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Nov. 18, 2012 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:19:52

2261 I Betrayed My Virginity: Freedomain Radio Show, 18 Nov 2012

Stefan Molyneux, host of Freedomain Radio, discusses a listener losing their Virginity in a Betrayal, How to Argue against Welfare, the Dangers of Education, and How to Quit Smoking.

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	Hello, hello, everybody.
	It is Stefan Molyneux, November the 18th, 2012, 10 a.m.
	on a Sunday.
	Remember to come by freedomaderadio.com forward slash sundayshow.aspx because we're all about URL-friendly names.
	And we do a Sunday show every 10 o'clock.
	And if you have questions, comments, issues, problems, think that I'm a rambling bag of protoplasm with no common sense, please smack me straight up the head with the wet fish of cold reason.
	And set me straight.
	So thanks again, James, for hosting.
	If we have, as I do believe we have, quite a deck of callers to shuffle from, if you'd like to bring up the first, let's see what we can do.
	All right, first up, first card flip over, it's Tom.
	Hey.
	Tom, I would really like to congratulate you first and foremost on having a name that is very friendly for children's games.
	Yeah.
	When I was a child, you know, we used to do this thing, right?
	This game.
	There was someone, someone, sitting on a whatever, right?
	In the quarter, master's store.
	And so you, as the name Tom, we could do like...
	There was Tom, Tom, sitting on a bomb.
	In the quarter, master's store.
	Now, for me, with Stefan, what on earth do you do with that?
	Nothing.
	I am never going to be part of a rap song.
	And that's a great tragedy of my life.
	We don't speak English where I come from, so...
	That's cool.
	We didn't play that game.
	But you ended up with the ultimate WASP name.
	What is your last name?
	Smithson?
	No, no.
	It's actually Smilovic.
	It's Jewish-Romanian.
	Yeah.
	Is Tom short for something?
	No, no.
	It's Anglo-Saxon for better integration in the world or something.
	You might have mentioned that about the last name.
	But anyway, what's your question?
	How can I help you, my friend?
	Well, you know, I heard that call from last week with a guy from the United Arab Emirates.
	You know, that was...
	Oh my God, you know?
	And I wanted to talk to you about childhood and stuff.
	And I wanted to do that in...
	You know, in a way, not done normally.
	Which is to say that I'm going to tell you things about me and then you can deduce things about how I was raised.
	Alright, I'm hearing a creak of springs, so if you could just ask your roommate to stop having sex during the conversation, that would be less distracting for me.
	Yeah, that's my chair.
	Okay.
	Oh, so it's not your roommate who's having sex right now.
	Okay, got it.
	So, the first property is like insecurity.
	And the second quality is that I have selective eating, which means I don't eat fruit and vegetables.
	Just as a property.
	That's kind of a weird feature.
	I have a tendency to, I don't know, compromise a bit too much and things like that.
	And I have sort of disparate groups of friends, like groups of friends that don't like each other very much.
	And so I'm friends with both of them.
	That's sort of, if you want any more features or questions or anything.
	No, if you could tell me a little bit more about the selective eating, please.
	Well, I don't know, just...
	I was raised by...
	I mean, I had my mom and stuff and all kinds of things like that and she, if I didn't like to eat any of these fruits and vegetables and stuff, she won't compel me to eat those.
	Just that.
	All right.
	Alright.
	And what about insecurity?
	How does that show up?
	Well, I don't know.
	Are you just like an example of insecurities?
	Yeah.
	Well, you know, grades at school used to be kind of a thing that determined self-worth.
	And the thing is, I'm pretty clever or something, I don't know, and I used to like having good grades without having to practice too much.
	And that would be an indicator if I'm intelligent or not.
	See, getting the grades after practicing wasn't that big of a deal.
	And if I got the grades only from listening class or whatever, then that would be a marker of intelligence.
	That would be the reasoning.
	And whenever I didn't get the grades high enough or whatever, I stopped thinking I was...
	intelligent enough for a time.
	That'd be a thing.
	Right, okay.
	And do you remember what specific things might have occurred in your childhood that may have made you more insecure?
	No, actually, you know, I didn't have any of the adverse childhood experience stuff, you know, no beatings, no No sexual harassment or any other things like that.
	Right.
	Right.
	And what are your theories as to why you may have ended up this way?
	Well, I don't know, actually.
	That's kind of why I came to ask you because, you know, that thing with the guy from the United Arab Emirates last week was pretty mind-blowing with the...
	Do you remember that?
	I do, I really do.
	I really do.
	Okay, do you mind if I ask you to what degree your Jewish identity is central or important to you?
	No, it's not important at all.
	I mean, it's bullshit, actually.
	Okay, alright.
	Asked and answered, alright.
	And what about sexuality in terms of your comfort with sexuality and dating and romance and all that kind of stuff?
	Well, that's been a bit of an issue.
	I was a virgin until very recently.
	I'm 21, lost at 20 and a half.
	Alright.
	Yeah.
	And that was not with a girlfriend, but with a person cheating on her boyfriend, with me.
	So, yeah.
	And how did that come about?
	Well, she was close friends.
	She was a sister of a A friend of a close friend.
	Okay?
	Uh-huh.
	And we met at this party and we kind of...
	She was like...
	She was...
	She's very smart and good-looking and beautiful.
	You know, all the regular goodies.
	And she's kind of...
	We kind of broadcast in the same wavelength or...
	And so we kind of hit it off, and we talked on Facebook, and I kind of introduced Free Domain Radio to her, too, and talked about all kinds of things, politics and arts and all kinds of things.
	And, well, one chat, I told her I loved her and such, but she went like...
	She went like, okay, you know, I love you too, but there's the boyfriend, and she loves him too, and, well, if you're okay with it, we can have sex.
	And so I was 20 and a half and virgin and very into that girl.
	So, yeah, that doesn't...
	It doesn't continue until now, because that's kind of a story in itself.
	Sorry, was it just a one-time thing?
	A month or two ago, it ended.
	Sorry, was it just a one-time thing?
	No.
	She and I were living in different places, so we met around, I don't know, I guess it was less than 10 times.
	I wouldn't know.
	And does the boyfriend know?
	No.
	Not yet.
	What do you think might happen when the boyfriend finds out?
	Well, I think he'll split with her.
	And I know what she's gonna do.
	Yeah, so that's romance for me.
	So, with your parents, you know, one of the most, I don't know if it's real or just cultural, but one of the most challenging aspects of parenting is preparing your children for sexual maturity.
	And this doesn't mean sex, this just means, you know, dating and romance and being in the reproductive sphere.
	If that makes any sense.
	So, my question would be, with regards to your parents, were you able to talk about your difficulties with dating with them?
	Did they give you any feedback?
	Was that part of your relationship with them?
	Well, I wouldn't like talking to them that much, really.
	Sorry, you said you don't like talking to them that much?
	Yeah, just...
	Don't worry.
	I talked to them about...
	I talked to my mom, basically, about what happened, you know, with that girl.
	And she said that...
	And she kind of revealed to me that when she was in the army, she had a similar thing where she...
	No, yeah, a similar thing when she was with a married man or something.
	Yeah.
	Right, so she talked to you about her things, but did you get much traction about your thing?
	Well, I don't know.
	I don't know really.
	We talked about that and she...
	I don't know really what we were talking about now that I'm talking to you about that.
	Yeah, because look, there's times, like if you say, you know, I went to a NASCAR race, and I say, oh, I love NASCAR races, I went to one too, that can either be a way of saying, I understand the framework, so you don't need to explain to me what NASCAR is, or it can be me then going on into an hour-long story about my NASCAR thoughts and experiences.
	So I guess my question is, when you were talking to your mother about your difficulties, Did she talk to you about her history as a way of connecting to your problem, or did it become about her history?
	Well, it did become about her history, but not intentionally, I guess, but it kind of happened because I was also curious about what that was all about, you see, but then And what about your father?
	Well, that's a story.
	We don't talk much because it's relating to that eating thing.
	About when I was, I don't know, 14 or 15, he stopped working as much.
	He was in IT, and then he worked like 10-11 hours a day, and he won't be at home that much.
	And basically, when I was 14, he sort of realized that he wasn't...
	Well, he didn't know, but...
	Sorry, what are you talking about?
	He didn't know what happened.
	He didn't know that I wasn't eating that much, but then he started confronting me about that.
	I didn't want to stop eating what I eat and eat new things.
	That was a fight.
	It was a fact because he was kind of pressuring me and stuff and won't...
	Sorry, he was kind of what?
	Pressuring me.
	Okay, to eat fruits and vegetables.
	Yeah, kind of in nasty ways.
	I don't know.
	Is it fair to say that he did not take ownership for encouraging this behavior in you beforehand?
	Yes, he did, but...
	He said, you know, yeah, he did.
	That's kind of a point there.
	But he said that didn't matter anymore because the problem at hand was that I wasn't eating the things I was supposed to.
	And so we shouldn't dwell on that, see?
	Right.
	Okay.
	And how would you gauge your parents' romantic relationship?
	I don't mean sexual relationship, but just their romantic relationship.
	Well, I don't know if you can maintain one of those when you're working like 12 and 11 hours a day.
	Well, I guess I'll give them 4 or 5 out of 10.
	I don't know, something like that.
	Right, okay.
	And when did you want to start dating?
	Well, I guess about 15, 16 was pretty much that, but I couldn't get any kind of traction with that.
	Right, so my question is, so let's go back to this, right?
	So if you have a problem when you're 15 or 16, you don't know when it's going to end, which is that you want a date or whatever, did you, I mean, who did you confide in about this problem?
	Who was part of your community to help you with this problem?
	One of my friends, I guess.
	Which, yeah, but they're probably not able to help you with the problem, right?
	No, not really, I guess.
	And did you talk to your parents about this, saying, look, I'm having trouble trying to get myself into a Romantic situation?
	No, not really.
	Was this the most important issue at the time for you?
	No, I guess.
	It wasn't...
	I was kind of not...
	I wasn't thinking about that too much, but this was kind of bugging me, because...
	You know, people should start dating and stuff at that time.
	It was kind of more of a social thing that you were supposed to have.
	It was that I missed having a girlfriend or something.
	Alright, so let's go back to when you told your mom that you had sex with a woman in a relationship.
	Did she have any thoughts about this relative to you?
	What do you mean?
	Like...
	Well, so for instance, I can completely understand that a 20-year-old virgin would find it extremely difficult to say no to...
	I would say a woman, but let's throw in attractive there.
	She said she was very attractive.
	I mean, it would be very hard to say no to an attractive woman who wants to have sex with you when you're a 20-year-old virgin, right?
	Yeah.
	But like all really challenging moral situations, it's not about that moment.
	It's all about everything that comes before that moment.
	I mean, if you were in a committed, loving relationship, then you would be able to say no.
	Because it would be easier.
	Or if you had some sort of resolution about your sexuality.
	But given that this was a problem that had been years in the making when it comes to that kind of crisis, so to speak, it's almost impossible.
	I mean, it's not impossible, but it's really hard.
