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Dec. 19, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:52:50

1809 Freedomain Radio Sunday Show Dec 19 2010

Trusting your kids, a listener reports on his progress in therapy, and emerging from insanity...

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	Hi, everybody. It's Devan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
	It is December the 19th, 2010, just after 4 p.m.
	Eastern Standard Time for the Free Domain Radio Sunday call-in show, which you can join anytime you like at fdurl.com forward slash chat, and we can call you through Skype or by phone.
	So it is my daughter's second birthday today.
	I guess third if you count year zero, as I guess we do with Jesus Christ.
	Nothing hugely moving or powerful to add here.
	She has been just the most extraordinary, bright comet of admirable love to land in my life, with the exception of my wife.
	It has just been truly staggering.
	Isabella is by far the best person that I know.
	She's better than me. She's better than anybody that I know.
	She is warm and kind and passionate and hardworking and curious and empathetic and incredibly fun-loving, exuberant, self-expressed.
	There are so many adjectives that I could heap upon her that I still want you to be able to see her underneath the adjectives.
	But she is just a truly amazing, amazing human being.
	It is an almost...
	Divine honor to have her in my life and to have a relationship with her in the way that we do.
	I've had those who know who don't know, I guess.
	It took us quite a long time to have a child, and there was much heartache on the way.
	And I've had the enormous privilege of being a stay-at-home dad for the past two years while working on Free Domain Radio.
	And that has been an experience that is truly astounding.
	I would unreservedly recommend it to anyone who can even conceivably swing it to stay at home.
	You know, people will often say to me, and it's kind of cliché among parents, that, you know, oh, the time goes by so fast and you blink and they're grown and so on.
	I have not found that to be the case.
	You know, sort of like, well, if you only see your kid for two hours a day or three hours a day because you're rushing out the door to go to work or whatever, then sure, the time seems to fly in the same way that if you only see every tenth frame of a film, it seems to be going very fast.
	But the details of the everyday, the absorption into the everyday, the rhythms of the everyday, to me, has been a perfect passage of time.
	We were just, Christina and I were watching some shots and videos of Izzy's younger days.
	Last night, and I was saying, like, I look back with extreme fondness to when she was younger, but I don't look back with any extreme nostalgia, like, oh, if she were only that young again, blah, blah, blah.
	Maybe I'll feel that in future years, but I loved each phase that she went through.
	I'm glad that each phase is done, and I look forward eagerly to the next one.
	She is...
	There's so much that is surprising to me about what an amazing spirit she And energy that she has.
	She's very funny.
	Well, first of all, she's doing like N-word sentences before she's even two, which just blows my gourd right out of the water.
	But she's given up on saying no.
	No was, of course, her favorite word for the past few months.
	She's given up on saying no.
	And now she says, like a little lady fontal, right?
	She says, You say, would you like some juice, Isabella?
	And normally she would say no. Over the last couple of weeks she's taken a saying, I think not.
	Which I think is just too funny.
	Would you like to go to the mall, Isabella?
	I think not. I think that's just too funny.
	And when she wants to get my attention, she will sort of say, da-da, da-da, da-da.
	And then if she doesn't get my attention, what she'll eventually say is, oh, daddles.
	Which I think is just too funny.
	Oh man, she's just delightful.
	She is...
	I mean, there's still...
	I mean, obviously we have some authority a couple of months Months ago, we had to really make her brush her teeth, and we do that by offering her, you know, she can watch another, she likes Timmy Time, this British show, so you can watch another Timmy Time.
	That's been going on now for a couple of months, and she's been perfectly content to have her teeth brushed.
	She'll often say she doesn't want it, but we say you have to sort of do it every day.
	I try to explain so you don't get an owie in your teeth and so on.
	But discipline has remained very minimal to non-existent, which is kind of the theory that I had going in, so I'm kind of glad that it has panned out, so to speak.
	I found that we need the very lightest of touches.
	I have a lamp in my study.
	She's allowed to turn it on and on, but not lift it up because it's too heavy.
	And so all I need to say is, Isabella, please don't lift it up.
	And literally that tone, that change of emphasis, and she will stop doing it.
	And that is a wonderful thing.
	The earnestness and the energy.
	Boy, I thought I was a hard-working guy, but when you're around a kid who's...
	Learning language, my god, it is an inspiration, just how hard somebody can work.
	And her language progression is, to me, astounding, but it kind of makes sense.
	I mean, if I worked for 12 hours a day learning a new language, which is really what she's doing, trying new words, new phrases, constantly experimenting with new thoughts, putting things together and trying to understand how Band-Aids can be applied to absolutely everything that is a problem.
	You know, like I don't want it to rain, Dad, I put a Band-Aid on the sky, which I think was an early Jimi Hendrix song before he rewrote some of the lyrics into kissing some guy, I think.
	She is such a hard worker and learned how hard she learns, you know, she wanted to learn how to jump.
	So literally, she became a kangaroo being hit by a cattle prod pretty randomly.
	She'd jump and you'd have to be pretty alert about where she was going to jump and where.
	And she's just so enthusiastic and in such wonder.
	So she came down this morning, we had the Christmas tree up with the lights, and she just...
	Literally broke into a dance.
	This is how she expresses her joy.
	She'll just race around dancing like Buzz in Toy Story 3.
	Anyway, so I just wanted to let you know, for those who've been asking about the update, I thought it was going to be great.
	It is absolutely more fantastic than I could have ever imagined.
	It's an incredible honor and a privilege to have this person I hope and I believe very strongly that I'm doing everything I can to make her life as happy and productive and enjoyable and rich and loved as possible because she is truly an astoundingly amazing, gracious, passionate, powerful, beautiful, intelligent, affectionate human being and it is an extraordinary privilege to have her in my life.
	Parenting is highly...
	I highly recommend parenting, particularly if you can swing it to the point where you can stay home.
	I think that's really, really important.
	It's important for my daughter.
	It's important for my marriage.
	It's important for me.
	And I wouldn't have it any other way.
	The last thing I'll say is there's quite a lot of self-knowledge that you can get out of parenting as well.
	So, for instance, I found that I'm just a little bit...
	We go to Chuck E. Cheese, right?
	And she wants to throw these balls, and they're like this series of little buckets that she can throw the balls into.
	And she just wants to throw them into the first ball.
	And then the lights, you're supposed to throw them in each sequential ball, sorry, each sequential bucket.
	And so I'm literally gritting my teeth saying, no, no, it's a good job, honey, you don't have to throw them in.
	But I'm like, and why?
	Because I want the three tickets that are worth about three pennies from Chuck E. Cheese, because apparently that is my sole motivation.
	I really realized this when she wanted me to play a game where you throw balls against a wall, like into these holes, and it records how fast you throw them, and it gives you points and so on.
	And it was sort of late afternoon.
	I was hurling the balls, hurling the balls, and I got the high score.
	And I literally went, yes!
	You know, like, yay! I got the high score.
	And I looked around, and it's, of course, a field full of children under 10.
	And apparently, Big Daddy was extremely proud that he managed to throw a ball harder than your average 10-year-old.
	It's sad, but it's true.
	And so that's something I have to sort of keep alert to myself, because you can lose a little bit of perspective.
	When it comes to chasing little tickets, about a million of which buys you a rubber ball.
	So I just wanted to mention that things that you can learn about yourself when you're a parent can be revelatory, though not always complimentary.
	So again, if you're a parent, I think you'll understand that you do have to sometimes decouple your adult side in order to enjoy your interactions with your kid, which I think is actually a good, healthy, and positive thing to do.
	So that's it for my introduction.
	If you'd like to... If you get on with the questions, we will move on with the show.
	Thank you everybody so, so, so much for your support and encouragement in this philosophical conversation.
	I couldn't do what I'm doing without you.
	I couldn't have this parenting experience, which I've tried to share through my series on philosophical parenting.
	I've really tried to share what is achievable through peaceful parenting, so I'm not just Absorbing this and having it just for myself.
	I really want to try and reproduce the experience for other people.
	But I really, really want to express my incredible deep and sincere appreciation, heartfelt from the very bottom of my heart.
	Appreciation for the support and generosity and kindness and encouragement and participation and sharing and promoting our free domain radio that so many hundreds or thousands of people have been involved in.
	This show wouldn't exist without you.
	This great show.
	Philosophical conversation would not be possible without you.
	What I'm learning and sharing about parenting would not be possible without you.
	So thank you. If you haven't donated, freedomainradio.com forward slash donate.
	It's all gratefully accepted.
	I promise you I am not plowing into tripped out pimp mobiles.
	My car is now 12 years old and has no air conditioning.
	One of the locks doesn't work.
	Half of the lights are out of the inside dash.
	And... What else is wrong with it?
	Oh, it's got a dent in the side and all that.
	So I'm not plowing it into gold underwear for myself, but most of it goes back into the show and food and drink.
	So I hope that you will consider donating to help out this philosophical conversation.
	And thank you so much to those who have supported.
	And thank you so much to those who are going to.
	All right. Hello.
	Hello. Hi.
	Hi, Steph. How's it going? It's going great.
	Great. Right on. First of all, I'm really, really happy to hear all your positive parenting experiences.
	I'm going, I think, about through most of that myself.
	Hopefully not. I'll get to the same level you are maybe sometime soon.
	But anyway, Here's a question that's kind of on topic and fairly important, especially at this time of the year.
	It's Santa Claus.
	My son is not quite old enough for, like, he can't even ask me.
	He's a year and a half old now.
	He's obviously not an issue for him, but there's all kinds of, everywhere we go, there's all kinds of, I mean, the topic just kind of pops up.
	It's like, okay, what did Santa Claus bring you?
	And Santa Claus is coming and so on and so forth.
	I was just wondering if you have any ideas on how to handle some of these questions, both from the kids and, as a follow-up, how to deal with this question coming from the parents or others.
	Santa Claus, as if Santa Claus is, you know, some real creepy dude who's clambering into your house's orifices, right?
	Yes. Yeah, I mean, fortunately Isabella doesn't like Santa Claus so far, but I understand there's going to be other parents who are going to talk about it.
	Well, I think that it's okay for children to, I mean, first of all, they're not going to be able to distinguish, I think, very clearly between fictional characters and real characters.
