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Oct. 10, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:37:32

1766 Freedomain Radio Sunday Show Oct 10 2010

The philosophy of judgements, overcoming the death of dreams - and surviving suicide.

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	All right. Well, thank you everybody for dropping by.
	My goodness, it's a triple 10.
	It's the 10th of October 2010, just after 2 p.m.
	And I just came back last night from Philadelphia, where I spoke at the Students for Liberty National Regional Conference, which was a great deal of fun.
	Met some really nice people and got some good, very interesting speaking invitations to go further.
	I think the speech went very well. Certainly, audience feedback seemed very positive, and so, again, thanks everybody who donates to make that kind of stuff possible.
	Student organizations don't have a lot of money, so I did pay my own way down and all of that, so it's your donations that make all of that possible, and about 175 student leaders in the liberty movement who got to hear, I think, a fairly good argument for statelessness and had some very good questions and very good comments, so... So good stuff.
	And I guess we'll keep it short to start with and see if we have any questions from the listeners.
	You can type them into the chat room.
	We can call a telephone if you don't have Skype.
	You can also call us if you let James P know, 315-876-9705.
	And I'm all ears.
	Hello, can you hear me?
	I sure can. Oh, hey, how are you?
	I'm fine. How are you doing? I'm pretty good.
	How are you? I'm a little nervous, obviously, but I'm not exactly sure what I called.
	I'm Juan, by the way. We've sent you a couple of emails about a situation that I'm having at home and a conversation that I had with a few FDR members.
	I think that...
	One of my concerns right now is that I just started school while I'm studying social work.
	What I'm going to be doing when I come out is I'll be working with addicts and people that have had a real rough childhood.
	Maybe kids that are living in household homes or older people.
	There's a wide range of people that I I could be working with, but it's going to be mainly with people in the lower, you know, the ones that are having the roughest times, right?
	And one of the concerns that have come up for me is I'm worried of how much I'll be able to empathize with people who maybe have been violent to children or people who have been Who have done the things that we consider immoral, right? I'm just kind of concerned about how I'll be able to help them if I'm thinking, you know, this person, right?
	And I know that sympathy kind of comes in there, but I don't know if I'm being very clear or what's your thoughts around that.
	That's an interesting question.
	When you said, we consider immoral, what do you mean by that?
	Well, I mean, like, maybe people who have initiated violence against kids have been abusive or Who will be verbally aggressive against me, perhaps, or will be, you know, obviously won't have too much self-knowledge based on their situation.
	You know, I don't know.
	People who...
	Oh, hello.
	Did we lose you? Yeah, I think that that's...
	No, can you hear me? Sorry, can you hear me?
	Yeah, okay. First of all, let's look at the bigger question, which is why would you be drawn to that kind of environment?
	Interesting. Yeah, good question.
	Do you have an experience with verbal aggression or abuse within your own family?
	Yeah, I do.
	Verbal. Alright.
	And have you gone through therapy?
	I have taken a few A few sessions of therapy before, and I have a counselor right now, she's not a therapist, but I have been in it, and I'm doing it right now.
	Perhaps I'm still in the living situation, though, like I still live with my dad, who has taken part in that, and he's actually here right now, so I'm just gonna sneak out a bit.
	Sure. But yeah, go on.
	Okay, so why do you think that you're drawn to that occupation?
	Shit. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it.
	I'm just curious if you know why.
	Because I personally would not put myself back in an abusive situation without a good, good, good degree of self-knowledge about what was going on.
	Right, right. Well, there's a few reasons that I can think of right now.
	First, I've always been into psychology.
	I've always liked psychology a lot.
	And so helping people and just talking to people about their problems and just kind of helping...
	Just helping people work through family problems, right?
	So that's been a great motivation for me.
	And the other part is that it's like a short one-year program, whereas as soon as I'm done, I'll be out working and doing, you know, like, actually working with people.
	So that has been another motivation for that.
	But yeah, I have to get a thought about that.
	Like, okay, if I'm trying to get out of this abusive situation, why would I get into that field again?
	And I'm...
	I'm not sure if there's something else similar recently.
	I don't know. Absolutely.
	I guarantee you that there's other stuff, because the answer that you gave me is all very surface and pragmatic, and your motivations for being drawn towards this kind of work will be very deep and complex, because you have a history with this, right?
	So I personally would make very sure that I knew what I was doing before I put myself back into that.
	I mean, the last thing you'd want to do is to, you know, sign with the box to yourself and put you back in situations of abusive victimhood with potential patients.
	Yeah.
	You'd really want to make sure that you weren't doing that.
	That would be very self-harming and very damaging to you.
	So I would definitely, you know, to sit down with a counselor and just talk about all this stuff before you commit to this.
	That's the one thing.
	Now, the second thing that I'll say, and I, you know, this is just my opinion, right?
	I'm not saying I have a lot of facts to back this up, but I have a fair amount of ideas and experience in this area.
	Abusers do not go in for psychological treatment.
	Interesting. Right? So the guy who gets robbed, he goes to the cops.
	The thief does not.
	Right. Because an abuser is all about keeping secrets, right?
	They keep secrets and they force their victims to keep secrets as well.
	And so since therapy is about self-confrontation and it is about truly liberating and excruciating honesty with yourself and with others, it is entirely counter to the methodology of an abuser.
	An abuser is about taking secrets Locking them in lead boxes and throwing them in the bottom of the ocean with his victims attached.
	Therapy is about uncovering secrets, so it runs in the complete opposite direction.
	And so somebody who's been an abuser, who's had a chance to abuse kids, and he's probably in his 40s by the time this may come out, and so he's had decades of experience with In hiding the bodies, in keeping the secrets, in keeping his victims, you know, shutting the hell up.
	So since his entire being is dedicated to entombing and locking away and keeping hidden and misdirecting and evading secrets, the likelihood that he's going to go into therapy or she's going to go into therapy is almost zero.
	Because it is the complete opposite of everything that he's been doing.
	So maybe you'll get court-mandated therapy with somebody who's an abuser or whatever, but by the time you're that old and by the time you've done that much harm, if you've done a lot of harm to kids, the chance of reversals just seem to me extraordinarily slim.
	Now, of course, I don't have any scientific studies behind this, but we've talked about a lot of Victims here on this show over the years and I don't know of somebody who's been seriously victimized by a parent whose parent has gone to get the requisite help and it's turned around and it's gotten better and I mean it's not a scientific survey but it's also not completely unimportant that I can't think of a single time that it's happened.
	So I wouldn't, you know, I don't think that's a significant concern.
	The victims will come to you because the victims are the victims of secrets.
	Whereas the abusers are the perpetrators of secrets.
	So, you know, the rape victim will go to the cops, the rapist won't.
	And that's, I think, the difference.
	Right, right, right. Thank you, thank you.
	I think that's a great answer. I had a thought while you were saying that.
	I don't know how deep you want to go into this, but...
	Well, basically...
	Okay, I'm just going to say what I was thinking.
	I'm sure barbecue, you know, after meeting these great people and this, you know, vulnerable and honest and respectful people, it's just amazing, right?
	After coming back here and having to re-experience all this kind of stuff and realize that I have to start from scratch, right?
	I think that that really showed me, I don't know, I think that that triggered, I'm not sure, but after that I started to notice How my expectations of myself and of people are like really, really have a huge disparity, right?
	So I think that that's maybe deeper down into my concern about this empathy thing, which is not to say that that stuff's not valid, but I think that I've noticed that if I'm talking to somebody At school, they're talking about themselves, and they're not very deep or whatnot.
	In my mind, I'll judge them very harsh.
	They'll be like, okay, this person has no self-knowledge, or, you know, this person has, you know, I couldn't have an honest conversation with him or her.
	And it might be true, but I think, you know, I'm concerned that how that is going to play out with people who are actually, who are not even studying, you know, the same social work, but are actually going to be the clients, right?
	And maybe that's obvious, that's my, I think it is my thing.
	I think I've had a few thoughts on it, like maybe, Some sort of arrogance for a self-esteem issue or something like that, but I don't know if you have any thoughts on that.
	Well, I'm concerned that you would call your own judgment harsh.
	Look, there's no such thing as a harsh judgment.
	There's no such thing as a harsh judgment.
	A judgment, it's like saying there's a harsh equation in mathematics.
	Right? I mean, an equation in mathematics, I mean, you either solve it correctly or you don't.
	You know, if somebody asks me, what's the capital of Nepal, and I get it wrong, it's not a harsh answer.
	It's just incorrect.
	So for you, if you're talking to someone and you get a strong experience or feeling that this person avoids self-knowledge, there's no such thing as no self-knowledge, right?
	Everybody knows something about themselves, even if it's just their name, where their birthmarks are, and where they were born, right?
	Or whether they're hot or cold or neutral in the moment, right?
