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Sept. 18, 2011 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:57:09

1996 Freedomain Radio Sunday Show 18 September 2011

Social Security is not a Ponzi scheme! The emotional power of music, the philosophy of comedy, investments in failure, and dealing with passive aggression in relationships.

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	Hi, everybody. Hope you're doing very well.
	September the 18th, 2011.
	Hey, look at that. Got the year right. Just after 2 p.m.
	And interesting stuff has been floating around the media recently.
	Rick Perry, no relation to Katie, I believe, has been talking about how he views Social Security as a Ponzi scheme.
	And I wish to take Extreme objection to the characterization of Social Security as a Ponzi scheme.
	That is irresponsible in the extreme.
	It is absolutely inaccurate.
	It is, in fact, an insult to Ponzi schemes because Social Security is far worse than a Ponzi scheme.
	It is way too generous to compare it to a Ponzi scheme.
	Now, a Ponzi scheme is You set up some investment, quote, investment deal or whatever, and you get people to kick in money, and then you pay people who are already in from people you get coming in who are new, right?
	So you get 10 people to put in five grand, and then you get 20 people to put in five grand, and you pay the first five granders with money from the second group, and it grows and grows, and then it explodes.
	This almost destroyed Albania's economy, I think, in the 90s.
	So a Ponzi scheme is that and they're of course illegal because they are entirely too benevolent relative to government programs.
	Social Security of course has some aspects of a Ponzi scheme in that it is a wealth transfer From the young to the old, which is one of the most regressive taxes you can imagine.
	The baby boomers are the richest generation that has ever existed on the planet, at least in the West.
	They have had, you know, 40 or 50 years to gather their wealth together and have done a good deal of doing that.
	And now that they're coming close to retirement, as of 2010, Social Security is in the red.
	It is already paying out more than it has or is drawing in in revenues.
	And this is before the bulge of the boomers retire.
	So obviously the system is doomed.
	Nobody wants to talk about that. They all go, oh, 2037!
	And it's all complete nonsense.
	And everybody has this, I don't know, this idea, this fantasy or whatever, that the money that was taken from you...
	By force was, I mean, at two levels.
	You have a tax on Social Security on your paycheck and the employer pays half as well, so that's simply another deduction, the hidden deduction from your paycheck.
	And the money is blown.
	It's gone. It's been used to, as Harry Brown used to say, prop up the Russian ruble 20 years ago for three hours.
	I mean, it's just gone. It's evaporated.
	It's snaked its way into the oily, deep pockets of the politically connected, and the money is just gone.
	Toast. It's vanished.
	And so there's nothing there for people to retire on.
	And so the only way that you can pay people's retirement is to take a gun to the temple of the young and get them to cough up their damn meager resources at the beginning of their careers to line the pockets of those who've had an entire lifetime to generate wealth and to save, even outside of Social Security.
	The, quote, assets that the Social Security system have Our government IOUs.
	They're bonds, which the government has to pay through increasing taxes or borrowing.
	So, why is Social Security not like a Ponzi scheme?
	Well, a Ponzi scheme It's voluntary.
	A Ponzi scheme is not something...
	I mean, you're drawn in by greed or by corruption or by ignorance, but you're not forced to be there.
	Nobody who was ripped off by Bernie Madoff was held up at gunpoint.
	So, first of all, Ponzi schemes are voluntary, and Social Security is entirely coercive and violent and destructive as a result.
	So, the first thing is it's an insult to Ponzi schemes.
	to say that it's like Social Security because a Ponzi scheme is voluntary.
	The other thing that's true about a Ponzi scheme is in a Ponzi scheme, a private Ponzi scheme, you cannot sell off your children.
	You cannot sell off the unborn of strangers.
	You get hosed and your financial indebtedness begins and ends with you.
	You can't go and sell off your children for the sake of profit in the present, but that of course is not the case with Social Security, which is basically funded On the wholesale auction of the unborn.
	So this is another way in which Social Security is not like a Ponzi scheme.
	Ponzi schemes collapse relatively quickly.
	The Ponzi scheme called Social Security has been running, I guess, a little over 100 years as far as Germany goes, and of course about half that time.
	In America and it's completely toast.
	A Ponzi scheme, sorry, a Social Security much like government pension programs are predicated on actuarial analyses or statistics that would be completely illegal in the private sector.
	So the projections for how much How much is going to be available for the seniors and how much is going to be available for government employees is based upon completely absurd returns.
	Seven, eight, nine percent of returns on the money that's invested.
	This is all complete nonsense.
	I mean, stocks have been flat for years and, in fact, have lost value in many cases.
	So there's just not going to be any money there.
	The difference, of course, is the Ponzi scheme implodes and takes the people's savings who were in it voluntarily and who had the chance to get out whenever they wanted.
	For many years. We could only hope to elevate social security to the status of a Ponzi scheme.
	I mean, that would be fantastic.
	It means you could take your money out.
	It means you're not there by force.
	It means that if you're not in the system, you can't be held liable for its shortfalls.
	You can't sell the unborn.
	I mean, God, if we could only elevate...
	Government crimes to the status of merely private crimes, that would be a staggering leap forward in the reduction of violence within society.
	If you could get the government to be as ethical, as responsible, as voluntary as Bernie Madoff, that would be a massive step forward in human society.
	But frankly, given the grey power of the voters and the general ignorance of people on the subject and the hysteria that floats around this topic, don't hold your breath for Bernie Madoff to become the moral ideal that our politicians should strive towards.
	Instead, they're going to throw him in jail while they get fat pensions and book deals.
	It's the Freedom Aid Radio Sunday Show, 2 p.m.
	Eastern Standard Time, fdrurl.com forward slash chat if you want to get involved.
	It's every Sunday. I hope to see you there.
	Now let's move on with the show.
	Hey, sorry we lost a little bit of audio here at the beginning.
	The fine gentleman, the listener, was describing how he was listening to music at work, a Trent Reznor song, and became very emotional and...
	I began to cry, and so he's just going to ask me if I experienced anything similar.
	What happened to me at work, I ended up crying for five to ten minutes in the conference room, and I was already after that, but is that something you've experienced or have experienced?
	Yeah, I mean, down to the last detail, actually.
	It doesn't mean it's normal, it just means we may both be normal or completely abnormal, but certainly the experience that I had was identical.
	I was listening to, this is just when I'd started therapy, and this is after I'd been working on, you know, opening up my heart.
	You know, sometimes it feels like you're trying to dislodge something like a bowling ball in a toilet with a plunger.
	But I was listening to, I even remember the song.
	It was the Barenaked Ladies off the Gordon album.
	A song called Good Boy, which I would sometimes sing at karaoke or just sort of in the shower.
	To me, the lyrics are very moving and we don't have to sort of get into why because I want to sort of make sure we focus upon you.
	But it was a sadness that I experienced and yes, I went to the washroom and I went into the stall and wept and wept and wept and it was convulsive and it was like, I don't know, like a cat with a hairball or a snake coughing up the fragments of an ostrich egg or something.
	It was really like just a wretch of agony and it felt actually bigger even than me.
	It felt almost like a world sadness or a cosmic sadness or a sadness of the species.
	That is so broken and violent and depressed and anxious and so on.
	It felt like a suffering of the world that was coalescing within me.
	And it took quite a while for me to regain some composure.
	And of course, as is always the case with those kinds of emotions, I felt better.
	I felt better afterwards.
	I think that it's drilling through layers.
	It's drilling through layers of that which is unacceptable to feel.
	In the past.
	And so I think that music is a great trigger for that kind of stuff, particularly if the music strikes something in you that is a layer of sadness from your history.
	That, you know, a lot of us are quite sad in many levels.
	It doesn't mean that's all we are, but a lot of us...
	You know, 90% of parents spank their kids.
	A lot of us have sad things that have happened to us that lay within us, you know, like dinosaur bones.
	We attempt to reconstruct the evolution of ourselves and we dig down into these layers and we hit a very powerful, very animated bones of history.
	So, I understand it.
	I accept it.
	I think that the music must have, either that was music you listened to during a difficult time in your life, it reminded you of a difficult time in your life And you connected with the difficulty of that time.
	Because life is not difficult because it's difficult.
	Life is difficult because we can't share how difficult it is.
	That's the real difficulty in life.
	Anything that we can share is bearable.
	Everything which we cannot share is unbearable.
	And because it's unbearable...
	We tend to not experience it at the time.
	You know, it's like if you have a sudden injury that is really bad, then a lot of times you will simply become unconscious.
	You just go unconscious, right?
	You just pass out because the pain is overwhelming or the body damage is too intense.
	This happens in a car crashes and stuff.
	And yeah, that which is overwhelming, we shut down from.
	And the suffering in our life that is overwhelming is a suffering that we have no one to share it with.
	And so, again, this is just my thoughts and opinions on it, but I completely understand.
	I think it's perfectly healthy.
	I think it's perfectly normal.
	But I do think that it's tragic that we live in a society where we have to wait for those moments to feel the tragedies that we experienced in the past.
	Does that make any sense?
	It does make sense. Do you think that maybe for me as a coping mechanism I may have deposited a lot of my despair and sadness in that music and instead of processing it and maybe now listening to it now that I am in a safe place and I've made the conscious decision to go into my past to deal and process with trauma that it's kind of like it's stored on a hard drive in this music So to speak,
	and that I'm re-experiencing it, are able to now experience it.
	Would that make any empirical sense, psychology-wise?
	Well, I certainly can't speak for psychology as a whole.
	These are just sort of my thoughts and opinions about self-knowledge.
	But yes, to me, it does make total sense.
	I don't know. I remember when I was 16, I was going to go and fly to see my father in South Africa.
	The day before, I was jogging, running through the woods, and I leapt off some rocks because I was feeling very Batman-y onto what I thought were leaves, but unfortunately it was a thin layer of leaves covering a bunch of rocks, and I twisted my ankle.
	And I don't know if you've ever twisted your ankle, but the way it works is weird.
	It's like it doesn't really hurt that much at the time.
	You're like, oh, that's kind of painful.
	And you get home, and then your foot begins to swell, your ankle begins to swell, and then the real pain kicks in.
	And this happened once too when I jumped into some water that I thought was deeper and turned out to be shallower.
	And my experience with culture as a whole.
	But I hurt my knee and it didn't hurt at the time.
	Same thing happened when I was dancing on New Year's Eve when I was 22.
	I went down for a particularly spectacular disco Travolta move and didn't come back up very well and hurt my knee.
	And it didn't really hurt that much at the time.
	But, you know, later, oh my God, it was unbelievable.
	Same thing happened. I once cracked my, the only time I've ever injured a bone, I cracked my forearm falling off a bike when I was about 25.
	And again, I biked home and I was like, wow, I thought that would hurt more.
	And then it's like, oh, half an hour later, I was like, oh, that's the pain.
