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March 17, 2013 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:25:37

2347 Freedomain Radio Sunday Call in Show, 17 March 2013

Stefan Molyneux, host of Freedomain Radio, discusses anxiety graduating from University, bringing people together in the real world and dealing with children after a divorce.

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	Good morning, everybody.
	It's Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Main Radio, back from taking a bullet for the cause by going to give a speech in Belize.
	Belize, a wonderful island.
	One of the great things about tropical islands is you get completely delightful weather and bugs the size of biplanes, which is quite exciting if your daughter likes bugs.
	And the bugs seem to like her.
	And seaweed on the beach, which is, again, not the end of the world, but has a lovely...
	Pungent, can't quite enjoy my coffee smell first thing in the morning.
	Naturally, of course, you have semi-despotic political regimes and massively high taxes.
	It is a shame that everyone says, Iceland did a good job of dealing with the bankers in the financial crisis.
	Well, that's true because very few despots want to live in Iceland.
	It's a general theory that The warmer the climate gets, the more you are going to draw the parasite overlords of mankind to send themselves on the crushed spines of their citizenry.
	So I always have a mixed feeling when I go to warmer climates.
	Thank God, vitamin D, I could make it another day!
	But on the other hand, bugs the size of biplanes and dictators the size of the entire sky.
	But it was a great deal of fun and...
	If you like snorkeling, I did go on one snorkeling trip.
	I was in Belize about 11 years ago for scuba diving.
	It has unbelievably great reefs, second only to the Great Barrier Reef, and that was quite exciting.
	I saw my very first moray eel.
	Actually, I came out of the water with it still attached to my leg.
	No, not really.
	But that's what you always think.
	They're really one of the most evil-looking creatures in the known universe.
	So it was really, if you do get a chance to go out there, it's a long trip for us.
	It was three plane flights.
	And I had to get to the airport so early I didn't even bother going to bed.
	And so it's three plane flights and then a taxi ride.
	So it really was quite exciting.
	And it's actually...
	The last plane ride was the smallest plane I've flown in ever since I was doing my prospecting gold panning days where sometimes we'd fly into the areas we needed to, either in these tiny wind-up planes or in helicopters.
	So thanks, of course, to Bobby Casey for inviting me out.
	It was really great to meet everyone.
	I did a couple of interviews down there and mulling over a radio offer and things like that.
	So it was a good networking opportunity, and I met some fantastic people.
	And so thanks to Bobby Casey for setting that up.
	Upcoming, we have Liberty in the Pines.
	That's going to be on Saturday, March 23rd.
	I guess there's six days from now.
	2013, that's going to be at the Stephen F. Austin State University, where you can graduate in jumping up a high building to a funny creaking sound.
	And if you want to go, it's freedominradio.com forward slash speeches.aspx, but I'll be speaking there.
	It's Liberty in the Pines.
	They have a lot of Liberty speakers, but they've agreed to let me come and be a pine.
	So you'll find me just at the right of the parking lot when you go in.
	Anarchy in New York City, April 20th.
	That's a Saturday, April 20th, 2013.
	And you can get all these places out there.
	I'll be at Freedom Fest 2013, July 10th or 13th in Vegas, baby, Nevada.
	that And at Capitalism and Morality, which is going to be a very crackerjack debate.
	My debated partner is going to be Walter Block of the Doctoredom, and that's going to be July 27th, 2013.
	It's got to be a lot of great speakers there.
	I'll do a speech and a debate, which I'm entirely looking forward to.
	And I'll be at the Rethinking Everywhere conference, August 22nd to 26th in Texas.
	That's RethinkingEverything.net.
	Libertopia 2013, of course.
	I will be the emcee.
	They're August 30th to September 1st.
	It's Labor Day weekend.
	That's in San Diego, California.
	And you can go to libertopia.org to check that out.
	So I hope you'll have a chance to drop by.
	But most importantly, free shipping!
	Yes!
	As far as I understand it from Mike, if you order seven, count them, seven of my non-fiction books...
	You get a free ship.
	That's right, a free boat will come to your house and...
	Sorry, sorry, bike's telling me that's not correct.
	That's not correct.
	It's free shipping, not free ship.
	So you can get a handbook of human ownership, manual for new tax farmers on truth, the tyranny of illusion, universally preferable behavior, a rational proof of secular ethics, real-time relationships, the logic of love, everyday anarchy, practical anarchy, how not to achieve freedom.
	All for 70 bucks US. That includes free shipping anywhere in the world.
	So that is approximately 8 cents a book and then of course the ship as I mentioned is extra.
	I hope you will avail yourself of that.
	And if you'd like to avail yourself of that, you can go to FDRURL.com forward slash 7 for 70.
	S-E-V-E-N-F-O-R-7-0.
	7 for 70.
	And I hope you will give yourself a shot at getting that deal.
	Lulu has a pretty good deal on with passing the savings along to you.
	And I don't know if you're on mic, but I think that was it for our announcements.
	Was there anything else that you wanted to mention or say?
	Oh, yes!
	Brett, Brett Van Ott of schoolsucks.com.
	Oh, no.
	SchoolsucksProject.
	He's going to be guest hosting next week because, as I said, I will be planting my roots down deep in Texas as a pine.
	And so he will be hosting the show next week and I'm certainly looking forward over the summer to be consistently edged out by higher quality hosts than I can possibly provide.
	So look forward to that.
	Please drop by and say hi to Brett.
	He will be bringing the required expertise and charisma and machismo to the show that generally is sorely lacking.
	So I hope you'll come by and have a chat with Brett.
	You know, it sort of reminds me, I had a t-shirt.
	I didn't buy this t-shirt.
	I can't even remember where I got it.
	But when I was a kid, I ended up at 14 or 15.
	I had a t-shirt which read, Disco sucks.
	Disco sucks.
	And one day I was walking down the hallway and the vice principal, ooh, is there any petty dictator worse than a vice principal?
	Not charismatic enough to be a teacher, not politically connected enough to be a principal, just can't quite get it.
	It falls into the gap of truly horrendous bureaucracy.
	Anyway, he found my t-shirt offensive.
	He found my t-shirt offensive.
	School sucks.
	And I had to wear it inside out before I got to go home.
	Now, of course, what he didn't realize, and this is true of almost all these kinds of people, is that it's actually kind of a mark of honor in my junior high school to be forced to wear something inside out.
	I had another t-shirt that said, non-smokers do it without puffing.
	And...
	I had another t-shirt that said, here's to all the kisses I've snatched and vice versa.
	None of those, I mean, clearly they went way over the head of these people.
	None of those I ever had to turn inside out.
	But school sucks.
	Sorry, disco sucks was something that was too offensive to him.
	And given his hairdo and his bell-bottom pants, I can understand that perhaps he was dripping the light fantastic in a John Travolta style in a late-night pulsing disco head of orgiastic abandon.
	But anyway...
	It just sort of reminded me how strange that is, that of all the moral guidance you can possibly get from your public schools, turn this teacher with the word sucks inside out.
	It was really, I think, the only one that I ever got.
	So thanks for the moral instruction.
	It really, that was, of course, the basis of UPP, was which words need to be facing inwards to your nipples rather than outwards to the world in a government school.
	It's good to get that kind of moral instruction.
	I feel it really grounded me.
	Thank you so much for the indulgence of the introduction.
	Let's move on to the callers.
	All right.
	First up today, we have Matt.
	Good morning, Jeff.
	Good morning.
	Michael and James for all the background.
	And I really appreciate all the podcasts and all the hard work you've been putting into those over the years.
	They've really come in handy.
	And what I wanted to talk to you today about was I'm actually getting ready to graduate from college out here in Oregon from a state school.
	And over the past couple of years, I've been having a little bit of anxiety.
	I was wondering if we could maybe work through that.
	And it kind of goes back to that podcast you put out probably five months ago, the Why You're Depressed in College.
	That kind of really resonated with me.
	Sure, I'd be happy to.
	I'm wondering if we could talk through that.
	What are your prospects?
	Well, I'm graduating with two degrees in engineering.
	So in terms of jobs, I'm not really too worried.
	I have a couple things that are falling into place.
	But it's still kind of a...
	Sorry, you just cut out for a sec there.
	You said it's still...
	Yeah, it's still kind of a big thought, and it's something that's, you know, what do I do next?
	And, you know, some of the things you said, like, you know, the society we're in is kind of unsustainable, really kind of, I mean, I've known that for a while, and I mean, I guess it's kind of hard, you know, being more of the libertarian, anarcho-capitalist, and just seeing where we're going, it kind of feels like we're on a big slide.
	And, you know, even though there are those jobs prospects, it's like, you know, do I just get to the lifeboat?
	And what would the lifeboat be?
	So, you know, being able to find a job, because I'm watching a lot of my friends, you know, struggling with that, and it's, you know, it's been kind of difficult for them, so.
	Right.
	Now, do you like engineering?
	I really do, and I'm doing industrial engineering, and what's really neat about it is the making of things.
	One of the things that I really like about it is it's not just applicable for making things, it's really applicable any time you do a process or a system.
	So, I mean, even as, you know, manufacturing leaves or comes back, it's in a good position, but I really do enjoy the work.
	Okay, good.
	Good.
	And now I'm going to assume, obviously, since you listen to this show, and probably because you have an ethical foundation that precedes that, that you would probably, if possible, steer somewhat clear of the old military-industrial complex?
	I'm sorry there, did I get disconnected?
	You're back.
	Yeah, I'm going to assume that you're going to stay away from the military-industrial complex?
	Yes, and that's actually one of those challenges.
	I mean, I feel like that's where a lot of the job opportunities are, and that's one thing I just will stay away from because I know I won't be able to sleep at night.
	Yeah, no, I mean, that's important.
	That's really important.
	That would be a pretty ill thing to apply your obvious intelligence and talents to.
	We like to assemble minds, not disassemble bodies.
	I think that's the...
	Reassemble minds rather than disassemble bodies.
	I think that's a better use of your talents.
	But I'm sure you can find something that is...
	I mean, even if it's in the public sector, but it's more to do with building bridges or whatever...
	We can assume that there's going to be some need for bridges as long as it's not a bridge to nowhere.
	So you can find that, but is your concern that you're going to make some decent coin and, as you know, the top 10% of earners in America pay almost three quarters of the...
	Of the federal income taxes and like the bottom 50% pay like 3% of the taxes.
	So they're going to crank that up, right?
	They're going to go after people who've got more net wealth.
	So, you know, if you start to – as you start to accumulate some money, I think you want to look at some of the perfectly legal ways that there are to move assets around.
	Like all the stuff that Romney did and all that.
	You can move assets offshore.
	You can put them in trusts.
	You can hold them in other – you can invest them in real estate and so on.
	Lots of things that – out of country.
	Lots of things that you can do to legally attempt to minimize your taxes.
	if you're going to start to make some decent money, then there are things that you can do.
	Now the other thing of course is that if you start to make some decent money then you can do lots of cool things like look for second passports or move overseas or those kinds of things, right?
	Things which are a lot easier to do if you have more money.
	So the pursuit of wealth is not I mean it gives you options.
	Last year at Libertopia, Doug Casey gave a great speech where, like Marx's wife complaining that Karl Marx should know a little bit more about making capital rather than just writing about it.
	He gave a great speech and in it he was talking about, you know, if you're a libertarian and you're into the free market, you know, find a service that you can offer people for money and make some money.
	You know, there's a lot of freedom in having some assets.
	And a lot of libertarians talk a lot more about the free market than go there.
	So, of course, you can work for a little while, understand the industry and then become an entrepreneur if you want.
	There was a member on the message board some years back, Rodzilla, who did just that.
	He started his own company.
	I think it was in engineering and design.
	And he's had quite an exciting ride of it.
	So you can do all that kind of stuff.
	And there's lots of resources here to get that done.
	One listener has just written a book on entrepreneurship.
	There's been entrepreneurship events.
	Conference calls, and if there's more interest, we can start them up again.
	I have some experience in that, as to a lot of other listeners.
	So you can use this community as a resource to spring out and be an entrepreneur, and that gives you some significant opportunities for independence and choice.
	I mean, choice.
	If you end up not making a lot of money, your choices are certainly going to be less.
	I mean, you'll obviously have other benefits.
	I mean, it's sort of a zero-sum game.
	If you work to make a lot of money, then you gain some choices, but you lose other choices, like putting your feet up for a while.
	But I think it's better to try and accumulate some capital and get the choices that are available from there.
	Yeah, I think that's one of the things that's so important is just having enough so you can make those decisions so you're not in the place where, you know, and that's one thing I really am grateful for is my parents really, really, I mean, basically what I learned from them that's really important was I avoid debt like the plague.
	So that was a valuable lesson.
	And so that's really, it's a really good position to be in, especially right now.
	So, I mean, I'm not too worried about that.
	Yeah, sorry.
	I have some mixed feelings about debt.
	Debt, I mean, if you think there's going to be inflation, then debt has some value.
	Yep, absolutely.
	Because, obviously, if you can pay off your future debt with devalued dollars, assuming that your income is going to rise in proportion to the inflation, at least to some degree.
	So, I mean, you want to get as fixed an interest rate as possible, and then...
	You can pay off your debt with the devalued dollars in the future.
	So I don't think, I mean, I think credit card debt is pretty toxic, but I wouldn't necessarily assume that debt is a plague.
	The timing, of course, is impossible to understand, right?
	I mean, lots of people were talking recently about, well, over the last couple of years, about how gold is going to go through the roof.
	And it's sunk because people are pulling their money out of gold and putting it into the stock market because the stock market is rising as a result of the Fed printing money and so on.
	And the reason the stock market is rising is that Most major companies in the U.S. are facing regime uncertainty.
	They don't know what crazy regulation or law or tax rule or lord knows what confiscatory measure is going to come down the pipe.
	So they're afraid to expand.
	And so given that there's lots of money floating around the Fed has made and businesses aren't using it to invest, well...
	It's going to be – it's going into the stock market, which is going to create a bubble, which is going to crash, and then people will go to gold.
