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Aug. 8, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:49:59

1717 Freedomain Radio Sunday Show Aug 8 2010

Hope for the future.

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	Hi, everybody. It's Devan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
	It's the 8th of August, 2010. I hope you're having an absolutely wonderful and splendiferous week.
	And what's new?
	Well, last call for the barbecue, which is at the beginning of next month, Labor Day weekend, in Mississauga, Ontario.
	You can go to meando.com forward slash FDRBBQ2010. We are looking at some activities.
	We're going to perhaps rent a karaoke room and host and also we're thinking perhaps that on Sunday it might be fun and worthwhile to go to Canada's Wonderland which is a truly stupendous and staggering park where you may get the edifying spectacle of watching me shriek like a little girl and perhaps soil myself and that's just going up the relatively fast escalator.
	Let's not even imagine what happens on the roller coasters of death.
	So I hope that you will be able to come and join our little Galt Scalch weekend.
	It is a great deal of fun and probably a social setting unlike you have ever experienced before because you don't have to hide anything.
	You can be who you are.
	Let your atheist dongles hang down and your agnostic dongles not so much.
	Anyway... I hope that you had a great week.
	There's nothing particularly new and exciting other than to say I have another speaking engagement, which is early December in Arizona.
	And I will be flying down for that.
	Not to forget that in September, I think it's the 6th, I will be speaking in Toronto.
	And of course, October the 6th, no, October the 9th, I will be speaking in Philadelphia.
	And the next week I will be speaking in California.
	So I am becoming a high-velocity social butterfly, touching down here and there, and throwing my little fairy dust of wisdom into the air, and just seeing who...
	Is with the sneezing. If you get a chance, if you could Pump the video that I completed, or rather that I did a little bit of work on, and then the Think Twice Productions Inc.
	did an enormous amount of work on, and thank you so much to the guys over there.
	If you could pimp it around a little bit, it's called The Sunset of Statism.
	You can find it on YouTube, and if you could share it and dig it, I would really appreciate it.
	It is, I think, a very good introduction to the non-aggression principle and why voluntarism is so good.
	So I hope that you will do that.
	Other than that, things are great up here.
	Isabella is starting to count a little randomly.
	Well, not randomly, but a little out of sequence.
	So she sees things and she starts stabbing her fingers at them and going, one, three, two, and very emphatically doing a triangulation on the actual correct numbers, which is quite exciting.
	And she's really enjoying gymnastics and she's just a delight.
	She's starting to put some words together.
	Dada, smell, you know, the usual things that a child of that age would get when pressed up against my armpit.
	And I did see a film which I just wanted to mention.
	It's called The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
	And it was good, not great.
	I generally find television better than movies these days.
	But what I did find interesting, this is no spoilers here, but what I did find interesting is that the people who've been through abuse were very clear on the moral lines of personal responsibility.
	And the people who hadn't been through abuse were much more prone to forgiveness and, quote, understanding, which I thought was interesting.
	And if you watch the film, we'll provide, I think, some food for thought that is worth mulling over the relationship between having been victimized and having very clear moral lines and not having been victimized and having more relativistic moral lines.
	I think it's an interesting topic and we can talk about that more another time.
	But it's a recommended film.
	I think it's subtitled, I guess, unless you do speak.
	I think it's Swedish. And interesting.
	The acting is very good. You know what's really nice to see actors you don't know?
	You know, if you see Jack Nicholson, you're like, hey, Jack Nicholson's doing a really great job of playing this character, or Jim Carrey, or whoever, Steve Carell.
	But to see actors you don't know, which you see in foreign, it's one of the great things about watching foreign films, is that you get to actually relate to the characters as characters, rather than actually relating to them as actors that you know and like.
	So I hope that you get a chance to watch that.
	It's violent at times for sure.
	And I definitely had to fast forward a few times, but it's got a good plot.
	It's well paced and the acting, especially the woman who plays the lead heroine, she is very good, chilling and...
	And they also don't, you know, they really have that bomb in the brain stuff down perfectly.
	And the writer, as far as I understand it, was a chain-smoking heavy drinker and so on.
	But they really do have the bomb in the brain stuff down in that people end up the way they are due to very specific childhood circumstances.
	And they don't pull any punches with that stuff.
	People don't just end up You know, with lots of tattoos and piercings, there are very specific things that lead them that way, which we know a lot about, but I hope that it's going to start to permeate into the general culture.
	Alright, so that's it for my stellar and well-thought-out introduction.
	I'm just releasing a new video called The Salvation of Philosophy Part 1, in which I'm starting to discuss self-detectating statements, which is something that I'm very keen on and have been, of course, since the beginning of Free Domain Radio, because I think it's something that gives philosophy some...
	You know, some killer packs and six packs and gets it to walk up and down the beach without having sand kicked in its face by relativism, religion, postmodernism, and all the other mental gooey spiderwebs that clog up the human neurons.
	So I hope that you will check that out.
	I'll publish that after the show. Other than that, it's your show, my friends, my charming companions.
	So if you have questions, please, with the unmute and the barking of orders, and I will stand to attention.
	I just have one announcement.
	Oh yes, sorry, go ahead.
	Not to date the show too much, but we have one room in our block for the group rates for the barbecue coming up.
	So first come, first serve.
	Just pop onto the general messages form, general information form, and you'll see the FDR BBQ 2010 group rates thread.
	Just find my email and send it off, and I'll get you on.
	Hello, Steph. Hi, go ahead.
	Hi. Hey, long time to talk.
	Good to talk to you again. I had a question.
	Well, I guess the main point I want to bring up, something recently kind of happened to me in my life that kind of threw my...
	Whole pattern for a loop.
	I recently found out my transmission on my car went out and so it's going to cost me like a whole bunch of money that I don't have to fix it.
	And the problem with that is that my job that I had relied on me having transportation to work.
	And you know, I can't, my parents don't have money to give me or anything like that.
	I don't really want money from anybody else to fix it.
	And so I'm kind of faced with a decision right now about what I'm going to do as far as if I'm going to stay in the city I'm living in or if I'm going to move or if my dad offered me to go back and live with him, but I don't want to do that.
	And I'm kind of at a crossroads where when things happen to me, when I run into a stint of bad luck, which I've kind of had for a few weeks now, just never seems to end, when I'm constantly trying to kind of better myself and work and, you know, kind of build credits and just kind of make it in our society, when things go wrong that Are completely out of my control.
	There's another side of me that kind of pops in, talking in the back of my mind, saying, why do you even attempt to do all this stuff?
	Why do you even keep working at it so hard?
	Because I'm happy with less.
	I could be okay without having a lot of money or not making a lot of money in my life.
	And I have other friends that want me to kind of like join them sort of like living on the road, going from like, you know, sort of commune to commune type situations and things like that.
	And I'm okay with that.
	But in the long term, I have problems with it.
	I don't want to have medical issues and not have any kind of economic status.
	And I'm also kind of concerned because I'm wondering about Your thoughts on the future of the world as far as, because the economy, everything I keep seeing about it seems like it's just getting worse as opposed to getting better.
	And I'm wondering if someone that's my age, I'm pretty young, I'm 22, if it's a worthwhile investment for me to try and build credit and try to make it in the current system.
	Those are all great questions.
	And if it's any consolation, I just had to drop $3,000 on my car because the brakes were basically three peanut butter cups clamping onto the wheel with a piece of string.
	And I'm still driving around without any air conditioning in 40-degree weather because it's $1,700 to get new air conditioning.
	So I just can't do it.
	I can't do it. So if it's any consolation, cars do occasionally run you over.
	And my car, of course, is...
	It's almost 13 years old, so it's starting to show its age and I sort of feel like, you know, Band-Aids and duct tape is going to be the future of its fuselage.
	So I sympathize and I understand it's rough.
	You just, I mean, this shit happens, right?
	But before we get into that, I wanted to dip back into something that you talked about.
	You said luck. I'd like to sort of explore, if you don't mind, what it is that you mean when you talk about bad luck or good luck.
	Well, I don't think I necessarily believe in some kind of ethereal luck that – like I'm destined to have bad luck or anything like that.
	I suppose – yeah, I'm not a determinist.
	I don't think that it happened to me just because I deserved it or something like that.
	I suppose I just use the term loosely.
	But I suppose – It does feel like it's a pretty big...
	I mean, I just have to make, because I'm not going to be able to afford to live right here where I am right now.
	I mean, unless I, you know, get a job within walking distance or something, which is, you know, so much worse than what I was doing, because I was making a lot of money doing what I was doing.
	All right, sorry, I don't want to get into too many details.
	I want to get into the philosophy show, right?
	So let's go back to the general, because you used the term luck, and I just really wanted to understand what you meant by that.
	I mean, I have my own thoughts about luck or whatever, but I want to sort of understand what you mean when you say bad luck.
	When something out of your control happens to you, I suppose, that would be bad luck.
	When something bad happens to you that was out of your control, yeah.
	Okay, but luck by its very nature indicates pattern, right?
	I'm not sure I know what you mean.
	Well, I think that the word luck indicates some sort of pattern, right?
	So if people think they're unlucky or they're, you know, I'm going through a phase of lots of bad things happening, I think we have the urge as conceptual beings, we try to put rules around everything.
	We try to put patterns on everything, if you've ever sort of… Sat on a...
	Lay down in a meadow in the summer and look at the clouds.
	The first thing that you do when you look at clouds is your brain tries to turn it into something, you know, like that's an eel riding a unicorn kind of thing, right?
	So we always try to see patterns.
	And I don't know, for myself, I have to fight these patterns sometimes, you know, when it feels like...
	You're in the room financially with Mike Tyson, you know, in terms of things just hit you out of nowhere.
	Like, bam! Didn't get a big tax grant.