	That's the pain I was expecting.
	And so the shocks that occur at the time, the body tends to go into protective mode.
	And I think the same thing happens with the mind.
	The mind is just another part of the body.
	It goes into a protective mode.
	And I think this is particularly true when you're in a situation of humiliation.
	The details, you're certainly welcome to talk about them if you want, but if you were in a situation of humiliation, then I think it's very common for the mind to shut down the emotions because if you've been humiliated by someone and then you, in a sense, go crying to that person, they're more likely to humiliate you even more or again, if that makes any sense.
	I think not so much humiliation, from my experience, as it is.
	People are parents who claim to love and listen, but then when you really need them to listen, they don't want any part of it.
	A mother says, oh, I love you so much, tell me everything.
	I'm always there for you.
	But as soon as you started, or for me, as soon as I started to hit adolescence and I started to have all these feelings that It may come from me being adopted a month after I was born and other issues.
	As soon as darkness came in, oh, I don't want to hear about that dark stuff.
	No, no, no dark stuff.
	Right, so be vulnerable, but don't be vulnerable in a way that makes me at all upset.
	Yeah, and if you'd like, it's really quick.
	I can just read very briefly just the lyrics that had brought this up, and there is two curse words.
	Is that all right? It's totally fine.
	Okay, not a problem.
	So, in the back, off the side, far away, is a place where I hide, where I stay.
	Tried to say, tried to ask, I needed to, all alone, by myself.
	Where were you? How could I ever think it's funny how everything that swore it wouldn't change is different now?
	Just like you would always say, we'll make it through, then my head fell apart, and where were you?
	How could I? Ever think it's funny how everything you swore would never change is different now.
	Like you said, you and me make it through.
	Didn't quite fell apart.
	Where the fuck were you? So...
	Right. There was that, and then at the beginning of the next song, which is kind of similar, and I'd never realized that with a lot of the philosophy things I'm learning about what happens with parents, how this may strike a chord as well.
	The second song just stating, I listened to the words he'd say, but in his voice I heard decay.
	The plastic face forced to portray all the insides left cold and gray.
	There is a place that still remains.
	It eats the fear.
	It eats the pain.
	The sweetest price will have to pay the day the whole world went away.
	So, yeah, very melancholy and sadness, but so much of what helped me get through that sadness was this music.
	And looking back, and again, I don't know if that's what it's called, intellectualizing it all and not feeling it.
	but maybe that was a cry to my parents.
	You know, look, you're not listening.
	And then when they bring it up, oh, let's take you to a Christian therapist to try to normalize.
	I don't know, I'm just kind of rambling.
	I just wanted to...
	Get your opinion on it, though, which you've provided.
	Now, did Trent Reznor write those lyrics?
	Yes. Trent Reznor is Nine Inch Nails.
	He does everything.
	Only when he would be on tour would he have other people.
	But all the music and everything is done by just himself.
	And I, to put it lightly, was obsessed with that band from the age of 13 to...
	I would say 26, 27.
	That was my identity.
	That was my false self, from what I understand so far, of the false self.
	All of my shirts were Nine Inch Nails and everything.
	That was me.
	I'm sure that was a way of trying to express the pain and sadness.
	Well, let me...
	Sorry, he was basically talking about an absent person in his life, right?
	In these lyrics. Where were you?
	This kind of thing, right? Yeah.
	All right. Michael Trent Reznor was born in Mercer, Pennsylvania, the son of blah, blah, blah, it doesn't matter.
	After his parents divorced, he lived with his maternal grandparents while his sister, Tara, lived with their mother.
	Doesn't that tell you a lot?
	Yeah, and funny thing...
	His mother was willing to take his sister, but not him.
	He was rejected by his mother.
	Wow. He was rejected by his mother.
	And I was rejected by both my mothers.
	Right. And you see, these vibrations, these communications, this is from his experience to your experience, this is the hands under the table, right?
	Yeah. We're all taught to snarl at each other over the table, but we can hold hands under the table, and I think that music is the way that people communicate their experiences.
	He was rejected by his mother.
	I mean, how agonizing would that have been?
	He was, in a sense, abandoned.
	During the five years following the release of the downward spiral, Reznor struggled with depression, social anxiety disorder, and the death of his grandmother.
	Who raised him during this period of intense grief.
	Reston began abusing alcohol and other drugs.
	He eventually became addicted to alcohol and cocaine.
	This is all bomb in the brain stuff.
	I don't know if you've seen any of that.
	Yes. I'm the one I'd brought it up to recently that I had helped bring that into the group therapy I've been going through for OB addiction.
	Sorry about that. Not a problem.
	I don't know anything about his grandparents.
	When my mother went to Germany for And my brother went to stay with relatives in England.
	I stayed with a friend of mine's grandparents and this guy.
	And it was a very strange summer.
	I mean, the grandmother was ill, and I think I was 12 or so.
	And it was...
	I'll get into it this another time, perhaps.
	It was a very strange summer. I remember extremely vividly, but I also remember a great distance from the old people.
	And one thing that Trent Reznor said...
	This is a long time ago.
	This is in 1994. He said, he said, I don't know why I want to do these things other than my desire to escape from small town USA, to dismiss the boundaries, to explore.
	It isn't a bad place where I grew up, but there was nothing going on but the cornfields.
	My life experience came from watching movies, watching TV and reading books and looking at magazines.
	And when your fucking culture comes from watching TV every day, you're bombarded with images of things that seem cool, places that seem interesting, people who have jobs and careers and opportunities.
	None of that happened where I was.
	you're almost taught to realize it's not for you.
	Now, what's missing from this description of his childhood?
	His parents. Well, not just his parents, but people as a whole.
	There was nothing going on but the cornfields.
	My life experience came from watching movies, watching TV and reading books and looking at magazines.
	That is isolation, right?
	Because his life experience should be, you know, I played with my granddad, my grandmother taught me how to make a quiche, and, you know, all this, I don't know, whatever, right?
	But he said that there's no people in his history, in this description of it.
	It's just him and the media, right?
	Mm-hmm. Hmm.
	It's quite illuminating.
	Of course, again, a lot of this philosophy is still consuming it like crazy, and I hadn't re-evaluated his path since I've gained a lot of this knowledge, but that is very, very illuminating.
	To record the downward spiral, Trent Reznor rented and moved into Sorry, 10,050 CeeLo Drive Mansion, the site of the 1969 Manson family murderers.
	He built a studio space in the house which he renamed Le Pig, after the word that was scrawled on the front door in Sharon Tate's blood by her murderers.
	I don't know if you know that story.
	She was pregnant and she was killed by Manson and his gang, and they scrawled...
	Pig, I think, and all of this.
	So this is where he chose to live, where a mother and her child, her unborn child, had been murdered.
	This is where he chose to live and to record.
	Anyone you're fascinated with, learn about their childhood.
	That's your fascination, is the synchronicity between childhoods.
	I guarantee it. I guarantee that.
	Anyone you're fascinated with, learn about their childhoods, and they have great lessons for you.
	That's amazing, those correlations, as well as now that I am feeling a lot of these things, certain things that are violent and stuff, it's a lot harder for me to watch.
	Are things that I had numb myself before.
	It's like I feel them.
	Even you just described me.
	I knew that about Trent Reznor when I was younger.
	It's like, who cares?
	Whatever. Or cool or whatever.
	Now it's just like, oh my goodness.
	To even be around that.
	It's disgusting, actually.
	A song I listen to a lot, which I would recommend...
	Sorry to interrupt. A song I listen to a lot, which I would recommend...
	It's called Coming Back to Life by Pink Floyd.
	And I won't sing it because it's a beautiful song and you should hear the real guys do it.
	But the lyrics are, Where were you when I was burned and broken?
	While the days slipped by from my window watching.
	And where were you when I was hurt and I was helpless?
	Because the things you say and the things you do surround me.
	While you were hanging yourself on someone else's words, dying to believe in what you heard, I was staring straight into the shining sun.
	Lost in thought and lost in time while the seeds of life and the seeds of change were planted.
	Outside the rain felt dark and slow while I pondered on this dangerous but irresistible past time.
	I took a heavenly ride through our silence.
	I knew the moment had arrived for killing the past and coming back to life.
	And I think Pink Floyd has just astoundingly great lyrics.
	And I think that the lyrics are...
	I mean, I think the music is great.
	And it's a beautiful song.
	I think it goes a bit fast towards the end sort of pointlessly.
	But I really liked...
	I liked how it describes...
	I mean, people always think it's about a lover, but I always first think it's about childhood, and then really say that it's not about lovers, it's about childhood, right?
	Anyway, so when he's saying, well, you were hanging yourself on someone else's words, that's a mother who's distracted by a boyfriend or a lover and is unable to spend time With her son, Ringo Starr, who was an only child.
	And he said once to his mother, I wish that I had a brother or sister so that I would have someone to talk to when it was raining.
	And so anyway, you might want to ponder that.
	And Ringo Starr had a terrifying childhood.
	He was sick and spent like a year in hospital.
	And this is back in the day when mothers weren't allowed to see their children in hospital because it was considered to be too upsetting for them.
	And I think this happened two times in his childhood where this occurred for him.
	And anyway, so I just sort of wanted to point this out.
	The obsessions that we have are the cries of our own childhood that other people have been honest enough to hint at.
	They almost never write about them directly.
	They always cover them up in some way or another.
	But in a sense, that makes it even more powerful when it connects with us.
	So that would be... That would be my suggestion.
	I appreciate that.
	I've never really gotten into Pink Floyd too often.
	I respect their work, and I actually have most of their work, because one of my other obsessions growing up was collecting music, even if I hadn't listened to it all.
	But I will definitely put that on my to listen to.
	But there's one other quick, somewhat unrelated thing I wanted to bring up and lend credence to one of your theories on one of your earlier podcasts about conspiracy theorists.
	And with the recent 10th anniversary of 9-11, which I'm not going to get really big into, and that I have been exposed to a lot of the architects and engineers, empirical evidence, just showing at least the official story I don't agree with.
	Now, getting to your theory, is while at work, I see all this patriotic hoopla and everything about the whole 10th anniversary, and I would get so enraged.
	And like you described in the earlier podcast about conspiracy theorists, It shouldn't matter that much, you know, like about the JFK. It shouldn't care that much unless you had someone, you know, family member or friend who died in that, which I didn't.
	So looking at it with new eyes, I realized the similarity is when I was a lot younger, say, late 8, 9, 10, or early teens, that if I ever got in an argument, especially with my mother, or I got in trouble, and I knew logically, for a fact, 100% That I was right.
	Even if I tried to explain myself, what I got back was, don't you dare talk back.
	But I know I'm right.
	I know I'm right. If I continued, if it was still, then it would be the threat of violence.
	It would be the threat of getting hit, maybe getting picked up and thrown by a father, and getting the air knocked out of you, and you shouldn't have pissed off your father.
