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Sept. 16, 2012 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:14:07

2217 Freedomain Radio Sunday Call-In Show, 16 September 2012

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	Good morning!
	Everybody hope you're doing well.
	Good morning, good morning.
	It's time to philosophize.
	It's a lovely day in the neighborhood.
	A lovely day for thinking good.
	I hope you're doing all well.
	Thank you for dragging your philosophically bleary eyes out of bed at this crack of 10 a.m.
	Getting up at the crack of noon.
	And it's great to chat with everyone.
	Thank you so much for your time and for your support.
	So I'm going to do one more round of the martial arts thing.
	I really want to thank everyone.
	For giving thoughts and opinions and ideas.
	It's been very very interesting and I appreciate it's good to be controversial.
	It means that you're either completely right or you're doing something completely useful.
	So time will tell.
	Let's talk a little bit more about education.
	I think it's quite interesting.
	So you know the teachers all sort of talking about being underpaid, underpaid.
	Well, it's hard to find some of the new information, but in 2001 and This would be, of course, compared to the private sector, and I bet you that gap, well, I know for sure that gap has widened quite a bit.
	Weekly pay for teachers in 2001 was about the same, i.e.
	within 10%.
	As for accountants, biological and life scientists, registered nurses, and editors and reporters, teachers earned a heck of a lot more than social workers and artists.
	In fact, the only group out of seven professionals in the survey with a higher weekly pay were lawyers and judges.
	And they, of course, don't get summer vacations, PD days off, professional development days off, snow days, federal holidays, and so on.
	So, hourly wages, and this is based on self-reported data compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
	Teachers earn more per hour than architects, civil engineers, mechanical engineers, statisticians, biological and life scientists, atmospheric and space scientists, registered nurses, physical therapists, university level foreign language teachers, librarians, technical writers, musicians, artists, and editors and reporters.
	And of course you get massive pensions, you have health insurance plans which mostly require no contribution, and you have pretty much absolute job security.
	Now, maybe the very best people are going into education and that's why they can command such high salaries.
	Ah, sadly, the data does not support that.
	So, undergraduate education majors typically have lower SAT and ACT scores than other students.
	And there's quite a strong correlation.
	The lower the quality of the undergraduate institution a person attends, the more likely he or she is to wind up in the teaching profession.
	In 2001, only 60% of education students, i.e.
	people who want to become teachers, only 60% of education students could pass the basic teacher licensing exam in Virginia.
	Virginia stole what response?
	Well, the State Board of Education lowered the requirements.
	Ooh, isn't that just precious?
	In Massachusetts, they lowered the passing grade for a basic skills test for teachers in 1998, when nearly two-thirds of the teachers failed it.
	So, fail the test, you get an F. No, no, no.
	If you're a teacher who's administering the test, you get to take the test again, but they make it a whole lot easier for you.
	And I've had some questions about this information.
	I'll put the sources for this in the notes for the podcast in the link or the video below.
	So, Professor Charles Shakespeare, Interesting.
	Analyzed data from the American Association of University Women Education Foundation survey, end quote, estimates that between 1991 and 2000, roughly 290,000 students were subject to physical sexual abuse by teachers or other school personnel.
	Right?
	So you understand when priests and coaches do it, everyone goes insane.
	That's right, they should.
	But have you heard this statistic?
	That almost a third of a million students were subjected to physical sexual abuse.
	This is not emotional abuse.
	This is not physical abuse.
	Verbal abuse, this is just physical sexual abuse by teachers or other school personnel.
	Do you hear about that?
	Heck no!
	Only 12% of American students attend private schools, but 39% of Chicago public school teachers send their children to private schools.
	And of course those politicians who were against school choice all send their kids to private schools.
	President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Jesse Jackson, Hillary Clinton, and Al Gore.
	To name just a few.
	And how is all of this Wonderful education.
	Year after year after year of monopoly education doing.
	Well, the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs commissioned a civic education poll among public school students.
	77% didn't know that George Washington was the first president.
	Couldn't name Thomas Jefferson as the author of the Declaration of Independence.
	And only 2.8% of the students actually passed the citizenship test.
	The Goldwater Institute of Phoenix did the same survey, and only 3.5% of students passed the The civics test.
	According to National Research Council report, only 28% of high school science teachers consistently follow the National Research Council guidelines on teaching evolution.
	And 13% of those teachers explicitly advocate creationism or intelligent design.
	How is our critical thinking skills?
	On the eve of the first Iraq war, almost 70% of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9-11 attacks.
	Four years later, even though proof had been provided that he was not, over a third still believed that he was.
	An analysis of 300,000 an analysis of 300,000 Torrance creativity test scores of adults and children in the US found creativity and IQ scores rose steadily until 1990 and were in decline thereafter and the most serious decline occurred for the youngest children.
	In 1966, oh a banner year for the birth of philosophy I would say, In 1966 to 67, about 1.5 million students who took the verbal portion of the SAT had a score of 700 or more.
	And, sorry, a score of 700 or more was achieved by 33,000 students.
	In 86-87, almost 2 million students took the test and fewer than 14,000 achieved that score.
	Should we go on?
	One or two more.
	We could go on.
	According to the National Endowments for the Arts Report in 1982, do you think this is better?
	82% of college graduates read novels or poems for pleasure.
	Two decades later, only 67% did.
	More than 40% of Americans under 44 did not read a single book, fiction or non-fiction, over the course of the year.
	The proportion of 17-year-olds who read nothing, unless required by school, has doubled between 1984 and 2004.
	Between 1968 and 1988, the average soundbite on the news for a presidential candidate featuring the candidate's own voice has dropped from 42.3 seconds to 9.8 seconds.
	By 2000, according to another Harvard study, the bite was down to 7.8 Seconds.
	More than 50% of students at four-year schools and more than 75% at two-year colleges, this is after high school, lacked the skills to perform complex literary tasks.
	This is three kinds of literacy, analyzing news stories and other prose, understanding documents and having the math skills needed for checkbooks or restaurant tips.
	This is completely shocking.
	Completely shocking.
	Almost 20% of students pursuing four-year college degrees had only basic quantitative skills.
	For example, the students could not estimate if their car had enough gas to get to the service station.
	Most Chicago public schools alumni must take remedial classes at the Chicago City Colleges.
	74% must take remedial English.
	94% must take remedial math.
	More than 20% of adults in the U.S. read at or below a fifth grade level, far below the level needed to earn a living wage.
	Nearly half of America's adults are poor readers or functionally illiterate.
	They can't carry out simple tasks like balancing checkbooks, reading drug labels, or writing essays for a job.
	44 million adults in the US can't read well enough to read a simple story to a child.
	Do we need to go on?
	Approximately 50% of the nation's unemployed youth ages 16 to 21 are functionally illiterate with virtually no prospects of obtaining good jobs.
	Well, anyway, we can sort of go on.
	But, I mean, this is absolutely catastrophic.
	And one of the things I think that's happened is that people who are older, and, you know, in my sort of category, the education that we got wasn't so bad.
	Remember, it takes a generation.
	It takes a generation after the socialization of a particular program.
	For the real rot to set in, right?
	So I was being taught, like, okay, so the sectors, public sector unions really took over education and made it impossible to fire people in the 60s.
	So in the 70s and 80s, you still had teachers who'd come in and came in through the voluntary system.
	I mean, voluntary relative to a still government system, still pay for it through taxation, but you weren't heavily unionized and you could get fired for being a bad teacher.
	So in the 70s and 80s, education wasn't so bad.
	It's like all of the people in NASA who came in in the original space program came from the private sector and were really good and kept that work ethic, and then it decayed over time.
	That's why you went to the moon very quickly and then had the space shuttle for the next 30 years.
	And so the education that people received in the 70s and 80s, maybe even into the early 90s, was not nearly as bad as it is now, because now it's a whole different kind of Teacher who's in there and of course the people who have a lot of influence look back and say education was pretty good for me.
	These kids must be unmotivated.
	Well I would doubt that.
	Human nature doesn't really change that much generation to generation.
	So I would look at the quality of education.
	Now people have said to me, a very interesting thing, they say well it's the families.
	It's the families.
	Well you know you need to read The Bee Eater, the biography of Michelle Rhee.
	It's available on kindle.
	It's a couple of bucks.
	You can also read The worm in the apple, I think it's called, how the teachers' unions destroyed public education.
	And you need to know that when bad teachers are replaced with good teachers, students do a whole lot better.
	Teachers have a huge, huge impact on students.
	I mean, you understand, teachers see students more than parents do, for the most part.
	So, I think, and certainly interact with them more.
	So, I think that's important.
	That scores do go up when the quality of education improves, and not just empty scores, but actually quite useful scores, like, can you read and understand something?
	So, to say it's just families is nonsense.
	Families, of course, are important.
	But the reason families are so important is because education is so bad.
	If you have a good family, you get educated at home, and that gives you a huge advantage.
	If you have a bad family, and you're not educated at school, you're screwed.
	Well, you become part of the permanent underclass that socialism has created and always will create and always has created.
	The last thing that I wanted to say before we get on to the most excellent callers is now excuse me for being outraged but I am and maybe I'm wrong I'm happy to be corrected as always but these are my thoughts so I don't know how many teachers wrote to me and said you don't understand man okay they didn't say man they said I spend a lot of time creating lesson Plans.
	Lesson plans.
	This is like the magic spell word that everyone uses who's a teacher to explain why they only teach for about two and three quarters hours a day.
	No, no, I'm doing my lesson plans.
	And I must say I have a little bit of trouble understanding what is meant by this.
	It's a very confusing thing.
	So You do go to teachers' college to learn how to teach, and I assume that you create some lesson plans and get them vetted by your teachers in teachers' college, right?
	The professors in teachers' college must be teaching you how to do a lesson plan and what the best lessons plans are, which are validated and vetted by statistical analysis and, you know, all that kind of stuff.
	You also know what you're going to be teaching, I assume, you know, study science and end up teaching the humanities.
	And so by the time You graduate and get a job, you should already have lesson plans.
	Now, if you don't have lesson plans, then what the hell are you doing creating them as a new teacher?
	I mean, you understand, that's insane.
	If you're a new teacher, by definition, and you don't already have lesson plans that have been vetted by how well they work and so on, right?
	Best practices.
	Then you damn well shouldn't be creating them because it is absolutely unfair to experiment on children, on something so important.
	As education.
	Why are you creating lesson plans as a new teacher?
	Do you not know what works?
	Do you have no idea what works?
	Do you have no clue what's been proven to work?
	You should not be creating lesson plans if you're a new teacher.
	You should be using lesson plans that have been proven to work.
	Can you throw a little personal idiosyncrasy in?
	Sure!
	But you don't go to McDonald's and say, I want a Big Mac.
	And the McDonald's says, I'm sorry, we don't have any because we're still trying to figure out how to make them.
	It's like, no, no, no.
	There's already a recipe for a Big Mac.
	You don't need to do that.
	You don't go to a surgeon who says, I'm going to try doing an appendicitis by going in from the foot and blindfolded because I want to retain my individual.
	No, no, no.
	That's the best way of doing an appendicitis already.
	You don't need to reinvent the wheel.
	I did a search on Google.
	There are thousands of websites with literally thousands or tens of thousands of lesson plans available.
	That's pretty scary.
	That is pretty scary.
	Why the hell are there so many lesson plans?
	Is there nothing that has been proven to actually work?
	Is it just make up whatever shit you want?
	Call it a lesson plan and consider yourself an individual?
	Why are there so many lesson plans?
	I mean, imagine you do some research and you have to get your Gall bladder out or something.
	You do some research and there are thousands of different ways to take out your gall bladder.
	Every surgeon has their own way of taking out your gall bladder.
	How does that sound to you?
	How does that sound to you?
	And there are lesson plans, of course, already.
	There are lesson plans already.
	And you understand, if you're making up your own lesson plan, how do you know if it's going to be the most effective way that you could spend your time in the classroom?
	How do you know it's the best way to teach kids?
	How do you know?
	Don't make up lesson plans.
	That is irresponsible.
	That is experimenting on children.
	Plus you have all summer to make up your lesson plans.
	Yeah, lesson plans is just something that people say that makes no sense to me whatsoever.
	If you're a new teacher, you should be using lesson plans already.
