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Feb. 3, 2012 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
57:15
2087 Taking Agnostics on Faith - A Dating Conversation

A listener confronts the romantic bias against atheism, with tragic results...

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Time Text
Alright, how's everything going?
It's going fine. What can I do for you?
This is actually my first time using Skype, so I'm just getting acquainted with the system.
But like I had wrote in my email, I had discussed with you how I had recently broken up with a girl I was seeing.
And the reason she stated that we had broken up was because I was an atheist.
Well, let me just give you some background on the situation.
It's actually pretty funny.
I met this girl while I was working.
I'm in grad school right now, and I work for the university.
And initially, she had pursued me.
We would pass each other by, catch glances in the hallway, that kind of thing.
And she had Come up and, you know, introduced herself to me, which to me was just kind of like, I was like, oh, wow, you know, she seems, you know, pretty confident and, you know, come up and do that.
So, you know, I just kind of went with that.
And we went on our first date and during that first exchange, I decided to, you know, I decided to really Take the RTR approach to things and really just, you know, really just having a genuine, honest conversation and like, you know, really discuss myself and just be an open book for the most part.
And, you know, that went surprisingly well.
You know, none of my, you know, as we were conversating, none of my alarm systems Oh, it was a good sign?
Yeah, it was a really good sign, actually.
She seemed to open up, and I didn't get any indication that she was lying or was just kind of turned off by the conversation.
And things were just flowing really well.
This is during the first date.
And so... The first date was actually a lunch date, and we spent the entire time talking about our different things.
I even brought up the subject of philosophy.
I talked about how I got into philosophy and how religion didn't really work for me.
So this is something that was kind of implicitly stated Sorry, religion doesn't, that was how you phrased it, religion doesn't really work for you?
Yeah. And go on.
Why am I forcing you?
It's like a glove that doesn't fit you, but might fit other people.
It's a pretty subjectivist way of putting it, right?
Yeah, that's true.
Because philosophy isn't about what works for you, right?
Yeah. It's about what's true and what's false, right?
Anyway, I mean, I understand.
You know, if you really like the woman, you want to sort of maybe cross that bridge kind of slowly, right?
Rather than saying, you know, I can't accept religion because it's false.
And I'm not saying that's necessarily the way you'd want to put it, but you put it in kind of a very soft way, if that makes any sense?
I think so. I think for me, I was just kind of, you know...
Kind of following that advice, like, because I know for some people, this is still, you know, this is really new for a lot of people.
So, you know, I, you know, I kind of stumbled on it about two years ago, so.
Oh yeah, listen, please understand, it's not a criticism, I'm just pointing out, um, if religion turned out to be a problem, it may, like, I'm always looking at the beginning, right?
Yeah. What's the beginning that may have forestalled these problems?
Had she talked about her, her approach to religion or her feelings about, or her perceptions of religion prior to you talking?
Yeah, she had, well, not prior to me talking, but during the conversation, we were exchanging back and forth.
And she had shared with me her views on things.
And so she had a more, I think it's called agnostic view of things.
She didn't go to church. She wasn't particularly religious, but she believed in a higher power.
And so I didn't think that was too bad, you know?
I'm sorry, can I ask you something else?
Just for my own clarity's sake.
So when you said, when you were talking about religion, right?
Because people, they mean two things when they talk about religion, and that's hard to clarify sometimes.
On the one hand, they mean religion like, is there a God?
And by the other hand, they mean religion like, do you go to church where a guy in a funny hat waves incense around you?
You know, organized religion versus the existence of God, those are two things that people mean when they say religion.
So when she talked about religion, did she mean the sort of organized religion, the place to go, the rituals to perform?
I guess she meant organized religion if she was not that religious, but she didn't mean no God, she just meant no rituals.
Does that make sense? Yeah, that makes sense.
So when you said religion doesn't really work for me, if she had interpreted that as organized religion doesn't really work for me, then that doesn't qualify you as an atheist?
And again, this is not a criticism, I'm just pointing out, it's not very clear, because religion is used in these two kinds of ways.
Anyway, enough of my blathering, I just wanted to sort of clarify that, because it seems like an important statement, but please, go on.
Okay. Well, so, you know, after this conversation, well, we're still, you know, talking, and And the conversation was becoming more and more interesting.
We started talking about the subject of philosophy came up and she had talked about how she had gotten into reading philosophy because of her brother and her brother was really into it.
She had some background, not enough detail to have a full-on conversation, but she was very familiar with it.
So I was like, oh, hey, this seems like almost too good to be true.
Normally, people I meet, you mentioned philosophy, they have no clue or aren't even open to anything, any kind of conversation like that.
You know, or they think it means some bland, anti-emotional fortune cookie bullshit.
You know, like, I'm taking a philosophical approach to this means I'm rising above it and not feeling a damn thing about it.
That's what people often do by philosophy.
