Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

Jan. 6, 2012 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:42:06

2068 Freedomain Radio Sunday Call in Show, Jan 1 2012

Great listener questions to ring in the new year!

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Hello everybody, it's DeFan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
	Happy New Year!
	Hope you're doing fantastically.
	I hope you had a wonderful break.
	I hope you're continuing to have a wonderful break.
	And that you ate as much refined sugar as you could snort with a culvert.
	And that you had great times with good friends and family.
	And Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you.
	Some people have asked me for my thoughts on 2011.
	And my major thoughts on 2011 are, ah, it's something akin to a pterodactyl being fed ass backwards into a blender with a cat in its mouth.
	But what I would say about 2011 is step back like James Brown.
	I kiss myself.
	Because one of my predictions came true.
	And that was basically that the state is dead.
	Death of statism.
	I did a couple of years ago, a sort of five part series on statism is dead as a philosophy.
	And lo and behold, it has been fantastically confirmed.
	I will give you some examples. The Fukuyama disaster where the tidal wave hit the Japanese nuclear power plant.
	Government regulatory agency.
	Was it supposed to predict and deal with these kinds of issues?
	Of course. Did it? No, of course not.
	The regulatory story about the banks.
	Oh, it was deregulation that harmed the banks or harmed the financial industry as a whole has been largely disproven.
	I mean, there's a few knee-jerk Lefties who still repeat that mantra, but a lot of people don't really believe it.
	If you look at, what is it, close to 3,000 people have been arrested for the Wall Street protests, but actually on Wall Street, where trillions of dollars were ripped off from the middle class and the poor.
	Has anyone been charged to go to jail?
	Hells no! So no, that's not really going down at all.
	Despite the massive and widespread systematic robo-signing of fraud and deception and obfuscatory language that puts me to shame in the contracts, you know, deferred jumps in interest payments and so on.
	And so everybody recognizes that Wall Street is in bed with the government and they are using the kind of beads that you don't find on the children's activity table on each other.
	And so, yeah, everybody recognizes that that regulatory effort has completely failed.
	And the government is...
	The efforts to curb in government spending in 2011 completely failed the super committee, which has the superpower called...
	Putting themselves and everyone else to sleep.
	They cast that sleep spell and everybody failed their saving throws.
	We all dozed off and woke up that Barack Obama has now signed two trillion dollars extra of money to be pillaged from future generations to pay off the gaping, mowing, cheeping baby bird hoards of those dependent upon the state for their income by the rich, middle class or poor.
	That didn't work so well.
	It couldn't curb government spending.
	What else could the government do? Government could not improve education, the most important thing that the government needs to do.
	And the last thing the government will ever want to do is to create an educated, intelligent, and aware population.
	So not so much for that either.
	Massive unfunded liabilities in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and I'm talking about the US, this is common for all.
	What happened? Was the government able to solve that?
	Hells no! They just stuffed a few more IOUs in the empty, wet, snake-filled stocking of future generations Christmas presents from hell past and called it a done deal.
	What else did they not solve?
	Well, massive unfunded government pensions weren't solved.
	A minor effort to attempt to reform some of that in Wisconsin led to Governor Walker almost being put out of town on a pogo stick sharpened at the top with no seat and an elephant sitting on top of his head.
	Actually more like a donkey given that it was the Democratic Party who were largely hounding him.
	So that didn't work.
	Massive teacher fraud in the tests that were passed supposedly to get some sort of standardized testing.
	Because remember, you see, standardized testing is really, really important for children.
	It is not at all important for teachers.
	See, teachers? No, no, no. See, it's really, really important to instruct children using standardized tests in a pass-fail grade.
	But teachers must never, ever be allowed to submit to such a heinous invasion of their privacy and professionalism.
	And so, as was widely predicted and enormously...
	The teachers simply started fudging.
	They taught the test. They fudged the results of the test.
	They changed. They erased. They lied.
	And this scandal was all over the U.S. And so another nail in the coffin of statism.
	Did the recovery occur?
	No, the recovery did not occur, as I predicted several years ago.
	It was five or six years ago.
	I said it was five to 15 years in the future, the beginning of the collapse of the West.
	And I believe that I was...
	Pretty damn right. And there is no recovery.
	And what else didn't work?
	The stimulus plan worked.
	Remember, the stimulus plan was supposed to shave a couple of percentage points off the unemployment rate.
	That's how that mofo was sold.
	And what happened?
	Well, what happened was the unemployment rate got even worse, particularly if you count, as many people do, those who've given up, those who've gone back to school, and those who are underemployed.
	Or part-time, the unemployment rate went up.
	At which point the government changed the story and said, well, the stimulus plan was never supposed to bring the unemployment down.
	And yes, the unemployment has gone up, but it would have gone up even more if we hadn't done the stimulus plan.
	So a stimulus plan didn't work other than...
	You know, feathering the nest of people dependent on the state and making sure that future generations have to bend over and grab their shoelaces when the bill and tax collectors come calling.
	So that didn't work.
	And you could really go on and on.
	Of course, the Wall Street protests didn't work because a bunch of smelly socialists don't really change much unless they're willing to grab guns in the Russian Revolution.
	And so that didn't really work.
	Now, that wasn't statism per se, but it was an attempt to alter and affect statism.
	But! But! But!
	The most important thing that happened was a complete collapse in confidence in the general population about the state.
	Congressional approval. Approval of Congress as a whole.
	Not party by party, not policy by policy, not law by law or bill by bill.
	As a whole, approval of Congress is 6%.
	Is 6% as we close off 2011.
	That is astounding on every level.
	That is astounding on every level.
	That is a complete repudiation of the social contract.
	And those who say that the government represents the will of the people have to look at that 6%.
	And re-fry, re-triangulate, re-fix their brains on the moving target called reality because that, my friends, is no approval of the social contract whatsoever.
	That is a direct repudiation of the social contract.
	That is a lack of consent of the governed.
	That is a turning against the masters with their foggy whips of fiat currency manipulation and control.
	And what has changed?
	What has happened as a result of that 6%?
	Nothing, of course, has changed at all, other than the government is growing bigger.
	The government that everyone loathes is getting more powerful.
	That was entirely predicted by anarchic libertarian theory, by Austrian theory, and then, lo and behold, it's happening.
	So, with the facts on our side, we can make some great strides towards actually convincing the population that two and two make four, and their nose is in fact in front of their face, and violence does not work to solve social problems.
	I'm just talking about...
	In North America or America in particular, what happened in England?
	Well, massive government spending.
	They tried to cut a little bit here and there.
	What happened in Europe? Massive debts.
	They were unable to come up with any solutions.
	There have been riots. There have been deaths.
	There have been fires set. But most importantly, even more important than all of these, I think, fundamentally, is that the general population has now finally, finally, finally, thanks to the internet, moved ahead of the media.
	The population is ahead of the media.
	That's one of the most important developments of 2011.
	I'd say the most important development from 2011 is that the media is now playing catch-up.
	If you remember back in the day, if you're old like me, back in the day, It took Walter Cronkite saying that the Vietnam War was unwinnable for the American population to turn against the Vietnam War.
	That's oversimplistic and there were some elements of course who didn't support it before, but in general that's what it took.
	And this has really been the case, that the population did not have any access to contrary opinions, to actual facts, and therefore what the population did was they just, you know, drank the slowly dripping Chinese distracting shiny bauble water torture of the media factoids or truthiness and went with that.
	But now, but now, but now, the population is ahead of the media.
	The fact that Congressionalist approval is at 6%, I mean, let me tell you this.
	If you had a business and your customer approval rating was 6%, I can tell you for sure there would be unprecedented, unbelievable, unimaginable, staggering, reversal, up-is-down, black-is-white changes in that company.
	And you'd have shareholder revolts, you'd have CEOs being kicked out and probably sued.
	If you had a customer approval rating of 6% in the private sector, you'd be three minutes away from being firebombed and out of business.
	And so there would be massive changes.
	And so, given that the approval rating of the public sector is, or the Congress, is 6%, what should change?
	What should there be a revolution in context, in language, in understanding?
	But none of this is being talked about.
	What's being talked about is, oh, Ron Paul's a racist.
	Oh, Herman McCain has some allegations from unstable women against him.
	Whoa! Can you imagine?
	You can't talk about any of that other stuff, because the media, you see, The media represents one constituency and one constituency only.
	The media represents those who are dependent upon the state for their daily bread slash brioche slash carrot cake.
	That is who the media represents.
	The media is not left-wing. The media is not right-wing.
	The media represents those who are dependent upon the state because those who are dependent upon the state need propaganda shoved into the eyeballs, down the throat, and up the nose of everyone else around them to distract them.
	from the constant pilfering of pockets past, present and future that is going on as a result of the state redistribution of wealth which is about as equivalent of the redistribution of wealth as someone who's stealing your kidney while you're passed out in a hotel lobby or bar or washroom Somebody, you know, drugs you, cuts you open, steals your kidney.
	Well, that's just a redistribution of kidneys.
	No. I mean, it's a violation, it's a theft, which is what government redistribution of income is all about.
	The media represents everybody who's dependent upon the state for power, for income, for prestige, because that's what the media is, dependent upon the state.
	Much easier to read off a government press release than it is to actually think for yourself and do some investigative journalism, which costs a lot and could expose you to legal liabilities.
	So, the fact is that the media has become irrelevant to the future and it only represents the existing selfish, destructive impulses and desires, requirements and theft-fingering pocket fingers of the dependent classes, which means that they're going to become increasingly irrelevant.
	The only people who are really interested in politics are people who are dependent upon the state for power or money.
	Everybody else really could give two shits in a flying wind.