	So like real people versus fictional characters, they're just going to have a problem differentiating it.
	And I don't think that's a problem in particular.
	So Isabella likes Toy Story, of course, because she's carbon-based and has a brain.
	And in, I think, Toy Story 2, they use these Orange cones to cross the road.
	And so when we were in California, when I was speaking at Libertopia, there were cones in the garage.
	And so she wanted to go over and see if Buzz and Woody were underneath and the pig and the dinosaur were underneath the cones.
	So there's an example that she knows that there are cones.
	She knows that they're on TV, but she also thinks that the characters...
	And I don't know if she was playing or real.
	It's hard to say.
	You can't really say to a kid who's 18 months old, is that something real or are you playing?
	So I think that the only way that you could not have your children have any exposure to fictional characters would be to not read them any stories, to not show them any videos, to not, you know, so that everything would just be true.
	But then the problem is, of course, you know, they go to the mall and they see fictional characters there, they see advertisements, they see, you know, and I'm trying to sort of communicate to Isabella that That when she sees a picture of lights, they're not lights, right?
	It's a picture of lights.
	Because we were at the mall today and she saw a picture of Christmas lights.
	And she said, lights? And I'm like, yes, they look like lights.
	They appear to be like lights.
	They're pictures of lights.
	So I'm trying to get her to understand the difference between real things and pictures of things.
	Now, I don't have any particular indication that she doesn't understand that.
	In fact, I have good indications that she does understand the difference.
	So if she sees a light at home, she will try to turn it on.
	If she sees a picture of that light on the television, if we're looking at pictures and that picture is there, she doesn't reach up to the television and try and turn it on.
	So I think she understands the difference between things that are real, that are tangible and three-dimensional, and portrayals or pictures of things.
	So I think there's some differentiation, if not a considerable differentiation, between the image and the thing itself.
	And so you can say, well, Santa Claus is like a story.
	He's like a fairy tale, right?
	It's a fun story.
	It's not the same as what's real.
	How old is your son again?
	My son is, let's see, one year and five months.
	It's a little bit early for him.
	I think he does understand the difference between concepts and the real thing.
	He understands very well the concept of puppy, because there's a bunch of puppies around the house outside.
	Right. Now, what you can do...
	Yeah, and I've tried...
	So, somebody gave Isabella a...
	You know, like one of those puppets you put on your hands, and your fingers go into the neck, and it becomes the head, and then your thumb and your little finger become the arms.
	Right. So, she is interested in cats, but if I put my hand in and tell her a story as the kitty cat...
	She doesn't think it's a real cat.
	She doesn't sort of say, oh, you know, a cat and try and stroke it and do all the things that she does with the cat.
	In the same way, when we go to the mall, there's an old Navy store and it has a plastic dog, which she used to love and now she just likes.
	And she will go up and she will try to give the dog, they also have these like rubber bones, right?
	So she'll take a rubber bone and she'll try and feed the dog the rubber bone and I'll pretend to be the dog and say thank you and all that kind of stuff.
	And she never does that with a real dog.
	Right.
	So she knows that that's not a real dog.
	That's just a representation or an image of a dog because she does things with it she'd never do with another dog.
	So I would if I were you, I would explore your son's capacity to differentiate make believe from real.
	Like my daughter doesn't think that a toy car is exactly like a real car, but smaller.
	Right.
	Because she doesn't, you know, doesn't reach in and try and turn the music on and doesn't try and.
	Where's the key to start the car?
	Because she understands keys and all that.
	So I think that kids are pretty good at differentiating storytelling from reality.
	And so I would say that it's probably not bad.
	But what I would just say is that Santa Claus is a story.
	And it's a fun story.
	And it's fun to think about.
	And then when he gets a little older, you can say...
	How do we know it's a story?
	Like, how do we know that Santa Claus isn't real?
	Like, how do we know that it's a guy in a suit rather than a guy who really lives at the North Pole and rockets around on jet-propelled reindeer or whatever, right?
	So I think it's okay to...
	I don't think you can shield your child from fiction.
	And I also don't think that you should shield your child from fiction because fiction is enormously enjoyable.
	And human beings are very good at...
	In the theater world, you call it suspending disbelief.
	So the only way that you can go and see a play or a movie is to pretend that it's real.
	If you go and see a play and you're thinking about the actress, it's either not a good play or not good acting or both.
	So we're actually very good at suspending disbelief and enjoying a story as if that story is real.
	And... I would not underestimate the degree to which your son can do that earlier rather than later.
	So I think it's okay to just refer to it as a story and a fun story, you know, like the ones we see on TV or the ones that I read you from books or the ones I make up with hand puppets or whatever.
	It's just a story. And I think that kids are very good at understanding stories and not reality, if that makes any sense.
	Like, I know that Isabella is dreaming.
	I know that she's dreaming, and I'm starting to get some sense of what it is that she's dreaming.
	But she knows that it's not real.
	Anyway, so go ahead. Yeah, that's actually been very helpful.
	I kind of had a feeling you might say something along those lines.
	That's the first part of the problem.
	The second part of the problem is how do you deal with other children whose parents maybe haven't been all that great about it?
	The kids have been told Santa Claus is very much real.
	He comes down the chimney.
	He brings you presents. Actually, at one point, about a couple years ago, I actually played Santa Claus.
	We had a bunch of kids over at our house.
	Well, actually, at my parents' house.
	There was a bunch of kids there.
	I got picked to play Santa Claus.
	I played Santa Claus to them.
	I'm sure I was very much real.
	I mean, the older kids, I'm sure, clued into it, and they clearly did, but the younger ones didn't.
	They seemed to reinforce their belief that this was real.
	I don't know. I kind of feel bad about that now.
	I wouldn't assume that, necessarily.
	I wouldn't assume that, necessarily.
	Kids are very good at playing along with those kinds of things and getting enthusiastic.
	And remember, kids are also very sensitive to the expectations of their parents and other adults.
	So if it's like, ooh, he's Santa, he's real, what do you think?
	You know, like kids then like, oh, okay, I guess I'm supposed to be enthusiastic.
	It's not like it's completely made up.
	But I wouldn't underestimate the degree to which parental enthusiasm and expectations is producing the behavior.
	You know, like, wow, it's really Santa, what do you think?
	It's like, wow, it really is Santa.
	I'm sorry? Yeah, and the other kids, but they're all taking the cues from the parents, right?
	I mean, when they're that young, they're taking the cues about reality from...
	I wouldn't necessarily assume that the kids all think that Santa is then real.
	The more important question, if you don't mind me saying, is what about the other kids, right?
	Yeah, exactly. It's the other kids.
	It's pretty much out of the question to go up to the kids and say, you do know Santa Claus is not really real.
	I don't think I would do that even.
	But it kind of feels pretty bad because The way the other kids are brought up and they're told, well, around here anyway, they're told Santa Claus is very much real.
	He's got, you know, we leave out the cookies for him and he's the one who brought you all these toys and he brought all of your friends' toys and so on and so forth.
	It's really tough for me to come in and say, you know, Santa Claus is more like a story type character.
	Well, if you think Santa Claus is a problem, just wait until Jesus shows up.
	Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know, I mean, a lot of my friends are not really all that religious anymore, I guess, thanks to a lot of people.
	But the philosophical answer is very easy, but the emotional one, as you rightly point out, is not, right?
	Look, the philosophical answer is that you cannot participate in the faking of reality in that way, right?
	So you can't...
	I think you have to tell your kids it's a story.
	Because you can't say to your children that the impossible is true, that the unreal is real.
	That is not healthy.
	That is not healthy at all for your kids.
	I mean, if other parents were feeding their kids junk food all day, you wouldn't say, well, I have to now feed my kid junk food because I don't want to upset the other parents, right?
	Agreed. That's something I would never do to my own kids.
	It's just... Right, right. It's the same thing with what goes on in the mind, right?
	I mean, superstition and fantasy as reality...
	Is junk food for the brain.
	It's harmful to the brain.
	It's bad for thinking.
	It's bad for clarity. It's bad for self-trust because the kid doesn't believe that it's real, but then he's told that it's real.
	Because remember, there's a time where the kid grows in knowledge, right?
	It's not just a black and white thing.
	So you say to your kid, Santa Claus is real.
	When they're two, maybe they'll believe it.
	When they're three, probably a little less.
	When they're four, probably a whole lot less.
	So there's an area of transition where the parent is still saying to the child, Santa Claus is real, but the child has significant doubts, right?
	Yeah, of course.
	And what does that do to the kid?
	The kid is like, well, I don't really believe this, but my parents are telling me that it's true, so...
	Do I trust my parents?
	Do I trust myself? I mean, that's sort of important.
	And it's easy to say, well, you know, it's just Santa Claus, it's a face.
	But this stuff is very important to kids.
	For kids to figure out what is real and what is not is very important to them.
	Otherwise, I mean, if they think their dreams are real, then that's really terrifying to them, right?
	So... So I think that you just don't want to be feeding lies as truth.
	I mean, you can feed lies as fiction to your kids because that's an enjoyable part of life, but you don't want to feed lies as truth.
	That is, to me, the equivalent of...
	It's not even the equivalent of junk food because, you know, it's like feeding them junk food all the time because it's something that has to be perpetuated.
	So I think the tough answer is just to say, well, some parents will tell their kids that Santa Claus is real.
	Santa Claus is not real.
	I don't agree with that.
	Other parents make their own decisions.
	I'm sure other parents disagree with some things that I'm doing.
	But I'm not going to tell you something is real when it's not.
	Because I need to retain your trust in me.
	And I'm not going to tell you something is true when it's not.
	I'm going to tell you it's a fun story.
	But I'm not going to knowingly lie to you and pretend something is real when it's not.
	Because I don't think that's healthy.
	And I would never want you to do that to me.
	This is what you would say to the kid who is maybe coming up to you and asking you, hey, what about this Santa Claus dude?
	So that's something you'd say to a kid who already has...
	Well, no, sorry, do you mean your kid or some other kid?
	Some other kid. My kid is too young for this.
	Well, some other kid, it's a teaching moment, right?
	I mean, so some other kid, you say, well, what do you think?
	Well, I don't know. It's, you know, it's weird.
	I mean, okay, well, you know, why is it weird, you know?