But anyway, go on. You know, so the first date was, you know, actually, it was really great.
We had a great time talking with one another.
And, you know, just, you know, pretty much going out and having fun, doing things.
So after that first date, she was leaving for about a month because she is originally from a different state.
So she had left the city for about a month.
Sorry, that would make me kind of paranoid, to be frank.
She says, listen, that was a great date.
Now, listen, I'm going to be out of town for about a month.
Part of me would say like, really, was it really that great a date?
Am I going to walk in you like in three days around the corner?
Oh, yeah, I got back early.
Anyway, that would just be my paranoia, but go on.
That did cross my mind.
It was one of those days that went really well.
I was feeling pretty secure that this was something I could potentially go somewhere.
Right, you call it the next time.
She's like, you know, my Peace Corps thing came up and I'm going to go to Mozambique for two and a half years, but I'll call you when I get back.
Anyway, go on. So we talk on the phone for about a month and we start getting in more in-depth conversations and I even We even made a suggestion for her to read Real Time Relationships.
And she downloaded the book and had it printed out and was really interested.
So I took that as also a pretty good sign.
And we talked on the phone late, stayed up all hours of the night just talking and really having these really intimate conversations about our past and where we saw ourselves in the future.
And, you know, some of the, you know, sharing war wounds and horror stories of past relationships.
And I, you know, I brought up the whole conversation about family history and, you know, really asking her about her experiences and then sharing mine.
You know, my relationships with my family, like really being honest about everything, like all of my interactions.
And, you know, I noticed that her capacity for honesty like was, you know, was there was there as well.
Well, what seemed like seemed like it was, you know, pretty, pretty genuine honesty, like I didn't get any You know, any indications that, you know, that she could be lying.
But, you know, who knows?
So, so, you know, after a month of just really getting to know each other, she comes, she comes back and, you know, we spend about a week, a week just, you know, just again, you know, dating Dating in real time, so to speak, and we're having a blast.
I thought we were having a blast.
I'm introducing her to friends of mine, going out, we're partying, we're really having a good time and enjoying each other's company.
One of the last days I saw her, she asked me to come by her place and I'm thinking, all right, we'll probably go out, eat dinner and catch a movie or something.
And she says to me that she feels like things are moving too fast and that That she would like to take the time to get to know me as a friend.
And in my head, I was just kind of like, wait a minute, we spent about a month really getting to know each other without any kind of physical distractions.
Yeah, that's not a great sign.
And usually, I don't think it's ever true.
This too fast thing, I mean, imagine you win the lottery, right?
And the guy comes to your House with a big truck full of $100 bills and you're like, whoa, hey, no, man, we're moving too fast.
You know, just give me $100 and come back in a week or two.
No, you'd be like, grab it all, right?
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, so the moving too fast thing is, well, obviously, particularly since you guys had a month of conversations after your first date, And if you've got the right person, you know, I mean, I met my wife and 10 months later we were married and, you know, it's 10 years tomorrow that we've known each other.
So, you know, and it's better every day.
So you don't move too fast when it's the right thing.
So, yeah, that's not particularly honest, but I'm sure that you got more detail.
So go ahead. Oh, yeah.
So, you know, in my head, when she said that, I was just kind of like, all right, this is the relationship kiss of death.
You know, things are already, you know, this is like...
And, you know, she started, you know, tearing up and everything else.
And in my head, I was just kind of...
Kind of thinking to myself, like, wait a minute.
You know, this is supposed to be the fun stage.
I'm not supposed to be getting, you know, like, meld up in any kind of drama right now.
We're still, you know, still having a good time.
Like, wow.
Like, I don't, like, I really couldn't get it.
Like, I felt blindsided by it.
So I, you know, so I said to her, And I was just like, all right, if you think we're moving too fast, we'll slow things down.
That's fine with me.
And she was just kind of, you know, she was like, OK, that sounds good.
So we go out to dinner and we start talking some more.
And, you know, I shared with her how I think I just came out and said it because she had brought up the whole concept of God.
And I shared with her, just from what you know of my history, I'm an atheist.
I don't know that God exists.
I honestly don't know.
That's the position that I take.
And she seemed Fine with it, you know, she didn't bring it up again.
So, afterwards...
You mean you'd said that some earlier date, right?
Yeah. Okay, okay.
And I didn't hear from her after that day for about two days, and I ended up bumping into her again at my job, and...
You know, she was just like, you know, I really want to be honest with you.
The reason that, you know, I've been kind of like ducking you is because of the whole atheist thing.
And, you know, I feel like that, you know, my faith is a big part of me.
And that's something that we should probably talk about a little later.
And she gave me a hug, not even a kiss, a hug.
And when that happened, something in my head, maybe just from past relationships that I've been in that just went sour, Something in my head was just like, alright. She didn't ask me any questions.
She didn't even ask why I even took that position.
She wasn't curious about it, nothing.