	They don't really care. But the people who are dependent upon the state, who need the state for power, prestige and money, well, they're very interested.
	And that's why the media is interested in politics, that's why the general population is becoming increasingly disenchanted with and uninterested in politics, which I think is a very good sign.
	And so that's, I think, the most important development, that the people hate the government and the media is not reflecting that, which means that the media is only reflecting those who, quote, love the government, which means that the media is only reflecting the needs of those who are profiting from the government.
	That is fantastic because that class divide between the producers and the looters, as aptly described many, many decades ago by Ayn Rand, is really going to come to a head in 2012.
	2012 is the year, my friends.
	2012 is the year.
	This is the fork in the road.
	This is do we go free or do we go totalitarian?
	It comes down to this year because there's really not much time left.
	There's only a few... Grains of sand left in that hourglass.
	And so we really have got to push hard this year to recognize and to raise that flag, to shoot up those flares, to wave those flashlights around the sky, those searchlights, to do whatever we can.
	To wave an eclipse in the sky if we can.
	We must, we must, we must push everyone to recognize that the violence that is inherited in statism is not going to solve the problems, it's only going to make them work.
	To keep pointing out the gun in the room, to use the against me argument, to use whatever rhetorical tricks and abilities and statistics and passions and intransigence that you have.
	To keep reminding people that the problem that we are facing is not freedom, but force.
	Because once you correctly identify the problem, then, and only then, can you apply the correct solution.
	So, let's have a heavy, activist, hard-pumpin' 2012, because it is now or never.
	Thank you, and let's turn the Freedom Main Radio Sunday call-in show, 2 p.m.
	Eastern Standard Time, every week, over to the listeners.
	And thank you, James, so much as always.
	Hello? Hi, how are you doing?
	Hey, pretty good stuff. So, I know you're not a psychologist or anything like that.
	Am I muted? No, I just heard you, James.
	Yeah, my question is about introvert versus extroverted personalities.
	So a long time ago, like – well, I'm 20 years old right now.
	When I was about 15, that kind of changed after I had a – That was really annoying.
	A couple of years. Sorry.
	You just cut out a little bit there if you could repeat.
	Okay. I'm 20 years old right now.
	Back when I was 15 or so, I used to be really outgoing and stuff.
	That was before I fell into depression for a couple of years.
	I'm in therapy right now.
	I've been doing it for around six months.
	I've found that I still haven't been able to regain that I'm an extroverted personality that I used to have.
	Actually, it's in specific instances that I can be that way.
	It's like when I meet someone else who's really outgoing, then it kind of feels like I have permission to be outgoing as well.
	But if I'm hanging around someone who isn't that outgoing, I kind of act like they do in a way.
	Would you say that the extroversion that you had before your depression was true, authentic and healthy?
	Hmm.
	Well, let me give you an example of what I mean.
	Um...
	I used to just screw around all the time in class and Just, like, play jokes on people.
	Just not really...
	Not harmful jokes, but, you know, like...
	I would like to...
	I would like to yell people's names and, like, throw my voice so they didn't hear what I was doing.
	Hello? Hello?
	Yeah, sorry, if you can just wait, we're just on another call.
	Sorry, go ahead. Okay, um...
	So, yeah, I mean, I would...
	But you're not answering my question.
	I mean, at least I don't think you are.
	Do you think that the extroversion that you had before your depression was healthy?
	I mean, did it connect you with people?
	Were you a leader that led people to positive places?
	Because it sounds like if you were sort of a jokester and a trickster, that that may not have been the case.
	But tell me what you think. Yeah.
	I think it wasn't that healthy.
	Because... Yeah, like you said, it's sort of a negative thing, and it did give me a lot of positive attention from people, so maybe...
	So maybe I was just getting validation in my sort of...
	Well, there's a way to test for that.
	I mean, again, I try never to put forward an idea that doesn't have some sort of test to it.
	And of course, as you know, these are just my amateur ramblings.
	But the test would be, were you getting enough attention and interest and concern and care at home?
	Now, if you weren't and you were really seeking to create an impression to other people outside of that without dealing with the lack of attention at home, then I think the likelihood is that it was less healthy.
	But tell me what you think. Well, that was definitely the case, not getting attention at home.
	And when I found that I could act a certain way and get that attention and approval that I wanted, yeah.
	Yeah, that's what it was.
	So what was missing for you at home?
	Well, I was only living with my dad, and he...
	He's never really been involved in my life, other than, like, I see him when he comes home, and then he goes in his room and does whatever, and then I see him when he goes to work, but that's about it.
	Like, we don't talk about anything. What do you mean?
	So, when you were living with him, you didn't really interact with him?
	with him, he'd sort of come home and just go to his room?
	Do his own thing.
	Yeah, he'd just do his own thing.
	Even from my early childhood, the only memories I really have with him were occasionally my mom would take us kids to see him at work and we'd see him for a few minutes when he was on his break and that's really all I remember from that. the only memories I really have with him were occasionally It would take us kids to see him at work, and we'd see him for a few minutes when he was on his break, and that's really all I remember from that.
	I'm so sorry. I think that's terrible.
	I think that's terrible.
	And, you know, the first question that always pops into my mind is, why the hell do people have kids if they don't want to spend time with them?
	It's like getting married and then moving to another country, you know, separate from your wife.
	I mean, well, you get married then, with the difference being, of course, that your wife has choices that children don't have, right?
	Yeah. I'm so sorry.
	I really, I mean, that's heartbreaking.
	That's so sad. What about your mom?
	Well, um...
	She was a lot more involved in my life because she homeschooled me well before the public school age.
	So she was involved in my life a lot more, but she was kind of like the primary abuser, I guess you could say.
	She was the one who gave me all this propaganda about Politeness and manners really kind of getting me to not express my needs.
	Well, sorry, but just help me break that down a bit.
	I don't want to contradict anything you're saying because it's your experience.
	But I think politeness and manners are not necessarily bad things to have.
	You know, like, I mean, if someone gives you a gift, say thank you and all that kind of stuff.
	You know, don't take the last piece of cake without offering it to someone else.
	But you may be talking about something a little different than what I understand.
	And you may be right about the terms.
	I'm just telling you what they mean to me so that I can understand if we're using them differently.
	Yeah, hers were more of like religious teachings.
	Though she did teach me those manners that you're talking about.
	Right, and I don't think those things are bad, but you have issues with some other things she was teaching you?
	Would you be able to wait just a second?
	Have you seen?
	Alright, sorry about that. What was your last question?
	Well, it was not so much politeness and manners that you had an issue with, it was other things that she was teaching you?
	Yeah, it was like, if I walked around the house with my shirt off, she would tell me to be modest, or like...
	I'm trying to think of more examples.
	Can I ask you another question?
	Sure, yeah. Well, she was very interested in correct behavior, right?
	Yeah. And did she know that your father didn't really interact with you much?
	Yeah. And what did she do about that?
	Because clearly that's not interacting with your child when your child is kind of trapped in the house is pretty much more important than please thank you and put your shirt on, right?
	Yeah, a lot more.
	So what did she do, given that she was into correct behavior and your father's behavior was far more incorrect than yours, or what did she do about that?
	As far as I know, nothing.
	Probably nothing, yeah.
	What do you mean, probably nothing?
	Well, I mean, I never heard her having a conversation with him about him not spending enough time with us or anything like that.
	And... During that time in my childhood, he was working the night shift and so he was basically asleep the whole time we were awake.
	I just never heard any conversations about that and it didn't seem like...
	They certainly never talked with us about it.
	And the behavior didn't change, is that right?
	Yeah, and it actually didn't even change after he got off night shift.
	Right, so I would be a little skeptical of your mom's interest in correct behavior as in any kind of objective standard.
	Yeah, of course, of course.
	And I just want to point that out.
	I don't know, of course, problems. I'm just saying that that's the rational analysis of it, you know?
	If somebody's really into correct behavior, well, parenting is more important than whether your shirt is on or not.
	So you would expect them to deal rationally with that hierarchy and deal with your dad first before your shirt or your whatever, right?
	P's and Q's. Yeah.
	Okay, so the attention-seeking that you were doing at school may have been sort of an attempt to fill a void at home or to feel, you know, let me give you a tiny little speech, hopefully tiny, and see if it makes any sense. Oh, yeah, definitely.
	Okay, so when we are children...
	If we are not interacted with, if we are not noticed, because we don't have the capacity to really introspect when we're children.
	We don't have the capacity to do calculus when we're two.
	We don't have the capacity to introspect and to develop the boundaries and borders of the personality that result from chosen socializing.
	Because, you know, we just go with whoever the kids in the neighborhood are or whoever parents are around, but it's not quite the same as choosing your friends when you get to be an adult.
	So because you can't introspect and because you don't have that many chosen social relationships, If you don't get attention as a child, it feels like you're shriveling into nothing.
	It feels like you're being inflated into a kind of gas that's gonna blow away.
	It feels like you're vanishing.
	It feels like you're being turned into a tiny, energetic, dying ghost.
	And children will do anything to gain attention rather than experience the loss of identity, the living death of being ignored.
	Because children, I mean, this is why, you know, children, if their parents are fighting, will do something, quote, bad, so their parents will scold them.
	They would rather have negative attention than no attention.
	And you can tell, at least, I think you can tell when it is coming from a place of being ignored at home...
	When it is impactful interaction rather than intimate interaction.
	So impactful interaction is, I made somebody laugh.
	And there's nothing wrong with making people laugh.
	I'm no critic of that.
	I hope not, because occasionally I try to strive that way myself.
	So if it's impactful, Interaction, then it's something where it leaves an impression in people's mind, but it's not the same as them getting to know you.