	To say no, right?
	Yeah, I guess.
	I had that offer.
	I mean, actually, I had that offer once.
	I had that offer once.
	A woman I met at a gym.
	We went out.
	I asked her out for a coffee, and we went out for a coffee.
	Very attractive woman, very nice woman.
	And, you know, we were chatting away and chatting away, and then At some point she said, blah, blah, blah, my boyfriend, right?
	And I said, I'm sorry, what now?
	She said, oh, my boyfriend, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	And I said, oh, I thought this was a date.
	And she's like, well, yeah, but, you know, we don't really have sex and I have needs and so on, right?
	She basically, we ended up, basically she said, would you like to have friends with benefits kind of thing, right?
	And, you know, I was a young single guy, and I won't say that I wasn't even remotely tempted, but I just said to her, I said, well, here's the problem.
	If I really like you, then the sex is good, but then you have a boyfriend.
	So then I end up really liking someone I'm having sex with, and you have a boyfriend, so I get stuck there, right?
	I said, if we don't get along at a personal level...
	Then the sex isn't going to be any good in particular.
	And then I'm doing something that's sort of against my values and not even getting some sort of slutty penthouse benefit out of it.
	So, I mean, there's ways of reasoning through this stuff.
	And also, I said, you know, the third option is you like me so much that you end up leaving your boyfriend and going out with me.
	But, you know, as the old saying goes, if they'll do it with you, they'll do it to you.
	And therefore, trying to build a relationship on betrayal is not going to work, right?
	I mean, the odds are very low.
	So there's ways of sort of reasoning through this stuff, right?
	But my concern is that where is your wisdom?
	Where is your guidance?
	Where is the guidance in your life to help you navigate?
	I mean, that's a very difficult situation to be in.
	To get that kind of offer that comes out of a lot of stuff that comes before it.
	But even in the moment and even afterwards, it doesn't seem like you're getting a lot of guidance.
	And I don't mean guidance like you have no idea what you're doing or anything, but I guess my concern is where's your sounding board?
	The thing I just explained to you, it makes kind of sense, right?
	Yeah, it does.
	And it didn't take a long time to explain it, right?
	No.
	And that doesn't mean that your penis isn't some ovary-seeking missile that you're trying to hold onto, because sometimes it just is.
	But it does give you a kind of perspective that helps you understand the decisions and what's going to happen.
	And this is not to mention as well that if you start screwing around with other people's dates, you don't know how volatile they are, right?
	Well, that was a risk, yeah.
	Yeah, I mean, you don't know if he's just going to come and kick your ass.
	You do know that he's dating a woman who does this, so you know that he's pretty dysfunctional to begin with, and I don't really like to mess with the interests of those kinds of people unless there's some really good cause at stake, you know?
	So, you know, if you reason through the decision matrix, and also, you know, there's that thing, too, that you don't necessarily want your, you know, losing your virginity to be in a kind of sordid situation, right?
	That's something that is going to stick with you a little bit, right?
	Well, yeah, that might be the case.
	So, I guess, yeah, this is my concern, that it seems to me that you're kind of going it solo, which is not a reference to your early sexual life, but it seems to me that you don't have around you people who can really listen to what's going on, And give you feedback that's helpful.
	Tell me if I'm wrong.
	I mean, if I'm way off base, we'll talk about something else.
	Well, it does sound a bit familiar.
	I don't know, because people have their own things going on, which makes them not as attentive, I guess.
	But yes, but why aren't you one of their things that's going on?
	Why isn't your happiness and your success and your dating growth and your preparing for and achieving an adult, mature, loving relationship, why isn't that one of their key things?
	So recently it became...
	A thing that was kind of mentioned in a comment and...
	So, do you mean in the chat window?
	No, not in the chat window.
	Like, I was...
	Oh, so in your life?
	I was, yeah, with friends and something.
	It was just yesterday, actually.
	We were with friends and this friend of mine who...
	We were at his girlfriend's house and she was like, you're a really nice guy, you should start meeting.
	And she was aware of that story that I mentioned earlier.
	And so she was like, you're a really nice guy and kind of, why don't you date, I guess.
	You should hook up with a nice girl or something.
	That was what she said.
	I was like, yeah, totally.
	That's not getting involved in your thing.
	That's just giving you some drive-by nonsense advice.
	It's like me saying to somebody who's overweight, you should drop a few pounds and then walking on and think I've achieved some good in the world.
	My question is, is anyone calling you on the problems, moral, emotional, sexual, that you have taken on by losing your virginity in a betrayal?
	Um...
	That someone mentioned to me that that was, like, not okay or not cool.
	You know, like, not...
	Yeah, I understand that.
	What I'm talking about is actually getting involved in how it came about.
	All the steps that led up to it.
	The decision making in the moment.
	Why not say, let me sleep on it.
	I mean, that's probably not the best phrase.
	Let me take a day to think about it.
	I would like to talk about it with some friends.
	You know, this is a big decision, right?
	You're making You're making decisions in isolation, which can happen sometimes, but then it doesn't seem to me like you have people interested enough to help you to figure out how you ended up in that situation, in this situation, where you have sexually bonded with a girl, with a woman, who's not trustworthy, who is not available, who has a boyfriend she has to lie to.
	You're continuing the relationship.
	This is a dangerous situation.
	It's dangerous, I would say, emotionally, because if you get really attached to the woman, then you've got a huge problem.
	If you don't get attached to the woman, then you're divorcing your feelings from your sexuality, which is not a good thing to do.
	Plus, there's the physical risk if the guy just goes nuts one day and decides to come beat you up.
	Also, there's the problem that If there are people around who are, you know, if a really nice girl does get interested in you, are you going to keep this from her?
	And then shut off part of your heart from being open to the new nice woman?
	Or are you going to tell her, and what is a nice woman going to think about this?
	See, you're stepping into a swamp here.
	You're stepping into a big swamp, but I'm very worried that nobody is helping you to pull back.
	Nobody's getting involved in your life enough.
	Nobody is loving you enough to say, these decisions you're making have huge implications and you really need to – not from a, you're a bad guy and you slept with this woman who's in a relationship and you betrayed yourself and you betrayed – I don't know.
	I'm not talking about somebody who's just going to get moralizing on you, but somebody who's going to help you to understand What steps you're taking and what effects these steps are going to have on your future.
	Try not to have a life where you have to have a secret, at least from the people that you love.
	And when you make these decisions to continue to sleep with this woman, you are changing who you are.
	You are changing the course of your future.
	You're changing your capacity for intimacy.
	You're changing your capacity for trust.
	You're changing your capacity for honesty.
	And you're exposing yourself to significant dangers.
	And I'm not trying to tell you this from a moralizing you're a bad guy.
	I don't believe that at all.
	I think you're a really great guy from what I hear, from what you're telling me, from what I'm experiencing in the conversation.
	But my major concern, Tom, is that who the hell around you is helping you to shine a flashlight into these incredibly dark woods that you're running into?
	Well, I don't know, really.
	I kind of...
	These people who I'm friends with, I've known for a lot of time, you see, a really long time.
	One of them is from, like, the fourth grade, and one of them is, like, from the seventh grade, and we kept being friends all along, and we kind of know every dark corner of You have a
	lot of proximity and you've had a lot of history.
	That doesn't answer my question, though, of who is helping you in this very difficult part of your life.
	Well, it's kind of over now, the thing with that girl.
	And at the time, I don't know.
	Sorry, it's not over.
	This is the point I'm trying to make.
	It may be over.
	I can't hear you.
	I can't hear you.
	You're breaking up.
	Can you repeat the...
	Yeah, it may be over physically.
	Yeah.
	But that doesn't mean it's over.
	There's still a lot to process, right?
	Yes.
	And I would assume you don't want to be doing this again.
	Um, no.
	I mean, let's say you do this, and for some reason or another, condom breaks, forgot to take her pill.
	What if she gets pregnant?
	Well, I guess she's going to have an abortion.
	I don't know.
	You don't really want to do that, right?
	No, it's bad.
	You don't want the death of a fetus to be on your head, right?
	Yeah, even though it's okay and things.
	Well, it's not okay for the fetus.
	It certainly wouldn't be okay for you if that had happened, right?
	I mean...
	No, not in a psychological manner, but I guess in the moral sense it will be okay.
	Just like when you cheat with someone, it's not okay on the psychological effect it has, but it is okay in a moral sense because it has no moral gravity.
	Well, that's complex, right?
	So, for instance, if you get an STD, then there's a moral element involved because now you've been infected, right?
	Yeah.
	If there is a baby, and if the baby is born, obviously there's a moral obligation, and if the baby is not born, then a fetus has been killed.
	And that's, obviously, I don't believe that's murder in the same way as killing an adult is, but it's obviously not a good thing, right?
	Yeah, it's not, but to, like, I think also that a live baby, you know, that's kind of a sensitive point to have, but live babies also are like I like older cows.
	You see what I'm getting at?
	Newborn babies are just like older cows in a moral sense, aren't they?
	No, not at all, because older cows don't grow into human beings.
	They're not at all the same.
	Why does it matter that the baby is going to go into a man?
	I don't know.
	Well, it matters.
	I mean, just look.
	Well, if you kill it, you...
	Look, the reason you can't strangle someone who's asleep is because they're going to wake up, right?
	Because, you know, they may have no particular higher brain functioning while they're sleeping, whatever, right?
	But...
	The baby is going to grow up into a human being.
	And so it's not the same as a mammal that is not going to change into a higher functioning, higher reasoning person.
	Okay.
	And look, I don't want to get hugely distracted into the...
	This is just a potential risk.
	I don't want to get too distracted from...
	I get that this would be an interesting topic to explore...
	And maybe we can do it another time, but my suggestion is this.
	I think that there's been a lack of guidance in your life, a lack of preparation for the complexities and challenges of adult eating, adult sexuality, adult romance, and I think that's part of the insecurity that you feel.
	I mean, when I was a kid, right, you could either buy a little go-kart or you could make one.
	And the way that you made one was you got some wood and you got some old pram wheels from some pram someone was throwing out and you kind of built your own go-kart, your own little race car.
	And when you built it yourself, it sucked.
	You know, if you bought one, it was pretty solid.
	It had steering, it had brakes, it had all kinds of cool stuff.
	But when you built it yourself, it was wobbly, the steering was crappy, you'd get splinters, there were no brakes.
	And so, if you have to build all of this stuff yourself, it's kind of exhausting.
	You know, in Windows, some version back, there were like 40 million lines of code.
	If you had to write your own operating system, it would suck, right?
	Well, I guess people do that all the time, right?
	Well, no, they don't write their own operating system.
	I mean, I knew one guy I hired from a university who, as part of his degree in computer science, they had to Write their own operating system, but it was just file IO and that, right?
	It's not going to have all these funky features.
	I mean, even Linux, not one guy writes it, right?
	It's a whole community that builds it.
	But if you have to write your own operating system, it's going to be a hell of a lot of work.
	That's why people buy it.
	I just picked up a copy of Windows 8 for $69, you know?