Well, and neither did she talk about how she had said that she wasn't religious.
Yeah. That's kind of important, right?
I mean, that's a complete misrepresentation.
If suddenly she's talking about how important her faith is, but she introduced herself as an agnostic, well, agnostic and faith do not go hand in hand, right?
Faith is the, you know, imagined belief in something that is there for the person, right?
Agnosticism is, well, you know, could be, could be not, but what does it matter, right?
Yeah. So no apologies for the misleading, right?
No, no, not at all.
Oh, that's wretched. That's wretched.
I'm so sorry. Look, I'm so sorry.
That's really slimy from what you're telling me.
I mean, it's slimy as hell.
Yeah.
Anyway, go ahead.
So, you know, I just start, like, adding, you know, just really doing some introspection of my own And, you know, I just decided, you know, I went home that day and I just sent her a text and was just like, you know, look, take care of yourself.
It was nice meeting you.
Bye. And, you know, she sent me a text back just saying, you know, it was great getting to know you.
Blah, blah, blah. Bye.
And, you know, The thing, I really started thinking about the situation, trying to figure out, you know, like, why it blew up, what happened.
And, you know, I really started thinking about it.
I was like, all right, wait. She was already backing out before, you know, before I, you know, we had had that discussion about that, you know, more in-depth discussion about, you My belief system and my values.
So she was already backing out before that conversation.
So it wasn't that, you know.
So I was just kind of like, I don't know what it could have been.
But then I started thinking, all right.
She was, you know, during our conversations, she would say things that were just, you know, almost red flags of insecurity.
And I, you know, I think I've come to a point in my life where insecure, where the, you know, the whole, I've had two years of therapy.
I'm regular on the Free Domain Radio podcast.
And, you know, I've done a lot of work, a lot of, like, you know, hard work, you know, on myself.
So, like, insecurity, like, that level of insecurity, like, where A person is seeking something external to kind of validate themselves.
I feel like...
I feel like I've kind of outgrown it.
If that makes any sense.
Yeah, no, I completely understand that.
I mean, we all have our insecurities, but it's the level of self-knowledge about those insecurities and the capacity to not have them run your life in an unconscious way.
That's the key. Yeah.
And so, you know, I kind of, you know, I'm really still thinking about the situation.
I felt like, okay, if, you know, if I was bringing, you know, all of this, you know, good stuff to the table and somebody who was that insecure, you know, kind of matches up the points and feels like they don't match up, then You know, maybe that could have been a reason.
I'm not saying I know what the reason was.
You know, I was just kind of theorizing.
But I would love your opinion on this.
Okay, I can tell you what I think.
Obviously it's shot in the dark, but maybe it'll be helpful.
Okay. Alright, so here's a question for you.
If you wanted to ensure the survival of a belief system, would you focus on indoctrinating the women or the men?
The women.
Go on.
If you indoctrinate the women, the men will just follow suit just to pretty much reproduce.
Right. And, of course, the women...
Traditionally have control over the children's upbringing early on, right?
They give them over to the men at five or six when, you know, the propaganda, if it ain't there, it ain't there, right?
If it ain't there, it never get there, right?
So this to me is pretty key around the issue of religion.
And this is well known, I think, in propaganda circles.
If you want a belief system to survive, then you have to get the women.
I mean, I've known a bunch of couples where the woman is religious, the man is an agnostic or an atheist, but the woman still takes the kids to church every Sunday.
And of course, women, yeah, women hold the reproduction, and women are the choosers of the men.
And so if the woman is religious, the man will go along with it, so to speak, even though the man may be more skeptical.
But it will pass its way through women.
And this is no slight on women.
This is just the biology and the tribalism of reproduction and the reality of replicating memes or thought structures.
You pass them through women.
If you don't pass them through women, it doesn't really – it doesn't work.
It doesn't last.
I mean think of one of the oldest religions.
It's the Jewish religion, which is notoriously matriarchal, right?
Yeah.
And so a lot of pressure is put on women in cultures to maintain the belief system.
And it's my belief that if women were able to...
This is why it's a shame that more men are philosophical than women, because if women were able to break free, and I can only imagine just how tough that would be, but if women were able to break free of that kind of pressure and conditioning, philosophy would leap forward like...
I think that's important to recognize when you are dating, you know, as an atheist, as a philosopher, as someone with therapy and self-knowledge, that you have a lot of freedom to To believe in the truth, which is denied to a lot of women.
They say a lot of women are not that keen on philosophy because philosophy opposes, in a sense, what the dominant belief structure demands and needs of women, which is to not be philosophical but rather to be imprintable, if that makes any sense.
No, that does make a lot of sense.
Sorry, go ahead. I'm sorry, no.
Go on. Well, so when you bring your beliefs, right, this is complete generalization.
And this is true of most people.
I think it's slightly more true of women, in my experience.
But, you know, this is not any kind of universal proof.
But in my experience, most women...