	So if somebody makes you laugh, you don't really get to know that person.
	If somebody is teasing you, you don't get to know that person.
	If somebody's bullying you, obviously, I'm not saying you were, but all of that is impactful, not intimate.
	You know, the intimate stuff is when you're, you know, I have great memories.
	I had a friend when I first came to Canada who unfortunately died of a congenital heart failure a year or two after I first knew him.
	I first met him when I was 11.
	I went over to his house, and we would lie in his backyard, and we would look at the stars, and we would just chat about our thoughts, our lives, what we wanted to do, who we liked, who we didn't like.
	And it was really relaxed and relaxing.
	And we did make jokes from time to time, but we would have...
	I remember in the recess, we would walk around just...
	We didn't really want to play games with the other kids, but we would walk around and just have conversations.
	And I thought he was a little bit lonely at home.
	I certainly know that I was. And I've always been happy that I was able, it wasn't like a gift, but I was able to give that friend some, I think, some real intimacy and some real contact before he died.
	So he didn't die not having known what it was like to not be alone.
	And when you are impactful rather than intimate, you can't do that stuff lying on your back looking at the stars and chatting, if that makes sense.
	You have to be doing something that is bigger.
	You have to be doing something that is creating an impression in people.
	You have to be an entertainer.
	You have to be a distractor.
	You have to be someone who is, in a sense, creating an impression but not creating knowledge, not creating intimacy.
	I hope that makes some kind of sense.
	Does that ring true with anything that you experienced?
	Definitely, because back then I was binge drinking like every weekend and the only times I would say anything intimate to other people would be when I was wasted and start crying and all that mess.
	So yeah, that definitely describes me.
	And that's, you know, the alcohol-fueled stuff is not the same as intimacy because it's intimacy with an excuse, right?
	I was drunk. You were drunk.
	It's not this. And it doesn't tend to carry over into, like, I've never heard people who were drunk, and then later on, they apologize, maybe they avoid it, but they don't say, listen, that thing I brought up with you when I was drunk, I'm sorry I brought it up when I was drunk, but I would really like to talk about it now that my head's clear.
	That never seems to happen, right?
	Yeah, well, I never did that, and I've never heard anyone else do it either, so yeah.
	Right, right, right.
	So, do you know if there was any particular event that may have changed you from, as you say, the extrovert to depressed?
	Was there any particular change?
	Because usually it happens when the extroversion strategy for gaining attention is starting to work less and less, and that can happen for any number of reasons, then there is a sort of collapse to the original loneliness that is driving that need for Because it feels like you're having an interaction when you're having an impact on people, when you're making them laugh, when you're the center of attention, when you're the guy with the lampshade on his head.
	But you're not. It's a strategy that doesn't work in the long run and tends to make things worse in the long run because people then associate you with somebody who's entertaining, which keeps other empty people around who don't want intimacy but would rather be entertained as well.
	And the people who are capable of intimacy tend to veer away from the, you know, endless jokes, no open-hearted person.
	And so it tends to create this world where, you know, not all the world's a stage, but your social world is a stage.
	The spotlight's on you and you can't see the audience.
	And just because they can see you doesn't mean they really see you.
	And so was there something that caused that extroversion strategy to no longer work?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Okay, so when I was 15, that was when I was, or actually it was when I was 14.
	I was a sophomore, so there was a class that I was in that particularly, like it was my favorite class that I ever had because it was the class where the teacher wasn't really respected by any students, and so we kind of just did whatever we wanted as far as like We would just make jokes, screw around the whole time.
	And anyways, so after that year, there's that, the fact that I was no longer in that class, and then during the next year, I didn't know as many people in my classes, because that class had almost all my friends in it.
	And so it was a combination of that, the classroom environment changing from year to year, and also I used to hang out with, when I was a sophomore, I used to hang out with all these seniors.
	And so they graduated, and they were the group that I hung out with at school.
	And so once they were gone, it was kind of like, oh, I've got to find new people to hang out with.
	And then my old group of friends who I hung out with before them, the ones that were in my grade, they sort of moved on to a different group of friends.
	And so I would go sit at that table and Not really talk to anyone, and that was a hell in a way.
	Right, so because you couldn't entertain them, and you weren't able to be intimate, you felt really isolated, and then what was going on at home was going on everywhere, and that's probably when the depression set in, right?
	Because there's now no escape.
	There's no way to even come up with fake food to pretend you're not hungry all the time.
	Yeah, yeah, that was really, really miserable.
	I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.
	And, I mean, I'm guessing, were your parents any help or use in this time frame at all?
	I didn't talk with either of them about it.
	So, no. And they didn't ask me any.
	Wow. That is really, really isolated, my friend.
	That is really isolated.
	I think you were probably lucky that you didn't get picked on more.
	You must have been good-looking, a jock, some shield, right?
	No, actually.
	I've always been really skinny and short, but I guess some people said I was good-looking, but that same year, 11th grade, I started to get really severe acne, so that was... Oh yeah, you know, I'm sorry, I was going to mention that too as well.
	One of the things that happens when people are social extroverts is if something happens like they get acne, they start going bald, they gain weight for whatever reason, then it's really hard to maintain that.
	And so if the severe acne comes along, it makes it much tougher to be the class clown, right?
	Yeah. When the clown nose on your nose is not a clown nose, but a big honking pimple, it's kind of tough to be the jokester, right?
	Yeah. I'm sorry.
	I'm so sorry. And how long did the acne last for?
	Well, it's still pretty bad right now, but I have gotten some stuff to put on my face from a dermatologist.
	Right, right. Not as bad as it was then, but still.
	Is it face or back and chest as well?
	I have like a pimple or two on my chest.
	It's mostly face. Right.
	I'm so sorry. That is a hard thing.
	That's a hard thing to go through.
	It really is. I mean, massive sympathies.
	It is a pretty serious way to drive a wedge between yourself and your self-confidence to make you self-conscious and to make you shy, right?
	Yeah. Yeah, I really, really sympathize.
	I've known people who've gone through that, and it is a wretched, wretched experience.
	I mean, I know that there's stuff out there that you can take, and it's certainly better than when I was younger.
	I didn't have it too bad. I had a little bit here and there, but nothing too bad.
	But yeah, that's a huge, huge challenge.
	It's a huge, huge challenge.
	And, you know, you can say, well, you come out of it a better, but, you know, who wants, you know, who wants any of that shit, right?
	Rather have some clear skin and maybe a slightly slower self-growth, right?
	Yeah A bunch of people with medical advice or dietary advice in the chat room I don't know if you can see it. I don't even want to repeat it because I don't know whether it's true or not.
	But I'm sure, you know, if you've had acne for years, I'm sure you've tried or thought of every conceivable thing and tried every different kind of thing because, I mean, it is such a challenge.
	It's real hard to feel confident, sexy, attractive, and smart, right, when you've got pizza face.
	It's really rough. And I just really want to extend my sympathies for that.
	I appreciate that.
	Does that help at least provide a possible framework for looking at the sequence?
	Yeah, because I told my therapist before that I sort of experienced a collapse in my social life when I was in high school.
	We didn't delve into that too much.
	But the next time I see him, I'm going to talk with him about that.
	And you've definitely given me some useful things to bring up when I do see him again.
	So I really appreciate that.
	Yeah, look, I mean, it's...
	You know, the body sucks sometimes.
	And you've got to wonder, like, the fuck is the point of acne?
	You know, I mean, I can understand you've got to fart and it smells bad because you've got to get that shit out of your body.
	And, you know, not that shit, I guess.
	That's not a good fart. But, you know, it is kind of like, well, what the hell is the point of this?
	How could this be evolutionary advantageous for me to get all of this crap on my face?
	So it is frustrating.
	I mean, I went through some years when I was younger, when I was starting to go bald.
	I'm like... I'm 16.
	What the hell? What is going on?
	You know, I get the chemo of the week award at school.
	And it is something that can be hard for self-confidence.
	And I, you know, I'm not even going to try and give you any for the best nonsense.
	But I will say that there is a way that the soul can rise above the limitations of the body.
	And, you know, you can be a beautiful human being.
	Do not let accidental pustules define your soul.
	And, you know, that's an easy thing to say, and I'm not trying to give you any instant cures.
	But we have to be bigger than our physical limitations.
	You know, we're all going to get old and decrepit and we have to have bigger souls than that.
	And, you know, I go bald, you have acne.
	Other people, one guy was saying he had a cyst the size of a baseball on the top of his butt crack.
	And that's not exactly first date conversation that gets you anywhere but an exit sign.
	So, you know, there are infinite numbers of betrayals and weaknesses by the body.
	And we simply have to have a soul that's bigger than the limitations of the flesh.
	And the beauty of...
	The being is in the soul not in the flesh and we're all drawn to the flesh because that's how we reproduce and that's our drive and I understand that but if you could find a way to Find the beauty of your own truth and virtue and commitment to excellence and goodness and courage and all of the stalwart military metaphor philosophy virtues.
	I think you can be more beautiful than your skin.
	Far more beautiful than your skin.
	And, you know, when in luck your skin will clear up and follow suit.
	But that at least you can have some control over which you don't have as much over your skin.
	Yeah. Yeah, thank you so much, Steph.
	You're welcome, man. And I wish you the best of luck with your treatment in every sense.
	And thank you so much for calling in.
	Oh, I had a quick donation question, too, if that's okay.
	No, I hate donating. No, go ahead.
	So I donated like $20 a month or two ago.
	And... It was through my dad's email because he has PayPal, and I was wondering if that gets me access to a bronze podcast or anything like that.
	Yes, it does. Sorry if I've missed it.
	Just shoot me another email.
