort of taught empathy.
	I feel I'm very sensitive in that way.
	So maybe that taught something.
	I don't know. But maybe they also might be emotionally manipulative.
	I could see that. You know, like giving anthropomorphic qualities to animals and how you should feel bad for eating animals.
	I mean, it could be, you know, a big signal.
	I don't know. I never got that from Bambi or whatever, but, you know, somebody might.
	So I'm just wondering what your view is.
	Do you think that, you know, really emotionally charged children's movies are positive or negative to the child?
	I mean, I think that's too broad a question to answer, and I'm certainly not an expert in children's films.
	For the most part, I did not enjoy Children's films when I was a kid.
	I didn't like them.
	I found them weird. I found them way too sentimental.
	I mean, I remember when I was a kid in boarding school, they used to show us movies every week.
	I only remember two of them.
	One was, I think it was called The Longest Journey about dogs and a cat and, I don't know, a wombat or something trying to get home or something.
	And I don't remember much about it other than they ran through the woods a lot.
	And I think there was a bear at one point.
	And And the other one, which was wildly inappropriate, was called The Omega Man with Charlton Heston, which gave me nightmares for weeks.
	It was just completely traumatizing film to show to children who were six and seven and eight years old and away from home for the first time.
	Some of them, some of us, I guess.
	And of course, even if it had been my mistake, you wouldn't keep that film running.
	You'd stop it, right? I just remember that being wildly traumatizing.
	But I've never been a huge fan of children's films.
	E.T. was weird and creepy, and the second half was just really stupid.
	But I will say that there is a group fantasy, in my opinion, throughout the world, and it's less so in the West, but it's still there in the West.
	There is this group fantasy. That does not deal with negative parent behavior.
	I hate to keep beating the same drum, but this is the issue and I'm going to give you my honest opinion about it, of course, as I always strive to do.
	So I don't remember, and I'm sure I'm older than you, but I don't remember when I was a kid that there was a children's film out there that traced bullying and To the actions of parents, right?
	So the kid who's a bully, right, comes from a bullying home.
	Some of the older, some of the stuff that's more recent and older traces that out, right?
	So, for instance, oh gosh, what was it called?
	Freaks and Geeks was about, I think it was about 10 years ago it came out, which is a depiction of kids' lives when they were in the 70s, I think it was.
	And there was one girl played by a woman who's now on Cougar Town, I think, and whose name is A Day of the Week.
	I can't remember. Maybe somebody can put it in the chat window if they know.
	And she was a real bully and a cold witchy woman.
	And there was one episode where they showed her home life, and you could sort of understand where it came from.
	But... In children's movies, there's so often an evil, and the evil is always outside the family.
	And that is not where evil arises, right?
	So children don't...
	They don't...
	The vast majority of children who are hurt do not experience hurt from anyone other than their own parents.
	That's 80% or 83% or something if I remember the statistic of abuse is from the parents.
	And I don't remember when I was a kid ever seeing that a child was facing danger from his or her own parents.
	I think that's just something that is not able to be processed.
	And stuff which is not able to be processed is either completely absent or everywhere, right?
	So I think for children's films to take a step forward, I think that they need to, in a sense, street-proof children with regards to the actual dangers that children experience, which are within the home.
	And I think that a lot of the Harry Potter stuff and a lot of the Disney stuff is around.
	I mean, in the Disney films, the parents are all dead or gone, with the exception, I think, of 101 Dalmatians.
	And that, of course, is a way to put the children in situations of risk and danger without implicating the parents, right?
	So the parents are gone and then there are bad people who kidnap.
	The children, right?
	So in Pinocchio, Giuseppe is a wonderfully, kindly, lovely old man, but then Pinocchio is kidnapped by these terrible people, and in the same thing, right?
	So in Peter Pan, Peter Pan's parents are Wendy's parents, they're these wonderful, kind people, but then they go into this adventure where there's this guy with a pirate hook, and this is all very silly, right?
	A crocodile with a watch in it, because children face that kind of danger all the time.
	So the parents are removed and the danger that most children experience who are abused, which is from their parents, is then projected into Voldemort and Captain Hook and all of these other silly beasties that have nothing to do with the dangers that children actually face.