	Or bam! Had to repair this in my house.
	Or bam! Had to repair this on my car.
	Or bam! Had to go to the doctor and get this prescription, which was expensive.
	And sometimes it just feels like those costs just kind of gang up on you and pummel the living shit out of you.
	You know, like you've crossed the crypts or something like that.
	And I don't know about you.
	I have to fight that feeling like...
	You know, bracing myself for what's next, if that makes any sense.
	Oh, I don't even want to go out of the house in case I sit on my toe and have to have...
	Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
	That can really, really happen where there's just this rolling clusterfuck of endless expenses.
	I don't know about you, but sometimes it just feels like I don't even want to get out of bed because it's like, oh my God, what is going to...
	You know, what surprise expense is going to show up now, right?
	Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yes.
	Yeah. And yeah, I mean, yeah, of course.
	I mean, I can't even, where am I going to go?
	I mean, when I would get out of bed, I would get out of bed and go to work.
	And now I'm like, uh, uh, just kind of waiting around.
	Like, well, I've got to make a decision now.
	I've got to do something.
	I've got to go somewhere. Right.
	So, just as far as luck goes, I think it's really important to understand, and I remind myself of this, right?
	So, you know, my car just bit me in the ass with a lot of costs.
	But then I think, well, I really haven't put any money into the car over the past five years, other than, you know, oil changes and I think I bought a new pair of tires or something, right?
	Right. And so what happens is we don't notice the things that are going well, and we notice the things that are going badly.
	And that actually makes sense.
	I mean, that's sort of what you need to focus on, right?
	I mean, if you're going hunting, you want to focus on the one thing you're hunting, not everything else that you're not hunting.
	And if a boulder is coming down the hill, you want to really focus on that one boulder and not on everything else.
	So we do biologically have a drive towards focusing on the negative because that's really how our brains are wired.
	Right, that's what you have to deal with, yeah.
	Yeah, if you have a toothache, you don't notice that your knee feels fine, right?
	You just really zero in on the mechanism.
	And I think that's an important thing to remember.
	I don't think this is a self-esteem issue or even a reality issue.
	It's just... A biological issue that we generally tend to focus on that which is problematic and negative.
	And that's an undertow that we all face in life.
	And what we need to do is to remember to focus on the things that are going well and to remind ourselves that the fake gods are not lining up their bow and arrows to puncture our eyeballs over and over again.
	Sometimes it just feels a little bit like that.
	So I just wanted to point that out just before we move on.
	And just to say like...
	I think you have it. I think just about everyone alive struggles with that problem as focusing on – and I find that I genuinely feel better, right?
	So, I sit there going, oh, yeah, it's $2,500 on breaks and I got to get a bunch of stuff replaced like the ducts and all that.
	I don't know what the hell they're called, the tubes that go in the ducts.
	I don't want to get too technical. And it's like, oh, man.
	And then I think, well, yeah, but, you know, five, seven years, I really haven't dropped any money into the car, so I can focus.
	And actually, I feel a weight lifting from me.
	If I just think of it, it's neutral, and then I go into the negatives, then I feel bad.
	But if I remember all the positives and then look at the negatives as a dip in a rising line, then I genuinely feel better.
	So I just sort of would remind you that, you know, just to remember all of the good things rather than just focus on.
	And it's a cheesy thing to say, but I just wanted to actually mention it.
	Another weird thing about it, and this is just kind of a...
	It's strange.
	It's a strange feeling about it because it is a bad situation.
	I mean, I really liked my car, and I'm not going to have it, really.
	And at the same time, when things get bad enough to where you really are powerless, or at least the way I feel anyway right now, I'm powerless to do anything as far as just getting back to where I was anyway.
	In a way...
	I feel kind of better because it's almost like a responsibility is lifted off me.
	Like, I become a victim and now it's like, oh, okay, like, you know, people can feel bad for me now.
	And I mean, I don't know if I'm making any sense.
	No, it makes sense. Like, so, you know, the Christians will sing Jesus take the wheel and the atheists will sit in the backseat saying, Satan's got the wheel, I might as well just have a nap.
	And that certainly does happen.
	And I think that's actually a sensible thing to do sometimes, right?
	Which is just to say, you know, there's just such a shitstorm going on that I'm not going to try and angle my umbrella.
	I'm just going to throw my arms wide and get covered.
	You know, because it's like, I'm sick and tired of fighting this shitstorm.
	Maybe I'll still close my mouth and put some swimming plugs on my nose.
	And I'm certainly going to shut my eyes, but I'm not going to try and shield myself.
	And that happens, I think, sometimes if you're out and it's raining, like you get an umbrella and you're trying to keep dry.
	And then after a while, it's, you know, if it's too windy or you just, it's just like, oh, fuck it.
	I'm going to shut the umbrella and, you know, the clouds can just pee all over me as much as they want because there's no escape.
	It's car wash, right? Yeah.
	So I think that there is a certain letting go when things snowball in that sense that I think is sort of wise because, you know, stress occurs when we don't control what we could control, then we start to feel depressed.
	But when we try to control what we can't control, then we start to feel anxious.
	And I always try to... It's sort of like surfing.
	You have to try and find that middle ground.
	That's more of the art of living than the ethics of virtue or whatever.
	It's a very important aspect.
	Right. Of philosophy, right?
	And so, I think you're right.
	You know, give it up when it's all going too bad to control.
	But remember that, you know, reasserting control is important.
	Now, as far as your other question goes about what are we going to do, you know, the society is creaking and groaning, bursting apart at the seams, the collapse seems relatively close, or at least a fundamental change in the way things are being done.
	I totally know what you mean.
	I totally know what you mean.
	I have sort of two minds about it.
	And I'm aware that giving advice in the first instance is not necessarily good advice.
	I'm going to give it anyway, and you can tell me whether it's good advice or not.
	I just don't want to be, you know, the guy who's seven feet tall saying to everyone, you should be a basketball player, right?
	Because I have particular skills in communication and philosophy and so on.
	And so for me...
	It was much more important to do philosophy than it was to produce another great piece of software or to land another big sale in my field or to come out with some great new marketing campaign or something like that.
	So for me, it was like, you know, what's more important for the world?
	And I think given my particular skill sets, I'm focusing on...
	Producing the kind of material that is genuinely going to help the world rather than producing software which is going to help the world but not in any fundamental or long-lasting way.
	The thing about software is it's got the It's got the attention span of a ferret on a double espresso.
	Today, it's hot. Tomorrow, it's history.
	I really wanted to produce something that was of value.
	I also felt that if I had these skills, that it was important for me to apply them to making the world a better place.
	If there's something that you can do in the realm of philosophy or libertarianism or the freedom movement or waking people up to the coercive nature of a state of society, whatever it is that you have A passion for.
	If you have skill sets in that, I think that it's important.
	You know, there's no positive, unchosen obligations.
	I absolutely accept that.
	But that is a philosophical principle that is very important when it comes to opposing statism.
	If you walk past a pond where a kid is drowning and you happen to be an Olympic swimmer, it's true there are no unchosen, positive obligations.
	You don't have to go in and save them, but we all know that we would.
	We all know that everybody would, right?
	So you don't have to, of course, but I think if you have skills in that way, focus on developing those skills of communication, of clarity, of passion, of whatever it is that you can get to bring philosophy or freedom to people.
	I think that's a good thing. And if that has to be as it was for me, free and then part-time and then full-time, then you can do that progression.
	But it will make whatever else you do It will also make your fear of the future will diminish to the degree with which you are helping the present avoid that future.
	So I think that's really important.
	If you don't happen to have particular skill sets that way, or if you just don't like it for whatever reason, then I think you have to live like the world is not going to collapse.
	Right? Because it may not.
	Obviously, I think that the likelihood is.
	But the only thing that's going to, quote, collapse is not bridges.
	It's not cars. It's not ocean liners aren't going to crack into and fall into the sea.
	Planes aren't going to fall out of the sky.
	What's going to change is a concept, is an idea called the state.
	Right? We're called justified violence.
	What fundamentally is going to change is philosophical, right?
	So if we imagine the government was gone tomorrow, all the buildings would still be standing, all the schools would still be standing.
	If they end a public school, it doesn't mean that the schools fall down and the teachers all explode, right?
	It just means that there's a different configuration.
	In people's minds, but the resources that have existed are all still going to be there.
	So if there is a change in currency, if there is a change in our conception of social organization, all of the resources are still going to be there, right?
	So the world is not going to collapse.
	Ideas in people's minds are going to collapse.
	I hope, of course, that they're not going to be replaced by worse ideas.
	But there's no change in the external world when a human being changes his or her mind in that moment.
	It just means that Right?
	He has changed his mind or she has changed her mind.
	That's what's going to fundamentally collapse.
	Now hopefully it's not going to be freedom, the concept of freedom that's going to collapse in people's minds because that will in the long run have an effect on everyone.
	Hopefully it's going to be the idea that violence works that's going to collapse in people's minds and of course many people are doing as much as they can, myself included, to ensure that people are going to identify the correct There's no reason for things not working anymore.
	But the world is not going to collapse.
	So I would act as if the future is stable.
	You're crossing a bridge called the future.
	The future, the bridge is not going to collapse.
	I guarantee you that. The earth is not going to fall into the sun.
	Buildings aren't going to all start collapsing the moment that something changes.
	But there will be a change in people's thinking.
	And that is something to be aware of.
	But I would definitely plan with confidence for the future.
	Okay, that makes sense.
	Now, to what you were saying about helping the freedom movement along and things like that, I can tell you this, that when I was growing up, you know, I got a lot of pressure from my family, or I say the word pressure, I suppose that's what it was.
	I felt the expectations of my family to do something significant with my life, right?
	Not just be A drifter or something, or just working as a waiter my whole life.