	I'm starting to see that correlation.
	The reason I'm getting so angry is not because of the 9-11, the truth, or whatever.
	It's a complete emotional correlation to the unprocessed trauma with my parents.
	So I just wanted to lend that credence to your theory.
	I agree with that theory, even though I am highly interested in a lot of the information out there.
	I try to go at it with an empirical scientific mind, but I do agree with that theory.
	Right, right. And there's another song.
	Again, I don't know the answer to this, so if anybody does know, we can test the theory live.
	You can see it in the chat room. I don't know if you know, this is a song by Imogen Heap called Hide and Seek.
	Oh, I love that song so much.
	I knew that you would love that song if you'd heard it, and I will tell you why, if you like.
	Okay. So, again, I'm not going to sing it, because there's a few songs I can sing.
	It makes me cry. It made me cry the first time I heard it.
	When busy streets and mess with people would stop to hold their heads heavy.
	Hide and seek trains and sewing machines all those years.
	They were here first.
	So, for me, the where are we is an indication of something that is disorienting in early childhood.
	Well, why do I say early childhood?
	Because she's talking about crop circles on the carpet.
	Crop circles on the carpet are where furniture has been moved, right?
	Mm-hmm. Because, I mean, if you've moved furniture, you know, you see these little holes in the carpet or there are circles in the carpet if there's something round sitting on the carpet.
	Why does furniture generally get moved in a situation that is disorienting for young people?
	Well, because there's been a divorce, right?
	This can't be happening.
	Hide and seek. Trains and sewing machines.
	Trains would be a symbol of manhood and sewing machines would be a symbol of femininity.
	So father and Mother, all those years, they were here first.
	Well, of course, children understand that adults were here first, right?
	So they were here first and then they had me as a baby.
	Oily marks appear on walls where pleasure moments hung before the takeover, the sweeping insensitivity of this still life.
	So that to me is pictures that have been taken down from the wall.
	Because it's a little bit lighter where pictures are if you've been in a sunny room.
	Sorry, it's usually a little bit darker because the sun has faded the paint around where the walls are.
	So to a kid, it probably looks oily.
	Oily marks appear on walls where pleasure moments hung before the takeover.
	Pleasure moments are the happiness that a kid takes looking at pictures on the wall.
	The sweeping insensitivity of this still life.
	The pictures move, they don't care, and so on.
	Blood and tears, hearts.
	I mean, this is a divorce.
	This is a couple that's been fighting.
	And then the mother is sitting there talking to the child and explaining the divorce.
	So she says, hmm, what did you say?
	Hmm, that you only meant well?
	Well, of course you did. You say that it's all for the best?
	Well, isn't that what parents say when they keep getting divorced?
	It's all for the best? Of course it is.
	Oh, what did you say? That it's just what we need?
	You decided that.
	You decided this, not me.
	The mother is saying to the child, well, it's all for the best.
	It's what we need as a family and this and that.
	And the kid is saying, you.
	You decided this.
	Ransom notes keep falling out your mouth.
	Mid-sweet talk, newspaper word cutouts.
	Speak no feeling. No, I don't believe you.
	You don't care a bit. You don't care a bit.
	Because the mother is justifying and explaining the divorce.
	And the child doesn't feel empathy because the mother is justifying and explaining it to her.
	And you can go a lot into that song, but that to me is what it's all about.
	Sorry, let me just...
	And again, to me that's very clear.
	That's what the song is about.
	But let's see. Somebody's written, Imogen Heap says, oh, it's about her parents' divorce.
	Okay. Good.
	So, yeah. Hey, look at that.
	Managed to get one. And so this is why the song is so powerful to people.
	And also, what's the phrase that is used when they merge the voices together with the electronics?
	I can't remember. There's a tone, something or other.
	Vocoder. Vocoder. Vocoder, yeah.
	So the vocoder is because I think a child's voice sounds funny to the child because there is a still growing, their voice is kind of shrill in their own ears and so on.
	And also it could be that if a child is covering up her ears because she doesn't want to hear something, i.e.
	her parents fighting, then voices are going to sound strange and distorted to her, her own voice included.
	And I think that's another reason why it is such a powerful song.
	And also the only real music that's there other than the voice is a little bit of what sounds like A child's toy, you know, like a little wind-up ballerina toy or whatever.
	And so I think that it is, yeah.
	So that to me is a very, very powerful song about divorce.
	And the fact that it doesn't say, my parents' divorce, right, in a sense makes it even more powerful because it bypasses defenses.
	But everyone thinks, you know, it's about a lover or whatever, but to me it's very clear that...
	That it's about a child, young, three or four years old, incredibly disoriented and angry about a divorce.
	Anyway, I think that you can do a lot with songs that you find very passionate and very powerful.
	I think that it's well worth looking at the childhoods, and I bet you you'll find a lot in common with the people who wrote them.
	That's a fantastic insight that I'd never had thought of before.
	Reviewing. And I always have seeked out songs that make me feel true emotion.
	I know I like the song because I feel it, and it's not really listening to the words, but just feeling that.
	But I appreciate the insight because I'm going to start going through a lot of the music that makes me feel that way.
	I mean, it's just amazing that you brought up another one of my favorite songs with Image and Heap.
	I'm sure that if you Yeah, if you and I have similar childhoods, then we're going to, if exposed to, we're going to like similar music.
	And I mean, the other thing that I would say is that people who've gone through difficult childhoods tend to be into a wider variety of musical styles.
	That's because of the Miko system stuff, which we can perhaps talk about another time, but...
	That's just something else that I've noticed.
	They tend to have more eclectic tastes.
	You go look at their album collection and it's like, holy crap.
	You got everything from John Lee Hooker and Britney Spears and everything in between or whatever, right?
	That's me. Anyway, I just wanted to mention that.
	That's you too, right? Yeah, that would make sense.
	Because there's personality fragmentation that occurs, which means that we can be exposed to a wider variety of stuff.
	Awesome. Well, I really appreciate your insights on that and thank you for everything you do and continue to do.
	Thank you. That's a great conversation.
	And I would also suggest, I mean, I know we've sort of done this movie thing that it's a little hard to arrange.
	What I'd like to do also is I'm not really getting exposed to much new music at the moment.
	I mean, listening to the radio is pretty hard because a lot of it is pretty junky.
	And that's just natural because the good stuff survives long enough that later it all seems like good in the past.
	I'd like to get together with people in the FDR chat, people who are knowledgeable about music, and get exposed to some new bands and some new music.
	So if you're ever interested in doing that, just YouTube it, right?
	Listen to this, here are the lyrics, what do you think?
	And just share some new music.
	I think that would just be fantastic because I'm yearning for some new stuff, but I really don't get exposed to it too much.
	I'll get right on that because that's what I do.
	Fantastic. Thanks, man. Yeah, music is...
	Yeah, music is one of the most beautiful things in life, and I absolutely envy people who have just fantastic musical talent.
	I think it's just amazing.
	Yeah, New Music Mondays, maybe we can give that a shot.
	I'd really like to, because when I do get exposed to new music through people through FDR, I mean, I just love it.
	I just love it, and it's just been fantastic.
	And so, yeah, I would really like to get more into it.
	All right, do we have anybody else?
	Hello, Seth. Hello.
	Can you hear me all right? Sure can.
	How you doing, man? Yeah, this is Baskin from First Principles.
	On a recent video, you spoke about the value of looking at history in an integrated way so that you're not just looking at data.
	So I have some observations which I wanted to share with you.
	It won't take five minutes of your show.
	I wanted to read them out to you and hear what you think of them.
	Alright. In the 19th century, Nietzsche spoke about how, up until that point in history, that which was known as morality was nothing but a series of after-the-fact justifications for violent institutions, such as the monarchy, the church when it was a part of a state, etc.,
	Now, both you and Nietzsche explained the origin of the priestly class developing from the need of people with great language skills to gain power by providing a justification for those violent institutions through the manipulations of dishonest language, creating dishonest abstractions such as God, the king, the state.
	I wanted to include in the ranks of those classes of language-skilled justifiers the jesters, the comedians, the entertainers, and the musicians, and point to what I consider as historically the starting point of this philosophical renaissance that we are watching unfold, which is taking place during that which Doug Casey refers to as the Greater Depression, which not surprisingly, like the renaissance, took place in Europe during the Dark Ages.
	That turning point for me is not only the beginning of Freedom Aid Radio in 2006, but also George Carlin's last HBO special, It's Bad For You, where he uses his language and comedic skills to expose the evil falsehood of the state, similarly to how you now use morality and your philosophical skills to apply morality to those who invented morality to control people.
	So, that's a bit of a historical analysis or observation that I'm making.
	I would be interested in listening to what you think of it.
	I think that's a very great observation.
	The thing that pops into my mind is when I was at the National Theatre School in the late 80s, I think it was.
	I was in King Lear, of course, by Shakespeare.
	I played... No, Cornwall.
	Gloucester. The guy who gouges out Gloucester's eyes.
	And one of the things that I was quite fascinated about was the fool or the jester in King Lear.
	The fool in King Lear, and Shakespeare doesn't actually write a lot of fools.
	He writes a lot of foolish people, but he doesn't write a lot of fools.
	The fool in King Lear is very interesting because the fool is the only person who is able to tell The king the truth about who the king is without getting killed, right?
	Because the king is this vainglorious, narcissistic, sociopathic monster who prefers form over substance.
	So he's got a love test for his daughters, and the one who really loves him isn't that great with words, and she gets banished.
	And the two that don't really love him are really great with words, and so they get rewarded.
	And of course, all the vile things in the world I think that comedy is a way of telling people a truth that if you didn't make jokes about it would be extremely dangerous.
	I don't know that it's that great a way of doing it, because people tend to laugh about it and then forget about it, or laugh at it and then forget about it.
	But I think that comedy has to some degree developed as a way of disarming people that you're making fun of to the point where they're not just going to kill you.
	Right. I remember the podcast from a couple of days ago where you were still mulling over the purposes of comedy with your experiences with Isabella.
	I thought that was interesting.
	Yeah, comedy. I mean, I love comedy.
	I wish I got to see it more live.
	I have just some great memories of seeing it live.
	But it is fascinating to figure out what the purpose of comedy is.
	And since I've already done a podcast on it, I won't repeat those theories.
	But it's fascinating because my daughter is trying to figure out what comedy is.
	She's fascinated. She's completely fascinated by what is funny and what is not.
	And of course, I don't want to tell her because I could be wrong.
	Sorry, go ahead. Did you check out the...
	We have a comedian in our ranks on Freedom Aiden Radio, David Kopp, put up a video of Neanderthal comedy, and I think everyone should watch it.
	It's pretty funny. I haven't looked at it yet, but it's sort of on my list to watch.
	And yeah, so I think that comedy is a way of telling truth to power.