	So to me, it's just a massive amount of propaganda.
	In Soviet Russia, the danger that you faced came from your own damn government, but all of the Soviet propaganda films had Western spies parachuting in and infiltrating and counter-revolutionaries and Trotskyists and all of these people infiltrating and these foreigners and exotic people and these were all the dangers, which is bullshit. The danger came from your own government.
	Right? Like, the American government does the same thing.
	All governments do, right? The American government says that what you have to worry about is Al-Qaeda, you see, not your own U.S. government, which has 5% of the world population and 25% of the world's prisoners in jail, right?
	So they say it's not the government that you have to worry about.
	It's guys in turbans 3,000 miles away.
	And so in the same way, I see that children are not given honest and accurate descriptions of the dangers.
	If they are going to face them, the danger is going to come from their own parents.
	Or extended family, or most likely, right?
	And so to me, there's this massive blank spot where children are taken out of the picture of what children experience, and then these wild, incomprehensible, never to really be experienced dangers are portrayed.
	Which children are never going to face.
	And I think that is not honest.
	That is not true.
	That is not reasonable.
	That is not valid. That is like playing, if you could play movies to slaves in southern plantations and say that the real danger they face is being adopted by space aliens, it would be ludicrous.
	We would understand that that would be ludicrous.
	And so, you know, in Finding Nemo, the mom is gone, and then the danger that Nemo faces is being scooped up by a scuba diver and thrown into a dentist's fish tank.
	Well, that's not the danger that children face.
	And think until art can accurately deal with the dangers that children actually face.
	Then it's going to continue to put these dangers into these...
	It's going to take the parents out of the equation and it's going to put these dangers into these weird, abstract, supernatural, nonsensical things that children will never face, which is a way of actually avoiding the reality of the situation.
	And in situations that I've seen where you do actually see abuse from caregivers, the caregivers must always be presented as sympathetic in some way.
	Right? So in a movie with Sandra Bullock, If you want to ask her for it, let me just double check her if somebody knows.
	It's about the black kid that she rescued from the ghetto.
	I think someone's just typing it.
	Is it called By All Means?
	No. I think that's somebody else who was typing that.
	Let me just get that. Oh, someone's typing now.
	I think it's like the wide side or something like that.
	I'm not sure. Let me just say, Sandra Bullock, Oscar.
	Oh, the internet.
	You don't have to know anything anymore.
	For...
	Blindside is the blindside.
	Is it called the blindside? Yeah.
	Right. Okay. So in the blindside, this kid has been atrociously treated by his mother, who I think is a drug addict and has had, I don't know, a number of kids by a number of different dads and so on.
	And so at least there's some connection between the child's homelessness and lack of social skills and so on.
	There's some connection between that and his home life.
	But in the scene that Sandra Bullock plays with the actress who plays this crack addict mom or whatever, the mom is played sympathetically.
	And look, I can understand why people are drawn to that.
	I can understand why people are drawn to that.
	I really can. But you know who's portrayed unsympathetically in that movie?
	Is Sandra Bullock's kind of bitchy ladies who lunch high society friends.
	They are portrayed very negatively.
	They're kind of mildly racist, they're shallow, they're materialistic, they're this, they're that, they're the other, right?
	So in the hierarchy of human values, this is what is so insane when you look at culture philosophically, right?
	In the hierarchy of human values, abusing and abandoning and failing to provide for your children to the point where they're wandering around homeless, having been beaten and abused to the point where they have incredibly violent tempers themselves, that we have sympathy for.
	Being rich and slightly insensitive to life on the other side of the tracks, that must be morally condemned.
	That is so mad.
	It's so mental. That is the challenge, right?
	So in every piece of art, you have to have a protagonist, most, and an antagonist.
	And I know that The Blind Side isn't a children's movie, but the pattern still remains clear that you simply almost never see The abuse is against children that if there is abuse occurring the vast majority of times, statistically, don't get mad at me, these are just the facts, statistically it's the parents, and it's just not something that's dealt with.
	There's all this thing about street-proofing your kids, and I would really like to see a movie where a kid was being bullied by another kid, understood where the bullying came from, which was the abuses of the parents, and got that kid some help, and the parents were You know, dealt with in some manner, whether that was, you know, jail or whether that was rehabilitation or something, but there was that kind of intervention.
