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April 28, 2013 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:12:13

2370 Freedomain Radio Call In Show, 28 April 2013

Stefan Molyneux, host of Freedomain Radio, discusses overcoming self-attack, helplessness, hostility, perfection, projecting onto the world and danger in group situations.

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Time	Text
	Good morning, everybody.
	It's Stefan Molyneux.
	10 o'clock.
	In the AM on the 28th of April 2013.
	I hope you're doing magnificently.
	I will not be speaking with you until the end of the month, so I must assume my happy hooker position, Xavier Hollander.
	Oh my goodness, yes, I was around in the 70s.
	And request donations, as always.
	It's something that I must do.
	I must do for the sake of philosophy.
	It's not fun.
	But it certainly is important.
	So to help get the word out, to help, as you probably know, we have employee number pi, number two, the fabulous Michael DeMarco.
	If you have questions, comments, or issues, you can contact him.
	operations at freedomainradio.com.
	He is one more barrier between me and reality, which of course is absolutely essential if you're going to explore the life of the mind.
	My wife, of course, a huge barrier between me and reality.
	My daughter, of course, since I now spend a good deal of my time engaged in fantasy play during the day, now Mike, so I feel that I'm now approaching a platonic state of pure idealized abstract bliss.
	So if you would like to help out, he's got to eat, I've got to eat now.
	You can think of us as two chirping baby birds in the nest.
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	FreeDomainRadio.com forward slash donate or FDRURL.com forward slash donate.
	We take bitcoins.
	I like how I slip the plural in there.
	Not just a bitcoin, not just part of a bitcoin, but bitcoins would really be appreciated as well.
	So, yeah, please donate and we will keep things moving on the show.
	So, that's really it for my intro.
	I now must get off my presidential knee pads and assume the listening position.
	So, James, if you would like to kick up the first cue, I'm happy to hear.
	Alright, first up today we have Robert.
	So we start with giving and we go to Rob.
	Fantastic.
	I like the duality.
	Please go ahead, Rob.
	Hi, Stefan.
	Thanks for taking my call.
	I had a question.
	I sent you an email before and I was trying to find out how much trouble do you think I might be in.
	Should I read you off the letter, perhaps?
	Okay, I should probably explain myself.
	I do web development, PHP, MySQL, CSS, JavaScript, etc.
	Should I read you off the letter?
	Would that be helpful?
	If you could just cut to the core part about the problems, that would be great.
	Well, I'm being told that I... Okay, so I got an email saying that...
	He's disappointed in the progress of two projects, and he says you better get it done by the end of this week.
	And I'm just wondering, when you get that kind of letter, does that sort of thing mean that they're considering getting rid of you, or...?
	Well, tell me a little bit more about the project.
	Is it behind schedule?
	Yeah, it is behind schedule.
	And there are actually two projects, unfortunately.
	So one project is at least, it's been in progress for about a year or two.
	I've not been in charge of it.
	I've only been dealing with it for the past eight months.
	And he really wanted to have gotten it done months before.
	And another one, same similar situation.
	And one thing he pointed out is that on a live site that a client could see, they could see a major error, something that wasn't updated.
	Technically, I'm not responsible.
	I don't know if I'm responsible for this or not, but I'm just trying to figure out...
	Okay, so he went into detail as to what the issue was and why it's wrong.
	And how these two projects, because they're not being done, they're delaying other projects.
	Right.
	I'm just wondering if the tone of the email indicates, you know...
	Are they really...
	I mean, he sounds like he's angry.
	I mean, I'm just wondering how much trouble...
	Look, I'm going to make a guess here.
	Now, it's a somewhat educated guess.
	As you know, I spent 15 years in entrepreneurial, mostly entrepreneurial software development.
	So it's unlikely...
	That he is going to fire you.
	Because what happens, of course, when you're the client is that if you're so embedded in the project, he's either going to drop the project completely or he's going to kind of try to get you finished faster.
	Because imagine if he gets rid of you and he hires someone new, how long is it going to take for that person to get up to speed on what's going on?
	Right.
	I mean, it's kind of important because, I mean, I don't plan on being in the USA for a whole lot.
	Hang on, sorry.
	I don't want to get a huge amount of backstory.
	I just want to focus on the issue.
	I'm sorry.
	No, no, no problem at all.
	So he's at your mercy.
	Because I'm assuming he can't drop the project, right?
	Right.
	He's already got a lot of sunk costs in, right?
	So if he's dropped a couple hundred K in the project, he can't just drop it because then he's left with nothing, right?
	Right.