	But unfortunately, it's telling truth to power in a way – I mean, it's partly like politics in that you tell truth to power because you want power to be reformed, but political power cannot be reformed.
	So I think it's a bit of a fool's quest.
	In the same way that I think that politics is a bit of a fool's quest for changing the nature of the violent monopoly we call the state.
	So I think that it's a way of relieving frustration or feeling that you've spoken truth to power, but I don't think that speaking truth to power matters much.
	Because power, I mean in the way that we talk about it, is coercion.
	And coercion does not bow to language.
	Except through philosophy, except in the long run through child raising.
	So I hope that helps. Thanks, Steph.
	Alright, thanks man. Great comment, great question, great idea.
	Alright, do we got ourselves anybody else?
	Yes, hi Steph. I got a question.
	In one of the podcasts you said something like that children that did not listen to their parents when they were young End up pretty broken, and they have serious problems later, and I was wondering...
	I'm sorry, did you say children who...
	Sorry, to interrupt, I just want to make sure I... Sorry, I said that children who do not listen to their parents?
	Yes, like they rebel.
	Well, that's not quite the same as not listening.
	I mean, I hope that my daughter listens to me, and I hope that I have sensible things to say to her, so...
	But there are times when she doesn't listen to me, and there are times when she's right not to listen to me, because I'm making a mistake or telling her something that is not consistent with the general standards of behavior that we have.
	So I wouldn't put it as not listening to parents breaks children, but please go on.
	I just want to put that caveat in.
	No, that was pretty much it.
	Sorry, what was your question? What did you mean by that, that they have problems later in life?
	Again, I can tell you what I think about the issue as a whole, but I don't recall that segment in particular.
	But certainly, I mean, this is straight out of Richard Dawkins, who I believe is the polar opposite of Compton.
	But Richard Dawkins has a sort of theory.
	It says, well, why are children so...
	Susceptible, in a sense, are so obedient to their parents' belief systems.
	And it's because if you live in the forest and then your parents say, don't eat the red berries, we assume that's for some good reason.
	Don't eat the red berries because they're poisonous.
	And so if you don't listen to your parents and you eat the red berries, then you're going to get sick or you're going to die or whatever.
	It's a negative thing. And so children are very prone to listen to their parents.
	And I think that one of the most important things that parents need to cultivate Is to encourage the child to disagree with the parents and to feel comfortable doing so.
	It makes parenting a bit of a challenge at times, but it's really worthwhile to do so.
	My daughter's like a cobra.
	She's like a cobra. As I said before, if I'm saying something wrong or I'm telling a story and I skip a bit because I'm distracted, no, right?
	She strikes. She fastens the fangs of truth on the quivering mongoose of error.
	God, this is not my day for metaphors.
	But, yeah, so encouraging disagreement is very, very important.
	I certainly never want to be any kind of infallible authority to her.
	And also, of course, explaining why there are certain rules rather than just imposing them, all of these kinds of things.
	I think that's just parenting, not even 101.
	It's like parenting preschool.
	But when societies are founded on falsehoods, then if you don't listen to those falsehoods, As a child, you tend to be in very dangerous territory indeed.
	Very dangerous territory indeed.
	The human farm is fundamentally not even political, it is fundamentally ideological.
	So if you can lie to people in a convincing way, they become dependent upon your lies, and then you're going to encourage them to have children, of course, right?
	Because the tribe that has the most children is the one that tends to end up dominating, at least when you were in a sword-fist warrior culture.
	Not so much with more technology, but the tribe that bred the most tended to succeed.
	And this is why you have this bizarre paradox, this completely strange and, dare I say, unholy paradox, that the Catholic Church has never been particularly out of favor with war And yet considers itself the ultimate protector of human rights by being against abortion.
	Well, the reason that they're against abortion is they want more Catholics.
	I mean, fundamentally, it's a biological farming mechanism to cause the Catholic cattle to breed more.
	Because if they were such staunch defenders of human rights and of life itself, then clearly, I would think, an adult life would be of higher priority to you than a blastocyst or a couple of cells here and there in a woman's dark dungeon of fertility.
	But this is not the reality.
	I mean, they were fine with Hitler.
	They did not oppose war.
	They've never excommunicated anyone for going to war or starting wars or being involved in wars or volunteering for wars.
	They're completely fine with wars, which is, of course, the death of millions of adults.
	But they very much want to protect Catholic fetuses, because Catholic fetuses grow into Catholic babies, which brings more money to Catholicism, and that grow up into Catholic adults, which bring more money to Catholicism.
	I mean, if you look at the Mormon Church, it's 10%!
	10% of the gross income of people there, so, you know, $50,000, $5,000 a year.
	$5,000 a year is quite a lot of money to be getting from people.
	And so people who are in control of a particular ideology and have people encased or entrapped within that ideology are very much into protecting their investments and growing their investments.
	You know, the dividends are enormous when you propagandize someone.
	But all of that rests upon unquestioning acceptance, brain-dead belief.
	Because there's no particular ideology, particularly within religion, there's no particular religion that can survive any kind of rational scrutiny, even a little tiny bit, right?
	Even a little tiny bit.
	So, I mean, the sort of higher power, God made the universe, all that really abstract spiritual stuff, that's one thing.
	But any particular religion, you know, say, well, Catholicism is true because of I don't know, the Catholic text, the Pope, but almost every religion has some sort of spiritual leader, so why would you all be more important than anyone else?
	So that kind of stuff, right? So all of that stuff is really fragile, really delicate, and so children who disagree with or criticize or question or oppose or disobey their parents are directly threatening the income of the people in charge.
	And so it's usually quite dangerous to do that, and it's one of the reasons why there are strong fear inhibitions about questioning or opposing whatever dominant paradigm is floating around, particularly if it's quite easy to get rid of intellectually.
	And this is the thing that I dislike about ideology so much.
	I dislike about ideologies, and by ideologies I simply mean conclusions without philosophy.
	I dislike ideologies so much because...
	There are very few adults who were not raised religious who wake up one morning and say, hey, you know what would be great?
	I should become a Catholic or a Jew or a Muslim or whatever.
	I mean, I would imagine that is so extraordinarily rare as to be virtually non-existent.
	And so it's almost impossible To proselytize someone into becoming religious.
	Maybe you can proselytize people into changing religions.
	You know, there's the Cat Stevens thing or whatever.
	But religion has to be grown from the womb onwards.
	It can't be reasoned.
	You can't reason people into religion.
	You have to indoctrinate the children.
	The false of the belief, the more it has to get its mental claws and hooks into children as early as possible.
	The more irrational the doctrine, the more it has to corrupt And undermine the minds of children.
	It has to attack the helpless, you see?
	Ideology is an old sick lion.
	It cannot hunt the healthy.
	It can only hunt the weak and the vulnerable.
	And that means children. Always, always and forever.
	My challenge to ideologies has always been the same.
	And it's something I accept with my conclusions as well.
	Which is, you know, if you're a Christian and you really believe in Christianity, And you really believe that God answers prayers and God talks to people and so on, then let your child discover that for himself or herself.
	Do not take the child to Sunday school.
	Why? Because God should be talking to the child, not some guy in a robe.
	So you let your child discover religiosity on their own.
	That's what you do. You don't take them to get baptized.
	You don't take them to Sunday school.
	You don't take them to church. You can leave a Bible lying around the house if you want.
	Maybe they'll pick it up. Maybe they won't.
	But you do not indoctrinate your children into things that are true.
	All good education avoids conclusions and teaches only methodology.
	A math teacher is not a math teacher if he's simply getting children to recite equations and their answers.
	Or getting people to write down an incomprehensible set of symbols and then think that he's taught them something about that.
	About how to think, about how to reason, about how to figure things out for themselves.
	We understand. All teachers do not teach conclusions if they're at all teachers.
	They teach methodology. Religion is a conclusion.
	Jesus saves.
	Well, he saves, then he shoots, then he scores!
	But religion is a conclusion.
	Anarchism is a conclusion.
	Atheism is a conclusion.
	And what you don't do is you don't teach people conclusions.
	You don't teach children conclusions.
	You teach them how to think. But you don't teach them what to think.
	And if the world could do that for the next five years, there would be almost nothing left of false beliefs.
	Almost nothing left.
	Left. So I hope that clarifies things a little bit.
	Yes, thank you. Alrighty.
	Hi, Steph. Hello.
	Anybody else?
	I'm willing to talk if nobody else is waiting.
	Step on up. Alright.
	For the last two months, I've been struggling with Getting a job, and this happens every time I need to get one.
	Actually, you could say I've been struggling with getting a job for much longer than that, even before I quit my last job.
	And it's very frustrating because if I care for my well-being, I would go and And do what I need to do.
	Because now I'm at the point where if I don't get one by October 15th, my parents want me to move back home.
	Yeah.
	Can you hear me, Laura?
	Sorry, yes what? I'm not sure what your question is.
	Oh, did you?
	Okay, so did you hear that?
	All that? I did hear that you were having trouble finding a job, and if you don't get a job by, was it October 15th, you're going to move back in with your parents?
	Right, okay, so the question is, well, I'm just trying to figure out why I'm doing this.
	It's like, it's dysfunctional behavior.
	I quit my job at the beginning of July and it's now the middle of September.
	So I was curious, I made a post on the forum.
	I'm sorry, I'm still not sure what your question is.
	Okay, okay. Why do...
	Okay, okay.
	The question is like, how do I motivate myself?
	To get a job? Yeah, and why am I not?
	Yeah.
	And why do you need to motivate yourself to get a job?
	If I don't...
	Sorry, we're going to have to just move this forward a little bit just because there's I'm just curious, I mean, why do you need him up?
	Why not just move back in with your parents?
	That would be...
	terrible.
	Well, it may be, but it's certainly not more terrible than looking for a job, right?
	I mean, just statistically, or I guess factually, right?
	I mean, if you are...
	If you're on a raft floating down a river and you say, I don't want to go where the river goes, but you're not jumping off and swimming, then clearly you do want to go where the river goes, right?
	Yeah, that's really frustrating.
	And again, I'm not criticizing.
	I'm just pointing out that the facts are that you don't view that as the worst thing, right?
	Yeah, yeah, that's really frustrating.
	For some reason, I notice I feel very strongly right now.
	I'm sorry, you feel what? Very strongly.
	And what do you feel? The moment I opened my mouth and I started to feel fear and sadness.
	Go on. And my heart is pounding.
	And can I tell you why I think that is?
	Sure, go. Good.
	Well, because I'm not applying any pressure to you.
	Right? I'm not saying get yourself together, go out there, look for a job, find a job, get moving with your life, but I'm not, right?
	I'm not applying any external pressure.
	Right? Yeah.
	I'm just saying, well, why do you need to make yourself get a job?
	That's just curiosity, right?
	Right, right. Right.