	That, to me, would be teaching kids about a virtue and an empathy and a goodness that they could actually achieve in their own lives.
	I really hate, as those who've seen my heroism videos understand, I really loathe and revile and detest The endless projection of virtue into the realm of the supernatural and the superheroic and the alternate reality and the alternate dimension that a movie where a kid helped another abused kid where the parents were accurately portrayed That would be something that children could actually achieve.
	Think globally, act locally.
	I've taken that to heart when it comes to philosophy.
	But that is not something I anticipate.
	And the only reason that I can think as to why we don't see that is that there are too many parents out there who aren't proud of what they've done.
	That this movie simply couldn't be made and it couldn't be sold.
	It's an interesting take.
	I appreciate it. I was thinking another example of, and this is not a children's movie either, but the movie Forrest Gump, the female protagonist, is shown as an abused child and you actually get to see her grow up and become this really messed up person who gets into drugs and all this and eventually gets AIDS and dies or something.
	I mean, it's really terrible. But I thought that's an interesting, you know, one of those few that actually does portray it.
	But again, you know, that's not a children's movie.
	It's not a children's... A, it's not a children's movie.
	B, I saw a few minutes of that when I was working out on my way to New Hampshire.
	We stayed at night in Montreal.
	I went to the gym because I'd been driving all day.
	I needed to work out. And I saw a few minutes.
	I forgot how explicitly religious that film is, which is probably one of the reasons why.
	Like, it's really, really, really religious.
	And I just sort of wanted to point that out.
	But the other thing, too, is that...
	There's no justice for the father in that film, right?
	He just vanishes.
	And I think that's really important.
	Because in most movies, the bad guy gets his comeuppance, right?
	What are those cheesy lethal weapon films like Danny Glover with that South African bastard, right?
	No way you get to live!
	No way you get to live! I mean, he was just an embezzler, right?
	But I think that, if I remember rightly, it was Robin Wright who played the woman in Forrest Gump.
	Oh, this is like, it's embarrassing how much I know about popular culture, but there it is.
	She was raped by her father, if I remember rightly.
	And it's been a long time since I saw the film, and I only saw it once.
	But she was raped by her father.
	And in most movies where there's an evil guy, the evil guy gets his comeuppance, right?
	Yeah. But he vanishes from the film and there's never any revenge.
	And I also don't believe that anybody gives her moral sympathy and clarity with regards to what she experienced as a child.
	Forrest Gump is too childlike, in a sense, too retarded to be able to do that for her.
	But of course, if she had had someone...
	Give her moral clarity about what occurred for her as a child and sympathy for the evil, the incredible, immense, bottomless evil that she experienced, then it's my belief.
	It's my belief that those are the two ingredients that most help people who've been through that kind of history.
	But yeah, I mean, Hollywood is obsessed with punishing evildoers, but child abusers either vanish or are portrayed sympathetically, with very few exceptions.
	I remember seeing a movie called Kindergarten Cop with Arnold Schwarzenegger where I think he beats up a guy who is physically abusing his child.
	Which is, again, a pretty fantastical response, which I guess if you're Arnold Schwarzenegger you could probably pull off, but that's not how people should deal with abusers.
	That's not the kind of real courage that you need to deal with this kind of stuff.
	But I do remember that being one sort of glaring instance where that was considered to be justified.
	Oh, and also in a film called Mr.
	Mom, Michael Keaton punches out a guy who simply raises his voice at his child twice.
	And that, of course, is considered to be a virtuous thing to do as well.
	Despite the fact that you're showing the kid that violence is an acceptable solution to disagreements, even rudeness.
	Anyway... I appreciate the conversation.
	A person in the chat room pointed out that Matilda would be another example of an exception.
	I thought that was a fantastic book, and I never saw the movie, but the book was really good.
	I don't know. Oh, okay.
	It's pretty...
	Well, the book's good anyway.
	But I appreciate the conversation.
	Thanks, Steph. Thanks.
	We've had a question in the chat room.
	How do you get the courage to stop self-abusing?
	It's a big topic, and I would be happy to...
	Somebody's asked, is there a moral obligation to give to the poor?