	If you're an experienced teacher, then you already know how to teach the subject.
	Maybe you make some notes or maybe you found a slightly better way to improve it.
	But of course, if you have found the best way to teach history, then you should make sure it gets standardized as best you can, right?
	But this individuality stuff, I mean, it's really crappy.
	It's crappy for the kids.
	It's really crappy for the kids.
	And of course, you know, if they move from one school to another or even a new teacher comes along, How the hell is anyone supposed to know what's going on?
	You move to some new school where some teacher is working on their own individualized lesson plan and there's no standardization.
	And where there's no standardization, there's no possibility of excellence.
	Where there's no standardization, there's no possibility of excellence.
	Quality is measurability.
	If you can't measure it, you can't manage it.
	If you can't manage it, you can't improve it.
	It sort of reminds me of when Bill Gates started working with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
	And they were trying to Get mosquito nets, you know, to people and they just gave, you know, they wanted to give a bunch of money to people and then they said, okay, well, how do you measure your success?
	How do you measure how many people are using?
	And they're like, oh, we don't.
	You know, we're a non-government organization.
	We're an NGO, man.
	We don't do that.
	We just, you know, hand out, hold hands, sing Kumbaya, have a fire light, get stoned.
	And Bill Gates was like, no, no, no, no.
	Come on.
	I'm going to give you this money.
	I'm going to give you these.
	You need to track where they're going.
	You need to report back to me.
	They had no idea what he was talking about.
	Because they're socialized.
	Meeting a pseudo-capitalist.
	So I'm afraid, I am tempted, I am tempted to call extreme bullshit on the lesson plan claim.
	I just, again, I'm happy to be proven wrong.
	But here, you know, for those who don't know how to prove me wrong, here's a tip.
	So you have to Show me why everybody should be creating their own lesson plan.
	You have to show me how those individually created lesson plans are objectively the best thing for the students.
	And a couple of other things.
	I mean, I don't even need to go on because you can't.
	The moment you create an individual lesson plan, you're immediately saying, I have no idea whether this is going to work or not in any statistically significant way.
	I mean, teachers resist standardization for a very simple and obvious reason.
	And not all teachers, right?
	A couple of good teachers out there, I'm sure.
	I never met them, but maybe there are.
	But...
	Teachers resist standardization because standardization means you can be measured.
	Right?
	So, if you are supposed to, on the fourth week, if your kids are supposed to know X, Y, and Z, then they can be tested whether they know X, Y, and Z. If you're following your own lesson plan, man, you're hiding, you're camouflaged, you're chameleon in the undergrowth.
	You can't be measured.
	The whole point of individualized lesson plan, if it's nonsense, lesson plan means going to the internet and downloading something.
	But the whole point of individualized lesson plan is simply to avoid being measured.
	And the only people who are afraid of being measured are the people who don't measure up.
	So anyway, sorry for a long intro.
	Thank you for your patience.
	Wanted to get those few things off my chest.
	But I'm happy to hear from the brains of the outfit, the listeners.
	And oh, if you do get a chance to donate, I would really appreciate it.
	Handing out money hand over fist.
	to make this documentary thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars to make this documentary and it's only gonna get worse so if you would like to support I would really appreciate it it's been a rather exciting week for donations it's been what yesterday I got five dollars from someone and let's see on Friday I got $20 Thursday $25 $15 on Wednesday And
	$25 on Wednesday as well.
	So what I'm saying is that you really do need to help out.
	If you could, I would really appreciate it.
	It's very important.
	I'm happy to spend this money, but I do need the support of the community to make it work.
	So please go to freedomainradio.com forward slash donate to help out.
	Thank you so much.
	Let's move on to the quarters.
	Hi, it's Steph.
	Sorry, but we lost the first few seconds of this caller's question.
	He has a teacher who said that the way that we can achieve world peace is to strip everyone of their identity, their ego, and their religiosity.
	So that's what I'm responding to from here.
	Strip everyone of their identity and their religion.
	I was just wondering what people think about that.
	What do you think about it?
	I thought it was an interesting idea that world peace is only possible that way.
	So there is conflict between different religions.
	For instance, some Catholics hate some Jews, but there are also Catholics that don't hate Jews.
	I was wondering why people have to be stripped of their religion and religion has to be completely gone in order for world peace to happen.
	Well, but the teacher said two things, right?
	The teacher said they need to be stripped of their identity and they need to be stripped of their religion?
	Yeah.
	Was that right?
	Yeah.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	He would say, okay, so you three students, he would go around and ask, who likes pizza?
	And so people that didn't like pizza, he'd be like, well, I like pizza and you guys hate pizza.
	So that's a conflict.
	That isn't peace.
	So people have to be stripped of their idea of do they like pizza or not and stripped of all their ideas in order for everybody to agree.
	Right.
	Well, I don't think that agreement is necessary for world peace.
	In fact, I would hope that agreement as a whole would never happen to the human race because if everybody agrees, there's no progress, right?
	Progress is disagreeing with the way things are.
	And I don't think there's any upward limit to progress.
	So I don't think the disagreement.
	I think that...
	Well, let's see here.
	Okay, so there are beliefs that can only be survived by not taking them very seriously.
	I think those are probably the beliefs that this teacher, and I myself, would say are sort of problematic.
	So there was this recent, apparently a film came out in the U.S. that was Depicting the Islamic prophet as negative in some way.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And then there were riots and there were rocket attacks on the U.S. embassy in Libya and people got murdered and so on.
	And this is terrible.
	This is shocking.
	Of course, why people imagine that because Gaddafi was killed, somehow everybody's childhood and everybody's brain somehow become different.
	Well, that's just silly, of course, right?
	But...
	What's happening is that the Muslims, and this is true of various religious groups, they're taking it seriously.
	I mean, they're taking what is written in their holy books very, very seriously.
	And that's a problem.
	It's not good If you have to dilute your ideas to make them survivable, right?
	I mean, so the Old Testament, which is the foundation of, right, the three major religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, well, it's got moral commandments in there that are just horrendous, right?
	Just horrendous.
	And those moral commandments include things like kill atheists, kill gays, kill sorcerers.
	Look out, Gandalf!
	And all this kind of stuff.
	And this is not survivable.
	I mean, you can't have a society where people take that stuff literally.
	So immediately you have to start picking and choosing, right?
	You have to start cherry picking.
	And so, sorry, if you have to start cherry picking, then it's no longer a coherent belief system.
	It's a buffet.
	It's no longer a coherent belief system.
	It's a buffet.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Well, based off the whole idea with the movie is, I was talking with my dad about it, and the movie actually came out like six months ago, but it was recently translated into Arabic, which I think the language they speak.
	But the idea was, they attacked the Libyan embassy on the anniversary of 9-11.
	Many, many things can spark like an outrage, but do you think they timed it perfectly with the movie?
	Or the movie sparked all of it?
	Well, I don't know.
	I don't know.
	And the identity of the man who funded the movie was in doubt.
	And it turns out he's a pretty shady character who's under house arrest for some financial...
	No, I think it was more attempting to defraud a bank.
	Oh, that's what it was, yeah.
	I thought I went to jail, but it was house arrest.
	No, you think he was under house arrest, wasn't allowed to use computers or use a fake identity, and then he used a fake identity to fund the film.
	I mean, there's lots of shady stuff going on.
	You know, the coincidence of 9-11.
	Who knows?
	So, like, you were talking about...
	Yeah.
	So, sorry, listen, listen, what I would say.
	What I would say is that for world peace to be achieved...
	There's only one thing that needs to be put in place in people's minds.
	It's a doozy.
	It's a big one, which is why we haven't achieved it yet.
	But there's only one thing that needs to be put into people's minds for world peace to be achieved.
	And that is an objective methodology for resolving disputes.
	That's all that needs to be put into place for there to be world peace, an objective methodology for resolving disputes.
	You have religious wars.
	You don't have science wars.
	Science has its problems, and scientists can be irrational, just like me, just like you, just like everyone.
	But scientists have an objective methodology for resolving disputes.
	It's called the scientific method.
	Mathematicians rarely wage war against each other and launch rocket attacks at each other's offices because they have an objective methodology for resolving disputes.
	Yeah.
	Governments wage war against each other because they do not have an objective methodology for resolving disputes because governments are a violation of an objective methodology for resolving disputes.
	Religion, unfortunately, has no objective methodology for resolving disputes.
	In fact, religion is one of the most dangerous things of all because it's okay if you don't have an objective methodology of resolving disputes if the stakes are very small.
	Thank you.
	You know, if you see a nickel on the ground and someone, some kid comes along and grabs the nickel from you, you're like, hey, that was quick, good for you.
	Why?
	Because it's only a nickel, right?
	Right.
	But if you're a diabetic who desperately needs her insulin and you're lost in the woods and you drop your insulin on the ground and you're scrambling for it and some little kid comes along and grabs it, well, you're going to pretty much freak out, right?
	Because you need that or you're going to die.
	So where the stakes are very high and the methodology for resolving disputes is entirely subjective and irrational, that is the worst combination.
	Okay.
	And so...
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Well, you're talking about how, like...
	Governments attack each other, but isn't MAD kind of mutually assured destruction, kind of like preventing people from attacking each other?
	Well, that's not an objective methodology for resolving disputes.
	That's just fear.
	Yeah.
	And it certainly is not preventing governments from attacking other governments.
	It's just preventing governments from attacking each other.
	Right, so America may not be attacking England, but it sure as hell is attacking a whole bunch of Middle Eastern countries and has 700 plus military bases all over the world.
	And it's attacking its own people, both through direct incarceration.
	Now rates higher than they were under the gulag in Apicalago under Stalin.
	So it's still attacking and stealing and thieving, it's just that they don't tend to do it against other nuclear powers.
	And so, yes, there is a reduction of violence because of mutually assured destruction, but that still is not an objective methodology for resolving disputes.
	And this is why.
	It is philosophy or nothing.
	It's philosophy or nothing.
	Go ahead.
	Sorry, you were going to say...
	I was talking to somebody, and they were talking about how Everybody probably agrees war is bad, but war is necessary because you can't really negotiate with terrorists.
	Getting back to the whole idea of MAD is, if Russia bombed us, we bombed them back.
	But if a terrorist organization that's moving all around bombs us, who do we bomb back?
	But why are they bombing us?
	War is kind of necessary.
	No, no, no.
	Wait, wait.
	See, why are they bombing us?
	Because they don't agree with our views.
	Nonsense.
	Come on.
	You don't believe that, do you?
	Believe in what?
	Do you think that Muslims are bombing America because they disagree with America's views?
	Oh, no, no.
	I believe it's because...
	So, after the Cold War...
	After the Cold War, when we helped...
	The CIA gave them weapons and stuff so that they could fight the Russians...
	We left Afghanistan a mess.
	We didn't help clean up.
	It was just we ruined everything.
	We burned things.
	We left it a mess.
	And so they're angry at us for leaving their country that way.
	No, I think that's probably not correct.
	Again, I don't want to speak for our Islamic friends, but my understanding is that U.S. foreign policy, which is largely centered around resource-rich, relatively philosophically backward countries such as the Middle East, has killed about 30 million people.
	since World War II.
	I mean, they've overturned elected governments, replaced them with dictatorships.
	They have sold massive amounts of weapons.
	They've participated in the repression of millions of people.
	They have loaned huge amounts of money to dictatorships.
	They've used foreign aid to prop up dictatorships.
	They have directly intervened in popular uprisings to crush them.
	And they have caused the deaths of millions and millions of Muslims and displaced millions and millions more.
	So I don't think it's because they gave some weapons to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 80s.
	I think it's pretty much because the American government has directly caused the deaths of millions and millions of Muslims around the world.
	And that's probably one central reason.
	I mean, I think, look for the more primal emotions.
	I mean...
	They disagree with Switzerland, too, right?
	I mean, Switzerland is a secular, Christian, neutral country, and does not have a lot of Muslims in it, and so obviously they disagree with that way of life, but I don't see them launching attacks against Muslims.
	See, the view from outside the empire is very different from the view from inside the empire, for obvious reasons I don't have to get into here.
	But I would look for something a lot more primal.
	Like, you disagree with Muslims, I assume, but that doesn't mean that you're going to go and shoot rockets at them.