	Not that there's anything wrong with that, but just because a long time, for a long time, that was what they kind of expected of me.
	They were like, you're talented, you're good-looking, you can do this, you can be great, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	And so there's a part of me...
	Sorry, you're good-looking? I'm sorry.
	Okay, just wondering.
	Yeah, you know. And so there's a part of me that is...
	Terrified of being a really important person or being a person of substance.
	There is a...
	As though...
	Like I'm afraid to actually live a principled life and actually try and tell people to be responsible.
	And so because it's I guess I just don't I don't know that I have the courage to do it.
	Wait, wait, wait, wait.
	No, no, no, no, no, no.
	You viewed off at the end there.
	I'm with you.
	And then you went off in the ditch.
	Right.
	So you're talking about pressure and expectations for living a life of whatever substance or whatever.
	Right.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	And then you started talking about...
	So you talk about external influences and then you just started talking about internal things with no transition.
	Like suddenly it was all about you and I just don't have the courage, right?
	But you're starting me with these external influences, which I think are very important.
	They're not the whole deal, but they're very important, right?
	But you then made this transition to, it's just me.
	I lack the courage and so on with no reference to these external conditions.
	So help me through that transition.
	Yeah. I don't know, maybe I'm making an excuse.
	I mean, I understand that...
	I guess I'm wondering if the external influences in a way have caused me to have sort of a passive-aggressive Sort of a passive-aggressive way of not being who I really want to be,
	of sort of not living my life The way that I would see it being...
	I don't know.
	I'm sorry. It's kind of a...
	Well, if I can cut through the fog and tell me if I'm right or wrong, but if your parents gave you this expectation of a big life or a powerful life or a life of something or other, then if you weren't on board with that, right?
	If your parents were kind of pulling you behind the ambition truck, right?
	Well, it sped up on hopefully not a gravel road, but then you're going to fight that, right?
	Right, exactly. That's what I mean.
	If you're not enrolled in...
	There's no such thing as a pull economy in terms of ambition.
	People can't pull you in the wake of ambition.
	It never works. It's always going to self-destruct in some manner or another, right?
	And so, if you don't own your own motivation and your own ambition, if it's not yours, if it's not organic, that doesn't mean that other people can't help you clarify it.
	But if it's not fundamentally your motive power, You know, then you're just going to be, you know, feeling this urgency that's been implanted in you and then there's this resistance which you don't want to do it and then you feel like, well, but I should because I have all these abilities but I don't really want to because I never owned it and it's other people's expectations.
	Right? You just go round and round.
	This merry go round, right?
	Right. And the only thing that you can do, in my opinion, is you have to, and it's easier said than done, right?
	There's no magic spell, but you have to throw away the expectations of other people.
	Right. If I'm, you know, you have to start from a blank slate.
	Because you're not here to please anyone, right?
	You're not here to please anyone.
	You're not here to fulfill anybody else's You are not here to satisfy other people.
	You're not here to fill the holes in their personalities.
	You're not here to make up for their mistakes.
	You are not here to make them proud.
	You're not here to give them a higher status.
	You're not even here to piss them off, if that's your preference.
	You're not here to fulfill the needs of Of one single other soul in the universe.
	No matter how much they may need it, no matter how much they may want it, that is not in the job description called having a heartbeat.
	Your future, your soul, your satisfaction, right?
	The meat of the meal called your life is yours to hunt, is yours to define, is yours to choose, is yours to achieve.
	I know I'm not telling you anything you don't already know, and I know there's nothing original in what I'm saying, but I think it's something we all need to be reminded of.
	Another thing that I think is kind of...
	Wait, wait, wait! This is charging off somewhere else, right?
	Was it meaningless what I said?
	Well, it's not...
	No, it wasn't meaningless. But, I mean, I know that.
	I mean, it's just...
	And the reason I'm saying that is I just felt for a moment there that you weren't listening to me, and what that usually means is that you don't think I'm listening to you, and that's perfectly fair if that's the case, right?
	I just think you were trying to communicate something to me there about not feeling listened to because you went on as if I hadn't spoken.
	Hmm. It's not a criticism, I'm just pointing it out.
	Do you feel that I'm missing your issues entirely?
	I'm not, I don't think that, I'm not even sure I'm clear how much it is exactly.
	So I suppose that, because, I mean, what you just said is true, but I've definitely, what's weird about it, I suppose, in my situation is that I have family members that have said those same things to me, but at the same time, those are the same people that I feel like have the expectations, which is confusing.
	Oh, so they say, you're not here to please us, but here's how you should please us.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And it's...
	Or even if they do, it's not...
	I don't think they're conscious of the fact that they're doing it.
	And when I try to call them out on it, it's just kind of avoiding it.
	And I don't know. But I suppose, I guess what I'm trying to...
	I'll tell you what, why don't you, I mean, you're welcome to call back in, but I think you need to figure out what it is that you're asking, because you've asked about 12 questions.
	I've tried to answer as many of them as possible, but I just don't feel that we're connecting.
	No, you're right, you're right. And that's totally fine.
	I just, maybe you should try and figure out what it is that you'd like to ask, because I feel like you're not asking the real questions, because you're not particularly connected into the feedback or the response, which is fine.
	I'm just pointing it out that I think we're talking past each other.
	Okay. Okay.
	All right. Thanks. Well, I will definitely think about this a little more and I will call back in when I'm a little more clear on what I want to get across.
	Thanks, Steph. All right.
	Well, I'm sorry that I couldn't give you anything more useful, but I think we have somebody else who's on the line.
	All right. Thanks. Thanks, man.
	Hello? Hello.
	Hi. How are you doing, Steph?
	I'm great. How are you doing? Good, good.
	Okay, so I'm calling you again, like the Colombian guy.
	I just...
	Yesterday happened something, and I wanted to talk about it with you.
	Maybe you can give me some advice.
	Maybe you can help me organize my ideas, because I'm kind of confused right now.
	So... Well, I had this girlfriend, like, for the last year and a couple months.
	And, I mean, she's really, really caring, really infectious.
	And I love spending time with her.
	You know, we were, like, building up our confidence in each other.
	And that was working.
	Pretty well. She was not so open at first but you know and well neither was I but we tried to build up like confidence that was that was good and I was feeling really really nice but there were some some issues and What I'm thinking now is,
	okay, so her family is Catholic, right?
	So I'm living in Colombia, you know, there's a lot of Catholic people out there.
	And her family is very, I mean, her father is like, he goes to church, like, secretly, and he really believes in all of the church stuff.
	And, well, so does the rest of her family.
	And she was like that.
	But, you know, we started talking about religion stuff.
	And she said, like, she wanted to give it a thought.
	Maybe think about God, the existence of God, you know, the church and everything.
	But, you know, I feel like she was not...
	Too interested in it.
	Maybe that maybe I was pushing it too far.
	I don't know. And well, that was like building up in my mind.
	Because, you know, I am pretty confident like I could see a long relationship with her if she was not Like, I would not get married by the church.
	Sorry, let me just make sure I understand.
	I just want to make sure I understand what the issue is.
	So the issue is that her family is religious and you're an atheist and communicating it is causing problems.
	Is that right? Well, yeah, I don't want to extend too long on this because you're right, you know, time is limited.
	So I'm going to, you know, summary it up as briefly as I can.
	So I, you know, there's The sentiment that I had that she was religious and she didn't want to discuss it, you know, openly or I don't know, like we would not touch that topic so often.
	And then like everything, you know, the rest of it was fine.
	And I really loved spending time with her.
	But yesterday it was the presidential Things here in Colombia, like the new president got, you know, there in the event that they changed and the speaking and, you know, the speech and everything.
	And I didn't want to see that.
	And she came to my house and she said, no, like I was watching at my house.
	So, you know, let's watch it.
	And then I put it in and As I was listening to that, the President's speech lasted for one hour or more.
	I just realized that we are very different in something very basic.
	I'm very interested in knowing if people are telling me the truth or not.
	Like, you know, priests and my family and politicians, etc.
	But then I felt like she was completely different.
	Like, she would just...
	She was, like, supportive of a candidate.
	And, you know, like, I felt a great distance there.
	And I got really, really depressed.
	And it was like we were fine, but then I don't know.
	I got really depressed and then things got awkward.
	I told her that I felt like we were very different.
	She got really sad.
	I was sad as well.
	And then she asked me if I wanted to, you know, continue with her.
	And I told her that I didn't know.
	So since then, that was like yesterday in the afternoon.
	I've been thinking about I almost couldn't sleep then, you know.
	I've been trying to think about it and I don't know.
	I don't know. I don't know.
	I don't know if my standard is too high.
	I don't know if what I want is too much.
	I don't know. I don't know.
	I don't know if you can help me out.
	Sure, sure. I mean, I don't know if I can help you out.
	I doubt it, but I can perhaps just lob some questions out that might be helpful.
	Yeah, sure.
	To me, the fundamental issue that you're talking about is not one of atheism versus religion or voluntarism versus statism.
	The question is, what How are you resolving this difference of opinion?
	That's the key. The key is how you resolve a difference.
	The differences of opinion are inevitable and natural and healthy.
	I mean, none of us will ever say that we agree with ourselves 100%, obviously.
	I mean, we have different opinions about everything, and the best we can hope for is to...
	Push the herd of the self in roughly the same direction.
	So, the question I think that I would have with you is, what went wrong with the resolution of this conflict that you ended up feeling sad?
	Well, the first thing that comes to my mind was when I thought that I I see myself in a long, stable relationship for the future with her.
	When I saw that, I realized that, you know, religion was something that we needed to discuss because, of course, I won't raise my child a Catholic or anything like that.
	So, in December last year, I wrote her a letter Telling her that I really thought that, you know, our differences in opinion about religion was something really important that I really, really, you know, thought it was really important to discuss it.