	But who knows when that's going to happen?
	There are so many variables, it's impossible to predict.
	But that having been said, I mean, if you can – the government is simply not in a position where it can allow interest rates to rise.
	I mean, it simply can't.
	This is all my opinion.
	I don't have any expertise.
	A point or two rise in interest rates is just going to break the budget completely.
	The government can't allow the interest rates to rise.
	My guess is they're going to print some money and keep the interest rates forced down.
	That's going to make things very tricky.
	For that, you probably do want in a situation where you've got some assets which you can pay off with devalued dollars.
	You do want to have a situation Well, you have the value in the marketplace where you can go and ask for a raise commensurate with inflation.
	I mean, if you're a minimum wage, then you simply don't have enough value to the employer that he's going to cover inflation for you.
	Once you raise your skills in the marketplace, what you're basically doing is you're raising your negotiation value with your employer.
	So I think that's not a bad...
	It's never in a bad position to be in a stronger negotiating position.
	That's never a bad thing to go for.
	Sorry, end of rant.
	I think I like to avoid debt too, but it's not necessarily the end of the world in the coming years.
	And I think that's one of the challenges that I've been struggling to kind of get over.
	And just because the way my family treated debt, that, you know...
	I just have this adversity to it.
	And it's like, you know, I'm working on getting more comfortable with the idea of it, but it's just with all the, you know, the fiat, you know, all the strangeness in our monetary system.
	It's like, it's not the one I would choose to use.
	That's for certain.
	Oh, yeah, absolutely.
	I'm also...
	Sorry, go ahead, please.
	I also already have another passport, just because I actually came down from Canada.
	I'm a dual citizen living here in the United States.
	Whether it's jumping from the fire pan to the fireplace, it is another option.
	Yeah, Canada, I mean, I've gone over this before, but in many ways, Canada is more economically free than the U.S. And, you know, I think with Canada, you just have to have, I mean, you have to have enough money that you can pursue an alternate healthcare system if this one lets you down, because it can be pretty brutal in Canada to try and get healthcare.
	I mean, it's free, therefore it's heavily rationed, and The resources tend to slide towards the people with the least responsibility.
	The people with chronic healthcare conditions tend to eat up those.
	Anybody else who's relatively healthy who needs healthcare once in a while tends to just sit in the back of the line at all times.
	It's a big problem.
	I had a friend when I was younger, just by the by.
	I had a friend when I was younger and she injured herself on a horse.
	Well, I guess the horse went up against the wall and injured her.
	She had back pain and she went for her scan.
	I can't remember if it was an MRI or CAT scan, but she went for a scan.
	And they said, oh, is it your back or your hips?
	And she said, well, I don't know.
	I mean, I'm not a doctor.
	Just do both.
	And they said, no, no, you have to choose one because you're already booked for one.
	So choose one.
	And then if it's not right, we'll try and book you in another six months to get your second one.
	And that's the kind of stuff you face in Canada.
	It's horrible.
	That's kind of unthinkable.
	That's like taking your car into the shop saying it's not running and picking whether to replace the transmission or the engine.
	Well, can I tell you that it's not even remotely like that?
	And I'm sorry to push back on your metaphor because the car is an inanimate object.
	This is your body.
	This is your health.
	Exactly.
	probably never feel more helpless yeah you never feel more helpless than trying to deal with the canadian health care system uh if they don't consider it urgent or they just don't have enough time and the people in bc are waiting two years for cataract surgery and then you book it and you know gets postponed oh we're gonna have an anesthetologist an anesthetologist so we're gonna have to push it or you know it's just um in the most important area which is your health i I mean, if you haven't got your health, you haven't got much of anything, you're just completely helpless.
	And it's not a lot of fun.
	As I was talking to with Bill Gairdner, he said, you know, you can wait six months for a scan in Canada unless you're a dog, in which case you get it the same day because veterinary services are not in the public sector.
	So anyway, I want to sort of get into it.
	I mean, I think Canada is a pretty great place.
	I mean, it's one of the reasons I'm kind of a fetishist about trying to take care of my health, you know, eating well.
	I'm keeping my weight around 190 and some change.
	I exercise four hours a week at least and walk all the time.
	Even in the Sunday show, I'm walking around.
	I don't like to sit.
	I'm trying to stay healthy as best I can because the idea of getting caught up in this system is pretty alarming to say the least.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Yeah, I mean, the only one who's going to be ultimately responsible for your own health is, you know, yourself.
	Well, no, sorry to interrupt, but because you're young, right, there's stuff that, I mean, you are somewhat responsible for your own health, but there's some stuff that you can't figure out, right?
	I mean, there's some stuff that's just going to happen to you.
	Yes.
	But in terms of, I guess I was going in the wrong tangent with that.
	I meant specifically in terms of the preventative.
	Realistically, that's in your own hands to go in, get the preventative treatments, live in a way that is going to encourage good health, that sort of stuff.
	Yes.
	And so there's some things you could do, but of course, if you just happen to trip down the stairs or whatever, then you're in big trouble.
	Yeah.
	Anyway, I want to do the healthcare thing.
	I just want to make sure that we stay with your issues.
	So yeah, congrats on getting and enjoying a field where there's still some demand.
	I know that engineering in the US is a little bit tight, but I'm sure you can get something there, particularly with a double degree.
	So if you go in there with the idea that you're buying yourself choice by sacrificing time, and I mean that's what you do when you're younger.
	That's what you do when you're younger, is you sacrifice time to buy choices.
	I mean, the long arc of life is something I've thought about from teenage years and onwards.
	The long arc of life is really, really important.
	And I remember I even wrote an entire play about this called Teeth.
	And...
	About a guy who, I mean, it was about two men, right?
	One of whom sacrifices his youth to make money, and the other one, you know, does all this cool, fun stuff, which I really envied when I was younger.
	Oh, God, I still wanted to do it.
	I mean, just when I was in Belize, I see all these guys in their 20s and sort of backpacking around.
	You know, they've got tats on their pecs and carrying surfboards and, you know, strolling around.
	I mean, my God.
	And I knew people who did this.
	And I was literally green with envy.
	I wanted to go backpacking for a year or two around the world.
	I thought that would have been just fantastic.
	I couldn't.
	I mean, I had no familial support.
	You know, no parents around.
	I had to I had to work.
	I had to, you know, sort of getting up and going to some pretty crappy jobs.
	At one point, I was in high school.
	I was working three jobs.
	Three jobs!
	And I had to do that through college sometimes as well, although when I got my skill set up, I could work enough in the summers to make it a good way through college.
	But I really wanted to do that stuff.
	I mean, who wouldn't?
	My God, when you're 21 or 22 or 23 or 25, I mean, to be picking grapes in Queensland is the thing to be doing, rather than, you know, what I was doing, which was, I guess, getting up and going to temp jobs in a recession while saving up money to do my master's.
	So...
	So that wasn't fun, of course, right?
	I mean, you're slugging your way along a slushy sidewalk to get to a bus at 7.30 in the morning, and you're thinking of all the people who are doing cave tubing in Belize, and it's like, it burns a little, you know?
	But I'm very glad that I made all the choices because then I have had some of the options to do that.
	And so it's all the thing that you have to deal with in life.
	It's the stuff that's fun now ain't a whole lot of fun later.
	And the stuff that's fun later ain't a whole lot of fun now.
	And I don't have any particularly great answers.
	There's no magic...
	Solution.
	If you focus on what you want out of the second half of your life, then you'll make choices in the first half of your life.
	And if you focus what you want in the first half of your life, then the second half of your life is going to be a challenge.
	And these are not hard and fast rules.
	I mean, I guess you can fart around your whole 20s and then win a lottery when you're 30.
	But that's not really a very practical plan.
	So if you want to buy some freedom, you know, in your 30s and 40s, then...
	You have to.
	I mean, the only thing you can plan for is to sacrifice these things.
	I mean, I can't believe it.
	I know one person who escaped this equation.
	One person I knew when I was young.
	Who farted around a lot and, you know, it was pretty much you could see the fiscal shadow of his 40 plus years on the wall growing as he approached it.
	And then it turned out that a distant relative died, left him a lot of money.
	He'd never even heard of her once and that was it.
	And he was just like, are you kidding me?
	You're going to go pick grapes in Queensland and then somebody died and left you a lot of money.
	But of course, the reality is that that didn't make him any particularly bit happier either.
	And winning the lottery, of course, usually makes people sadder.
	They usually end up divorced and alone.
	Money is like electricity.
	You have to be able to handle the charge.
	If you don't, you just get shocked.
	So, I mean, that would be my suggestions, which is because, like, make the argument that because the economy is unstable, because the existing system is unsustainable, then you want as much choice as you possibly can, and part of that choice is having money.
	Yeah, because I mean, I really, I just, I kind of just want to be comfortable.
	You know, I don't really, like, want to be, you know, exceptionally wealthy.
	I mean, I'm looking into, you know, little tiny houses to live in and that sort of stuff.
	And I think one of the things that I'd like to do eventually...
	I was on a team down here.
	We built a car.
	It's pretty neat.
	We drove it 1,600 miles.
	It's powered on solar power.
	We took it to two races.
	And competed and did really well.
	And it was literally run out of a garage.
	And I just had the opportunity to work with these tools.
	And it wasn't really affiliated with the university.
	And I learned so much during that time and that opportunity.
	And that's the type of thing I'd like to give back.
	Can I just tell you how immature I am?
	Sure.
	This is how immature I remain because, you know, I did work a lot during my youth and didn't obviously do a lot of emotional growth.
	You said me and a group worked together to create this car.
	You said I worked with these tools.
	Now, for me, of course, I worked with these tools.
	They were complete assholes, but at least the car worked.
	Sorry, I just thought I would intrude with ridiculous immaturity and tell you that it's a great story.
	And I can't wait until you make a hat like that.
	But they're just struggling.
	It's kind of funny, so sorry about that.
	Yeah, and you can have that kind of...
	You can have a lot of fun at work.
	I mean, once you get out of...
	Even when I was a waiter, When I was a waiter for a couple of years in my teens, I think I did it one summer when I was in my early 20s, I mean, it's kind of fun, you know?
	I mean, when the restaurant's slow, you can put on some fun music and you can chat with people and I had some good conversations.
	I worked at a downtown seafood restaurant and so I had some pretty swanky people come in and I remember having – because I was, you know, still – I'm an objectivist, very politically curious and active and so on.
	And so I would have political conversations sometimes with the guests if the restaurant was slow.
	And so you can even have fun with that stuff.
	I did office cleaning for a while in my mid-teens.
	And, I mean, it can be kind of you put some nice music on and you can just enjoy doing the work.
	So, you can get some fun stuff out of almost any job.
	Of course, as you go up, the fun increases as does the stress and risk and all that kind of stuff.
	So, just to graduate yourself up to that.
	But, so, I mean, you can have a lot of fun doing what you're doing, particularly, I mean, of engineering.
	The satisfaction of actually building something tangible is hard to do.
	To imagine, right?
	I mean, I needed a new PC and I was thinking, oh, I'll order a kit.
	And I actually would like to build a PC kit.
	I think that would be fun.
	It's just that, you know, with a four-year-old around, it can be a little bit of a challenge to get some of the detailed longer-term work done.
	But, I mean, I've built almost nothing in my life that's not digital, you know?
	I have a huge cathedral of sound.
	It's called a podcast archive.
	But, you know, what is that?
	It's bits and burps on a platter.
	And so, to actually build something tangible that you can look at is really great.
	It's really, really important.
	There's, oh gosh, please somebody help me.
	There's a movie.
	A movie about finances with Kevin Spacey.
	I'm going to find it, because it's not that great a film.
	Kevin Spacey and...
	What's her...
	What's her blobby, the woman who was married to Ashton Kutcher, who is a sort of...
	No, just type it in like that.
	You'll probably get something.
	Kevin Spacey, finance film.
	It was written by a guy whose father was actually on Wall Street, For a long time.
	And Margin Call.
	Yeah, Margin Call is the review.
	It's the film, sorry.
	And the film is not bad.
	It's worth watching.
	I just like films with lots of good dialogue.
	So I thought it was interesting.
	And there's Stanley Tucci, who is a completely fantastic actor, who just does the most amazing work.
	Stanley Tucci has a great speech in it.
	Where he shows up, he was an engineer and then he got into finance, because of course engineers are good at math and the finance stuff needs a lot of math.
	And he basically says, I'll just give you a very brief synopsis, but he basically says, you know, I built this bridge which saved all these people time from their commute.
	And he went through all the people who'd used the bridge since he built it, and all of the thousands and thousands of person years that he had saved mankind by building this bridge.
	You know, that he had basically added X amount of...
	Months to people's lifespan who used the bridge and added I mean he went through this amazing speech and That to me was a very important you've built something that's tangible you've built something that's real you've built something that has an effect on people's lives and My yearning I don't want to make this about me,
	but I think this echoes where you might be having some challenges and My yearning to build something real, to build something that is true, to build something that is valuable, is important to me.
	And this is where art was just not quite enough for me.
	So, one of the greatest artistic performances on camera is Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire.
	And, I mean, it's an incredible film.
	With Karl Malden, and I can't remember who played Blanche, but she was very good as well.
	The Gone with the Wind lady.
	And so, but people watched that film.
	Now, of course, I was a student of acting for some years when I was younger, and if you watch that film as a student of acting, you're like, whoa, that's incredible what Brando is doing.
	It's also incredible how Brando's belly changed over the years, but that's a topic for another time.
	And so people watch this and they say, it's a beautiful play, it's a terrifying play, it's an exciting play, and it's masterfully acted.
	And then what?
	You know, it's the and then what that is the challenge, right?
	And so if you're going to actually build things for real, then you get Stanley Tucci's speech from Margin Call, which is, I saved thousands of years of people's lives by building this bridge.
	And he compares that to the financial whack jobbery thing jiggery that he does.
	And of course, it comes off kind of short and hollow to be pushing numbers around.
	And so I wanted to put ideas out into the world.
	I've yearned to do that since I was young.