Will not evaluate the truth or falsehood of an argument, but rather will feel its impact on their relationships.
That's what's a lot of fun. The cultural meme,
whatever it is that's dominant.
And to do that, the way that you enforce an irrational idea is through ostracism, personal attack, smearing, character assassination, rejection, whatever, right?
And we're all susceptible to that, because we all want to reproduce.
We're more interested in reproducing than being right.
Because if we're right but don't reproduce, our rightness dies with us.
Whereas if we reproduce and are only somewhat right, we can move things forward a little bit, generation to generation.
So we don't want to be right at the expense of not being able to reproduce.
That's a real strong urge that we have as animals, as biological species.
And so... But women also, of course, they need a lot of support for raising kids and so on, and men out, hunter-gathering and so on.
So they're very dependent. Again, I'm just talking sort of historically.
More dependent upon relationships than men are.
And so, since women have to transmit the cultural meme, and philosophy is the opposite of culture, and relationships are threatened if a woman turns to philosophy rather than to the crap masquerading as culture or religion or nationalism or whatever, right? Then when a philosopher comes to a woman, the woman looks at the arguments put forward and feels its impact on her relationships.
And in my experience, you know, 51 to 49 percent, maybe it's that close, but it certainly is dominant in my experience.
The value of the idea, which for you and I is relative to the reason and evidence, the value of the idea for women is the degree to which it helps or harms her personal relationships.
And so that's the end of my sort of spiel, or the way that I would experience it.
Now, to be fair to women, a lot of women really, really see that North Star, they see that lamp, they see that lighthouse, and they really want to get to it, but it's really hard.
Because they're programmed to be relational, not empirical.
Okay. That makes a lot of sense.
And so my guess is that the growing intimacy that you had, the honesty, the intimacy, the openness that you had, was having an effect on her other relationships.
Every relationship we have radiates out to all our other relationships.
Right?
So if she's having a more honest and open relationship with you than she's having with other people, what are those other people going to do?
I'm going to react with, I want to say, hostility.
Yeah, they're going to get you out of the picture, right?
Yeah. I mean, if you've got, I mean, I'm not putting her in this category, but an extreme example, right?
You've got some drunk with a bunch of other drunks, and someone comes along and starts sobering up the drunk.
Well, it makes them feel anxious. They want to get rid of the guy who's coming to sober up the drunk, so they can all go back into their squalid pit of alcoholism again, right?
And if she has dysfunctional relationships, and if you are exposing her or introducing or interacting with her in a super-functional way, Then the other people in her relationships, in her life, are going to feel threatened by that.
And it's all maybe unconscious, maybe she never talked about anything in particular, but they're going to find her less interested in them because she's more interested in you.
They're going to find her looking critically at them because she's getting more value from you.
And they're going to realize that you are, not consciously and not intentionally, but simply through the quality of your interaction with her, You are turning their steak into a C-grade hamburger.
And in my experience, again, if they have self-knowledge, they'll understand that and they'll talk about it amongst each other.
They'll go see a therapist. They'll recognize that something's changing here.
I'm not as interesting to this woman as I used to be, these other friends or family may say.
But generally, that's not what happens.
What happens is people move in defensively to eject the high-quality specimen from the lower-quality environment.
Well, yeah, like if they had the capacity to do something like that, to take those kinds of actions in the first place, then it wouldn't even be an issue.
Right, right, right, right, right.
And that's, yeah, that's very much the case.
And so, yeah, if the people around her are not self-knowledge oriented or, you know, And since religion seemed to come up, religion and self-knowledge do not go hand in hand, right?
Because with religion your deepest self is projected out into the infinite cosmos and anthropomorphized as the nebula around distant non-existent stars.
And so self-knowledge, the idea that your entire soul, your entire consciousness, your entire being is contained Within a couple of pounds of brain in your skull is not the case.
Religious people project everything that is of depth and substance out into the universe and therefore...
I mean, they kind of have a path to self-knowledge in terms of asking God and so on, but it's not quite the same as self-knowledge because it's so heavily projected.
And it's so open to manipulation.
Whatever we project out into the universe can be grabbed by other people and manipulated, which is why self-knowledge is the opposite of hierarchy and opposite of exploitation because It's contained within you and therefore you have all these buttons floating around that people can just grab and push.
Whereas if you believe in Jesus and somebody says, this is what Jesus says, then they can grab that projection and use it to walk you around like you're at the end of a vacuum on a stick.
And so if there were religious elements in her environment, then...
They are going to move.
They're going to make their moves.
I used to think that I was just one side of a chessboard, but there's so many other sides to the chessboard.
You make a move, other people make a counter move.
And she's talking about you with other people that she knows.
And she's, you know, if she's talking very enthusiastically about you and what she's enthusiastic about is not the nature of their relationship, then that's going to be a threat, right?
Like if she's like, oh, you know, he's so great because he really, really talks about his childhood.