	I mean, when I was a coder, that was an hour of work.
	You can't write 50 million lines of code in an hour of work and have them work flawlessly.
	So I guess my concern is that If you're in an environment where you're not getting feedback on major decisions and you're not part of a back and forth about the big choices that you have to make, if you're flying blind without instruments, that's pretty nerve-wracking, right?
	I mean, I've always had these thoughts, you know, not always, but occasionally I have these thoughts like I'm driving along and suddenly the hood comes up.
	You know, I forgot to close it or something, right?
	The hood just flies up.
	Well, you can't see then.
	In that moment, I transform from a pretty calm driver to a driver who's risking ass-shock from peeing into my electric seats.
	And so I guess my concern is if you're flying blind, in other words, if you're making decisions based upon the drives of the moment, the accumulated inertias of history, and what other people want in the moment, That's going to be anxiety-provoking because you don't have a calm and reasoned community that can help you to make decisions that are going to serve your long-term interests as well as your short-term needs.
	I'm telling you this.
	If you were a friend of mine and you told me this story, this is probably all we would talk about for about a week.
	And I would really try and figure out and help you to understand how you've ended up in this situation, what the ramifications are, what steps you need to take now, how you need to process this, how you can develop relationships or expand your existing relationships so that you're not flying blind in this isolated manner.
	And that to me would be being a real friend to you.
	Would be to help me to understand because, you know, with understanding, We can help avoid the shallow judgment of, you know, that was bad, right?
	And, you know, maybe, I think it was not the right thing to do.
	It was not the right thing to do, I'll be honest with you, but the important thing is to understand why.
	And that's what I want to emphasize in this conversation with you, is to encourage you to look at expanding your definition of community, of family, of friendship.
	To include a really in-depth conversation about these kinds of issues.
	And the reason for that is, okay, so let's say that you were my friend and we talked about this for an hour or two every night for a week or two.
	Obviously, I would know you a lot better at the end of it, which is, I think, a pretty important aspect of friendship.
	You would know me a lot better, which is an important aspect of friendship.
	I would genuinely be helping you, I hope.
	which is an important aspect of friendship and it would cost me some hours and those hours would not even be a cost because they would improve our friendship but the difference that it could make in your life could be the difference between heaven and hell as far as dating and marriage goes and I also would reinforce my own community feeling about ethics and I would also know then that if I had a moral problem That
	you would be a guy I would turn to, right?
	As they say in Crazy Anatomy, you would be my person for feedback.
	And that's what I... How do I go about that?
	How do I go about that?
	Well, I... I don't really know how I go about that.
	Well, I don't know either.
	Honestly, I don't know either.
	Because whenever you have a plan that involves other people's responses, you can't have a plan.
	Like you can't say, I'm going to turn my friends into really great friends who are going to help me navigate the whitewater rapids of ethical decision making.
	Because what you can do though is you can state where you would like friendship to go and where things have been deficient on both sides up to now and talk about your feelings.
	You know, I mean, if someone just says to you, well, you just date a nice girl.
	It's like, that's just off the cuff.
	That's not intimate.
	That's not helpful.
	That's not close.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, that's been from, like, this new person who is the girlfriend of my older friend's She only knows me for, I guess, a month now.
	And she doesn't really know me.
	You mean we didn't have any meaningful conversations.
	I'm sorry to interrupt, but first of all, she's not going to get to know you by giving you flip-off-the-cuff stupid-ass advice, which is remotely helpful.
	That's not how you get to know someone.
	And second of all, this is the kind of person that your friend wants to date.
	That tells me a huge amount about your friend.
	Yeah, like what?
	You mean like...
	You mean like that's not very deep?
	Yeah, okay.
	Let's be as nice as humanly possible and call it not very deep.
	Okay, I'm willing to do that.
	And so, look, I think...
	Look, you know, I'm a huge advocate of...
	Of talk therapy.
	Particularly the family systems therapy, internal family systems therapy, or even CBT. And the reason for that is if you get the right therapist, then through their interactions with you, you get a sense of what it actually means to really talk to someone.
	To really have a conversation.
	Well, I did go to therapy.
	I'm sorry?
	I did go to therapy, but it was kind of not as effective as it could be, I guess.
	Right.
	Look, not all therapists are good, obviously.
	But, and I, you know, I certainly didn't stick with my therapist more than one session, but if you get a therapist who knows what the hell they're doing and is really committed to a rich and deep and meaningful and value-filled conversation, I mean, you know, once you go deep, you can't go back.
	I mean, you can go back a little bit, you know, like chat about the weather with people on the bus if you have to, but That's what I just need.
	Really what I'm trying to do is just to denormalize the non-interactions that you're having.
	The fly-by-night, pass-by, shallow, non-value-based, non-philosophical, non-deep conversation.
	I just want to denormalize that from you and say that if you want my advice, you know, this is just advice, what the hell do I know, right?
	But if you want my advice, then you need to Practice having a deep conversation.
	A therapist is great for that.
	I mean, a good therapist is all about what are the deep connections they can help you make and what are the patterns that they can help you see and they're really focused on you.
	It is, of course, what we should all have gotten from our parents when we were infants and toddlers to really be focused on our child's thoughts and feelings to help them discover patterns and all that kind of stuff but, you know, of course, how many of us get that?
	Well, I don't imagine it's a whole heck of a lot and So it is a kind of reparenting in that it's a one-way relationship between the therapist to you.
	You don't ask your therapist about her day or his day, but they focus on you, which is what toddlers should be receiving and all that.
	And, you know, I certainly, you know, my daughter has been for years now fascinated by moral questions.
	What is good?
	What is bad?
	What is right?
	What is wrong?
	And why?
	Now, I fortunately am in the position because I've worked on these ethical theories for a long time to have pretty good answers for her.
	But she's always curious about what it means to be good and bad, right and wrong.
	And so this phase of developing depth and ethical decision-making and reasoning and so on, it all happens a hell of a lot earlier than most people think.
	Studies have shown moral reasoning kicking in at 14, 15, 16 months of age.
	We all have this desperate Deep, cavernous, Mariana Trench, Grand Canyon hunger, thirst that needs to be filled for moral reason.
	And it certainly doesn't happen in daycares.
	It doesn't happen in nursery schools.
	It doesn't happen in...
	It happens...
	I mean, you'll get answers in church, but we don't want answers.
	We want reasoning.
	We want to know how to think about virtue when we're kids.
	And so...
	We don't get that.
	In fact, the reasoning is kept from us as children because the ethics that society claims it runs on universally are not even close to universal.
	And so, if you're a con man, you don't want a background check.
	If you're a counterfeiter, you don't want a counterfeit detection machine.
	And if you're a moral bullshitter, in other words, if you have moral authority in every society I've ever heard of, If you're a moral bullshitter, then you don't want children to be taught reasoning any more than you want the children to be exposed to atheistic reasoning or just reasoning.
	And so when children have the greatest hunger for trying to understand virtue Philosophy.
	We specifically, as a culture, and I would argue even consciously, keep philosophy away from children when they need it the most.
	And we do that because our moral institutions can't survive even the most cursory moral scrutiny.
	So how do they survive it?
	Well, because we starve children of the nutrition they need, And no one does the inspection that you talked about.
	Yeah, to fight the beast of oligarchy, we starve children of the nutrition they need to build the muscles to become free, and this is how they remain in chains.
	And so, I think that you have a hunger for moral reasoning.
	Not judgment and condemnation and hurling thunderbolts and Old Testament bullshit, but you have a hunger for how the hell am I supposed to make decisions Ahead of time that are going to lead me to happiness in 5 or 10 or 20 or 50 years.
	You can't just make decisions in the moment and then consequences hit you later, which is kind of what's going to happen if you don't get your ass down to eat some fruits and vegetables.
	That's really what I'm trying to make a case for here.
	You've got to look deeper than your existing relationships.
	And how you achieve that, I think, you know, journal, self-knowledge, examine your dreams, explore your dreams, explore your thoughts and impulses, look for patterns.
	There's lots of workbooks out there.
	Brandon has them.
	Bradshaw has them.
	They're, I think, interesting and worthwhile working through them.
	And if you can afford to, try and get a therapist who has, you know, I'm going to, you know, IFS stuff or CBT is okay, but it does not really depth therapy.
	I think Jungian therapists can be very interesting in terms of just expanding an awareness of dreams.
	The Freudian therapists can be very interesting that way as well.
	And, you know, understand just my understanding of it.
	It's not because I've sampled all of this stuff myself.
	But what a therapist will do, or any friend who's going to talk to you and ask you questions and really strive to understand your life, your thoughts, your decisions, your choices, how they came to be, What effect they're going to have.
	That's, to me, that's love.
	There's nothing else that can call itself love other than somebody who is relentlessly and genuinely concerned with your self-interest and your happiness and this, of course, is reciprocal and, or it should be.
	So my with you is just try to think about a deeper and more meaningful interaction.
	With the people around you.
	How you achieve that, I don't know.
	You can ask for it and see who reciprocates.
	You can get to therapy and get used to that kind of conversation.
	It is like speaking a new language.
	But I think that's the most important thing to focus on if I were in your shoes.
	Okay.
	Thanks.
	Just lots of things to think about, really.
	Good.
	Well, I hope you don't mind.
	The thing about being stuck in childhood in some manner was pretty much accurate, I guess.
	Alright, but listen, I'm going to have to move on.
	I really appreciate you doing this.
	Thanks a lot.
	...on the courage it takes to talk about this in this kind of environment, so thank you so much for that.
	Let's talk to our next friend to be.
	There are no strangers.
	They're only friends I have not met yet.
	All right, next up we have JR. Hello.
	Thank you for your patience.
	Can you hear me?
	Yeah.
	Hello.
	Yes, go ahead.
	Hello.
	Yes, can you hear me?
	Yeah, I can hear you.
	Good to be back.
	I just wanted to ask you, well, I actually have a two-parter.
	Second question is totally unrelated, if you don't mind.
	The first question regards the sort of tactic I've heard media statists make that I find really disturbing.
	And I wanted to get your take on it.
	It involves Well, I've heard it from two people now.
	The first one was a debate between Webster Tarpley and Adam Kokesh, and the second one was between this guy, I'm sure you know him, Tom Hartman and libertarian Wayne Root.
	In both cases, what they said was, what their argument was, if you advocate any sort of removal of people off of food stamps or ending of any kind of government program that would You know, make it more difficult for them to get those free handouts, then you are advocating genocide.
	And they said that almost verbatim.
	When I heard that, I just, I mean, first of all, it's just pretty shocking that they would try a tactic like that.
	But second, it just...
	It made me kind of think that they're not really trying to debate.
	What they're trying to do is just put themselves beyond defeat, in a way, in the eyes of their public, I guess.
	Right.
	What Adam said to Tarpley after he said that was, well, you know, he gave the usual logical argument, well, you know, that was stolen from people at the point of a gun, whatever.
	And then Tarpley, he says, well, I don't care.
	We have to deal with the reality now.
	I mean, what would you say to something as absurd as that?
	And I've heard it.