	But I always wanted to make sure that the ideas were not, well, that's interesting.
	Now I'm going to go back to my life.
	Well, that was a great movie.
	Now I'm going to go back to my life.
	Ooh, Marlon Brando, he's a really great actor.
	And now I'm going to go back to my life.
	Like it's this little bubble that just passes through you.
	You know, artistic embolism.
	Yeah, you wanted to see that the effect, you know, it moved something, you know.
	Or if you have the bridge, you see all the traffic going over it.
	And it'd be kind of like, you know, you put out the idea and people change.
	You know, people start doing things differently, that sort of thing, right?
	Yes, I don't want it to be a little isolated bubble, as a lot of libertarian theory is, right?
	Oh, I've learned about the Fed, and now I'm going to go back to my life.
	Oh, I've learned about fiat currency.
	Oh, I've learned about the economics of war.
	Oh, I've learned about the military welfare state.
	Oh, I've learned about foreign policy.
	Oh, I've learned about how the CIA overthrew all these countries in the past.
	Oh, I've learned this.
	Oh, I've learned this.
	And now I'm going back to my life.
	You know, like...
	Yeah, yeah.
	Like, abstractions are just this kind of sexy, slutty mistress you keep in a Super 8 down the road.
	You know, I'm gonna go bang these concepts senseless, and then I'm going back to my wife, as if nothing happened.
	And in fact, I have to go back if nothing happened, because otherwise I'm gonna be found out, right?
	I don't want that.
	And so I always wanted it to be, now that I have these ideas, I cannot go back to the life I had before.
	Now, you could do that if everything's in isolation, but you can't do that if the ethics are applicable to your life, which is what I've always focused on since the very beginning, is I want people to say, oh, shit, I've crossed this bridge, and it's gone behind me, and the only way on is forward, because I can't go back to my life.
	It's like the guy in The Matrix, the bald guy in The Matrix, who says, I'll go back into The Matrix, but you have to erase this choice that I chose to go back into The Matrix.
	And that's not possible, of course, in life.
	I mean, you can't go back, right?
	That's the old argument.
	The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original shape.
	And that's actually not true, fundamentally.
	I mean, there's lots of new ideas that I've heard about.
	You know, like, oh, wow, relativity.
	I remember first reading about relativity.
	Whoa, that's really trippy.
	That's really cool.
	You know, Brian May should write a song about that.
	And then I went back to my life.
	And really, what did relativity do?
	Well, for some people, it gave them the argument or the idea that relativism was somehow the shit, right?
	That you could, oh, well, there's a general theory of relativity.
	That means everything is relative.
	That means that there's no moral standards.
	That means, that means, that means.
	Oh, man, people would just grab it anyway.
	Justify their nonsense.
	A mind once stretched by a new idea that can be achieved, that can be implemented, never really gains its original shape.
	But lots of great ideas that we hear or read about that don't really change our behavior in any particular way.
	My experience of Of building a bridge that changes people's directions, that changes people's lives.
	And of course, it's not me who's doing that.
	It's the people who do it.
	But the same thing is true.
	Just because there's a bridge there doesn't mean that people don't like the scenic route.
	Just because philosophy's there doesn't mean that people will...
	They may hear it and react against it.
	They may hear it and ignore it.
	But...
	Nonetheless, the bridge is there and lots of people are changing their course based on the existence of the bridge.
	And so if you can build something tangible, if you can build something that decays and needs to be replaced at some point, that changes people's behavior, more than just the immediate consumption of it.
	I mean, if you build a bridge, people will change where they live.
	You change real estate values.
	You change builder.
	Oh, there's a bridge here that cuts 45 minutes out of the commute so we can build all these places here.
	I mean, that's really something.
	And for me, the footprint of the mind on the world is the meaning of the mind in the world.
	Do you create something that has an impact?
	Are you an asteroid that misses the moon of human action, or are you an asteroid that leaves a crater?
	Not the best metaphor, but I mean, you want to have an impact on people.
	And so if you can find a career where you will have an effect on people's behavior, where you won't just change the book they're reading, but you change the words that they say.
	You change the choices that they make.
	You create choices.
	Where choices didn't exist before.
	You know, the advancements in medicine create lots of bad doctors, right?
	Because everyone's in a state of nature before some advancement in medicine.
	Once there's an advancement in medicine, some doctors will become educated about it and apply it, and some doctors won't.
	So you're actually creating bad doctors by advancing the science of medicine.
	In the same way, the advancements in philosophy actually create evil.
	I mean, this is one of the effects that philosophy has, is that when you put out the argument, say, I mean, so people immersed in a world where spanking is okay, and, you know, the Bible says so, and I was spanked, and look how I turned out, I'm fine, and blah, blah, blah.
	They're kind of in a state of nature.
	They've never been exposed to the information.
	Once they get exposed to the information, it creates evil by people who reject the information that they've been exposed to, which is why people get so upset at philosophy and philosophers because we actually are waving a black wand across the human landscape and creating light and dark where before there was only gray.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Go ahead.
	So I look at it like, you know, whether or not I'm creating something physical, all these things, you know, whether it's your books or it's the bridge, all these things are just tools.
	And it's exactly, I think you've made, you know, the metaphor before of the, you know, the doctor in the, you know, the dark ages with the bucket of leeches, right?
	And if, you know, if he's not prescribing antibiotics and he's reaching the bucket of leeches, he's not a bad doctor.
	He just, he doesn't know any better yet.
	Right.
	Right, right.
	And so the expansion of knowledge is the creation of choice.
	The expansion of moral knowledge is the creation of good and evil.
	Because we cannot be held responsible for knowledge we do not possess.
	We can be held responsible for knowledge we have avoided.
	But certainly in certain parts of the world, the anti-spanking thing is not clearly enough understood.
	I mean, libertarians are the most responsible for spanking their children.
	And this is why I focused on trying to get this message across to the libertarian community.
	I mean, you have to change your behavior because our conscience is entirely UPB-based.
	I mean, our conscience runs on universally preferable behavior.
	UPB is just another word for the conscience.
	And man, if you violate principles that you proclaim and publish to the world in your own family, if you decry an evil that you enact in the silence, darkness, power, and control of your own abode, well...
	You will become seriously toxic to the world and yourself.
	Bad behavior is a It's a toxic substance.
	is a toxic choice.
	It's worse than smoking, worse than asbestos.
	I mean, evil behavior is toxicity and we all want to keep our friends away from toxic substances.
	And we even want to keep some of our enemies away from toxic substances.
	And so it is that approach.
	And of course, the last thing I'll say is that if you go into a business, you will of course go in with a strong set of ethics, which will be challenging, but I think ultimately productive.
	And if you ever become an entrepreneur, then you will have a relationship with authority as a resource rather than authority as a bullying that will be enormously beneficial and spread freedom to the people who come and work for you.
	So there's lots of great things that you can do in the world in terms of spreading freedom, being free, achieving the choices that money can bring and not just the choices that money can bring but the choices that investments in human capital can bring.
	So you've got a lot of book learning, which is great, and then you're going to go out there and have real-world learning, which you can't have without the book learning in some areas.
	And through that process, you will bring a lot of freedom to people just being who you are.
	I mean, you don't always have trumpet philosophy.
	You can just be free and embody philosophy.
	And in many ways, that's more effective at spreading it than lecturing people.
	Certainly, it's more effective than spreading it While lecturing people to do the opposite of your actions, right?
	Yeah, exactly.
	You work on the actions first and the theory.
	You work on the theory to produce the actions, but when it's in the world, you work on the actions and then you reinforce the argument of your actions through the It was actually because I really hadn't thought of it that way as,
	you know, me being a resource to actually spread freedom.
	I mean, it always felt like, you know, I'm kind of going out there.
	I'm just this, you know, this person.
	I don't know, trying to live free in this unfree world, and then I really want to spread it.
	It's kind of a one-way street.
	You get down here, and then you're like, well, now I'm in this cul-de-sac, and what's the way forward?
	So that gave me some things to think about.
	Fantastic.
	Well, have a listen, and of course, if there's more, I'm sure you'll have more questions, please feel free.
	You can set up a listener conversation with operations at freedomainradio.com or call back into a Sunday show, but I'm glad this has been helpful.
	Alright, well thanks so much, Steph.
	Keep posted and congratulations, and I guess we'll move on to the next caller, please.
	Next up we have Justin.
	Hi, Steph.
	Hello, hello.
	I'm all ears.
	Cool.
	I just wanted to call in today to have you expound on a topic you touched on about a month ago in an interview where you mentioned the importance of libertarians, ANCAPS, people into philosophy, the importance of them having real relationships with real people in real life.
	And I thought it was interesting because a lot of us are You know, kind of on the fringe with our thinking and a lot of us are really good at being juiced into the internet and social networks and Facebook and chatting and stuff like that online and a lot of people choose to live their lives online.
	And so I wanted you to talk about why it's important for people to have relationships in the real world with real people.
	Why do you think that is?
	That's an interesting question.
	First of all, I'd like to thank you for asking me to expand on something.
	I don't often get that request and a little shiver of semi-erotic delight shivers down my spine at the very words that you're saying, so thank you very much for that.
	Well, we, of course, eye contact is important.
	You can't really get that very well.
	You can, I guess, with you Skyping with someone or whatever, but it's not quite the same as being In the room with someone.
	I think we hunger for contact.
	I think we thirst for contact.
	I mean, we know that as babies we need it or we die.
	It's called a failure to thrive, right?
	I mean, there's kids in these orphanages all over the world who are fed and clothed and kept warm enough and they just die in their cribs because they're not touched.
	So we do have a A yearning for physical contact.
	And so I think that's something which you can to some degree get.
	You can get, I mean, intellectual contact and so on, but physical contact, eye contact, shared breath contact.
	I don't just mean sexual, I mean, but, you know, just in the same room kind of stuff is nice.
	But that's kind of how we're designed.
	And there's nothing wrong, of course.
	I mean, I do a lot of internet stuff, but there's nothing wrong with it.
	But I think we're...
	Designed for face-to-face stuff.
	The other thing that's the case, I'm going to assume that you're a young man pre-family.
	Is that fair to say?
	Yes, very close.
	Very close to being pre-family.
	Very close to being pre-family?
	Oh, sorry.
	What I mean is you haven't had kids of your own yet, right?
	Right.
	Okay.
	So when you have kids, what happens is there's this giant...
	The birth is the supernova, and then the supernova collapses into the black hole, which draws every resource in the known universe into itself.
	I mean, you need a lot of help, you need a lot of support, you need a community when you are raising kids.
	And that's something which really can't be overestimated.
	You know that old crap, what Hillary Clinton said, it takes a village to satisfy my husband?
	No, wait, that wasn't it.
	It takes a village to raise a child.
	Well, that's kind of true, right?
	I mean, the way that we were, again, designed was...
	Or the way that we evolved was to have approximately four to five adults around for every child.
	Because children need a huge amount of resources.
	The average toddler needs the parent's significant attention every three minutes.
	At best.
	And that is something that you can do without...
	The community prior to kids, but after kids, it's kind of necessary.
	You could do it without, right?
	But it's pretty important to have that kind of community.
	So I think that, and of course, after you have kids, I mean, you want to try and build this stuff up before you have kids, because after you have kids, you're not going to have time to go around building bridges and all that kind of stuff.
	And also, when you're in a state of significant need, it's kind of hard to build relationships.
	Because you're already in that state of significant need.
	And so, you know, people can sense it.
	It's like, oh, so you just want to be friends with me because you need someone to help take care of your kids or whatever.
	That doesn't really work out so well.
	And so, I think it is important if you want to have kids in particular, I mean, build your community beforehand.
	And you can always...
	I guess alter your community as time goes forward if things aren't working out or whatever, but I think that would be my major argument.
	Well, I mean, I think libertarians and freethinkers get the rap that we are just a bunch of nerds, geeks, or hermits living in our mother's basement, and we get that rap for, I think, good reason in some respect because a lot of people do.
	They live in their mom's basement and play, I don't know, World of Warcraft and read Murray Rothbard in their basement and they don't really come out because they have this online world.
	You mentioned the children thing, and that's important, but I also think we need to make a case that the guy playing Dungeons and Dragons in his basement should come out into the real world and should meet people who are also into Stefan Molyneux and also into Murray Rothbard.
	I think there's a case to be made for that.
	And the last time you spoke about this, I think you were trying to make that case that, yeah, you know, technology has advanced so far that we could live and interact entirely online.
	We could probably order groceries into our mom's basement online and just interact in chat rooms and stuff and play World of Warcraft.
	But maybe that's not...
	The optimal play.
	Maybe there's a better way to do things and meeting people in real life and having real relationships and having a community that's physical is better than just being entirely a bunch of ones and zeros your whole life.
	So I completely and utterly agree with that and I wanted to reinforce that point and say that you mentioned Going to New Hampshire and working with the Free State Project and that's a big community that has grown from People wanting to live around each other in the physical sense and be with each other in the physical sense.
	There's conferences that go on all the time all around the country where people get together and finally meet in real life.
	I've met you at Libertopia and that was a thrill and I love going to conferences for the simple fact of meeting people in real life.
	And so long story short, do you see value in the guy Getting out of his basement and going to meet people in real life.
	Oh, yeah.
	I mean, I certainly do think so.
	I think that stereotype of reading Rothbard and playing World of Warcraft, it may be somewhat accurate.
	It's certainly better than playing World of Rothbard, which was not a great game.
	I remember seeing a proposal for it in the business world.
	Now, World of Rothbard, of course, can't have a command prompt because he's an anarchist.
	Can't have a central server because...
	That would be authority.
	So basically, it's just you have a computer, do with it what you want, and that's called World of Rothbard.
	A lot of people weren't willing to pay for something they already had, so I just wanted to mention that.
	So it did not go as far as, of course, the investors and the developers were hoping.
	But I think there is that.
	I mean, video games are a challenge.
	They are so absorbing.
	Do you know that the average young...
	Boy, young man, spends almost as much time playing video games as he does in school.