	You don't actually have to give any answers.
	And in fact, I think that's probably for the best, right?
	But you can, obviously, you can, I think, very productively lead the kid through the thinking exercise, right?
	And say, okay, well, how many people are in the world?
	Well, billions, right?
	And how many houses are in the world?
	Well, how many people would he have to visit?
	And one night you can teach them some math, you can teach them some physics, you know, you can teach them that, you know, poor little Rudolph would...
	Burn up like an unshielded space shuttle going through the air that fast, you know?
	I mean, whatever, right? Maybe not flaming farm animals or something, but you can make that a teaching moment where you can just ask questions to provoke or inspire critical thinking, if that makes sense.
	You know, that all makes sense.
	I mean, I think if they're old enough, you can have that kind of conversation with them and you can just kind of walk them through the physics of it at least.
	Just the sheer impossibility of it, they'll just get it.
	But you know, that one time I told you when I was dressed as Santa Claus, one of the kids that I was closer to, like one of our closer family friends' kids, he actually recognized me.
	Right. I guess, well, he was old enough.
	I can't remember how old he was. He was like maybe six or seven.
	I really can't remember, but he recognized me.
	And while all the other kids were kind of going along with the wave and just cheering and so on, he was kind of withdrawn and sitting by the side.
	I could feel that he was maybe in a way disappointed.
	His first philosophical moment, right?
	The crowd believes things that aren't true.
	I know that they're not. What the hell do I do, right?
	Yeah. And that was a little bit heartbreaking.
	Yeah, well, I would talk to him about that.
	I would talk to him and say, listen, I noticed this.
	Because, you know, I think that would be a good thing.
	No, no. He came up to me and he asked me, after it was all said and done, I changed back into my normal clothes.
	He came up to me and asked me, hey, was that you playing Santa Claus?
	And I said, yeah. Good for you.
	And after that, yeah, I just couldn't lie to the kid.
	And I felt kind of sheepish about it.
	And after that, he was a little bit sad.
	He was... Back then, I wasn't philosophical enough to really be able to talk to him and ask him how he feels and so on, but he was a bit unsettled.
	And unfortunately for me, I kind of left it at that.
	I didn't know how to handle the situation.
	But this is what I want to kind of avoid in the future.
	I mean, if a kid comes up to me and says, Is Santa Claus really real?
	I mean, if he's old enough to ask that, it's easier.
	But if a kid is young enough that they may not be able to tell, that's a lot tougher when everybody else around them tells them Santa Claus is real.
	It's really tough.
	It's really tough. Well, you know, it's...
	It's tough now, for sure, but it's a lot easier when they're younger than when they're older, right?
	To have kids learn some ways to differentiate truth from fantasy is better when they're younger than when they're older, because when they're older, it's less likely that they'll be able to do it or will have that same motive.
	And then the third issue is dealing with the parents after that, but I mean, that's a lot easier because the parents are adults.
	It's, you know, I can talk to them one-on-one, but the kids is the one that, it's a tough one.
	I mean, if you walk up to the kid and say, you know, Santa Claus is just a story, it's just kind of made up like television or like movies, then the kid's going to get it, but the parents are just going to sometimes be upset.
	They may. I mean, I wouldn't necessarily make it my mission to disabuse kids of this belief, but it's going to come up for sure.
	I mean, Some parents will get upset.
	But again, if your kid is eating good food and they're eating junk food, those parents will be upset with you as well because you're setting a higher standard than they're currently achieving.
	People always have strong reactions to higher standards.
	They either are inspired or they're just resentful and they hate it.
	Or sometimes it's a mixed shit.
	But you can't sail As you know, right?
	You cannot sail through life on the winds of other people's emotions.
	Because you will forever then be at the mercy of the most irrational and immature people who are the ones who act out their emotions the most.
	You cannot use...
	You'll sing to the lowest. Yeah, you'll sing to the lowest.
	And the least good people will have the most control over your choices.
	And that is...
	That is the counterintuitive thing of philosophy.
	Philosophy is exactly the same as nutrition.
	Nutrition says, usually, if it tastes good, don't eat it.
	And if it tastes bad, then eat it.
	So it's kind of the opposite, in a sense.
	And the same thing is true. In the moment, it feels very good to go along with the crowd, and it feels like a relief.
	But in the long run, it's very bad for you.
	And so... You just have to not sail.
	What you want to sail by is through the objective navigation of principles, of philosophy, not according to what people like and don't like.
	Which is not to say that it's not hard sometimes.
	It is. But so is everything, I think, good in this world.
	And of course, what you're doing is you're teaching your child, right?
	I mean, if you want your kids to eat vegetables, there's only one way to do it.
	You have to sit down repeatedly with a big plate of vegetables and eat them, right?
	I mean, if you're sitting down to steak and eggs, and you're saying to your kid, here's a plate of carrots, you get the vegetables.
	I'm the king, you're the goat, right?
	I mean, that's not going to work, right?
	It always has to be by example.
	I mean, what I teach Isabella verbally is almost inconsequential.
	I mean, that's just like a, it's like that little bit of icing, it's like that little bit of flour, like a little rose that's made with icing on the top of a cake.
	It's, the only thing that I'm teaching her is what I do.
	And your kid is watching you all the time to learn about what is true.
	It's amazing how, it's almost scary how close they can imitate me.
	He's only like a year and a half and he's been imitating me like so close, like whatever I do around the house, he tries to do.
	Oh yeah, we had some friends, some listeners to Levi, a truly delightful couple.
	They have wonderful, wonderful children.
	He's really taken to FDR-style parenting, and it's had, according to him, a hugely positive effect on their family.
	They came over yesterday, and his girls are older, and Isabella was very enthusiastic to see them.
	She ran to the door because she remembered them.
	We saw them, I think, a month or two ago.
	And yeah, I mean, whatever the older girls did, Isabella wanted to do.
	And I think that's just great.
	But they are, you know, they're like paper going into a photocopier at this age.
	The imprinting of actions is what is going on for everyone.
	So, yeah, I agree with you.
	It is all about what you do and how to interact with With his peers, he is going to learn from how you interact with your peers.
	If he sees you compromising your principles for the sake of getting along in the moment, then that is what he will do with his peers.
	You know, parents always worry about, oh, the kids, you know, the peer influence is so strong, it's so strong, it's so strong.
	But why is it so strong?
	It's so strong for the kids because the peer influence Influence was so strong for the parents, right?
	Because kids know when they go to church that the parents are going along with peer influence because there is no God.
	They have kids know that, but they also know that you better go along with peer influence or you're going to get into a lot of trouble.
	And then the people who go to church, they complain that their children, when they become teenagers, are falling in with the wrong crowd and they're too influenced by their peers.
	It's like, dudes, come on.
	Can you see that?
	Is that not as obvious as anything can be?
	So, yeah, I mean, parenting is all about, as you know, like life as a whole, is, you know, pay me now or pay me later, right?
	And so if you act with integrity, even though it's difficult, your kid will see that, and that will mean that when it comes time to peer pressure for him, he will say, well, I remember what my dad did, and that's what I'm going to do.
	You know, you touched on a really, really sensitive nerve there when you said kids will just basically copy whatever it is you do, including with the way they relate to other kids.
	And what I was concerned about is, like, let's say if the kids, let's say, well, if I have a discussion on Santa Claus with their parents, it's going to be very, very important to not get, like, some of those people get defensive and I don't want to say belligerent, but they will have a fairly negative reaction if I To having a rational discussion with the kids about Santa Claus.
	And I really, really have to control myself and avoid getting into some kind of a scruff or argument with the parents.
	I really have to show those kids how to interact with other kids.
	I can't be arguing about, no, no, Santa Claus is not real.
	I guess I have to find a way to...
	Talk to them about it in a way that they'll just also not only learn that Santa Claus, they have to think about it and maybe decide whether it's real or not, but they also have to learn how to interact with other people.
	Because if I just walk in there and I say, okay, Santa Claus is not real and you guys are all brainwashing your kids, that's not good either because there's going to be all kinds of backlash from the parents.
	Well, no, I'll tell you why that.
	I mean, I agree with you there'll be backlash, but I'll tell you why that's not good.
	I mean, why that's not good is let's say that it's true.
	Right? I mean, there's a strong charge to brainwashing your kids.
	But let's say that it's true. Then what your son is going to say is that, look, if my dad genuinely thinks that these people are brainwashing and harming their children, why is he even in this room?
	Yeah, good one. Good point.
	Right? So it's not whether you get into an argument that your kids will really think about.
	What your kids will really absorb is who's in the room with you.
	Which is why I say don't have abusive relationships, right?
	Particularly, as you know, when you have kids, right?
	So if I chose to stay in a relationship with abusive people and it was just me, well, okay, so it's going to have an effect on people I work with.
	It's going to have an effect on my friends.
	But really, they're all adults and so on, right?
	So they can choose to associate with me or not.
	I absolutely do not have the right in any way, shape, or form.
	To have destructive, abusive, or dysfunctional people around my daughter.
	I simply don't have that right.
	I can eat all the junk food I want.
	It's just my body, right?
	I don't have the right to feed my daughter junk food.
	She has no defenses on that.
	Yeah. She has no defenses, no options, no choices.
	And, you know, everybody...
	It's so funny, you know?
	It's sort of predictable, but it's kind of sad that every news show is like, here are the 12 common household items that will cause your children's heads to explode.
	You know, there's Everybody is so paranoid about children's bodies, right?
	Like, so these ads running in Canada that says, do you know that you can crack your child's skull at only seven kilometers an hour in the car, you know, if you hit something?
	And they have these children, don't shake your baby.
	Well, I mean, these things are all true, and it's not bad to know or whatever, but every book about parenting that I've read is about feeding children.
	Protecting, managing, disciplining, controlling the body of the baby.
	I have seen almost nothing about the mind of the child.
	It's all about how to get your shots, get the kid to exercise, feed him his vegetables.
	That's all the body. Me neither, and I've been looking.
	Yeah, I've been looking too.
	Some of that stuff was pretty bad.
	I mean, there's a few things, right?
	Fundamentally, it's all about how to manipulate your kid, right?
	Even some of the better stuff, like parental effectiveness training, it's like, here's what you should do to get your way with your child.