	And I gave her the letter and I bought her as a present for Christmas, a book, you know, an atheist book, like an introductory atheist book.
	And she said that, yeah, it was fine, that she thought that if it was important for me to, you know, to talk about that, then she was fine with it.
	And then she started to read it.
	And then she stopped.
	She never really read it all.
	And we discussed it a couple times, but I don't know, like, I feel that she felt uncomfortable.
	Reading it. So we didn't talk about it anymore.
	Then recently, like a couple weeks ago, we decided that we needed to talk about it.
	And I don't know, I was planning on doing that, but, you know, yesterday happened before we had the opportunity to talk about religion again.
	And as far as politics go, she's, I don't know, I guess a pragmatic person.
	So she doesn't really Gives a lot of thought about politics and she gets bored when discussing those issues.
	So I don't know how to get on board on those.
	Well, sorry, but you can't make her interested in something she's not interested in, right?
	Right. I mean, that I think you have to accept, first and foremost.
	The second thing is that they're not your kids, right?
	They would be the kids of both of you.
	So if you got married and had kids, it would be both of you who the children would be.
	So you can't make a decision about how your children are raised.
	You can't make that decision.
	It's not yours to make because it's a shared responsibility, right?
	Yeah, but I think in that case, you could try to veto some stuff after you discuss it.
	Oh, veto?
	No, you can't veto your partner.
	I mean, you can't, because the UPB denies that, right?
	Because if you have a veto, she has a veto, and you just end up both vetoing each other's veto, right?
	So you can't veto your partner.
	You have to agree on this stuff before you have kids if it's really important to you, but thinking that it's going to get resolved afterwards or that you have some big power thing is not the way the relationships work, in my opinion.
	Yeah, you're right.
	So... Look, no one can tell you what to do.
	I can tell you that when I was doing my master's program, I got very close to a woman who was in the master's program with me and I liked her very much.
	She was very smart and very witty and a good cook.
	Very important to a man who likes to eat.
	And a very similar cultural background, which can help in some situations.
	But she was, unfortunately, she was religious.
	And she was like...
	Going to church religious. And this is back in my salad days of integrity.
	So we flirted and we kind of half dated for a couple of months.
	And then I had to have a conversation with her.
	And I said, look, if we get married, like if we have a relationship, it will be with the purpose of, you know, a long-term thing.
	I would sort of pass my he-man dating situation.
	And I, you know, if you want to go to church, that's fine.
	But you can't take the kids to church as if it's true.
	If they want to choose religion when they get older, then they can.
	But that's not something that I could live with.
	And she says, no, I would take the children to church with me when they're young.
	And she said, my father is an atheist and he sleeps in while we all go to church.
	And that's fine. That's the way it works in our family.
	And I said, well, I'm sorry then.
	I'm certainly not going to ask you to change your beliefs.
	I'm certainly not going to change mine because they're not beliefs.
	There is no God, so I can't have you putting superstitious fantasy.
	I didn't say all of this, but this is the reality, right?
	I just, you know, this is not going to work.
	So I ended up not going any further in that relationship.
	And that was just because I could not...
	And I'll tell you why.
	I'll tell you why. Look, if you want to have these values, then have the values.
	Right? Have the values.
	Have philosophy.
	Have philosophy. And if you want to have a relationship with people who are superstitious or embedded in these kinds of environments, who are statists, who won't see the gun in the room and so on, by all means, it's absolutely fine for you to do that.
	But then you need to let go of philosophy.
	You need to let it go.
	Right? I don't think there's a way to even remotely happily live in this null zone, in this purgatory of these are my values and I live a different way.
	Right? So, you know, we define statism as evil, as the initiation of force as evil.
	And we have to, logically, ipso facto cogeco ergo sum, we have to accept that if statism is evil, then support for statism is morally corrupt, is wrong, is immoral.
	You know, I call it dropping the E-bomb.
	If we're going to define things as evil, then they're evil until we can figure out some other definition or way in which the definition is flawed.
	If the initiation of force is immoral, if lying to children about the existence of supernatural beings is wrong, then it's wrong.
	It's just plain wrong.
	And people who are wrong, people who are corrupt, people who are immoral, can be a lot of fun to go to the movies with.
	And they can be a lot of fun to go to discos with.
	And they can be a lot of fun to go hiking with.
	And you can have great conversations and enjoyable conversations with people who are corrupt and immoral.
	And you can even have fun times.
	You can have great sex with people who are corrupt and immoral.
	But my suggestion is, if you're going to get involved in a philosophy that objectively defines good and evil, then that's how you need to live.
	Because you're dropping the e-bomb on people.
	You're dropping the word evil on people.
	Now, if you find that there's a problem with that, and there are problems with it, of course, but if you find you don't want to do that, I mean, not that you care, but I think that's perfectly fine.
	Then you say, okay, I'm going to let go of philosophy, and I'm going to pursue a relationship based upon other kinds of compatibilities, and I'm going to let go of this good and evil thing.
	Because I'll tell you, my friend, if you try to go into a relationship with a philosophy that defines the person you're having a relationship with as immoral, that is cruel.
	That is cold.
	That is destructive.
	So if you like the woman, then maybe philosophy is fucked.
	Philosophy is completely wrong.
	If you like the woman, and she's fun, and she's engaging, and she's intelligent, and she's a good person in many ways, then let go of the word evil.
	Let go of the word morality.
	Let go of the word philosophical ethics.
	Let go of that whole approach, and be with the woman.
	But let go of that.
	Because if you bring the E-bomb into a house where it's going to go off, You are responsible for the resulting carnage, not the people in the house.
	If you're going to bring the word evil into a relationship or immoral or corrupt or superstitious or lying or false or any of those things which philosophy is embedded with, if you're going to bring those into a relationship, Where they're gonna go off?
	That is a bad, bad, bad idea.
	So if you can live with the woman the way she is, and she contradicts philosophical premises, then stay with the woman, let go of the philosophical premises, but don't torture yourself by being with her, defining her as immoral, and trying to change her.
	That, I believe, is a cruel and destructive use of philosophy.
	You're completely right.
	Steph, I'm thinking about a couple things before, you know, you hung me up.
	I'm sorry. We have some other people on the line, and that was a big topic, so I'd like you to mull.
	You can spend a month mulling that one over.
	So I'd like to get on to the next callers, if you don't mind.
	I just want to make sure we get everyone who's in the queue.
	So I hope that was helpful.
	Yeah, thank you, Steph.
	I don't know. I don't know. I just wanted to ask you something real quick before you change to someone else.
	I don't know if you have written about how was like Your personal experience with Christina in a forum or something like that, where I can read it?
	Oh, very briefly.
	I mean, Christina was trained as a scientist, of course.
	She's a psychological associate.
	So she's trained in the scientific method.
	She is not herself religious.
	She was a vague sort of, there must be something, a higher power agnostic when I first met her.
	But it took like maybe half an hour or an hour's conversation to get her to realize that was an untenable position.
	And because she's trained as a scientist, she puts reason and evidence ahead of personal preference.
	And so she was no longer religious.
	And maybe it was another hour or two with the state.
	And then we were done.
	But so it was, you know, but so that was fortunately and that worked out really well.
	But that's due to her integrity.
	And of course, I was a bit better at presenting these things when I was older.
	But yeah, that was the history.
	But it was not a big deal in our relationship.
	Okay. Thank you very much, Steph.
	Have a great day. You're very welcome and best of luck.
	Alright, I think we have more callers.
	Hello Steph, you alright?
	Hi. Thank you for your patience.
	I'm sorry that you had to wait so long.
	That's absolutely fine.
	I just wanted to quickly say that I really like your new video, Subset of the State.
	Absolutely. Excellent. From yourself.
	So I just wanted to say that just from the start, if that's okay.
	Well, I appreciate that. But just please remember, it's not really my video.
	I just wrote and narrated it and did some suggestions.
	But it goes to think twice. Productions takes the lion's share of the impact.
	Right. Okay. Yeah. Well, congratulations to both of you then.
	Thank you. My question is, Steph, I try not to take too much of your time because obviously there is a lot of people waiting.
	I just wanted to know your opinion, really, on this topic.
	Obviously, we all know from the work you've been doing and from philosophers of the past that the state is going to collapse in the near future, however long that takes.
	I just wanted to know what your opinion is on how that's going to happen, i.e., Is it going to be genocide?
	Is it going to be like what's happened in Greece?
	What do you think the outcome's going to be?
	You know, that day from when it's running, it's up and running, and then bang, it collapses, or whether it's going to be a gradual collapse, which probably I would assume it would be.
	But what's it going to be like that day?
	I mean, what are your views and opinions on that, please, Stephen?
	Sure, I can give you my brief scenario on what I think will happen.
	And of course, nobody knows for sure.
	I don't think we're going to wake up in FEMA camps.
	I don't think that's going to happen.
	There is too much of an embedded respect For liberty.
	And there is a horror in Western society about the direct use of force.
	I think that's really, really important to understand.
	So America sends people to be tortured to Egypt, whereas in Egypt, they don't send them to America.
	They know that they're being tortured in Egypt, and apparently that's relatively fine with people.
	And so Egypt has a culture that accepts torture.
	America has a culture which rejects torture, which is why they need to put people in the legal limbo of Guantanamo Bay and send them abroad for this extraordinary rendition.
	And also why they have to call it extraordinary rendition rather than foreign government torture for hire.
	So there is a horror of naked force...
	In the West. And so, naked force cannot be used to rule people in the West.
	This comes a long time out of, you know, you can check out the psychohistory.com website, but it comes out of a long line of better parenting, right?
	So, naked force is very rarely publicly used for children and is much more rare in the West than it used to be.