	Everybody has some self-knowledge, right?
	But the difference or the challenge is whether the person is actively pursuing self-knowledge that they're opposed to.
	The only thing that we really need to work at to pursue is the self-knowledge that we don't want to have, or rather that the alter egos in our minds don't want us to have.
	So if we grow up in abusive households, then we have to keep secrets, we have to hide in plain sight And we have to pretend that everything is fine and we have to appease and we have to placate and we have to pretend to be normal and adjusted in a world that is allowing us to be attacked in this kind of way and is surrendering us to predators.
	On a regular basis. So it's a fucked up kind of existence.
	And what lingers is our relationship with society, not our relationship with the abusers.
	Because we can choose not to associate with our abusers, but we can't choose not to associate with the society that does nothing to protect us and scorns, mocks, avoids us when we bring up the iniquities within society.
	So like a basic example...
	One out of five women and one out of ten men experience sexual abuse as children, according to pretty much worldwide and reliable statistics.
	One in ten men and one in five women experience sexual abuse as children.
	If you're in a party then with 30 or 40 people, right?
	Let's just say you're in a party with 50 people.
	Let's say you're at a party with 100 people, right?
	So 20 women there and 10 men experience sexual abuse and those are just the people who admit it.
	And that's just sexual abuse.
	And yet it's this massive thing that is not talked about in society.
	And if you try to bring it up, this is one of the few places in the world where you can talk about this stuff and it is not rejected.
	There's no eye rolling.
	There's no turning away.
	There's no horror.
	There's no shock. There's just a space for listening and talking about these things.
	And so... With most people, they've been trained, if they've gone through an abusive situation, they've been trained to avoid self-knowledge.
	The knowledge of who their parents are, the knowledge of what was done to them, the knowledge of society as a whole.
	And so, if they continue into adulthood with this avoidance of self-knowledge, the avoidance of the truth of their histories and the truth of their situation, their families, their environment, their culture, their religion, their schooling, everything, their government for heaven's sakes, well, If you judge them to be self-avoidant, what's harsh about that?
	I mean, you're either right or you're wrong.
	But I don't see how it would be harsh or not harsh.
	Right. Okay. Okay.
	My thought on that was, I think, obviously, that's a great answer.
	I've never heard that.
	That way of seeing.
	I think that's very wise.
	And I like that. But my thought was that if I open...
	If I say, okay, my judgments might be either true or not, then I have to accept that in people as well.
	And that would mean accepting my dad's judgments.
	And that was just my thought on it.
	No, no. Sorry. Let's go back.
	Just say that again.
	I may have misunderstood you.
	Right. My thought, my reasoning there was like, If I open my judgments to be either binary, it's either right or wrong.
	If it's a strong judgment, it's going to be right or wrong.
	I'm sorry, what is a strong judgment?
	You keep putting these adjectives in front of the word judgment that I don't understand.
	If I say the world is round and not flat, is that a strong judgment?
	No, no, no, it's not.
	It's a true judgment. No, and look, I'll tell you why you're doing this, right?
	Just in the interest of time.
	The reason you're doing this is that you were exposed to judgments, quote judgments, that were inflicted in an abusive way upon you as a child, right?
	Right, right. So for you, the term judgment is very loaded because it has been used in an abusive fashion in the past, right?
	Right, right. Yeah, that's true.
	And so you're afraid of judgment because the judgment is, right?
	Like I remember, not to compare you to a dog, but I will compare you to a dog.
	So when I first came to Canada, when I was 12, we stayed with my uncle.
	And they had a beautiful collie dog.
	I've always loved collies.
	I think they're fantastic. This dog was very friendly and very happy, and I really enjoyed spending time with the dog.
	And then one day my uncle asked me to rake the leaves in the front yard, and the dog was out.
	And I picked up the rake to rake the leaves, and the dog ran howling and tried to wedge himself under the car.
	Okay. And I was confused, and my uncle said, uh, yeah, somebody hit him with a rake.
	Oh, wow. Now, I mean, I'm not even going to speculate, right, who it actually was.
	It doesn't really matter. The point is that if something like a rake is used in an abusive way, an animal has a very tough time seeing it as just a rake, right?
	Right, somebody picks up a rake, Could be to rake leaves, could be to hit me, I'm not going to take the chance.
	So the rake is no longer something you use to gather leaves.
	It is something you use to inflict vicious pain on someone, right?
	And so, why I'm saying this, Juan, is I'm concerned, and I think it's inevitable, and I think it's natural, but it's something to be aware of.
	where judgment has become like a rake to you.
	Do you understand?
	Right.
	Yeah, I do.
	Don't be afraid. Because I tell you, the dog was not fundamentally afraid of the rake.
	Because the rake is just a thing.
	The rake cannot do the dog any harm.
	It can't jump off the wall and smack it in the head, right?
	So it is not...
	We tend to shift our judgment to things because it's too scary to judge people.
	So you shift your anger and your fear and your hostility to the word judgment, which is why you keep giving it these pejorative words, right?
	But it's not the judgment that you're afraid of.
	It's the judger. It's not the act of judging that you're afraid of, any more than the dog was afraid of the rake.
	The dog was afraid of the man wielding the rake, not the rake.
	It's really important not to confuse the two.
	So judgment is fine.
	It is not judgment that has any problem, any negativity, any problems.
	Like anger, right?
	People, they also think that anger is like the rake.
	So now anger becomes a bad thing.
	There's nothing wrong with anger.
	Anger is damn healthy. So you have a judgment that somebody is self-avoidant, avoids self-knowledge, but then it's like, oh shit, judgment is like a rake.
	I better drop it. Because rakes are bad.
	Judgment is bad. Judgment is harsh.
	Judgment is strong. No.
	Judgment is just an evaluation.
	Anger is simply the experience of violation.
	There's nothing wrong with it.
	Anger that is used as an abuse, as a tool of abuse, is like a rake that is picked up and used to hit someone.
	The problem is not the rake and the problem is not anger.
	The problem is whoever is using these tools or states or words in an abusive fashion.
	The problem is the abuser, not the thing that he's using.
	Right, right. Yeah, that makes sense.
	Right. Wow.
	Okay, so basically, it's differentiating my anger, my fear of judgment, and just from, you know, making a difference between judgment, just exactly what you said.
	I understand. Yeah, I mean, just to sort of attack a larger perspective on it, right?
	So, in the 20th century, people who were certain, some people who were certain were very dangerous, right?
	So, people who were certain that Jews were evil, like the Nazis, they did some staggeringly evil things.
	People who were certain that capitalists were evil and the proletariat was no one, the communists, you know, slaughtered people by the tens of millions.
	So, people who were very certain...
	It became very dangerous, and world wars were fought between various kinds of certainty.
	And then after the Second World War, you saw a rise of this addiction to relativism.
	In other words, certainty is dangerous.
	Certainty is bad.
	Certainty is evil.
	Certainty is genocidal.
	Certainty starts wars.
	So certainty is the problem.
	And anybody who's certain is an absolutist, is an ideologue, is judgmental, is defensive, is brittle, is aggressive, all of these pejoratives.
	But certainty wasn't the problem.
	Irrationality was the problem.
	Bigotry was the problem.
	But to conflate bigotry with certainty is ridiculous, because people are certain that certainty is problematic.
	People are certain that bigotry is bad.
	So certainty can't be both good and bad.
	And people who are raised in households or environments where it's typically called judgmental, somebody who's judgmental.
	Well, it's like, okay, so judgment is bad.
	It's like, is that your judgment?
	It doesn't work logically.
	You can't throw out judgment.
	You can't throw out certainty. You can't throw out anger.
	You can't throw out perceptiveness.
	You can't throw out reasoning.
	I mean, you can, but that's just surrendering to the bad guys.
	Just because people use a rake to hit a dog doesn't mean that you can't sweep up your mental leaves.
	You just have to recognize that the immorality is not in the rake.
	The rake can't be evil.
	Any more than a piece of metal can be evil.
	It wasn't the fact that there were walls at Auschwitz that kept the Jews in.
	It's the fact that people would shoot them if they tried to leave.
	And it wasn't the guns that were evil and it wasn't the uniforms that were evil.
	It was the individuals who were committing these atrocities.
	So it's very, very important that we continue to focus our moral outrage back upon the individuals and not be distracted by the accidents of however they happened to be abusive.
	Right, right, right, right.
	Okay. Yeah, I think that clarification is very helpful.
	Yeah, don't throw out your judgment.
	You will absolutely need it.
	Yeah. I mean, I think to be an effective counselor, I think judgment is very important.
	Sorry, I can't hear you very well.
	Oh, to be an effective counselor, judgment is very important.
	Right, right. And helping your patients discover the value of their own judgment is very important.
	Interesting, yeah.
	Wow. That's deep.