	Here's what you should do to negotiate with your child.
	It's all about what you should do or how you should interact with your kid rather than Set a great example and everything will fall into place.
	You know, forget about your kid.
	Now, some people do it. Some people do it.
	Dr. Phil does it occasionally where, you know, some guy is saying, like, I don't want my kids to order fake drinks like Shirley Temple's, like these non-alcoholic cocktails.
	I don't want my kids to order fake drinks in a restaurant.
	And I think it was Dr. Phil's My son who was saying, well, do you order a drink when you eat?
	And he's like, well, yeah. And he's like, well, why do you think they're doing it?
	It's got nothing to do with telling your kids not to order a drink.
	If you want your kids not to order a drink at dinner, don't order a drink at dinner.
	I mean, it really is that simple.
	All you have to do is change your behavior yourself, and everything else will then fall into line with your kids.
	But everything is about their bodies and their kidneys and their stomachs and their skin and their eyes.
	And their teeth. There's precious little about how to raise your child with mental health, integrity, and virtue.
	Because that is too explosive an issue, right?
	So the government will run endless advertisements about, here's how to take care of your baby, right?
	There's this whole thing about, you know, like, don't have the baby sleep on his back, I think it was.
	I mean, there's nothing wrong with that.
	I think that's good. Obviously, nobody wants Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, but of course, there's nothing about Public school is bad for your children's brains because they just sit there like turnips absorbing the most astonishing bullshit year after year.
	It's nothing like that, right?
	There's nothing like...
	I mean, how insane is it to have a school system that is not synced up with the parental workday?
	I mean, how completely mental is that?
	Can you imagine in a free society, if people worked nine to five, that any school would work nine to three?
	And, okay, well, now you've got two hours, right?
	So then they have to go to some daycare, and it's complicated, and it's challenging, and it's just another transition, and it's new kids, and this is not good for the kids.
	And, of course, these daycares are just petri dishes of biological warfare when it comes to what goes, you know, what's coating every single square, a millimeter of it.
	So I guess, sorry, that's a long ramble, but I guess I'm just kind of frustrated with the parenting magazines and books that I've read.
	Oh, I hear you. Yeah, it's all about, you know, feed them this stuff and they'll be physically healthy.
	Don't give them too much sugar because of this and that.
	But nothing about integrity and virtue and knowledge and all of that kind of stuff and, you know, inspire them to live great lives through your example.
	Because that would require integrity on the part of the parents rather than controlling the child or managing or manipulating the child.
	And that's not a message that people want to hear very much.
	Sorry, Stefan, if we could backtrack just a little bit back to the kids and Santa Claus.
	One follow-up that I was thinking about, it's a little bit early to worry about it yet, but I mean, I'm sure the day is coming when my son is going to be hanging out with other kids who have been raised differently.
	Let's say, just to give an example, since it's Christmas and all, if he's hanging out with kids who believe that Santa Claus is real and so on, and they firmly believe it for whatever reason, and he knows it's a fantasy, it's a story.
	At what point, where do I draw the line as far as having him hang out with those kids?
	Do you think I'd be able to trust him when he says he doesn't want to hang out with those kids?
	Will he know? Or would I be able to watch out for signs that he shouldn't really be hanging out with kids that are not being raised philosophically?
	Well, I think you're just providing an example of what it is we're talking about, right?
	So how is it that you're going to have the greatest certainty that your child is not going to hang out with destructive people?
	I think he's going to not want to hang out with them.
	And why? Why is he going to not want to hang out with them?
	I'm going out on a limb here.
	I don't know, but I'm guessing he's probably going to feel some kind of attack coming from the other kids.
	Well, yes, but it's interesting.
	We were just talking about this, right?
	What is the best way for you to be sure...
	You can never have 100% certainty as a parent, right?
	But what is the best way to have the greatest certainty that your kid is going to avoid destructive relationships?
	Not doing destructive relationships myself.
	Exactly. Right, so in terms of like, can you trust your son?
	To not get into bad relationships.
	Well, you can trust your son to not get into any worse relationships than you're in.
	Because you are the standard that he is going to measure relationships by.
	And not your relationship with him, but your relationship with your peers.
	Right? Yeah.
	It's your relationship with your peers.
	Right? Everybody who's in the room with your kid is the standard by which he judges who should be in the room with him for the rest of his life.
	Do you want me to say that again?
	That's a complicated one. Yes, please do.
	Right, so everyone who's in the room with your kid is the standard by which he is going to allow people into his life, into his heart, into his bed for the rest of his life.
	So it is pretty important to not put him in situations where he'd have to basically be in the same room with abusive people.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Look, if you're going to have your son in the room with abusive people, what is the message?
	Let's just say, make up, you have some crazy aunt, right?
	Who's verbally abusive or drinks too much, just doesn't matter, right?
	What message is he going to get?
	If she's in the room? If she's in the room, that means I brought him there, or I either brought him to her or I allowed her to come to him.
	Right. And to you?
	That's not good for my relationship with him.
	Right. Right.
	And it's not good for his future relationships with other people, right?
	Because he's going to be like, well, you can't say no to crazy people.
	You can't say no to abusive people.
	They have to be in the room.
	Yeah. Well, my dad wants him to be in the room.
	Right. Because he will not have very many choices about it at that end.
	Right, right. We're talking when he's going to be, let's say, less than 10 years old.
	I'm sure this is going to come about much earlier than that.
	But he's basically going to be dependent on what his dad's doing, where his dad is taking him.
	And if it's going to be up to me, make sure he doesn't get exposed to bad people.
	Right. And if you do expose him to bad people, then he's going to want to know why, right?
	That's the question, though. Where do I draw the line?
	For example, if he wants to go play with some of the kids, let's say at Christmas time, next year or the year after that, he wants to go and hang out with the neighbor's kids and so on and so forth, and those kids have been raised differently, how do I know when it's time to either...
	Well, let me rephrase that.
	How do I know when it's time to not let him hang with those kids?
	Again, we're stuck in a loop here, right?
	Because I keep saying that it's your behavior that is going to determine his behavior, and then you keep saying, well, I need to find a way to trust him because his behavior is going to be independent of mine, right?
	Right. So it's basically up to me to make sure he doesn't...
	No, it's up to you to make sure you live with integrity in your personal relationships, and then he will live with integrity.
	Your son is going to have the same level of integrity that you do.
	And again, there's going to be some changes, and we can alter things later, but this is a sort of general way that we start.
	To me, and I said this to a parent a couple of weeks ago, don't have higher standards for your children than you have for yourself.
	If you allow destructive people into your life, You cannot criticize your child if your child allows destructive people into his life.
	I mean, you can, but it's really bad.
	It's hypocritical. Yeah, it's really hypocritical.
	I'm not saying you do, but if you say, well, I don't want to offend this crazy aunt, so I'm going to have her come over, and she's going to scare the kids, and she's going to make everybody upset, but we don't say no to crazy people, then when your kid turns out to be susceptible to peer pressure, and the craziest people tell them what to do, well...
	You have yourself in the mirror to look, right?
	Not to your son.
	I think I'm beginning to get it.
	Do you see what I mean? So you keep going back to, well, how will I know?
	And there's this uncertainty.
	You know, I'm teaching my daughter English because it's the only language I'm competent in.
	So for me to say, well, she's never experienced any kind of abuse of any kind.
	And so she's just going to be susceptible to abusive people.
	That's exactly the same as saying, well, I've never taught her Esperanto or try her Mandarin, but she's going to wake up and be perfectly fluent in Mandarin one day.
	I say, well, how do I avoid my child from speaking Mandarin?
	Well, I just don't teach them Mandarin, right?
	Gotcha. Parents, it's all about what you do.
	it's not about what your kid does yeah I'll yeah that's I'm amazed it took you so many tries to get it No, don't be amazed.
	Look, it's a big problem.
	And you are absolutely not alone in this.
	I mean, and I really, really appreciate and admire that you're talking about this because it is a huge issue that people really don't like to talk about.
	So, you know, massive kudos and congratulations to you.
	I mean, there's no support in the culture for this, right?
	It takes such a conscious effort to think about these things and make sure I'm not going down bad paths.
	You know, it is so hard because I guess my own parenting, I guess, wasn't the greatest.
	It takes some real effort to be aware of this stuff, even.
	Like, there's some things going on.
	For example, there's some things going on that you may not even be aware of.
	Like, when he told me, like I said, when it took you three tries to get me to understand what you were saying about living with Taylor and myself, that's the kind of stuff.
	That's how hard it is. It is.
	It is very hard. And, of course, there are lots of people.
	I mean, the world is run by the crazy aunts, right?
	There are lots of people in the world who don't want this standard to be there, right?
	They want to be crazy and have people invite them over for dinner.
	They don't want there to be negative consequences to their own nuttiness, right?
	And so they actively resist and avoid this kind of conversation, right?
	So, yeah, I completely understand.
	It is very, very hard to see this kind of stuff.
	And it's so easy to focus on what our kids are doing and so hard to focus on what we're doing because controlling our kids is a lot easier than changing our own behavior.
	Than changing ourselves, yeah.
	I guess I'm really going off on a tangent here, but I guess it's one of the things I'm actually quite worried about is I have to basically...
	Fix myself and try to rediscover myself at the same time as I'm raising my own kid and sometimes I get scared that maybe what if I don't get there, so to speak, in time?
	You will. Look, I completely understand that and there's nothing I can say that's going to make all of those concerns go away and I don't think they should go away.
	I am concerned every day that I'm being a good enough parent.
	I have to At least once a day, I will say to Isabella something like...
	So she's really into coat hangers these days, right?
	And she wanted to bring the coat hanger, the little coat hanger, into the mall.
	And I said, no, no, don't bring the coat hanger.
	I don't want you to bring the coat hanger into the mall.
	And she really, really wanted to bring the coat hanger into the mall.
	And so I had this fork in the road, right?
	I think this happened like a day or two ago.
	And the fork in the road was, okay, do I stand my ground and simply not have her take this into the mall?
	Or do I say to myself, okay, is it really that big a deal?
	Does it really matter if she brings a coat hanger into the mall?
	Is this what I want to take a stand on as far as parenting goes?