	I mean, this seems to be a recurring theme, you know, this argument of genocide.
	Sure, sure.
	Well, I mean, in a way, I can understand where they're coming from.
	The only way that you could cut social programs is if you repudiate the debt, right?
	Because if you cut social programs and then you expect the American population to pay off 70, 80 trillion dollars of unfunded liabilities, I mean, that's just going to make a revolution, right?
	Right.
	I'm sure the powers that be are looking at the Arab Spring and they're seeing what happens when people run out of food and they're like, well, shit, that's not very helpful to us, right?
	So you can't – I don't think you can morally cut social programs without repudiating the debt, right?
	Now, if you cut social programs and you repudiate the debt, then, frankly, you can't You can have no income tax because in America, of course, the income tax only goes to service the debt, right?
	People think it's the making roads and hospitals.
	It's not.
	It's just going to service the debt, right?
	So if you say to people, look, we obviously want to phase out these programs for moral reasons and practical reasons, but not keeping everything else constant.
	But how would people do if they didn't have food stamps But no one had to pay income tax.
	And then people would say, well, you don't pay income tax to people on food stamps.
	It's like, that's not the point.
	The point is that in the entire economy, nobody's paying income tax, which means that they can go and buy a whole bunch of other stuff that they've wanted and needed, which is going to generate massive amounts of job demands, right?
	Yeah.
	And they're going to say, well, what about The mom who's got six kids, who needs the food stamps, right?
	At which point I will say, well, whenever taxes go down, charitable donations go up.
	And so I think that most people obviously would not say that that's a very responsible woman to have six children and no provider, that she's obviously made terrible mistakes and done some very bad things, but of course the children shouldn't be the ones to pay for that.
	It's not their fault.
	that their mother couldn't keep her legs crossed and so we would help those people out and they'd say well how would you guarantee that that help would be enough to which point I would say but you are not in reality because in your fantasy land food stamps can continue forever and anything that I suggest to replace them is in your mind changing from some perfect world Where
	the welfare state and our existing system can continue forever.
	That is a fantasy land.
	The reason we need to change, obviously there are very important moral reasons, but the reason we need to change these programs is we either have a soft landing or we have one hard, hard landing, a crash.
	These systems, these programs, are completely unsustainable.
	We're either going to find a way to transition people off these programs in a reasonable, moral, productive way or we're just going to run the hell out of money and then these people are completely and totally screwed.
	It is compassion for the poor through which libertarians recognize that The existing systems of, let's call them charity for want of a better word, that's how the statists see them, the existing systems are completely unsustainable.
	We're either going to find a way to transition off them in a rational, measured way where jobs are waiting and charity is waiting and there's a way to get people away from this trap, this roach motel of welfare, or we're just going to run out of money and the checks will stop coming And there will be blood in the streets.
	So anybody who thinks that whatever solutions voluntarists or libertarians come up with is somehow comparing to some perfect magical system where these benefits just keep flowing despite the completely obvious math that they can't is delusionary and actually, I would argue, is an incredible enemy and danger to the poor.
	Because they cannot possibly survive.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	I'm sure you understand why, but I haven't yet understood the delusion of so-called, not even just people on food stamps, I'm just talking about people that are supposedly intellectually savvy, you know, that should have at least the faint awareness of the economic catastrophe that's coming, and yet I mean, you know, Tom Hartman's not an idiot.
	I mean, he's an intelligent guy, but there's no recognition whatsoever of the obvious, and I just don't understand how someone supposedly so educated could be so blind, you know?
	Well, but there's no fool like an educated fool, right?
	You know, the common sense of the masses in someone is, I think, fairly well understood, and I think in the main, the majority of people do come around to common sense over time.
	But...
	There's no fool like an educated fool.
	I mean, what should they say?
	Marxism is so absurd that it takes a PhD to accept it.
	And so they live in a world, right?
	So when you get educated, what happens is you begin to live in concepts.
	And that's great.
	Nothing wrong with that.
	I think concepts are fantastic.
	They are the greatest engine of the human mind.
	But the problem with concepts is they're They can be manipulated.
	And so, to become educated, move out of the concrete and into abstractions.
	Now, the concrete can't be manipulated.
	So, if we were on a lifeboat, and we were still three days from land, and we only had two days of food, and I said, we need to ration ourselves, Everybody would accept that because they'd count the number of granola bars.
	They'd count the number of people.
	They'd get that with three days.
	Maybe we've got a GPS. I don't know.
	But they would understand that we can't magically create more granola bars.
	We can't magically get there faster and we're not about to start throwing people overboard so people can have an extra granola bar a day.
	So reality, like bald, in-your-face, tangible reality cannot be manipulated.
	And so nobody would say that it was cruel to cut back on our granola bars if we didn't have enough or we need to, you know, whatever.
	In fact, they would say that it would be idiotic and ridiculous to eat all our granola bars now because we don't know exactly when we're going to hit land and Larry over there is a diabetic or whatever it is, right?
	But once you start living in the world of concepts, Ah, then you are in a different world because you can invent all kinds of crazy stuff.
	You can invent magical fairies that will shit granola bars onto your plate if you do just the right dubstep dance.
	And they call that taxing the rich.
	If we tax the rich, we can solve the debt crisis.
	Now, it's not because anybody has done the math.
	I mean, you can't tax the rich at all and solve the deficit crisis, let alone the debt crisis.
	It's just they don't have enough money.
	And that's assuming the rich are going to just stand there and let you go through their pockets and carve out their kidney with a rusty spoon.
	Or they say, we've got another magical fairy that will give us food, and that magical fairy is called, we're going to close loopholes and cut wasteful spending.
	Those are two other...
	Magical fairies.
	Of course, when you press anyone for specifics, they can't really tell you and they haven't done the math.
	But these are just magical spells that people say to make their anxiety go away and to win the debate in the short term, right?
	And so when you live in concepts, which is, I think, to be educated, you've got to be very familiar with concepts, If you had to do every mathematical equation by counting marbles, you would not be a very good mathematician.
	When you become educated, you live in concepts, but concepts are bullshit magnets.
	They're incredibly powerful if you do them right, and if you do them wrong, they're incredibly destructive.
	If you remember this debate I had with Sam Seder, I told him a million times.
	Treasuries are not assets.
	They're liabilities.
	It's like, no, but they have $100 written on them.
	Yes, it's $100 of debt, not of assets, not gold, right?
	It's not a house.
	And so if we were actually looking at something, right?
	If he was looking at a hole I dug 100 feet deep and saying, that's a mountain, he would obviously be insane, right?
	And people would look at that and say, well, how can this man even put his shoes on the right I mean, this is insane.
	He's looking at a hole and thinking it's a hill.
	But when you start talking about treasuries and deficits and assets and so on, you start to abstract things so much that you can manipulate them.
	I sometimes wonder if concepts were not developed as a form of exploitation.
	I sort of think that they were and we're trying to wrestle them back to where they should be or where they are if people care about the truth.
	But that's sort of my answer.
	I think a lot of people get into concepts Because they are grease for the most civilization-crushing bullshit that can be conceivably imagined.
	And that's why, to me, there's no fool.
	And no more dangerous fool than an educated fool.
	Yeah.
	Well, I mean, I see your point.
	And I guess there comes a day of reckoning for anyone who lives entirely on concepts, I guess, right?
	Inevitably.
	Well, if they lie about things.
	But see, this is the problem.
	It's that the day of reckoning doesn't get the educated classes.
	Right?
	So, in Weimar Republic, in sort of the post-war period and so on, the Weimar Republic, you had all these asshole leftist intellectuals building all the pyramids to fascism and national socialism and so on.
	And then, when the totalitarians got in, Because they had ground down the common sense of the people with endless, lasting winds of bullshit abstractions, when the totalitarians came in, what did the intellectuals do?
	came to America and did the same thing to us.
	Sigmund Freud.
	paid.
	One of the greatest betrayals in human history was committed by Sigmund Freud.
	Where his patients came to him and said, I was raped as a child.
	And this is why I'm a neurasthenic basket case.
	This is why I have hysterical blindness or I can't feel my arm even though there's nothing wrong with it.
	I was raped as a child.
	And so many adults came to him and said that they were raped as children.
	And he began to uncover what was at the time an incredibly dark secret, which was the prevalence of child sexual rape in society.
	And what did he do?
	He started to talk about it and he drew the trolls as you generally tend to do when you start to not just encourage but help people to achieve virtue and freedom from abuse.
	And then what happened?
	Well, he backed down.
	He betrayed the children.
	He betrayed his patients.
	He betrayed the world.
	And he said, it's a fantasy.
	They weren't actually raped.
	They just want to be raped.
	They imagine it.
	This is where the Oedipus complex and the Electra complex came from.
	This boy was not seduced by his mother for real, even though he tells me that he was.
	He has specific memories of it and he has all the symptoms that would be associated with such a betrayal.
	He was not seduced by his mother.
	He just really wants to be seduced by his mother.
	And that's where the Oedipus, or he wants to seduce his mother, and this is a wish fulfillment, and all he's telling me about his childhood experiences is all just a wish fulfillment, that it's not real.
	And with that fundamental betrayal, the world of evildoers breathed a huge sigh of relief.
	And I genuinely believe, I can't prove this, maybe I can someday, but I can't right now, I genuinely believe that if Freud had stuck to his guns, there would have been no World War I. And I'll get through all the causality of that another time.
	But these are the stakes.
	If I can hold my course and promote violence with my family, I believe that it can be significant in avoiding war.
	And so, and what happened, you know, if World War I led to Nazism and so on, so Freud's betrayal, if it led to World War I, if it emboldened the evildoers, and if it so traumatized Those who had suffered because, you know, once you take a rape victim and say that it's a wish fulfillment on her part,
	you join in with the abusers and victimize the victims who were children, creates such a seething amount of rage and betrayal and hatred that I believe that it cracked the continuation of peace of the 19th century in Western Europe that could have continued and we might have avoided all of the slaughters and horrors of the 20th century, the hundreds of millions murdered and entire societies dislocated and starvation and war and...
	Plague and famine and, oh my god, just a nightmare century in so many ways.
	But Freud got out, right?
	He got out of Germany.
	Now, his sisters didn't, but he did.
	And so the intellectuals, they don't face the consequences of what they build because they're mobile, they're smart, they're in demand elsewhere.
	It's the lumpenproletariat who suffer.
	The hostess thing, right?
	The hostess just closed down all of its plants and so on because, I mean, obviously there's changing diets and so on.
	You know, McDonald's can adapt and, you know, Twinkies could, you know, you could stuff a couple of cabbage heads in there or whatever.
	But they just shut down because the union was demanding more than they could mathematically pay them and also because Like most industrial concerns, like why is manufacturing dying in the United States?
	Well, obviously, it's hyperregulation and unions and so on.
	And one of the main effects of it, or the main causes, is because manufacturing companies have not, they're not doing what they should be doing, or what they're supposed to be doing, or what economically it would make sense for them to do, which is to build and sell stuff.
	No.