	But if they wiped out all of your family, you might feel a little differently.
	Yeah.
	Well, that's all.
	Thank you.
	You're welcome.
	That is a good correction from the board.
	He says, I need to stop using the all-encompassing we.
	We gave them arms.
	No, you're absolutely right.
	You're absolutely right.
	That is to say, it's just the language is a little tricky to use, you know.
	The government.
	Well, what do I mean by the government?
	Do I mean the public servants, like who are there permanently?
	The bureaucrats?
	Do I mean the financiers?
	Do I mean the politicians, right?
	So, I appreciate that.
	It's challenging to talk about, but...
	I think that's important.
	And of course, if they hated America's freedoms, then America was, of course, a lot more free in the 19th century than it was in the 20th and 21st century.
	And if Muslims really hated America's freedoms, then why weren't they coming over and strangling Americans when America was staying home from the Islamic world?
	Which it really hasn't done a whole lot of in its history, but it's just not credible to say That they hate us because we're just so free and wonderful.
	I think it has a lot more to do with, you know, with the murders, the massive amounts of death.
	Yeah, somebody said, if you look at the covers of Time magazine for the U.S. and outside the U.S., it's very different.
	So the last thing that I would say is that Once you have a commonly accepted methodology for resolving disputes, and in philosophy, that's reason and evidence.
	In ethics, I would argue that's UPB. Once you have that as a commonly...
	Then we have no war.
	We have no war.
	We have no state.
	And we have no imprisonment, as we currently understand it, since banking does violate the NAP. We do have...
	And verbal abuse causes subjective harm to a growing child's mind, like a poison.
	syllables are poisonous venomous then we we have a great world you know where the perfection of life will only be interrupted by asteroids and cancers and other things that are random and not causal and so but to get rid of identity to me and then there's a lot in philosophy particularly in the eastern brand that talks about surrender your ego be free be free
	And this idea that we must put aside our ego in order to be happy.
	And to me, when people say identity or ego or whatever, what they're talking about is that part of us that out of fear has come to love lies, has come to praise lies.
	The lies of culture, the lies of religiosity, the lies of nationalism, the lies of racism, the lies of whatever, you name it.
	The lies of history, out of fear.
	Children do not love lies.
	They're not born loving lies, but out of fear of abandonment, out of fear of rejection, which is for children, of course, the fear of murder, Out of fear, we learn to love lies.
	And this is the story of 1984.
	I finally loved Big Brother.
	I was no longer afraid of him.
	I no longer wanted to fight him.
	I gave up everything about me that was individual and reality-based.
	Freedom is the freedom to say two and two make four.
	If that is granted, everything else follows.
	Well, this is fundamentally true in The mind of children.
	So, ego, the vanity, the identity, well, we just have to give up things that aren't true.
	And it's very painful.
	Very painful to give up things that aren't true.
	It's not so painful for us, but it's painful in our relationships to give up things that aren't true.
	Because the moment you give up things that aren't true, You have to say that people are liars.
	They may be unconscious liars, whatever that means, however that's provable, doesn't really matter.
	The fact is, you have to say, well, a whole bunch of you people lied to me, and I don't like it.
	And you lied to me, right?
	The estoppel theory is, the estoppel response is to say, you lied to me while telling me that lying was bad.
	So, that's a problem.
	People can lie to you if they say lying is good.
	Yeah.
	But if parents and teachers say to you that lying is bad and then lie to you about a whole bunch of things and refuse to correct themselves when you bring better reason and evidence to the table, well, that's a problem.
	Right?
	That's a problem.
	So, anyway, I just want to mention that.
	There's my quick recipe for world peace.
	And I hope that helps.
	Okay, thank you.
	Bye.
	Thank you.
	Alright.
	We got a bunch of new callers.
	So we'll try to do what you can.
	We have four more people on the line.
	Up first, we have Cheryl.
	The Cheryl?
	The Cheryl from Facebook?
	Whose name involves fruit?
	Hi, Steph.
	Look, I'm not even going to out you.
	But every time I read your Facebook post, I get hungry.
	I just wanted to mention that.
	And thank you for that.
	Okay.
	I'd like to talk about helping my daughter.
	I would like to listen.
	She is in a relationship with a boyfriend who is suicidal and it's putting a lot of pressure on her.
	Gosh, how terrifying.
	Yeah, I'm not sure of the best way to handle it.
	I'm really trying to be there to listen to her.
	She'll come to me and talk about it.
	But it's more about the mechanics of the relationship.
	Talking about her emotions is a little bit more difficult.
	She has a lot of extreme anxiety attacks.
	When her boyfriend threatens to commit suicide, she feels like it's all on her shoulders.
	My God, yeah, that's terrifying.
	Yeah.
	Alright.
	How long have they been...
	Sorry, I don't want to start asking questions if you have more to tell, so I don't want to interrupt if you're...
	Yeah, they've been in a relationship for about seven months, and it's a long-distance relationship.
	So he lives in Chicago, and we live in New York, and they've seen each other maybe three times in person.
	So it's all over Skype and text messages on the phone.
	And so that makes her feel even more helpless because it's so far away.
	You know the question that I'm going to ask next, right?
	I do.
	Okay, so do I even need to ask it?
	Okay.
	What was her relationship like with her father?
	Her father and I are divorcing and I do not live with them right now.
	I'm the one that left and I'm going to get foggy now.
	Can you ask me questions, please?
	Sure.
	What was her relationship with her father like when she was young, like a toddler?
	He's very much there.
	He's there physically.
	And everyone calls him the great father, the one who's so involved with his children.
	But he's not there.
	Mentally and emotionally.
	He can't talk about feelings.
	He doesn't want to talk about anything real.
	He likes to do fun things.
	Take them places.
	Take them to the movies.
	Bake with them.
	Do stuff with them.
	But when it comes to anything serious, he's there physically, but talking about it Doesn't happen.
	And why do you think that is?
	That's a loaded question, I feel like.
	We can come back to it if you like.
	I mean, I obviously have about a million and a half other questions.
	Right.
	And what has your daughter's dating relationship been like other than this relationship?
	She had one other boyfriend before who was about three hours away and there was no communication whatsoever.
	They didn't talk about anything.
	It was more of a physical relationship where they were together in body and in name, you know, just saying they were boyfriend and girlfriend, but they didn't talk about anything.
	You see the pattern, right?
	You see the pattern?
	I do.
	Okay, tell me the pattern.
	It's just like her father.
	Yeah, her father is distant and she has long-distance relationships with men who are not emotionally available, right?
	Yes.
	And what is her perspective of her father?
	I think she would answer according to his story.
	She would say that she loves him.
	And obviously she wanted to live with him when we broke up.
	I'm in the process of looking for a house myself so that they can come live with me too if they want to or stay with me, but there's not going to be any force or requirement for them to do that.
	And how was she disciplined as a child?
	Sorry, it's a loaded question because maybe there was no discipline, which doesn't mean no standards, but how was she corrected as a child?
	It was not good.
	Timeouts, yelling, probably withdrawing.
	I was very depressed through much of her childhood.
	I know you're asking a lot of questions about her father, but feel free to Feel free to ask me about me.
	Oh no, I'm slowly turning the ship around to point at mommy dearest.
	But I just wanted to get a sense of the correction aspect.
	So if you were depressed, then I would imagine there was obviously some lack of emotional availability on your side as well, right?
	Yeah.
	And I chose him because he was emotionally unavailable and he would not ask me about my childhood or I could avoid my childhood in a relationship with him and just pretend none of it ever happened and start a new life, I thought.
	Oh yes, that always is the plan, right?
	Yeah.
	I will pretend that I'm not in a wheelchair and I will go down these very high stairs and everything will be great.
	Bang, bang, bang, bang.
	Yeah, I've been there, done that, still do that sometimes, so I sympathize and I definitely empathize with that, so...
	Was she spanked?
	A few times, yes.
	It's not something that I did often, but yeah, I did.
	I did do that.
	Right, right.
	And I've apologized to her.
	Oh, good for you, good for you.
	I get a sense, you know, and when I say I get a sense, obviously this is just internet crap.
	You know that, right?
	This is just, I'm just sharing my thoughts about what you're saying, so this doesn't mean anything to do with truth.
	But I get a sense that she probably ended up, let me put this, helping or carrying a load for her parents quite a lot in her childhood.
	If her father was emotionally unavailable and you were depressed and therefore emotionally unavailable, then it seems to me that she would have perhaps molded her character in response to that as a role of supporter, as a role of proper upper, if that makes any sense.
	That makes a lot of sense.
	That's the same thing that I did with my mother.
	Oh, can you tell me a bit about that?
	My parents split up when I was seven, and their relationship was so bad that I was relieved.
	But then she went from man to man for the rest of my childhood.
	She was always depressed, always taking on a victim role, choosing these men who would turn her into a victim.
	So my thought was to be as good as possible, not to cause any problems for her because she had enough problems in her life.
	And just to be the good kid, got the good grades, did what I was supposed to.
	Right.
	The extremity of suicidality is something that I can't quite join the dots to.
	I mean, it's one thing, you know, he's clingy and he's needy and he's whatever, right?
	He's depressed or whatever.
	The act of suicidality is obviously a huge concern.
	And so...
	It's that aspect.
	Was he more functional when she first met him and then became less functional over time or revealed less functionality over time or was it something else?
	It's hard to say because I don't know him.
	I've never met him in person.
	But when she first met him, I assume it wasn't like, hi, I'm suicidal.
	Would you like to date?
	Right.
	But one of the first things that she said about him is, this guy's a creepy stalker because he needed so much attention.
	That was her sense of him.
	And then...
	And then he won her over, is the way she would say it.
	And do you know how he won her over?
	Lots of compliments, gifts.
	Just giving her a lot of attention.
	Right.
	Right.
	Okay, so obviously there's a need for attention, right?
	A need for attention from...
	Men or from other people, right?
	That obviously would probably go back to her dad and that kind of stuff.
	And do you know at what point in the relationship he either revealed or became suicidal?
	I don't know exactly.
	And it's kind of a sticky trap, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	Because, of course, once you're in, then...
	Once you're in with somebody who's suicidal, what do you do?
	Because they have this thing hanging over you, right?
	Right.
	And that's really problematic because it's like, if you say, like, I don't know, a couple of years ago, someone sent me an email saying I'm feeling suicidal, and I wrote them back and said, here are the suicide hotlines you need to call.
	This is not a topic for a philosophy show, right?
	You need to get straight to professionals.
	You need to get resources.
	You need to go to the emergency ward.
	You need to, you know, this is not something that, you know, we can chat about, so to speak, right?
	Right.
	And so, but once you're in, then they have this huge power over you, right?
	Right.
	Because if they, you know, I mean, if, heaven forbid, they went and did something and killed themselves or tried, I mean, that would just be horrible, right?
	I mean, it would really haunt your daughter and you and everyone, right?
	So it's a huge amount of power that somebody who claims suicidality has, right?
	Right.
	And I don't think if he really wanted to do it, he would be saying it.
	I think he would just do it.
	So I think that's why he's doing it.
	I think that's a myth.
	I think that's not true.
	I'm no expert on this, but I think it's not true that if people talk about it, they don't do it.
	I think a lot of people do talk about it before they do it.
	In fact, they can be quite explicit about it before they do it.
	So I wouldn't necessarily...
	Again, do your research on that.
	But I think, if I remember right, and it's been a couple of years since I read up on this, but I think it's not true that if they talk about it, they won't do it.
	So I just really want to sort of caution you on that.
	At least caution you to do more research.
	Okay.
	But it is...
	I think...
	I mean, if I were to talk to your daughter, you know, I would say something like this.
	You...
	If somebody's having a heart attack, even if you have a Swiss army knife on you, you don't go in and try and unclog their arteries with a spoon, right?
	Helping somebody who is having a heart attack takes years of training.
	It is highly specialized stuff, right?
	We don't pretend that we can deal with highly complex physical or emotional problems Right.
	Right.
	So the important thing to understand is that you cannot solve this.
	You cannot fix this.
	You cannot help him.
	Because what he's going through requires things like a full physical workup.
	It requires psychological evaluation.
	It might require a voluntary or even involuntary stay in some mental health treatment facility.
	Thank you.
	This is very complex stuff.