	Wow. I mean, because self-knowledge is self-trust, right?
	So once you know yourself, you can trust yourself because you're not being blindsided by unconscious weirdness.
	So self-knowledge is self-trust, but you can't trust yourself without trusting your judgment.
	I think the two are sort of one and the same.
	Right. And most of judgment is saying no.
	Most of judgment is saying no.
	Right? So you go to a party where there are 20 women.
	And let's say you want to date someone.
	You want to, you know, you're there looking for a woman to have a relationship with or at least go out on a date with or ask out at least or whatever, right?
	So it seems unlikely to me that you're going to go to each 20 women randomly and just ask them out, right?
	You're going to see who may be appealing to you, who may be interesting, who may have a positive air about her, or whatever, right?
	Whatever you find attractive.
	And you're going to go and ask that person out.
	And unless you're, I don't know, a bit of a real player, you're not just going to go, oh, well, she said no, so I'm going to go ask some woman out.
	Oh, she said no, I'm going to ask some other woman out at the same party, right?
	That's kind of cheesy, right?
	So you pass that one woman out, and you're not saying, yes, I want to go out with one woman.
	You're saying, no, I don't want to go out with 19 other women.
	Every job you take is 100 jobs that you don't take or at least look for.
	Every friend you have, or every friend you keep, like I stayed friends with maybe two or three people out of a high school of 2000.
	So I said no.
	We say no a lot more than we say yes.
	Far more. We chose to live in this house, which meant that we did not choose to live in the other 20 houses we looked at.
	I chose to buy this car after test driving 10 other cars, right?
	I said no to all of the others.
	You buy one computer, you've said no, you understand, right?
	So most of judgment is negative.
	Most of judgment is negative, and most of judgment is rejection.
	It's important to remember that because we're on the receiving end of it a lot as well, right?
	So it's just important that most judgment is rejection.
	It's not personal, at least not usually, but it's definitely necessary, right?
	Right. But abusers are hypersensitive to rejection, right?
	Because they know they deserve it.
	So they're hypersensitive to it.
	Like in the same way that a guy who's passing over a bad check is hypersensitive to you phoning the bank to check out whether his check is worthwhile because he knows it's not so he's hypersensitive to you doing that.
	So abusers are hypersensitive to rejection and so they can't tolerate it when you don't want to do something that they want to do or you judge them in some negative way.
	They can't take it. So our negative judgment gets Stifled and controlled in an abusive environment, which means we don't have the capacity to say no, which is fundamentally what we need to do for most of our lives, is say no, to set boundaries.
	Which is why people who've been through abusive histories tend to be so easy to exploit, because they just, they can't say no, abusers can't hear enough.
	Oh, wow.
	Wow, yeah.
	Wow.
	So I just want to be cautious about negatively judging your judgment, right?
	Right. Yeah.
	Oh, wow. That's immensely helpful.
	Wow. All right.
	Thank you so much. I think that definitely clears it up and gives me some food for thought for the next few months.
	I'm glad it was helpful. I hope that it works out better.
	Yeah. All right.
	Thank you so much, Steph. You have a great day and enjoy the sun if it ends early.
	Hello. Thank you.
	Alright. Take care.
	Sorry, is there anything else that you would like to mention?
	No, I'm going to see if there's anybody else who has comments or questions.
	Okay, sounds great. Thank you so much.
	Take care. Bye.
	Hello? Hello.
	Hi. Hey, Steph.
	I had a question.
	I was talking to a friend the other night about a certain thing, having to deal with jobs and also having to, well, maybe not just jobs, but careers.
	And there's this saying, I'm not sure if I'm quoting you correctly or if this was the correct way of looking, but the idea that if you want to be doing something, then you would be doing it.
	And if you're not doing it, then you don't really want to be doing it.
	And this holding these ideas and these mythologies inside our heads that, you know, I really want to do this.
	I have these lofty goals and things in the distance in my mind of things that I really want to be doing, but I'm not doing them.
	They're not in the immediate and I may see myself working toward them.
	Um, But there's also the idea that, you know, you're never going to be 100% ready to do anything.
	So, you know, why not just do them now?
	Sorry, just to pull it out of the abstract.
	What are you talking about doing or not doing?
	Give me something specific. Okay, okay.
	Let's just say...
	No, no, no. Let's just say you have things that you want to do.
	So let's not invent some fictional cousin who wants to become a ballerina.
	Let's talk about your twinkle toes.
	But that's so much safer stuff.
	I know, I know.
	Look, if you want safe, you need another show because that's not what we're about.
	But I guess...
	Not I guess.
	Not I guess. Oh man, you're going to make me work for my better today, aren't you?
	What do you want to do?
	I want to... Create and work on like a YouTube channel and do some kind of show, some sort of philosophy meets heavy metal type idea and expand upon that and also work toward Creating some sort of,
	taking my two interests, both my interests in that and the introspection that comes from a certain culture of like heavy metal and the idea of some of the horror movies that I've watched and trying to Introspect and see why did I like them?
	What was the interest? What part of my trauma or my childhood inspired me to like those movies?
	And where are they coming from? And dissecting that.
	And also dissecting different parts of the heavy metal scene psychologically.
	Like, why are we attracted to this type of music?
	Why does this part of, you know, why do I feel like this is most interesting?
	Why would I listen to something that most people would be clawing at the walls to get away from that I find resonates with me on a deep level?
	And so there's an interest in wanting to take those two worlds, both philosophy, psychology, and the middle and some of the subculture that's in there and combine it and turn it into some sort of platform to present to people that are interested in those sort and the middle and some of the subculture that's in there and And might be interested in introspecting on them.
	And yeah, so that's my dream per se.
	And that's kind of scary to say because it's like, you know.
	I think it sounds fantastic, to be honest.
	I think it's great.
	I think to take a genre of music and to start to explore it from a self-knowledge and psychology and philosophical perspective, I think it's brilliant.
	I think it's brilliant, and I think it could do a lot of good.
	But why is it that you want to do this?
	What's the goal? How would you know if you succeeded or not?
	I mean, it's not a binary thing, success, right?
	But in general, right?
	The thought behind it was that, A, it would just make me happy being able to put my fingers in all the pies that I like.
	I like heavy metal.
	I like psychology. I like philosophy.
	What would I do every day that would make me happy would be to do this.
	To have that and to create a community around that.
	Or at least people that were interested in bringing those people closer to me and also to be able to You know, to help other people to kind of introspect and look at the things that maybe they wouldn't look at if it's in any other platform or any other medium that they would like, you know, oh, he's got a bunch of heavy metal stuff.
	Oh, this is cool. I'm looking at what the hell is this other stuff he's talking about?
	You know, it's, you know, it'd be something else to to pull people into.
	And You know, there's a selfish part of me that's like, oh great, I can pull more people in who actually like metal and we can talk about this and we can talk about psychology and philosophy and I can kind of, you know, also, you know, kind of a group thing and a community thing and then also as well as You know, just helping people in general.
	But I mean... All right.
	Hang on. Hang on. Sorry. It's too much for me to follow, but let me see if I make sure that I understand, right?
	So, I mean, you could do all of this on your own, right?
	But you want to share it with others, right?
	Right. And if you're going to share something with others, we're going to assume there's some benefit to them, right?
	Right. Right, right.
	I mean, if I'm Mistress Dominatrix Weaselhead and I share my fetish dungeon with other people, I assume it's because they enjoy having me put my stiletto heels on their nether regions or whatever.
	At least there's some creepy benefit to them that way.
	So if you're going to share something, we're going to assume that it has some benefit to other people.
	So my question is, what's the benefit?
	Right. Because, I mean, the benefit for this show is freedom.
	Right. That's what I want to try and give or stimulate or provoke in other people is freedom and freedom from illusion and primarily through self-knowledge.
	That is the goal, right?
	So it's to do good in the world that I'm doing...
	What I'm doing, right? And so that's just my sort of simple thing, right?
	I want to just challenge people to confront their illusions and surround them and, you know, flap away in the free sky of self-knowledge.
	So what is the benefit that people would receive on looking at your channel?
	It would allow them the ability to go a little bit deeper, deeper introspection, to allow them to start to slowly realize the different types of ways in their lives that they are...
	That they are and can be imprisoned by society and culture.
	The idea for me, I don't think I ever got around to the actual idea or the word freedom, but it was definitely an idea of wanting to help them pull away from abusive situations.
	The main thing to get to them is to give them the ability to live a happy life, to live a life where they don't have to be prisoners of these emotions, where they can be free from them and not be trapped by them.
	Because I know that, you know, I can, with the trauma and the abuse and the pain, that I know that personally, firsthand, obviously, I know that that can be a prison.
	And I don't want people to live in that prison.
	I especially don't want people in the genre of music that I love so much to be trapped in it as well.