	That's really quite astounding.
	There are five million gamers in the US who rack up more than 40 hours a week.
	And it's screen time, right?
	I mean, one of the problems with black culture in the US is this TV addiction, right?
	I mean, the average Oriental watches about 21 hours of TV a week.
	And the average black person watches 47 hours of TV a week.
	But that's significant.
	I mean, that's important.
	So screen time is a challenge.
	I mean, even 20...
	I was just...
	Because when I read this the other day, I was like, well, how much do I watch a week?
	Well, I don't really watch any during the day because I'm parenting.
	I usually will watch maybe one 20-minute show or if I'm not too tired, a 40-minute show before I go to bed.
	And so that's...
	Maybe three or four, five hours a week.
	And I don't play video games that much anymore.
	I'd like to, but I just don't really have the time.
	At this point, because time with my wife, given that we're parents, is tougher.
	I mean, it's much more fun to chat with her than it is to play a game, although the games are a great deal of fun.
	Everything that you're learning in video games is stuff you're not learning In the real world.
	And video games, of course, give you a sense of achievement without effort.
	I mean, fundamentally without effort.
	And certainly without emotional risk.
	Right?
	So to play a lot of World of Warcraft, you can achieve things, you know, like Pac-Man eating the little blips on the screen.
	But there's no emotional risk.
	And so on.
	And I think the problem with video games is it does not help people learn how to handle emotional risk.
	There's also very little risk of rejection.
	Maybe your clan could drop you, but that's usually not the case.
	There's a comparison that can be made about all the things that you could be doing if you weren't playing video games.
	Six months worth of video games, you could actually become a really good guitarist.
	Maybe you do or maybe you don't.
	You learn a foreign language, at least some significant basics for it and so on.
	It's a mixed bag because I got into computers.
	I learned how to program computers because I wanted to learn how to make games, you know, back in the days of the Atari 400 and the PET computer and even the TRS-80, the Trash 80, as it was called.
	And so I learned how to program computers because I wanted to make games.
	And so it's a tough call.
	I think if you want to go into, do a lot of gaming, then you really need to go into gaming and you need to make sure you're not just gaming but you're learning how to level design.
	You know, some people get jobs at computer companies.
	They're gaming companies because they make really great levels and release them and people know about that and all that sort of stuff.
	So there are things that you can do.
	I mean, fortunately, games now, you can't learn how to program them because it takes, you know, hundreds of man-years to make a computer game now, so you can't really learn to...
	I mean, I guess you can do some iOS games or whatever, but...
	So, I mean, you can develop some good technical skills if you're interested in learning how computers work rather than just consuming them.
	But I do think it's important every time you sit down in front of a computer...
	It's important to look at all of the array of things that you could be doing.
	I had a friend when I was younger who would go to his mom's every day for dinner.
	I lived in the same building and he was complaining about not being able to meet any women.
	And as I pointed out, there are women in lots of places but there aren't any at your mom's house.
	So every time you go over there for a free meal, nothing comes for free, right?
	You're not going someplace where you might meet a woman.
	I met a woman in a restaurant.
	We dated for some time.
	I found her to be very charming.
	She was eating alone.
	I was eating alone.
	I said, hey, let's eat alone together.
	Why not?
	And we did.
	So there's things that he could have been doing, but he's not developing those skills because he's going over to his mom's place.
	And so everything that we do has options that are killed.
	Everywhere we go is everywhere else we're not going.
	Everything we're learning is everything else we're not learning.
	Yeah, economists would call that opportunity cost.
	Yes, but I think that we're not particularly aware of it.
	And, of course, what video games do is they do concentrate the mind, for sure, in virtual combat.
	Of course it does, right?
	It hooks into all of the old-style fight-and-flight stuff that we have.
	But...
	There is, of course, a desire to escape.
	I mean, the old mom's basement thing, I mean, I have a lot of sympathy for that.
	I have a lot of sympathy for the people who are, quote, stuck in the mom's basement.
	I mean, whenever I put out a video about men's rights, we get this, you know, basement dwelling can't get laid, bitter, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all the usual shaming.
	101 comes out, which is actually kind of funny when you know it's coming.
	It's just, it's like watching a show.
	I mean, with most people expecting a different conversation, it's like, Watching a rerun of a Seinfeld and expecting a different ending.
	They're not going to be doing that.
	And I actually have a lot of sympathy for that.
	I mean, gosh.
	I mean, to play a lot of video games and to have a strong desire for an alternate universe, well, that's a kind of dissociation, right?
	I mean, people who are being tortured are told to think, like, one of the preparations for being tortured is to think of a happy place.
	Go to your happy place, right?
	Well, that's because you're being tortured, right?
	I mean, if you're If you're windsurfing and you love to windsurf, nobody says, while you're windsurfing, go to your happy place in your cubicle.
	No, no, no.
	I'm in my happy place.
	I'm in my happy place.
	And so why would somebody need and want such escapism?
	Well, it's because they're fundamentally unprepared for life.
	And it is a desperately sad moment when you look in the mirror and you say, I am completely fucking unprepared for my life.
	And what that generally means is people have neglected to prepare me for my life.
	People have neglected to prepare me for my life.
	And that obviously means that there's a deficiency of love and care and concern and future thinking and so on, right?
	I mean, I actually got mad at this guy's mom.
	She was a single mom, right?
	So she wanted company so she'd invite him over every night.
	It's greedy, eating of his future.
	Don't have him come over.
	Push him out into the world.
	But she wanted him for company.
	She wanted him to come over.
	It's greedy.
	It's destructive.
	Yeah, and I think I just wanted to echo your...
	Your sentiment about getting out into the real world and really examining your personal opportunity cost, and I'm not here to knock anybody's subjective preferences.
	If they prefer to play a game online or something and I prefer to hike in the woods, there's no right or wrong about it, but I wanted to let your listeners know that there are a lot of conferences, there are a lot of organizations that exist For people getting out there.
	If there is a burning desire, if there's something within you that says, I want to get out into the real world, I want to meet other people that are like-minded, I want to have a community that's physical...
	Sorry to interrupt you, but you're moving around a lot and it's making a lot of noise on your mic.
	Oh, sorry.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	I just wanted to let your listeners know that there are organizations out there like the Free State Project and like the organization that I helped co-found called Liberty on the Rocks that allows people to get together in the real world and meet other people.
	If there's any part of you that's looking to get out there and start meeting people, there's no shortage of organizations and conferences and communities that do exist.
	It's not a death sentence to feel like you've You've got to be inside and on the web.
	There's a lot of things out there.
	Liberty on the Rocks is an organization that has almost 30 chapters around the country And these chapters meet regularly once or twice a month, sometimes more than that.
	And the entire purpose is to get people interacting and meeting other people in the flesh that have the same values and the same interests and forming communities all across the country.
	So we've actually got one in Toronto.
	So I noticed that they just met on March...
	I believe Tuesday, March 5th, they just had a meeting.
	So, Steph, even you could kind of drive yourself down the road and go meet some people at Liberty on the Rocks Toronto.
	But I just wanted to let your listeners know that Liberty on the Rocks is available, and it very likely will be near them, because we've got, like I said, almost 30 chapters across the country.
	And it's very easy to start one.
	So if there wasn't something near somebody that wanted to meet people, they could start a chapter and start meeting people.
	So, you know, if your subjective preference is to play some video games and to be online, there's nothing wrong with that.
	But if there is something inside of you that wants to go meet people, understand that there's a lot of ways that you can do that.
	Well, I would argue that there is something wrong with it if you only want to live online.
	I mean, it's not the way to go.
	I mean, and I know what you're saying, like if you have a yearning, burning desire to go meet people, but I would say that don't wait for your desires to come, right?
	I mean, work on yourself, obviously, and all that, but I wouldn't sort of sit and wait for the desire to come.
	And I mean, as Mike was mentioning, the I guess employee number two at FDR. He met his wife and his wife drove to a new place, new country to meet people she'd only met online.
	That was kind of alarming for her.
	And she did a great job.
	She bagged a great husband out of it.
	Woohoo!
	Good big game hunting.
	But kind of make yourself do it.
	You don't have to make yourself do it for the next year, right?
	But recognize the choices that you're making that When you're developing online skills, you're not developing social skills.
	And most of the online skills are not economically valuable skills.
	I mean, unless you're learning how to program or something like that.
	But being really good at World of Warcraft, you are a passive consumer of other people's creativity, of other people's excellence, of other people's generative capacity and power.
	And so there's an old thing that there's no time like the present.
	I really believe in that.
	I really believe in that.
	And I think what you need to do to try and break yourself out of these kinds of habits or at least provide some alternative to them is to basically say something like this.
	Where is this going to lead me?
	Where does this take me?
	What happens if I keep doing this?
	Because, I mean, certainly when you play a lot of video games or, you know, when you go to mom's for dinner every night, You can look forward, you're kind of dealing with immediate gratification, right?
	Well, it's more fun to play video games than to do X. Okay, yeah, for sure, absolutely.
	And it's easier for me to go to mom's for dinner than it is for me to not do that, right?
	Ah, she's already cooking something.
	You know, why not?
	I gotta eat, right?
	What's the point of ordering a pizza?
	If mom's got chili on the stove, that kind of stuff, right?
	Or if you're living, you know, rent-free in your mom's basement, well, yeah, it's easier for sure.
	Of course it is.
	Absolutely.
	And you could argue that, you know, well, I'm saving money for X or whatever it is.
	I mean, if you're working.
	But you have to remember and you have to know that nothing comes for free in this life.
	Nothing, nothing ever anywhere comes for free in this life.
	Either you're expanding the present or you're robbing the future.
	Either you are enriching today or you are starving tomorrow.
	And the free meal at mom's in your 20s, fine, go over for a free meal.
	Invite her over and cook for her.
	Just make it mutual.
	I mean, if mom's cooking you dinner all the time, And you go on a date and say, oh, you know, my mom cooks dinner for me every night.
	I mean, what is your date going to think?
	Ah, I think I see where this might be going if I get married to this fine young man.
	Because you're not developing those skills of self-sufficiency.
	You're not developing those skills of...
	And you're not...
	Like, your challenges are all artificial.
	We are built...
	To eat problems and shit solutions.
	This is what we do as a species.
	This is why we have all this great stuff.
	It's why we have computers.
	Why we have video games.
	Why we have houses.
	Air conditioning.
	Contact lenses.
	Eyeshadow.
	You know, we are adversarial to challenges.
	We're born fighters.
	I mean, you don't get to the top of the food chain by...
	Bending over and playing video games, right?
	You get to the top of the food chain by eating challenges and shitting solutions.
	It's like culture, right?
	So let me just finish the rant and I'll turn it over to you.
	But, you know, people say, well, what's wrong with the Aboriginal culture?
	Well, because they get all this government money, they no longer have challenges to solve, at least the challenges of production and consumption at the very least.
	And so you need to embrace challenges in your life.
	Now, if you've had a traumatic childhood, you've had a difficult childhood, I get it.
	I really, really and totally get it.
	And I have massive sympathy for that.
	I've been there.
	I know, I know, I know.
	There's this avoidance of challenges and so on because you feel kind of exhausted.
	So take your rest, but don't take your rest unconsciously.
	Take your rest, take time, play video games, relax, put your feet up.
	Watch a movie.
	Okay, enjoy.
	But get that you're resting to achieve.
	You're resting in order to achieve.
	You're like an athlete who has a down day.
	Well, you need to rest.
	So rest and enjoy that rest.
	But don't make that your permanent state, right?
	We gain satisfaction from the solving of problems, from the application of our mind to the challenges of virtue, productivity, love, child raising.
	That's where we gain our satisfaction.
	The people who want happiness without solving problems want muscles without exercise.
	They want weight loss without adjustment of habits.
	It's not going to happen.
	It's a fantasy.
	You will not be able to be happy unless you are solving problems in the world.
	And solving problems brings with it all of these emotional challenges like rejection, like failure, like mockery.
	And when you start Getting out of your comfort zone and start solving problems in the world, then everyone who wants to stay in their comfort zone is going to try to undermine you, consciously or not.
	So you face all of that challenge.
	But what's on the other side of recognizing that the virtuous life is combat with problems, and whether those problems are moral or productive or practical or scientific or...
	So relational, whatever it is, whatever problems, whatever improvements you want to bring to the world, that's where your happiness is going to be.
	And so do not waste your life shoveling pixels from one side of the screen to the other.
	That is going to solve anxiety in the short run, like not smoking solves the anxiety of quitting smoking.
	Sorry, like smoking solves the anxiety of quitting smoking in the short run, but creates toxicity in the long run.
	You don't want to do that.
	Listen to your future self.
	Listen to the self that you want to be in 10 years and start building the path towards that.
	And reject the idea that avoidance is going to bring you anything but depression in the long run.
	And gird yourself a battle, my friends.
	There's a world to be saved.
	That's it.
	Well, you don't know how happy it makes me to hear you make that case.
	Because like I said, I... I want to urge everybody listening to go out and meet people in the real world and that doesn't necessarily have to mean that you need to pack up your things and move to New Hampshire and be a part of the Free State Project because there are many other locations and many other organizations that do gather people in the real world and into a real physical community And like I said,
	I just want to make one more pitch for Liberty on the Rocks, my organization, libertyontherocks.org, to go find a community near you because I helped create this community back in 2008.
	It started in Denver and it's branched out all across the country and into Canada because I felt like We were getting that bad rap of being socially awkward and being video gamers and being readers that never left the house and it was time that people got out and met other people and became more fulfilled by having a real physical community and develop those skills that you are talking about.
	And I think those skills are really important.
	I think it's a way to advance yourself.
	It's a way to be fulfilled.
	So, please go find an organization that's near you, and if it doesn't exist, there is no harm in trying to start one.
	The worst that can happen is that you try to start one and it doesn't work.
	I know that part of the problem is that people are very risk-averse and they're avoiding the consequences of real life, but like you just said, Steph, you can't spend your whole life avoiding the consequences of the real world because it's out there and I really want to encourage everybody to go out there and visit it because it's very fun and fulfilling.