	No. No, there's not a moral obligation to give to the poor.
	Moral obligations are UPB. So there's a moral obligation not to rape someone, and that person has the right to shoot you if you're going to try and rape them, in my opinion.
	But when it comes to charity, I think it's an APA. I think it's a useful and good thing to do.
	I certainly do my part to help the world charitably, both through FDR and through other means.
	I would not shoot somebody who did not give to charity.
	And ethical absolutes, ethical obligations are really where the gun comes into play.
	And so if you don't want to pull out the gun, then it's not an ethical absolute.
	Do we have any other verbal questions?
	Otherwise, I'll put a few comments out about this self-abuse thing.
	Going nuts. Okay, so the question is, somebody's asked, how...
	Let me just make sure I get the question right.
	How do you get the courage to stop self-abusing?
	Well, that is a big question, and I'm not going to be able to provide any kind of expert answer.
	But I will tell you my thoughts and hopefully they will be of some utility to you even if you dismiss them and find that they're completely useless and ridiculous, in which case you've at least eliminated one possibility of an answer.
	So, this is how to stop self-abusing.
	The term self-abuse is difficult and it's complicated, as it should be.
	But there are two ways that people look at this word.
	The first is that myself is being abused.
	My identity, my essence, my soul, for want of a better word, my being, my personality, my mind is being abused.
	And that is...
	Being whipped with the whip in somebody else's hand.
	That's self-abuse.
	My self is being abused.
	There's that aspect to it, but most times what people mean when they say self-abuse is they mean that I'm being whipped and I am doing the whipping.
	That is a very, very different thing.
	It's a very different thing. I think the first thing to understand about self-abuse is that it is not a spontaneous outgrowth of the mind, right?
	Puberty is a spontaneous occurrence within the body, depending on your consumption of meat, I suppose, in the first world, right?
	Between the ages of 9, 10, 12, 13 or whatever, right?
	So... Puberty is a spontaneous thing that occurs.
	When my daughter sprouted hair, it is a spontaneous thing that occurs.
	That is a natural development within the body, within the mind.
	The development of her language skills is a natural development within the mind.
	Self abuse is not a natural development of the mind.
	And self abuse Can only and forever be implanted in the mind like a virus through the actions of others.
	So, self-abuse, in the two ways that we're talking about it here, first, that it is myself that is being abused by an external agent, that is, in my opinion, always and forever necessary as a prerequisite to the internalization of that state.
	So you have to, if you end up beating yourself with a whip in your hand, that's only because somebody else beat you with a whip in their hand.
	So then the question of course becomes, or the question becomes, if that is a sequence, how does it get internalized?
	How do you end up growing a third arm with which to beat yourself with a stick or a whip?
	And use your two arms to attempt to fend it off, which never quite works because it's growing out of your own back and whipping yourself in the back.
	How does it occur that it becomes internalized?
	Well, my opinion, silly though it may be, my opinion is this.
	A human being can stand almost anything except the loss of control.
	Except the loss of control?
	So since a human being can stand anything except the loss of control, if you attack yourself, then an abuser will be less likely to attack you or will attack you less hard.
	This is not the case in the animal kingdom, right?
	If an antelope is running away from a lion and trips and breaks its leg, the lion doesn't say, okay, well, I'll let you go because you've already hurt yourself.
	You've already, quote, attacked yourself.
	He's like, yummy!
	Less moving antelope.
	That's tasty, right? And he dives in to carve out his pound of flesh.
	But that's not the case with the abusers.
	Sorry, this is the abuse theme, Joe, I suppose.
	But these are the questions, right? I am market-driven.
	But this is not the case with abusers or sadists within the human realm.
	If you attack yourself, you are likely to receive less external attack.
	So, for instance, and this is not the best example, but it's the one that popped into my head.
	In The Wire, there is, this is not any kind of spoiler, but in the TV show The Wire, which I highly recommend, In The Wire, there is a homeless guy who accidentally kills a friend of his.
	And the police pick him up, and he's so unbelievably wracked with shame and guilt and remorse that the cop says, let him go.
	He's doing more to himself than we ever could.
	Like he's punishing himself more than we ever could.
	And the way that you...
	Like the sadist wants to see pain.
	The abuser wants to see pain.