	I want them to be able to be free of that, to be able to see the world without having to be locked into those either cliches or labyrinths of thought that keep them self-abusing, to be able to see the world without having to be locked into
	Instead of them using metal or using the idea of that kind of passionate spirit as something that has them as evil and beaten down, that it's something that actually inspires them to see it as something that's that it's something that actually inspires them to see it as something that's liberating, something that is actually going to keep them out of a place of abuse and a place where they can actually gain more control over their life, where it's not excess of
	And other things like that where it can slowly allow them more control over their life than they can.
	their destiny, and allow them to, generally what you were saying, to be free.
	Right. Have you listened to, I put a podcast out recently, which is a review of American Psycho?
	No, I looked for it and looked for it, and I didn't see the actual thing.
	Is that on the premium, or is it...
	No, no, it's... It's FDR 1759.
	I'll throw it in the chat window right now.
	And the reason I'm saying that is that the thesis is, my thesis is that American Psycho is a plea for recognition of child abuse, right?
	So the writer has based the character of this murderous sociopath, he's openly said he based it on his father.
	Who was an abusive, horribly abusive man and a drunk.
	And so he's writing this book saying, this is my father.
	And so to me, that's very clear.
	He's saying, look, I was raised by a murderer.
	And so it's sort of like a, it's not a plea for help exactly, but it's definitely a plea for recognition for what he went through.
	And nobody, not one interview, and I read quite a few of them, not one interviewer ever asked him about this.
	Oh, it's about American materialism and excess and capitalism and greed and blah, blah, blah.
	It's like bullshit. What utter load of nonsense.
	It's about a guy saying, I was raised by a murderer.
	And nobody talks about this.
	And of course, in the novel, sorry, in the movie, I'm still plowing my way through the novel, but in the movie, the guy continually says, hey, do you know I like to dissect girls and that I'm completely insane?
	That I have homicidal tendencies that I simply cannot succumb, that I'm succumbing to more and more bloodlust?
	And he hands bloody sheets to someone and says, you deal with the cleaner about getting these clean.
	And nobody... Nobody recognizes what he's doing, even though he's openly stating it.
	Right? So, anyway, I won't go into the podcast because I think it's a long and I think very good podcast, so have a listen to it.
	Definitely, definitely. Along the lines, look, I'm not trying to define your show.
	I'm not, right? But you definitely are scattered, if you don't mind me saying so, and I understand that.
	But if I understand what you're saying, and tell me if I don't, but if I understand what you're saying...
	You're saying, look, people are drawn to heavy metal because they had harsh childhoods.
	Right. And it's not like I want them to give up their love of this music, but if somebody says, I'm really into heavy metal, what they're really saying is, this is the only way that I can tell you I had a bad childhood.
	And what you want to say is, hey, I understand.
	You had a bad childhood.
	This music is a symptom of that.
	That doesn't mean that you can't like it.
	But I want you to understand that I get it.
	I get what you're telling me.
	Do you know, people are always telling you everything.
	People are always telling you everything, everything, everything, everything, all the time.
	And the great tragedy, isolation, humiliation, indignation, and loneliness of human existence is that everybody is telling everyone all the time, like they're speaking through a megaphone with skywriting.
	The constellations are moving to spell out the secrecies of their history.
	And nobody listens.
	And nobody looks.
	And nobody sees.
	And I think what you want to set up is a place where it's like, hey, I share this enthusiasm.
	I know my history.
	I know the relationship between my enthusiasm and this history.
	And I want you to see it too.
	Not to drop the music, but to see the source of its power for you.
	Because that may free you.
	Right. Again, I'm not trying to tell you what your show is about.
	This is what I'm trying to glean out of what you're saying, with my own prejudice bias as well.
	Right. Well, you have a way with language that I don't.
	But no, I think you're dead on.
	Definitely, I think you're dead on.
	Yeah. Just on a side note, yeah, I mean, American Psycho was my most favorite movie, along with the TV episode Dexter.
	I don't know if you're familiar with that.
	I watched the very first one, but I could not quite get into it.
	But yeah, I think it's, look, I think what you're doing would be a good thing to do.
	I think it would be a good thing to do.
	So the question is, why aren't you doing it?
	Yeah, exactly. That was the whole thing.
	Like, why am I not doing it?
	And, I mean, there's not like there isn't a short of programs or things that I can do to get it started.
	And why haven't I started it? Oh, come on.
	Look, you get the privilege of me not listening to nonsense from you because you've been around for a while.
	So you know exactly why you're not doing it.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Why aren't you doing it? Um, fear, I think.
	Of course. And fear of what?
	Uh... Fear of failure?
	Fear of... No, no, no, no.
	No, look. I like the way that people just randomly get...
	Okay, what's a negative word?
	Failure. Okay, maybe I'm afraid of that.
	Fear of stubbing my toe.
	Fear of elves. Fear of spiders.
	Ghosts. Right? These are all negative things.
	Fear of the dark. No.
	And I'll tell you why it's not fear of failure.
	It's because you're already failing. Good point.
	You're standing in a burning house and I say, why aren't you leaving?
	And you say, well, I'm afraid I'm going to get burned.
	It's like, but you're already going to get burned, right?
	In fact, you're already on fire, right?
	So you're already failing at doing this by not doing it.
	So it's not fear of failure because you're actually more comfortable with failure than with success or even the potential of success, right?
	Right. I mean, just logically, it has to be, right?
	Right. That makes sense.
	But an excellent random guess.
	Go on. I was just going to be like, well, there's a sense of failure.
	There's a fear of rejection.
	I was just running through the negatives.
	Yeah, just running through it. No, because you're already self-rejecting.
	There is no rejection.
	There's only self-rejection.
	There is no rejection from the outside world.
	There really is only self-rejection.
	So somebody can say to me, I don't like your show.
	In fact, most people say to me, I don't like your show.
	Because the vast majority of people don't listen to my show, right?
	So they're either indifferent to or they don't like my show, right?
	I get emails from people who say, I don't like your show.
	You're arrogant, you're smarmy, you're condescending, you're a know-it-all, you're this or that, the other, right?
	Fine. But because I don't self-reject, it doesn't happen.
	It doesn't occur. It's a swing and a miss, right?
	Right, right. So you're already self-rejecting, so it can't be a fear of rejection.
	Because if you were that afraid of rejection, you'd stop self-rejecting, which is the most painful.
	Because it's the only one that counts, right?
	Right, right. And I was doing this speech on Saturday, and I don't know, it was like 175 people in the hall, and they were all like really smart student leaders, right?
	And it was a great crowd, I really liked it, but there were some people there who really didn't like what I was saying.
	And we sort of don't have to get into sitting there, arms crossed, stony-faced, right?
	Oh, yeah, right, yeah.
	And I mean, that's inevitable, that's natural, it would be completely bizarre and sort of pointless to go if that wasn't the case, right?
	Right, right. But I don't focus on those people and say my speech is bad.
	Right, right.
	Now, if everyone's doing that, I won't say that my speech is bad.
	I will say that I'm not connecting to the audience.
	And that may be because my speech is very good, right?
	I mean, if I were talking to a bunch of Christians and they got upset, it would be because my speech hit home, right?
	If I was an atheist and bored Christians, that would be a bad speech, right?
	So let me just finish the point.
	I apologize for that. So it's not fear of failure because you're already failing.
	It's not fear of rejection because you're already self-rejecting, which is the only rejection that counts.
	Now, let me give you a hint because it's a tough question, right?
	But if you can't answer this question, you can't start your project, right?
	Right. So if you want to look at what is stopping you in the future, where's the first place to look?
	The past. Right.
	What were you most afraid of as a child?
	Well, we know the answer to that because it's the same for all of us.
	We were the most afraid of being attacked.
	Right. Right.
	Definitely. Sorry, go ahead.
	I was just going to say that's why you grow the thick skin and why you start listening to Heavy Mel in the first place and you get all big and strong because you're afraid of being attacked.
	It's a reaction to that, but yeah.
	Right, right. And you're afraid of being attacked because you will be attacked.
	It's not an imaginary fear, right?
	Right, right. So, I can guarantee you that if you do what you do, you're going to be attacked.
	Hmm, right. I guarantee you.
	It doesn't mean you're only going to be attacked.
	But if you attempt to tell people or to reveal to people that their extreme preference for dark and sinister music is a symptom of trauma, some people are going to thank you in time and some people will not thank you.
	Right? Because When you expose people's habits as being the scar tissue of trauma, you are exposing a grave secret.
	And people will either react as the victim of that secret, which is they will lunge towards that knowledge as a prisoner lunges at a loose rock in a prison wall.
	Or they will react as an abuser, in which case they will attack you for daring to speak the unspeakable.
	Right. Right.
	Because if you do that, then...
	I guess it brings a level of consciousness that they don't want.