	Yeah, and certainly the bad people of the world are hard at work.
	And, you know, so we either work or they own us.
	We either do the right thing or they end up owning us.
	And, you know, that's not a good thing.
	And also, I mean, just to help out, if it's of any value, I'll be happy to commit to coming out to a Liberty on the Rocks gathering in Toronto in April.
	And so we'll publicize that.
	And, you know, if people want to come out and have a chat, I would love to do that.
	So, you know, I'll...
	I'll make that commitment now because I actually don't think I have anything on.
	It's hugely pressing in April in terms of speaking and travel or whatever.
	So we'll do that and hopefully that will be some incentive for people to come out too.
	Thank you.
	Thank you so much.
	I appreciate it.
	I'll have myself and the president of Liberty on the Rocks, Amanda Mill, get in contact with the Toronto chapter and have them Work it out so you can go visit and anybody that's in the Toronto area please come out and meet other people and understand that you can learn a lot online,
	you can learn a lot by reading books, you can learn a lot by watching videos online but you can also learn A ton from other people in a setting that we provide and in a setting of the real world where you're having a real conversation with other people in real time.
	And that's just a great learning opportunity.
	It's a great way to have a community build around you where you live.
	So again, check Toronto, people, check out Liberty on the Rocks Toronto.
	We've got almost 30 chapters across the continent of North America at this point, and if you don't have one near you, there is no harm in trying to contact Amanda or I, Justin Longo, at libertyontherocks.org to start one and start learning and start learning.
	I want to thank you, Steph, for doing everything that you do and going on all these trips around the globe.
	I think it's amazing how many people that actually get to meet you in real life.
	And I'll probably see you in Libertopia if I don't see you here in Denver, because we're trying to get you out to Liberty on the Rocks here in Denver.
	So I hope to meet you before Libertopia, but if not, I'll probably see you again at Libertopia.
	So I don't want to waste any more of the call or take up any more time from the other callers, but I appreciate the opportunity and I really appreciate your thoughts on people getting out there.
	Well, yes, and thank you, Justin, so much for the work that you're doing to expand the social circles.
	You need a huge amount of social skills to change the world.
	Knowledge is necessary but not sufficient.
	Changing the world requires massive amounts of social skills, and you simply can't learn those online.
	You just can't.
	The other thing, too, is that if you're afraid of the world, and there's good reasons to be a little nervous about the world at times, if you're afraid of the world, then online is not the place you want to be.
	Because all the games that you play are going to be about fighting people online.
	And also, if you spend time on message boards or even in chat rooms or in live video game conversations, are people generally nicer or nastier online?
	Well, generally, they're nastier.
	And so if you have social anxiety, then the internet is your drug of choice.
	And it is definitely...
	I mean, deep down, there's a part of us that has no idea that technology exists, right?
	I mean, no idea whatsoever that technology exists.
	And we know that because people gain sexual satisfaction from pornography, right?
	And so, deep down in your reptile brain, it's like, oh, some people in the room are having sex.
	That means other people in the room might want to have sex.
	That means I should get turned on.
	Hey, Maybe I can have sex with that person if she's having sex with multiple partners.
	So deep down in your brain, the images don't translate into, well, that's just pixels on a screen.
	There's no sex possibility happening right here.
	In fact, I'm kind of moving away from the sex possibility with this activity.
	So in the same way that your reptile brain responds to pornography as if there was real sexual opportunity, Our reptile brain responds to social cues on the internet as if this is our society and will forever be our society, right?
	Because we scan our social environment with no idea that it's ever going to change.
	Because for most of human history, our social environment didn't change.
	This is the tribe you were born into.
	This is the tribe you're going to die among.
	And so every time you expose yourself to toxicity, whether it's trolling on the internet or endless fighting and warring, you're not learning any social skills.
	When you're playing Unreal Tournament because you're learning how to fight.
	You're not learning how to negotiate or read emotional cues or learn how to differentiate good people from bad people.
	I mean, you're just blasting pixels.
	And again, it's fine.
	There's nothing wrong with it.
	A candy bar a week is probably not going to kill you.
	But whatever you're exposing your reptile brain to is the world.
	It's not the online world.
	Your reptile brain, as much as it thinks that porn is truly sexually stimulating, it also thinks that your social environment and your interactions.
	So if you're basically programming your reptile brain with four hours of fighting a day, it's going to assume that you're in a state of eternal combat and it's going to react accordingly, right?
	It's going to shut down its empathy centers.
	It's going to raise cortisol levels.
	It's going to stimulate fight-or-flight mechanisms and so on, which is going to make it a whole lot harder to actually interact with people in a positive and benevolent way.
	So, you know, we are programming ourselves with almost every activity.
	And I don't want to make, you know, it's like I'm paranoid or, oh my god, I can't touch a mouse or whatever.
	It's not that at all.
	It's all to do with proportion, right?
	So if the majority of your interactions are sort of positive, relaxed, loving, and then you play half an hour video games a day, well, that's fine, right?
	It's in the same way that our reptile brain assumes that the people we watch on TV are our tribe, right?
	So, I mean, I try not to watch, you know, really dysfunctional stuff on TV because I get that my reptile brain just assumes that that's the people around me and will adapt accordingly.
	So, just be aware that there's a part of your brain that has no capacity to differentiate fact from fantasy.
	And be aware of what you're feeding it.
	So, that's the other thing I would mention.
	Alright.
	Well, thanks so much for your call, Justin.
	It was great.
	Congratulations on what you're doing.
	I hugely appreciate it.
	Much needed.
	Hugely valuable.
	Thank you, thank you, thank you.
	And let's move on to the next caller.
	Anyways, I want to say thanks to Mike for going back and forth with email and email with me this week and schedule this and make this happen.
	Steph, I wanted to talk to you about the non-aggression principle and parenting from a distance.
	I got divorced, let me see, four and a half years ago.
	And my ex-wife and I have three children together, three sons.
	And...
	Since we've been apart, not living together, I have worked very hard at staying true to the non-aggression of principle, especially where it comes to the boys.
	For example, each of the last three years for the court decreed that I'm entitled to summer visitation and other things like that, And the decree says I get eight weeks and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	But, you know, I want to respect my children's choices and show that to them, show them understanding and caring about their desires for their summer.
	And so, you know, we've negotiated about the time they come and visit with me.
	Last year, my eldest child elected not to come visit at all.
	How old are your kids?
	My oldest son is 15, my middle child is 13, and my youngest child is 11.
	Wow, you really did pack in the conveyor belt there, huh?
	Oh yeah, oh yeah.
	It took me a little while to figure out how it kept happening, but anyways...
	I believe there may be some instructional videos on the internet, but anyway, go ahead.
	There is.
	They kept telling me it was in the water, but my water was fine.
	I never knew what was going on.
	But anyways...
	So, with the boys, like I was saying, and I verbalized this to them, I said, hey, I respect your choices, I respect your wishes, and I want you to know, no matter what you choose, that I will always love you, never give up on you, and I will continue doing my part to remain as active a part of your life as I possibly can.
	Now, we live apart.
	We live about 700 miles apart.
	So, visits can't happen every weekend and stuff like that.
	It's just cost prohibitive to do that.
	And why did you live so far apart?
	It's a job thing.
	Where they live, I can't get a job in my field, so I'm kind of stuck going right now where my company sends me.
	So, at any rate, with the summer visitation, you know, last summer my oldest elected not to come at all.
	And so I told him, okay, I understood.
	You know, he was that age where friends and activities and stuff are way more important than his relationship with his old man, and I get that.
	I just asked him that, you know, If I called and stuff like I'm supposed to on the days the court says that I can, that he'll answer and talk to me and we can maintain our relationship like that.
	And my eldest has been fantastic at that.
	When we call or when we have our scheduled chats, there's no time limit or whatever, but he's great.
	He'll sit down and we'll talk for 45 minutes to an hour every Sunday about everything from He's a really smart kid, so he likes to challenge me with things like quantum mechanics and string theory and all this other kind of stuff.
	So it's great.
	We have fantastic chats.
	It's my middle two children that I'm concerned about because they do not answer the phone.
	They do not answer or respond to text messages or emails or letters.
	And it's been now...
	I don't know six weeks since I spoke to either of them and at that it was just a really nasty sarcastic response to a text message that I sent my youngest son.
	I sent him a message saying, hey, you know, how you doing, buddy?
	I'd love to chat.
	What you up to?
	And he didn't answer for a couple hours.
	And then he said, why do you want to chat?
	And I said, well, because I'm your father, I want to, you know, see what's going on in your life.
	I want to stay connected with you.
	And his response to me after that was, and your point is...
	I didn't even know how to respond.
	Obviously, that hurt deeply.
	I try and separate my emotions versus the mindset and everything of an 11-year-old boy, for example.
	With the example of my youngest son.
	And so I just wrote an encouraging message back to which he didn't respond.
	I said, look, man, I love you and I'm going to continue doing everything I can to remain a part of your life and keep up with you and, you know, remind you that, hey, you have a father who loves you and misses you and, you know, hope that you'll reciprocate and, you know, remain engaged with me in the relationship.
	And I can use big words like that because all these kids are, you know, fortunately for me, they're super smart.
	But at any rate, And he didn't respond.
	My middle child, his last response to me was just, I'd rather text than talk on the phone.
	I said, okay, well, what are you up to?
	And I haven't heard from him since.
	And their mother, the divorce was nasty and messy, and I won't go into all the details, but through counseling sessions that I was fortunate enough to have with the children, and with her actually, I discovered that She told the boys a ton of really egregious, nasty lies about me and whatnot.
	We hashed out in counseling that these were lies.
	Of course, after the counselor turned the lens on her, she mysteriously quit taking the boys to counseling.
	And so I've demonstrated this.
	I do not talk bad about their mother to the boys, not in the least.
	I was advised by the counselor to, if the boys ask me questions, to preface my answers with, this is my side of the story, this is how I saw things, and be as honest as I can without blaming or insinuating any kind of insult or wrongdoing on their mother's part.
	And so I've tried really hard to stick true to that.
	I'm looking at myself as honestly and objectively as I can with regards to sticking to the non-aggression principle with regards to relations to my children.
	And I can't see where I'm falling short, but what I do see is the lack, at least at this point in time, of the fruit bearing with regards to that effort.
	Outside of my oldest child, he and I are like peas and carrots, and I mean, God bless him.
	Well, there's no God, but anyways, for my birthday, he's a piano player.
	He composed a song and sent it to me as an MP for my birthday.
	And just a short note, happy birthday, dad.
	I love you.
	I just, I broke down.
	It was amazing.
	And his brothers wouldn't even respond to my text messages that day.
	And they get no encouragement, like I said, from their mother.
	And I'm really at a loss with how I can remain true to these principles and not do a disservice by, you know, I don't know if maybe behaving a little more aggressively would actually be justified in this instance in the case of self-defense against what I'm sure is going on through this campaign of alienation that their mother's committing against me.
	Right.
	Right.
	I'm very sorry.
	I mean, that's heartbreaking.
	I mean, I really get that.
	Now, you said that you didn't want to go into the details of the acrimonious nature of the divorce, and I certainly don't want you to talk about anything you're not comfortable with, but I'm going to assume that it was pretty negative and pretty hostile and pretty destructive and all that kind of stuff.
	And then your mom went on, right, the hating on you campaign with the kids, right?
	Right, their mother did, yes.
	Yeah, that is astonishingly abusive.
	And I wish it were astonishing.
	But this is very common.
	Very common.
	Right?
	I think, I can't remember, but it was some huge number, like three quarters or so, of moms who separate from dads badmouth the dad in front of the kids, and only 13% of dads do that.
	So, I don't know, my mom did that.
	I mean, badmouth my dad told...
	Told us wildly inappropriate things about their relationship when we were little kids.
	So that is, I mean, obviously, it's incredibly vindictive and destructive.
	And every negative thing that your wife says to your sons about you, she's saying about half of them, right?
	Right.
	Your dad's a jerk.
	Well, I'm half my dad.
	Am I half a jerk?
	Right?
	I mean, this is what goes on in kids' heads.
	Also, of course, when you badmouth an absent parent, then you're basically saying that, if you're the mom, you're basically saying, well, you know, dad displeased me and I left him.
	And what does the kid hear?
	The kid says, well, geez, I better not displease mom, right?
	Right.
	Or she's going to throw me out with next week's trash.
	So the youngest children...
	Sorry, go ahead.
	I was just going to say that both of the counselors...
	See, when the first counselor kind of sniffed out the lying and the mental abuse, the emotional abuse against the children, my ex took the children to another counselor.
	That both counselors told me, after the counseling sessions abruptly ended, that the children, they believe the children were behaving completely in compliance with what they term the loyalty complex,
	where, especially in the younger children, having positive feelings about me at all, given the environment that they're in, The negative environment they're in toward me, produced by their mother, can actually cause them to feel guilt or pain or like they're betraying their mother.
	Fear, yeah.
	Right.
	Both of them said that the children were essentially behaving toward me that way in their own self-interest for their perception of their ability to get along without punishment in their home.
	I'm losing my mind here because these are such crucial years.
	I don't want to make assumptions because it doesn't serve for this purpose, but I have my own ideas about the environment that they're growing up in based off what I know of their mother and what I know from the things that the children tell me.
	I'm missing out really bad.
	They fight a lot.
	Sorry, who fights?
	The boys, my sons.
	Oh, they fight between themselves, right, okay.
	Right, and you know, the And during the marriage, I never raised a hand to my ex-wife.
	We yelled at each other a lot, which of course I know now was terribly destructive to them if they heard it.
	I tried my best to try and make sure if we were going to have a disagreement or an argument that they were not around and that we kept our voices low so they wouldn't have to hear those things.
	But it doesn't always work out that way.
	But I never raised a hand to his mother.
	She never hit me.
	What she took to instead was throwing things at me.
	And she didn't seem to care who was around.
	And I know that they saw those things and that they didn't see, you know, Dad, you know, slapping the shit out of her or pushing her down or pulling her hair or anything like that.