	What they do is they provide healthcare and pensions, and to pay for that, they have to build and And pay stuff, build and sell stuff.
	And that's the fundamental change that has occurred.
	And it's all over the place.
	A GM spends more on pensions and healthcare than it does on R&D and sometimes it seems even on building cars.
	Most times, the biggest single item is pensions and healthcare for retirees.
	And the union bosses, well, They'll go get a job at a public sector union, or they've made already enough to retire if they need to, or they've got their guaranteed pensions enforced by the state as part of the sweetheart deals usually between Democrats and unions.
	I was just reading this article that says that almost all university employees give to Democrats.
	Well, that's what the future is, right?
	Because you're training your intellectuals along left-wing lines, therefore you're going to get a left-wing future.
	And so they're fine.
	The union bosses are going to move on.
	They've got their context.
	They can go into the rotating door between the public sector and the quasi-public sector.
	But, what is it?
	18,000 workers are going to be out on their arses and those people are going to take that long, slow bilbo down the side of a mountain slide towards the lower classes.
	So the intellectuals, the people who've been pro-union, they're going to be fine.
	They're going to be fine.
	I mean, Noam Chomsky ain't going to be out of a job because Hostess closes down.
	He's got his tenure.
	He's got his pension.
	He's fine.
	Okay, he invests in the military-industrial complex, but anyway, leave that for another time.
	But they're going to be fine.
	It's the poor who suffer when the vanity of intellectuals drives them into poverty, when the mad fantasies of the central planners Decay them into the underclass.
	The intellectuals always escape.
	This is why they keep doing it.
	They get power, they get prestige, and they get to pat themselves on the back for all of their supposed moral virtues, and they get praised as forward thinkers and those who care about the poor, and when the machines they make grind over the eyeballs of the underprivileged, they just go on to some new con, some new venture.
	It's filthy.
	It seems to be a very hard cycle to break.
	Yeah, definitely.
	Well, thanks for that insight.
	Do you have time for a quick second question?
	It should be short.
	It's not a complex question.
	Hello?
	Yes, go ahead.
	Okay.
	It's related, actually.
	It's a fun topic.
	First of all, I want to say I saw the short film you did.
	You know, about the guy who comes back from the war.
	I really thought it was excellent.
	Thank you.
	Yeah.
	But related to that, I just wanted to ask you, why do you think movies have decayed so much in the last 20 to 30 years?
	And I say this because I was listening to a podcast with this famous critic, and he was saying that The reason that movies are so much poorer now, and I don't really agree with this, but he said that it's because back in the 50s and 60s, studios used to have,
	you know, he said they had far less competition and they owned all the theaters, so basically they felt safer putting out more cutting-edge kind of stories, whereas now it's all about just capturing the audience with special effects and all that.
	I don't agree with that necessarily, but I mean, what do you think is the cause of it?
	Because it is a...
	I mean, I haven't been in the theater in like three years.
	I mean, and it's just there's nothing to see.
	I mean, it's all terrible, you know?
	I mean, what are you...
	The quality of movies has declined.
	Now, I, you know, I do confess to being a bit of a CGI whore.
	I'm quite amazed by the technology and the degree to which they can just seamlessly blend the most amazing effects with live action.
	It gets me Even within a spitting distance of fast-forwarding through bits of John Cotter of Mars or whatever the hell it's called.
	So I'm a bit of a CGI whore.
	I mean, I find the technology absolutely fascinating.
	I have no idea how fun...
	I mean, I know how it's done, but it's just amazing to me that it can be done.
	So I think there's that aspect.
	But look, I mean, people are getting smarter, but education is getting worse.
	Education is getting worse.
	I mean...
	That's the most fundamental thing to stand, I think, about society as a whole.
	Education is getting worse and people are very stressed.
	I was reading this thing about how diabetes has just exploded in the US. In the 1950s, 1% of people were diabetic.
	Now it's like 14%, 15%.
	A 1500% increase in diabetes.
	I know people are living longer and all, but that's just astounding.
	And I think that ill health in a late empire seems to be associated because it's just such a shameful and horrible place to live.
	And there's so much propaganda and people are so stressed.
	People get that our society is not sustainable and they're kind of stressed.
	And a lot of people, when they're stressed, they eat.
	But since The public sector unions took over education in the 1960s and basically made it possible to fire teachers.
	Education has just declined.
	Education now is the equivalent of a LADA. Actually, some guy wrote to me after I used that last analogy and said, my LADA was great!
	So I don't know, I'm just going...
	But it's a Soviet department store.
	Education is a Soviet department store.
	And so if everybody's wearing ill-fitting, ugly clothes, the first place we look for is, well, how do they get them?
	Well, they go to the Soviet department store.
	And because education, the quality of education is declining considerably, and this is particularly true if you go back a little over 100 years and you can do, you can Google these tests that were given to grade 8 students in, you know, the 19th century.
	I mean, it's some tough stuff, let me tell you.
	I mean, I think the average educational achievement of the founding fathers was grade 6.
	I mean, we just, we don't, you know, people say that, well, Shakespeare went to a government school, yes, but only for 12 weeks a year.
	The rest of the time, he could actually learn something or unlearn the bullshit he'd been taught.
	And so, the quality of education has deteriorated so much.
	That it's impossible to understand things like the Obama phone lady or the election or most of television or why people are so fascinated by the human cockfighting of reality shows or why people are eating such crap or why health is in so many ways declining or Why people are into junk books and why 40% of college grads never pick up another book for the rest of their lives and why the complexity of presidential speech has declined considerably over the past 40 years
	or why movies are so crappy.
	If we caged up our children, like really, really caged them up, like put them in restraints so that they could not move and fed them Cane sugar or what's that god-awful stuff?
	High fructose corn syrup.
	If we physically stopped them from moving and fed them crap for six hours a day and then gave them more crap to take home and eat and made sure they had to sit at a table for another hour or two doing homework.
	And then we said, well, this has been in place for about 40 years.
	I can't understand why...
	Our sports records are declining.
	Why are sports performances declining so much?
	I mean, it's because you lock your kids up in school for six hours a day, immobilizing their brains, and feed them all sorts of crappy propaganda, and attack anyone who thinks for themselves, and then you wonder why the quality of the culture is declining.
	I don't mean you, but I mean, it's obvious.
	Anybody who doesn't understand that everything...
	That most people think, literally everything that most people think is propaganda from public schools or from religion.
	If anybody doesn't understand that, they are absolutely unworthy to have any kind of discussion about anything in society because they have zero conception of cause and effect.
	Like anybody who talks about unions and says, well, unions are there to protect you from the predation of the owners.
	It's just repeating a bullshit propaganda talking point that has no relationship to reality.
	No relationship.
	Well, you see, but the factory owner, he takes a percentage of the union, like if the worker's wages is profit.
	It's like, well, yeah, but what do you think the union bosses do?
	They take a percentage of profit.
	The manager of the factory has an incentive to drive down wages to make more money.
	Yes, that's true.
	Of course it's true.
	Which is only limited by the fact that people who are more valuable, they'll be able to command more wages.
	Like anybody who says, why can't workers earn more?
	We need to raise the minimum wage.
	Who doesn't understand that people come out of almost a decade and a half of government education with almost zero economic skills whatsoever and that's why their goddamn wages are so low.
	It's just not worth talking to about these issues.
	Or people who say, well, you know, the factory owner wants to drive down wages.
	Of course, yeah, maybe he does, maybe he doesn't.
	Who knows?
	There's lots of nice factory workers out there.
	I was a corporate manager.
	I was a company founder.
	I was doing all these kinds of funky things.
	It's kind of insulting to be lumped in with, you know, I'm sure there are assholes out there, but there are asshole blacks, but we don't call all blacks assholes.
	It's just being a racist.
	But you can be a classist and somehow that's Being enlightened, but being a racist, of course, everybody understands.
	You can lump everyone together in economic categories and call them assholes for sure.
	But what do they think the motives are of the union heads?
	I mean, there's this thing called feather betting.
	I think Peter Schiff talked about this on his show a couple of days ago about how they have separate drivers for cakes and breads.
	The union, their goal is to make things as inefficient as possible.
	Which is why sometimes I had a friend who had to wait for half a day because he wasn't allowed to plug in his own computer.
	John Stossel writes about this in his new book, No We Can't.
	It's a good read.
	And they have an incentive to make things as inefficient as possible because if things are inefficient, then more people need to be hired.
	More people who need to be hired means more union dues for the union bosses.
	But of course, more inefficiency means that The organization's days are numbered.
	And they say, well, but the world should have control of the factories.
	Well, did you know that the unions of Hostess were offered 25% ownership, a seat on the board, and I think $100 million in credit?
	And they said no.
	They were also offered partial ownership of GM? And they said no.
	Because then they'd actually have to be bosses and work, rather than just pound the table, shake their fists, and look...
	Extraordinarily obese on TV. So, I think that's...
	So, the quality of our arts and all that, in movies and music, whatever, it's just a reflection of decadence in public education, right?
	I mean, it's just a direct mirror of that, in other words.
	Yeah, look, educational spending has risen enormously, but educational scores...
	For the past 40 years have remained flat.
	And I believe that means that they're declining.
	A third of the teachers, I think it was in Massachusetts, couldn't pass the test they were giving to their children.
	I mean, teachers are, in a generic sense, this is not every teacher, but statistically teachers are The lowest of the low when it comes to educational achievement.
	I mean, it's the people in the bottom 10 to 20% of scholastic achievement who go into becoming teachers, which is exactly what you'd expect when you're not very good, you want to go into a protected environment, right?
	Yeah, those who can't teach.
	Yeah, and they don't teach well because they can't.
	You know, you don't see a lot of, say, people saying that in order for gender equality, we need to have male and female tennis in the same league.
	I mean, women are less strong.
	They need to stay in their own league.
	It's just a biological reality.
	And so they need to be in this, quote, protest.
	It's not enforced, right?
	It's not coercive or anything.
	But in order for there to be competition, they can't be directly competing with men.
	That's why there's not a male-female mixed NFL league, right?
	It's not going to work very well.
	And the same thing is true.
	So people who are underachievers or people who aren't very bright are going to be drawn towards areas where they get more Then they would earn on the free market and they'd go there through compulsion.
	And then, which, this only proves that they're actually very intelligent.
	They weave all of these moral myths to defend themselves, right?
	The nobility of the teachers and the public sector, the heroes of the public sector unions and, you know, we keep your lights on and we keep your roads and blah, blah, blah.
	It's like bullshit.
	At the moment a public sector union invents a light, I'd be impressed.
	But they just take over what capitalists do.
	Crowd the capitalists out and put the ring of guns around what they do and then claim that they're heroic.
	Nah.
	Anyway, so I hope.
	It's just a general dumbing down as a whole.
	But at the same time, the Flynn effect means that people are getting smarter, but they are more propagandized.
	And those two are probably not coincidental.
	It all seems a lot like that movie Idiocracy.
	Have you seen that?
	No, actually, I've...
	Somebody recommended it.
	It's a good film to see, but I haven't seen it.