	Well, let's say you're talking to a victim.
	All victims have inner abusers in their heads.
	They have to. They have to internalize their abusers in order to survive.
	I mean, that's... Natural and inevitable.
	In the same way that your body produces antibodies based upon the illness itself.
	In the same way that you become safe from smallpox by injecting a small amount of smallpox that your body can handle, you internalize your abusers in order to understand and navigate and appease and survive them.
	Right? Right, right.
	So when you talk to a victim, you are also talking to his abusers in his head.
	And if you show sympathy for the victim and talk about the reality of the crimes that were committed against the victim, who else in his head hears that?
	It's abusers, right?
	Right. And they seriously do not fucking want you to talk about that shit.
	They rise up in a storm from the amygdala.
	They rise up like dragons, like Nazgul, like all the flaming hellhounds and horses from hell.
	They rise up to attack whoever turns the lights on and interrupts them in their feast.
	So that's I mean, I would say that you know that, and I would say that that's what's stopping you.
	Right. Right.
	No, I think that I'm just sitting here processing it, and I'm like, no, that makes sense.
	I mean, it's because ultimately the fear is that I'm going to go up against all these different...
	It's not the fear.
	It's not the fear. It's the certainty.
	Oh. It's not a fear.
	I mean, it is a fear, but it's the certainty.
	Right? So the difference is, if I'm standing in front of a cage at the zoo, I'm not afraid of the lion, right?
	Right, right. Because there's a cage there, right?
	So the lion can't get at me, right?
	Right. If somebody opens the cage, I'm seriously scared because the lion might attack me, right?
	Right, right. If the lion lowers its head and charges at me, I know that the lion is going to attack me.
	Because the lion is attacking me, right?
	So the one is the certainty of safety, and the second is the possibility of attack, and the third is the reality of attack.
	Now the certainty of safety is why people live tiny lives.
	It's why they don't ever talk about anything.
	It's why they live these shallow, non-existent, sports-addicted, patriot-addicted, crowd-addicted, conformity-addicted, appeasement-addicted, self-erasing, non-lives.
	Because they need to keep the lion in the cage.
	It's only the tall poppy that gets cut down.
	It's only the nail that sticks up that gets hammered down.
	To stand up in this world is to be attacked.
	And you're attacked by the abusers, and you're also attacked by your fellow slaves, because when you stand up, you remind them that they're not.
	Ultimately, it's not just the concept of fear.
	It's a physiological response.
	To an actual attack that will certainly occur.
	And more than one.
	A whole series, right? Because you're going into a very volatile community, right?
	I mean, if people have had that bad a childhood that they're into that kind of really dark death metal, you're going into a pretty volatile community.
	Right, right. It's like going, I mean, it's not quite this extreme, but it's like going into a community of drug addicts and talking about the ACE study, right?
	The effects of childhood and that drugs are a way of masking childhood abuse.
	I mean, that is some heavy shit for people and they react very harshly to it.
	Right, right. Right.
	I just think that's amazing, because I guess I always framed it as just the thought of fear, but you were saying it's a certain danger, and that it's an actual physiological response to that certain danger, that it's not just a concept that I can't seem to grasp.
	And it's not personal, and it's not in your head, and it's not just made up, and it's not just random anxiety.
	Right? I mean, any more than being charged by a fucking grizzly is, you know, you're scared because you're neurotic.
	Right, right. You know, I tell you, it is some hard shit.
	It is some hard shit to grab humanity by the scruff of its neck and try and get it to its goddamn knees.
	It is a hard, hard job.
	It takes balls of steel.
	To stand in front of the species and say, you can do better.
	Right. People don't like it.
	Leave me alone. Leave me to my smallness.
	Leave me to my tininess. Leave me to my non-existence.
	Leave me to my hiding from the vast predators that rule the world.
	And to me, that's fine.
	Hey, if you want to hide out for the rest of your life, that's fine with me.
	Just be aware of it. There's never any problem in life as long as you know it.
	Nothing you do is a problem as long as you know it consciously.
	There's people who think they're courageous and attack anyone who really stands up.
	I mean, they're the real problem.
	But anyway, I digress.
	Right, right. No, and...
	And the reason why there's all that fear and why you feel locked up and that you – as if you can't is because your body, I guess, and your mind is systematically trying to protect you from an actual – a real perceived danger.
	Yeah. And that's why it's not – I mean because I don't know.
	I just – maybe I'm reiterating what I just said, but I always thought it was just – it's some concept.
	It's something having to do with my mind.
	I have to just figure out my thoughts and rearrange them.
	But no, that makes so much more sense why it's so permanent, why it's so definite, why it's like your feet are in concrete and you're not moving anywhere.
	You're trying to yank yourself out.
	But no, that definitely makes a lot of sense.
	I mean, I can do the final bit here, which will truly blow your mind if you like.
	Certainly, certainly.
	The final bit to this is the question of why your unconscious gives you these negative feelings like fear and anxiety but doesn't identify their cause.
	It doesn't tell you. So if I see the lion charging at me at the zoo because the cage is open, my unconscious doesn't hide from me why we're terrified.
	So the question is, why does your unconscious paralyze you but not tell you why you're paralyzed?
	Because your unconscious could, if it wanted, You could have a dream, you could have an impulse, it could give you repetitive thoughts or visions or whatever.
	Your unconscious could absolutely tell you why you're paralyzed, but it doesn't.
	Why? Is the unconscious an asshole?
	I don't think so. The only thing I can come up with is that because that's what it was doing to try to protect you when you were little.
	Yes, but your unconscious knows that you're not little now.
	I mean, the unconscious is better at time than we are, right?
	Right, right, right.
	I mean, the unconscious knows when puberty is supposed to happen even when we don't, right?
	Right, right. Yeah, I'm drawing a blank.
	I'm not quite sure.
	Well, because if you know the source of the fear, it will no longer be paralyzing.
	Right? So this is the kind of paralysis that only occurs when you don't know the source.
	It can't paralyze you if you know the source.
	Oh. Huh.
	No, that really does make...
	Yeah. Because it defeats the purpose...
	Of the physiological response.
	It knows that once you put the pieces of the puzzle together, the physiological response ceases to be, a new form of reasoning develops, and you will move forward toward the perceived, not the perceived, but the certain danger, which it is trying to protect you from.
	That's interesting. Huh.
	Right. And I would say that the source of the fear is your inner child.
	But the invisibility of the fear is your inner parents.
	Hmm. Hmm.
	Because it's secrets. And anything that is a secret comes from abusers.
	Anything which is a secret within you comes from abusers.
	Because they're the ones who benefit from secrets, not us, right?
	Right, right.
	The truth does set us free.
	Therefore, any time we're enslaved, it's because of the slave owners.
	Right, right.
	No, that was definitely mind-blowing.
	I really appreciate you going over this with me because this is very eye-opening.
	It's extremely helpful.
	It's very interesting.
	I'm glad. I'm glad.
	And so none of this means that you have to do it or not do it.
	The important thing is just to know, right?
	The decision always comes from the knowing.
	Right, right. No, definitely.
	Thank you for helping me clear that up.
	I think that it gives me a better place to work from instead of a kind of vicious cycle of self-attack and trying to figure out the concept instead of tooling around in an abstract.
	Very little within us that is deep and meaningful comes in isolation.
	It's almost always from our environment in some way, at least if it's that deep.
	That's just a good place to start.
	Definitely. Definitely. All right.
	Well, let me know how it goes.
	And I hope you find a way to do it because I think it's a good thing to do.
	But I think it's definitely a challenging community that you're going to launch yourself into.
	And I think just to be aware of it is useful.
	Definitely. Definitely. Again, I really appreciate the conversation.
	My pleasure. All right.
	Do we got me somebody else?
	Going once. Going twice.
	Hello? Hi.
	Hi. I emailed in a couple of times.
	It's about my friend on suicide.
	Yes, yes. How are you doing?
	I'm all right. Yeah, so I guess my question is, I'm just wondering how I'm supposed to cope with it.
	Yeah, just for the other listeners, again, no names if you don't mind, just talk a little bit about the circumstances and the history.
	All right. Yeah, she...
	So the supposed story that came to me was that her boyfriend, her parents didn't want them to be together, so she told her boyfriend to shoot her and then shoot himself, and that's the supposed story.
	But, you know, in my eyes, it could...
	It's just as easily been a murder, because supposedly also that she wanted to come back to Bandera that day, and he didn't want her to.
	To come back to where, sorry?
	Oh, where I live, sorry. Sorry, I didn't quite hear that.
	Oh, where I live?
	Sorry. Okay, so your concern is, I mean, you'll never know, I would imagine, right, whether it was murder or suicide.
	I mean, the fact is that she's dead, right?
	And if you can talk a little bit about your history of your relationship with the woman?