	This is all done by hand, and I do occasionally miss some, so just shoot me another email.
	We'll sort it out. Okay, so like, yeah, yeah, that's fine.
	Thank you. Thank you very much.
	All right. Jimmy Jambo Jimbo Fest, do we have another caller?
	Yeah, we do. And I apologize for the diversion.
	Maybe mark this moment so you can cut it out.
	I have a hard break at four today, and I really apologize because I was late.
	Oh, no sweat. Yeah.
	So next caller we have is Asghar.
	Yes. You're up.
	Can you hear me all right, everybody?
	Yes, I feel like you should be calling from Ragnarok.
	Am I correct? Yeah, sure thing.
	It's late in the evening here.
	Now, alright. The thing I would like to talk about today, tonight, or whatever, is Karl Popper.
	I'm sorry, is what?
	Karl Popper.
	Oh, the theoretician of science?
	Precisely. I'm no expert, but I will certainly share if I have any remotely useful thoughts on it, but go ahead.
	Yes. So basically, as it stands, I am going to an exam tomorrow for the admission course at the engineering college where I'm attending.
	And on the admission course we have to take a course on idea history, the history of ideas.
	I have to talk about Karl Popper tomorrow.
	So I just want to sort of maybe take a little practice run right here.
	Sounds great. School me, brother.
	Yeah. Now, Karl Popper is, in his science theory, he attempts to set up a standard by which you can differentiate between Scientific theories and pseudoscientific theories.
	He doesn't judge whether a theory is true or false, but only if it's scientific.
	Pseudoscience will sometimes, occasionally stumble onto some truth, sort of by accident or by coincidence, rather.
	Now, what Karl Popper says is that a theory must be falsifiable, such that It makes some daring prediction that if that prediction doesn't come true, it falsifies the entire theory.
	And a theory can only be considered scientific...
	I'm sorry, I just wanted to interject.
	I think there's one more standard to falsifiability.
	Which is a logical standard, right?
	I mean, it's not just verifiable externally, like the ball bounces this high, but it's also a logical standard.
	I think we're all aware, who've debated with statists and theists, the moving goalpost problem, right?
	So you say, well, they say, well, God is this, and then you prove God isn't that, and then they move God to somewhere else or whatever.
	They change the standard at all times, and I think that's a suit.
	I just wanted to point that out, but go ahead.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	I'm going to mention that for the exam, too, that there's this logical standard.
	But that sort of applies to anything, even outside the scientific realm, I would say.
	Now, an example of a theory that has a very strong falsifiability, or it had at least, or I guess still does, What's the theory of relativity by Albert Einstein?
	So he theorized that light would bend around in a gravitational field, right?
	So this meant that the stars that sent their light around our sun down to reach us, they would get bent, right?
	But of course you couldn't see that during the day when the sun was in fact in the way of these distant stars because the sun shines so brightly.
	So he made the prediction that the next time there was a solar eclipse the stars would be visible but they would be out of place compared to where they would be expected to be assuming that light shining from these distant stars did not change in the gravitational field.
	And so That is sort of an example of a theory that has this falsifiability element.
	In contrast, Karl Popper criticized the Freudian psychoanalysis simply because that any observed human behavior could be sort of explained into this Freudian theory.
	Yes, I've heard those criticisms as well.
	So if you have sort of X characteristic in the Freudian model, then it confirms the theory.
	And if you don't have it, then it's repressed.
	And if you have the opposite, it's a reaction formation.
	So it's sort of a mutating wraparound to any human behavior which can be used to explain anything.
	I'm not sure that's exactly what Freud intended.
	I'm not sure. I think there's sort of real Freud and then there's sort of parlor game Freud.
	And the real Freud is a little bit more dense and complicated.
	But I certainly do understand that it's very difficult to falsify some psychoanalytic approaches.
	Absolutely. But so the thing that struck me when I was reading about this falsifiability thing was this whole climate change thing.
	I don't know what it's like in Canada or the US, but they're out of control with climate change here in Denmark, where I'm from.
	At the engineering college, there's these climate change warnings all over the place, because the windmill factories, they like to educate a lot of engineers in In these high-voltage disciplines, for example, high-voltage and this sort of offshore workings.
	So anyway, I figured, is there any falsifiability in climate change theory?
	I sort of wondered about that.
	Is there one thing you could say, aha, if this is observed, then...
	Well, I mean, I'm no expert in this, but I'm not sure that there's a lot of it.
	And I simply say this because there was this famous hockey stick graph that came out, I think, in the 80s, which turned out to be the result of bad programming.
	Like, if you fed any set of numbers in, you got a hockey stick graph.
	And you'd think that would make everyone take a huge step back and say, whoa, what have we been doing?
	But it didn't. Everyone just kept plowing on.
	There seem to be numerous inaccuracies in, I think, Al Gore's documentary, An Inconvenient Truth.
	And those don't seem to have caused the movement to back off a huge amount.
	There have been admitted fudging of the numbers within the movement by prominent people.
	I'm not sure that's made a lot of doubt and step back.
	And, of course, there's been no warming.
	For, what? 12 years?
	14 years? And it's supposed to be accelerating.
	You'd think that would make people, you know, look...
	I don't know. I don't know about climate change.
	I don't know. As far as I understand it, it seems to be occurring to a small degree.
	It's certainly not unprecedented in terms of it occurring before.
	There was a warm period in the Middle Ages.
	There was a cold period, I think, in the 16th century.
	So climate change is a synonym, right?
	Climate is change. And so when people say climate change, what they're saying is, change, change.
	Now, if they say global warming, what they're doing is they're saying, well, the globe is getting warmer and warmer.
	And if they say global cooling, which was all the fad when I was younger, then they're saying...
	But climate change is a way of non-falsifying it because climate is always changing.
	Anthropomorphic climate change is another thing entirely.
	I think most people accept that there's been a little bit of warming, but...
	The degree to which it is anthropomorphic is, I think, still to some degree under debate.
	And, of course, as we know from those of us who study any kind of economics or political theory, for the current policies to be of value, then a number of criteria have to be satisfied.
	First of all, there has to be consistent and escalating changes in the climate.
	That is driven by human activity, of course, CO2 emissions and so on.
	So those two things have to be occurring without doubt, or at least with almost no doubt.
	And the theories have not been consistent with the predictions for quite some time.
	And anyone who says that they can predict what the climate is going to be in 100 years is just an astounding con man, in my opinion.
	And so those two things have met some criteria of satisfiability.
	Certainly the CO2 emissions has some value in theory, but none of the predictions seem to be true.
	And again, I'm really going off memory here, but I think it was the upper atmosphere was supposed to be cooling first, and that's actually quite the reverse is true.
	And it was supposed to be cooling here, sorry, warming here, not there, and the reverse is true.
	So there was supposed to be expansion, sorry, a contraction in the ice depth and spread in the polar ice caps, and this is not occurring quite.
	The reverse is true. So a lot of predictions have been not coming true, and that is problematic.
	But even if we accept that there's massive, dangerous climate change that's being driven by human activity, We then have to also accept that the correct and rational response to that is two-fold.
	A, massive funding of scientists and climate researchers, and B, by the government, and B, that it is government activity, laws, regulations that is going to solve these problems.
	To me, if the government can't balance its own budget, it can't manage the fucking climate 100 years from now.
	I mean, this is just a basic thing.
	This is like a guy who can't lift five pounds.
	I'm not going to ask him to help me lift my car up to change my tire.
	If the government cannot get out of debt from one day to the next because it's too incompetent to do even that, if the government can't improve educational scores after pouring billions of dollars into it, which is far more manageable than climate change over a century,
	if, say, Washington D.C. cannot lower the crime rate in Washington D.C., where they have massive amounts of authority and control and fund half the damn city through Welfare and Social Security and other cash payouts or payouts in kind and government housing and they manage all the roads and they run the whole damn city and they still, it's one of the worst educational districts and has the highest murder rate of any US city.
	So it's to assume that the government can do something intelligent to manage the climate 100 years from now when it can't even educate children, it can't win the war on drugs, it can't balance its budget, it can't Prosecute a reasonable war.
	I mean, it can't fund any of its programs.
	You know, that last step is the most ridiculous one, wherein we say, okay, well, climate change is happening.
	Climate change is real. Climate change is man-made.
	Climate change can be reversed, right?
	Because if it's man-made but not reversible, then it's like aging.
	I'm aging because I'm alive.
	It's not really reversible. And then we say, well, government funding of scientists and expansions of government power are how we solve these things.
	Well, all of that just becomes such complete nonsense that anyone who gets to the end of that logic trail and can say it with a straight face is an empty-headed propaganda machine who's just out to suck your lifeblood and cash money dry.
	Yeah. Yeah, that seems like a pretty good analysis.
	I just remembered, right?
	A couple of years ago, I saw in the conservative newspaper we have in Denmark, so it's conservative by standards here, right?
	But they had under, I think, under cover, right?
	There was this little interview by these climate dudes who were, I don't know, they were all like, oh, climate change this, right?
	And then they were asked about this falsifiability thing, and then they were like, Well, if in 30 years there hasn't been any significant increases in climate change, or there has been cooling for 30 years, then maybe it's not true.
	But setting the falsifiability in 30 years seems pointless.
	Now, one very interesting thing we had occurring here in Denmark was our good Bjorn Lombau.
	I'm not sure if you've heard of him.
	Heard of him? I've interviewed him.
	You have? Wow.
	Yes, I did. For my conversations with Casey series.
	Yeah. Oh, that one has escaped me.
	I will go check that one out later.