	It could be I put pressure on myself internally and then I rebel against that.
	Maybe I'm not serious enough with myself.
	Go on. Yeah, maybe it's like...
	a breakdown of communication with parts of myself, with my necosystem.
	I definitely feel a lot less connected to myself than I did.
	Go on. It's so frustrating.
	I definitely want to be connected with myself.
	Right. Go on.
	I'm shaking.
	I don't know.
	I'm shaking.
	I've gone over this in my mind repeatedly.
	I've talked about it with With my friend, like, repeatedly.
	And you haven't had any success, I guess, right?
	In terms of dealing with it?
	Yeah. Right.
	Can I ask you a question?
	Yeah, sure. How many people in your life have been genuinely invested in your success?
	Have wanted you to succeed, have helped you succeed, have done everything within their power to help you succeed in whatever it is you want to do.
	No, buddy. My parents simply claimed to be invested in my success and they say they would do anything for me.
	They claimed that they would pay for my college and they would get behind in anything that I wanted to do.
	That's not true because I know that, for example, my mom's just like, I think you should go to school or something like that.
	I don't want to go to college.
	I don't think that's for me.
	I'm not willing to tell the lot but you know there's nobody in my life who has ever been invested in my success and the path that I want to go on And my mom pretends that she doesn't have enough money.
	Okay, let me ask you a sort of slightly related question.
	Okay. Are there people in your life or in your history who would feel any kind of relief or satisfaction if you succeeded?
	I'm sorry, I put that backwards.
	Who would feel any kind of relief or satisfaction if you fail?
	Yeah, my mom would feel really relieved because then I would move back in with them.
	Right, so people who give you advice, and I think this is pretty automatic, right?
	I could be wrong, of course, like in everything, but I think this is pretty automatic.
	So people who give you advice, if you do the opposite, they are invested in your failure.
	And this doesn't mean that they're bad people, it's just, it's natural.
	It's natural. So if somebody says to you, to have any kind of success in this life, you need to go to college.
	And if you say, no, there's this guy down the road named Steve Jobs, we want to start a business in our garage.
	That person, that person who's given you the advice to go to college is going to be invested in your failure.
	Yeah. And that doesn't mean that they're going to sabotage you or they're going to want you to fail, but they are invested in your failure.
	And so when we take a path that is in opposition to the advice we have received in our life, the parts of us who were formed by that advice are going to be invested in our failure.
	And the people around us who have given us This opposing advice are going to be invested in our failure.
	And this can occur to the point where people will just lie.
	So for instance, let's just take a macro example.
	I mean, so we can take it out of the personal for just a second.
	Sometimes it can be easier to see that way.
	So for how long have libertarians been saying, the bigger the government, the worse the problems?
	Three to four hundred years, conservatively, right?
	And the majority of society has taken the opposite approach, right?
	They've said, no, the bigger the government, the more we solve problems, the better things become, right?
	Now, this is clearly, it has turned out that the libertarians were right all along, right?
	The objectivists were right, the libertarians were right, the anarchists are even more right if they are into property rights and the non-aggression principle.
	But we've been right all along, right?
	And so everybody who has pursued big government as a solution to problems is now enormously invested in the failure of libertarianism.
	In other words, they will now say that big government is failing because there's too much small government.
	Right? Which is what they say about deregulation, right?
	That the biggest government in the world is a failure because it wasn't big enough in certain areas.
	Now, deregulation is a complete lie, and we don't have to sort of get into the details about that now, but you can read your Tom Woods for that.
	And libertarians are invested in the failures of statism.
	We are. Right.
	I mean, we are. And it's not because we want, you know, all of this disasters to occur in the world.
	It's just, you know, like somebody who says smoking will give you lung cancer doesn't want people to get lung cancer.
	In fact, he wants people to not get lung cancer.
	And so when you're paralyzed in your life, what, again, this is my approach.
	It may work for you, it may not, but I think there's value in it.
	If you're paralyzed in your life, first place I would look at, who in my life benefits from me failing?
	Who in my life benefits from me failing?
	My family.
	I don't have anybody except my family and one good friend.
	Right. And my friend is definitely on my side.
	Right. Well, that's good.
	And so, if it's your family, that's tough, right?
	That's very tough because they're so embedded in your head, right?
	Yeah, it's mainly just, you know, it's my family in my head that I obviously can't just be food from, but I need to talk to them, right?
	Yes, absolutely.
	And the family in your head are more your friends, right?
	Because it's not their fault that they're there, right?
	Right. Then just come out of nowhere, right?
	So... So you can make a list.
	I've actually done this in my life.
	I did this when I was in therapy.
	So again, you know, if you can talk to a therapist, fantastic.
	But if not, I think this is still a useful thing to do.
	So I took the path of philosophy and self-knowledge in my life.
	I took that path and I took it really early.
	And so I did all of that.
	I read up. I studied philosophy.
	I studied psychology.
	I went to therapy.
	I studied self-knowledge. You know, all of this kind of stuff.
	And that's taken my life in a particular direction.
	And almost nobody...
	Oh, God, almost?
	Is that true? I can't think of anyone in my teenage life who was even neutral about the path that I was taking.
	Most of them were hostile or contemptuous or oppositional.
	And I had to hide this.
	This is a guilty secret, right?
	Philosophy is my... You know, skanky ho in a motel down the street.
	And so if you sort of peel off from the pack, if you peel out of the V-shaped formation of the flying geese, and you say, no, I'm not going to go for money, I'm not going to go for material success, I'm not going to go for career, I'm not going to go for these things.
	And that doesn't mean you can't have these things, of course, right?
	It just means that's not going to be how I define my value as a human being, fundamentally.
	But I'm going to go for self-knowledge and virtue and Honestly and openly dealing with the past and standing up for what is true and what is right, damn the consequences, damn the torpedoes.
	Though the sky should fall, the truth must be upheld.
	Right. Well, now that I am seven days, six days, six days from being 45 years old, the data is in.
	The data is in.
	Because we've had 30 years to see how this experiment works out.
	And those friends that I have some knowledge about, I am enormously glad that I did what I did.
	I am enormously glad that I did what I did.
	I can't tell you how glad I am that I chose the path that I chose.
	Man, it was hard, and it is still hard sometimes, but it beats any alternative that I have ever seen in this world.
	Yo. Hello?
	Hi. Hi.
	What was the last thing you heard? That you're enormously happy.
	Yeah, I mean, I'll leave other people to, you know, for me to say that, it doesn't mean much, though it's true, but I mean, I have the best marriage that I know of.
	I think I'm doing the best parenting job that I can do.
	I have a life that I love, and I have listeners that I absolutely adore.
	Everyone on this call, you included, being in that number.
	And I'm enormously proud of what we're achieving as a community and what is going out into the world.
	But I'm very aware that the people who took the opposite road, who decided against or reacted to self-knowledge and philosophy, And who told me openly and often with great contempt that it was a path of weakness and dysfunction.
	You know, that I needed philosophy because I just wasn't sure of things myself.
	That I was using it to prop up my diminished personality, my weakened personality.
	That self-knowledge was narcissistic and self-absorbed and I was only focusing on myself and to the exclusion of others and blah blah blah blah blah.
	Anyway, I mean, I think we've all heard these things a million times before.
	But there was a pretty endless litany of negative judgments about the path that I was taking.
	And as time has gone on and as the evidence continues to pour in for people's lives, they are invested in my failure.
	And I'm invested in their failure.
	Again, it just means that given that we're going in opposite direction, like if we both desperately want To get to a town, you and I, and we go in opposite directions in the woods, and I really want to go the right direction, I'm invested in you being the wrong direction.
	It has to be. Because if you're going in the right direction, I'm going in the entirely wrong direction.
	I'm going deeper into the bush where there are bears and giant spiders and whatever, right?
	Right. So the moment that you go in an opposite direction from someone, you have to understand, you are both invested in each other's failure.
	Right, right. Yeah, I understand that.
	When you're talking about this opposition, I think about applying to jobs and getting interviews and stuff.
	I always have this idea that maybe I'm crazy, they're invested in my failure.
	I mean, I don't think they're on my side.
	It's kind of weird. I'm getting a job from people that I almost inevitably will hate.
	What do you think? I'm sorry, can you just explain that a little more?
	Okay. When I go for jobs, it's like, yeah, I don't think that I can jive with people.
	Well, but see, the issue isn't that.
	You know, in my opinion. In my opinion, right?
	I would say for sure. But the issue isn't whether you're going to end up with a job with people you dislike.
	I mean, that's almost inevitable.
	We've talked about this on the show before.
	Right? So all entry-level jobs are with entry-level people.
	And anybody who's over 30 and in charge of entry-level people is a crap manager.
	They have to be, right?
	Right. I kind of think it's like I won't get hired because...
	Because I am who I am.
	Well, okay, but that's to say that the self-knowledge truth, that these are all disastrous, that these turn you into a leper, right?
	But this is just not true. No, no, look, it's not true.
	Look, are you saying that everybody who has pursued the truth is unemployable?
	Well, for that to be true, then statistically, nobody at FDR should have jobs, right?
	Yeah, that's true. So again, just go back to the facts, right?
	Yeah. It's not true.
	Yeah, maybe I'm getting ideas from the parental parts of me, trying to discourage me, maybe.
	That's what's going on.
	I mean, that would be where, I mean, whether it's parental or not, but I would certainly go on...
	Who's invested in you not succeeding?
	I mean, you know, to take just one more example, I've got to get on to another caller, but just one more example, right?
	So, if you are, I don't know, Jehovah's Witness, right?
	And your brother is Jehovah's Witness, and then he goes all atheist on your medieval hiney, right?
	You believe that he's going to go to hell now, right?
	You believe that he's turned away from Christ or Joseph or whatever the guy's name is.
	So if he goes and he's happy and all that kind of stuff, then that's negative for you, right?
	Yeah, your beliefs go completely against...
	Yeah, I mean, if you're two heroin junkies in an alley shooting up and then you decide to quit...
	I mean, you're quitting because you're terrified of the heroin lifestyle and you want something better.
	And now, yes, people can write to me and say that heroin addicts can do fine if they're on methadone and blah, blah, blah.
	Okay, fine. But just take the cliché, you know, the Sid and Nancy cliché.
	So if you quit heroin and then your life gets worse and worse and the guy who keeps doing heroin...
	Gets a life that is better and better and better and he becomes a lawyer and a chief executive and a doctor and he's happily married and he's got three kids and he's a pillar of his community and he donates to charities and he volunteers here and there and he's a shining example of everything that is good and positive.
	He's gonna totally feel like bitterness towards the guy.
	Well, yeah, because it's like, crap, why the hell did I quit heroin if you can have this great life on heroin?
	Yeah. But, you know, and again, it sounds cold and it doesn't mean that.
	I really want to be clear on that. It can mean that.