	Well, she was...
	I was always kind of sad from past things before her.
	I'm sorry, you don't have Skype by chance, do you?
	I'm having a tough time following what you're saying.
	You either need to enunciate or I need to call you back on Skype.
	It's hard to hear. It's hard to hear.
	Either you're mumbling or, like, if you don't have Skype, if you could just try and speak more clearly to make sure that I don't keep annoying you with pardon me and what.
	Okay. Is this anybody right here?
	Yeah, let's keep going.
	Alright. Yeah, she's just always very nice and would always care for me.
	And was always there for me whenever I needed her.
	And... Yeah, we were going to date, but her ex, which was the ex at the time, the one that supposedly killed her, you know?
	You know, they were still talking, so she said she was in love with him, so...
	Yeah, and then she moved away, back over there, and then...
	Yeah, that was it. I'm...
	I'm sorry, did you just end your sentence, or did we lose you?
	Oh, no, no, no. Yeah, I ended my sentence.
	Alright, and how can I help you?
	Sorry, I didn't hear that. What?
	How can I help you? Oh, I'm just...
	Because, I mean, I feel like I should have been there to protect her, you know?
	I feel like if I would have texted her more and everything, I have a bunch of what-ifs, you know?
	When was the last time that you had contact with her before she died?
	It was... I think probably a month before it happened.
	And had you been there to help her?
	I would imagine she had some issues.
	If this is the way her life ended, were you there to help her with her issues?
	You said that she was there when you needed her.
	Were you there when she needed you?
	I mean, I don't mean at the end, of course.
	I know not, but beforehand. Yeah.
	See, that's the thing. I think of...
	Because I knew about the issues.
	I just never really talked to her about it.
	She just never brought him up after she told me about him.
	And what were the issues? It was that her parents were...
	Her dad was abusive.
	Her mom was overprotective.
	She wouldn't let her out anywhere.
	Yeah, and it's not exactly overprotective.
	Overprotective, I think, is actually quite good.
	Someone who lets the kid get abused is not exactly overprotective.
	But anyway, go on. Yeah.
	And then her boyfriend, of course, was supposedly abusive.
	And did you know her boyfriend was abusive before this death?
	Before what? Before she died.
	She never really told me about it.
	She just told me that he was one of the people that always would, like, oh, who are you calling, texting?
	You know, like, kind of, how can I say it?
	Like kind of jealous and intrusive?
	Yeah, yeah. And did you know he was abusive?
	Yeah, I had the impulse that he was, yeah.
	I'm not sure what you mean when you say you had the impulse that he was.
	I never said exactly that he was, but she told me how he got jealous, how he always yelled, how he did all that.
	And what did you do about that?
	And what did you do about that?
	I was just... You know, I just said, oh, I'm so sorry, you know, if there's anything I can do, just let me know.
	And then she was like, okay.
	And then she just didn't bring it back up.
	And when did that happen?
	That was, see, she died like four months after she moved back to where she was before she moved to my town.
	And that's like five months before she died.
	Okay, and when did she die?
	Three months ago. Right.
	And when did she... So she told you four months before she died that she thought her boyfriend was yelly and controlling and whatever, right?
	Yes. And how long have you been listening to this show?
	Ever since...
	I think about six months ago.
	So it was after...
	She told you, a month after she told you that her boyfriend was abusive, in her words, you started listening to this show?
	It was during the summer, or like right before the summer.
	Right, right. And was there any, did you get any impulse, either as a result of this show or something else, to talk to her about what was going on with her boyfriend?
	I'm sorry, you broke up a little bit.
	Did you ever have the impulse to talk to her more, either based on this show or for some other reason, to talk to her more about what she'd said about her boyfriend being abusive?
	Oh yeah, I really wanted to, but whenever I'd bring it up, she'd kind of get a little snaggy about it.
	Can you give me an example?
	Yeah, like if I was like, well...
	Well, tell me more. What does he do?
	And she'd be like, oh, well, no, no, no, no.
	He doesn't do anything. Never mind.
	You know, she tried to just downplay it.
	Right, right. Because she always said, supposedly, she loved him.
	And was she more honest about other things in your relationship and this was the exception or did she avoid this kind of self-knowledge in general?
	Yeah, see, with me, she was always like, towards me, she was the opposite, you know?
	She'd always like, She'd talk about love and everything.
	She'd talk about how I don't deserve what I've been getting from girls, you know?
	And then she'd always talk like that.
	But whenever it came to her, she would just shut down with it.
	She wouldn't want to talk about it.
	Right. Right. Okay.
	And can you tell me why she was in your life in the first place?
	I'm not criticizing why.
	I'm just curious, right?
	I mean, why she was in your life.
	We had a class together during school.
	Yeah, that's not what I'm asking.
	You had classes with lots of people, right?
	So why was she in your life?
	What was it in your life or your history that this person, who you couldn't talk to honestly about very important topics, why was she in your life?
	Right. I guess it's because she started talking to me when I looked depressed and nobody else would talk to me at that time, you know?
	Okay, so she was definitely helpful to you, but she wouldn't accept any help from you, right?
	Yeah. Right.
	Well, that's tough, right?
	That's tough. I mean, people who are like that, they can be very helpful, but they're like people who, in a sense, they always buy you dinner, but they won't ever let you buy them dinner.
	It's like, well, I'm hungry, but, you know, hey, reciprocity is good.
	So that's a tough situation for sure.
	Do you feel, looking back, that there's more that you could have done?
	Very much. Well, like what?
	I feel like I could have...
	She would text me, but sometimes I wouldn't answer.
	And I feel like I would have stayed in touch.
	Somehow, maybe that night, she would have texted me before she did it, or maybe she would have talked to me about it.
	But she didn't talk to you about it when she was in less of an extreme state, right?
	Yeah. So, what do I know?
	I'm just some guy on the internet.
	But this is what my thoughts are.
	Is that if she consistently rejected an important topic in her life, i.e.
	her pretty destructive boyfriend, if she avoided that topic when it was less extreme...
	It seems less likely to me that she would then embrace that topic when she was in a more extreme state, if that makes any sense.
	Yeah, right. That makes sense.
	Like, if I can't run because I've stubbed my toe, I sure as hell can't run if I break my leg, right?
	Right, right. So when I'm in a more extreme state, it's not like things become more possible, if that makes sense.
	Right, that makes sense.
	Yeah. And did you ever talk to her about her childhood?
	She just told me about how her parents were in her childhood.
	And that's about it.
	She never told me anything specific.
	And did you ask her, and I'm not saying this because you should or shouldn't, I'm just curious, right?
	Did you ask her? And she wouldn't talk more about it?
	Yeah, she just told me about her parents and how her life was...
	She was always bowing down and everything.
	She could never go out and do anything.
	She was resentful about that.
	Yeah, that's all she told me about her past, really.
	Right, right.
	Look, I want to make sure that I'm doing something to help you, but I do sort of feel like I'm pulling teeth here.
	It's all right, yeah. So, you tell me what it is that would be the most helpful to you, and I'm happy to provide it if I can, but me just asking you questions and getting these sort of little answers isn't going to do anybody any good.
	Right. Alright, yeah.
	Well, the thing is, because I just found out, like, last week that she died, and she died three months ago, you know?
	And, I don't know, like, I just feel like, because There's only been one time in my life where I've been actually happy and everything, and I started to come up again, and all of a sudden, the suicide happened.
	It just feels like every time I'm about to come up and get happier, something bad just always brings me back down.
	Right, right, right.
	Well, you know, I can't give you any advice about the past, because the past is the past, right?
	And this is what happened.
	But I can tell you this, my friend.
	If someone's in an abusive relationship and won't talk about it, it is not going to change.
	That's right. Right?
	So, you know, I can't do anything, obviously nobody can, about what happened in the past.
	But I think the key thing is to look at signs about the future, right?
	Yeah. If anybody wants to get over an abused history, it takes a lot of work, a lot of commitment, years of work.
	Yeah. It's like somebody who weighs 600 pounds, right?
	I weigh 195 and I get 405 pounds of baggage, right?
	So if you weigh 600 pounds...
	Everybody knows it's gonna take you years to get down to even a remotely healthy weight, right?
	And they also know that you have to be aware of the fact that you're overweight.
	You have to be committed to losing the weight.
	You have to have a coach to lose that kind of weight.
	You better get a doctor involved and a nutritionist and a psychologist.
	And you better regularly monitor what you're doing.
	And you better be knowledgeable.
	And you better be in it for the long haul.
	And you better start exercising when it's safe to do so.
	So like it's a whole massive flurry of activity to lose 400 pounds, right?
	Yeah.
	Now, if somebody's 400 pounds overweight, like this woman was 600 pounds, and every time you went over, she was eating more cookies and chocolate and chips and cake and all this, right?