	If somebody says to you, I have diabetes, you don't go down to your basement and say, well, I think I've got some ingredients down here.
	Let's whip up some insulin.
	Because that is a very complex and very difficult to treat and very problematic ailment, right?
	Right.
	So I think the important thing to understand is that she's way over her head.
	She cannot solve this.
	She does not have the training.
	She does not have the legal backup.
	She does not have the access to medications.
	She doesn't have the access to provide physical or psychological workups.
	She doesn't have any of that, right?
	So she is watching someone having a heart attack thinking, well, I guess I'll just be his heart surgeon.
	Right.
	That is not going to work.
	She's thinking that if she loves him enough, that'll make everything better.
	Right.
	And that is not true.
	She does not have the training, the expertise to make that call.
	Right.
	Right?
	She does not have the training or the expertise to deal with a suicidal person.
	Do you advocate calling the police if someone threatens suicide?
	Somebody hesitant to do that.
	Yeah, I mean, it's a tough call.
	It's a tough call.
	I think that there's some very good elements in the mental health system.
	I really do.
	I think that there's lots of great psychologists out there who do fantastic talk therapy.
	These are all just my opinions.
	But I think that, and there are, look, there are lots of social agencies that are dedicated to helping people in this area, and some of them will actually help.
	Right.
	And he says he can't talk to anybody but her, and he's really anxious to talk to people he doesn't know.
	And she wants me to call his parents, but I can't imagine having any, from what I've heard about them, any honest conversation with them.
	And I'm worried that it's going to make it even worse.
	That they're just going to attack him more.
	Right.
	Yeah, I mean, this is a very, you know, this is a very, it's like a roach motel, right?
	This is a very sticky situation.
	It's a very tricky situation because we're kind of in now.
	But, I mean, I think the first thing to recognize is that Neither you, nor I, nor your daughter, nor anyone that I know in particular, can help this person.
	Can help this person.
	And I would also argue that allowing him to bully and dominate through the threats of suicidality is kind of doing the opposite of helping him.
	Right.
	Does that make sense?
	It does make sense.
	That's giving drinks to a drunk.
	That's going out and scoring some smack for a heroin addict.
	That is...
	I'm no expert, but I'm pretty convinced that's got to be the not good thing, right?
	Right.
	Yeah.
	So, he's got to get to a therapist.
	He's got to get to an emergency ward.
	He's got to get help.
	Right.
	You can't solve this.
	I can't solve this.
	Right?
	I mean, what I do, I mean, just by the by, is, you know, one of the strongest defenses against people who've had histories of child abuse is called the moral defense, where, you know, I deserved it.
	It was, you know, they were good parents and so on.
	I was reading this statistic the other day that says that Up to 60% of children who were actually hospitalized as a result of physical abuse.
	I mean, that's some serious physical abuse.
	Between 43 and 60%, and this is when they were, you know, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 years old.
	Between 43 and 60% of children who were hospitalized for extreme physical abuse, when later interviewed, claimed that they were never abused.
	Right.
	That's very dangerous, right?
	I mean, you have the highest chance of becoming an abuser if you deny that you were abused.
	I'm not talking about you.
	I'm just going to clarify my position, because I certainly talk to people about their histories and so on, but my goal is to try to pierce the moral defense, which is the job of philosophy.
	Philosophy is a moral conversation.
	Pierce the moral defense about the state, pierce the moral defense about abusive parents, pierce the moral defense about deities and so on.
	That's the job of philosophy.
	Now, treating It is not the job of philosophy.
	That's the job of psychology and mental health professionals and so on.
	And so this is not a moral argument.
	He needs to get to professionals.
	Now, I don't know, you know, you can check into the laws, but I would suggest that you guys call a mental health hotline, a suicide hotline, and say, this is the situation that we're in, right?
	I don't know what you should do.
	I mean, I don't, because that's like you saying to me, well, I can't be his heart surgeon, Steph, but where should I cut?
	It's like, well, I don't know, because I'm not a heart surgeon either, right?
	Right.
	So don't call his parents, but call the...
	I would call some mental health professionals and say, look, this is the situation that we've gotten in.
	We don't know what to do.
	Right.
	Which is true.
	And I don't know what you should do.
	Well, I think what they're going to tell me is to call the police.
	I mean, that's the general rule of thumb.
	They say if somebody threatens suicide, call the police.
	And I really don't want to bring violent people to his house.
	I can answer as to whether that is or isn't a good idea, but I would say that probably the best thing that you can do is follow the advice of professionals in this area.
	Okay.
	I mean, the police do have legal authority to get this guy to a mental health professional.
	And the other thing, too, which I would suggest is a good thing, is that once you pass it over to the authorities, no matter what, then at least they're doing the job now, right?
	Right.
	And it's off your plate.
	Because it being on your plate is definitely not good, right?
	Yeah.
	Now, the police aren't going to go lock him in jail, right?
	Well, isn't a mental health facility kind of like jail if he's forced to be there?
	It's really not.
	And, I mean, I say this with some experience, right?
	Not with myself, but with family members.
	It's really not.
	Okay.
	Because you, I mean, you will meet with professionals.
	You will get a physical workup.
	You will, and there's, you know, I think it's three days.
	I mean, it depends where, I don't know what the laws are where you are.
	I barely know what the laws are where I am.
	But, again, you certainly can't handle it yourself, and I don't know what the options are other than getting the authorities involved.
	I don't have a lot of faith in the system.
	Well, with all due respect, I don't have any faith in you or your daughter or me to be able to deal with this stuff, right?
	Right.
	And so, given that you can't help him, and given that your daughter can't help him, you have two choices.
	You either withdraw from the situation, and just, you know, whatever.
	Maybe you never find out what happens, or whatever.
	Oh, heaven forbid you read about it in the paper.
	You either withdraw from the situation, or you get experts involved.
	Okay.
	And then you can explore the possibility that all of this drama is happening so that you all don't talk about the divorce.
	Right.
	Yeah, I'm the only one in the family really trying to talk about it.
	Right.
	And I'm, you know, I'm a big fan of family therapy with a great therapist.
	I'm a huge fan of therapy as a whole.
	Yeah, my daughter's asking for a therapist, so I'm going to be getting her one tomorrow.
	And this woman also wants to work with all of us as a family.
	Fantastic, fantastic.
	Well, that's great.
	In which case, then I would try and get a family appointment as soon as possible.
	Tomorrow, the day after, or whatever, right?
	And I would be talking about this with the therapist first and forward, right?
	This would not be the first time that the therapist has dealt with these kinds of questions or issues.
	Again, rely on the expertise of the professionals.
	Okay.
	But you first have to disengage from the possibility that you can solve this problem.
	Again, I don't think you can.
	I mean, I think this is highly specialized, highly problematic.
	And I'm really sorry.
	I mean, I'm sorry.
	I mean, my God, you've got the stress of a family breakup, a divorce, and your daughter is in this terrible situation.
	And my God, my heart goes out to you, Cheryl.
	I mean, what an unbelievably difficult situation you're in.
	And I really just want to say how sorry I am that you're going through all of this, that your daughter's going through all of this, that your husband's going through all of this.
	It is a very, very difficult situation.
	And to have this on top, Of that is...
	I mean, it's very, very straining.
	And I just really want to give you mental hugs, hearts, ponies, and kisses to say that I'm really sorry that this is all going on.
	I think that these kinds of extremities can be catalysts for really important breakthroughs.
	But it sure doesn't obviously feel that way at the moment, I'm sure.
	But I think if it gets you all into therapy and helps you to figure out how your daughter and you as a family as a whole got into this situation, prevents recurrence, it could be a lifesaver in that your daughter now has gone through seven months of this incredibly stressful hell.
	But, you know, maybe she would have married and had a kid with this guy.
	And then, what are you going to do for the next 20, right?
	So, it could be worse kind of thing, but if this is a sort of wake-up call to get everyone into therapy and to start turning the corner in terms of communication, in terms of self-esteem, in terms of intimacy and honesty and disappointment and having all of those necessary conversations about history, you know, this guy may be doing you a completely weird kind of favor.
	Yeah, that's an understatement.
	I want to say thank you.
	I mean, this show has been so helpful to me and all the progress that I've made.
	I don't know if you noticed the difference in me.
	I feel I'm able to be so much more present in this conversation.
	My anxiety level has gone down tremendously and I know how to find a good therapist.
	I know the questions to ask and it's just, it's huge.
	I'm so glad.
	I'm so glad and I appreciate that and If you get a chance, drop me a line and let me know how it goes.
	Thank you for your honesty.
	It's a difficult topic to talk about, but I appreciate you talking about it.
	Okay.
	Thank you, Stan.
	Take care.
	You too.
	All right.
	And next on the queue.
	I just want to thank you for everything.
	Five guests in the thousands.
	It's amazing.
	You're welcome.
	What can I do for you, my friend?
	I was hoping to talk about a dream I had last Saturday night.
	I think there's something to it because as I was writing this up, the post on the board, but halfway through I got to something that kind of stuck me.
	Like I wasn't sure which way.
	Sorry, just to ask ahead of time, was it last Saturday night, right?
	Yeah, I woke up Sunday morning.
	Sorry, I just wanted to mention, last Saturday night I was doing my dream rounds, mostly of donators, in my lederhosen with the cougars and the unicorns and a kind of Greco-Roman chariot and lots of throbbing disco.
	If that's the dream, then I sort of know that already because I worked quite a bit on the CGI for that to give me abs.
	But if it's something else, I'm happy to talk about it.
	I just wanted to mention that up front.
	Right, right.
	Yes, no, absolutely.
	I'm not sure why I wasn't included in that, but no, I don't think you made an appearance there, but that's alright.
	What's your dream?
	Okay, so this is from the journal, and it's a little bit scribbly, but I'll do my best.
	Alright, so I was sitting in a bedroom, my bedroom, but of course it's a dream bedroom, so it's not really where I live or any of that.
	But it feels like it.
	And I'm there with a new friend.
	He's a guy about my age in his mid-twenties.
	And we're talking about stuff, friendly stuff.
	And I'm sitting on the bed.
	He's sitting across from me on a little dresser.
	And, you know, as we're having this animated positive conversation, these little critters start crawling out from under things in my apartment.
	Like a big tarantula spider and this weird little crab thing that's covered in fur and like a wood mouse.
	They'd crawl out from under the little dresser he's sitting on, come in from the hallway and it was just really weird.
	He seemed really comfortable with them.
	I was kind of like, whoa, where did these things come from?
	Did he notice them or he just seemed comfortable?
	No, he noticed them.
	Not only did he notice them, like with the tarantula, he was like, he sort of picked it up and like, well not sort of, he did pick it up.
	And like, I don't know if he had a backpack with him or something, but basically he got rid of it.
	So, like one thing would appear and he'd be all like, whoa, huh?
	And then he'd put it away somewhere.
	And then that happened a couple of times.
	And...
	You know, I thought this guy had something to do with it.
	So I asked him to leave.
	You know, to leave my apartment.
	And he looked at me and he said, you think this is about me?
	And, you know, I sort of had decided to get him out of my apartment.
	So I, you know, got him out of there.
	And, you know, this is one of those dreams where, like, there's...
	It continued after that.
	So this was...
	So he did leave, right?
	Huh?
	I'm sorry?
	He left, right?
	Oh, yeah.
	Yeah, he left.
	After his question, he just, yeah, he left.
	And so soon after, I left.
	And it was sort of a rainy, overcast day.
	You know, these are apartments from my childhood.
	I didn't live in, but school bus would stop at them.
	But I was living in one.
	So I went for a walk to either pick up something from the store or get lost, you know, just to walk to walk.
	And I stopped on my walk.
	This was a really short dream walk where you cross large distances in no time.
	I was on a street corner in a town.
	And there was a bar with a female bouncer and a male bouncer.
	The girl I remember had brown hair and a black t-shirt, black slacks like bouncers do.
	The guy was a big sort of Hispanic guy.
	I don't think he said anything to me.
	But I had a short conversation with the female bouncer, but I don't remember what it was about.
	After that, it sort of became night while I was at the bar when I was walking home.
	So the streetlights were on and all that.
	It wasn't raining anymore.
	As I was walking back, it was late afternoon again and overcast.