	I never did those things.
	But they saw physical violence against you.
	Yes.
	Right.
	And they experienced...
	How long after the divorce did you move away?
	They moved away.
	She disappeared.
	I mean, she took off with them.
	This is one of the more egregious lies here is she disappeared on a particular Wednesday evening.
	She and I had been talking and having, you know, calm and rational discussions over the phone.
	I had moved out to stay with a friend to just increase the peace, I guess, in the environment for the children.
	And I asked her if I could come over to the house and pick some things up that I needed and to take the kids out for ice cream, you know, or something like that.
	And so I showed up and she met me outside and we were talking.
	And she told me, she said, I'm afraid where this is going.
	You know, I know things have been bad, but I really, you know, the thought of divorce scares me.
	And I said, it scares me too.
	And we talked, we hugged for the first time in three weeks.
	And we even started doing a little kissing there right under the carport.
	And I was so elated that things, maybe she was seeing things in a different perspective.
	And that we were really going to work to turn things around.
	I left the house with the kids and we went and ice cream and things were great and I brought them back and I gave her another hug before I left and she was happy to return that hug and I had to work that Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
	So again, I was staying with my friend and I called Friday.
	I was working afternoon shift and so I called that morning to say hello to the children and I got no answer.
	And I got no answer Friday afternoon or Saturday or Sunday.
	And Sunday afternoon, one of my supervisors came up and told me that she had called him to tell me that she had left with children and she wasn't coming back.
	Well, did she say where she went?
	Nope, she wouldn't.
	And I knew that she was talking to men all over the country.
	I had no idea where she was going to go.
	I went about four or five days without even knowing where my children were.
	And, you know, I had, you know, no sleep.
	She had left us.
	She had emptied a checking account, not paid bills for two months.
	So she'd been planning her grand escape with the help of friends and all these other kind of things.
	And, you know, I isolated for about two and a half months eating ramen and tuna so that I could pay up my bills and get myself back squared away financially, only so I could go through a course, you know?
	Right, yeah, and so I guess the kissing was to lower your suspicion level, right?
	Absolutely.
	Right, right.
	Wow, that's pretty monstrous, and I mean, of course, you know, the agony of that, I mean, you don't know, it's only going to be a couple of days, I mean, you don't know what the hell's going to happen, right?
	Right.
	And then she left, like I said, and I, when we finally did talk, and I found out where the children were and everything, I asked her, I said, you know, This was the one thing I put beyond you.
	I never thought you would do this to me, to take off with our children with no notice, just out of the you guys disappeared.
	I said, you could have called.
	I could have at least spoken to the children before they left.
	And she told me that they did not want to talk to me.
	They couldn't wait to get away and they were ready to leave.
	Well, in counseling, I discovered that that wasn't true, that they were begging her, can we at least call dad to say goodbye?
	And she told them that I told her, I didn't want to talk to those stupid brats.
	That was the kind of shit that came out in counseling.
	Now, of course, since, that has been exposed for the lie that it is.
	Many of these lies, like I said, were hashed out and sniffed out in counseling.
	And...
	I remember the looks on my son's face.
	I'm sorry.
	Even four and a half years later, it's tough to talk about.
	But I remember the looks on their faces in those counseling sessions.
	It just broke my heart.
	Now, were there signs, right?
	So, I mean, there's your situation to deal with, which obviously is important and we'll do our best.
	For other people, I mean to avoid these kinds of situations, what were the signs beforehand that your wife had this capacity?
	There were none.
	The demise of our marriage basically stemmed from a fundamental disagreement about what marriage was supposed to be.
	And, you know, it's easy for me to sit here and say these things and...
	No, no, sorry.
	I hate to interrupt you, but I'm going to have to be efficient here.
	Yes.
	Because if you have fundamental disagreements, then you don't get married, right?
	But even if you have disagreements after you have marriage, then you try to work them out, right?
	But the emotional activities that you're describing Are so problematic, are so dysfunctional, are so destructive, are so selfish that it's not a disagreement that causes the problem in the marriage.
	What I mean is, was the emotional destruction of your wife's behavior, to what degree was it evident when you were dating, before you got married, before you had children and so on?
	I guess the first hints of it that I saw were after the birth of my second child.
	I noticed that she spent a lot more time away from me with the kids.
	She would go to friends, she would go to family, and worked very hard to create strong ties between the children and those people.
	And work to undermine my presence in their lives if I tried to, you know, correct their behavior for fighting or, you know, whatever, anything like that, she would...
	So, sorry, is your argument that she was emotionally mature and healthy and so on, but something happened after the birth of your second child?
	No, not at all.
	I apologize.
	Okay, so let's go back to the dating, because we want to help people.
	I mean, obviously, I will talk about your situation in a sec.
	But we want to help people to avoid this kind of situation.
	Not that, you know, you're not happy your kids are alive or anything like that, but you certainly would be better off if you were with a woman that you'd stayed with and who wasn't pulling this kind of stuff, right?
	So when you were dating, when you met, what were the signs that if you could sort of go back in time, you'd say, look, this is a danger, danger, danger kind of thing?
	The signs were not knowing myself.
	I was young.
	I was 20 years old.
	No, the science in her.
	Oh, they just – her – wow.
	I suppose it was the way she tended to marginalize me until she felt like I was getting upset for being marginalized in favor of friends or other activities and whatnot.
	What does that mean, marginalized?
	In other words, she made it plainly apparent that the purpose of my life was to pay for her and not ask any questions and to not have any expectations of her as a person in a relationship with regards to nurturing that relationship.
	So the selfishness that you are talking about now was evident from the very beginning?
	Yes, just in much, much, much smaller degrees.
	She was young like me, so I thought it was just an issue with maturity that we'd both grow out of, and I was wrong.
	So she was not very selfish when you were younger, but she became more selfish after the children were born, particularly the second child?
	Yes.
	I must be somewhat skeptical.
	I must be somewhat skeptical of that, because...
	And personality traits tend to, like negative personality traits do tend to diminish over time, right?
	So, I mean, this is my understanding of what the experts say, but, you know, things like borderline personality disorder and so on, I don't know what your wife is, I have no capacity to diagnose, but those kinds of behaviors, they do tend to diminish over time.
	So, even sociopaths and psychopaths do tend to mellow a little bit over time and then just run out of energy or whatever it is.
	And borderlines tend to become less histrionic and all that over time.
	So it usually is the case that negative behavior traits can diminish over time.
	Now, I'm sure there are exceptions to every rule, but when you say that she was less selfish when she was younger, that would sort of go against the trend.
	I don't know whether it's possible or not, but it certainly would go against the trend.
	I mean, it's altogether possible, too, that I just was blinded and not really observant to that fact as well, that she was selfish or whatever.
	I mean, we had problems when we were dating, too, and ultimately, again, I'm a little older than she is, and I feel my responsibility was not recognizing some of those traits to stop the progress of that relationship in its tracks, and I should have done that, but I didn't.
	And what attracted you to her?
	And here's where we have to be very honest, right?
	Yes, absolutely.
	She is, was and is a gorgeous lady, lively personality, you know, fun, engaging.
	So you mean physically gorgeous?
	Yes.
	Yeah, that's another danger sign.
	Right.
	No, I mean, I hate to say it.
	I mean, I'm sure there are some very nice, gorgeous people out there, but it's a great danger sign.
	Right.
	Being gorgeous is like being very rich.
	I mean, being a gorgeous woman is something that is hard for men to understand.
	I mean, even a gorgeous man to understand.
	I mean, imagine you just walk into some place and everybody wants to buy you a drink and everybody wants to be your friend and everybody wants to buy you stuff.
	I mean, it's this gravity well of biological attraction that completely spoils people.
	I mean, unless you resolutely work against it as a human being, like as a woman, unless you resolutely recognize that You can't milk this thing.
	I have a beautiful woman in one of my novels and in it I comment that she wanted to put her beauty to work for her like a glistening slave.
	I mean we can't even imagine what it's like to walk in some place or to say to yourself, no matter what happens in life, there will always be somebody there to give me lots of money and to take care of me.
	I mean guys don't have that.
	I mean they just don't.
	And so it's hard to...
	And also, I mean, I remember being...
	When I was in boarding school, the boys and the girls were segregated.
	I still have this picture somewhere in the basement of the whole school.
	I actually used to know every kid's name.
	Can you believe it?
	I don't...
	I remember only a few of them now.
	And I still can point out that one girl who was the prettiest.
	And I swear to God, the whole school bent around her.
	All the social...
	Everybody stared at everyone who wanted to be friends.
	The girls all wanted to be friends.
	There was a woman in my high school, a junior high school...
	And I still remember her name.
	I actually asked her out because she was the prettiest girl in that high school.
	And, I mean, everybody worshipped her.
	All the girls wanted to be her friend.
	All the guys wanted to have five minutes conversation with her.
	She was constantly showered with gifts.
	There was another girl in my high school who was also pretty and had big boobs.
	And we had one of those Valentine's Day things, you know, where everybody sort of hands out these valentines.
	And I swear to God, like, when the day was done, you couldn't see her because she was such a mountain of valentines in front of her.
	So that, and I remember actually met that woman I met the other woman years later from junior high school and she actually looked wistfully back at this time.
	Oh my god, I mean what a crazy time that was.
	I mean to be a beautiful woman warps and distorts the world around you.
	And it's something that's kind of hard for men to fathom, but it has some seriously negative effects on the personality.
	You know, it's the great vengeance of the beta male to screw up the alpha female.
	And we do that by giving, you know, excessive attention and spoiling the personality and so on.
	And that, I mean, if the beauty is preserved, it follows you through life.
	It's this constant get-out-of-jail-free card that you have.
	It's this constant escape-from-responsibility card that you have.
	That there'll always be someone there.
	To pick up the pieces, to take care of you, to give you money, to support you, to this, that, and the other, right?
	And you can get away with a ridiculous amount of stuff if you are physically attractive.
	And it's not just my – I mean the studies show this over and over again.
	I mean you earn more money.
	You get in less trouble.
	You can blink your way out of tickets.
	I mean it's a huge distortionary effect.
	And I mean you can read Dr.
	Warren Farrell's books about this.
	He was on the show a couple of weeks ago.
	And he sort of points out that these genetic celebrities tend to be rather spoiled and they tend to have great challenges.
	And this comes from very early on.
	I mean, even babies who are beautiful get more attention, right?
	So it goes so deep.
	It's not a part of the personality.
	It is the personality for the most part.
	So I would really just caution people about physical attractiveness.
	Caution people about physical attractiveness.
	It is a great – it's a great challenge.
	Like I was on Elliot Hulse's show recently and he was talking all about how you just got to go out there and you got to go talk to people and you got to go make things happen and so on.
	And part of me was thinking, well, yeah, but you're gorgeous.
	He's a gorgeous guy.
	And so to what degree is that going to have an effect on people's receptivity to him?
	And if he were, you know, 300 pounds with a hair lip, would he have that same level of go-get-em, open-hearted confidence?
	I don't know that people understand the degree to which physical attractiveness opens doors.
	We so often will mistake accidental characteristics for personal virtues.
	It's the great trap of vanity.
	So if you've sort of won the biological lottery and you're gorgeous, either male or female, but for females it's even more prevalent, Then it's really tough to separate your physical appearance from your personality because the two inform each other so deeply and it is a great challenge.
	Margaret Atwood wrote once in a book something like this.
	I think it was a guy who lived on a farm or something like that.
	I probably got this half wrong but it's what I remember.
	It was, you know, he didn't need a pretty woman tottering around on high heels.
	He needed a competent woman with a strong back.
	And I think that's really important.
	That's really important.
	I mean, the people you want to have sex with, biologically, are almost never the people you want to raise children with.
	I mean, there may be blah, blah, blah, but, you know, everybody wants this chemistry.
	Fuck chemistry.
	Well, actually, literally, you want to fuck chemistry, but not have children with it, maybe.
	But this chemistry, this sizzle, this, you know, it doesn't...
	When your child is coughing for the third time in the middle of the night, how your ass looks in a tight dress doesn't do a damn bit of good, right?
	What matters is do you have the compassion and the care and the concern to go and comfort your child and help them and that kind of stuff, right?
	Or as some famous director said, Beauty gets pretty tired.
	You get bored of beauty after three days of it walking around your apartment kind of thing.
	And also the competition element of beauty is a big problem as well.
	You said that she was in contact with guys all over the country, right?
	Well, because she's beautiful, so people will do shitty things to get in contact with her and to pursue sexual agendas with her.
	And it's – so if you're dissatisfied – it's like if you're unhappy in your job and there are like literally 500 people offering you better jobs, how motivated are you going to be to work out the difficulties in your existing employment?
	Well, you're not going to be that immotivated in it.
	This is probably stuff you already know, but for other people, beauty is a honey trap.
	It is really, really something.
	To be incredibly cautious around.
	And so I sympathize because this is, you know, we're programmed this way.
	And of course, culture and advertising really milks this shit for us too, right?
	But physical beauty is a grenade with the pin out.
	I mean, you could be around it, but it's probably going to blow up.
	Right.
	And something to note, something you were talking about was that both counselors, like I said, told me about this.
	They believed there was a campaign of alienation going on.
	They recognized her lies and whatnot.
	But when we talked more in depth about our history and the way we got together, the marriage and whatnot...
	Based off what I told them and what she told them, one of the counselors ventured that she had personality disorder and another one said she was likely a sociopath.
	And so I was really kind of taken aback by that.
	I always figured I would be smart enough to sniff that out in the beginning, but obviously I wasn't.
	My next question is, who conditioned you as a child to be used to this kind of behavior?
	Oh, that's a great question.
	Wow.
	I would have to say it was my mother because my parents split and my mother got custody of me and my sister.
	So I was...
	And is your mother pretty?
	I think she is, yes.
	All right.
	Not in an Oedipal kind of way, but yes, I think she is.
	No, no, no.
	I mean, look, my mother was a beautiful woman when she was younger.