	Oh, it's hilarious.
	It's a bit ominous because it reflects a degradation society to the point where everyone is a moron.
	In a lot of ways, at least the general public is going into that trend.
	It's pretty scary.
	I think there might be a point between where we reach where it would be impossible to talk to anyone in the I mean, there'll be such a gap in intelligence between, you know, people that are, you know, on government paychecks and, you know, people that actually do things, you know?
	Yeah, I mean, look, anyone on a government paycheck who doesn't admit their conflict of interest in voting again, I mean, they're just trying to pull a fast one, right?
	So, yeah, I mean, we have the increased propaganda, but we also have the internet.
	I mean, we're having this conversation, right?
	So, there are...
	Different forces at work.
	And people say, well, we're getting lots of people over to the libertarian side.
	I don't know if they forget how many millions of statists are produced every year by the public schools.
	I mean, this is not a race we're winning.
	I mean, all other things being equal, if we get zero more statists and we convert more people to freedom and reason and libertarianism and anarchism, great, but the problem is there's this conveyor belt spilling millions of new statists Every single year into the public.
	And, you know, we can't keep up with that.
	But, you know, there's that old statement that says, never forget that only a small determined group of individuals can change history.
	In fact, that's the only group that ever has.
	And so, you know, determination and reason and evidence, I think, will prevail in the long run.
	But only if we avoid the matrix and You know, grow our children outside the matrix.
	I think that's the best way to overcome it.
	But I hope that helps.
	It does, and I appreciate your help with these questions.
	So I'll leave it there.
	But just wanted to ask you, if you can, at the end of the show, just elaborate on how you made that, you know, that short film or whatever.
	Oh, yeah.
	Well, I tell you, that was back in the days where making a film was really expensive.
	I'll tell you, you could do it now with a whole lot of equipment that's dirt cheap, but this is long before Video cameras and all that kind of stuff, like the digital video cameras and so on.
	So it was quite a pretty penny, but I was very pleased with it.
	Alright, thank you.
	Maybe I will.
	I don't have time on the show, but I can certainly touch on it in the show at some point.
	Alright, next!
	Next up today, we have Larry.
	Hello.
	Hello.
	Hello, Stefan.
	Hello.
	It's nice to talk to you in person.
	First of all, I want to say that this is my first time calling, so...
	I'm gonna try to not sound like a complete ass, but I'm a little nervous, so...
	So, you do the non-ass part of the show.
	Alright.
	Well, thanks for everything you've done.
	For me, I really want to thank you in person.
	I don't know where my wife and I would be right now if we hadn't run across you, so...
	In a comfortable social environment, I appreciate it.
	Well, I had kind of two topics that I had brewing around in my head that I wanted to cover.
	I thought maybe you could choose.
	Smoking and conspiracy.
	Let's do the first one.
	Ah, quitting smoking.
	It's been a really, really rollercoaster ride for me as well as my wife.
	I know for me, I kind of look at it, I've analyzed it quite a bit.
	Well, first of all, I really enjoy smoking.
	That's kind of one aspect of it.
	But another one is, I see it as kind of a A tough guy thing.
	I find myself, when I watch movies or whatever, and I see the really tough guy smoking thing, it's very appealing to me.
	I guess the look...
	I was at a restaurant last night.
	A friend of mine's wife, it was her birthday, and we went out with them and their kids and had a blast.
	But there was this picture on the wall of Arnold Schwarzenegger in a muscle-tea With a cigar sticking out of his mouth, looking all kinds of jovial and manly.
	And I was like, that's pretty manly.
	I will certainly say that.
	So yeah, I get there is that kind of tough guy thing.
	Well, there's that, and well, I guess that's the main part.
	I mean, besides the complete addiction, that's the hard part for me, I think, is shedding that image of the tough guy.
	You know, I see this more in me.
	I mean, in me, it's more...
	Everything, part of my life.
	Coffee, black, red cigarettes, no complaining, no being sick.
	No exercise?
	Yeah, well, work is kind of an exercise for me, so I don't really...
	smoking a little vanilla latte in a little china teacup and then drank it with your little finger raised with no gain of mind my first impulses are never quite on the right mark but And when did you start smoking?
	Oh, it was early, 14 or 15.
	I'm 35 now, so...
	And how much do you smoke?
	Less than I used to.
	I'm a pack a day now.
	It was two, at least.
	Wow.
	Wow.
	You got some tar, baby.
	Yeah, I know.
	I know.
	It's a...
	Sorry, do you have kids?
	No, no, no.
	No kids.
	Right.
	And why do you want to quit?
	For health reasons and money reasons.
	I mean, that would be the two major things, of course.
	Right.
	I mean, the amount of money that I spend on cigarettes is almost a mortgage payment between the two of us, you know.
	Yeah, yeah.
	No, but of course, if you save the packs and glue them together, you can't really get a house out of it.
	Possibly.
	Recycle.
	I'm sorry, there's a little lag here.
	I'm not hearing you.
	Sorry about that.
	What was your childhood like?
	Pretty rough.
	My mother...
	She was first married to a very...
	I mean, my real father.
	He was very abusive, alcoholic.
	Beat her, beat us.
	She divorced him.
	I don't know.
	I was around six or seven.
	Then she married a A more verbal abuser, but there was some physical abuse.
	He sexually abused my sister, which she kind of turned on to me around puberty.
	That was only a minor incident, you know.
	Probably lasted a week, and then it was sort of forgotten.
	I've...
	I'm sorry, I'm missing out the first part of your conversation every time you speak.
	Sorry about that.
	Sorry, just to be clear, your sexual abuse lasted a week, but your sister's lasted longer?
	I'm sure.
	I don't know when it actually started between my stepfather and her.
	You know, I mean, that's not something I could even come close to guessing.
	But I think I was around 15 or 14 or 15.
	She's a year older than me when she kind of passed it on to me.
	There is that thought in the back of my mind that Something previously had happened to me to make me so susceptible to it.
	But, you know, my memories of my childhood are very blurry.
	And did he smoke?
	No, my mother never smoked.
	My stepfather never smoked.
	I don't remember whether or not my...
	You're by a father, yeah.
	My maternal father smoked, but my grandparents did.
	I mean, that was a...
	I kind of idolized my grandfather as a young man and my memories of him are at 6 o'clock in the morning sitting in the kitchen listening to the radio and drinking black coffee and smoking cigarettes.
	So I'd imagine that's where I get mine from.
	Yeah.
	I mean there's another theory as to why smoking is so pleasurable for you.
	Yeah, I've heard you talk about that a couple of times.
	It basically takes the place of the affection that was missed out as a child or something of that nature.
	I can't remember exactly now.
	I'll give you the two-second version.
	I hope I do the theories and kind of just it.
	The realm of hungry ghosts is important.
	Basically, if you grew up in a traumatized childhood, your body doesn't naturally produce enough endorphins, enough of the stuff that makes life pleasurable and makes life enjoyable.
	And so, for most people, you know, a lot of people will experiment with smoking, and for most people, like, they start at a happiness level of 100, and smoking takes them to 110 or 120, And then they go back to 100.
	And 100 is like, well, that's okay.
	You're like 80% of people who try and never do it again.
	It just takes it from 100 to 150 or 200.
	They go back down to 100.
	It's like, oh, that's okay.
	But if you grow up, you know, in this, you know, I just really want to express my incredible sympathy for this childhood.
	Monstrous.
	Just monstrous.
	Physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse.
	It's, you know, it's the ugly fucking trifecta.
	And I just really want to express incredible sympathy.
	That's the exact opposite.
	of where it should have been and how it should have been for you so I really want to express sympathy for that but what happens is you come out of that childhood with like a happiness level of 30 and you're just kind of struggling along getting by and all that then what happens is you have a cigarette and it fills a deficiency that's unfortunately become biological and it raises you to a happiness level of 70 or 80 close to normal and it's only then that
	we kind of get the deficiency that we've been struggling with because then when we crash back down we go back down to our 20 and 30 and it feels like a 20 or 30 for the first time as opposed to what we thought was was normal and so suddenly it's not exactly unbearable but suddenly how we've been functioning is revealed as significantly subpar and so It's not like greedy for happiness.
	We just want to get somewhere within spitting distance of normal happiness.
	And because of traumatic histories, our brains have developed in such a way that external agents will give us something close to a normal human experience of happiness.
	And then of course, you know, because we end up putting a lot more of this stuff into our system, our natural production of it declines, which is where the addiction comes from and so on.
	So that's the two-second version, and I apologize if I've mangled it, but I think that's the general idea.
	So, I mean, the way, in my understanding, is the way to deal with these kinds of things, it's just got to keep working on the childhood stuff.
	I don't think that there's any way to just will this kind of stuff.
	I'm sorry.
	It always seems that there's always an excuse.
	We start, we cut back, we do fairly well for a while, and then there's always that excuse.
	Well, my latest one was, I've just started a new job.
	It's kind of stressful.
	I want to do very well.
	Without the cigarettes, I cannot function.
	A new job and all that, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Before that, we've recently moved back from Europe.
	You know, oh, we'll quit when we get stable.
	You know, we're too stressed right now.
	We can't do it.
	And there's always that excuse right around the corner.
	I mean, it becomes one of those things where it basically...
	It's gnawing at me.
	And it's almost like now the...
	The guilt for not quitting is worse than the health effects that I will see later down the road.
	It's a constant struggle and I think that kind of beating myself up over not quitting or buying the next pack only leads to more smoking, if that makes any sense.
	Right.
	Let me give you one redefinition that will help, at least with some of the metaphorical aspects.
	The metaphorical aspects, in other words, the story we tell ourselves about our addictions is, I think, a very important part of addiction.
	First thing to recognize is that smoking is not toughness.
	You understand it's a crutch.
	It's a weakness.
	It's a way of avoiding it.
	It's not tough.
	It's a confession.
	For sure.
	We got that.
	What are the qualities of the people who are in your life at the moment?
	In other words, are there any echoes or repetitions of the traumas that you suffered as a child existing in your life at the moment?
	No, not really.
	We're pretty isolated here now.
	We're living in a small town in the middle of Missouri.
	It's basically just me and my wife.
	I have very limited contact with my family.
	I have yet...
	I've started a conversation with my mom but that has gone nowhere since the first initiation.
	That's another one of those excuses deal where I started it and it was very uncomfortable for both of us and we had to kind of When we came back from Europe, I really needed, you know, a foothold back here.
	And, of course, family was the only thing I had, but now that we have, you know, I've got a position and we've kind of moved on, the time has come for me to have that conversation again, but it's another one of those excuses type deal.
	So, as far as contact, you know, it's basically just me and my wife.
	Okay, okay.
	Anything personal.
	But, you know, she is...
	We are two peas in a pod when it comes to this smoking problem.
	And, you know, it turns out we tried to do the whole, you know, if I quit, you quit thing, but it just absolutely does not work.
	I mean, you know, you can't...
	I only smoke this much and it became a guilt thing.
	Why are you doing this when I'm only smoking?
	We've abandoned it and I'd like to try to get back on board to moving in the direction of no smoking.