	To use, you know, straight on, you know, belt to the face violence on children.
	And so people don't have, they have not been acclimatized, they've not been brutalized to the point where open violence is acceptable.
	And that is actually moving in the right direction, right?
	So this is always the case in society that parenting is It's far ahead of social institutions.
	Parenting is always far ahead of social institutions.
	And I know this sounds like a tangent, but I will get to why I think this will slow down what is happening.
	So, parenting is building a generation or two from now.
	And a generation and a half, probably, in terms of people getting into real power, right?
	People don't generally get into real power into society until they're in their 50s, right?
	So the parenting that is going on for me and other people with kids who are very young, it's not going to show up in society until 2060.
	At least, right?
	So, parenting, what is going on in terms of parenting is way ahead of society.
	Of course, the people who are in power now, who are in their 50s or their 60s, were raised 50 or 60 years ago.
	And 50 or 60 years ago, parenting hadn't gone through much of a revolution compared to what has happened more recently.
	So, those parenting standards were 100 to 150 years old.
	And so, Parenting is so far ahead of where social institutions are.
	So, I mean, I'll give you another tiny example, right?
	So every generation people get smarter, but government and religious institutions stay cripplingly medieval, right?
	So the schoolroom situation that was set up for children in the 1850s, we're dealing with children probably less than half as smart, just biologically, less than half as smart as children are today.
	So children have continued to accelerate in terms of their intelligence, and that's just biologically, let alone all of the amazing stimulation that children have available to them through videos and video games and all of that, and typing and, sorry, computers, chat rooms and so on.
	All of the amazing stimulation that children have at the moment, which sharpens their minds and quickens their reflexes and so on.
	So children are probably many times smarter than the children of the 1850s now, and yet they're still stuck.
	In these stupid ass rooms with some boring stupid ass teacher droning away and scraping chalk on a blackboard, the same as it was 150 years ago.
	So statism stays stagnant, but children and parenting advance incredibly rapidly.
	And so there's no way, given that the people in charge are always ruling a psycho class ahead of them.
	Sorry, that's a bit technical.
	The people who are running things are always more primitive than the young people.
	That they're ruling. Much more primitive, much more retrograde, fuddy-duddy, ridiculous, ancient.
	I hope I won't be one of those people, but I may be.
	I may be sure there'll be something that will come along, which I just won't get.
	I won't grok. I won't understand at some point, right?
	Like my mom still refers to a CD player as a gramophone.
	There'll be something that comes along.
	I just can't cross that bridge.
	I have to stay in where I am, and I'll call some brainstem neural device an iPod or something.
	I don't know, but... But the reality is that the rulers who are in charge of things, and these are the people who run the media and the people who run the government and the people who run the big corporations and all that fascistic state Tentacle intertwining.
	They're always ruling people who were younger, and those people who were younger are much more advanced intellectually, emotionally, they're raised more peacefully, they have a great abhorrence for naked and open force.
	And that is a huge restraint on the collapse.
	The second thing I would say is that the state won't collapse.
	A state, a particular method of social configuration will reach the end of its lifespan.
	And I genuinely believe that although the media is still pretty statist, it is skeptical of authority as a whole.
	So you see shows like The Wire, even the movie that I mentioned at the beginning of this, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has, this is no particular secret, it has corruption at high levels of business and it has the exact same corruption in the state, in the state representatives.
	So there seems to be a general skepticism of authority as a whole.
	You think of how police were portrayed in the Andy Griffith show in the 1950s versus how they're portrayed in The Wire.
	There is a clarity and a realism and holding a mirror up to nature, a mirror up to the corrupting nature of power.
	That is really communicated to children these days and to young people these days very clearly.
	There is a lot of status propaganda.
	There is a lot of anti-status propaganda that is mostly unconscious.
	And mostly it's like, well, there are bad apples and we need to make them.
	But still, there is a clarity that is put forward.
	Just think of how soldiers are portrayed in modern movies versus how soldiers were portrayed in In John Wayne movies, like The Longest Day or whatever.
	I mean, it is night and day.
	Look at how the reality of war is portrayed.
	Look at how the reality of prison is portrayed.
	But you have movies like Prison Break that are largely sympathetic to the prisoners.
	Sorry, TV shows. So, again, we don't have to get into six million different kinds of things to talk about as far as the media goes and so on.
	But there's a huge amount of skepticism towards authority that is directly targeted to To the younger people.
	And this is targeted by the middle generation, right?
	So the people who start making TV shows are sort of the middle generation between the young, the middle-aged, and the old who have real political and cultural power.
	And it's like I had this call with a guy from Israel who was just basically saying, well, the hardliners, we just have to wait for them to die off.
	And then we can get a more reasonable accommodation with the Palestinians, but they're just not going to change.
	And so we just have to wait.
	We just have to wait them out.
	And so I have a fair amount of optimism about what is going on in the world and what is being communicated to people.
	It still is a very big paradigm shift to go from skepticism of authority to the consistent non-aggression principle.
	But I think that we may very well be surprised At what happens when the current system reaches the end of its tether.
	I think we may very well be surprised.
	I mean, that a show as radical as Free Domain Radio has been viewed or listened to over 20 million times is mind-blowing.
	The fact that a strong atheist, anarchist philosopher is put front and center at conferences is mind-blowing to me.
	What the fuck are these people thinking?
	I'm kidding. I mean, I know that I'm a good speaker and all, but it is amazing that somebody like me gets a chance to talk to anyone except my toes and hand puppets.
	It's amazing.
	That is stupendous, stupendous progress in the world.
	And so I think that we should, the steps are pretty dismal, pretty much the same.
	The government is going to start to run out of money.
	They're going to claw back benefits to those who have the least power, which is going to be the young, particularly the children.
	They are going to start charging for things that used to be free, but not lowering your taxes, which is just another tax increase.
	They're going to start privatizing stuff.
	So the private company is going to take things over and then you're going to get mad at the private companies who are going to run, you know, the parks and the garbage collection and other sorts of shit that the government should be doing because you pay taxes.
	So it's just going to start selling stuff off in a feeding frenzy.
	So a lot of stuff is going to move over to the private sector.
	And I think that's fantastic.
	So stuff will move over to the private sector.
	And people are going to get mad at the private sector because the private sector is going to charge them money while they're still paying for all the status nonsense.
	But it certainly is possible that by the time the end comes, enough stuff has been transferred to the private sector by being stalled off by the state, that the transition might not be...
	As radical as we think.
	I think that's how I think it's going to shake down, but of course there's many, many answers and those are just my particular thoughts.
	Yeah, thanks for that, Steph.
	That was really helpful.
	Obviously, I really hope that I'm around when that day comes, when it does crumble, because that'll be part of history, won't it?
	Just right there. But yeah, thanks for your time.
	Anyway, Steph, that's really helped me out.
	Yeah, and frankly, it's a pretty goddamn exciting time to be communicating about ideas.
	And I know that we're all doing this in one form or another, whether it's personally or on the web or even on the Freedom Aid radio message boards and so on.
	It's a pretty damn exciting time to be doing it because I don't think that freedom has ever had a better chance than it has now with this amazing technology, with the deficiencies of the system becoming so blindingly obvious, and with the fact that the West is absolutely not going to slide Into dictatorship.
	It is absolutely not going to slide into a dictatorship.
	There are many people who would like to, but it's simply not.
	It's no longer possible.
	People have not been brutalized.
	And you have to be beaten so badly.
	And you have to have been whipped in school.
	And of course, I was at a school when I was younger where I was caned for doing things as simple as climbing over a wall that I shouldn't have.
	Children don't experience that.
	Most children don't experience that anymore.
	They're not beaten to within an inch of their lives.
	They're not pummeled and pounded and all of that.
	So you have to have been broken down so hard so that you don't reject totalitarianism.
	It is a psychological effect.
	Totalitarianism is a psychological effect of insanely brutalized children.
	And children just aren't that brutalized that they can be ruled in that way as adults anymore.
	They don't have that wiring.
	They don't respond to those inputs.
	So it is not going to go that way.
	Yeah, I totally agree with you.
	It's been lovely speaking to you.
	It's definitely a pleasure. Keep up the good work.
	And thanks, and stay optimistic and stay excited.
	I think we're going to win, man.
	I think we're going to win. Anyway.
	All the best, Steph. Okay, man.
	Take care. And next.
	Yes. Hi, Steph.
	Hello. Hi.
	Can you hear me? I sure can.
	Okay, Steph, I've talked to you two weeks ago.
	I'm the guy that's over 30, still living with his father.
	And yes, I asked you some questions.
	And you told me that it was a good idea to study myself and go to therapy before I take action and move out my father's place.
	I have some other questions I would love to ask you.
	I have no problem with that, but sorry, I just want to make sure, in case we have people who are still on the line, who haven't had a chance to talk, I just wanted to make sure we get to them, just in case there's anybody who's ahead.
	James, do we have anybody who's waiting to begin anything in the chatroom that should be dealt with first?
	I think we can, you know, I think Caleb hasn't spoken in a while, if you want to speak up.
	Hello, sorry. I just wanted to make sure that we're getting to people who haven't been on for a while, so we'll get back to you if we can before the end of the show.
	Go ahead. Hi, Steph.
	Hi. Hey, I was just calling.
	I wanted to get your thoughts on a few things about some parenting questions.
	Sure. Well, I'm a stay-at-home dad.
	I've talked to you a little bit before, I don't know if I remember, but my youngest son is three.
	And he's the one who's really been raised basically since I discovered FDR. And he's a little bit different case than my slightly older son, who's six, who kind of caught the brunt of some of a lot of my big changes.
	But it's been really great to see my youngest son grow up in a more relaxed and peaceful parenting style.
	And I think it's been really wonderful so far.