	Like, you can't just be cold and hostile and whatever, right?
	But if you quit heroin and you get a great life and you get a job, you get an education, whether it's self or formal, and you have your marriage, you have kids, whatever it is that makes you happy, and then, you know, a couple of years later, you step over this guy, you know, waste it down to 90 pounds, With a needle sticking out of his arm and vomit on his lips in an alley, it's not like you're happy that happened.
	Right? It's not like, yay, you know, sucks to be you, I'm great.
	It's like your self-interest conflicts with the other person's self-interest, right?
	Right. Right.
	But it just means that you will probably view that with great sadness.
	I mean, the people who opposed my path those 30 years ago, how their lives turned up, I view that with great sadness.
	I don't feel angry.
	It's desperately sad, because it can't be undone now.
	It's too late. It can't be changed.
	There's no turning back when you're that far down the road.
	So anyway, I just wanted to, really, if you're paralyzed, look at the forces against you.
	If you're having trouble swimming up a current, look at the current that's coming.
	Against you, right? If you're having trouble getting back to shore, look for the riptide.
	Look for that which is in your mind that is invested in your failure, and I bet you that's where you'll find the source of your paralysis.
	Does that make any sense?
	I hope it does. I hope it does.
	And yeah, keep me posted if you can.
	I'll keep this posted. I hope it goes well.
	Okay. Thank you.
	Thanks. I'd like to thank the person who told me that heroin addicts can do fine if they're on methadone.
	Hey, who's the next caller?
	Who's the next caller? I believe that would be whoever just stepped over the line and asked who the next caller was.
	Boom! Okay.
	I've got one relationship question and one career question, so let me know.
	I'll just start with a relationship one.
	You can cut me off if it's too long.
	So, I'm in a relationship with a girl that I very much like.
	She's got a lot of good qualities.
	She's pretty reasonable.
	She's had shared podcasts.
	Sorry, was that pretty reasonable or pretty comma reasonable?
	Both. Okay, that sounds good.
	She's reasonable. She's atheist.
	She is interested, not like a cynical atheist.
	She can have conversations about this kind of stuff, and she's listening to podcasts and enjoys them.
	But anyways, so I've noticed a trait that she has that Maybe I can deal with it.
	Maybe I can't. Maybe I'm trying to manage her.
	But what happens is...
	I'll give you an example.
	She is terrified of flight.
	So she went on a flight with her brother.
	And her brother was totally fine with flying.
	He didn't care. He was like, whatever.
	Flying's safe. I get it.
	So... She was really worried for her brother.
	What I really think is she was really anxious about flying and then made it seem like it was her brother and then tried to coddle her brother.
	You know what I mean? Does that make sense?
	And so she does that often and it's going to be problematic if we don't figure it out.
	Figure what out? How she can go about...
	Not projecting her anxieties onto other people and then trying to fix the other person's anxieties, which don't really exist, which are just merely a projection of her own.
	Right. Alright.
	I mean, I'm not so sure I can fix that, but how could I facilitate best as possible to help her see that for herself?
	And I'll give you another example.
	Last night... Maybe I was wrong, but I basically explicitly asked her.
	She was kind of tired, but who knows?
	I didn't know, so I said, oh, are you in the mood to do it?
	Not quite in those words, but...
	Are you in the mood to do it?
	I think you've got a Hallmark card in the making right there.
	I think that's just going to wipe a tear away.
	I hope that you were grasping at least one...
	Rose petals somewhere on your body.
	It was not that tasteless, but it was quite obvious that I was making a request.
	And she cannot say no.
	She feels bad.
	All right. Well, what's the problem? Sorry, just go on.
	You know what I'm saying, though? What I'm saying is like...
	Oh yeah, look, if you even suspect a no, then don't go ahead.
	I mean, you know that, right? Because you're just going to sow the seeds of massive resentment.
	Exactly. So she totally feels bad about saying no, and she thinks that I will be mad, which I won't.
	But she can't help but think.
	Like what I'm thinking is I think she feels guilty for saying no.
	She's like a people-pleasing type person.
	So she'll feel guilty for saying no.
	And then instead of addressing that, makes it seem like I'll get mad or I react a certain way if she says no.
	That way she like rationalizes why she can't say no.
	Yeah, I mean you say the honest thing which is I'm fine if you don't want to make love.
	I just need to go online for a few minutes.
	So that you can solve the problem.
	I said something similar to that, not quite as crass, but you know what I mean.
	Not quite as crass as me.
	That's usually a good problem.
	I was literally like, I just wanted to be free to make that request and you're totally free to say no.
	Honestly. Yes, because you don't want to stop managing her the way that she manages other people, right?
	Exactly. So I'm like, no, it's fine.
	Like, literally. And she was like, no, I can tell that you're going to be upset.
	I was like, I really, really won't.
	So I don't know how to... I won't be as upset as if we have sex and you don't want to.
	You're that gross, right?
	That's just... Right?
	That's just nasty. Yeah, so...
	This is...
	Yeah, that's one...
	That's a characteristic that permeates all over, you know, from the airplane trip.
	How long have you been listening to this show, my friend?
	Um... I would say...
	Just roughly. I don't need it down to the day.
	A year? A year, okay.
	So, why are you daring to ask me this question?
	Because you already know the answer.
	How dare you ask me this question?
	You know the answer, right? Is the answer that I shouldn't be in a relationship with her in the first place?
	No, that's not an answer.
	That's a conclusion. I can't tell you that.
	Nobody can. Okay, so the answer is...
	What is her childhood experience with saying no to people?
	Well, she did tell me that her father was the...
	And here's the weird thing, though. I know her father, and I get...
	And she has... Her parents have been married for 25 years.
	Not to say that just because they've been together, that means it's a healthy relationship.
	But growing up, she would tell me about these experiences with her father, who now I can never picture him doing this, but what he would do is get right up in her face and yell at her.
	Basically, he would try to do the...
	He would bully her. I mean, she knows that he'd bully her, and we talked about it.
	He would kind of do the get in her face, trying to intimidate you to do this bill.
	And he wouldn't... Again, it's not like he was like, I'm going to bully this child.
	He would say, in his mind, he thought, I know what's best for her, and then he would get frustrated when she wouldn't comply, and then would go about trying to get her compliance through this manner.
	Okay, how do you know that?
	Because she told me that. How do you know that the, well, okay, but how, if she was all down with the history, and she all knew everything about her history, it wouldn't be repeating itself in the present, right?
	There must be something that she's unaware of in her history if it's replicating to this degree in the present, right?
	So don't accept anything she's saying at face value.
	As far as this stuff goes, right?
	Yeah. Does that make sense?
	I mean, I'm always suspicious.
	It doesn't mean that I'm always right, but I'm always suspicious slash paranoid.
	When people say about parents or whoever, when they give the best possible interpretation for their parents' behavior.
	Always be skeptical.
	It may be true. It may be true.
	But how do you know? People always rationalize it and make it seem like it was better than it was.
	Yeah, people did the best they could with the knowledge they had and blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
	I mean, she would say things like he would get so mad that he'd flip the chair that she was sitting on, not with the intention of hurting her, he'd just get mad and all of a sudden she'd be on the ground and terrified, you know?
	Yeah. This is something that really needs to be dealt with professionally or what?
	Personally, I think if a dad is flipping chairs and stuff, I think that's worth the trip to the therapist, I believe.
	Particularly if there's denial, right?
	If there's a mind reading of intentions from the point of view of a child for things that happened 20 years ago or whenever, that to me is an entirely too great a leap in knowledge.
	I mean, you can't know for sure.
	Because, I mean... You're in a situation of extremity and stress and this and that, right?
	Yeah. So, for instance, the thing that I hear and a lot of people hear with parents is, well, they did the best they could, but the knowledge that they had, right?
	Yeah. Well, let me ask you this.
	Do you watch TV? Yes.
	Okay. Did you watch TV when you were growing up?
	Yes.
	Tell me some of the sitcoms that were family-based that you may have watched when you were growing up.
	Rugrats?
	I don't, I mean, honestly, I don't.
	No, no, no. Sitcoms. That's a kids' show.
	I mean, you sound too young for the Cosby show, right?
	Yeah. However, I did watch a lot of the Cosby.
	I was a big into the Cosby show.
	I watched The Brady Bunch. I kind of was into the older ones, even though I'm 23.
	Okay, good. No, listen.
	And you did that entirely in preparation for this conversation.
	And I really appreciate that because I got a big hole in my TV watching in my 20s because I was in school and I didn't really have a TV. But anyway.
	Okay, so I'm going to talk about Family Ties and The Cosby Show and Full House and you name it, right?
	Eight is Enough and all of this kind of stuff, right?
	Did you ever see a child getting yelled at in these shows?
	No. No. Did you ever see a child getting spanked?
	No. Did you ever see a child getting a chair flipped over with them inside it?
	No. How did parents deal with the children?
	Laugh tracks? I don't...
	I mean, they sat down and talked to them.
	They did. They reasoned with them.
	Bill was best at that. Did you ever see children crying because they were even getting a timeout?
	No. That wouldn't get very good ratings.
	But isn't that fascinating?
	So that's what they're trying to...
	Well, let me tell you why.
	And this is why when people say, my parents did the best they could with the knowledge that they had, I ask, was there a TV in the house?
	Did anyone ever watch any sitcoms where there were children?
	Oh, you're saying... Okay. Because then you've had dozens or hundreds or thousands of hours of examples of calm, peaceful, rational, non-aggressive parenting.
	That's slightly more scripted.
	I see your point. It's still a little bit more scripted.
	So what? I mean, lots of educational videos are scripted, right?
	I mean, kids' shows are scripted.
	That doesn't mean they can't teach you how to read, right?
	Yeah, but I would say the level of emotional intensity is not always...
	I mean, you can act emotional, and I get that, but...
	No, no, sorry. There's a layer that you're not getting yet.
	And I apologize. That sounds condescending, and I don't mean it that way, but...
	But they're the shows themselves, but the shows reflect a demand on the part of parents, right?
	Why do you never see a child getting spanked in a sitcom on television or even a TV movie on television?
	Or even a drama on television?
	Because to some extent it's kind of terrifying.
	Well, because if you did that, then people would not watch the show.
	They would complain, right?
	Yeah. Do you see how bizarre that is?
	Mm-hmm. I mean, do you see how bizarre that is?
	90% of parents spank their children, but if you spank a child on television, it would be pretend spanking, of course, right?
	Yeah. Then people would stop watching the show.
	Yeah. People would be appalled.
	In other words, if you showed, honestly, what 90% of parents are doing, they'd be appalled, shocked, horrified, and outraged.
	Um... Yes, there would be dissatisfaction.
	I don't know if they'd be out. They would probably not be completely outraged, but I get that there would be...
	Hey, listen, man. These people who write these shows, they're not stupid.