	And anytime you tried to bring up her weight, she said, oh, I'm fine.
	There's nothing to talk about, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	What are the odds of her losing weight in that situation?
	extremely low Zero. Yeah.
	Zero. Not extremely low.
	Zero. Yeah. I mean, unless we count getting bitten by a land-born shark or something, it's not going to happen, right?
	Yeah. Yeah.
	And so, my concern is that you were depressed when you met her and you had someone in your life Who would not talk about her issues, who told you about these issues and then refused to talk about it.
	I consider that a very destructive thing to do to someone.
	I consider it very destructive to say, my boyfriend is abusive, and then when the other person tries to talk about it more, say, oh, it's no big deal, it's nothing, it didn't, right?
	That is a destructive thing to do.
	Does that make any sense to you?
	Yeah, it really does.
	So there's a clue, right?
	There's one indication, right?
	She had an abusive history, which means she's 600 pounds.
	Like it or not, that's the reality.
	And then the question is, what is she doing about that baggage?
	If she's not doing anything about that baggage, that baggage will get worse.
	It will get worse.
	I mean, you're either getting healthier or you're getting sicker.
	There's not much in the middle, in my opinion.
	So my concern and my sort of advice to you is, I mean, how you deal with, you know, the reality is that nothing you did prior to her extremity helped her because she avoided help, right? Yeah.
	She pursued this ex-boyfriend or they got back together.
	He told you and you tried to help and she rejected it and so on.
	And then you hadn't talked to her or communicated with her in three months, right?
	Yeah. So, look, again, this is all just my opinion, but I'm going to tell you what I think.
	There is no magic phone call that saves someone's life.
	Right. Mental health is like physical health.
	You either have good habits or you have bad habits.
	Right? And if you have good habits, then you will get healthier.
	And if you have bad habits, which is the same as not having good habits, then you will get worse.
	So let me give you an analogy, right?
	So if I'm a friend of yours and I say, geez, you know, I'm worried about my teeth.
	You know, I keep getting cavities and plaque buildup and my gums are receding and I've got gingivitis and halitosis and demons living in my molars or whatever, right?
	And you say, well, hey, you know, you should really, you know, floss and go to the dentist.
	And I'm like, oh, no, I got no problems with my teeth.
	Everything's fine, right? Yeah.
	Well, you can't drag me to the dentist and tie me in the chair.
	I have to, I mean, you can't.
	That's not legal. Now, let's say I then phone you up and say, I had to have six teeth removed.
	Are you going to sit there and say, well, if you called me yesterday, you wouldn't have had to have those six teeth removed?
	No. Of course not, right?
	Because it's too late.
	Yeah. Right.
	There's no magic phone call.
	There's no magic word.
	There's no... If only this opportunity had opened up, she might be alive.
	Yeah. Because she had opportunity for help.
	Look, you can get free mental health...
	Help just about any time.
	You go to the hospital, you say, I'm feeling crazy, I'm feeling suicidal.
	They will give you a psychiatrist.
	They will give you a therapist.
	They will give you resources for free.
	There are books on mental health that you can read.
	There are exercises. There are resources on the web on mental health and well-being that are free.
	You can go to the library and check out books and read up about it.
	Like if somebody's 600 pounds, it's not because nobody has any idea in the world how to lose weight.
	Right. Right?
	Yeah. And if somebody is that unwell in their soul, it's not because nobody has any idea how to improve mental health.
	It's because they have rejected that as an option.
	And again, this is all just my opinion.
	I'm not saying there's any truth to this.
	This is all just my opinion, right?
	Makes sense, yeah. But there is no saving people after a certain point that I've known.
	Again, this is just my opinion and my experience.
	And look, I mean, this could also just be my defenses, right?
	Because there are people in my history who are not doing well mentally in terms of mental health and all that, right?
	And I poured huge amounts of time and effort and energy into people trying to help them.
	Trying to suggest going to therapy, trying to suggest self-knowledge, trying to say, read this little book, read this fucking pamphlet, for Christ's sake.
	Look at these studies. Look at these statistics.
	There is a way that you can get better.
	There is a way you can be happier.
	And they didn't.
	They didn't, they didn't, they didn't, they didn't.
	And that's, you know, I mean, I don't even, I'm not even going to say whether that's a choice or not, but it's a reality.
	It's a reality.
	Have you ever had a deal with a suicide?
	So...
	No. No, so this is why I'm saying this is all just bullshit, right?
	But I mean, I think there's some value in it, but I'm not going to tell you how to deal with it.
	I'm just saying that this is my thoughts on it.
	Yeah, I think it's great, yeah, but I was just asking.
	Do they have... I don't know.
	Yeah, this is my first one, but of course.
	Right, and my concern is I don't want you to have a second one.
	Yeah. It is very, very hard to help people even when they desperately want to be helped.
	Right. Right, so even if somebody is 600 pounds and desperately wants to lose the weight, it is still very hard to help that person, right?
	Right. Because there's a reason that they're 600 pounds and they have to uncover all of that stuff.
	Plus, if they've been 600 pounds for 20 years, they have to look at 20 years of being 600 pounds and all that losses and all that.
	And so their temptation to flee back into food and whatever is enormous.
	You are not a mental health professional.
	I am not a mental health professional.
	I don't diagnose cancers.
	I don't diagnose mental illness.
	I don't do any of that stuff because I'm not trained.
	I'm not qualified. Right.
	To deal with a suicide requires...
	I mean, there's a reason that they involuntarily commit people like this.
	Because it requires around-the-clock supervision.
	It requires sometimes a complete medical workup.
	Sometimes it requires temporary drugs.
	Sometimes it requires restraints.
	It requires a huge investment from a highly trained and specialized field, right?
	Yeah. You and I are not trauma surgeons, right?
	Yeah. There's no way to recreate that entire knowledge set and legal authority that a psychiatric ward might have, right?
	You can't recreate it.
	You can't do it. It's like saying to you, listen, so you're out walking in the woods with a friend and he gets mauled by a grizzly and three of his limbs are hanging on by a thread.
	Okay, save him!
	No, that requires a team of doctors and an entire hospital and anesthesiologists and nurses and interns and residents.
	It's a whole complex team to save somebody who's that badly damaged.
	Right. You can't do it with a phone call.
	You can't do it with a text message.
	It's like somebody texts you and says you're having a heart attack, there's no text back that you can send that says, hey, walk it off, you'll be fine.
	Or, I really sympathize, that's terrible.
	Hey, my heart attack's gone, I'm all better.
	No, you say, get to a hospital.
	Right, right.
	Suicidality is an incredibly entrenched and stubborn and problematic mental health problem.
	And there are very few people, even in the mental health profession, who are really good at doing that, in my opinion, at dealing with that.
	Right.
	So don't put upon yourself the burdens that only an entire team of legally enabled people with 12, 14, 16 years of education and experience or more would have a tough time dealing with.
	Right.
	Lift that burden off yourself.
	It is not a matter of a phone call.
	That is magical thinking.
	That is like a Jesus thing, you know?
	If only I touched her forehead!
	Right? She'd have been fine!
	No. She would not have been fine.
	Anybody who looks at their boyfriend and says, murder-suicide is a really good idea right now, cannot be saved by a phone call.
	Understand? Exactly, yeah.
	But you need to...
	So, I mean, as far as that goes, I mean, I just look back and say, well, damn, that was tragic.
	But there's nothing that you could have done You didn't know it was going to happen.
	You hadn't talked to her in three months.
	She'd rejected any conversations or help that you'd offered her in the past.
	Obviously her family didn't help her.
	She had friends, maybe siblings, aunts, uncles who were much closer to her than you do.
	They didn't know. They didn't help.
	She may have had a doctor who didn't help.
	She may have been committed at some point in the past and that didn't help.
	She may have gone through an entire regimen of attempted treatments and that didn't help.
	Right. So, you know, I don't mean to puncture your sense of importance and omnipotence here, but a phone call from you would not have done anything.
	Returning a text, right?
	People don't get into murder-suicide packs because someone didn't return their text, right?
	It goes a little deeper than that, right?
	Mm-hmm. Don't attempt to substitute some one thing that you could have done for something that an entire community of mental health professionals perhaps couldn't have done.
	Wow. I've never thought of it like that.
	And look into your friendship to make sure that you can see the signs.
	People have had abusive histories and they're not working on them or they haven't worked on them substantially and I say ideally, if not necessarily, with the help of a good mental health professional, they are dangerous.
	They are dangerous.
	Not because they're bad, they're just dangerous.
	I mean, you wouldn't go to a rifle range with somebody wearing a blindfold, right?
	Let's practice! But first, let's spin three times, right?
	Right. So people who are blindfolded, right?
	Words are weapons. People who are blindfolded shoot randomly.