	So just wanted to, again, thank you for that.
	No, my pleasure. I'm certainly very, very happy to hear that.
	And one thing that has been kind of a challenge for us is that My youngest son's language skills haven't really developed quite as fast as my older son's,
	and so there was some worry about that, whether it was an issue of him being a younger sibling or an issue of some sort of developmental difficulty or maybe the fact that I was the primary caregiver.
	I've read a lot of research saying that stay-at-home dads I tend to say a lot less words than others, similarly, in most situations.
	So your concern is that because you may have used fewer words with him, that might be why his language skills are not as far as advanced as you'd like?
	That was one of the concerns I had.
	It got to the point we decided to take him to a professional to be evaluated.
	And in our area, there's not many options.
	It's a cooperative that works with the public school systems.
	And they did a lot of tests.
	But I noticed that when they were talking about these tests, the educators that seemed kind of Cold and distant, reported not so good things, and the educators that seemed warm and personable always reported good things.
	He was pleasurably interacting with those who were kind of warm and those who weren't.
	My thought was, yeah, I wouldn't give you a test either, sort of thing.
	They just said that he wouldn't cooperate with the test.
	Right. So my big question is, first of all, what things have you noticed different about maybe Eddie than her peers?
	So maybe I can get an idea of what's due to his idiosyncrasies and what's due to maybe just a little less, I don't want to say less, a little different way of interacting that he just I mean,
	I can certainly tell you a little bit of what I've noticed, but I obviously can't say anything about your son in particular.
	I mean, I've certainly noticed that my daughter has...
	People that she gravitates towards and people that she is less inclined to cooperate with.
	I think she's very good at reading people, certainly people that I find a bit off-putting.
	She's either reading them or she's reading me, but I think she's reading them because sometimes it happens when I'm standing behind her and she sees someone And so people who are less friendly or more awkward or more shy or in a bad mood, she tends to shy away from and be less cooperative with.
	And I think that's the same.
	We have a neighbor here.
	His daughter is about eight months older than Isabella.
	And I was just saying to Christina the other day, it's like, wow, she doesn't seem to talk.
	Isabella is like a complete chatterbox.
	She'll start talking before she even opens her eyes, before she wakes up.
	And she'll talk in her sleep, and she's just a real chatterbox.
	And she's like that way for the most part in company, though not always.
	Sometimes she will get sort of shy or freeze up if there's certain people around.
	And my wife said, Christina said, oh, you know, I heard this neighbor with his daughter in their backyard and the daughter was chatting up a storm.
	So I think there is definitely an argument to be made that some children...
	Are shy or clam up around other people and I think that there is a level of friendliness that invites more cooperation from a child and a level of coldness that disinvites that.
	I don't know the degree to...
	I would assume that the people who are giving the tests, I would hope that they know what they're doing and are not in a sense priming the child to succeed or fail based upon...
	Well, I guess just to fail because you can't really prime for success in those kinds of tests.
	But I hope that they're not priming the child to fail because they are cold or hostile or distant.
	I think that they should be somewhat neutral in the giving of the test.
	So I've certainly noticed that that's been the case.
	I mean, I have no idea, of course, to what degree that may influence what's happening with your son.
	But I think I certainly agree with you that the attitude of the adults has a big effect.
	I think that's true.
	I don't think they're priming him to fail necessarily out of coldness.
	It might be the fact that they have to justify their budget.
	They are a governmental organization after all.
	They basically were doing these tests as paperwork to involve him in the preschool program, which I thought about for a long time.
	And decided that it was okay to send him to half a day where he could interact with other kids, being that he's kind of isolated out there with me.
	So I definitely wanted him to get a little more peer interaction there.
	But it is a subsidized program and they have to make sure that the kids who are there need to be there, according to the tests they run.
	I'm kind of in the quandary.
	I'm not sure if they were just basically running these tests to fill out the papers in the right way, or if there's something I really need to get evaluated, or maybe it's just the fact that I have a weird relationship with intelligence.
	So it's all kind of confused and one of those things that parents worry about.
	Oh, I completely understand.
	And I mean, you have a huge, huge sympathy.
	I mean, I would guess that it's going to balance out and everything's going to be fine.
	But of course, I mean, what do I know, right?
	I'm just some guy on the web. But it is definitely a stressful thing when development in certain areas seems to be It seems to be behind, I guess, the only thing that, I mean, you have to take the advice of the professionals, but of course, you know, I have read that one of the things that is a challenge for children in various classes,
	and to use that sort of semi-ancient terminology that, and I think these are the right numbers, but children from parents who are educated hear about 2,400 words a day.
	And children from people from the middle class, they're about 1,200 to 1,400.
	And the children from the very poor or less privileged classes, those children hear about 600 words a day.
	And that it has a difference on, I think, long-term language acquisition.
	So whatever you can do, I'm sure, to up the language that he's exposed to would, I'm sure, be helpful.
	But of course, that's just my amateur opinion.
	I appreciate that.
	I don't want to take off anyone else's time, because I know there's other people waiting.
	I just want to make sure, because my vanity is all kinds of caught up in my own mind.
	That's always kind of how I made my living and distinguished myself.
	I want to get that out of the way so I can look at what he needs.
	Right. I mean, there's lots of people who don't have great language skills who have fantastic success in life.
	Sylvester Stallone comes to mind.
	It could be people who don't seem to have really great language skills but who have other abilities.
	I mean, they could be It could be very athletic or they could be very charismatic or whatever.
	But there could be lots of things that are not specific to language skills.
	And of course, every kid is different in the constellation of skills and abilities and deficiencies, which they, like you, like me, all possess.
	So it is tough for sure if you have a child who's skilled in an area that...
	Was not a big deal for you and is less skilled in an area that was a big deal for you for sure.
	But that is just a reminder of how we should not take our personalities as absolutes, right?
	I mean, there is a tendency that whatever is like me is good and whatever is unlike me is bad.
	That is, I think, a very human tendency or is deficient in some way.
	But in the... Incredibly complex kaleidoscope and constellation of personalities, we can learn a lot of humility by looking at things that other people do well that we don't, and not just focus on comparing our strengths to other people's relative weaknesses.
	That helps.
	The one thing all of them agreed on was that he was the most happy child they'd ever seen.
	I said, he's always smiling, he's always happy, so he must be doing something right.
	That's true. And that may be something, instead of trying to figure out how to teach him more language, you might want to learn about how to learn more happiness from him.
	I have found it enormously helpful to be instructed by my daughter, and I think that it gives her a sense of security and weight in the relationship.
	So I think it's very important for parents to have a two-way street.
	None of us are so wise that we can't learn from your average 18-month-old or 3-year-old or 5-year-old or 10-year-old.
	And so I think that to...
	The best way to teach, in a sense, is to learn, because it makes it reciprocal and gives the child a sense of his or her own value, and not that the child is an empty receptacle, in a sense, waiting to be filled up by the wisdom of the parent, which I think makes them a little bit more passive and they less expect reciprocity in relationships, I think. I'm just talking off the top of my head.
	I'm certainly not trying to put any thoughts into how you're parenting, because I don't know, but I think that there's something to be learned from a happy child, no matter what his or her language skills are.
	That's excellent. Thank you. That's what I wanted.
	Thank you very much. You're very welcome.
	And best of luck. And keep him on the specialist.
	And I think that's great that you're getting him in there.
	So I certainly wish you the best of luck with that.
	Thank you very much. Bye. All right.
	All right, I think we have time for Uno, Uno, Uno, more Game of Uno.
	Hi, Steph.
	Hello.
	Are there other people that are still waiting to ask something?
	I don't know, James.
	Who we got? Anyone on deck?
	I think the queue has pretty much been cleared out.
	That's good. Yeah, so I think we're clear to go.
	Go for it. Okay, thanks.
	So, I have one question that pops up with many men, I think.
	I have a good girlfriend, but for already more than 10 years, we have very good conversations.
	Well, I wouldn't say I'm in love with her, but always I'm attracted to her also.
	I don't have, I never had real girlfriends.
	I mean, friends that are feminine.
	But the one indeed that I have now, she's attractive also.
	But I'm wondering, what do you think about that friendship with the other sex?
	Is it possible?
	Yeah, I do think it's possible.
	I do think it's possible.
	I think it's tough in a situation where you're sort of the same age or both are single.
	And if there's a physical attraction, I think that there's always going to be that element of the interaction.
	But I certainly think that it's possible.
	I mean, I would count myself friends with some women and very happy to have their friendship.
	So I think it certainly is possible.
	But I think that where there is...
	The element of romantic attraction that that's always going to be part of it.
	And there may be some discomfort when the other person starts dating or gets into a serious relationship or gets married or whatever.
	But yeah, I think it certainly is possible.
	And if you're attracted to her for more than friendship, is it an obligation to go for that and to tell that?
	Or because I feel that she's not interested in more.
	So how do you handle that then?
	Well, I don't think there's an obligation.
	I mean, I think it's honest to do that.
	I certainly have thrown myself on the sword of rejected declarations, oh gosh, a number of times in my life.
	And I have no regrets whatsoever.
	That I did any of those.
	So I have, you know, stood and declared my passions for a woman on a number of occasions and been met with bemused indifference, I suppose is the way to put it.
	And I, you know, it was painful at the time.
	I had to work my courage up to do it.
	I'm very glad that I did it.
	There are times when I've been accepted.
	There are times when I've been rejected, I think, like everyone except Brad Pitt, perhaps.
	And I just felt that it was important to do so because...
	Of honesty, because I've always sort of really been interested in what it means to be as honest as possible in relationships.
	And so, if for me it was like a mild thing, like, oh yeah, this woman's attractive or whatever and, you know, You sort of think about that aspect of the relationship.