	I mean, that's not Oedipal.
	That's just a...
	I look at her pictures and I can make a judgment.
	I mean, she was extremely attractive and...
	Great bones and slender figure, which I think she still has.
	Anyway, so, yeah, I mean, we can judge these things without it being edible.
	And this is one of the great cautions that I've had, is I saw lots of men floating around my mom, drawn, of course, by her beauty.
	And so, I got that this was incredibly dangerous and toxic.
	And, of course, anytime she had any kind of self-doubt...
	She could just go get a man to shore her up, so to speak, and these befuddled idiots just enabled this, right?
	So if you had a mom who had some characteristics that were similar, then this is why, again, we'll try and deal with your thing in a sec, but just for the people to avoid this stuff, do not get married without self-work.
	Do not have children without self-work.
	Significant self-work.
	It is a very, very dangerous thing to do.
	And I say this as somebody who dodged this bullet very narrowly, you know, proposed to, and then withdrew the proposal from the wrong woman, and then, thank the fates, met the perfect woman for me, and now joyfully married for over ten years.
	Yeah, the self-work is essential.
	I mean, I'm saying this, I wish I could say myself in the past.
	Do not, I mean, don't even date without self-work.
	It's not good.
	It's like, you know what, it's like going to an empty gymnastics.
	It's like going to an empty gym, throwing a couple of gym mats down on the floor and trying to do an Olympic routine.
	You're just going to hurt yourself without significant coaching.
	So, get the coaching and all that kind of stuff.
	So, Okay, so enough of that.
	Let's...
	Sorry, somebody said, I'm 21 and trying to look away from an attractive girl is very difficult.
	Well, that's a bit self-censorious.
	That's certainly not what I'm talking about.
	I mean, recognize that you have these characteristics.
	Recognize that you have these desires.
	And, you know, it's like saying, looking at a beautiful thing that you want, a ring or a computer or something, and not just taking it, it's very hard.
	Well, I guess, but, you know, you wanting it means go work for it, right?
	And what you want is not the beautiful woman.
	What you want is love.
	And love and beauty often seem to be in opposition.
	So, okay, so let's get to your situation at the moment.
	So I'm going to assume...
	Because your wife's not on the call.
	I'm going to assume that everything you're saying is more or less the truth.
	I mean, what else am I going to do, right?
	So, I know there's two sides to every story and so on, but I give lots of credence to people who listen to this show.
	So, you know, you don't listen to this show if you're...
	Not a decent person or on your way there or having already achieved it.
	This show is a shield against sociopaths and narcissists and borderlines and all that kind of stuff.
	I mean, they short-circuit on this conversation and react negatively to it, right?
	It's one of the stars I guide by is, do bad people dislike this show?
	Yay!
	I'm doing something right!
	Good for me, right?
	I mean, if you're treating cancer, you want the cancer to not like you, right?
	So...
	So I'm going to assume that you're giving me the straight facts, and I'm just going to work with that assumption.
	I don't know if it's true.
	I believe it is true.
	But I'm just going to, just up front, I'm going to work with that.
	So let's say, and let's just put the amateur label narcissist, right?
	I don't have any diagnostic capacity, but let's say she's a narcissist, right?
	Okay, so your youngest kid was, your oldest was, I think, 15, 13, 11, something like that?
	Yes.
	Ten?
	No, fifteen, thirteen, and eleven.
	Eleven, okay.
	So, your youngest was...
	How long were you married for?
	Twelve years.
	Right, okay.
	So, obviously you started having kids right away.
	I don't think that's always necessarily a great idea.
	No, not at all.
	So, that's another thing to be concerned about.
	Particularly, you know, very attractive women are not unaware of their power in society and among the legal system, too.
	So, if they want to have kids with you right away, it may be a bit of a noose.
	Anyway, something to be aware of.
	So, your youngest child...
	Sort of trying to figure it out from his perspective.
	So he saw a pretty crappy marriage.
	He saw yelling.
	He saw you having stuff thrown at you.
	And he probably is pretty aware of the dysfunctional aspects of your wife's personality, right?
	I imagine.
	I'm not sure, but I would hope so.
	Oh no, he is.
	I mean, there's nobody you'll ever know better than your own parents.
	Because that's your interest and your environment when you're a kid, right?
	Yes.
	So, you couldn't, quote, handle...
	I mean, I know you were trying to work on a marriage and all that, but basically, you moved away and you couldn't...
	From his perspective, right?
	You couldn't stand or couldn't handle living with or being in a relationship with the mom, right?
	Correct.
	And...
	From the child's perspective, it's like, okay, so you got out, but you left me with this crazy woman when I was six or seven.
	Right?
	You couldn't find a way to make her treat you well.
	She was throwing stuff at you, and you couldn't protect yourself or keep yourself safe, but you thought that somehow a child of six or seven was going to be fine with that.
	Right.
	And, of course, he doesn't know the legal system.
	He doesn't know the history.
	He doesn't know any of that stuff, right?
	But basically, you're like, well, I'm in a pit with a really big tiger.
	I can't fight the tiger, so I'm going to leave my kids behind and get out.
	And then, of course, the.
	The mom makes her demands for allegiance very clear, right?
	Tells the kids truly relationship-shattering lies.
	What was it that you just didn't want to call the little brats?
	That's what she said, right?
	So you were desperate to try and get in touch with them.
	Right.
	Right, so that's pretty crazy.
	That's just evil, right?
	Incredibly selfish, incredibly destructive, right?
	That's not the worst of it, but yes.
	Oh, yeah.
	Look, I would not be shocked by almost anything you said, because these kinds of personalities, when pushed, there's nothing that they won't do to win in the moment, right?
	Right.
	So, again, I don't know, but I'm guessing that from your kid's perspective, you got out and left them with the crazy, right?
	It's arguable, sure.
	What's arguable?
	Well, what I'm saying is that's certainly as valid a point as anything else I might contribute, so yes.
	No, no, sorry, I'm not trying to say that, I mean, what I'm trying to say is that from your kid's perspective, I mean, even outside, I mean, in a sense, it doesn't matter how toxic the mom is, right?
	Because if the mom isn't that toxic, then you left and she wasn't even that toxic.
	But if the mom is that toxic, then you left your children with a toxic woman, right?
	Right.
	And that's going to be a challenge, right?
	Now, the problem is, and this is the bind of the divorced dad, I think, right?
	I mean, you tell me.
	You've got the experience.
	But you can't openly deal with that in your relationship with your children, right?
	Please say that again.
	I'm sorry I broke up.
	You can't...
	Deal with that reality in your relationship with your children, right?
	So you can't say to your kids, listen, your mom is crazy.
	She told you all these lies.
	It's incredibly abusive, incredibly destructive.
	Now, go on back home.
	Well, right.
	No, I wouldn't say that to them.
	Right.
	Right.
	So there's a level of honesty which...
	can't be achieved in your relationship with your kids that would give them some perspective, perhaps some comfort about society's visibility towards the craziness of their mom, right?
	Well, yes, and I've been advised to not say anything that may even be deemed as negative about their mother to the children necessarily.
	Like I said, I was told to be gentle and honest and age-appropriate when discussing issues if my children ask me questions and to avoid making any insinuations of any wrongdoing, error, or evil intent on the part of their mother.
	Right.
	But if the mother is wicked, then you can't be honest, right?
	Right.
	That is a very, very difficult thing for me to do when they ask some of the tougher questions.
	Right.
	And, of course, this is partly from an age-appropriate and respectful standpoint to their situation, but also partly, you know, if they go back and say, well, Dad said that, right, what happens next, right?
	Right.
	Right.
	God forbid you do 1% of what she did, right?
	Oh, yes.
	That's...
	Yes.
	I mean, that's unthinkable!
	I mean, this is the outrage of endless hypocrisy that these people have, right?
	That they can do the most egregious things, and the moment you lift a tiny little finger to fight back, suddenly you're an abuser, right?
	Correct.
	And, of course, since she has custody, if you step on that landmine, then kaboom, right?
	Oh, yes.
	Right.
	So there is a very difficult situation here, that your children are being raised by a somewhat toxic person, and you cannot be honest and validate any negative experiences they have of their mom, right?
	Right.
	Yeah, I've been castrated.
	I mean, that's exactly what I feel like with regards to what I can and can't do with the relationship with my sons.
	It feels like, you know, the fucking court and she worked pretty much to, you know, neuter me as a father, and it really, really sucks.
	Yes, it really does.
	And, of course, but not neuter you as a provider.
	No.
	Mike, you've got to still fire cannon fulls of cash over that bitter wall, right?
	Yeah.
	That's right.
	That's precisely right.
	So, yeah, they'll castrate you as a father, but not as a provider, right?
	And kudos to you for hanging in there, because that's just a mind-bendingly bad situation all around, right?
	Yes, it is.
	So, I don't think that you have the right to be aggressive with your children, obviously.
	I mean, you were talking about how to get them to tax back and so on.
	Yes.
	I don't think...
	I mean, because the whole situation is not their fault.
	You really want to make sure that you are not assigning any moral responsibility in particular to an 11 and 13 year old, right?
	Of course.
	Absolutely.
	Right.
	They didn't choose the mom.
	They didn't choose the divorce.
	They didn't choose the dad.
	They didn't choose the whole situation.
	They're just struggling to survive in the house of a crazy person.
	Yes, and that's where the source, the big issue for me is the empathy that I feel for them being in that position.
	And I see, perhaps this is ego or whatever on my part, but I see a stronger relationship between us as a kind of lifeline, if you will.
	on life, on the world and whatnot.
	And obviously there must be some kind of draw with that for one of them because my eldest son, like I said, I don't know too many other 15-year-olds who talk about the intricacies of quantum theory.
	But his mother is in her fourth year of junior college and he's got to have an outlet for that expanse.
	And so I try and provide it.
	I tend to believe, based off that interaction, that there's at least some kind of draw, something good and wholesome that I can provide to them with regards to perspective or insight and everything that he sees, at least, but the younger two either perhaps.
	But he had a lot longer with you in the house, right?
	Yes, he did.
	I mean, your youngest may not remember you, particularly if the end of the divorce or end of the marriage was tough, your youngest may not even remember you that much being around.
	So then it's just some guy on the phone, right?
	I mean, I don't mean to say just something like, I mean, obviously you've been around and to your credit, you've worked to engage them and keep them around for summers and so on.
	But your eldest has a much more continual memory of you as a dad, right?
	That foundation was there.
	Yes.
	And this is, the other thing is, what's really perplexing to me is that during the summer visits, right, last year my two younger children, in comparison to my eldest, they did decide to come out and spend time with me, which I thought was odd because they never try and engage with me on the phone on any kind of regular basis.
	But they did come out and they clung to me like Saran Wrap and they couldn't ask me enough questions and they couldn't be happy enough and we couldn't have enough fun together.
	And I mean, that stuff is like replenishment to my soul, you know.
	Of course, but what does your wife feel about that?
	What work does your wife put in after that, your ex-wife?
	Oh, well, none.
	No, no.
	No, she does, I would guess.
	So if she feels that they're drawing closer to you, what's her response going to be?
	What's she going to do?
	Well, I have no idea.
	Sure you do.
	Come on, of course you do.
	Don't tell me you have no idea.
	You've been married to the woman for over a decade.
	What I mean is I can make assumptions based on the pattern of behavior thus far, but I'm not a fly on the wall.
	No, of course we don't know for sure, but what would your guess be?
	If you were a betting man and you had to put money on it, how would your wife react to your children's increased closeness to you?
	Well, let me give you an experience.
	During one of the counseling sessions, I learned that she told the children that I was never around and that any memories they have of me are just something that I planted in their heads and this kind of crap.
	So when I heard that, I went digging through my computer for pictures of us for birthdays, for trips, for trips to the zoo, fun times that we all had together.
	And I put this together in a slideshow for the kids and we watched it together.
	Right.
	And I'm sitting there in the pictures with the kids and we're having a good time and she's sitting over there in the corner saying, he wasn't there.
	He wasn't there for that.
	I'm like, what the?
	What?
	A psychopathy.
	Did I just photoshop this in?
	Right.
	Yeah, I just photoshopped it, right.
	Right.
	So that's what I'm dealing with.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, when you set yourself as oppositional to a co-parent, then everything becomes win-lose, right?
	In other words, since she has said all these things that are negative about you, if your children experience you as positive, they experience her as negative.
	And if they experience her as positive, they experience you as negative, right?
	It's a seesaw.
	You can't both go up at the same time.
	Does that make sense?
	It does.
	I wish it were the opposite, but yes, it does.
	And again, with all sympathy to the situation that you're in.
	But, so what that means is that if you have an improved relationship with your children, unless your wife confesses, the ex-wife confesses and says, I said all these terrible things, I was angry, I'm sorry, your dad's a great guy, or he was at least better than I said, and so on.
	Unless she actually confesses, which I would not hold my breath for, then the reality is that she is going to be incredibly threatened by you coming across well to the children because that reveals her as a manipulative, hateful liar, right? then the reality is that she is going to be Right.
	Right?
	So she's going to have to work to not have that be the case, right?
	Once you start telling lies to children, then the truth tellers become your mortal enemy, right?
	Yes.
	So, I mean, that's the reality of the situation.
	Now, I'm guessing that given your child support and possibly alimony obligations, you don't have the liberty to take a lower paying job closer to your children.
	Oh no, not at all.
	Right.
	If you did take a lower paying job, would you be able to petition the court for lower payments?
	I will.
	The problem will come is that will be a probably, from the time I file my petition until we actually get the hearing, would be about a four-month process.
	Based off, you know, I've been to court now three times for this.
	Anyways, but during that four months, I would be expected to maintain the same level of child support.
	And without the same level of income, that's just absolutely cost prohibitive unless I want to live in a box and, you know, eat trash.
	Sell a kidney, right?
	Right, yeah.
	I mean, this is one of the challenges, right?
	That you have to pay a lot of money for...
	I mean, I certainly don't agree with alimony.
	I mean, if I quit a job, they don't have to keep paying me.