	And so if you hurt yourself, their appetite, to some degree, is satisfied.
	And you can control the amount of self-attack that you have, that you inflict upon yourself.
	But you can't really control the attack from somebody else.
	So if somebody says to you, you know, I want to hit your leg with a stick, and I'm really angry, And either I'm going to hit you 10 times on the leg with a stick, or you're going to hit yourself 10 times on the leg with a stick, and I'm going to tell you whether it's good enough.
	How many of us would say, I don't want to hit myself, I want you to hit me in your current state of rage?
	Well, no one. We would always say, I'm going to hit myself, and you're going to tell me whether it's good enough.
	Because at least we can cheat, we can minimize, we can pretend that it hurts more than it does, we can glance it off, we can hit different spots at least on our bodies so we're not hitting a welt that we just made.
	And so self-attack is a form of protection against an abuser.
	It's the slave that gets to whip himself.
	Rather than be whipped by a sadist, he will choose to whip himself.
	Because that will, to some degree, satisfy the sadist.
	And he has some control.
	In a way, he has more control, infinitely more control than if he is whipped by somebody else.
	So this never develops spontaneously.
	People don't just wake up one day and say, I'm going to start self-abusing, cutting, mutilating, whatever, right?
	But it is an internalized sadism that is foreign to the personality that is ingested because it is a sensible, rational, and healthy survival strategy in the face of Of significant or extreme abuse.
	It is a sensible survival strategy to self-attack in the presence of a sadist who has power over you.
	Because it gives you some control and without any control, if we have no control, we don't want to live.
	It's a way of appeasing a sadist by inflicting pain on yourself.
	Somebody says, either I'm going to stab you or you have to stab yourself.
	We will always take stabbing ourselves because we can control to some degree where we stab, how deep we stab.
	So self-attack is a very healthy, healthy, irrational survival strategy in the face of severe abuse.
	Now, how do you stop?
	Well, It's all my opinion, but to stop in my opinion is both very simple and very, very hard.
	The simple way to stop self-abusing is to not own the shame and guilt of self-abuse.
	Do not own the shame and guilt of self-abuse.
	If you don't see the sadist, you look masochistic.
	Right? It's all about the gun in the room, as it always is.
	You focus on the sadist who made you do it.
	You focus on the abuser who made you do it, who you were responding to.
	You know, there's scenes in movies, right?
	I can't think of one in particular, but I've seen this at least a dozen times.
	The camera comes into a room and a woman is standing there Seemingly alone.
	And she's shaking and she's stammering and she's sweating.
	And her hands are twitching and armpits are stained.
	She's just standing there. And you think, what the hell?
	Is she having a panic attack?
	Is she just inexplicably nervous?
	What the hell is going on?
	It makes no sense. And then the camera pans around and there's a guy standing behind her with a gun to the back of his head.
	And as an audience member, we understand how our judgment changes the moment we see the guy with the gun.
	Right? Before, we judge the woman as shaking and sweating, as if she is just Having a mysteriously created or evoked internal state.
	She's just having a panic attack.
	She's just nervous for some reason.
	She's whatever, right?
	She's messed up. And it makes no sense.
	And in a sense, we blame the woman for this.
	And we don't have empathy in a sense because it's so foreign to our experience.
	We don't just stand there in a room and sweat and shake and...
	But the moment that the camera pans around and we see the man with the gun pointed to the back of her head, it all becomes clear.
	Her former mysterious behavior is perfectly comprehensible and in a rush of empathy we all understand that we would be the same as her in that position, right?
	We all understand that. Our empathy goes out, we understand what she's doing, what she's doing, it all makes sense.
	Self-abuse continues when you don't pan the camera to see the guy with the gun.
	You always have to pan the camera into history, into our minds, into where we came from to see the gun in the room.
	And then we understand that we're shaking and sweating and self-attacking because There was violence and threats and brutality and abuse.
	Once we see that and we understand that the self-abuse that we developed as a habit when we were young was a rational survival mechanism, was a rational self-protection mechanism, then we don't anymore take moral ownership for that.
	I'll give you another example, which is probably kind of silly, but it sort of popped into my mind.
	So, many years ago, when I was just starting to really work through my stuff with my history, I watched the second Star Wars movie that came out.