	Then if it was just a passing thought then I don't think it was important enough to raise.
	But if it was something that was persistent for me and growing and became something that was very important then I did not feel that I could have an honest relationship with that woman without talking about How I felt.
	Now, I would talk about how I felt, like, not like this is something we have to act on or something that you have to do anything about, of course, right?
	But I just wanted to tell you that this is on my mind, because otherwise, I'll have to do this false self-double-think where I'll have to be thinking one thing while pretending to do something else, and I just never felt very comfortable doing that.
	So, I don't think you're obliged to, like, have to.
	I think that if it's become something that's increasingly...
	On your mind and it's becoming a passion, then I think it's good information because it's honest information because it is going to affect the relationship.
	It's either going to affect it consciously or it's going to affect it unconsciously, right?
	What you don't want to do in relationships is bewilder people, in my opinion.
	You don't want to bewilder people.
	So let's say you don't say anything to this woman and then she comes and says, Hey, I'm dating this really great guy and your heart drops.
	Well, you can't tell her about that at that point.
	And so you then can't be responding as warmly as possible.
	You're kind of freaked out. You're kind of distant.
	And she's like, well, what the hell?
	Why is he not happy for me?
	And then she's bewildered and she's confused and she's upset and she might get, you know, whatever, something.
	So I think it's the most important things in relationships.
	The most important thing is not to bewilder people with seemingly random behavior because I think that is hugely destructive.
	To people's sense of self-confidence, to people's capacity for intimacy, to their gun shyness when it comes to opening up to other people.
	I think it's really important not to be...
	Not to be bewildering or confusing to people as a whole.
	So if it's not a big deal for you, then I would just keep it to yourself.
	But if it's starting to become a big deal, I think it's information that she needs to have.
	So then when she starts to date someone, she's going to know that your reaction is not incomprehensible, if that makes sense.
	So I think that would be my approach.
	Great. Thank you, Steph.
	I have another question.
	I have actually a big fight with my brother.
	So I have mistreated him when I was young.
	I had beaten him and he actually, I think he did the same to me the last 10 years.
	But not physically, but mentally.
	And together with his wife, the last year they said some things to me that I was really shocked from.
	But I have always accepted that because I have used lots of weed, a lot of drugs.
	But now I decided to stop that and it's unbearable to hear the same criticism.
	So at one point I said to my brother, look, I don't want to see your wife anymore because she's telling very hurtful things to me.
	And he said to me, look, that's your problem.
	And then I tried to explain to him, look, imagine that because they just lost a child.
	It was six months old.
	And I said to my brother, six months in the belly.
	So it's quite a big issue for them.
	So I said to my brother, look, if I would laugh about the death of your child, then your wife would not want to see me also.
	And he reacted furious on that.
	He said that it is totally not comparable and that I have to apologize.
	And so now it's a big war.
	Why is it a big war?
	Well, he doesn't speak to me anymore.
	I've seen him twice now on weddings.
	He ignores me, doesn't speak with me, and he is very angry at me.
	But that doesn't seem like a war.
	I mean, that just seems like the relationship is not going on at the moment, right?
	Yeah, right. And what can I do for you about that?
	Well, I want to know if I'm morally...
	If it's what I said to him, I want to know if it's your opinion, if I was wrong to say that or not.
	Do you know if they ever had a miscarriage or lost a child?
	Yes, they did.
	Very recently. Oh.
	And you were comparing that to her making jokes about your drug use, if I remember rightly?
	Her making jokes about my career and about my position in life while I have failed several jobs and making jokes about that.
	Right, right.
	And was the child that they lost, was it a miscarriage?
	Yes. And was it at about six months?
	Yes. Right.
	I don't think that's an objective answer.
	I mean, relationships are negotiated.
	I don't think there's an objective answer that says you should not have used that or that was an appropriate thing to use.
	I think that what you were trying to communicate was that it was about as painful for you as something could be, right?
	That's correct. And I think that offense is a very cheap substitute for communication.
	And in this, I would fault your brother, to be honest.
	So I can't speak as to the appropriateness of the metaphor because I don't know the history that you have in terms of that.
	I do know that the loss of a child is...
	Absolutely devastating.
	And what you were trying to say is, I've been devastated by this.
	And I think that for your brother to say, when you brought this up, that your behavior is absolutely appalling and shocking and I'm so offended and you must now apologize and so on, I think is...
	It's pretty crappy behavior.
	Even if the metaphor is inappropriate, just getting offended is, to me, a pretty cheap substitute for actually being in a conversation with someone.
	And I will tell you this though, and it's a strong opinion of mine.
	I'm not saying it's 100% proven, but it's a strong opinion of mine.
	You cannot argue people into empathy.
	Empathy is something that people have or they don't have.
	But you can't argue someone into having empathy.
	And I'm not saying that everybody has the same level of empathy, but there does seem to be a sort of binary thing that happens where people either have empathy or they just plain don't seem to have it.
	And I've not experienced, and Lord knows I've tried this, I can't even imagine how many times.
	I mean, it's got to have been hundreds of times in my life that I've tried this either online or even on shows or in my personal life, where I have tried to logically corner someone into having empathy.
	And I can tell you, That it has never, ever worked.
	Now, that doesn't mean that people can't act badly and then regret it.
	I mean, just the other day, somebody posted something really nasty and harsh on my YouTube channel.
	And then I didn't get around to doing anything about it.
	I was probably going to delete it just because I don't want to have that on my channel.
	And then he posted and he said, Oh, man, I'm so sorry.
	What a ridiculously bad thing to do.
	That was, you know, I apologize and blah, blah, blah.
	In which case, you know, well, it's not great, but it's not the end of the world.
	And so, you know, people can have regrets even if they act in a very harsh manner.
	They can have regrets and they can apologize, which is definitely a step in the right direction.
	But I have never experienced and I've never seen it happen, right?
	So 100% failed rate in my experience, which is pretty considerable.
	Of saying to someone, but my feelings are like if I did this to you.
	Empathy, to my limited understanding of the brain, but empathy is something that occurs At a physical level.
	It is a physical, like there are called mirror neurons, where you see someone do something and then you do it yourself and you understand that what is painful for you is painful for others.
	It is a whole stage of development that goes on in the brain when people are very young.
	It's like, I'll use the analogy again, it's like learning to speak Chinese.
	Logic cannot teach someone to speak Chinese.
	Logic can convince someone of the merits or lack of merits of an argument if they are already interested and accept logic.
	Logic can't fix the effects of trauma, of childhood trauma.
	Logic can't fix missed developmental stages in the brain.
	I'm sort of reminded that, this at least is the story, that when Ayn Rand was old and her husband Frank O'Connor was old, he began to experience dementia.
	It was just awful and tragic.
	It may have had something to do with his drinking.
	Who knows, right? But he began to experience this dementia.
	And Ayn Rand would assign him essays because he would make mistakes in his thinking.
	And she would assign him essays and homework to work on.
	To fix his thinking.
	To fix his mind. And she would sometimes harangue him.
	To be clearer.
	To be who he used to be.
	But of course it didn't work.
	Because he was experiencing a physical cognitive decline.
	I can't reason my hair into regrowing.
	I'm not even sure I would if I could.
	Kind of like this look. But...
	You cannot reason people into suddenly having parts of their brain develop that did not develop when they were children.
	Right? So if somebody did not get enough calcium when they were young and they have brittle bones, I mean, you can't reason them into having had more calcium when they were younger.
	And this is part of, you know, this is back to what we were talking about, or what I was talking about at the beginning of the show, to recognize where you have some power to affect and change things and where you don't.
	And I'm not saying, I think it was probably a good thing to say, I feel this way as if I had done this to you.
	I feel as if I, like, you would feel as I feel if I said to you, if I've made jokes about your miscarriage.
	But if somebody doesn't already get that at a very sort of deep and emotional level, if they have not developed the capacity for empathy, which is a very long and involved and detailed process, Then a logical argument is not going to go back in time and give them the kind of parenting that they needed to get in order to develop empathy.
	It's just not going to happen.
	What is going to happen is you're either going to get this kind of blow-up and this offense, or you're going to get this endless logical wrangling that goes on, like watching Rosencrantz and Guildenstern play tennis in that Tim Roth and Gary Oldman film.
	You're going to get this eternal wrangling which goes on where people are jockeying for the upper hand and so on.
	But I'm telling you, I'm telling you, you will not come up with a logical argument that will create empathy in another human being.
	It is not something that you accept on the basis of reason and evidence.
	It's something that you have to have experienced as you are growing up.
	And I don't know the degree to which empathy can be taught later.
	I think I would imagine that if somebody is very, very interested in developing empathy, then if they were to spend years in therapy and work very hard, I would imagine that they could.
	In the same way that if you didn't learn Chinese as a kid, then you can spend years and years and work very hard and learn Chinese.
	But there's no logical argument that uncorks some hidden reserve of Chinese speaking in a non-Chinese speaker.
	And I would say that the same is true for empathy.
	Again, I'm not saying that's 100% proven, of course, but to me, it's pretty damn close to an absolute.
	Thank you, Stef. Well, I didn't know that, but now I know that thanks to the experience and your explanation that through logic one cannot create empathy.
	Thank you very much for explaining that.
	The problem I have now is that And the whole family agrees with him that I am wrong because in our culture we don't talk about the death and I clearly did that and so I am the one being wrong.
	But that was to be expected from my family.
	But the problem is I went for the first time to a therapist And he thinks the same.
	Sorry, he thinks that you should not have talked about the death of your brother's child or fetus, right?
	Yes, that I should not have used the comparison.
	But he said that, look, I said to the therapist, yes, but he has beaten me for 10 years, laughing with my problems.
	And so when I use that comparison, it's righteous.