	And so I said, okay, bring the coat hanger into the mall.
	And it was not convenient for me for her to have the coat hanger in the mall.
	She was swinging it around. And then, of course, in 20 minutes, she got bored of the coat hanger.
	And you have to carry the coat hanger for the rest of the week.
	I took it back to the car and we put it there or whatever, right?
	But, so at least once a day, and sometimes more, I will say, I don't want this.
	And, I mean, sometimes she'd be like, okay, I'll leave the coat hanger behind, so I'm not doing it irrationally.
	But I have to say to myself, is this really that important?
	Is this what I want to get into a fight about?
	Is this, you know, some things I will get into a fight about, for sure.
	You know, she has to push her teeth, right?
	I mean, some of those things, and again, we don't fight about it, but you know what, like, I'm willing to have a conflict over that.
	She has to have a boss, right?
	Once in a while, she has to change.
	If she's pooped, she has to change her diaper even if she doesn't want to.
	And I'm sorry about that. So some things I will.
	But at least once a day and sometimes more, I will say something like, I don't want this.
	And then she really digs in and wants it.
	And it's like, I have to say to myself, is this really that important?
	And I tell you, nine times out of ten, it's really not.
	So it's kind of inconvenient.
	We have to go back to the car once and I have to keep an extra eye on her so she doesn't Swing her coat hanger through some china or something, but it's not really that big a deal.
	And so I'm in the same boat as every other parent.
	I'm, you know, certainly not like years ahead.
	I am continually having to uncouple my own authoritarian history from my current experience and enactment of parenting.
	And there's no other way to do it because, of course, when I was a kid, you didn't get to take your coat hanger to the mall.
	In fact, you didn't even get to take it into the car, right?
	Yeah. Well, it's funny you should say that.
	I guess it's a sign that something that I'm doing must be right.
	What I noticed is I basically let my son do pretty much whatever he wants.
	Let's say if he likes clothespins, he likes...
	Recently, he's taken to really like the vacuum cleaner.
	Oh, yeah. He'll go to where we keep it up, pull it out.
	He'll get me to pull it out, and then I have to basically walk around with him for half an hour as he's pushing it around the house.
	So many things like that, I'm sure you know.
	But the thing is, what I found is once in a while, he will try to do something that I really don't want him to do, like play with the oven.
	And I'll just tell him, no...
	And 99 times out of 100, he will just kind of accept it.
	And I have exactly the same experience.
	But sorry, go on. Some things he will, though.
	Nothing comes to mind right now.
	It hasn't been anything that was really dangerous.
	He hasn't been wanting to stick screwdrivers into the wall blocks yet.
	But he loves screwdrivers and he's interested in the wall blocks, so I'm sure that day is coming.
	But the point is, I don't think there has been anything where I really needed to stop him from doing something, and he's complained about it yet.
	No, and I have that same experience.
	I guess it's a sign I must be doing something right at least.
	Yeah, I mean, I think that what happens is that if you train your kid that a conflict of wills is an automatic fight, Then they will simply approach any conflict of wills as an automatic fight.
	And you're training them to have fights with you when you have disagreements with your children.
	Whereas if it's a real exception, if it's a very rare exception, it won't bother them because you haven't trained them to have conflict with you.
	Yeah, I hope so. So, no, I agree with you.
	It is exactly the same in my household.
	I have a very light touch with Isabella and she...
	It's almost always, no exception pops to mind, but I can't remember any at the moment, maybe there are, but there is no time where I've said no to her in a serious way and she hasn't been okay with it.
	And a serious way is no raised voice.
	It's like we were in the mall today and we really had to go and I had to come back, get ready for the show.
	And I said, okay, Isabella, I'm sorry, you have to come up into my arms now.
	We have to go to the car.
	And that was such a different tone than I normally have with her that she just jumped up to my arms and, you know, it's like, I'm sorry, there's no need to get upset because it's not going to be any particular conflict.
	We just now have to go.
	And she's fine with that stuff.
	And I've not had any conflicts with her about that stuff.
	And I think that comes from that light touch and from disconnecting the...
	You know, I had so many authority figures when I was a kid who would come up with these stupid ass rules and then just dig in, you know, and would never admit that they were wrong, would never admit that it wasn't important, would never, they just, that is the rule.
	And it became like they were so easily offended by questioning of the rules or opposing the rules or whatever that, yeah, I just really aimed to not replicate that experience with Isabella and it works like a charm.
	Yeah. Yeah, lots of work ahead of me, anyway.
	And I think you should be proud.
	Yeah, I appreciate that, and I think you should be very proud.
	I think your son is a very, very lucky boy.
	Nice to have a dad who is so enthusiastic and so interested in this approach to parenting.
	I think the virtuous approach to parenting, you know, big hugs, big kisses, good for you.
	You are the real Santa Claus in your child's Christmas, so good for you.
	A lot of that is thanks to you, though, so...
	Well, look, that is a hugely wonderful thing to hear, and I get lots of comments about that from parents, and I hugely appreciate it.
	I'm very glad that being half a step ahead of some people in this massive experiment called peace and volunteerism, I'm glad that people are finding it so valuable.
	That's the other thing. Please keep up the easy updates because I look for them and then I'll just...
	It gives me kind of a heads up of where my son's going to be in about six months because they're about six months apart.
	It's really funny. Yeah, I'm going to do a video this week and I have an example of this light touch with Izzy on film.
	So I'm going to do a video this week of showing people just how little authority is actually needed with kids.
	Because I get this question at least once a day, if not more.
	It's like, well... Your kid runs into traffic, or your kid is about to eat a chainsaw, or your kid comes home with a pet pterodactyl, and what do you do?
	Anyway, I appreciate that.
	Let's get on to the next caller, and I'm glad that we spent some time on that, so thank you so much.
	Okay. All right, bye.
	That is the future, ladies and gentlemen.
	That is the future. That is the peaceful world.
	Right there. Hi, Steph.
	Hello. Hi.
	Yeah, I wonder if I can go ahead and give you my six months with the psychoanalyst report.
	Oh yeah, please do.
	Yeah. Yeah, I started back in August seeing a psychologist once every two weeks, more or less.
	You know, he's taken off for the Christmas holidays right now, but I was very pleased with the whole thing, all in all.
	I wasn't too overly optimistic, I don't think, of what would happen, but it's been really good.
	It's exceeded my expectations.
	You think, well, you know, you're sort of set in your character after a certain age and you're not going to really make much change.
	But in fact, you know, I've never had a real professional listener before.
	And it's surprising.
	It's really surprising what...
	You know, it's just like I come out of some of those sessions just so high up, you know, like so recharged kind of and feeling like new vistas are opening up for me and that sort of thing, you know. And, yeah, it's been really great.
	I just thought I'd tell you, you know, how it's going.
	And I was interested because it started off, he didn't say, okay, we're going to do it this way or that way.
	But just what happened was I started off kind of telling him the story of my life because he doesn't know really who I am or what I've been doing.
	Thank you.
	We got into the present.
	Well, what kind of day-to-day things?
	And also, it was interesting because he got into, well, what kind of plans?
	And he would catch me, you know, like you mentioned this.
	And he'd come back and he'd draw my attention to something that I did say, but I hardly noticed, you know.
	And it was very interesting because we kind of, in a time sense, covered the past and the present.
	And we're kind of getting into the future, you know, like, what do I want to do?
	What are my hopes and plans for the future and that sort of thing?
	It's interesting because it is part of you, even though those plans aren't realized and so on yet, it's still part of you.
	I mean, we are interesting creatures, you know, human beings, and there is a kind of, you know, we intend to go places, and that's part of us, as well as where we've been, how we are handling the present, and how we have handled the past, and so on. It's been just fascinating, and I don't know.
	I guess I'll just carry on seeing him in January and we'll just see where it goes from there.
	Does your therapist have any particular discipline or approach, like some cognitive therapy or Larian or I guess there's the family systems therapy, that kind of stuff.
	So does he or she have any particular approach or is it more ad hoc?
	I don't know exactly.
	I think he's actually a Buddhist.
	That hasn't come up at all.
	I think he seems to...
	Now, this is just inference.
	I shouldn't really say that.
	But I believe that he is because he has links to...
	In our town, there's a fair-sized Buddhist community.
	And... He has links to other Buddhist businesses, Shambhala publications, and that sort of thing, you know?
	And that doesn't really come up to my awareness, anyway, in our sessions.
	What do you think is the cause of the exhilaration that you feel?
	I think you said that it was related to the listening itself.
	Do you have any thoughts or theories as to why that exhilaration would occur?
	because it's funny i mean being listened to is there are many people it's like it's like a passive thing someone's just sort of sitting there and nodding and of course you know whether they're really listening or not but it's funny to think that such a quote passive thing would be so energizing i was wondering if you had any thoughts as to why you think that might occur uh yes it's not just the listening but he's a good quality listener he He asks very intelligent questions.
	I think that it goes back to your childhood.
	If you had, as I did, a dad who...
	You know, if you did go to him with one or two problems, I've talked this over with my brother, you know, like you learn to not do that because he would always add to the problems considerably, you know, like he wouldn't hear what you were saying, but he'd turn it around so that he had his whole trip that he wanted to lay on you.
	And it was like you ended up worse off with more problems.
	So we tended to not go that route.
	And that's why I thought to myself, what you want to do is get a male psychologist, because that's the parent I had most problems with, was my father.
	And I think vice versa, although that could be just a crazy theory, but that's what I was thinking of myself anyway.
	I thought, well, I want to get a male psychologist.
	I'm a psychologist who, you know, I can kind of transfer the good father.
	Hopefully, you know, I'll get some good father messages from him, which I am getting.
	And so I'm very delighted, you know, with that, really.
	I think that's part of the elation.
	Right, right. Now, have you been doing, say homework sounds like kind of like the wrong, but is there stuff that you do outside of therapy to prepare for or to process the sessions?
	He actually does that.
	And I, well, I could say I listen to all the FDR podcasts and everything.
	It's certainly been great, you know?
	I mean, I think that's been just, that's like started a whole new life for me.
	I think that for a couple of years ago, a year and a half ago when I first Saw your face on a YouTube video and decided to listen.
	That's just been great for me.
	Just so positive, terrific.