	And if I quit a marriage, they shouldn't have to keep paying me.
	If I get fired from a job, they don't have to keep paying me.
	And if you fire your wife or the wife fires the husband, then...
	Anyway, that's a topic for another time.
	But child support is sort of a somewhat different matter because the children are not responsible for these things.
	So I'll give you my advice for what it's worth.
	And, you know, again, I'm really sorry for this, but I hugely respect you for hanging in there.
	I mean, it's a tough situation to say the least.
	I can't fathom how tough it is emotionally.
	So I just really wanted to, you know, deep respect and sympathies for that.
	I appreciate that.
	I'm just curious as to if texting, calling, writing letters, is there anything that you think I might be able to do differently to provide a source of inspiration for my two younger children to interact with me more regularly?
	Right, right.
	I can't change a damn thing about their mother's behavior.
	I accepted that a long time ago.
	I accepted that I've got to be consistent with the application of the way I live, my morals, my principles.
	I have to highlight these things to the boys so that if they're not readily cognizant of it, then they can have it kind of brought to light for them to view.
	I can only change or deal with how I behave, not her, not the boys.
	I want to provide some kind of spark to create the potential for change in the positive regarding our interaction with my two younger sons.
	Right, right.
	So, I'll give you my advice.
	And you remember, I'm just some idiot on the internet, so this is all to take under your own wisdom and consideration.
	And I have not been in this situation, though I've been a child in this situation with my own parents.
	So, you know, take it all with a grain of salt, but this is what I would advise.
	First of all, I would guess that you're the kind of guy, if you have a problem, then you start to focus on it, if not obsess about it, until you've solved it, right?
	Right.
	And I can tell that because you have a job, I assume, since you can't do it around your kids that's more involved than being a waiter.
	So you have, like most of us, maybe men slightly more than women.
	No, actually, it's the same with women, too, just in different areas for the most part.
	But if you have a problem, then you obsess about it until it's solved.
	Now, that's a great thing if your problem is solvable.
	If your problem is not solvable, it burns out your brain, right?
	Yes.
	Right.
	Because you keep trying to find a way to solve a problem that you can't solve.
	Right?
	So, this problem you cannot solve.
	Now, that doesn't mean there's nothing you can do, but as you pointed out yourself, you can't change your wife's behavior and you cannot make your children text you.
	Correct.
	Right?
	So...
	And now you may choose to go to the court and if you want to move closer to your kids, then take a pay card.
	I mean, that's of course up to you.
	That's one thing you could do.
	But on the assumption that that doesn't work, then this would be my suggestion.
	Obviously, grit your teeth, be patient and positive with your kids and recognize that they're just trying to survive and recognize how crazy you'd be if you were still there, right?
	Dealing with this stuff in your face, right?
	Right.
	Right.
	And they're only 11 and 13, right?
	And you couldn't handle it in your 30s or 40s or whatever it was, right?
	So recognize that the kind of awful betrayal that you felt when your wife kissed you and then left with the children is something that they are fully aware of every day.
	And if she's physically that attractive, then of course they're probably a man drifting in and out of the place and all this kind of mess, right?
	So...
	If you give them sort of as much contact as they want, I mean, you have to respect their wishes.
	And if their wishes are, at the moment, and it's not their wishes like they've just come up with it on their own, but if their wishes are, or their needs are, mostly I would imagine generated by the mom, if their needs are that if I have a good relationship with you, then I have a bad relationship with my mom, And trust me, a bad relationship with my mom is much more costly for me than a bad relationship with you.
	Because I live with mom and mom doesn't have the maturity you have, right?
	Right.
	And so mom's demand is that I not have a good relationship with you and since I live with mom and she's more dangerous, that's what I have to go with, right?
	Right.
	And it's not their fault.
	It's not their fault at all that this is their situation.
	It's probably the last thing that they would want, right?
	But it's the one thing they have.
	I believe that wholeheartedly, yes.
	Right.
	So, you know, to be there, to be patient and positive, and to not assign them responsibility for not texting back.
	You know, the assignation of responsibility is really, really tricky, right?
	Right.
	Because when we assign responsibility, we tend to get kind of aggrieved, right?
	But if we accept a lack of responsibility, then we're not so aggrieved, right?
	I mean, if somebody plows into our garden gnome and they're drunk driving, we tend to get very upset, right?
	Of course.
	If somebody shot out their tires by accident, we tend not to be that upset but more sympathetic, right?
	So the assignation of responsibility changes the moral flavor of our responses like night and day, right?
	They're trying to survive in a very difficult situation with a toxic mom and a distant dad.
	And they don't understand all the complexities that have brought all that about and so on, but they know the emotional results.
	Now, if you are the better person, and I'm fine with that as a thesis, if you are the better person, then they are most likely to drift towards you in time.
	I'm not sure that they have that luxury at the moment because recognizing that you're the better person reveals their mom is a liar.
	And you can't hide much from your parents when you're in the same house, particularly parents who are obsessed with finding out where you stand on particular things due to their own insecurities, right?
	Right.
	So, given that they can't hide a good relationship with you, and their mom might be looking right over their shoulder while they're texting.
	Yeah, she does that.
	No, she does that.
	I'm sure she does.
	I'm sure she does.
	So, this is not voluntary on their part and it is not a reflection of their character or their love for you or anything like that.
	It's only relative to their need to survive, right?
	That's what I recognize.
	And again, I'm not angry at them and I'm not blaming them for not doing their part per se.
	Again, the basis of my ultimate question is if somebody thought of, you specifically, could think of something else I might be able to do to spark that interest in them and...
	Making our relationship better based off, you know, as long as I'm doing my part to them, being a responsible father like that and trying to remain a part of their life, what can I do or say differently to perhaps encourage them to place a different value set on their relationship with their old man, you know?
	Well, but again, you're looking at their relationship with you in isolation, which is not the reality of the situation, at least as far as I understand it, right?
	Which is that their relationship with you is conditioned by their living with their mom.
	Right?
	The relationship with the mom is like the statue, and their relationship with you is like the shadow.
	You can't move the shadow without moving the statue, right?
	And if you can't move the statue, then the shadow's gonna stay where it is, at least for now, right?
	Right.
	If your wife has turned it into a win-lose scenario, And she's the primary custodian of the children, then it seems very unlikely that you're going to win and she's going to lose, right?
	Right.
	You can try to move closer.
	You can try to reduce your payment so you can take a job that's closer and that might help for sure.
	I mean, that would be a possibility.
	you can of course continue to stay in contact with them and to give them positive messages and tell them that you're thinking of them and so on but with the expectation just imagine your ex-wife standing over them while they get these text messages and telling them what to write it's the only thing that I can think of but with the knowledge and the understanding that as they get older they can't have an independent judgment of your mother I'm sorry.
	They can't have an independent judgment of their mother because they're dependent on her, right?
	It's like asking welfare recipients to be objective about welfare, right, with the difference being that Welfare recipients aren't born into it, right?
	Usually.
	It's like asking Prince Harry to be objective about the monarchy, right?
	It's not going to happen.
	Because they're dependent on your mom, she's going to rule the discourse.
	Because she...
	Not only are they dependent on her, but also she can inflict much more suffering on them than you can or will, right?
	Right.
	So...
	From that standpoint, given that it is a win-lose situation, I mean, you can either do things like fight for complete custody, parental alienation, complaints, whatever it is.
	I don't know what the legal issues are or the legal possibilities are.
	I'm certainly no lawyer, but you can do that kind of stuff.
	And if that's your choice, then that's your choice.
	If that's not your choice, then I think you just have to keep treading water.
	And as they grow older, they will get more clear about their mom, and they will get more clear about you.
	I know that's a terrible thing to say because as they get older, what the hell do you do in the meantime?
	But I think that's the reality, that as they get older and more independent, they will begin to see things more clearly if you've provided a counterexample.
	If your behavior consistently undermines the things that their mom is saying about you, then empiricism will almost certainly win out over lies.
	And I think it seems likely that they will gravitate more towards you and bring your wife like a fire-breathing dragon in quick tow, but I mean that will be easier because they will be older.
	So I think that's the only thing that I can suggest.
	Yes, and that makes sense, and other people have given me a similar perspective based on what I tell them and what they've observed.
	Like I was saying, when my children do visit, there's a ton of love, there's a ton of affection, there's a lot of fun and laughter, and I don't spank the kids.
	When they do fight, like I told you about earlier, I sit them down, I separate them, and I say, hey, this isn't acceptable behavior.
	Let's talk about why.
	It's really kind of funny because they've told me that these kind of talks about the morality of their behavior It's more painful than a spanking because it makes them think.
	So maybe I'm doing something right there, you know?
	But anyways, so their behavior when we're together is indicative of exactly what you're talking about.
	It's just really, really, really difficult for me.
	And this is personal.
	This has nothing to do with them.
	This is all about me here.
	It's very difficult for me to go You know, three, four, six months between phone calls or text messages, you know, when I try and try and try and...
	Oh, it's agonizing.
	I mean, again, I can only imagine, and my imagination, strong though it is, is probably no more than 1% of your emotional experience.
	So, I mean, putting myself in your situation, I mean, I miss my daughter when I'm doing these Sunday shows.
	Right.
	So, I mean, and that's two hours where I have great conversations with people.
	So, I mean, my heart goes out to you.
	I mean, what a wretched, wretched situation.
	And, you know, sometimes, I mean, the best thing that we can get out of these mistakes is a recognition, of course, of where we went wrong and the work that we didn't do to get into the situation and communicate to other people how to avoid these kinds of situations.
	You know, like the Guy gets involved with drugs who ends up being a counselor or whatever.
	I mean, you can use these mistakes to create some good in the world to help other people from avoiding these kinds of problems.
	But, I mean, gosh, what a...
	You know, what a great dad you sound.
	And I mean, of course, that's fantastic for you.
	And it's the best chance your kids have of not repeating the mistakes, right?
	So if I were in your shoes, my sole focus as a dad would be, I can't do anything about the present, but I am damn well going to make sure that my children, my sons, don't grow up to marry someone like my mom or their mom.
	That's the most important thing is to break the cycle.
	Now, that's a long-term goal.
	That's a long-term proposition, right?
	That's not over the next month or six months or even year.
	That is a long-term proposition to ease them out of this cycle to make sure that they see the dysfunction of their mom before they get married, before they get to be adults or before they get someone pregnant because that would be the worst thing, right?
	I mean, this is terrible enough, but imagine if you just saw the whole damn thing starting all over again with your own sons.
	Right.
	Oh, God.
	And you could see their divorce in the future and you could see them being in the same situation and you could see them calling some old Canadian philosopher on the internet in 20 years or whatever, right?
	So that is, I think, the major focus is to work as much as possible and as hard as possible and with as much integrity as possible to prevent A recycling of this same old stuff and that is a long-term project, but if you achieve that, then I think you've done the most good you can in this situation.
	So, see, this is what I've come to my own personal decision, and perhaps I was just looking for a little validation from someone like you, was, you know, this is a big shit sandwich that I helped make, so I've got to eat it until it's done and stay consistent anyway because I love my kids.
	I want them to know that they're the most important thing to me, that my relationship with them is the most important thing to me.
	That there is love, virtue, integrity, caring, not assessment of blame.
	Because this isn't.
	They had nothing to do with the things that caused all of this.
	It's not their fault in any way.
	And that no matter what happens, that I'm going to love them and stay true and do everything I can to remain a part of their lives.
	And even if they don't necessarily reciprocate that kind of effort, it doesn't matter.
	I'm still their dad and I'm going to do it anyway.
	Right.
	And I appreciate that.
	Good for you.
	And I would also recommend Warren Farrell's – I just finished this book, The Father and Child Reunion.
	It's a very, very important book, I think, for men to read no matter what.
	No matter what.
	Before you get married, while you're married, if you have divorced, if you have been through divorce, read that book.
	It's really, really important.
	Your sons need you.
	We need you desperately and you are the single most important factor in how their lives in the future are going to turn out even though they're 700 miles away or perhaps even more so because they're 700 miles away.
	So I hugely respect you for staying the course.
	I hugely respect you for your sensitivity and obvious love towards your children.
	So kudos for that.
	I mean that's… That's fantastic and honorable, and I can only imagine how difficult that is.
	So, listen, thanks so much for the call.
	Do drop me a line if you get a chance and let me know how it's going.
	And I certainly wish you the very best of luck, and you are certainly a great ally for your children in a very difficult situation, and you should be very proud of that, I think.
	Thank you very much, Steph.
	I appreciate it.
	Thank you for your time.
	You're welcome.
	All right, so I guess that's it.
	We've gone a little bit over.
	over.
	I'm sorry that we can't get to the last caller.
	I do apologize for that.
	It's a little hard to predict.
	But I really want to make sure that these are important questions.
	I want to make sure we give them the proper respect of the time.
	So either call in next Sunday or we can try and arrange something for a one-on-one call.
	But thank you so much.
	So just a last note.
	I think it's until...
	Tonight, is it, that you can get seven of my books, a hard copy.
	We are on a tree-slaughtering mission, of course, but seven of my books for $70 anywhere in the world, shipping included.
	In fact, I will deliver them personally in a stock outfit.
	And you can go fdrurl.com forward slash 7, S-E-V-E-N, 470, 7-0, to pick up that deal.
	Thanks to Mike for setting it up.
	I look forward to seeing y'all at various speaking engagements this summer and next week, next week, the great Brett Venat will be taking your calls and I think that as his topic, I'm not sure why, he only wants to answer questions about cross-dressing.
	So I'm not sure what that's all about but I'm sure we will all Very excitedly find out about all of that next week.
	And for the subscribers, Brett will be showing off his Frankenfurter outfit on a webcam.
	So thanks, Brett, for that.
	Have yourselves a wonderful week, everyone.
	And we will talk to you soon.
	Bye!
	As always, just as a brief addendum, if you really enjoy Free Domain Radio, please help out with financial support or sharing the videos or podcasts.
	You can do so at FDRURL.com forward slash donate.
	Thank you.

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