	I think it was The Empire Strikes Back.
	I hadn't seen it since I was, I guess, in my early teens.
	And I felt dizzy and I felt nauseous watching this film.
	And I was absolutely convinced that it was because I was having an intense flashback to what my life was like when I was that age.
	And my life at that age was beyond terrible.
	It was beyond wretched. And so I thought, oh my god, I have so many unprocessed emotions from back here.
	This is the reaction that I'm having to watching this film that I haven't seen since I was about that age when these things were so terrible and so on, right?
	And I had food poisoning.
	So I thought it was an internally generated state, but it came from some bad food I eat.
	And so in a sense, it was not the gun in the room, but the bacteria in the gut.
	But I think it's really important to focus on the external cause, the external demand, the external requirement, the external absolute that began this process.
	If you own your self-abuse and you don't get the guy with the gun to the back of your head when you were a kid, then it won't stop.
	Again, this is all just my bullshit opinion, but I'm still emphatic about it because I think it's true, but I'm not saying it's proven.
	And I drive back self-abuse with the gun in the room.
	The gun in the room, the gun in the room, the gun in the room.
	I drive back social criticism.
	I drive back. This is not to say I'm not self-critical.
	I certainly am. And some of it's justified and some of it's not.
	But I drive back criticism.
	You know, if I get, oh my god, I've done something wrong.
	I've done something bad. I drive it back by saying, you know, who is society to criticize me?
	Society didn't do a goddamn thing to help protect And save me as a child.
	In fact, everybody kind of colluded with my abusers to one degree or another.
	That was the reality in many cities.
	That was the reality in many countries that I lived in.
	In many schools that I went to.
	In many universities that I went to, even.
	So I thought, well, who the hell is society to morally criticize me?
	Because I sure as hell have never backed down from the opportunity to help somebody who claims Historical victimhood and abuse.
	So who the hell is society?
	This bullshit construct that doesn't do a goddamn thing to help children other than pat itself on the back about how noble it is when it comes to protecting the innocent.
	Who the fuck is society to criticize me?
	Fuck them. Nobody stood up for me when I was a kid.
	Nobody gets to criticize me as an adult.
	I won't take it.
	I won't take a syllable of it.
	Until people stand up for children who are being abused, I won't take a shred of fundamental moral criticism.
	And so, when I get self-attacky, I know that it's coming from outside myself.
	And I know it's the projected guilt of a society that does fuck all to help children being abused.
	Does fuck all to help children being abused.
	And then that same society has the gall to criticize those who do.
	That is just projected guilt, shame, and self-loathing, and I won't take a shredding.
	I won't take an atom of it.
	I push back the guilt to the people who don't act.
	I push back the guilt to the people who enable the abusers.
	I push back the guilt to the people who don't pick up the fucking phone.
	I push back the guilt to the people who don't Interfere when they see children being yelled at in malls, put down, humiliated, aggressed against.
	I won't take an atom of it.
	The projected self-loathing of a cowardly world that does nothing to protect children is not something I'm going to own.
	People have to do a hell of a lot of standing up for children and the adult victims of abuse before they get to criticize me.
	But the people who haven't Can take a flying fuck off a short pier.
	Because I don't listen to that shit at all.
	And they can scream and piss into the wind if they want.
	But until society starts standing up for the truly helpless and victimized in this world, it better shut the fuck up about lecturing people who do.
	I feel quite passionately about this.
	I'm sure you can tell.
	Another reason why I love the listeners so much is that you all are actually wrestling with this.
	You all are actually wrestling with this challenge.
	I can't tell you how much I wish you guys were around when I was a little kid.
	At least we can be around for others, right?
	And I think that's it for our show.
	Let's end on a yelly note.
	I hope that you don't mind that.
	I feel very strongly about this.
	I want my daughter to grow up in a world that is far safer than the one I grew up in, and this is the only way that I know how to do it.
	And I absolutely, massively and eternally appreciate your support in getting this message out to people.
	And thank you so much for listening.
	Have yourselves an absolutely wonderful week.
	I hope that philosophy elevates and lifts you up on the rockets of thought, reason and evidence, sends you sky flying high into this world and gives you a great view of your past, present and future.

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