	I'm walking down a back street, which people would use for biking and walking.
	It's like a little creek area.
	Or something where people, there's a person sitting there.
	I can see my complex on the other side of the creek.
	So I keep walking and I get to the back entrance.
	And, you know, it's the back entrance where it's like chain link fences and a gate.
	So I go in and I meet a guard and the guard tells me there's something wrong with my apartment.
	Sorry, what's a guard?
	Like a security guard?
	Yeah, security guard.
	You got it.
	Okay.
	Yeah, and it's like I had just moved in to my apartment, like, very recently, so I guess the guard knew me from that.
	But there was something wrong with my apartment, so I went to my apartment, and apparently I lived on the second story catwalk, and that had collapsed, so I couldn't get into my apartment.
	Like, there was already a workman there fixing it.
	And, you know, I tried to get up, but it was almost like one of those video game, like, platformy things where it's like there's a ladder on a bucket and there's this plywood board on some scaffold.
	You know, it's like you gotta jump and climb all over to even get in there, which I attempted, but I don't think I did.
	So, I don't think I made it in.
	But then I remembered that I had an invite or was welcome at this other fella who lived in the complex with me.
	Not the same guy at the beginning though?
	No, not him.
	Different fella, sure.
	Now this guy is a real person in real life.
	He runs a game company, or a video game company, but for the sake of not dropping the ball, we'll just call him Bob.
	Even though I guess he's a public figure, but whatever, Bob.
	So I go over to Bob's apartment, and I knock on the door, and I'm greeted by, I don't know, somebody, another guy who's my age.
	Bob would be in his 50s, probably.
	And he's like, oh, hey, yeah, come on in.
	And I come in, and it's not an apartment on the inside.
	It's another apartment like the building I lived in, but it was a two-story apartment that had I see the in my complex thing if it's supposed to be dual meaning and I don't think so.
	Sorry, keep going.
	Right, right.
	So it's like this two-story apartment building is only one story but really vaulted ceilings.
	So it's like I just walked into this big mansion almost of an apartment.
	All right.
	And what happened then?
	I look around and it's dimly lit, you know, where they have those little Are they called sconces?
	Little circular lights that project down in little cones and stuff.
	You know, on a little bar and then there's like a big foyer and to my right there's some bedrooms and a drawing room which is where the guy who brings me in says that Bob is.
	So he takes me over there.
	Takes me into the drawing room and that's where Bob is.
	So it's another dimly lit room but Bob's sitting there in the middle of the room on a drawing table with a little light shining on the table so he's drawing a picture or whatever and So, sorry, when you say drawing room, you mean like a room actually for drawing, because drawing room means like a reception room or something, but you mean like a drafting room or a drawing room, right?
	Yeah, actually.
	I think it's kind of both in this sense, so, you know.
	All right.
	So, he's drawing a picture, and then what happens?
	So, I walk over to him, and, you know, he only sort of recognizes me.
	Like, he knows I'm there, but It's sort of almost a casual thing, like he was expecting me.
	I thank him for having me.
	Nice to see him.
	And he says, well, feel free to look around.
	Something like that.
	So I do.
	It's a beautiful, beautiful house.
	Lots of wood.
	Dude, I'm going to have to ask you to get to the end of the dream, just because I can't do a 20-minute dream description.
	It's going to kill my audience dead.
	So right at the end of the dream, something happens that has made this dream memorable, and that's the moral of the dream.
	So what happens near the end?
	That's actually...
	That's the end of the dream?
	It's almost here.
	So I walk...
	I look around very briefly, and I come to this stool.
	It's a little circular, short wooden stool about a foot off the ground, and I press on it.
	And then the stool, like, it escalates to, like, six feet tall or taller.
	Like, it gets taller than me where I couldn't sit comfortably on it either way.
	Like, it's at another drawing table.
	And that's it.
	That's really where, like, it ends.
	And I'm sorry that the dream's so long, but...
	No, that's okay.
	That's okay.
	All right.
	Okay, so you're in a bedroom, new friend chatting about stuff.
	You have a good chat.
	All these critters come out.
	You think it's got something to do with him or he's quite friendly with them.
	And so you ask him to leave.
	He goes.
	And then you end up walking around, going to a bar, talking to a female bouncer.
	You leave late in the afternoon.
	It's not raining.
	You take a backstreet back.
	You go back to your apartment building and there's been an accident.
	Was it your balcony collapsed or just someone's balcony?
	It was the balcony that would have led to my apartment.
	Okay.
	And so you go and stay with a game designer's friend, he says, come in, and you sit down and a stool escalates, right?
	Yes.
	Right.
	Am I right in guessing that in your life as a whole, you don't talk a lot about deep and intimate things to the people around you?
	Well, I do, but I don't have like...
	I don't spend a ton of time with the people I do talk about those things with.
	Right, because what seems here...
	I'm just starting at the bigot with your new friend.
	So you're talking about having a pleasant chat, and then all these little critters come out, and he's quite friendly, and he takes care of them, but you seem to get upset with him, and you tell him to leave, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, that's an odd thing to do.
	It is.
	Because it's not his fault that they're coming out.
	But what happens is he doesn't challenge you on why you're saying what you're saying, right?
	Just a little bit.
	When he said, you think this is about me, initially I thought he was saying that to hide the fact that it was about him.
	Right when I woke up, I thought it really was his fault and he was lying to me.
	But then on review of the dream, You know, it's like, maybe it really is me, not him.
	So that's sort of like a dissonance point.
	Right.
	Now, when you grew up as a child, did you have these kinds of chats, the kind that you had in your bedroom?
	Did you have these kinds of chats on any kind of regular basis with people about what was important to you?
	No, I don't think so.
	And how long have you been listening to this show?
	About two years.
	And in listening to this show, have you developed, I'm assuming you have, developed some deeper thoughts or ideas that you want to communicate with other people?
	Yeah, for sure.
	And the people in your childhood, have you been able to talk about these deeper thoughts and ideas with the people who were around in your childhood?
	Friends or family or whoever?
	Yeah.
	No, I don't have much contact with anybody that I grew up with.
	I don't actually...
	Well, I've talked with my dad about it.
	So I'll tell you a...
	I'm sorry, say that last bit again?
	I've talked to my dad about it a little bit.
	A little bit, okay.
	And how's that gone?
	Well...
	He's been...
	It's been...
	It's interesting because he's he's a libertarian of sorts so but like perpetually minarchist and he works for the state so it's sort of right contradiction there but I mean that's sort of politics but you're not talking politics much in this dream right no I don't I don't think so no right okay all right so I mean I don't know about the second half is yet but the first part Upping
	your game means ancient pain.
	That's just a phrase that came into my head while you were talking.
	Upping your game means ancient pain.
	And what I mean by that is that you're having a chat with a friend, and it's a good chat, right?
	And so you would expect that to be a kind of pleasant thing to do, right?
	Look, we're having a nice chat.
	We should have butterflies and rainbows and my little ponies scampering around the room, right?
	But what comes out from under the furniture are creepy crawlies, right?
	Yeah.
	Right, so what would that mean?
	What would that mean is that you don't get how hungry you always were until you have your first real meal, right?
	And so if you have been hungry, mostly your whole life, and then you sit down to a buffet and you have a full meal, the likelihood is that you will burst into tears.
	Why is that?
	Over full stomach.
	No.
	I don't cry when I eat too much.
	I may be uncomfortable, but I don't cry.
	Oh.
	Because it's the first time the buffet's been available?
	Yeah, because you now get a sense of everything you missed, right?
	Right.
	And this is the bittersweetness of personal growth.
	So if you find that it's incredibly rich, enjoyable, and powerful to have conversations about things which mean something to you, about truth, virtue, integrity, goodness, politics, economics, you name it, right, all the stuff that is passionate and powerful for you, then when you start having these conversations, it's really hard.
	It's bittersweet.
	You're really happy to be having the conversations, but there's a pain in that as well, right?
	Yeah.
	Sorry, I shouldn't say right, like that's, you know, I'm just, this is my idea, my experience, my thoughts.
	And if you have, you know, I'm going to ridiculously over-characterize your historical relationships and take it for what it's worth.
	It may not be true.
	But if you have relatively shallow relationships with people around you, then when you begin to go deep, when you begin to go deep, it's not great for them, right?
	Oh, yeah, if you try to change the relationship with the other person?
	No, see, not if you try to change the relationship with the other person, because that's an unfair thing to do.
	What I mean is that if you are honest and open about what you think and feel with people with whom you've had a historically shallow relationship, I don't mean try to manipulate them or change them, just being who you are, all of who you are.
	Right.
	That's painful.
	Because either they're going to resist you like crazy, which is painful, or they're going to change and adapt, in which case it's like, well, if you could do this, why the hell didn't you do it for the last 20 or 30 years?
	Why am I the one who has to grow the relationship?
	So it may be beneficial in the long run, but it's still a painful thing to go through, right?
	Yeah.
	You know, it's like...
	Your mother either didn't give you enough to eat because she didn't have enough, which is painful to see, or she had it but she just didn't want to feed it to you, which is painful to see, right?
	So if you go to your mom and say, listen, all your meals have been too small.
	I've been hungry.
	And she says, stop being so selfish.
	Stop being so greedy, right?
	That's like, ow, right?
	Or if she says, oh, okay, here's a buffet.
	It's like, what?
	Why was I hungry my whole childhood if you've got a damn buffet?
	Either way, right, it's not good.
	Yeah.
	Or she might say, well, you know, I don't have a lot of food because of X, Y, and Z. Here are the reasons and so on.
	It's like, well, why didn't you ever talk to me about this before?
	Why didn't you ever explain this to me before?
	Why can we not talk to this?
	No matter what happens, when you go deep and you haven't had deep relationships before, it's tough.
	It's bittersweet.
	And maybe it leads to some better place.
	Maybe, I mean, I've certainly had reports, you know, parents who say, yeah, my kid's sitting down talking about important things now and it's great.
	It's been a real revolution, but it's always bittersweet, right?
	So when you're having a great chat with someone, creepy crawlies and critters come out, right?
	I think that's the bittersweet side.
	It's fun, but I'm uneasy, and I can't concentrate.
	It's a positive conversation.
	It's a relaxed and enjoyable conversation, but it can't continue.
	Yeah, that's really familiar.
	Good.
	Okay, good.
	Yeah, I mean, going deep is like going pearl diving.
	You can stay down, but for a lot of people, they're pushing right up.
	They can't breathe down there, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	And so you say, so rather than say, I wonder where all these critics are coming from, or more importantly, rather than saying, I'm having trouble concentrating on this conversation because these creepy crawlies are kind of creeping me out.
	And your reaction to them is unsettling to me, which is an honest RTR conversation about real-time relationships, right?
	Talking about your experience in the moment.
	Right.
	But you don't do that, right?
	What you do is you say, you kind of attack the guy to some degree, and you tell him to go, right?
	Yeah.
	Right?
	And that's important.
	And what I get a sense of there, going way out on a limb, so throw it aside if it's not true for you, is that this may be the response of other people in your life.
	When you're having deep conversations, do you find that when you have people who've been in your life historically, if you try to have deep conversations with them, do you find that they react in a way that feels like they want to stop the conversation or shut it down or back off or postpone it or something like that?
	Or have you not tried to have those, except with your dad?
	Well, I did have one a while back with my brother, but that was a while back and I haven't pursued that any further, so...
	But has he pursued it?
	He did get in contact with me a week or three ago, so it was...
	No, I don't think specifically on what we were talking about before, so...
	Okay, so it hasn't been met with wonderful receptivity, right?
	No.
	Right.
	So it may be...
	Sorry, go ahead.
	It's...
	I really...
	I don't talk to anyone from, you know, since about the time.
	Anybody really who...
	Everybody's new in my life, like, within the past couple of years.
	Right, right.
	I mean, you're still in contact with people from your old life, which is fine, of course, but it may be that you're trying to understand what it's like for other people.
	Like, maybe in the dream, you're your brother or your dad or your mother or something like that, and...
	You're new to them and you're having an enjoyable chat with them because it seems to me like if you've been listening to the show for two years and you're into self-knowledge and honesty and all that, it seems unlikely that you would be not honest in this kind of conversation.