	I'm a big fan, that's for sure.
	Anything like that is very good.
	All the self-knowledge podcasts and a lot of times just interacting with people on the boards is very good.
	You kind of You're kind of self-exploring, you know, when you're exploring truth with others.
	It's a kind of double thing where you're self-exploring and you're helping them, too, to do that.
	And, you know, the truth is kind of like a...
	shines light in all directions, you know, on you and on the person you're talking with and on the subject, everything.
	This is great. One of the things that occurred for me in therapy was...
	When you have a really good listener on your hands, realizing the degree to which that wasn't present in my other relationships was kind of shocking and disorienting for me.
	Has that been your experience at all, or is it not so much with you?
	No, it has.
	And I've got a little interesting story that my wife told me that she felt bad because I came home, you know, a couple of times from the psychology session and said, oh, this is so amazing.
	You know, and he really listens to me.
	And she was saying, well...
	I feel bad because I think that I should have done that.
	And I said, oh no, you're not a psychologist and everything.
	But it was interesting, it was confronting actually for her because I was so like...
	Oh, this guy really listens to me.
	And I guess she thinks that she really listens to me.
	But it's a little different, you know, to have a real professional.
	I mean, you actually are married to a psychologist.
	So for you, it may be different.
	I don't know. But, you know, my wife's not a psychologist or anything.
	We share a lot.
	But... And I kind of let her off, that one.
	I thought, oh, well, you're not a psychologist.
	You don't know. And he does...
	Some of our sessions have been very chatty, like back and forth, you know?
	And it's not all just me going on and on and on.
	But he asks very interesting questions.
	And then he tells me little stories I've learned about his son, who's a musician like I am, and that sort of thing, you know?
	So we kind of have developed a bit of a relationship over the months, right?
	My wife's technical term is psychological associate, but yeah, same thing, no difference.
	Well, that's very interesting, and I think you're right.
	I think that a professional, like somebody who's really trained to listen to the important things and who has a lot of experience, you know, conversation with people can be a little bit like sort of panning for gold.
	You know, you've got to go through a lot of sand to get to the nuggets.
	and somebody who's really trained to understand the importance, who's trained to listen to the vocal inflections that suggest from the unconscious that something important is coming and who can pick up on that stuff and who can remember the associations from a conversation from two months ago.
	And that is a skill that does require some significant training and practice and experience and mentoring.
	Because, I mean, of course, psychologists get a lot of mentoring from other psychologists earlier on in their career, and they have to go to continual training programs every year and so on.
	So, yeah, I think it is – I hope, of course, in the future that the profession becomes largely unnecessary because people are good listeners as a whole.
	But, you know, it's a long way.
	You know, I guess all nutritionists would hope that people just eat well.
	I guess at some point they could get another job, but I'm sure there will always be some need for it, but I hope in the future it will be less.
	I really appreciate the update and I'm completely thrilled that you're having such a positive experience with that.
	That's just wonderful.
	Yeah, and thank you very much for encouraging me to do just that.
	Really, you're the instigator of it, I would say.
	All right. Well, as the instigator, I'm glad that it didn't turn into a hellacious, abusive money hit in hell.
	So, good. Well, thanks.
	And keep it posted. You're going to continue.
	So you're going to continue on in January, right?
	Yes, yeah. If you'd like to give me another update, I'd be thrilled because I think it's just wonderful.
	I can't recommend the process highly enough with a good therapist, so I'm very glad that you're doing it.
	I'm glad that it's such a positive experience.
	Oh, that's great. Thanks a lot.
	All the best. Take care.
	Okay, bye. Did I see a question or two in the chatty chat room?
	Hi, Steph. Yo.
	Can I go? You can.
	Hi, how are you doing? I'm very well, how are you?
	I'm fine. I'd like to share two realizations I've gotten from therapy and a related question.
	I'll try and make it quick.
	Turns out that I grew up with two irrational fears.
	One was to fear to the dark.
	And another was fear of looking up.
	I'll try and explain what it is.
	Whenever I'm outside, like in an open field, and if I'm by myself, I've never felt that by myself.
	I've never thought about it.
	But sometimes I remember looking up into the clouds in the sky and feel like, what if gravity just stopped working and I would fly away?
	It's irrational.
	Sometimes I thought I was just nuts for thinking about it and didn't pay much attention to it.
	But it was a real fear and sometimes I would get sweaty.
	That was growing up because after my twenties I just ignored it.
	And through therapy it turns out that And what happened was that when I was a little kid, there was an uncle of mine.
	They used to have this nasty game of picking me up and throwing me into the air.
	And I would cry.
	I would ask for my mother and somebody to help me.
	Nobody would. And they would just laugh because it was supposed to be a game.
	And so my fear was that in one of those throws, perhaps I would just not come down.
	Nobody wanted me down.
	And I grew up with that and I avoided that all through like 25 years, 28 years something.
	And the other fear was the fear of the dark.
	When I was a kid, I remember when I was eight, I was home alone in the dark.
	There was a blackout.
	And I became...
	I was just screaming for the neighbors to come to the house and help me because I was home alone in the dark.
	And the neighbors just came and they found this bizarre.
	They had this weird face like, what am I doing?
	Why am I so scared? Because I was Scratching out the door trying to get it open.
	Irrational. And after that, I can remember many different episodes where I get very scared of the dark.
	And still now, I mean, I'm 30.
	Sometimes, when I get up at night to pee, I get scared.
	Turns out that there was another uncle of mine who lived in the house and he had this nasty game of creeping up on my crib and my bed at any time of the day but preferably in the pitch start night and just scared me and laugh at me and torture me that way.
	So I'm working with that.
	I'm getting past that.
	But in a recent call I heard you speaking with a caller and he had an issue of growing up with an insane mother and she was schizophrenic I guess.
	And I remember you were cautious that after growing up in such a situation you would have difficulty I don't know how to phrase it.
	Difficult to trust?
	Not trust, but...
	Well...
	Hating the world, I guess.
	Not having much room to allow mistakes in people or something like that.
	Well, sorry. Rather than talk about my call with somebody else, if you could just talk about what it meant to you?
	Well, yeah. You can imagine the sort of life I got back then.
	There were a few people back then that I related to.
	Just brief moments.
	Once or twice, a couple of people.
	But then it was just hell.
	All about it.
	I do feel that right now.
	I do feel that resentment to the entire society I live in.
	It's really hard getting...
	Wanting to do positive things for society.
	I'd like to get you a speech on it.
	Right, right. Well, I'll run through the arguments that I've sort of made before.
	Crazy people are a real burden, right?
	And the question that society as a whole has is, well, what the hell do we do with these crazy people?
	Because they're exhausting, they are destabilizing, they are problematic, they are expensive, they can be expensive.
	And all too often, the answer is, ah, the kids can handle it, right?
	I mean, my mom was crazy, and my extended family was basically like, ah, when...
	We're not going to get involved because she's crazy and she's dangerous.
	And yes, she was.
	So they basically just took a big step back and didn't get involved.
	It's like, okay, well, the kids can deal with it, right?
	She has kids, so they can deal with it.
	And that is also what happens when parents who are not loved in a family, when they get old, there's a lot of hot potato, right?
	There was a film with Jake Gyllenhaal, I think it is, and Gwyneth Paltrow and Anthony Hopkins.
	I can't remember what it was called. About math.
	It was about math. And the brother had gone off to do great things, and the sister had stayed home to take care of the ailing father.
	And this is like Water for Chocolate as well.
	I think there's that. The youngest kid is just, you know, stay home and take care.
	And so when...
	I'm going to use some strong language here.
	I hope this makes some sense. So when the slave class of children begins to shrug off the assumed responsibilities to take care of the difficult people in society, most people have this knee-jerk reaction which says, put them back in the goddamn box.
	You know, get them the hell back to take care of those people because You know, if she's not wiping mom's ass, I have to wipe mom's ass, so to speak.
	And people don't want to do that, right?
	So there are, in a sense, there are children who are assigned to take care of the difficult people in society, the parents or who knows what, right?
	It's often the parents. And that takes the problem off everybody else's plate.
	You know, what's going to happen to so-and-so?
	Well, you know... John will be there, you know, or Sally will be there, or Ahmed or Rolando will be there.
	And so the problem is answered.
	Now, if Johnny or Sally or Ahmed or Rolando begin to say, you know, I took this crazy fool on the face for 18 years growing up, I am done.
	Well, people's first reaction, for the most part, is to say, no, no, no, no.
	It's virtuous. You have a responsibility.
	She's your mother. Because they really care about virtue and responsibility and taking care of people?
	Of course not. It's because they don't want that big bag of crazy to roll down to their house, right?
	And I think, and look, this is not to say this is all the time, everyone, but this is common enough, right?
	And I speak from experience, which hopefully is not coloring the theory too, too much, right?
	Which is that when I, I was the one who was, in a sense, programmed to not, like, to have to take care of my mom.
	And when I began to say, meh, you know, I've dealt with this for a long time, I think I've put my time in.
	I think I've punched my clock.
	I think I'm done, because I don't have any desire to do it anymore.
	Then, of course, what happened?
	Well, I was selfish. She had raised me.
	She had taken care of me when I was younger.
	It's not all about me.
	And it can be easy to fall into that trap.
	And it is a trap. It's complete bullshit.
	Because all of these people who were so concerned about taking care of others and being there for others weren't there for me when I was a kid dealing with this stuff.
	So I knew I had enough UPB juice in me to know that they were simply using words to try and, you know, almost all ethical language is like a hook designed to catch a fish.
	It's not virtue.
	It's not Goodness, it's not empathy or caring or courage.
	It's just a hook. If I can get someone to self-attack with the word selfish or ungrateful or whatever, then I can control them.
	It's just a hook. Morality is just a tool for controlling people, for the most part, or at least up until somewhat recently, I believe.
	And so, when the slave class of crazy caretakers begins to rebel and say, I don't want to do this anymore, Then most people will simply try and force them back into that role using moral guilt and sometimes violence.
	Sometimes violence.
	There was a case in British Columbia here where a woman who had abandoned her children when she was five successfully sued her 50-year-old son for parental support.
	And won! Won!
	Crazy. Crazy.
	But this is what happens sometimes.