He really talks about his history.
He's gone to therapy. He's got a great deal of self-knowledge and blah, blah, blah, whatever.
I don't know what she would say, right?
If the other people haven't gone to therapy and don't have two sticks of self-knowledge to rub together to start even a wet fire, then they're going to be like, oh, shit.
I don't know how this is going to go, but I don't think it's going to go well.
Right? Yeah.
And it's other people's interactions, other people's influence over her that is something which we rarely see, but something that comes kind of out of the blue, like this, and something with this level of dishonesty.
Where she goes from agnostic to a faith-based glowing goddess of Yahweh, then without even acknowledging it, that means that it's unconscious.
So when people have changed their story fundamentally about their values and claim that's a reason to start breaking up and aren't even conscious of having changed their values, it means that someone else's alter ego is in possession of their personality, which means that They don't have boundaries.
It means they've got manipulative people around them.
It means that, you know, you name it, right?
But that level of unconsciousness, because she didn't seem to you, like she wasn't being evasive.
She was just genuinely, well, I'm a person.
My faith means a lot to me and so on.
It wasn't like she was ducking the, you know, like, because some people could try and bluster that out, giving you a guilty look or whatever, or just being nervous about it, but it sounds like she was, and, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, of course, but it sounds like she was like, well, no, I mean, I'm a person of faith.
I mean, of course, right? As opposed to what you said on your first date, which was pretty important.
That is an indication of an extreme unconscious split, right?
I mean, these two parts are not, she might even pass a lie detector on that, that she's that split, right?
Does that make any sense?
That makes a lot of sense, actually.
Now, I mean, obviously this is all sketchy as shit, right?
Because, I mean, I just got little bits.
And you don't have to give me any details about the woman's history, of course, because you're not on the call.
But does that sort of fit with what you know about her history, her surroundings, her family, and so on?
That actually, that fits.
That's a perfect fit, actually.
Woo-hoo! Hole-in-one! Every 500 listener calls, I try to get a hole-in-one.
Anyway, go on. So, yeah.
You know, like I never, you know, when she would tell me about her history, I would always kind of do the math in my head.
You know, that's just the way my mind works.
You know, and I would really start to size...
up the situation just be like you know kind of like all right if you felt like this as a kid something in your history was just kind of something in your history was was was off you know wasn't perfect you know um you know something there was something toxic there um and she i don't even think she was um knowledgeable enough knowledgeable enough to give me Any of those kinds of details.
During our conversation, she would say...
At first, I should have taken it as a red flag when she would say things like, you almost seem too good to be true.
I guess it was a nice stroke to my ego, but...
But that, of course, is an indication that there's a radical newness in her interactions with you.
Yeah. Which tells you that people are either going to have to up their game or they're going to try and get rid of you, right?
People around her. If people say, I've never had any conversations like this before, it's like, uh-oh.
Because then all the people who she's never had conversations, she's going to try and open up those avenues of communication with them and They're going to make their counter moves for the most part.
So, yeah, if it's radically new for her to have these kinds of conversations, you know, you're too good to be true.
I've never been anyone like you before and so on.
That's, you know, again, it's not necessarily automatic doom, but it does mean that there's going to be a counter move from others at some point.
You know, I don't know.
Like, it's... I guess it was kind of my fault because, you know, like, I tend to...
If I find something...
For instance, Free Domain Radio.
It's challenging me in a way that is beneficial and other people around me are hostile to it.
I didn't say, all right, this has to go because it's changing my relationships.
I was just like, you know what?
I kind of have nothing to lose.
Right, because you're like, I'm going to go in pursuit of the truth, and relationships, hopefully, they'll come with me, and those that don't, well, maybe I'll circle back later, but you're in hot pursuit.
The truth is your prey, right?
Yeah. In my experience, again, speaking very generally, that's not quite the case for women.
Like, we're the hunter-gatherers, and the women are the relational nurturers, right?
And so we, you know, we're going to go catch that, you know, going to bring down that gazelle, going to bring down that mammoth or else, right?
But that's not, I think, I don't think there's anything biologic.
I think it's almost all conditioning, but it's, you know, that doesn't make it, it doesn't matter in a sense, you know, conditioning deep enough might as well be biological, but But in my experience, there are not many women who are willing to say the truth at all costs.
There are a lot more men who are willing to say the truth at all costs.
But I think it's much harder for women.
Hmm. Hmm.
And as a result, right, so, like, sorry, if you were to say, well, I'm going to sacrifice the truth as I understand it, and as I've reasoned it, I'm going to sacrifice and not live the truth for the sake of a relationship, you would experience that as hypocritical and kind of low, right?
Yeah, like, you know, I completely got and understand the whole Meikle system thing, and I know a part of myself would not Even be sad.
Like, I can't go back into that box.
Right. You would be conscious of it, you'd be aware of it, and you'd be unable to fake it for long.