	Now, so yeah, I don't need to tell you about him very much, but just to suffice it to say, he says that assuming that everything in climate science is true, spending the money to reduce CO2 emissions is the place where you get the least amount of goodness for your money,
	right? So if, for example, you spend a bazillion dollars on, I don't know, windmills or whatever, But if you spend a fraction of that to provide clean drinking water for those who will allegedly be hurt by climate change, you will do much more good.
	And that's sort of the general thing I get from Pion Lambo.
	Yeah, and I have a huge amount of respect for the guy for bringing some basic economic analysis to the issue of how society spends its resources.
	Now, I mean, like Sam Harris, he's still into how should the government spend our money.
	Well, it would be more rational and better for people if the government spend its money this way, which is, of course, overlooking the crime of stealing it in the first place.
	But, you know, that's a lot to ask from some guy raised in the socialist paradise of Denmark.
	I at least do respect for the fact that he's bringing some economic analysis to it because what that does is it reveals the motives of those who are alarming people for money.
	Scaring people for money is the oldest trick in the book.
	It's the oldest con game in the book.
	Scaring people for money is what a massive section of human society is all devoted to.
	These are just the new priests, right?
	The priests used to scare people with hell, and now we're just being scared with climate change.
	Climate change really began to emerge after the fall of the Soviet threat, after the fall of communism.
	And... That's because you needed something new to scare the population with.
	Something new with which they would excuse the threats against them, right?
	And the theft from them.
	And you'll notice, of course, as the war on terror has arisen, climate change in the U.S. has become less of an issue because now they have something new.
	To scare the money out of people's asses.
	And so it's just a new priestly class.
	The invention of enemies and then bribing people to keep you safe from all of these enemies.
	Almost all of those enemies are created by the people who are...
	It's like a guy pees in your water system and then says, I can sell you a filter.
	Except the pee is actually real, right?
	The climate change and heaven and hell seem to be much more dubious.
	But yeah, look, scaring people for money is just the oldest gig in the book because we are...
	Gamblers by nature, and we will spend a certain amount of money just to avoid absolute catastrophe.
	Tell me something real quick.
	Martin Luther, not the I Have a Dream guy, the guy who founded the Lutheran Christian tradition.
	Those letters where they could give money to pay for their sins, what were they called in English?
	Oh, they're called indulgences.
	Indulgences. Yeah.
	Yeah, I know what they're called in Danish, but in English they're called indulgences.
	So people would pay indulgences to pay for their sins.
	Yeah, just for those who don't know, the basic theory was that Jesus and the saints created more good works than they needed to in order to get into heaven.
	So to get into heaven, you need 100 double-plus good units, and Jesus, of course, had a billion, and the excess resides with the Pope and the Catholic clergy, and you could buy these excess double-plus good virtue credits Uh, on a cash down or a slow payment system from the church in order to wash away your sins.
	And actually you could eventually, uh, what happened was you could buy them in advance.
	So you could say, listen, I'm going to go have a dirty weekend with my mistress.
	Uh, you know, that's, you know, minus 50 double plus good points.
	I need to buy 50. Here's, you know, two gilder and now you can wave your little thing over me and I'm going to go and do this guilt free.
	And so that's, that's sort of the general theory and what happened with these indulgences.
	Um, To me, it's no different from the government saying, we've got to protect you from all these criminals and anarchists and chaos, and so give us all this money or else, right?
	Yeah, that's exactly the same.
	So anyway, if we go back to falsifiability, I also find it difficult that many times when I see people arguing politically, they never bring up this issue.
	They say, all right, Assuming everything you say is true, well, it's the fault of viability.
	That is like an argument that never comes up.
	Sorry, there's a simple reason for that, which is...
	People don't want to disprove government programs because it will expose the degree to which people are controlled by violence.
	Right? So people, like if people say, okay, the welfare state is, let's just say you argue from effect.
	You say, well, the welfare state has done really bad things to poor people.
	And I think, you know, it really has.
	The educational standards are far worse.
	Their opportunities to escape poverty are far worse.
	The intergenerational poverty is far worse.
	Single parenthood is much worse, which is a huge predictor of criminality and other forms of social pathology and destruction.
	Even if you just argue from effect and say the welfare state is clearly a shit sandwich covered with excrement, Well, people don't want to come to that conclusion because the next logical thing is to say, well, we need to change the welfare state or get rid of the welfare state.
	And as soon as people accept that, then they will recognize that it can't be done.
	And that will expose the fact that it's not there to help the poor.
	It's simply a power grab.
	It's there to enslave the poor.
	And people don't want to argue against the state because then they'll come right up against the fact that the state is completely unresponsive to them and they recognize that they're tax cattle and they just want to avoid that to keep a shred of illusory pride in their shrunken chests.
	Hey listen, this reminds me so much about this kind of libertarian man in Denmark who wrote a book called The Loser Factory about the Danish welfare system.
	I think you should have him on your show.
	Yeah, shoot me his contact.
	I'd be happy. It's so funny you say a libertarian guy in Denmark.
	There's only one. I guess there's two if you're calling.
	Listen, I want to make sure I have enough room for the other callers.
	I hope you don't mind if we jump. But I really wanted to thank you for the scientific stuff.
	I always love science theory.
	And best of luck on your exam, Mark.
	I wrote his name in the chat box.
	Oh, thank you so much. Yeah.
	Well, it was nice, the first call.
	Yeah. I'll listen for the rest of the show.
	So take care. Alright, but don't forget to study.
	Thank you. Coolest name ever, Asgard.
	I feel named for less than some sort of deity who should be wearing some sort of, I feel, gold lederhosen and carrying thunderbolts.
	That's my mental image, which is entirely the same as your mental image of me living in an igloo.
	Anyway, thank you so much.
	James, next caller? Yeah, up next we have Jeff.
	Jeff, if you're ready, come on by.
	I'm ready. Hi, Steph.
	How are you doing? Hi, Jeff. How are you doing?
	Thanks for taking my call.
	So, I'll just get right into it.
	I've made some pretty bad choices and now I'm in a situation and I'm wondering if you can help me with what I should do to make the best out of it.
	And I apologize if this is a little bit on the heavy side, but yeah, I know I've been married for seven years and I find myself single now with my wife, my ex-wife living with my best friend from high school.
	So it's kind of like one of those things.
	Ouch, ouch, ouch.
	Yeah, yeah. We haven't been divorced yet.
	Oh, so you're separated, but she's living with this guy.
	Was this an affair that began before you separated?
	And it did again before we separated, so...
	I'm sorry, it did or didn't? It did.
	I'm so sorry, you just caught up there.
	Could you say that one more time? It did.
	Oh, I'm so sorry for that.
	Oh man, that's rough. That is rough.
	It is. It's tough, but I mean...
	My intent is not to call and bitch about her or whatever else.
	I mean, because she's going to do what she's going to do and it's absolutely evil and I get that.
	I have two questions and this is just what's going to make your heart scream more than anything else.
	I've got three kids with her and one of them is four, one of them is two, and one of them is one.
	Obviously, she's not a great person, and the guy she's with is even worse.
	I stopped associating with him years ago because of the kind of person he was.
	Obviously, my wife being attracted to him just shows what kind of person she is and just the whole situation.
	It just kind of hit me where it really hurts.
	My question is two-fold.
	One, what do I do about these kids?
	Because I know, I know, I know, I know that these people are not raising my kids properly.
	I've been kind of kicked out of the house.
	We don't have any custody arrangements, but I just don't know what to do.
	Right. Well, I mean, first of all, holy crap.
	I mean, that is a serious mess, and I feel for you, man.
	I really do. That is hard on every conceivable level.
	I mean, the affair, the breakup of the marriage, the fact that your kids may not be being treated right, as you say, by your wife and this guy from high school that you knew.
	I mean, that's rough on every conceivable level.
	I'm mostly concerned about the kids, so...
	Because, I mean, I'm an adult.
	I can, you know, go to therapy if I have to, which I've done some stuff like that.
	But, I mean, I can handle myself.
	You know, my kids, they're right in the middle of all this.
	First thing I'd like to do is just understand, I mean, obviously it sounds like your wife and yourself are in very different places in terms of emotional maturity.
	And, you know, I'm actually just going by what you say.
	I have no reason to disbelieve you.
	What changed from the time that you were courting, engaged, and married to now in terms of self-growth or self-knowledge?
	It sounds like you're really working out a concern for the kids and your wife is not so much, so what changed?
	You kind of started out that divergent, right?
	Well, you know, I got introduced to philosophy and I think that was a huge, huge factor in I mean, when I met my wife, I was not the person I am now.
	I'm a better person. And I have improved my life a thousand-fold since then, and she has not.
	In fact, she's kind of got digressed in hers.
	And I think that put a strain on us, honestly.
	Because, you know, and she just was, and still is extremely shallow.
	And, you know, I could not sit down and have a conversation with her, if that makes any sense.
	No, I understand. Yeah, because if she's immature, then she's going to be volatile and reactionary.
	There's going to be ad hominems and escalations and...
	It seems like the more into philosophy I would get, the more reactionary she would get, if that makes any sense.
	Yeah, look, I mean, I think it's a pretty well-known phenomenon that if one person grows, the other person grows or the relationship tends to crater.
	I mean, that's the risk.
	And I've certainly talked about it a bunch of times in the show, that if you're going to take the path of philosophy, you know, it's going to frack with your relationships six ways from Sunday.
	And you will, I hope, of course, in the long run, you get better relationships and blah, blah, blah.
	But it is, you know, it's like if two people are drunks and one person quits drinking...
	I mean, what's going to happen to that relationship?
	Well, either the other person's going to quit drinking, yay, fantastic, or they're going to keep drinking, in which case, what's going to happen to the relationship?