	So, I hope that's not too far off the mark in terms of what it is that you are thinking about.
	Does that come even closer, or should we talk about something else?
	Hello? Hello?
	Did the call drop?
	Yes. Okay.
	I was saying, in relation to that other call, I'd like you to talk about children who grow up with insane people.
	You know, I just finished a whole speech about that, and I'm so sorry that you dropped.
	Why don't you have a listen to it, and then if I didn't address your questions or concerns, you can call back in next week, but I just did like a 15-minute speech on that exact topic, which I don't want to replicate, if that's all right.
	Well, yeah. I think I listened to the speech.
	Just briefly.
	This is the question. Is there something special that a person who grows up in this situation has to address different from the rest of the population?
	It affects somebody that grows up with insane people around the house.
	Something to watch out for.
	Are there tales that one has to look up and be aware of?
	Can one end up being damaging to the world somehow?
	You mean to grow up with somebody who's crazy in the house?
	I think it's very damaging for sure.
	And what's very damaging, I mean, there's the damage that's obvious, which is that you have to deal with a crazy person in the house.
	But the damage that is more subtle, and I think the one that persists into adulthood, is your relationship with everyone who left you with a crazy person in the house.
	Right? Children should not be raised by crazy people.
	That's my very strong opinion.
	They should not be raised by people who are insane.
	I mean, we don't let crazy people fly planes.
	We don't let crazy people drive cars.
	We don't let crazy people operate chainsaws.
	You don't let crazy people buy guns.
	I mean, there's so many restrictions on the rights of crazy people.
	But most people, you know, seem to be pretty okay with children being raised by crazy people because, you know, it's important to keep them out of cars because, you know, that could damage other people.
	But as long as it's only their own kids who are being damaged, well, I guess that's okay, right?
	Yeah. I have, just a full disclosure, I have personal history here that may cloud some of this.
	And I do have a certain amount of...
	It's not particularly strong now, but certainly when I was younger, you know, I mean, my brother went to go and live for a couple of years with relatives in England, and I was left alone with my mom when she was going through a complete mental breakdown for years.
	And I don't even remember getting one phone call from these other relatives who'd bungeed out my brother while I was left behind to deal with this, right?
	And the reason for that was that if I were bungeed out, then somebody would have to deal with my mom.
	So I, at the age of 11, was considered to be the most competent and able person to handle my mother's insanity.
	And my brother was taken out of the situation.
	I was left there for a couple of years to manage this insanity.
	And nobody called or contacted or had any knowledge of how I was doing.
	Because that would have been very inconvenient for them, right?
	Because then they would have said to themselves, well, I guess leaving an 11-year-old boy to deal with this isn't really the most moral thing in the world.
	So maybe we'll have to be inconvenient somewhat, go over and get him and figure out how to deal with this from a legal standpoint.
	But they didn't do that.
	I was just... You know, stuffed like a sacrificial lamb into the crazy dragon's mouth.
	And I have a history here that lends me to be perhaps less objective, although it could be argued more objective because I'm very aware of this history.
	I understand. I know that there are specific problems with people who grew up with, people who are often hospitalized, like a syndrome that if you watch your mother or your father being hospitalized and paid attention to, you might have this tendency to want to be hospitalized, to be paid attention to.
	Oh, you mean sort of like hypochondria?
	Yeah, stuff like that.
	Growing up around people with problems can manifest in subtle ways in your life.
	I believe that most of the ways are still unknown.
	In my case, I grew up with an entire family.
	Probably an entire society, but a bunch of people crazy in the house.
	It was like 10 people in the house.
	All of them were the sons and daughters of this monster, my mother's father.
	He died and nobody cried.
	All of these were just crazy kids.
	My mother was 15 when I was born.
	If you grew up with a Sikh person in the house, there are tales that you should look up and pay attention to.
	Sorry, let me ask you this.
	Was it your mom who was crazy?
	I guess all of them.
	Now, was one of the ways in which they were crazy that they didn't listen to you?
	What do you mean? Well, that you would say something and they wouldn't process what you were saying and they would just repeat themselves.
	Yeah, all the time. Okay, you know that's what you're doing to me, right?
	Oh. I don't mean this in a critical way.
	I'm just pointing it out observationally that you are replicating the crazy.
	Because you say, what should you look out for?
	Well, I'll tell you. What you should look out for is replicating the crazy to other people, right?
	Because you've now asked me three or four times, what should I look out for?
	And I've given you, I think, some pretty good answers from my perspective about what you should look out for.
	And then what you say is, well, yes, but is there anything that I should look out for, given that I had this kind of history?
	And I say, well, you should look out for this, this, this, and this, and this was my experience, and this is what I think happens in society, so this is what you should look out for.
	And then I finish, and you say, well, yes, but is there anything that I should look out for coming from this kind of history, right?
	It's a broken record thing, right?
	Yeah, I'm not doing that.
	Like I said... And I'm not saying this to be critical.
	I'm just pointing out that this would be the first thing to look at is the degree to which you can listen and absorb what somebody's saying.
	Like, I don't know if I sound to you like I sound to me, or whether I sound to you like...
	And you say, okay, well, that didn't explain anything to me, so I'll have to ask again, right?
	Well, I sort of want you to say something else, address a different point or topic.
	I don't know, but I don't know how to get...
	I think I'm trying to get you to talk about some stuff.
	Maybe I'm being too...
	You can absolutely... But repeating the same question that got the same response...
	Sorry, repeating the same question that is not giving you the response you want isn't going to get you what you want, right?
	Yeah. I agree.
	So what is it that you wonder?
	Well, in the situation you described, you as a kid, you knew that these people were crazy.
	It was obvious.
	No, I knew that my mom was crazy.
	And I had some suspicions about others, but I didn't know as much, obviously, as I know now.
	But sorry, come on. Well, in my case, I didn't know.
	I think it was just normal behavior.
	Well, you knew emotionally that it was not pleasant, right?
	Yeah, sure. Right, so we may say that torture is normal behavior, but that doesn't mean that our body likes torture, right?
	Sure. Right, okay.
	You get the shame, you get yourself attacked because you think that you're a bad kid.
	Especially when they tell you not to cry and you just want to cry.
	Right. Now, you've used the term crazy, and I've used it too, right, because that was the sort of context.
	Is it a question of sanity or is it a question of morality that you are fundamentally concerned with?
	I don't apply morality to these people.
	I'm just beyond the moral.
	I don't think they're able to be responsible for their behavior because they're insane.
	Okay, so that's an easy test for that, right?
	What do you mean? There's an easy test to find out if somebody is blind or not.
	So somebody says, well, I'm blind.
	I can't see. And what you do is you throw a ball at them and you see if they dodge.
	And if the ball just hits them in the side of the head, then they're pretty likely to be blind.
	But if they do these amazing ninja moves, they sort of do these slow motion matrix stroll across the ceiling moves to dodge every ball you throw at them, Then they're not blind, right?
	They can see. Sure.
	Right? So there's a very easy way to find out, I'm not saying it's easily emotionally, but it's very easy to do, is you sit down with the people who you think are crazy and you start talking about the objections and problems that you have with your relationship.
	And if they do things like they fog, they misdirect, they defend, they attack, they withdraw, they rage, they, you know, all of the usual bullshit tricks that defensive people have, then they are ninjas and they are not crazy, right?
	Isn't that more scary?
	I agree. But it is certainly a very important thing to know, right?
	You don't want to confuse crazy for immoral, right?
	Because crazy people I think we should have some real sympathy with.
	And I know we've been using this term, so let me just sort of redefine it in terms of what it is.
	So somebody who's really crazy, right?
	So somebody who has Alzheimer's or dementia or who has had a brain injury or has a brain tumor that is altering their personalities.
	That kind of person I think we should have real sympathy for, and they clearly are not morally responsible for their actions, right?
	I agree. On the other hand, people who do bad things can sometimes seem very erratic, but one thing that is truly consistent is that if you bring up a moral criticism of an immoral person, that you will get a very predictable series of responses that are perfectly engineered To throw you off the scent of what it is you're after.
	And so the question between crazy and evil or crazy and immoral is judged by the RTR conversation that you have about your history with your family.
	If they're crazy, then, I don't know, they'll bark at the moon, they'll attempt to pluck an imaginary duck, but they won't get offended and upset and angry So if you go to some grandmother of yours who was nasty when you were a kid,
	who's got dementia, and is drooling on herself and doesn't know what day of the week it is, and you say, I had trouble with the way you treated me, I have trouble with the way you treated me when I was a kid, she's not going to start jumping up out of the chair and saying, well, you know, these were different times and nothing happened and it was all your mom's fault and you were a bad kid, and she's not going to come up with all of that bullshit that people say to blame the victims, right?
	She's just going to stare at you and glassy-eyed and continue to drool on herself and, you know, maybe fart a little, right?
	But can you be sophisticated crazy?
	I'm sorry? Well, I mean, can you be irrational or insane and still have these sophisticated defenses?
	Well, that's what you have to find out.
	I can't tell you that about your family.
	That's what you go and you find out by having these conversations with them.
	By having conversations, saying, look, I have significant problems with my history, with my family, with my history.
	And with friends, with priests, teachers, whoever, right?
	But we're talking about your family, right?
	I don't like what happened.
	I had some significant problems.
	If they're crazy, then they won't be able to string a coherent thought together.
	There won't be any emotional manipulations.
	They won't attempt to redirect or misdirect or fog or frighten or bully or evade or anything like that.
	It won't be trying to push two magnets together, like opposing pole magnets together.
	If they're genuinely crazy, then it's like trying to explain physics to an ape, right?
	But if they start pulling off all these ninja defense moves, Then they're not crazy.
	They may be random, they may be irrational, but they're not crazy because they can completely understand moral cause and effect.
	They completely understand that the conversation is going to be very threatening.
	They completely understand all of the tactics and the moves that they have to do to try and get out of this conversation without driving you away because they still want things from you.
	Then they're not crazy, right?
	Then what you're doing is a guy saying, I'm completely blind, And you're sort of creeping around, throwing balls at him, and he's doing all these ninja moves, dodging every single one of them.
	It's like, well, dude, sorry, you're not blind, right?
	You may be a lot of things, but you're not blind, right?