And it would be pretty gross for you, right?
Yeah. You know, I would, you know, self-loathing and all that crap that I feel like I've, you know, left behind in some way or another, you know.
Yeah. Yeah, it just wouldn't be pretty at all.
Right, right, right.
Right. And again, I find that to be more of a male trait, at least at the moment.
I find that to be more of a male trait than a female trait.
And I think it's very tragic for women, but women seem more able to live with those kinds of compromises than men do.
And that is a real challenge, right?
And so, you know...
To find a woman who's willing to do truth at all costs is, I mean, it's a needle in a haystack.
I mean, it's well worth looking, of course, right?
Because once you go down this path, once you find a woman like that, I mean, you are rock solid for life.
I mean, you're mated like swans.
But that is a challenge, right?
The other thing, too, is that with a couple of years of self-knowledge and philosophy and so on under your belt, you are like an Olympic athlete, right?
You know what I mean? Like, you're a top-seeded tennis player.
I mean, you could say, well, I'll just hand a racket to some random person who I find attractive and we'll go out and do doubles tennis with other Olympic team members, but it's not going to work unless she's really good at tennis, right?
Yeah. I mean, you didn't heal yourself into becoming an average player.
Because everybody's broken by something.
Everybody's broken by something. You've got a bad family.
If you don't have a bad family, you've got bad religion.
If you don't have bad religion, then you've got bad public schools.
If you don't have bad public schools, then you've got bad nationalism or some other kind of bigotry or shit or something like that, right?
I mean, we do not live in a philosophical world at all.
We are as common in the world as stars in the night sky when it's cloudy in Beijing and daylight.
So it's rare. We're rare.
That's what I'm trying to say. And so you have not healed yourself up to the average, right?
You have vaulted ahead of the average, and so I think you need to look for somebody who doesn't have...
So if you meet somebody and, you know, they've never been to therapy or never really delved into self-knowledge, not read a lot of books on the topic, they don't know anything about philosophy, it's like, well, that's great.
So you don't know which end of a tennis racket to hold.
I can point you to a coach.
I can, you know, give you a book or two to read.
Maybe I can even hit the ball back and forth for a little while, but, you know, we can't play.
Yeah. That makes sense?
All right. That makes sense.
I saw, like, I was just in this, I was down in Texas for this conference this last weekend.
I was giving a, I was the MC and I gave a speech.
And I saw this, I was introduced to this kid who was like 14 and his mom was there.
And he was like the only 14-year-old guy around.
So he was like this long, lanky guy with spider arms, like an orangutan, a stretch monster.
And he was sort of dithering around the ping pong table.
And I like to play ping pong myself.
And he had the arms.
It's like, man, if he knew how to play, he'd be like, whip, great.
And so I said, hey, you want to play and all that?
And anyway, he picked it up.
And, you know, he might as well try to hit it with the edge of the racket rather than the flat because it just went everywhere.
I didn't know what the hell he was doing. And so I played with him, I don't know, for five or ten minutes or whatever.
And then I basically said, let's go.
Let's go play chase with the kids that were in a play center right next to us or whatever.
So we went over there and played hide-and-seek with the kids or whatever.
I could play with him for a few minutes, but I couldn't say, let's meet here and play every day for an hour.
I'd go mental. My game would deteriorate.
His game would probably get a little better, but I'm not in the coaching business.
I'm in the playing business, so to speak.
And so you've got to recognize your expertise.
Your expertise needs to be matched with a level of expertise.
It doesn't have to be identical, but not completely off the same ballpark.
Otherwise, you're really not speaking the same language.
You're really not in the same world.
And you can keep that going for a while on, you know, because you talked about where she was really, really honest and really honest.
Honesty is fine, but honesty is not the same as virtue.
I mean, it's necessary. But, you know, if I come up to you and say, hey, I just strangled three homeless guys, I'm being honest, but that's not going to make you want to be my friend, right?
I mean, honesty is great, but that's not nearly enough.
Yeah. Okay.
People who say, well, I've had a bad childhood.
I don't know if she did or didn't, but let's say she did.
I had a really terrible childhood.
This happened, this happened, this happened, this happened.
Wow, that person's really honest.
Well, yeah, that's great, and that's certainly better than denying it, but that's not the same as dealing with it.
That's true. You know, if somebody's in a wheelchair and they say, I'm not in a wheelchair, then they're insane, right?
So if somebody had a bad child and won't even admit it, then that's crazy.
But if somebody's in a wheelchair and could get out but they're not doing any rehab, then guess what?
They're stuck in a wheelchair. And even if they come up and say, hey, I was stuck in a wheelchair.
I had this terrible accident, blah, blah, blah.
Well, that's great. But, you know, I was in a wheelchair too.
I did a lot of work and I got out.
So if the person doesn't even know that they can get out or isn't even interested or resists you mentioning it or whatever, then they're just going to stay stuck in that wheelchair.