	Instead of picking up other bad habits like I have at work, You know, I can't smoke all the time there.
	And I am, you know, a heavy, pretty heavy smoker.
	So I've gone back to the smokeless tobacco at work.
	And have you tried the patents and all that kind of crap?
	No, I haven't.
	That probably goes back to the, you know, whole Arnold Schwarzenegger tough guy thing, you know.
	The first person, of course, to talk to is your doctor.
	You have a significant addiction.
	Obviously, you know that.
	You started just after puberty, and it's been 20 years or 20 years plus.
	It's good to go from two packs a day to one pack a day, but I think you're probably going to need some outside help.
	There's probably no smokers or non where you are.
	If you talk to your doctor and say, you know, this is my plan, then he can or she can help you figure out, you know, cold turkey may be too much, but maybe there's some other things where you can sort of put in the patches and all that kind of stuff.
	Because, look, you know, you're not going to be all kinds of tough when you're lying in a hospital bed coughing up your last bit of lung.
	Yeah.
	Going to be a whole lot of, you know, that's not Rambo.
	Coming out of a mudslide to take on an alien, right?
	So that's not going to beat you up at all.
	And you obviously know that you're rolling the dice for that shadow on the lung every time you inhale.
	And you don't want to have those regrets.
	Because obviously I can guarantee you that if you don't quit, and you will almost surely get sick with the amount that you're smoking, And you're going to look back and say, well, how, you know, how hard was it to quit compared to what I have to face now, right?
	So, I mean, you know, I think it's fine to scrap out of yourself a little bit that way.
	And so I think that can be...
	I remember, but it's hard as hell to quit.
	I remember a long time ago, many, many years ago, working with a woman whose husband was a heavy smoker, and she finally convinced him to quit.
	quit.
	And she said, like a day and a half later, I went out and bought a carton and knelt down in front of him and I begged him to light up a cigarette because he was being such a bear about it.
	You know, if you redefine this you have about smoking, I either the toughness, if you can consult with a medical professional about the best ways, you want to really avoid having dysfunctional people define your narrative.
	And, I mean, your family is, like, jaw-droppingly screwed up.
	Yeah.
	And jaw-droppingly to children.
	I don't know if you've gone through the angry part about that.
	I suspect you haven't.
	Well, you know, there's that...
	I still have that sympathy, I guess, for my mother.
	You know, my father and my stepfather, you know, I care nothing for either one of them.
	But it's very difficult with my mom.
	You put a child's rapist into the house?
	Yeah, I know.
	I know.
	It's something that I'm still struggling with.
	And it was always one of those things, you know, I know...
	Let me ask you this.
	Yeah.
	Let me ask you this.
	I mean, you love your wife, right?
	Of course, more than anything.
	And what if a friend of yours took your wife to a party and at that party she was raped by his best friend?
	Yeah, well, it's unimaginable.
	I would hate to think that I would ever have to deal with that situation.
	Imagine that.
	In other words, your best friend brought his best friend into contact with your wife and your wife ended up getting raped.
	You'd be pretty pissed.
	Now, would you try to be understanding towards your friend?
	Absolutely not.
	Absolutely not.
	I'm not saying no understanding would be humanly possible, but we couldn't expect it from you, right?
	Yeah.
	Right, so a psychologist who's trained and paid and whatever, has a whole legal framework, he can sit down and deal with a rapist.
	And I don't know, I don't know if a rapist can be cured or whatever, but if there is cure for the rapist, it has something to do with having sympathy For that rapist's history, right?
	So, it's true that sympathy may be valid by a professional with a whole legal framework and independence and power and authority and all that, right?
	But we would never ask the victim of the rapist to do that, right?
	Do you see what I'm saying?
	Yeah, of course, of course.
	You know, and I've gone over this millions of times in my head.
	That's a hurdle I have yet to cross, and I guess that's why the main part of the conversation has not taken place yet.
	We were...
	I'm still struggling to get your outrage, right?
	And I'm not trying to manipulate you.
	But if you have a child...
	And if you have a child and you drop your child off at your mother's house and she has a boyfriend there and then it turns out that the boyfriend rapes your child.
	Yeah.
	Because this was your sister, right?
	I understand completely.
	Believe me, I have buried myself in your podcast about this and I've thought about it.
	It's just that there seems to be this thing in my head that when I look at my mother, I see so much weakness that it's hard for me not To have some sympathy.
	Her first choice for her husband was disastrous, completely.
	I attribute that basically to her upbringing.
	Like I said, I kind of idolized my grandfather when I was younger, but after After going in and listening to a lot of your podcasts about the family stuff, I came to the realization that her upbringing probably wasn't very good at all.
	After she divorced my maternal father, we were so poor, it was unbelievable.
	I remember she lost $10 in the grocery store one day and broke down and literally cried in the middle of the grocery store because she didn't have enough money to buy milk.
	She married my stepfather basically for the money.
	So, you know, and I realized that this is no substitution for having a loving family, you know, because looking back on it now, I would have preferred to be poor because...
	I was a kid.
	I didn't care about the money.
	It wasn't a concern for me.
	But we were so poor that when she was working and we were sleeping in her car outside of work, I know that these are The decision to have children or the inability not to have children when you're in that kind of situation is no excuse.
	But I'm still having a very difficult time in getting over that hurdle of basically just saying fuck it and sitting down and having a conversation and telling her exactly what I... What I know is right in my head, but will not...
	I don't even know how to put that.
	Will not...
	The two...
	I'm sorry?
	Sexual abuse?
	Yeah, she does.
	My sister is...
	They've gone over that.
	I don't know how in-depth they've gone over it, but she does.
	And he was basically, I mean, he was basically a sleazeball, you know, guy, my stepfather.
	I mean, he made passes at her sister, I believe, and who knows how many other women.
	Because, I mean, immediately after they divorced, he found himself another, you know, another family a la peanut butter sandwiches, you know, instant family.
	And when you were a child, did your mother punish you?
	No, this was kind of the...
	She was the no-rules side of the family.
	My stepfather was the strict one, and she was the...
	So there basically were no rules for me.
	I started drinking at 15, smoking weed at 15 or 16.
	Basically, my entire youth up until about the age of, well, up until recently, I've up until recently, I've quit drinking.
	And, I mean, basically all I have left is the cigarettes, but...
	I've been face down in the bathroom so many times I can't even tell you how many times it's happened.
	That's been from 16 up until probably the last year.
	A lot of problems with drugs and alcohol.
	What's that?
	I hope the podcast had something to do with that.
	Of course.
	You've helped me out tremendously.
	I can't even explain.
	No amount of money or explanation can make up for how much better I feel now.
	And how easy it is for me to say no to the alcohol now and to say no to the drugs.
	I mean, not that I had a problem with hard drugs, but I smoked a lot of pot, and that consumed my life, basically.
	The alcohol and the weed, it was always, you know, when's the next party, when's the next this, when's the...
	And there was nothing getting done.
	Now I'm starting...
	I'm sorry?
	Sometimes ourselves is only bearable because we can promise an elimination of the self at a party tomorrow.
	Anyway.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	Well, look, the reason that I'm talking in this way is, I mean, I think there's a moral reality to what it is that I'm saying.
	Now, I'm not saying that your mother didn't have A difficult childhood.
	Of course, I'm sure she did.
	I'm sure she did.
	I'm sure that she did.
	My mother had a very difficult childhood.
	You know, places to be born, to Jewish background, 1937, Germany, not where you would be, not even in your top ten of places to be born.
	So she had a worse childhood than I did.
	I have no doubt about that.
	But here's the problem, is that Your childhood experience was not of your parents and their childhoods.
	It was not with an adult's understanding of cause and effect.
	And so your original experience of your childhood was, I assume, of being scared and angry and violated and outraged and helpless.
	And without the understanding Our parents were once children and they may in fact still be largely children and so on, right?
	Without that adult, you know, going backwards through time, generations of blah, blah, cycles of hamana, hamana, right?
	But our original experience, our true experience as children was not deadened by sympathy, but was a direct...
	And the reason for that...
	Let me put this...
	The reason for that is because when we are children, we are punished because we are considered to be 100% responsible for our decisions, right?
	Yeah.
	So, and I just talk about me.
	I don't want to talk about your childhood, not because I don't care, but I don't want to pretend that I know how it went for you.
	But for me, if I... If I did something wrong, then the priest or the teacher or an authority figure or a parent or whatever would say, you have to be punished because you're 100% responsible, you could have done differently and you chose not to.
	This is when I was like 5 or 6 or 7 or 10 or 12 or whatever, right?
	And that's what I was told about moral responsibility when I was a child.
	And if I tried to make an excuse, it didn't work.
	Nobody believed me.
	I was slapped down, right?
	So it's the same situation in every household, almost every household.
	Everyone else was doing it.
	What's the answer, my friend?
	If everybody else dropped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you do that too?
	Would you do it too?
	Yeah, of course.
	Of course.
	So that's...
	If I said I couldn't complete my homework because my mom had a complete rage fest last night and I couldn't concentrate.
	I couldn't show up for the test because my mom was typing with an electric typewriter in my room all night and smoking like crazy and I didn't get any sleep and I couldn't concentrate, so that's why I didn't show up for the test today.
	What happened?
	It's your responsibility to make you prepared for this test, young man.
	Yeah, no excuses, of course.
	And of course that's all nonsense, right?
	I mean, I get that.
	But that's the part that we need to work through.
	It's the part that was punished with 150% moral responsibility and no excuses, even as a child.
	Yeah, well, I pretty much already had my confirmation that she doesn't even want to approach this topic.
	I sent her some links, of course, to your books.
	She's quite an avid reader.
	Of course, nothing important.
	It's mostly mysticism or some kind of silly novel.
	She wouldn't touch your information with a 10-foot pole because she knows what it's about.
	We've kind of breached the topic a couple of times.
	But, I mean, she just absolutely refuses.
	And then, of course, I still get phone calls from her about this and that, this information and that information.
	And I feel it that she wants to talk, but she doesn't want to talk about...
	About what I want to talk about, for sure.
	She will never, ever breach that topic.
	And even in the emails, when we kind of exchanged a couple of emails about this, this was when I was still over in Europe, you know, she said, I will, of course, do anything to help this relationship, but, you know, all I asked her to do was read a book.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I'm sorry I didn't catch that did I lose you?
	Thank you.
	Sorry, I was just saying she would do anything except that which is uncomfortable.
	Of course, of course.
	And this is kind of, you know, I've taken that...
	I've absorbed that personality, never ever wanting to have any kind of conflict.
	I mean, this is what she stays away from absolutely the most.
	No kind of real conflict.
	I just want to get back to this...
	And I certainly don't mean to layer my experience or theories on you, so if this doesn't seem true, then obviously toss it out.
	But for me, at least in particular, there was something exquisitely ghastly and horrible about the adults around me.
	And there were many that I had conversations with when I was going through this period of my life.
	But the adults around me who punished me For 100% moral responsibility for me when I was a little helpless dependent kid.