	So, I sympathize, I understand, I've certainly heard it before.
	Sorry, go ahead. And so, like I'm saying, you know, it's...
	I'm not... I mean, obviously, I am concerned with myself, and, you know, I have really looked at philosophy on this.
	You know, I've got a different lens I'm looking at it, you know, and...
	Obviously, it's a horrible thing, but like I said, I can handle that, you know?
	It's just my kids, my kids, my kids.
	It's like, I don't know, because I know, I mean, I can't trust that they're not being abused.
	In fact, emotionally they are because, I mean, that whole thing is just abusive by nature, you know?
	So how do I counteract that?
	Well, of course, you know, I don't mean to alarm you, but I mean, these are just the facts that children who live with a non-biological caregiver, like the boyfriend of a wife or whatever, there's not the same bond.
	The odds of maltreatment go up hugely.
	Yeah. Well, and like I say, you know, I mean, she's crazy to think that this guy's gonna raise her kids.
	I mean, I was just...
	I mean, for example, I went over there a couple days ago to pick him up, and we changed the car seats over, and it was a little bit harder to put the car seat in backwards like it should go, you know?
	And so this guy was insisting, well, just put it in straight, you know?
	It'll be okay. It's like, no, dude, these are my kids, you know?
	I want... Yeah, the kid has no neck strength.
	They can't stop, you know, they can't control their neck if I hit something.
	Yeah. He didn't care, you know what I mean?
	Because they're not his kids.
	Right. Wow.
	So, you know, so that was kind of my first question.
	My second question is, how do I avoid this in the future?
	How do I, you know, keep the connection with a future wife or relationship?
	All right. Well, look, the second one is easier than the first.
	Okay. So we'll start with that.
	At least in my idiot amateur opinion, it's easier than the first.
	Okay, so if I knew you eight years ago before you got married to your wife, and I just met you guys socially or whatever, and we just, you know, had dinner or whatever, or went for a walk or went to look at some fireworks, whatever, right?
	How would I know?
	What signs would there be that this was going to be trouble?
	You know, I don't know.
	The shallowness, probably.
	I don't know.
	I know that's probably not a good answer.
	If you don't know those signs, then it's going to be hard to avoid reproducing it, right?
	Yeah, well, of course.
	Of course. You know, we rushed in.
	We rushed into it.
	And so that's probably a big factor.
	She was really young. And, you know, neither one of us had real much world experience, but that doesn't really change, you know, your morality, you know?
	I mean, world experience doesn't make you moral or amoral.
	Well, but people who get married older tend to stay married longer.
	Younger marriages are at a statistical disadvantage.
	Again, that's not absolute, of course, there's exceptions, but youth is a risk factor for the longevity of a marriage.
	So, okay. So, no young'uns.
	That's number one, right?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.
	Okay, so the second thing is if I were to say, so, you know, tell me a little bit about your family, what would she say?
	What would she say? Well, okay, that's interesting.
	You know, nothing terribly, terribly abusive, but her family, her father got cancer and lived with it for 20 years, and every day she'd come home thinking that her father was going to die.
	You know, within the next...
	And I think that took a lot more of an emotional toll on her than she would like to acknowledge.
	She was pretty close, shut down, emotionally, in general, anyway.
	And that's pretty much...
	You know, she had a sister that they were pretty bad to each other, too.
	But... You know, and...
	As far as my family, I took that quiz that you had, it was a while ago, where negative childhood events...
	Oh, the ACE study.
	Yeah, I took that quiz and I had like a one.
	Like, honestly, my childhood was pretty good.
	Pretty, pretty good.
	So... Yeah.
	But... And I know...
	Okay, so look, the first thing you'd say is that she had this challenge, of course, her father being sick for 20 years.
	I mean, that's, as you say, it's an emotional toll.
	But my gut, which means nothing, right?
	I had some waffles for breakfast.
	But it also says that when people do stuff, right?
	So when they have an affair...
	When they have three young kids, thus directly jeopardizing...
	I mean, that's rolling a grenade into the marriage tent, right?
	There's no question of that. I mean, there's no way...
	And not only the marriage, but the family.
	Yes, marriage and the family.
	You're growing up... Yeah, you're putting everything in question with your kids and with your spouse.
	No, no, I got it. So what I'm saying is that kind of selfishness, like my pleasure in the affair is more important than my children's happiness, the stability of my marriage, my long-term family, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
	That is such a fundamental level of selfishness.
	Yeah. Narcissistic behavior, if I can use that in an amateur sense.
	There must be some template for that in her life.
	You don't just sort of start speaking that language out of nowhere.
	There must be some template in her life where that behavior doesn't seem weird.
	Yeah. And that's the question I've had.
	And that's why it kind of came out of nowhere.
	To that degree, I realized that there was something that was missing for her, but I just didn't realize it was that much, and I don't know where it came from.
	Well, and I can't answer that, obviously, I don't know, but this is what I would think about.
	Say, what were the signs that, you know, that kind of selfish behavior, that doesn't just, I mean, unless she has a brain tumor or a head injury, I don't think it just comes out of nowhere.
	I don't think people just wake up and say, hey, I'm, you know, going to go from being a kind, caring, considerate person to somebody who detonates my family for the sake of self-care.
	There's one more little factor in all this.
	Um... I grew up religious and she grew up religious as well.
	And about two to three years ago, actually about four years ago when I discovered philosophy, I became an atheist.
	And she did not at that point, but she did end in her religion for pretty much not knowing or caring.
	And that's pretty much when the huge shift.
	That's when she started drinking.
	Oh, so she was like, I'll be good for God, and if I don't believe in God, I don't have to be good, right?
	Yeah, and I mean, she ran out and started getting these weird piercings, and she, you know, she started smoking and just kind of going crazy at that point.
	So obviously there's a correlation between—I don't think that losing a religion is going to make somebody— Well, it didn't make you bad, right?
	What's that? It didn't make you bad, but of course the danger of religion is, for a lot of people, it's an all-or-nothing proposition.
	I'll be good for God, and if I can't be good, If I can't believe in God, then there's no reason to be good.
	And this is, of course, where a lot of the fear and suspicion of atheists, they don't believe in God.
	Well, they must be monstrous, right?
	Because we're only good for the sake of God.
	Even the words are one letter apart.
	But again, there's something in her history in which she wanted or had a template for that kind of moral philosophy.
	Nihilism. Because, look, I mean, this stuff is not going to make her happy in the long run.
	I mean, there's no question of that, at least in my mind, that this kind of stuff, you know, trading in you for some low-rent guy who doesn't care about her kids, detonating her marriage, this is not going to make her happy in the long run.
	And that's going to be realized when they break up.
	Because, you know, I mean, she's using him as heroine, obviously.
	But... When they break up, I'm not going back to her.
	So, I mean, be assured of that.
	It's just not going to happen.
	Well, just to move on, because we've got other callers, so you can mull that stuff over, but you need to start looking for the signs.
	It's somewhere in her history. In my opinion, there's some way in which this language came easy to her.
	The first place to look is the behavior of her mom.
	The second place to look is...
	It's dad, third place to look at siblings.
	If you can't find anything there, then if you can have a conversation with her about it, find out more, great.
	But otherwise, if there's no signs and then it just came out of nowhere, that to me would be pretty unprecedented.
	But look for those places.
	Now, as far as what you can do with your kids, Look, the first thing I want to say is I don't know.
	I mean, I can just give you a few ideas, but I genuinely don't know.
	And that's the case with a lot of stuff I talk about.
	Obviously, you care about your kids.
	Obviously, you are really, really concerned about their well-being.
	And kudos to you. Fantastic to you.
	Wonderful to you. I'm sorry that it's a hard curveball for you as a father to hit, but congratulations on taking that level of interest.
	Obviously, if there's maltreatment, you have to report it.
	You have to get The state involved.
	If there's direct physical or emotional abuse, then you have to.
	I mean, you simply have to. Yeah, of course.
	Because children can't be exposed to that, and that's the only tool we have, right?
	So that's sort of my opinion that you have to.
	Now, the second thing, of course, is you need to make sure that you have an open line of communication with your children.
	I know they're pretty young and all of that, but...
	They need to know that they can come to you if they're being maltreated.
	Because if they're being maltreated on the other side of the fence, there's going to be a secrecy rule.
	And so you need to keep the lines of communication open with them to make sure that they feel as comfortable as possible coming to you with anything that is occurring.
	And, you know, if there is maltreatment, then you can, of course, get the man out of the house.
	You may be able to get custody.
	There's lots of things, if that's going to occur.
	Again, I don't know the laws.
	I'm certainly no lawyer, but my understanding is that that's how it can work.
	But the key thing, of course, is...
	To keep open communication and, of course, to shield the children from adult situations that they can't understand.
	You know, why did you split up?
	Irreconcilable differences in that I kept my legs crossed.
	You know, whatever it is, you can't sort of give them the real reasons, unfortunately, until they get much older.
	And that's tough because, you know, you don't want to...
	So you have to keep an open line of communication at the same time you don't feel more than they can handle emotionally.
	Sorry? I don't want to be dishonest with them either.
	And that's a whole other subject.
	I get that. I'm not telling my daughter about this dread disease called cancer at the moment.
	Am I being dishonest?
	No. It's just that there's age-appropriate stuff to reveal to them.
	Discretion is not dishonesty.
	So I sort of wanted to mention that.
	Just keep those lines of communication.
	Have as much fun with them as possible.
	If you really want to Get them to talk to you, create as different an environment as what you suspect or fear may be occurring in the other house with you.
	So have as much fun, have as open a communication as possible.
	They will then begin to gravitate towards you more because children gravitate to that which is more honest, true and pleasurable.