Again, this is a terrible metaphor because people in wheelchairs have my incredible sympathy, but it means that you're not going to play great hoops with them, right?
No, not at all.
So respect the work that you've done.
Respect the work that you've done.
It does not bring you up to the norm.
It does not bring you up to the average.
catapults you right over that.
That makes sense.
I feel like we're sort of like angels with capes on, you know?
Shit, they better not see my wings.
It's going to really freak them out if they see my wings, man.
Shit, I dropped a feather. Let me step on it.
What's that rustling sound? No, I think there's a tree out here.
You know, the wind is on the tree.
That must be it. You know, if anything happens and we have to take flight suddenly, they'll just shit their pants or something, you know, like, you know, we've earned wings.
And we can fly in a way that other people have only read about, or maybe even not even.
So, you know, don't descend to the normal after the work that you've done.
Not going to work, I think.
Yeah. And it's just a matter of just, you know, How do you go about recognizing somebody with that, well, at least with that kind of potential?
Well, no, it's got to be more than potential.
It's got to have been work, because you are not a man of potential.
You are a man of work.
You've done it. I mean, you've done a hell of a lot of it.
Two years of therapy, geez, that's a long time.
That's great. Fantastic. Good for you.
Two years of philosophy, RTR, you know, all that kind of stuff.
Mekosystem work. I mean, you are a finely tuned self-knowledge...
Rocket sled, right?
And it's not potential.
I mean, I think, you know, you have to look not just for potential.
And now potential, of course, I mean, not everyone is a philosopher and so on, but if somebody's been, you know, if a woman's been trained in science or psychology or whatever, then they're going to have some exposure to a rational or critical method of thinking, which is great.
If they're an art major who came from a Catholic school, probably not so much.
But looking for people who have that kind of self-knowledge, it's pretty easy to establish early on.
You can say, oh yeah, I'm really buzzed.
I'm in my second year of therapy.
I find it amazing.
You know, and then if they say, oh, yeah, that's fantastic.
You know, I did a couple of years of therapy, you know, recently, and I just found it, you know, boom, Bob's your uncle, right?
Doesn't mean they're perfect, but it means that at least they know which end of a tennis racket to hold on the court, right?
That's true. Or if, you know, they light up when you start talking about reason and evidence, then, you know, it doesn't take long to get the basics, right?
Now, of course, once they get the basics, their enthusiasm...
People are usually only enthusiastic, really enthusiastic about philosophy if their relationships, their existing relationships aren't that important to them as it stands.
Again, I'm really, really generalizing here, right?
Yeah. But people, I mean, I think one of the reasons sort of in hindsight that I got so excited about philosophy was I was not satisfied with my relationship.
So in a sense, if philosophy was going to lead me to the truth and the truth was going to threaten my relationships, it was like, well, okay, so I'll threaten these relationships.
They're not that great to begin with, right?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, because that's how I felt initially.
Like that kind of enthusiasm?
Yeah, damn the torpedoes.
Straight on till morning, right?
Yeah. Like, I had nothing to lose.
So, that's what it felt like for me, anyway.
Right, right, right.
Yeah, I mean, people's tears cover the windshield.
It's like, I got wiper fluid.
Keep driving. But yeah, I mean, so you can, you know, if you talk a lot about your own sort of self-knowledge and history and all that sort of stuff, then look for more than nods.
I mean, look for enthusiasm.
Look for any kind of mirrored experience and that kind of stuff.
If all you get is nods and that's interesting and, you know, whatever, right, then that's great.
But it doesn't You know, it doesn't lead anywhere.
Or if somebody is like, philosophy is really interesting, but they don't have any clue how it might impact their relationships, then they don't know what philosophy is, really, at least in the way we talk about it, and they're going to get blindsided and unconsciously hijacked all over the place, like it sounds like this woman did.
That makes a lot of sense.
So what I'm saying is stalk all the attractive women coming out of psychology.
You know, find some psychologist and then look for whatever woman you find attractive and then just stalk her and say, listen, I followed you here from your psychiatrist.
And then if you don't get maced, then she has no boundaries.
Anyway, this is a real quick overview, but that's sort of what I would take out of that interaction.
Does that help put it in any kind of context or is that useful?
No, that's actually really useful.
That's really useful. Thank you for having this conversation with me.
I really appreciate it.
I think you've touched on some things that I didn't even take into consideration, like the idea that other people may be Maybe, you know, have their, you know, be really important influences on these kinds of situations.
Because I feel like this is something that's happened more than once in, like, relationships that I've been in.
And sorry to interrupt you what you're saying, but if you don't have, if you aren't that influenced by other people's opinions, then it's hard to see how much other people are, if that makes any sense.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
So, yeah, I hope that...
Yeah, remember, you're working in a mecosystem for other people and other people's mecosystems and a whole embedded history of which you were just a piece of foam on the tip of the ocean, right?