	So they're responsible. Well, I didn't say they're responsible.
	What I'm saying is that if you have a conversation with them and they pull out all of these ninja moves, then they're not crazy.
	In my opinion, he's just an amateur guy on the internet, but my experience has been, they're not crazy.
	They may not be good people.
	They may not be honest.
	People who have really bad consciences do some pretty erratic stuff, right?
	But they're not crazy.
	In the way that they have no responsibility.
	Somebody who has no responsibility doesn't try and evade responsibility when it's placed on him.
	He genuinely does not understand the concept of responsibility.
	It's like, you cannot teach a duck the concept of property rights, right?
	And... Sorry, I'm just mentally noting how many people are going to email me videos about ducks learning property rights.
	Anyway, it's going to happen.
	But anyway, that's because we're not just talking about your parents.
	But... But if somebody genuinely has no idea what responsibility is, then they won't get upset when you place moral responsibility on them.
	That's the great test, right? If somebody gets really angry and defensive and manipulative when you put moral responsibility on them, then they're morally responsible.
	In the same way that anybody who hides a body is not crazy.
	You kill someone and then you take great pains to evade and you die off the body and lie or whatever and dump it in the river wrapped in some sort of petrified, mummified obsidian casket so that it never rises to the surface of day, then you're not crazy because your actions are very purposeful to avoid detection and conviction.
	I believe I spent a great deal of time and mental effort in figuring out this theory of this idea about people being possessed, let's say, by personalities and things like that.
	I guess that's a way for me to run away from A probable reality that these people are responsible and their behavior is chosen.
	The other thing that you can do, if you have any sort of doubt, is that...
	Again, to talk from personal experience, when I had a series of conversations with my mom, she would say, well, I don't remember any of this.
	I don't remember this at all.
	I don't remember. And then I said to her, well, let's say that's true.
	I mean, you can remember stuff that happened when you were five, but let's pretend that you can't remember any of the stuff that occurred for the sort of 15 years that we lived together or whatever.
	Let's say you can't remember any of it.
	How does that absolve your responsibility?
	And she didn't understand, right?
	And I said, well, when I was a kid, I would get in trouble for things that I would forget, right?
	And the fact that I said, well, I don't remember...
	Did not mean that I was no longer responsible because I was responsible for forgetting.
	So if I was supposed to bring something and I forgot, like there was one time my mom was trying to sell a ring because we were out of money and I think I forgot to turn on the answering machine before we left and she got really angry at me because we needed the money and blah blah blah.
	And so I mentioned that.
	I said, you know, that day I had forgotten something and Me forgetting was no excuse.
	You were still angry. And so the fact that you can't remember doesn't absolve you of responsibility because it didn't absolve me of responsibility when I was 12.
	So how on earth could it resolve your responsibility for things you did in your 30s?
	So that's a conversation you can have.
	And she was very nimble and agile in that conversation to avoid responsibility, to avoid confession, to avoid ownership.
	And so, yeah, not crazy.
	Very alert. Very mind-working 10,000 miles a minute.
	The same thing was true with other people that I confronted.
	Same thing is true when you talk to people about a statism or the against-me argument or pointing out the gun in the room or any of the other things that we've talked about.
	They're very... That is not the random actions of a crazy brain damaged person.
	Sorry, that is a response of somebody who fully understands moral responsibility.
	That agility, that mental agility, that focus, it's evidence of a brain that's healthy, but not of a mind.
	I don't know if you get what I'm saying.
	Look, to me, crazy is when there's literal organic damage, right?
	Yeah, I agree. Not a bad conscience.
	Not somebody who's indulged themselves in terrible actions.
	And now wishes desperately to avoid the consequences of those actions.
	Right? So somebody who's, I don't know, got a pile of murdered homeless people buried in his backyard, if you say, listen, I don't know, I'm from the city and I need to dig in your backyard, and he starts coming up with all these crazy reasons and excuses, As to why you simply cannot dig in his backyard, at least not till tomorrow, right?
	He's going to look kind of crazy, right?
	But he's not. He's not crazy.
	He's just afraid of being found out.
	Does that make sense? Yes, it does.
	Like the really crazy people are out there shouting at the skies, waving a Bible with beards down to their asses in winter.
	On a street corner. You can't have conversations with those people about, I don't know, what they did as teenagers, whatever, right?
	Sorry, go ahead. Well, those sophisticated answers that you get from people are completely irrational, but at the same time sophisticated because it merges with everything that makes things stay the same, like religious people.
	Based on what you just said, their agility, their focus, they're not crazy.
	Is there a way in which they are crazy?
	Well, I mean, we can't use the same word, right?
	And again, I know we did, but we can't use the same word as the people who have some sort of organic brain function problem or some sort of tumor that's really altered their brain.
	Those people are crazy.
	If somebody is acting consistent with self-interest, then they're not crazy.
	Now, you and I may disagree with their self-interest, but they're not crazy.
	So you and I would say, look, it's not good to kill 10 homeless guys and bury them in your backyard.
	That's an evil thing to do.
	But if the guy who killed 10 homeless guys wraps up the body so they don't stink, make sure that Google Earth never takes a photo of his backyard in case someone's toe is sticking out, won't let anyone dig there, Won't let anyone's dogs come over in case they sniff and start digging, right? So he is acting consistent with his own self-interest given that he killed some guys and doesn't want to go to jail, right?
	Now, you and I would say, I don't agree with those actions.
	But he's not crazy because he's acting perfectly consistent.
	With his goal, his self-interest, of killing guys but not going to jail, right?
	Can you make the case for a religious man in the same way?
	In what context?
	Well... I mean, religious could be in terms of child raising, in terms of a relationship with himself, in terms of his career as a preacher.
	What do you mean? Yeah, he just did.
	Yeah, he just did it.
	Yeah, I've also got a section on religion as child abuse in the book Against the Gods, which is on my website, freedomaderadio.com.
	It's free, but you might want to read it or listen to it.
	I've got a case in there about that.
	But I think that this distinction—I had a listener comment about this just recently, which I just got permission to put out—but this distinction between the crazy and immoral— It's very, very important to make.
	Listen to this again.
	I think you really need to come over this kind of stuff.
	I really strongly recommend having honest conversations with family members to find out the degree to which their responses are consistent with their own immediate self-interest.
	I'll definitely avoid these people actually.
	I'm not looking forward to having those conversations.
	I would strongly suggest not avoiding them until you have clarity on this issue one way or the other.
	Look, if they're genuinely crazy, it doesn't mean you have to have anything to do with them.
	I mean, adult relations are voluntary.
	If they're genuinely crazy, but at least then you might have some sympathy or whatever, right?
	But if they're not crazy but rather are immoral, that's important to know.
	Neither answer has anything to do with whether you see them or not or like them or not.
	But it does have a lot to do with how you process your own history.
	Whether you were the victim of illness or whether you were the victim of immorality is very, very, very important.
	It has everything to do with how your life will go in the future.
	How so?
	Well, if...
	Let's take an example from history.
	So, of course, in history, people who were epileptic were perceived to be victims of demonic possession because they were bad people who had invited the devil into their hearts, right?
	So, people to whom society should have had sympathy, society morally condemned as evil, right?
	And that was inaccurate.
	And that led to, I mean, epileptics literally being demonized, right?
	And so the entire response in society to epilepsy was wrong, immoral, destructive.
	And because it was wrong, futile.
	And worse than futile.
	Because they believed they had an answer.
	To the question of epilepsy, i.e.
	demonic possession, they stopped looking for the real answer.
	Right? But I'm a victim either way.
	You are a victim either way.
	But it is really important to know the difference between crazy and evil.
	Because deep down, you already know the difference between crazy and evil.
	And so if you have a conscious perspective that is utterly at odds with your organic experience, then you will be at war with yourself.
	You will waste enormous amounts of mental energy going round and round in circles.
	And because you don't have moral clarity about your history all the way from top to bottom in your personality, you're going to be that much more susceptible to immoral people getting their hooks into you in the future.
	And as a guy who was enormously susceptible to that in the past, I can tell you that it did not change in my life until I got moral clarity about my history.
	I was exploited in business.
	I was exploited in romantic relationships.
	I was exploited financially.
	I was used and abused by countless people in my history.
	Once I got moral clarity about my history, that all ceased.
	I had a counterfeit detection machine.
	Counterfeiters no longer tried to pass me their bullshit bills.
	There is no protection except true knowledge, true self-knowledge.
	There is no protection from evil except through consistent moral philosophy.
	That is the magic circle that keeps evil at bay.
	Because evil people can see that a mile away, even when good people can't.
	And if you have moral clarity about your history and you know whether you were the victim of evil or crazy, then you will keep evil people away.
	And you don't have to worry about keeping crazy people away.
	Because crazy people aren't going to try and exploit you.
	Exploiting you is the actions of an evil person.
	It's consistent. It relies on moral lies and confusions and aggression and manipulation.
	And to the end of extracting resources from you, either emotional or monetary or physical.
	Because crazy people, you know, the guy shouting at Satan on the street corner is trying to lift my wallet.
	So the crazy people you don't have to worry about, because they're not trying to control and exploit you.
	It's the evil people who do that.
	So if you mistake evil for crazy, you get protection from neither.
	But if you clarify the difference between evil and crazy, then you gain protection from evil, and the crazy people you don't have to worry about anyway.
	It's about as safe as you can ever get.
	I hope that makes some sense.
	I know I've given you a fair amount to chew on, and I would definitely recommend...
	I'm putting out a list in the convo about this loneliness.
	So I'm going to have to wind this down just so I can get back to enjoying my daughter's birthday.
	But I really thank you for a whole series of absolutely fantastic questions.
	Just wonderful stuff.
	And this is difficult and deep work, which, again, I strongly recommend an ethical therapist to work on with because it's a long and involved process uncovering this kind of history and truly dealing with this kind of history.
	Yeah. Thank you, everybody, so, so much again.
	I look forward to your donations.
	I know December can be a little bit light for people, but if you could remember that there is a philosopher pitifully begging like a hungry dog from underneath your Christmas tree and throw a few shekels northward for most of you.
	I guess westward for my British listeners and European listeners.
	I would really appreciate that.
	Forward slash donate.
	That would be excellent.
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