	If they could raise their ratings by showing a spanking, I'm sure that they would.
	I'm not saying that spankings would increase ratings.
	I'm almost certain they would reduce ratings, but somebody might go, oh yeah, I spanked my kid, but that's not what they'd want to watch.
	It wouldn't be as enjoyable.
	I think it would be not less enjoyable.
	I think that people would get quite upset.
	Because it's a blanket prohibition.
	And it's not outlawed. It's just never shown.
	And the reason I'm bringing all this up, right, is there is a weird split in society, right?
	And the split in society is...
	Most people parent in this particularly aggressive way, or there's styles of...
	Elements of aggression in the parenting that they do.
	And yet the shows that people consume about parenting show nothing but peaceful, rational...
	Empathetic parenting.
	So people want one thing but yet do another?
	Look, anybody who's watched these shows cannot claim that they didn't know any other way to parent.
	Yes, yes. I mean...
	Yeah, you can know intellectually what's best, but when you get thrown into the heated moment and you have a shallow toolbox, then yes, oftentimes anger, which is a cheap ploy, can get pulled out because it gets immediate results.
	However, it gets long-term resentment.
	It gets immediate results and it stops the action at hand.
	Yeah, I don't think you'll be able to help your girlfriend until you stop just making up blanket excuses.
	Because every time I've talked about this, and I don't say this was resentment, I'm just sort of pointing it out.
	But whenever I talk about this, you dodge, right?
	So when you mention the sitcom, what you're trying to say is that...
	You're coming to conclusions about your girlfriend's father's motivations through her comments when she obviously has got some scar tissue from this aggression she experienced as a child, right?
	Yes. Yes.
	And so my suggestion...
	You know, it's just my suggestion.
	I mean, I don't know what you should do.
	This is just my thoughts. You know, amateur idiot are on the internet as usual.
	These are my thoughts on the subject since you asked for them.
	I think it is irrational and premature to jump to conclusions about somebody else's motivations until you've really studied it, so to speak, right?
	Whatever that subject is.
	So how would I go? Should I just ask more questions about her upbringing or what could I do to help make a clearer, more accurate depiction of what really occurred so we can get closer to pinpointing the problem?
	Well, the first question is what was her experience of aggression as a child or of being able to say no.
	Do you know what my second question is?
	What was my experiences?
	What was your experience with compliant people when you were a child?
	I was a people pleaser.
	I tend to be compliant. My father used aggression, but in a much more passive sense.
	Not quite as in your face physically, but definitely.
	And your mom? She was a doormat.
	Do you need me to put those two together or do you want to do that yourself?
	So am I taking on the role of my mother and she's taking on the role of her father?
	Nope. A doormat is someone who can't say no, right?
	Yes. And your mother couldn't say no, right?
	Okay, so I'm taking on the father portion.
	She's taking on the mother portion.
	Again, you're really rushing to conclusions here.
	We're just starting to process this, right?
	So you're just like, ah, here's the...
	No, no. Okay.
	No, but I think the place to look is if your experience of femininity is an inability to say no...
	Mm-hmm. It is.
	And your mother and your girlfriend have an inability to say no.
	That's an important thing to know.
	Yeah. Let me ask you this.
	Did your mother create, dare I say, justifications for your father's aggression?
	Yes. They did get divorced.
	Yes. Yes, she did.
	And so you have a habit, you know, again...
	This is just my thoughts, right?
	But it seems to me that you would have a habit of feeling more comfortable with people who were passive, doormats as you say, and who create excuses for other people's aggression.
	Yes. Damn you're good.
	Sorry, go ahead. Damn you're good.
	Well, it's, you know, I hate to say it's obvious, and it never is from the inside.
	I hope you understand that. The odds of you seeing this would be tiny, just as the odds of me seeing in my own life are tiny, but that's why we need each other to have these conversations.
	Sorry to interrupt. Yeah, yeah.
	No, no, it's fine. No, no, it's fine.
	This is the listener part of the show.
	You're not interrupting. Why would I do this?
	Now, you said that your girlfriend has a habit of taking on other people's problems while avoiding her own?
	Yes. Tell me how you've been doing this in your conversation about your girlfriend with me.
	I've been neglecting to confront the fact that I drift towards people who would do such a thing.
	Yeah. Yeah, you're saying that the issue is my girlfriend's, how can I help her with this issue that is my girlfriend's alone and that I really want to help her with and I have no issues, by the way.
	Did I mention that my girlfriend has an issue that I need to focus on?
	Yeah, I play a much larger role than I thought.
	Right, and that's important because if you're trying to, quote, help her without looking at...
	Your own history with these issues, then it seems to me very unlikely that you would be able to help her.
	And my concern, of course, is that, you know, if you love the woman and you want to spend time with her and maybe get married or you're happy with her, then I would strongly suggest not trying to help her about things which remain largely unconscious for you because it's just going to fall all over itself, right? How can I best work on myself that would help our relationship like this?
	What could I do for me?
	You've probably heard about a hundred listeners ask me this question before, right?
	Okay, I've got the knowledge. What do I do?
	Give me a 10-point plan that takes only six hours.
	And then I'm willing to do it, and then everything will be fine.
	And what's the answer?
	Further investigate my relationship in the past and how that would correlate with my relationship.
	It sounds like you're reading from the back of the FDR matchbook, you know?
	Oh, sorry, I misread it.
	I guess I don't know.
	To be honest, I don't know.
	Right. Well, the first thing that, I mean, there's six million things you could do, right?
	And, you know, it's like somebody saying, okay, now I know I live in China and I need to learn Mandarin.
	What do I need to do? Well, you need to learn Mandarin.
	Well, how do I do that? Well, there's lots of different ways you can do it, but blah, blah, blah, right?
	So, this is what I would do if I were in your shoes, right?
	First of all, I would sprint for a mile because you're 23 and can still do that comfortably.
	That's what I would do first. And then secondly, I guess I would spend a lot of time on the internet because I miss the validity of being 23.
	No, I'm kidding. But, okay, so what I would do is first sit down and I would say this to my girlfriend.
	Listen. Honey.
	Honey bunch. Honey bunches of votes.
	I owe you an apology.
	I really owe you an apology because I've been talking to you about your inability to say no like it's just some isolated problem that you have that I have no history with.
	But the truth of the matter is that, you know, and I know this sounds like all kinds of Freudian, but the truth of the matter is that my mom has a huge inability to say no.
	Now, my dad wasn't as aggressive as your dad, but he was still aggressive enough that my mom felt like she couldn't say no, and that she made up and makes up excuses for his aggression.
	And since I didn't know that, I put all of this burden on solving this problem on you.
	And there's a distinct possibility that part of what drew me to you, hopefully not a big part, but part of what drew me to you, honey, Was the fact that I'm very comfortable with women who can't say no.
	So I choose you for this thing called can't say no, and then I criticize you or say I need to help you fix this thing that says can't say no, right?
	So it's like, you know, I'm really attracted to women with small boobs, and then I start dating them and say the first thing they need to do is get a boob job, right?
	That's just kind of weird, right?
	Yeah. And so I would apologize for not having the self-awareness.
	Because, look, if you want her to become self-aware...
	You become self-aware.
	Did you see what I mean?
	Yes. If you're both overweight and you want her to lose weight, then you need to lose weight.
	Yeah. So, yeah, so I would apologize for focusing on this as her issue, because you have an extensive history of this with your mom that you weren't aware of.
	I'm sorry? I haven't yet brought it up as it's like it's your problem.
	It's just something I've noticed and I was neglecting to see my part in it.
	Okay. However you want to refine the apology is completely up to you.
	Obviously, I can't get all the details right from this side of the internet, but that would be the first thing.
	Then I would sit down with my mom.
	Okay. And I would say, I'd like to learn more about the marriage you had with dad.
	I'm now 23 years old.
	I'm a big boy. I'm swinging my weight in the world.
	I have a girlfriend. And as we all know, our parents' relationship has a big effect on our own relationships.
	And so in order to avoid some mistakes, obviously I don't want to get married and get divorced.
	It's a terrible thing. My dad, he just got done with his third divorce and my mom was his second wife.
	And so I'm deathly scared that that will happen to me.
	Right. And you should be.
	Yeah. And you should be. And that's a healthy fear.
	Right? So I sit down with my mom and say, listen, I could spend the next three nights.
	I want to take you out for dinner or I want to take you with no interruptions.
	Unplug the phone. Do you mind if I take notes?
	I want to know about...
	Your childhood. I want to know about your parents' marriage.
	Mom, I want to know about what drew you to dad.
	I want to know when you thought it was good, when you thought it was bad, when you knew it was unrecoverable.
	Just ask questions.
	Really, you know, I mean, to plumb the depths of our own parents' history is one of the most valuable things that we can do in this life.
	Because all of those hidden patterns and gravity wells and traps and catapults, I mean, they're laid bare.
	We can see them.
	We can only avoid the traps we can see, right?
	Yeah. And so I would talk to your mom.
	I would talk to your dad, right?
	There's so much information bound up in the histories of our parents that can truly change our lives.
	I've actually... That it literally is like mining for gold when there's nothing but gold, right?
	Yeah. I've cut all contact from my father.
	So my mom would be totally open to this conversation.
	And I've asked her something. I've picked a little bit, but I haven't quite asked as deep as I need to.
	But... No, ask, ask, ask, ask.
	I, you know, I got a lot of information about my parents' marriage.
	And I got a lot of information from my dad.
	Yeah. And that's hugely, hugely, hugely important.
	You know, I mean, if you're not seeing him, I think that's a shame.
	I mean, obviously, everybody can do what they want.
	Adults' relationships are voluntary.
	But if you ever did see him again, one of the reasons that I would suggest as a rationale behind that would be Find out information.
	You need to see your parents as people with histories.
	You need to see your parents as people who dated, who didn't know each other before, who dated other people, so that you can see the steps that led.
	Because we only generally know our parents after they've been married for a couple of years and they're in their 20s or 30s or 40s or whatever.
	And that, you know, if we only start figuring out the mistakes they made at those ages, then it's too late because we're already married and have kids, right?
	We want to find out if there are things to avoid.
	We want to find those out sooner rather than later.
	Yeah, well, I mean, I could get in contact with somebody just picking up the phone, so I might do that.
	And so first, yeah, I think that'd be a good first step.
	It sounds like I got a lot to figure out.
	Once I start noticing certain consistencies in my parents' behavior, when I ask about them, I'll ask about the history, I'll be like, oh, that's right.
	I do the same thing.
	Once I know that I do the same thing, it's like when you have a bad diet and then you realize you have a bad diet, it's still really hard to change your bad diet.
	Disciplining yourself to come off of it.
	Once I get the knowledge about why I shouldn't do a certain behavior, do you believe that behaviors stop not because of discipline, because I have to stop this, blah, blah, blah.