This woman's got 20, 25, 30 years or whatever embedded relationships with other people and you come along, you're like a cork on the ocean, right?
I mean, obviously the ideas are deep and powerful, but...
You're dealing with a whole lot of repercussions and ramifications that float out into her relationships, and those other people have a lot more hold over her than you do, unless she has a huge amount of integrity and is willing to come and talk to you and say, yeah, of course, do you prepare her for this stuff?
I don't know, that seems like too much management to me, but again, you can obviously, in this is all things, be your own best judge of those sorts of situations.
Yeah, well, I definitely agree with you on the too much management thing.
I really wouldn't want to tell someone how to go about living their lives.
Yeah, or the quality that we're having might provoke some repercussions in the relationships around you and all that kind of stuff.
I don't mean it sounds kind of sinister, but it also is a lot of management.
And of course, you would really hope that somebody would come to you and tell you if this was occurring.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's true.
Yeah, but that's...
If you get a chance, I don't know, I mean, if you get a chance, I mean, if the woman would be willing to have a post-mortem, you could sit down with her and say, look, this is not a get-back-together kind of thing, but When things don't work in my life that I want to work, I like to figure out why.
And, you know, this is like a no ego, no defensiveness, no hypersensitivity.
I just really want to know, you know, what happened, what went wrong.
And, you know, if you could give me 20 minutes, maybe it would be helpful for you, because obviously if you made a mistake with me, and I think that we're all looking for someone to live the rest of our lives with, to raise kids with, to have that kind of really quality You know, wipe each other's asses in her old age kind of interaction.
And so this didn't work for you.
It didn't work for me. And I try to learn as much as possible from things that don't work.
In fact, it's more important to analyze the things that don't work than the things that do work.
And so if you could, you know, lure her into a postmortem, I think that would be really helpful.
And it doesn't, in a sense, it doesn't matter how honest she is in that because you'll be aware and sensitive enough to see what's going on.
But, um, I think that would be really, really worthwhile.
And again, it's useful for you.
It also could be helpful to her to see how someone like you would deal with that kind of stuff.
But I think that stuff is really, really important.
Yeah. I actually thought about doing that at some point.
I know for me it was just kind of like, alright, let me just get over the fact, this whole, let me You know, take it in for a while and let's, you know, mourn, you know, the death of this, you know, relationship.
You can call it a relationship.
I mean, you had hopes and you cared and, yeah, I mean, I think that was a relationship and you poured your heart out.
I mean, you gave her your all. You shared your values.
You shared your history. I mean, that's I mean, that's exposing the soft underbelly of the soul and that's a relationship.
You had high hopes and I think it's definitely worth a post-mortem because that will give you some closure.
I think that's going to be really helpful and important.
And, you know, you can say, you know, at the beginning you seemed to be agnostic and then you talked about your faith.
I can't put those things together.
Did something change or did you find more religiosity in between?
Like, you know, that kind of stuff.
And just see how she deals with that.
It doesn't have to be anything confrontational or unpleasant.
But, you know, I can't square this up kind of stuff can be really, really helpful.
And, of course, you know, argument is helpful for her too, right?
I mean, she didn't want to spend another couple of months with some other guy that doesn't work out with or whatever, right?
So she can probably benefit from it as well.
Yeah. Yeah, that's true.
And it would also help, I think, if you guys are still working in the same place, you know, it'd be nice to, I think, get that kind of closure, too.
Yeah, yeah.
Just so that way there's no, you know, no static at all.
Yeah, the stuff that's unsaid is always tense, right?
The stuff that's confused, the stuff that's, you know, because you get to project all your crazy stuff, like my crazy stuff too, everyone has it, right?
You get to project all of that stuff into that which is not explicit.
And so I think it's always worth trying to bring as much as possible into the conscious mind.
And if she doesn't bring anything into the conscious mind, you're at least then conscious of the fact that she doesn't bring anything into the conscious mind, and I think that will help in terms of closure.
That makes a lot of sense.
Yeah, so I think I'm definitely going to go forward with having that conversation next time I see her, if she's open to it.
Yeah, of course, of course. Corner or whatever, but yeah, I think that's helpful.
And if she's not open to it, that tells you a lot as well, right?
Yeah. About her level of coachability, her capacity to learn, and her willingness to examine and grow, right?
I mean, if she's like, no, I don't want to talk about that, it's like, okay, well, I guess that would have been the pattern, right?
In which case, it's a little easier to let go.
Okay. Okay.
All right, man. Well, listen, I better start heading off to bed because Lord knows my daughter is going to raise with chickens.
So I'll send you a copy of this.
I mean, I think it's useful stuff.
I mean, I hope that you consider it.
We've got no names or anything. Consider letting other people have a listen.
But have a listen yourself first.
Oh, yeah. What do you think? Oh, yeah, definitely.
All right. Thanks, man. Have a great night.
All right. All right. Thank you.
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