	And if there's anything untoward going on, they'll be much more likely to let you know at which point, if that's occurring, then you can take the appropriate action.
	But yeah, I'm sorry that this is a huge amount of stress to bring into you as a dad of such a tender age.
	I appreciate the empathy, and I know you've got to move on to another caller.
	I just want to ask one more, real quick, yet-to-know type question.
	And that is, can I, by myself, raise my kids to be philosophically sound?
	You mean if you were the sole parent?
	Is that possible?
	Is that possible for me to...
	I'm just really...
	Yeah. You mean if you were the sole parent, or if you share custody?
	If I share custody, I mean, is it possible for me to overcome the negative influences that they have?
	Well, I will tell you this, that you're the best chance that they have to overcome the negative influences that they get.
	I mean, I don't know, I can't predict the future, but you sure as hell are the best chance they've got if you're philosophically inclined.
	Is it going to cause trouble for them sometimes?
	Yeah, I mean, mom's telling them one thing and you're telling them something else.
	Okay. I just need that kind of reassurance, I guess.
	And I really appreciate that.
	Well, listen, you drop me a line if you can.
	Let me know how it's going. And, you know, best of luck to you.
	And, you know, I'm doing calls with parents who are interested in at least some of the approaches I've worked out philosophically.
	So if there's anything I can do to help along those lines, just let me know.
	I appreciate it. All right.
	Have a good day. All right.
	Take care. All right. Bye.
	All right. Hello, Happy New Year to Stefan.
	Happy New Year to you too, Steve. How are you doing? Very well, thank you.
	How are you? Beautiful, thanks.
	Great, great, great to hear.
	Thanks for taking the call and just wanted to follow up with a call-in show from a couple of weeks ago where you were very generous with your time talking to me about issues with my beating up my little brother when I was younger.
	Yes, I recall. I recall.
	How are you doing? I'm well, thanks.
	And I just wanted to just do a quick follow-up with regard to that call.
	And I munched through the shit sandwich a little bit.
	And I found...
	One of the things that you said was like, you know...
	I did have some choices at that time when I was younger where I could have taken my brother for a walk, you know, or at the playground or something and said, hey, listen, you know, what's going on here in the family is not right.
	It's really bad. And we need to be comrades.
	We need to become a unit to protect ourselves, to help ourselves get through this really toxic familial situation together.
	And that made a lot of sense to me.
	And I'm not sure...
	I gave it a lot of thought and had an opportunity actually to discuss it in one of the meetup groups, which I'm grateful for and I wanted to shout out to everybody who's taking time and energy and effort to come out to the meetup groups.
	And the...
	One of the things that I arrived at was that I didn't feel that it was safe for me to say to my little brother, you know, who was four, five, six years old or seven years old, you know, throughout the years where, you know, I was beating him up and he was...
	I was being beat up and everything.
	It was a mess and it just didn't seem like it was an option.
	I was afraid... That he would have gone to my parents and say, hey, you know, Big Brother is coming to me saying, we got to go against you.
	We have to team up against the parents.
	And he was being coddled and protected by them.
	And I'm not...
	My concern about this...
	This...
	I feel like I'm trying to let myself off the hook.
	No, I really get that.
	That would be scary. Because you're saying, let's unite.
	And he's like, wait a minute.
	I have a pretty good relative to you.
	And of course, if you say this after you've beaten him up a bunch of times, then he may retaliate by going to your parents to get you beaten up.
	That may be his vengeance, so to speak.
	Or at least, you know, whether it was real or imagined, it was certainly a concern of mine.
	Yeah. Well, I don't think it's imagined.
	I mean, I think it's a very powerful thought, and it's a very strong incentive.
	Now, just in terms of the creativity, and I know we're sort of putting a lot of brain juice into your relatively young skull in memory, but there are alternatives to, you know, hey, bro, it's you and me against them.
	There are other ways of Of reaching out and creating solidarity without necessarily implicating the parents, if that makes sense?
	Yeah, it does. So what was other things that you could have said?
	Oh gosh, things like...
	Maybe just trying to explain to him my fears.
	Maybe I could have spoken to him about how I was feeling bad about beating him up and that it was something I really didn't want to do.
	I feel that I'm in the middle of a difficult situation.
	Where I was being repeatedly reminded that I needed to take care of him and be mindful of him and watch him all the time.
	And that I didn't know how to take care of him.
	And that if he did something wrong, I really didn't know how else to protect him.
	But by beating him up...
	I mean, I don't know. It's...
	I'm kind of...
	Well, do you know what?
	I mean, that's a great speech, and I appreciate the sentiment behind it, but do you know what's missing from that?
	It's hard to see.
	It's hard to see.
	Do you know what's missing?
	It wasn't my job.
	Thank you.
	No. To raise him or to raise myself.
	That's not what's missing. That I was treating him the way that I was being treated?
	That's not what's missing either.
	This is tough. I know.
	It's annoying. It's annoying.
	I'm so sorry. No, no, no.
	no it's cool it's cool I'm like and given what you've told me about your upbringing this doesn't I mean it's completely obvious to why it would be missing and you'll certainly kick yourself when I mention it but it what it is is an indication of of what you didn't experience as a child Right. I had no reference point.
	Can I say, or do you want to guess?
	No, go ahead. Let it rip.
	We've got to heartbreak at 4 o'clock.
	Alright, so what's missing is any questions about his experience.
	Everything you talked about was your thoughts and your experience.
	My, I, me.
	The way that you create solidarity with someone is you ask, Him, hey, how you doing?
	Yeah, right, what's going on?
	What's your experience? What's going on with you?
	I mean, what was that like for you?
	Right, right. But you wanted to explain yourself, which is alienating to somebody, particularly somebody who's been harmed, because everything sounds like an excuse.
	I'm not saying it was. But what's missing, of course, is the curiosity about the lived experience of the other.
	Right. And even then, and again, it's not a criticism.
	I mean, I mean this with huge empathy, but then when I asked you what was missing, you started to talk about yourself more.
	Well, I didn't have a template, and what's missing is I wasn't talking enough about this to do with me.
	But if you're on the receiving end, and I know that you were, because you got this language from someone, it tells me that you were not on the receiving end of empathy, in that you don't even know when it's missing.
	Because I was saying, well, how would you create solidarity?
	well, then it was all about you, and that's simply because you have a template called No Curiosity About the Other, right?
	Right.
	Because I was trying to place myself, you know, in that backyard situation where it could have been my little brother and me, you know, just privately.
	And I think that's what would have come out of my mouth at that time.
	I agree. And I think that's probably what would have come out of your mouth at the moment.
	And I think last time we talked, if I remember rightly, you had mentioned that you had tried to talk about things with your brother, but it didn't go very well, or he just brushed it off?
	And this is why, right?
	That would explain why.
	Yeah. Oh, so it's more about his needs, right?
	Because I'm going to use a strong word here, and I certainly don't mean this morally.
	I simply mean this in terms of self-knowledge.
	Violence against an other is a murder of the other in your mind.
	It is an erasure of the other in your mind.
	You can't hurt someone you empathize with.
	Because you feel their pain.
	I don't know if you've ever watched these endless piñata swinging, groin kicking video shows where people send in their I can't watch that stuff.
	I see someone take a shot to the nads and I'm like, I feel it.
	And you can't...
	I mean, this is why I'd be terrible in a fistfight.
	Because I would feel the other person's nose crack.
	That's something that bothers me sometimes.
	I wish I had less of it sometimes.
	But you can't hurt somebody if you have empathy for them.
	Fundamentally. I mean, that's almost tautological, right?
	But that's sort of fundamental. And so if you're able to hurt someone, it's because they do not exist in your mind.
	Right. Other than as a thing.
	You know, like I take a shit and flush the toilet.
	I don't think about whether the toilet wants to eat my shit.
	I don't think about the feelings of the toilet.
	It's just a thing to me to dump my poison, right?
	It's what's done in warfare propaganda.
	You dehumanize the enemy.
	Oh yeah, dehumanize the enemy.
	Otherwise, you have to kill the enemy in the mind.
	You have to make the enemy, whoever the enemy is, you have to make the enemy like a virus.
	If I get an infection and I take some antibiotics, I don't sit there and say, wow, I really should try and talk it out with these bacteria.
	I'm like, die, die, die.
	I want you all to die.
	And quickly too, right?
	I want my antibodies to kill the cold virus.
	I want that barrier to maintain itself.
	This is why they talked about Jews as lice and vermin in Germany in the 30s, because they needed people to view them as poison to be cut out, as an infection to be cured.
	You can't hurt someone, even a relatively small degree, you can't hurt someone if they are alive as a person in your mind.
	If you have the fundamental UPB of me human, they human.
	Me, ow, they ow.
	That synchronicity, that commonality.
	Because that's what solidarity means.
	Solidarity is simply a recognition that what hurts for you hurts for others.
	But you have to be isolated in a narcissistic universe of I, me, me, I. And I don't mean this critically.
	I'm simply talking about the template that you grew up with in my way of thinking.
	You have to be unbelievably fundamentally isolated and violence isolates staggeringly, right?
	Because you not only have to kill off people in your mind in order to hurt them, but you have to kill off people who might point that out.
	And that's why people who are violent tend to end up in these circles of dead souls, right?
	And again, I'm using very strong language here, and I don't mean to alarm you or give you a starring role in a zombie movie or anything like that.
	I just want to point out that when I talked about solidarity, you talked about your feelings and your thoughts and your experiences like you would...
	You know, but you weren't, I wanted to point out what's missing, not because I don't think you can do it, but because I think you can do it, but you haven't noticed what's missing.