	And people who lack self-knowledge, who have not examined their own histories, shoot randomly and are very dangerous.
	And that's the standard that I would like you to have.
	Oh, yeah. Do not try To help people in that way.
	Do not give yourself that magical thinking that just being around makes people better.
	A couple of text messages, a couple of phone calls, a couple of conversations makes people better.
	It doesn't. So I should just take this as a life lesson and move on to the people I do have in my life right now, right? Yeah, look, I mean, grieve, of course, right?
	I mean, a friend of yours is dead.
	I mean, that's a very sad thing.
	But for heaven's sakes, don't feel guilty.
	Right. I mean, suicide is also a very aggressive act to everybody who's left behind, right?
	I mean, anybody who kills himself or herself knows exactly what it is going to do to everyone who's left behind.
	Right. Yeah, everybody that cared for you.
	Yeah, you know, to me, and anybody who kills themselves in a way that everybody else knows it was a suicide, that to me, I'm going to be kind of brutally frank here, that to me is the act of an asshole.
	If you really want to kill yourself, then do it in such a way that people think it was an accident.
	Right. Because if they know that it was a suicide, that is a total fuck you from the suicide-y.
	Right. You know, go into the woods and rub yourself with marinade and dance naked in front of a grizzly bear.
	Whatever, right? Yeah.
	Get lost in the woods.
	Swim out to sea in a strong current.
	In some way that people say, damn, that was bad luck.
	How sad, right? But it messes people's heads up so badly to have a knowledgeable and conscious suicide in the midst that I just think it is such a destructive action on so many levels.
	I mean, I keep thinking of what she might have been thinking that night, you know?
	Like, wow.
	I mean, to me, that's kind of low to do that.
	Yeah. And the person that I used to talk to, she seemed like she'd never do that.
	That's always how it seemed.
	Right. Well, but she did, right?
	But she did, right?
	So the empirical evidence is that she did and she could, and even if she was susceptible to the boyfriend, she still chose to be susceptible to whatever, right?
	Chose to avoid help. So you may not know, you may never know, but And it's really hard to fathom the thoughts of somebody who's involved in that.
	I think Christopher Hitchens just wrote about his mother's suicide with her lover.
	And, I mean, it's brutal.
	She actually did try to phone him, but the hotel operator couldn't connect to him.
	I think the phone just rang and rang because he was out or something like that.
	So she actually did try to call him right before she killed herself.
	And so, yeah, he said to live with that.
	That's a viciously brutal thing to have to live with.
	So, you know, my sympathies, I mean, I don't want to sound cold and harsh, and I'm not saying like, ah, you know, if she was a terrible person and blah, blah, blah.
	I'm just, you know, there's no guilt on your side for somebody who kills themselves.
	I mean, you can't stop, you can't help.
	That's a very, very specialized and professional and legally enabled and medical, sometimes medically based thing to do with that even then doesn't have a hugely high success rate.
	So, you know, like if somebody loses a limb, when you're out swimming, they lose a limb to a shark, and they die, even though you try to do everything, you don't sit there and say, geez, I should have invented medicine and trauma surgery in the three minutes I had, right?
	Right, right. You're like, damn, that was really traumatic, and I have a lot to process.
	But guilt at not saving that person is not one of them.
	Yeah, I just gotta process it.
	Yeah, process it, but without the guilt.
	And with consciousness that you want to make sure that people like that aren't in your life.
	Because if you have the susceptibility to things like depression, or as you say, if you get better and then you get, you know, something happens to kick you back down, you've really got to be careful about the people who are in your life, right?
	You know, it's like if you have depression, it's like you, I mean, it's not like you say me, but it's like you're an alcoholic, right?
	If you're an alcoholic and you've quit, you know, you can't have heavy drinkers in your life.
	And if you're attempting to recover from a mental health issue, I mean, seriously, you can't have mentally ill people in your life.
	You just can't.
	If you're trying to quit heroin, you can't have people taking heroin in your living room for hours upon hours, right?
	You get that that's not going to help, right?
	It's just going to make you go back.
	So if you're overcoming something like depression, you cannot have mentally ill people in your life.
	As you say, it's just going to keep interfering with your recovery.
	Pulling me down, yeah. Yeah, you can't.
	You can't do it. It is exactly the same as an addiction.
	I'm not saying that depression is an addiction, but the metaphor is close, right?
	You've got to be really careful who you allow into the orbit of your mind, right?
	Because everyone that we allow into our life has a huge effect on us, whether we like it or not, whether we want it or not.
	Right. It's just a reality.
	Everyone we let into our life has a huge effect on us.
	And you have to be very careful.
	What's the word I'm thinking of?
	You have to be very judgmental about who you let into your life.
	Right. You have to have a very narrow door that people have to get through to get into your life, particularly if you're recovering from something like depression.
	Exactly, yeah. Yeah.
	Wow, thanks for a lot of stuff.
	That really, really, really, really, really helps.
	I can't tell you how much that helps.
	Listen, I hope so. And do me a favor if you can, listen to this again once or twice if you can, because you'll slip back.
	Oh, I will. Right? Right.
	I definitely will. All right.
	I really appreciate the stuff.
	Hey, you're welcome, man. And look, I'm so sorry.
	I'm so sorry that you're going through this.
	I really, I just wanted to really express my sympathies for that.
	It is a shocking and difficult and ugly thing to have to process.
	And I really am sorry for that.
	So I just wanted to end with that, with that sympathy.
	Well, thank you, Seth. All right, man.
	Have a great day. You too.
	All the best. All right.
	Well, I think we're coming up on the close of the show.
	So I just wanted to...
	I don't know.
	A few cute parenting stories, I suppose.
	Why not? It was about 10 days ago.
	Isabella said her first six-sentence word.
	It was... Dada, come out, big red car.
	When I stepped out of the Volvo, which was pretty, pretty cool.
	And it's just amazing to me that this language stuff is really, really fast, right?
	So I slept in a little bit this morning.
	I got up at 8 because I was pretty tired from all that travel and sleeping on a rubbery leather couch.
	And... Beer, go in, red, red room?
	Huh? Because she likes to study.
	Christina doesn't like her to be in the study because it's not exactly the safest, most child-friendly environment, but Isabella loves to study.
	She likes opening the computer, opening up the CD drive, the DVD drive, taking out the CD or DVD, putting it back in and closing it again.
	She's quite enamored of that.
	She also likes pushing. There's three buttons, right?
	There's a light button, which turns the light on the front on.
	There's a power button and a reset button.
	And she likes to touch the buttons.
	And I'm trying to get her to just touch the light button, but she will, of course, when I'm in the middle of doing something, touch the reset button.
	But that's okay. That's quite natural and that's going to happen.
	And we were at the pet store the other day.
	I take her to the pet store at least once a week because she just loves the animals.
	And there was a little Pomeranian, you know, one of these things that looks like a chia pet that sneezed and went beige.
	It was up on its hind legs and it was sort of scrabbling on the window, as this is a big window.
	And he's like, doggy washing window!
	Doggy washing window!
	Which I thought was just fantastic.
	I wouldn't have thought of it. It was a great observation.
	Yeah, I do. Actually, we have a pretty good...
	I'm still having sound problems with these things.
	I had a mic that failed, and my Boom microphone is tough, right?
	With all the donations that I got last month, I bought a nice $200 Boom microphone, which is sort of unidirectional.
	The problem is that it faces where the camera is facing, so they pointed the camera at me during the speech, but the Boom microphone is not good at picking up lateral noise.
	That's sort of what it's about, but the sound...
	I only realized this afterwards. The sound was coming from the lateral speakers.
	So we kind of needed to point the boom microphone at the speakers and the camera at me, but because it's attached on top, you can't really do that.
	So it's a bit of a hassle, but sound is still not quite as perfect as I'd like, but certainly better than the Bednarik debate.
	So yes, I do have a very energetic listener who is, we have four cameras on me, so it's going to be a reconstruction of me in a truly holographic way.
	And so that should be pretty cool, and we should have that in a couple of days.
	And I think that's it.
	I really do appreciate everyone.
	It was a great donation month last month.
	Please, please keep it up.
	I am going to buy some lighting for the study because I like to sweat.
	So to make it look a little bit less sort of freakazoidy and sort of washed out and zombie-like, so I should be a little bit less blue and purple when that's all done.
	I think I'm going to get that all set up.
	I've got the quote from it. It's fairly expensive, but I think it's worth doing.
	And so I'll do that when I get back from Libertopia.
	And I'm really looking forward to seeing everyone in Libertopia.
	There will be no show next week.
	So I think that's important to remember, but we will pick up the week after that.
	And I will see California listeners in less than a week, I suppose.
	Yeah, this is quite a lot of travel this time.
	So have yourselves a wonderful week, everyone.
	Thank you so much for listening and for supporting this show.

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