	So it may be, if in a dream you are inhabiting someone's skin who's doing stuff that you wouldn't do, it may be an attempt to empathize with other people's experience of you.
	Does that make any sense?
	Does that...
	That makes sense, because the apartment isn't mine.
	Like, it's not somewhere that I necessarily lived, but it was similar.
	Right, and your reaction in the dream is not likely to have been your reaction in real life, right?
	Yeah, I'd still be kind of surprised about where all those critters were coming from, but I'm not sure.
	Right, but you wouldn't ignore it and then blame the other person, right, unjustly.
	I've mentioned this before, but for those who are maybe not, haven't listened to all the shows, for years I had these dreams about massive tidal waves smashing into me and sometimes shredding me limb from limb.
	Couldn't stop these dreams, worked on them, worked on them, worked on them, and I finally got it.
	Once I got it, never had the dream again.
	And what I got was that I was the world and the wave was philosophy.
	And this is how philosophy appears to the world.
	Oh man, I've got a connection.
	I made a post about this on FDR, I think, a couple months ago, and it's a guy, we'll call him Bob, not the same Bob from the dream, but like in the very beginning of the dream, I am Bob and it's me sitting across on the dresser.
	I'm sitting on the dresser and I'm talking to Bob and there's creepy crawlies coming out and Bob freaks out.
	And I think that's very similar to what our short friendship was like because there was sort of a mutual shutting out going on.
	Or, I don't know, maybe he shut me out.
	It's hard to say.
	Maybe it's not.
	Right.
	So I think that's an important thing to understand.
	Now, I don't think I have time to spend on the rest of the dream, but that would be the parameter.
	Because nobody in the dream talks to you about anything that's important.
	Yeah.
	I mean, your apartment just got trashed and your friend just says, have a seat, you know, whatever, right?
	Yeah.
	And then you sit on this stool and it goes to you up six feet or something like that, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, like, I'm not even sitting on it.
	I just touch it to test it out, and it shoots way up, way above my head.
	Shoots way up.
	Right.
	Like a spring or something like that, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	And does your friend, the game owner, does he remark upon this?
	That's like I woke up, so...
	Right.
	Right, so sudden and unexpected growth.
	Again, this would be one I would work with, but I would look at the dream from the perspective of...
	An examination.
	Like, things don't seem shallow until you go deep.
	Now, once you go deep, which means going real, which means self-knowledge, which means honesty, which means, I think, really the only possibility of virtue.
	Like, once you plug into principles rather than expedience, once you go for values rather than pragmatism and so on, you go deep.
	And you don't even know that it's shallow, that your life was shallow until you go deep.
	And the most important thing, which I think the dream is really about, other people...
	Don't feel shallow until you go deep.
	Right, so I'm sure these weren't your conversations, but just to explain what I mean by that, if you have, you know, friends, they get together and they talk shit about sports and video games and the election and whatever bullshit that people talk about, right?
	Empty noise, chatterbox filling, it might as well be a bunch of birds being shaken in a bag over an empty canyon.
	And then you start to bring up something important, whether it's important to you emotionally, or it's deep philosophically, or it's an examination of the society as a whole.
	And it can be something as simple as, you know, I've been thinking that taxation is theft.
	It can be as simple as, you know, I've been really thinking about my history, my childhood, and how it's affecting me as an adult, and so on.
	Or if somebody in the...
	In the group is going through something dysfunctional.
	They have a problematic relationship with their girlfriends.
	Say, okay, you know, we've talked a lot about the weather and sports and the election.
	And we've talked a lot about what's on TV. And we've talked a lot about video games.
	I wonder if we could spend, you know, 20 minutes, you know, Bob here is having a real problem with his girlfriend.
	I think we should really try and talk about that because, you know, we're friends.
	And we should talk more than just about these inconsequential things, which, you know, can be fun.
	But let's talk about something a little more important.
	You know, what are most people's response to something like that?
	That talk about your girlfriend thing is really appropriate because that's something that I did and that sort of led to losing a friend.
	Yeah.
	And I'm sorry to hear that.
	I mean, this is very common.
	Most people drown psychologically in shallow pools surrounded by friends and family.
	And that is really tragic.
	Most people drown in shallow pools surrounded by empty-headed, chattering friends and family.
	People end up with their marriages breaking up without a single friend talking about it with them to intervene to help ahead of time.
	People end up in terrible jobs.
	People end up being abused at work.
	People end up hitting their kids.
	People end up yelling at people.
	People end up in self-destructive habits, drinking, drugs, promiscuity.
	People end up with STDs without anyone Bringing them up short ahead of time and trying to steer them off or away from that cliff edge.
	Most people drown in very shallow pools surrounded by happy chatty friends and family.
	And the moment that you point out that somebody's drowning and we should really try and help them, everyone gets offended.
	And that's a great challenge.
	It's a chilling fact about society.
	I'm generalizing, but you know, this is a lot of people, a hell of a lot of people.
	But the moment I started talking about things that were important and deep for me, I mean, people just ran.
	Now, one or two people did get more interested and involved, but what happened was their friends and their family moved to intervene and draw them back to the shallow, empty-headed, worker-bot, chattering, teeth-champing, empty-echo nonsense, right?
	All the trivia that so consumes and eats people.
	So depth is a great challenge to the surface shallow skimmery of an empty society, a society without philosophy, a society without history, a society without self-knowledge, a society fixated on the endless pixelated distractions of shiny empty media and shiny empty video games and shiny empty relationships and shiny empty sexual encounters.
	We are not whales who can rise to the surface, enjoy the sunshine, leap, and then descend to the depths.
	We are like those little surface skimmy spiders with the forelegs that run along the surface.
	Tension!
	Tension being the operative word.
	And can't go deep and can't fly, but live in a two-dimensional flatland.
	And when depth comes along, we experience our own crushed ocean.
	Two-dimensional natures, and it feels like an attack from someone who comes along and asks any kind of essential questions.
	I mean, this happens over and over again.
	I will bring up people's childhoods, whether it's about the martial arts thing or something else, and everybody freaks out.
	And all that tells me is that they haven't talked about their childhoods with anyone around them, whether it's a therapist or whether it's a friend or whether it's, you know, even just working alone on self-knowledge workbooks, the Brandon stuff, the Bradshaw stuff, you name it.
	It simply tells me that people are living in a world where their histories are never discussed, where the sources of their motivations are never examined, which means that they're living empty, shallow, surface, glittery makeup on a balloon, a helium balloon, floating in the endless stratosphere of inconsequential chatter, but that's the lives that most likely people are leading.
	Because when people start bringing up your childhood, if you freak out, it simply means that you've never talked about your childhood with anyone.
	If you've never talked about your childhood with anyone, how on earth can you consider yourself close to anyone?
	The childhood forms who we are.
	It doesn't just inform who we are, it forms who we are.
	Right?
	So people who don't talk about their history and its effects on their present, their family history and what they know about their grandparents' childhoods and their parents' childhoods and their childhoods, These are lives of quiet desperation.
	And then when someone comes along and says, you know, could be something deeper going on here, could be something historical going on here, could be some effective trauma going on here, could be, worth examining.
	Yeah.
	Well, what happens?
	People freak out.
	Because their loneliness, their isolation, their shallowness, their emptiness, their surface skimmery of nothingness, you know, they are not Angels of depth who can fly to the heavens and go kiss the base of the Mariana Trench.
	They are skipping rocks that flip over the surface of life, skip, skip, skip, crash into the far bank dead, in the grave.
	Skip out of the mother's womb, skip over the shallow surface of life, go straight into the grave.
	That's tragic.
	That is so tragic.
	And all the disasters that they accumulate like burrs on their empty hides?
	Well, nobody will talk about those.
	Nobody will help.
	You know, we say, well, we want to help the poor.
	Oh, we care about the education of the poor.
	We care about the homeless and so on.
	Care about the histories of those around you and you can truly be said to care about people.
	You can truly be said to be intimate if you care about the histories and the effects of those histories on those around you.
	But no, you can listen to that clattering statist alarm bell that goes on I don't know.
	What is that?
	Law and order, I think it is, right?
	Oh, yeah.
	Yeah, I mean, you can care about that stuff.
	And don't get me wrong.
	I'm sure that, you know, a couple of shows are fine.
	I'm not talking about don't play video games.
	I've not played video games in years, but I did just treat myself to a game or two of Skyrim and Really quite an amazing game.
	It's one of the first times I've actually stopped to admire the view in a video game.
	It's quite amazing.
	Anyway, so I'm not saying don't have these things on.
	Don't play sports.
	Don't talk about everything.
	Because this is what people go to and say, okay, well, if you're not just going to have empty, shallow conversations, then you have to be deep all the time.
	And that is just another sad little defense people make up.
	The important thing is to have flexibility.
	Oh, so you're saying that I should eat more vegetables.
	So what you're saying is that I should only ever eat vegetables.
	It's like, oh, come on.
	I mean, come on.
	So obvious.
	So to have the flexibility of conversation is to talk to people about the history.
	Why should we be afraid to talk about our histories with people who claim to love us?
	How can we claim to talk about our history?
	How can we claim that we're afraid to talk about our histories with people who claim to love us?
	When you love someone, no topic is off limits.
	What you think and what you feel is available, is important.
	So, anyway, just a little speech about the dream, but that's the way I would approach it.
	For sure.
	Thanks, Steph.
	You're very welcome.
	Sorry to take up as much time.
	No, don't apologize, Steph.
	I mean, that's my choice, right?
	Let me run the show, and don't worry about that.
	I'm so glad to have a chat.
	All right.
	Just as he moves on into the endless static of his rather shifty mic situation, we can move on to the last one.
	We have two more people to go.
	Let's do it.
	They're on the line.
	Hey.
	Hello.
	Hi.
	How are you doing?
	Can you hear me?
	Good.
	I can hear you.
	Go ahead, my friend.
	All right.
	This has been a lot of personal calls today, but I don't think I can change up the variation.
	I have another personal question.
	Go for it.
	Basically, I've been listening to your podcasts and also going therapy.
	Also, I've changed my diet, which has been very helpful to my recovery and just general mood.
	Sorry, did you say change your badge?
	Did you say change your badge?
	No, no, no.
	I said change diet.
	Oh, good.
	Okay, sorry.
	Got it, got it.
	Okay.
	Yeah, so I was recently looking around and I found this notebook.
	I've always liked drawing, especially when I was a child, but I found this notebook and it was filled with very violent imagery.
	And it was your notebook?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Just me drawing lots and lots of violent pictures.
	Like people being decapitated, you know, hurt in many ways, etc.
	I like drawing that for some reason.
	And I have to link it to psychosis or something.
	I mean, it's...
	When I saw it, I was actually very scared.
	Like, wow, I was like this at one point.
	Right.
	Amongst that, well, it's not diagnosed with psychosis, but I have the symptoms that I've been looking up.
	And amongst that, I also have an eating disorder.
	Well, I'm fully recovered now, but for a large portion of my time, I did have The people I've dated, the women I've dated, have also had eating disorders.
	So, a big mixed bag of pathological issues I'm afraid, but I was kind of shocked by how violent I used to be.
	Well, sorry, violence used to be just in terms of the imagery that you had.
	Oh, no.
	This isn't violent, like you weren't taking pictures of decapitations you'd achieved.
	You drew them, right?
	Yeah, I drew them, but I was also violent in school.
	Basically, I like playing play fights, but I went a little too far than the other kids.
	Like, I would chase them, and they would lock themselves in the toilets, and...
	You know, I was very violent as a child.
	I'm sorry, what is a K-fight?
	Play fights, like...
	Oh, play fights, sorry.
	Okay, got it.
	Got it.
	Yeah, so I was big into that.
	I was also in martial arts for a large portion of my time, all the cartoons and games I played all based on fighting, etc.
	So now I'm not that interested in it these days.
	I guess you could say.
	I'm not so interested.
	But I was just kind of amazed at how...
	and it brought back a lot of memories about how violent and how...
	you know, how violent I was to people when it's like a complete contrast to how I am now.
	I don't know.
	Right.
	It seems like a huge transition.
	I've only just realized how far I've actually come.
	Right.
	And why do you think you had...
	Why do you think you were violent or had violent imagery or enjoyed these play fights that, as you say, went too far?
	I'm not really sure.