	I mean, I even was...
	I got 100% moral responsibility and got caned in boarding school.
	I didn't even choose where I slept.
	So I was given 100% moral responsibility.
	I remember horsing around with some kid at the side of the pool and...
	We were trying to push each other in or whatever, and I ended up pushing him in, and then he complained or bitched about it or whatever, and then the gym teacher, who was one of these tough guys, came over and, did you push him in?
	I said, oh, a little bit, because we were just horsing around.
	He said, that's like being a little bit pregnant.
	I mean, this is something that we had when I was growing up.
	And so it's like, okay, so I have 100% responsibility for something where it was even just, we were just mutually horsing around.
	And what was so exquisitely horrible about that for me, sorry, let me put on my manly voice, what was exquisitely horrible about that for me was because if I was punished for 100% moral responsibility at the age of six, then how can moral responsibility Diminish for adults.
	In other words, how can you have almost infinitely more moral responsibility for a child than for an adult?
	Now, think of this as like two sliders, like on a Windows screen or something, two sliders.
	If you move the child's moral responsibility, you move the adult's moral responsibility 100-fold.
	So if you say, well, The child has plus 1% moral responsibility, then the adult has plus 100% moral responsibility.
	Now, if the adult says, I'm going from 100 to 50, then the child goes from 100 or 50 or a million to zero.
	But people want these sliders to move independently.
	They want the child's moral responsibility to be 100 when the adult is punishing the child but when the child as an adult comes to the parent and says that punishment was unjust suddenly the parent claims diminished moral responsibility I was in a difficult situation,
	your father was doing this, things changed, I was poor all excuses which were never allowed to the child now that kind of hypocrisy is enraging no matter what You do.
	It's jaw-droppingly diabolical, no matter what you do.
	Because then if you say, okay, well, my mom had no, you know, diminished moral responsibility, but she punished me for 100% moral responsibility, so she certainly accepted 100% moral responsibility only for helpless children, not independent adults.
	Right?
	Or if you say, well, my mom had 100% moral responsibility, but now that I'm bigger and independent, she now Claims that she doesn't have moral responsibility.
	Again, something which she never allowed me to do as a child.
	Either way, it's an incredible manipulation.
	Now, going through this process emotionally where you get pissed off because your desire to be good and your susceptibility to being called wrong or bad, your desire to be good, that which is best in you is Used to control and bully and punish you.
	That's something that no mere predator of the African...
	I mean, they'll bite your arm.
	They're not going to get you to self-attack on ethics, right?
	No.
	Going through that process...
	And this is not just your mom, right?
	This is society as a whole?
	I mean, a politician who will punish a teenager 100% for graffiti will claim all kinds of excuses if his own problems are discovered, right?
	Oh, of course, yes.
	You know, when you are bad in church, you are condemned.
	But when the priest is revealed to be having an affair, he views it as an opportunity...
	For humility and a re-entrance into God's grace.
	And he asks for...
	Yeah, I heard an example of this on the radio the other day.
	It was some radio station DJ guy.
	They were talking about, I think Bon Jovi's daughter was in the news.
	She had gotten arrested for heroin possession.
	She OD'd and she got arrested for heroin possession and he was basically saying that they should have been tougher on her.
	Because if he would have gotten in trouble with it, It would have been a class A felony.
	And then, I mean, literally, in the next breath, he was talking about how— The one drug, if you broke, you would go to jail, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	But in the next breath, he was talking about people already giving the legalization of marijuana a bad name.
	So he was all pro pot, but as soon as somebody gets in trouble for heroin, I don't know how people...
	I guess I used to do it, of course, before I really started actually thinking, but it's hard for me to put my mind back in that mindset of punishing people for arbitrary bullshit.
	And I mean there's examples of like there are district attorneys who have put hundreds of people behind bars for possession and then their son gets arrested for possession and they move heaven and earth to keep him out of jail and get him into rehab.
	Yeah, of course, of course.
	So I just think processing that dichotomy or that gap, it doesn't mean that, you know, you've got to You hate your mom forever.
	You don't even have to hate your mom now, but at least that action of assigning 100% moral responsibility to you as a child and punishing you thereby, or at least not intervening when you were punished if you say she's passive, and then when you become an adult and the power balance has shifted, I mean, I'll tell you this.
	I parent with half an eye on when I'm 70, right?
	When I'm 70, My daughter is going to be, I don't know, whatever, in her 20s.
	And she's going to be off doing her thing.
	She's going to be having a life.
	She might be married.
	And so I'm going to need her a whole lot more than she's going to need me.
	I hope I'll still be able to add value to her life.
	I hope that she'll want to come see me and so on.
	But, I mean, any parent with any brains gets that it changes.
	The equation changes.
	When the kid is young and they can't get their own snacks and they can't amuse themselves, then you have all the power in the known universe.
	But that shit changes.
	And it actually changes quickly.
	And it really doesn't take a long time Before that balance of power begins to shift.
	And if you abuse that power when you're an adult and your child is very small, you have just set the stage for the second half of your life.
	And you either are then going to fess up, apologize, and make whatever amends or restitution you can, which I hope works.
	I really do.
	Parents and children, when they become adults, have a huge amount to offer each other If it's healthy, if it's functional.
	Or, which is tragically what a lot of parents do, they've done wrong by their kids when they're younger and their kids grow up, shake their heads and say, wait a second, I just saw on Dr.
	Phil that it's essential to separate from abusive parents.
	I mean, he's really come around, I must say, on that.
	In fact, Philip Zimbardo, who's the past president of the American Psychological Association, I think the major problem with me is an inability to empathize
	with myself as a young kid.
	A lot of people will double down and just continue to manipulate and try and control in the hopes that it's just going to somehow turn around.
	And that's just like a gambler who can't leave the table and just keeps gambling everything and ends up with, you know, one kidney missing in the back alley.
	Anyway, sorry, go ahead.
	I was just saying, I think, you know, I mean, it just kind of came to me during this conversation here is the...
	probably a lot of the non-smoking or the smoking thing and...
	The conversation that I need to have with my mother, it comes from that inability to empathize with myself as a young kid.
	I can remember a time when I used to cry and get very upset at anything that upset me when I was young.
	About the age of eight or nine, that kind of just stopped completely.
	I became basically a stone wall.
	There was no crying, there was no...
	All emotions basically just completely shut down.
	I'm assuming just to not have to deal with what was going on in the household.
	I attribute my lack of memory and a lot of this to that situation.
	That even pervades today.
	I'm still a very unemotional, standoffish, tough guy, personality type of guy.
	I still struggle with it on a daily basis.
	Even with my wife.
	I mean, we've been married for five years.
	We discussed this quite often.
	And even the physical contact, reaching out and touching and stuff, I don't know.
	It's very difficult for me still.
	Yeah, and it will remain difficult, of course, as long as you have the chemical props, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Well, I never even made that connection, so, yeah.
	Yeah, I mean, it's self-medication, right?
	I mean, these kinds of, I think, as far as I understand it, most, I'm no expert, but most addiction is a form of self-medication, and in particular because of early trauma and the emotions, the very powerful emotions associated with early trauma.
	And so I think if you scale back, if you focus on the self-knowledge, obviously I recommend therapy, Because of your history, and I know it's tough where you are, but I'll put the recommendation out anyway, but if you work on the self-knowledge and scale back the addictions, the addictive behavior, and talk to a doctor, get the patch, whatever you need to transition, I think that's your best shot.
	But it is going to, I think it's going to, my guess is it's going to uncork Some unsettling emotions.
	But to me, if there is a definition of toughness, it is the capacity to experience intense passion without repressing it or acting on it, but simply to experience it.
	I think that is the kind of strength that the world could use a whole lot more of, and I'm sure you have it, but I think that would be, if I were to work on your definition of toughness, that's what I would be, that's what I would focus on.
	Yeah, well, it makes sense.
	Well, I guess I wanted to kind of talk about conspiracy, but we spent quite a bit of time on this.
	I see you have quite a few callers coming in.
	Listen, yeah, if you want to call back in, I mean, you're welcome anytime.
	It was a very enjoyable chat.
	How was it for you?
	Was it somewhat useful?
	No, it was good.
	I wasn't really actually prepared to go that in-depth, but I guess I should have been, you know, I should have been prepared for the question of the childhood before I even called in, considering that I've listened to quite a few of these conversations.
	So, anyway, no, it was very good, and I've been through this a lot.
	For me, it's very nice to be able to talk to somebody else because basically the only person I can talk to is my wife.
	As much of a genius as she is, it can only take me so far, I think.
	Of course, your idea of therapy is something that I've considered a lot.
	It's something that I need to, just like this phone call, I need to actually go out and do it.
	I've put this phone call off for a very long time.
	It helped me a lot.
	I feel better, but I don't think, of course, one phone call is going to resolve my problems, but I do feel that I've made at least one step in the right direction now.
	Yeah, of course, you might want to listen to this again, and it's a moment to get everything that's going back and forth.
	I really appreciate you.
	To me, it's very tough, very strong, and I hope you haven't smoked too much during the conversation.
	No, it was awesome.
	Thanks again, and thanks for all that you're doing.
	I'm happy to be a donator.
	I just wish that we could do some more.
	Maybe in the future, we won't be able to.
	Oh, yeah.
	Take the money and spend it on therapy.
	Take the money and spend it on whatever aids are going to help you get off the cigarettes and then we'll split your social security because you'll live to be 80.
	Thanks, man.
	I'm sorry we're not going to get to the last question, but I've made a note of it and I will try to get to it in the podcast this week.
	I'm so sorry that we have to go.
	I really could chat with you people all day.
	It is, as always, an intense pleasure.
	Just wanted to let you know, as far as the documentary goes, I've hired a bunch more animators, and we have some, well, I would say just jaw-droppingly great musical talent on board, which I'm very excited about.
	And so, yeah, if you want to help out with the ever-escalating costs of the documentary, it would be most appreciated at freedomainradio.com forward slash donate.
	Most useful, most helpful.
	And other than that, everything's going well.
	I'm going to be in New York in April.
	And let me just actually get that.
	You can find it on Facebook.
	I think that's the place to go for this stuff.
	And Ian...
	Kiyofi is CIOFFI. You can find him on Facebook.
	He's organizing it.
	And the tickets, this is the kind of U2-style front-row seat cash that I can command, is that I'm going to be...
	Yeah, you can look at Anarchy in the New York City, NYC, 4-20...
	I'm sure that's a coincidence.
	4-20-2013.
	So 20th of April 2013, I will be in New York.
	It's only five bucks to get in.
	And I hope that until January.
	So I hope that you can do that.
	You can go to anarchynyc.eventbrite.com.
	And I look forward to seeing you there.
	And as usual, like if I do a speech, I'm going to hang out all day.
	And, you know, maybe we can all go for dinner and get caught up and all that.
	Love, love chatting with you people.
	It's a real honor and a privilege.
	So, if you like to do it, fantastic.
	I look forward to seeing you in New York City.
	And have yourselves a wonderful week, everyone.
	Thanks again, James.

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