	And what's tragic, of course, is that tells me in your life, I talk about this isolation, I really mean it seriously.
	Steve, what's happened in your life is you are surrounded by people who can't tell you this.
	Otherwise you would know. Because it's not hard.
	Once somebody points it out, you're like, didn't you slap your head?
	You're like, oh, right, of course.
	I could have had a V8. I could have had some empathy, right?
	But it tells me who's around you.
	Right.
	And I hope you understand that you're not alone in this at all.
	This is the human template in the 21st century.
	It's been the human template for almost all of history.
	I would say for all of history. And the degree to which we're able to notice this is the degree to which we're able to make strides towards a reasonably decent and just and peaceful society.
	The million Iraqis who've been killed in this invasion They don't exist in American consciousness.
	There's not even a gravestone.
	They have to become un-people in order to be killed without remorse.
	And they're clearly innocent.
	I mean, it's not their fault that they had a dictator foisted upon them by the CIA who armed him.
	It's not their fault. And their deaths...
	You know, collateral damage?
	You know, it sounds like you bumped the icing on a birthday cake.
	Yeah, right. Well, this is very helpful because it's been...
	The call has been really helpful and I really appreciate it.
	It's... It's given me a clearer understanding of a lot of the anxiety that I feel in addition to a lot of other stuff.
	If I do an intervention, if I'm seeing kids being yelled at or abused on the streets or the subway or whatever, there's a part of me that feels like a hypocrite when I do it.
	And I think this is what it is.
	I'm feeling like a hypocrite because on one hand I'm like, oh hey, excuse me, please don't.
	I think here's some tools for you to help you be a better parent.
	Well, you know, I'm sorry to interrupt, but you, you know, people ask, not just me, but this is a huge problematic question is how do you intervene in situations of child abuse?
	I mean, it's hard.
	But what you really need to do that successfully, I think, is you need to have empathy for the child.
	And do that which is best.
	If you have empathy for what the child needs, then I don't think you can do much wrong in that situation.
	But if you're like, you know, that's an asshole parent, then that's just going in angry.
	That's not having empathy for what the child needs.
	And so I would say, yeah, avoid...
	Like, until you've, you know, felt the hole in your empathy muscle and worked it out a little bit so that it's got some fiber and gristle and strength, yeah, I think it's not good.
	Because if it's not out of empathy for the child and the child's needs...
	You know, the child does not need the abuser to be screamed at, right?
	Because they just know that's going to roll downhill, right?
	Right, right.
	The child needs to see somebody who's dealing with a situation of conflict in a different way than the abuser is.
	I feel I've been able to do that.
	Wow, that's great. That's fantastic.
	Thank you. It hasn't been 100% successful at all times because sometimes you get a lot of anger.
	No matter what you say, you'll get a lot of blowback.
	Yeah, because the perspective generally is my children are my goddamn property and it's like coming up and telling me to wash my damn car.
	Screw you, it's my car.
	I'll wash it when I damn well please.
	I try to hand out information when there's no escalation going on, so then the child won't be blamed in any way, shape, or form.
	Not to drag this out, but it's clear to me now that the gap that I'm sensing A hypocritical gap is that...
	No, no, no. No, no.
	Don't give yourself that label.
	That's not fair. It's not hypocritical because you didn't see it.
	I mean, is a man who's colorblind hypocritical for not knowing the difference between the same shades of red and blue?
	Right, right. Am I hypocritical for not understanding Mandarin?
	Hypocrisy requires knowledge.
	So, you know, don't...
	So, it's funny, you know, like I ask you for empathy for the others and then you start criticizing yourself.
	That's not, you know, that's just tilting the seesaw from one side to the other, right?
	Yeah. How about empathy for both?
	Right. Yeah, that's definitely something that makes sense.
	Thank you for that. Well, I'm listening to your child, right?
	Don't call me hypocritical for something we're not allowed to see.
	I mean, empathy, it requires exposure.
	It requires two things, which are both very complex and challenging.
	The development of empathy requires exposure to empathetic behavior.
	In other words, it requires that the child receive empathy.
	But then it also requires that the child...
	have empathy expected of the child, right?
	Because if all you do is tend to the child needs, you're kind of showing empathy for the child, but that doesn't cause the child to do anything other than know what empathy feels like on the receiving end.
	But we want to know what empathy feels like on the giving end too.
	Right.
	And I sort of talked about this in philosophical parenting recently that we're trying to, to really establish the reality that we have needs, Christina and I as adults, that Isabella needs to sort of begin to become cognizant of.
	It's a, you know, it's a tricky, tricky takeoff to, to the, you know, of the sky city of empathy.
	And if you didn't get empathy either modeled towards you in terms of people getting interested, there's just no way that you would know this.
	And furthermore, my guess is that The first thing that you talked about on this call was you said, if I were to be empathetic to my brother, I would end up being punished.
	And what I think is very true about that is certainly if you approached it without empathy, I think that would be very true.
	But also, empathy is punished in a destructive household.
	In a dysfunctional household, empathy is punished.
	Because it shows vulnerability and it also, you know, people who are Abusers are incredibly sensitive to hierarchy and incredibly sensitive to anything that they feel is, you know, oh, you think you're better than me?
	You know, that kind of stuff, right? Well, if you ask that question, I pretty much am already by definition, right?
	But empathy is so not only were you not taught the language, but you would have been punished, I bet, for even trying to learn it.
	And so, please, you know, you've got to be gentle with yourself about the realities of your history.
	And, and, last thing, and, and, and, and.
	And it's not like this is really taught much in the culture, right?
	Right. I mean, children are stuffed into these terrible schools because they're profit centers.
	They're crops for adults to get summers off and, you know, 40% more pay than the average American.
	This is teachers, right? And if the children don't conform, right, as I said before, there's no such thing as a teaching disability.
	There's only a learning disability.
	It's only the child who has the problem learning.
	It's never the teacher or the system that has a problem teaching.
	And so the children who don't fit in, is empathy shown towards them?
	Is anything even asked about what the children would like, what they would prefer, what works for them?
	No. Fucking drug them to the gills.
	Shrink their brain mass.
	You know, lend them to be susceptible to psychosis and near-permanent disabilities at times.
	Get them on disability sometimes for the rest of their lives to the tune of...
	Is it close to a thousand people a day in America sliding into the permanent disability roles for mental illness?
	I mean, the brutality that is shown towards our children at every conceivable level is staggering.
	I mean, we drug them, we box them up in these ridiculous indoctrination camps, we bore them, and then we sell them off to creditors for the sake of consuming and appeasing angry adults in the here and now.
	It's unbelievably brutal what we do to our kids.
	So the idea that you would see mirrored in society something different from what you experience in your family is a fantasy.
	Nobody taught you this language at all, I bet, because it's just not spoken.
	And we speak it in very abstract senses and we all tear up to Whitney Houston songs about how precious and beautiful children are.
	But actually putting that shit into practice would turn society upside down, you know, like a...
	Demolition Derby Rollover on fire.
	And people just don't want to do that yet.
	So, you know, please, please, please don't start self-attacking for not learning the language of empathy when you weren't taught it by your priests, you weren't taught it by your teachers, you weren't taught it by your parents, you weren't taught it by your culture, you weren't taught it by your artists, and you were punished if you were to show a shred of it.
	So, please, gentle, gentle, gentle with that stuff because that's not fair.
	I appreciate that. Thank you.
	You're welcome. I mean, I'm thrilled at what you're thinking about.
	I think it's fucking magnificent.
	And I think this is This is strong.
	This is courageous. This is what it means to be manly or womanly in a truly mature sense, which is to work from first principles, say, screw it, to all of the crap that was force fed me as a child.
	I'm going to go with what is true and what is real and what is valuable and what is honest and what is virtuous.
	And your courage in this area is a complete force of nature.
	And I think you should just, you know...
	You can maybe self-criticize yourself in 20 years, if you want, if you haven't achieved some decent stuff, but right now, nothing but praise, hosannas, flowers and balloons, and maybe something a little more manly.
	I don't know, a black horse with a cannon.
	I don't know. I appreciate that.
	But no, I mean, this is what heroism is to me.
	Well, on that note, how has your experience of the call with me been so far?
	Oh, it's been great. And how's yours?
	I mean, I know I've talked a lot, but what's your experience been?
	It's been great. It's been really very helpful, and I really appreciate it.
	And I'm hoping to...
	Move forward with this, especially for the new year.
	It's a great time for new things.
	And green shoots coming up through the cracks.
	Beautiful. And I'm seeing the call.
	It's getting close to 4 o'clock.
	I know that James has got a split.
	Yeah, James has got a mani-pedi that he has to get to, and I think followed by a shiatsu massage.
	And so, you know, obviously there are priorities, and obviously philosophy needs to bow to James's bottomless vanity and need for personal comfort.
	No, I'm kidding! I've said something very important.
	And as always, James, I worship at your intensely well-groomed feet for doing this every Sunday.
	So thank you so much. You would know about my feet stuff.
	I feel I'm kissing them on a regular basis, but perhaps I'm missing.
	But yeah, thanks everyone. And thanks everyone so much.
	Had a reasonable donation month for December, which is great because I know it's an expensive month for everyone.
	If you did get, you know, 20 bucks from Aunt Nellie, if you can photocopy it and send it to me.
	If I don't get money, I at least like to look at it and pretend at freedominradio.com forward slash donate.
	Thank you. Thank you everybody so much.
	Thanks, James. As always, it is unbelievably great to be able to just focus on What I need to say, my needs, my preferences, rather than have to manage the call.
	I really, really appreciate that. Have a super week, everyone.
	I will talk to you soon. Alright, you're very welcome.

▲