	How long have you been listening to this show?
	For about two years now, yeah.
	I'm so sorry, and I don't mean to laugh.
	I really don't, because what we're talking about here is very deep and very tragic.
	But what do you think I'm going to say when you say that you have no idea or you don't really know why you might have been violent?
	You know the answers.
	You know why.
	Yeah, so why?
	Why do you think, right?
	Why do you think?
	You know, the disciplining action, you know, I was...
	You know, it's still kind of hard to even say, but I was...
	I was abused as a child, but...
	And that was...
	In what way?
	In what way were you abused?
	Physically, emotionally, very weird ways.
	Like when I was young, I was made to play like violent games, like very violent games, like 18 plus games when I was like five or six.
	I used to enjoy that.
	I'm sorry, you said you were made to play, was it very violent video games when you were five or six?
	Yeah, yeah.
	I'm so sorry.
	Like horror games, like I'd be very scared to play it, but I was made to play it anyway by my dad.
	And yeah, it really made me scared and I had nightmares and that kind of stuff from playing horror games or watching horror movies.
	Do you mean sort of like alone in the dark, kind of like zombies jumping out of haunted houses kind of games, or do you mean more sort of military style games?
	I would say a combination of both, like just, you know, vinyl games, 18 +, whatever comes into your mind for 18 +, that's what I was thinking.
	Wow.
	And so your father would say, you have to sit down and play this game?
	Yeah, yeah.
	And would he sit there with you or would he leave you alone?
	He'd sit there with me.
	And did your mother know about this?
	She didn't like it, but there wasn't any real protest to it.
	She quietly opposed it.
	God, I'm so sorry.
	I'm so sorry.
	That is...
	It's appalling.
	It's appalling behavior on the part of your dad and your mom.
	So I just really want to...
	I still remember clear as day when I was in boarding school and they showed us a Charlton Heston zombie movie.
	I was six and I mean it was unbelievably overwhelming and none of the kids got any sleep and we were all traumatized and that was just a movie.
	I mean sitting there and participating in these ultra-violent, ultra-horrifying video games on your father's insistence when you're five or six is just appalling.
	I'm so sorry.
	I'm almost in tears.
	I'm so sorry.
	I don't know.
	It's just kind of crazy how that was the path I could have went.
	You know what I mean?
	And congratulations on not going that path.
	I think that's good for you.
	Good for you.
	Do you mind if I ask, were you struck on the head in discipline when you were a child or as punishment?
	Slapping on the cheeks.
	I would say, yeah.
	And, yeah, so look, the pictures of violence that you drew, clearly you can understand that now in this context, right?
	Does that make sense?
	I mean, you had a huge amount of disturbing and violent and repulsive imagery forced into your head, and you were forced to participate in it.
	By your father when you were a little tiny boy.
	Yeah, the pictures are really, really bad.
	Like, people being stabbed.
	You know, people having their, you know, drinking acid.
	Just really, really shocking imagery.
	You wouldn't doubt this person would be capable of murdering someone, and this is the kind of stuff I was drawing.
	It's just really...
	Well, sorry, I wouldn't necessarily go to that extreme.
	I don't think you can say, well, a kid draws violent images, therefore the kid is capable of murder.
	I wouldn't go to that.
	Hmm.
	I mean, when I was a kid, we were all drawing war stories and war games and so on, right?
	And I've certainly never been capable of murder or anything like it.
	And so I wouldn't necessarily jump to that conclusion.
	I mean, there is still a lot of disturbing and difficult experiences to process, but I wouldn't necessarily go to that extreme.
	I mean, you know, that would be my first thought.
	I mean, because that's pretty condemnatory.
	I mean, obviously you did something right because you're not going to go kill 15 people, right?
	Absolutely.
	So, from that standpoint, whatever you did in terms of attempting to retain your empathy and attempting to work through this sort of stuff, You did something right.
	I mean, I've mentioned this before on the show, but I used to go to a friend of mine's place after school.
	His father was a doctor, and I would draw endless pictures on his blackboard and on his, you know, so he could see it.
	Everyone in the whole family could see it.
	And these were pictures of half-rotted skulls with the eyeballs hanging down the cheeks and holes in the cheeks that you could see the teeth through and, you know, just incredibly mutilated.
	Pictures that I would draw over and over again, right?
	This is what I mean when I say most people drown in a shallow pool surrounded by people.
	Because no one, no one ever asked a question or thought about it or indicated that anything was amiss.
	What was I trying to communicate?
	while i was trying to communicate that this was my experience on the inside of being abused yeah Yeah.
	Now, could I talk about it directly?
	No.
	I mean, there's a...
	In a psychological study I was reading about recently, a mother hit her toddler, and the toddler, wide-eyed, grabbed her cheek and said, Mama, Mama, somebody just hit me.
	In other words, the toddler could not process that it was the mother who'd struck her.
	She had to invent somebody else who'd hit her that the mother could help her or save her from.
	This is how elemental and primitive these defenses are.
	So, the pictures I was drawing was not of, or the victims or the people involved were not imaginary, but they were actually apparitions of what I'm experiencing.
	Well, yeah.
	I mean, I was struck, and this is why I asked about head blows, right?
	I was struck repeatedly around the head.
	And from the inside, it feels like something very damaging, because it is to your brain, right?
	And so I was drawing my experience of abuse.
	I was broadcasting it to everyone, and nobody cared.
	Absolutely.
	I would do these drawings sometimes at school, primary school, and I was given a tap on the wrist and that's about it.
	There was no further inquiry or really sitting down with me asking what's going on.
	It was just, oh, don't draw back.
	You know?
	Right.
	Right.
	And in doing these drawings and in fighting in the way that you were fighting, What were you trying to say to people?
	You were trying to say to people, this is my experience.
	That which we cannot talk about, that which we cannot process, we act out.
	It's a fundamental law of the human mind.
	That which no one listens to, we escalate until they listen to.
	That which we cannot talk about, we act out.
	My friends during childhood were all very violent.
	Yeah, I guess I've...
	Yeah, it's kind of interesting.
	Like, why am I here?
	Like, considering all this, or considering, like, the bad cards are being dealt in terms of history, epigenetics, whatever.
	But I'm...
	Well, I don't...
	Look, sorry.
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	I don't mean to drop.
	I don't know.
	Obviously, nobody, I think, can answer that.
	But there are some clues.
	So, the people who become the most violent, statistically, are the people who were abused, but who defend or forget or praise the abuse.
	That which we praise, we become.
	That which we validate inhabits us, becomes us.
	And so, you didn't say to me, Nothing bad happened in my childhood.
	You didn't say to me, well, my dad made me sit down and play ultra violent and ultra terrifying video games, but it was good for me.
	It toughened me up.
	It taught me the way the world really was.
	I'm proud of that.
	I think I love him for doing that.
	If that's what you were saying, you would never be calling in, right?
	You'd be off getting ready to do, most likely, terrible things in the world.
	So the fact that you remember it as a negative experience is probably the key as to why you're not doing what others in your family have done.
	Thank you.
	Does that make any sense?
	I think that was because Only recently, where I've been delving into my past and been thinking about things philosophically, I actually remember what my childhood was like.
	Whereas when I was in my mid-teens, 13 to 16 I guess, it was just like this blank canvas where I wasn't thinking about my childhood or couldn't remember anything about it.
	But all these details just keep coming back to me.
	I did have a negative experience.
	It wasn't a blank canvas that I've just forgotten.
	I guess, though, when you suppress your memories in that way, you do forget how bad it was.
	Well, again, I would look more at the environment.
	It's not that you suppress the memories.
	It's the memories aren't allowed, right?
	The memories are punished, right?
	Yeah, like school environment is no place to...
	Well, and family environment, right?
	Yeah, absolutely.
	I'm also kind of intrigued how I became to, you know, how I had an eating disorder.
	Like, I'm fully recovered now, but there was a point where I was, you know, big into starvation diets, like 500 calories a day, which is very, very, very small, considering how tall I am.
	I did this for about two years, and of course, I became underweight.
	And the people I've dated are not violent, but they're just depressed.
	Like, everyone I've dated has had an eating disorder or some description, so...
	But now I'm recovered.
	I don't think you've ever made a podcast about eating disorders and its origins, but I'd be interested to hear your theory about it.
	Yeah, I mean, I obviously have nothing scientific or intelligible to say about a disorder, such as an eating disorder, but...
	What comes to mind when I think about eating disorders is when I was, I guess, seven or so, I was walking home from school and there was a house that was being demolished.
	I was really into painting at the time.
	And I brought home a door, I don't know, a real, like, honest-to-goodness door, because the door was big and white and I wanted to use it as a canvas to paint.
	And my mother let me keep the door and I started painting it and so on.
	And then she got, I mean, she got really enraged about because I think it was because I had put a glass of water on a cabinet and it had left one of those little white rings that fades over time because of the water condensation of residue.
	I mean, she just went completely insane, beat me with an inch of my life.
	I remember, and for a while afterwards, what she picked on was my painting.
	And what I sort of said to myself was, I painted a...
	No, I did a chalk picture of a sunset and mountains and goats and all that.
	And I sort of decided in my mind at that age, I said, this is the last picture I'm going to do.
	And in the future...
	In some manner that I couldn't figure out at the time it didn't really matter for the story in the future They will look at the artistic talent that I displayed as a seven-year-old and they will say what a tragic loss to the world That this child never went on to become an artist I was so angry at being so mistreated and so attacked and so scorned and so on that I was gonna go on strike and I was gonna rob the world and the world was going to mourn The loss of my abilities.
	And the reason why I think that thought came up when you were talking about this is that there is a punishment aspect towards others, right?
	So if you feel over-controlled as a child, over-managed, over-controlled, brutalized, if you don't receive the empathy you need to as a child when you're a child, Then you develop a lot of anger, a lot of healthy anger.
	But if the anger is not expressed or understood or sympathized with or empathized with, it turns kind of toxic and kind of...
	And then what happens is you control others through your behavior, right?
	So, I mean, the sort of typical example is...
	A girl who was sort of hyper-controlled by her mom and not allowed to be who she was and not allowed to be independent and so on, hyper-controlled.
	Then she grows up, she has an eating disorder and now she controls the mom through the eating disorder.
	Because the control aspect and the destructive aspect of the control aspect in the relationship is not expressed, so it comes out in another way and it comes out through vengeance.
	And so, the daughter is now controlling the mother through refusing to eat.
	And the daughter, of course, has internalized the self-control, right?
	If you've been controlled your whole life, then you have a distorted relationship to control.
	It's dictatorial, and so you control yourself.
	Also, if you've been physically attacked in your life, then your body is a source of pain rather than a source of pleasure, and so punishing yourself through starvation seems like a possibility.
	These are my thoughts.
	I mean, I have no idea what the fundamental ideology of it is, but to me it might be something along those lines.
	Does that make any sense for you?
	Yeah, it does.
	I haven't thought about it as a vengeance to your parents.
	I guess that would explain why so many people with eating disorders are around the age I described, like 15, 16, 17, when they're still living with their parents.
	So, yeah, that's quite interesting.
	All right.
	Listen, first of all, I want to take the last caller, but I just wanted to say I'm completely, completely sorry about what happened to you as a kid.
	Thank you.
	You know, it's BFL. It's bad fucking luck.
	It's bad fucking luck.
	And man, you drew some snake eyes with that family, and I'm just, I'm so sorry.
	I'm so sorry.
	It is heartbreaking to think, of course, of who we might have been with a warm, caring, nurturing, happy, loving, supportive family.
	But we dealt the cards we dealt.
	There's nobody dealing them.
	They're just basically falling from the sky like raindrops that land on us.
	That's what we have to live with.
	And unfortunately, it reveals a hell of a lot about society that nobody intervened.
	So I really just want to say, I'm so sorry that you went through what you went through.
	I'm so sorry that nobody helped, that nobody sympathized.
	I'm so sorry that you live in a culture where talking about childhood is a pin to taking a slow pee on a public cheesecake.
	And, you know, I'm glad that you found someplace like here where you can begin to think about your history, where you can begin to remember, where you can begin to deal with.
	I hope, I hope, I hope that you will think about Going to see a counselor, a therapist, a psychologist.
	I mean, this is stuff that you need help with.
	You're obviously a very intelligent person.