	It just becomes a matter of like, if I do this, then this destruction will unfold.
	Yeah. Yeah. Look, I mean, quitting smoking isn't easy, but it's impossible if you think smoking is good for you.
	Yeah. Yeah.
	All right. Well, thank you for the very valuable input.
	Hey, you're welcome. You sound vaguely pleased and vaguely not.
	And look, I'm sorry about your dad.
	I mean, if your mom's willing to have this conversation with you, fantastic.
	You know, thank her for me, if that makes any sense.
	I mean, I think that's great.
	The greatest gift, you know, is true honesty on the part of parents about successes and failures.
	And, you know, that's the education that kids, I think, really, really need.
	Yeah, well, I'll call her tonight and do that.
	Thank you so much. You're very, very welcome, my friend.
	And thank you for a great call. I appreciate the forthrightness and the honesty with which you have tackled this very challenging issue.
	And do give my sympathy to your girlfriend for the aggression that she experienced as a kid.
	That is not good, to say the least.
	So I just really wanted to express my sympathy for that.
	Yeah. Well, yeah.
	I love her, so I'm going to make it work.
	Or not make it work. I'm going to try the best that I can.
	Sounds good, man. Thanks. I appreciate that.
	All right. One more on the line.
	I guess...
	How's it going, Steph? Hi.
	Hi. First, I just want to thank you for all your work and stuff.
	I ordered two of your books.
	One is still in the mail and stuff, but I don't know.
	I've just been listening to everything you have to say and stuff.
	Well, I appreciate that.
	Thank you. You're welcome.
	I just have a quick question.
	I have a philosophy class in college, and I just wanted to see your thoughts on a question that I'm having right now.
	It's an extra credit question, and it just says, explain either pro or con, can truth be relative?
	Can truth be relative, yeah.
	Yeah, I know. I mean, this is like a discussion that's been floating around.
	On the FDR boards after I posted something about how the youth, the kids of today, the young people of today, have trouble even focusing on what moral questions are, right?
	So, you know, somebody says, what was the moral dilemma that you had?
	And kids will say, or young people will say, I had trouble finding an apartment once, or I had difficulty finding a job.
	But there aren't moral dilemmas, right?
	I mean, so people, morality has really fallen out of favor, out of fashion.
	And that's due to two factors, right?
	I mean, the fall of religiosity as a credible basis for morality has unfortunately taken the baby out with the Godwater.
	And also the hyper-regulation of governmental activity and laws and all that has created such a Social safety news and such a web of control that morality has seemed sort of less relevant, right? So the morality of don't have unprotected sex becomes less important.
	Like if you're not in a situation to raise a kid becomes much less important if there's welfare and free education or quote free education all that.
	So yeah, I think morality has sort of fallen by the wayside in a lot of ways and the reason I'm saying morality is that so When people say subjective morality, that seems to me like an entire contradiction in terms.
	An entire contradiction in terms.
	If it's subjective, it's not morality.
	And if it's morality, it's not subjective.
	It's like saying personal science.
	No. If it's personal, then it's not science.
	And if it's science, then it's not personal.
	You know, people say, what's your philosophy?
	No, no, no. If it's my philosophy, it's not philosophy, right?
	If it's mine only, then it's my subjective opinions or whatever.
	But if it's philosophy, then it's not mine.
	Nobody says your physics or my biology.
	It's like, no, it's either biology or it's not.
	Anyway, so I just sort of wanted to point that out, that there's these contradictions in terms that we've become so corrupted philosophically that we can't even identify them clearly, which is a great tragedy.
	And so when the question was, can truth be subjective, or is truth subjective, is that right?
	No, can truth be relative?
	Can truth be relative?
	Well, I can tell you how I would answer that question, and then you can obviously cogitate on it as you like.
	Can truth be relative?
	I think so.
	I think so. So if I say I like ice cream, that can be a true statement.
	It's relative to my preference for ice cream.
	That's fine.
	So truth can be relative.
	It can be relative to a particular preference.
	If I say ice cream contains milk, then that is not a relative statement.
	That's a true, false, factual statement.
	And so, yeah, truth can be relative, but truth is not only relative.
	Because if everything was relative, there'd be no such thing as truth, right?
	So, yeah, I would say the truth can be relative, but the truth that is relative is the least interesting truth of all.
	I mean, who gives a shit if I like ice cream, right?
	What we care about is what is virtuous.
	Aren't those, like, opinions, sort of?
	Yeah, but you can say something true about someone's opinion, right?
	Yeah. Right, so I'm going to assume, right, so in the recent video that I put out about spanking, 80% of parents, 90% of parents spank, and 80% of parents wish they didn't have to.
	So it's a true statement, as true as you can get in these kinds of environments, but I think it's a relatively true statement that 80% of parents don't want to spank.
	Yay, good for them, right?
	Now all they have to do is stop spanking, right?
	But, so that is a truth about people's opinions.
	Or as close to a truth as you can get about people's opinions.
	Somebody who's going to a Red Sox game dressed up as a Red Sox or whatever the hell they do and with a Red Sox hat and, you know, he's got a tattoo of the Red Sox emblem on both of his earlobes and forehead or whatever.
	We can say this person is a Red Sox fan, right?
	And that's a true statement about their subjective preferences.
	But who cares? I mean, the truths that are relative are completely boring and unimportant, I think.
	Now, of course, I just said the one about spanking and so on.
	But at a personal level...
	matter what people's personal opinions are.
	What matters really are the truths that are objective and provable and empirical and all that kind of stuff.
	Like virtue, like that kind of stuff.
	The non-aggression principle.
	Property rights.
	All that kind of good stuff.
	That seems to me the truths that matter.
	And so, yeah, truth can be relative, but who cares about relative truths?
	And that's not very important.
	How about like when someone says like they have their own truth about life and someone else has their other truth?
	What do they mean by that?
	Because the teacher was using that as an example.
	His truth could be true, but your truth is also true.
	But then it's not a truth.
	So somebody may say, the best life is the life of contemplation.
	And someone else may say that the best life is the life of daredevil activity.
	But these aren't truths about life.
	What they mean is the best life for me, right?
	Yeah. The best life for me.
	Now, if someone says human beings are mammals, warm-blooded, suckle their young, don't lay eggs, blah, blah, blah, then that is true, right?
	That's not a subjective opinion.
	If somebody says human beings are reptiles, assuming they're not David Icke, then they're wrong.
	So yeah, people can say, I think the best life is, right?
	And you see this all the time, right?
	You pick up Maxim, right?
	And the best life seems to be getting a really close shave, knowing your scotches and skydiving.
	And, you know, banging pinups.
	I mean, that seems to be the best life that they can come up with.
	And so lots of people will make that case.
	For other people, you know, think of the sort of typical ghetto kid.
	The best life is having power and money and really baggy clothing and whatever, right?
	No one, whatever, rap artist.
	And for a country guy, it's different.
	So these are lifestyles.
	Lifestyle is a funny word because...
	It almost always describes people who have neither life nor a style.
	But people will say that they have particular approaches to life.
	But that's not philosophy.
	That's just opinion. I like skydiving is not a work by Aristotle for many reasons.
	But that's not philosophy.
	As soon as somebody says, my philosophy of life is, then they don't understand what philosophy is.
	Nobody says, my science is...
	My mathematics is.
	My engineering is.
	No, no, no, no. If it's math, science, or engineering, it has to have some objectivity to it, some validity that is universal, some empirical evidence, whatever, right?
	And so when people say, well, what about conflicts in people's personal philosophies?
	Well, you've just contradicted yourself, because if it's personal, it ain't a philosophy.
	And if it's philosophy, it ain't personal.
	And... So that's, you know, the typical confusion that occurs.
	And people love to conflate these two things because everybody wants their opinions to be philosophy, right?
	Because, you know, then it sounds like you're much more, you're less opinionated and more philosophical, but that's just not true.
	Yeah. Well, this teacher that I'm having, like, he actually wrote his own book and he, like, makes us read off it.
	Like, that's the whole lecture, like, him reading off the book or whatever.
	Yeah. And, like, sometimes I think it's annoying because, like, he puts, like, his opinions on it, I'm guessing.
	And to me, it doesn't make sense, like, what he said, that, like, someone's truth could, like, be different than your truth and they could contradict each other.
	And I don't know, it's just annoying to me.
	Well, then it's not truth, right?
	Yeah, that's what I mean.
	Yeah, like, I mean, if you like chocolate ice cream and I like vanilla ice cream, these truths don't contradict each other because we're not claiming that they're universal truths.
	Yeah, I know.
	I understood that.
	When he first said that, I was like, man, this guy...
	What you say to him, right? Say to him, well, my truth is that I deserve an A even if I don't show up.
	Is that okay with you? Yeah, I guess.
	And the moment he says no, then it's like, okay, so there's some stuff that's outside opinion, right?
	I'm not saying you should do that.
	I'm just saying that that would be a fun thing.
	You do it because I didn't have the guts to do it when I was in college.
	So you do it and live my life for me.
	What do you think about philosophy, pursuing it in school and stuff?
	Well, I'll tell you what I think of that.
	And I can only tell you from my own experience, but I think that studying philosophers...
	Is a useful thing to do in school, right?
	So take a class on Plato and Aristotle and Heidegger and Nietzsche and Schopenhauer and whatever it is, if you're into those guys.
	I mean, you can, of course, study it on your own, but I think it's useful to really understand somebody else's thinking, to have somebody who's experienced and able to communicate that well.
	And that's sort of what I did.
	I studied the history of philosophy.
	I didn't study philosophy much itself, right?
	So I took courses on the history of philosophy and what people thought beforehand, and I found that was really helpful.
	But... I didn't take lots of courses on, you know, philosophy, philosophy.
	My degree was in history. So, I mean, my preference was to study what other people thought and some logic, which I think is a useful thing to study no matter what you're doing.
	But that was sort of what worked for me, and I think there's some value in that, but I don't know if that's a universal statement.
	Yeah. Well, thank you for that.
	You're very welcome and best of luck.
	Be wary of this teacher.
	People who are relativists tend to be quite savage in particular areas, particularly if their relativism is questioned.
	So I would be careful with this guy and be alert to any particular changes.
	And certainly don't get yourself an F for the sake of principle, because the principle will survive getting an A in a course from someone you don't respect, but the course won't survive your principles if you get an F.
	So that would be my suggestion.
	Yeah, that's true.
	The truth is not a sword to be drawn at all costs, as I write in a novel.
	Yeah.
	you Thank you.
	Alright, I think we're done.
	Thank you everybody so, so, so, so much.
	I really appreciate your time. And a great, great set of questions.
	I always love these Sunday afternoon visits with everybody.
	We all should be simping mint tea under a southern porch, I think, and smoking cigars the size of a baby's forearm.
	But anyway... Perhaps not at the moment.
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