	On which the therapist said, look, but you have beaten him before that also 10 years, when you were young.
	So, and that way he wanted to show that, look, you've beaten him first, then he's beaten you back now the last 10 years, and now if you've said something that's really not acceptable.
	So, he didn't say then, it's your fault, but that was, it looked like it.
	Sorry, let me just, look, I don't want to contradict your therapist at all, so I'm not going to talk about that.
	I'm just going to talk to you what I think are the philosophical aspects of this.
	I tell you, this I think is really important, and this goes out to everyone who ever listens to this.
	This is so essential. This is so essential.
	In my very strong opinion, the moment that you threaten the end of a relationship, the relationship is over.
	The moment that you put a condition on the relationship which says, do this or it's over.
	The moment that you lay down an ultimatum in a relationship, it's dead, done, buried and gone.
	I have never had a relationship succeed where ultimatums have ever been issued.
	Because an ultimatum is a threat.
	And an ultimatum is a demand for conformity and obedience and submission.
	It is hierarchical.
	It is top-down. It is win-lose.
	And I don't stay in relationships which are based on do this or else.
	I don't stay in relationships that are based on threats.
	So let's say that you did something really wrong in using this comparison.
	It was insensitive, it was harsh, it was cold, it was cruel, whatever, right?
	Let's even say that you were in a bad mood and were feeling mean and wanted to say something that hurt.
	I'm not saying that's true, but let's just say you did the wrong thing.
	Well, then if your brother wants to have a relationship with you, then he needs to say, not to say you better apologize or I'm never going to talk to you again or it's over unless you grovel or whatever.
	That's bullshit.
	That is not a relationship.
	It's just a familial roving dictatorship.
	So your brother says, oh my god, that really hurt.
	That was really harsh.
	Oh my god, I feel a great deal of pain and anger.
	And where the hell did that come from in you?
	Or whatever, right? But if it's like you have so upset me, you have so angered me that unless you get down on your knees and apologize, we will never talk again.
	Well, let's say you do that.
	Let's say you apologize. Have you learned anything?
	No, you haven't learned anything.
	You haven't learned why it was wrong.
	If it was wrong, you haven't learned why you did something that was wrong and hurtful.
	You haven't learned anything.
	You haven't grown in any way.
	All that's happened is you've put a little line which says, well, if I ever do that, I'm really in trouble, so I'm not going to do that.
	And then something else is going to happen and something else is going to happen.
	This box, they just get smaller and smaller and smaller.
	The people getting upset and people getting offended and people threatening, like, if you don't apologize, it's over!
	You know, threats and ultimatums and Pull the plug demands.
	I mean, that's a grenade.
	You pull that pin out of the grenade, it does not go back in.
	I don't mean you. In this case, I mean your brother.
	And again, this is just my thoughts on it.
	Relationship problems are solved through honesty, through openness, through curiosity, and through persistence, and through a lack of name-calling, an avoidance of contempt, And of destructive rage.
	Or if those things occur, apologies, lavish apologies as soon as possible.
	Relationship problems are solved by figuring out what is causing them deep down.
	They are not solved by banning behavior.
	At the surface level.
	All that happens is they get pushed somewhere else.
	That's why I'm saying that these restraints, these constraints, these restrictions will always increase, just like any hierarchical, top-down, aggressive, or abusive system, like a government.
	Government power always increases.
	Liberty always decreases. Ultimatums will always multiply because the core problems are not being dealt with.
	And therefore something else is going to happen which is going to provoke.
	And you both just end up completely paralyzed because you're not going to the root and solving the problems.
	And you can't go to the root and solve the root problems on your own.
	You can do that with your therapist.
	You can do that with regards to yourself.
	And you can do that with regards to people who are willing to stay in a conversation with you.
	But you can't do that with people who are offended and who have pulled the plug and who aren't getting help.
	And... I'm just not talking to you.
	You can't solve that.
	You can't date a girl who's never home when you come by.
	So anyway, I just wanted to point that out.
	This is why people use this.
	They use this like, oh, if you don't, I'm going to leave you or whatever.
	And they think that this is...
	It may get short-term compliance.
	It's not solving any problems.
	And the relationship as it stood then is over.
	Maybe you can build a new one.
	But the way that that relationship was, where that is possible and the person complies or even if they leave, where that's something that you can do is pull the pin on that grenade.
	And expect things to continue as they were before.
	That relationship is done.
	That's certainly my thought on it.
	Steph, thank you.
	I also came to that conclusion that the relationship is over.
	But there is one problem now.
	Two years ago he had his first child, which is a lovely kid, and he made me godfather.
	It's a tradition in our country.
	You appoint a godfather and a godmother, and the idea is that they have special care for the child.
	But now the relationship is over with my brother.
	But I feel that it's really impossible to be godfather for that child.
	And I would like to know how would you handle that if you were godfather from a child and the relationship went broke with the parents?
	Well, I mean, I've talked about this a number of times before.
	So you can look back, you can do a search through the podcast feed for that.
	But, I mean, I don't know.
	I couldn't figure out how to have a relationship with the children without having a relationship with the parents.
	I just couldn't figure out how to do that.
	And so it was with great regret that I did not have a relationship with the children.
	It just wasn't possible.
	And maybe there's some way that you can figure that out.
	I certainly don't claim to have the answer for this for everyone, but that was how it shook out for me.
	And is it a good idea to communicate that with my brother, to say, like, look, I can't be the godfather if we don't have a good relation, so I think it's better to fire me, or I fire myself for the job, and you could find someone who could do it.
	Oh, no, he's aware of that, right?
	I mean, he doesn't think that you're still intimately involved if there's no conversations occurring, right?
	Well, he still has to see that probably, but the anniversary will be very shortly, so I'm really asking myself, what do I do?
	Will I visit them?
	It's a bad idea. I can send a postcard, but do I have to do that for 10 years?
	It's not a lot of...
	I'm doubting because I think that if I am not being the godfather, I think the child in the future will think, look, that uncle of me, he was not there a lot.
	I don't know what to do, actually, because you have the child.
	For the brother, it's very easy.
	No, I'm not the godfather.
	But for the child, it's a person on sich.
	It's an individual. So maybe even when I have a bad relationship with my brother, it could be useful to Every year, I send a postcard and maybe later in life that I try to do something with the child.
	Yeah, when it becomes a puber and they don't like the parents, probably then.
	So maybe then I can be of value.
	Look, I think all of that is certainly possible, and with any luck, that is what is going to happen.
	I think that you have the answer within you, but I think that it's going to take a lot of time.
	I don't think you need to figure out what to do today, tomorrow, next week, next month.
	I think that you need to keep sitting on this question.
	I think you need to keep talking it over with your therapist.
	You can journal about it, talk it with your friends.
	I think that the right course of action will come out of I don't think there's an external, do this, do that, and that's going to give you your best chance.
	These situations, and I'm so sorry about, I mean, what a terrible thing to have to face, which is the, I mean, this situation with your brother and with your godchildren.
	I mean, it's just wretched, awful, and horrible, and I'm so, so sorry that you have to face it.
	I don't think that there's any external answer about the right course of action.
	I think that the right course of action is very specific to the individual and to the situation, and it's going to come out of persistently and consistently figuring out How you feel and your experience out of that, I think, well, this is the only way that I've been able to come up with good decisions in really impossible situations is just to continually figure out what's going on within me, to ruminate over the history, and to get as much moral and emotional clarity as I can on the situation.
	I know that's a crappy non-answer, but I mean, that's really the best that I can do based on my experience.
	Steph, your answers have been wonderful.
	So really, thank you very much.
	Can I ask a last question about the therapists?
	It's the first time I've been there.
	I talked one hour and a half with him.
	And the only useful thing he said was the thing I told you, his opinion about the conflict.
	And it wasn't really...
	Very useful either.
	So I'm wondering, is it a good idea to change therapists after the first time already, or is it a better idea to do five sessions and give them a chance?
	Well, again, I can't answer that for you because there's a lot of complexity that goes into a therapeutic relationship.
	You are the consumer. And the first thing that I would do is to say to your therapist, I'm not happy with, I'm not enthralled with how the therapy session went last time.
	You know, bring that kind of honesty and see how your therapist deals with it.
	We did do a show a week or two ago on some thoughts about how to find a good therapist and there was, I think, some good standards in there from myself and from some of the other listeners.
	So you might want to listen to that show.
	Thank you.
	But, yeah, look, if you're not happy, you're not happy.
	You're the customer.
	And you should be happy and you should be satisfied with what you're getting.
	And if you're not satisfied, then, yeah, I certainly wouldn't press one thin dime into the hand of somebody who wasn't doing a great job, particularly in stuff that is as sensitive as all of this.
	So if you want to go back, if you feel that it would be helpful to go back, then I would suggest to go back.
	But the first thing that I would talk about is how I felt about the last session, what I felt was missing, and see what the response was.
	But you're certainly under no obligation to go back if you feel that you could get better therapy elsewhere.
	Okay, thank you very much, Steph, for your answers.
	They have helped me a lot.
	Sorry, the show number is 1716.
	I can't believe it's four digits. 1716 is the show number if you wanted to check that out.
	Okay, thank you very much, Steph.
	You're very welcome. And thank you, everybody, for the calls this week.
	Oh, was it exciting? And it's like surfing blindfolded backwards through a Dali painting.
	It's very exciting.
	And you guys have great and interesting questions.
	And thank you so much. For your continued interest and support in this show.
	I really do appreciate it.
	We are doing some fantastic things in the realm of philosophy and I look forward to posting.
	I think we're going to post the agnosticism debate on video in case you want to see all of the dynamic driving action of me sitting and debating.
	Gosh, can you imagine the visuals?
	Maybe we'll put some fireworks in there.
	But thanks everyone so much.

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