	You are very strong-willed.
	You are brave, courageous in that you're willing to look at these things.
	But I think you can save yourself a lot of time and heartache.
	And by going to talk to someone who's had experience with this kind of stuff, I really think that it would be very helpful.
	It does change your relationship a little bit with society when somebody finally helps, even if you're paying them.
	You know, even if you're paying them.
	It does help.
	It is a powerful experience to go through and I hope that you will consider it and try and get involved into talk therapy.
	I think it would be very helpful for what you had to experience which is beyond the pale even for a society that is having trouble with good parenting as a whole.
	Yours is definitely Off the charts as far as that goes.
	So massive sympathies and massive encouragement, massive praise.
	This kind of heroism is the heroism that works.
	The heroism that you're displaying is the heroism that matters.
	People go and chain themselves to whales or trees and people go get themselves arrested for smoking pot.
	And that's all bullshit.
	Oh, can you hear me?
	This is the intervention that matters.
	This is the growth that matters.
	And I just really wanted to thank you For all of that and praise you for what it is that you're doing and encourage you to talk to someone about all of this stuff because that's a lot of process on your own and I think you would really benefit from it.
	Yeah, thanks a ton.
	I'll try and get in touch with my therapist again.
	So yeah, really big thank you for that.
	Thanks.
	You're very welcome.
	Take care.
	Alright, let's do, we're going a little bit over, but let's do the last few minutes with the caller.
	Thank you for your patience.
	I'm so sorry that it takes so long, but I never wanted to do these two or three minute caller things, so I'm happy that we're able to talk in depth, since that's kind of what we praise.
	So, last caller?
	Nate, that's you.
	Nate, can you hear me?
	Yep.
	Hi, I just wanted to express my appreciation as well for the last caller.
	As a parent myself, Seeing the real-life example of something like that makes me also want to do the best that I can.
	So, you know, 20 years from now, my kids are not in the same spot.
	So I want to thank him as well for being able to share that because I understand it's very difficult.
	My question relates to Fu, and I had a conversation about two months ago with my mother and her husband.
	And it went well as a fact that they listened to all the things they had to say about prior abuse and everything.
	Sorry, about what abuse?
	Prior abuse from me and then also on my siblings.
	Unfortunately, I have not received any sort of feedback from that at all from them, really.
	Other than at the point when I had talked to them about this, they said, oh, maybe I should go into therapy myself.
	But then I didn't hear—there was no re-engagement towards me, and I have engaged them once on this topic to, you know, try and talk about these things again.
	And my brother sent me a message and let me know that text message that he had got from our mother.
	And if you don't mind, I'm just going to read it real quick.
	Can I help you see—I can try and get better insight into the psyche of what my mother is saying here, right?
	Yeah, just no names, okay?
	No, no, no.
	Yeah, definitely no names.
	She said, thanks for the Facebook post about me.
	I'm sorry I can't be the mom you want me to be.
	Go ahead and delete me from your life and your phone.
	You really know how to hurt someone.
	I guess you wanted to make sure everyone knows just how you feel about me and what a crappy person I really am.
	Thanks, blank.
	I really needed that.
	Make you and your brother, maybe you and your brother, and that brother would be me, can make a Facebook page dedicated to bashing your mom.
	Sorry I'm not perfect.
	But I really am trying to be better.
	I'm sorry.
	Well, that's not very nice.
	No, it's not at all.
	What bothers me about this is I came to them person-to-person, emotional, vulnerable with them to discuss these things that were important to me.
	I did that in person.
	I took time off of work and drove to where they live, 600 miles away, and had the conversation face-to-face with them.
	It disturbs me and makes me see, it helps me to see more like where their standing is and all this that I've talked to them about.
	And when I see a reply like this that's addressed to my brother but includes me even when I have not done anything on a public domain towards them.
	Right.
	And it's just kind of, I want to respond to my brother, but unfortunately I'm not really...
	I'm still processing that, but I thought I would share that as far as having the food conversation to anyone else, if anyone ever got a response like this back from family.
	And is it because your brother posted something public about your mom?
	Well, it wasn't, it was that exactly.
	And this, on his part, is where I was going to let him know, I was like, maybe, I think this is something, I mean, you can do what you want, but I think this is something that you should, that maybe you could have engaged her on a personal level with.
	But unfortunately, he's not comfortable doing that because the guy that my mom's married to now chokeslammed him onto the floor when he was 15.
	Yeah.
	And it was...
	So he's concerned about physical violence if he has a conversation, right?
	Well, escalating into that, yeah, because...
	Nothing about this was ever discussed until I brought it up to them about my thoughts about the stuff that had happened to me and when I had intervened when all this went down.
	This was like six or seven years ago, yeah, but it's not been talked about since by anyone until I brought it up to them again.
	And it was very comfortable, I could tell, for them both.
	I mean, he wouldn't even look me in the eye.
	I mean, he'd be the guy that's married to my mother.
	He would not even look me in the eye when I was talking about these things, very rarely, right?
	And because of that, I think that he, my brother, which is unfortunately may or may not be correct, he's afraid of confrontation.
	No, he should be.
	Yeah, definitely, yeah.
	No, I mean, history of, yeah, I mean, I'm not big on reasoning passionately with people who have choked-slammed me into the floor, so I think that's, you know, especially if they've not made amends, apologized, gone to anger management, therapy, whatever, right?
	And since this time, they've both become very religious all of a sudden and said that they've changed.
	And I don't know, it's kind of a weird situation.
	Right.
	So I guess if...
	I mean, sorry, just...
	It's illegal to do that to a teenager, right?
	Yes, definitely, yes.
	I mean, it's illegal to choke slam, right?
	It's assault.
	Yes.
	And, I mean, I think that clarity is important.
	People go to jail for that.
	I mean, you try that with your wife.
	You will go to jail.
	Right, so it's this criminal behavior.
	I mean, I really want to be clear on that.
	This is criminal.
	This is a simple assault on a dependent and young teenager, right?
	Yes.
	So the fact that they're not eager to talk about their criminal behavior is not entirely shocking, if that makes sense?
	Oh, totally, yeah.
	So I really, really wanted to point that out.
	What did your mother do in this choke-slamming incident?
	I asked my brother about that because I wasn't there for the...
	For like a couple days later, you know, when it had kind of been a couple days and people might have begun talking about it.
	I don't know for myself what happened at that time because she was upstairs and we were downstairs in the basement, right?
	Where his and my sister's room were at, right?
	And I was down there and I heard a big loud noise and like something breaking.
	And I ran into the bedroom and I saw my brother lying on the floor.
	And I've talked to him about this because this haunted me for quite some time.
	But I talked to him about this and he was laying on the floor on his back.
	Looking up at this man with such a fear in his eyes that I have never forgotten it.
	That can be a life-ending move.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	I mean, you can break someone's neck that way.
	You can damage their brain.
	I mean, this could be drooling in a wheelchair or plain old dead, right?
	Yes.
	And when I walked in and saw this, I was so appalled and sick.
	And I said, what's going on in here?
	And that wasn't...
	I was a lot more cowardly, at least morally, and to stand...
	Oh, don't you dare.
	Don't you dare insult one of my listeners that way.
	Okay.
	Don't you dare insult one of my listeners that way.
	I will not stand for it.
	But go on.
	And I intervened, and it kind of...
	The adult was breathing heavy and my brother was just kind of with a dazed look on his face, rightfully so.
	And they kind of separated from there.
	And the crashing noise I'd heard was a cell phone being thrown against a dresser that was broken.
	My brother told me later that he had tried to leave and brushed by him to get out of the house.
	And that's when the chokeslam incident happened.
	Later, when he tried to discuss it with my mother, she said, well, you just have to listen to so-and-so because he's, for whatever reason, like, I'm not involved in it.
	You need to listen to what he has to say.
	Right, so for your mother, your brother's post was morally reprehensible, right?
	I mean, that was really not good.
	That was really bad.
	That was insensitive.
	That was rude.
	That was negative.
	She took a real moral stand on your brother's Facebook post, right?
	Yes, definitely.
	And the moral stand she took upon an assault...
	Upon her own child was that it was the child's fault and he needs to listen.
	I'm just trying to give you a sense of the moral calibration that your mother may be operating with, right?
	And right now that makes me very sad to hear that from a...
	She is morally outraged at typing.
	But she is not morally outraged at a potentially life-ending assault upon her child.
	Yeah.
	I'm just trying to be, you know, tell me if I'm wrong.
	Tell me how I'm wrong.
	I mean, this is not the way that I would view it.
	I don't feel you're wrong.
	It's just very hard to, when someone points that out, to...
	It's not hard to accept it, because I've ever accepted a lot of things about that, but to see that pointed out, that someone else can clearly see who is objective and not involved in the situation at all, that can point that out, and have you realize, wow, that really is what that is, It makes me sad for my brother, quite honestly.
	It makes me a great emotion for him.
	Right.
	And this is why I'm saying, please don't call yourself a coward.
	But did your stepfather, did he have military or martial training?
	I mean, that's an unusual move for somebody, unless they've been trained in those areas.
	Yeah, he had been in the army.
	Okay, so he'd been in the army.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	And that goes back to, when I went to have this conversation with him, I mean...
	There was absolutely zero conversation from him the whole time where my mom had engaged me and said, okay.
	And every time I paused or anything, she said, all right.
	But there was no word whatsoever from him.
	And it's going to continue that way, I'm pretty sure, until the end of their lives or until whenever.
	Because at this point, I don't foresee any positive reaction from them in regards to talking about these very important things.
	Right.
	Right.
	And so I just want to share that maybe for anyone else who had, you know, because I think these real life stories that people can hear are very important.
	So they can maybe, they're not alone.
	People can realize, hey, there's all this stuff going on all over the place, but we can do better than that.
	Or we can help each other through these difficult, difficult things.
	Yeah, listen, I mean, I'm all for talking about things with your family, but I'm not for putting yourself in physical danger.
	Yes, I get that.
	Right?
	So, I mean, I very much for if you have issues with your family, get therapy, talk to them about your issues, you know, connect, connect, connect, strive and strive and strive.
	And remember, of course, in the long run, adult relationships are voluntary.
	But I would not do that in a situation where there's the potential for physical violence.
	Definitely.
	And I really wanted to, so it seems to me that your brother is quite wise.
	Now, I don't know about posting publicly about these kinds of things in this kind of situation.
	It may not be the best idea in the world either.
	Yeah.
	I mean, if somebody's assaulted him in the past, you don't know.
	That person might just read a post and go nuts, drive over, and who knows what.
	I'm just saying, right?
	I mean, if there's an unacknowledged, unadmitted, untreated history of physical violence, particularly to this degree, particularly from somebody who's been trained in it, I would not poke that bear publicly.
	Gotcha.
	So I'd really recommend that he talk about it with you, that he talk about it with the therapist.
	But I would not go with the public posts.
	I think that is not a good idea at all.
	That's what my thinking was on that, as far as the public side of it goes, definitely.
	Okay, thank you very much.
	Thanks for your time, and thanks for going over.
	I appreciate it.
	Oh, listen, you're welcome.
	I'm so sorry that you had to wait for so long.
	So we have come to the end.
	Of our morning brunch.
	People have been saying in the chatroom that they cook food, and that would be nice if I didn't have to talk so much.
	I could faceplant into a nice pile of eggs many, but I do the talking.
	So, thank you, everybody.
	For a calling in and for the honesty.
	I mean, I'm honored.
	I'm impressed.
	I'm amazed.
	I'm awed.
	I respect everybody so much for dealing with these challenging issues.
	This is so essential for healing the world, for healing ourselves.
	You know, first step to virtue is honesty.
	Honesty about history.
	In particular is essential.
	So I would really talk, really respect everyone for talking about that.
	Please, please feel free to donate.
	Things have been pretty dry this month at a month when there's a lot of outlays going out as well.
	And so if you'd like to go to FDR URL.com forward slash donate or freedomainradio.com.
	There's a donation button right there.
	I kind of need that for the documentary.
	I think the documentary is coming along really well.
	And I think it's going to have a huge impact.
	But it ain't free.
	And so I hope that people will help out with that.
	And have yourselves an absolutely wonderful week.
	Thanks again to James for all of your help for these shows.

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