	Well, minus a huge amount of time, money, energy, and happiness.
	So he can't drop the project.
	And he can't replace you.
	I mean, at least it would be pretty unwise at this point.
	If you're fairly close to the end, it would be fairly unwise to replace you.
	So he's really helpless, right?
	And if you're on the client side of things, helplessness is one of the worst feelings.
	I mean, it's one of the worst feelings in the world as a whole, to be helpless.
	It provokes our fight-or-flight mechanism.
	Helpless is, I don't know, you're skin diving, you get your foot caught in some giant clam, then you're helpless to get back to the surface so you can imagine the surge of adrenaline and cortisol and all that kind of good stuff that starts flooding through your system.
	He is in a vulnerable position and people forget this on the technical side, just how vulnerable the clients are to what it is that we need to get done and what it is that they need for us to finish, right?
	So, my guess is that because he's experiencing this helplessness, he's also going to experience a surge of aggression, which is what generally accompanies helplessness, right?
	And, you know, unless he's got a lot of self-knowledge and great communication skills, He's not going to be able to call you up and say, listen, I feel incredibly helpless.
	This project has been dragging on and on.
	I don't have an end date.
	I really need this to go live.
	My livelihood depends on it.
	I poured huge amounts of money into this.
	And I just, you know, every time I click around, I see errors.
	Like, I'm just, I'm going mental with frustration and fear and anger.
	And, you know, you could say it's not necessarily your fault or anything like that, but...
	So I would be aware of the vulnerability.
	I mean, it's funny, you know, everyone thinks that the bosses are the ones who are always in charge, right?
	But bosses are very helpless when it comes to actually getting things done.
	Because you don't actually do things as a boss.
	You manage people.
	And yet you're held responsible for the actions of these people.
	And...
	It's a very vulnerable position to be a client, particularly a client of IT because you can't go in and do it yourself, right?
	Right.
	The closest analogy I can think of is you really need your car to go somewhere and you drop it off to get an oil change and you come back and half the engine's on the floor and they can't tell you when it's going to be fixed, right?
	Right.
	Of course, with that, you have alternatives.
	You take a cab, but just imagine that the car is the only thing that, you know, when's it going to be done?
	I don't know.
	We found a problem with the flange Vandelay bolt or something, right?
	I mean, the widget is de-widgeted or something, and, you know, we're waiting on some parts, and you're just sitting there, right, waiting and waiting, and you're going to feel like you're the client.
	You're going to pay, and imagine if they keep charging you every day and all that.
	So that kind of helplessness is probably what's going on.
	And the key thing with IT, in my experience and opinion, is, I mean, if you're a coder, you got in it to do the coding, right?
	You want to sit down and code!
	I mean, that's what you, hey, I've got a project, great, I'm just going to start typing.
	And certainly if you're anything like me or my impulses in the IT world, it's not so much planning and communication and all that boring kind of Gantt charts and all that kind of stuff.
	You just want to get in there and start coding, man, because that actually makes things happen.
	And you probably spend a lot more time coding than you do communicating with the client, right?
	Oh, yes.
	Yeah.
	Well, I mean, if you want to have a relationship with clients, And you want to have the independence of the entrepreneurship, and you want to have the income that entrepreneurship can grant you, then you need to do more communicating and less coding.
	Right.
	You think that you're going to solve the project problems by coding, right?
	Well, in the immediate...
	Well, in the short term, yes.
	Right.
	And I would argue that you're going to solve the project problems by communicating, not by coding, fundamentally.
	Because you have been coding for a year or two or, you know, eight months or whatever, and the project problems aren't solved.
	So another day or two of coding is not going to solve the problem.
	But there's this feeling like if we just keep coding, we'll solve the problem, right?
	But the problem is that the client does not lack code.
	He's got years and years of code, right?
	So another day or two of code isn't going to solve his problem.
	What he needs is a plan.
	What he needs is an overview.
	What he needs is some sense of comfort that you have an end goal, that there's a shape to it that he can understand.
	So it may be worth it.
	I mean, if I were in your shoes, and again, I get the sense, you know, urgency code, you know?
	But, you know, my, you know, if you're lost in the woods, so to speak, you obviously feel like you need to keep walking, right?
	But that's not a great idea if you don't know where you're going.
	Because you could be walking the wrong way or whatever.
	And I don't mean this in terms of finishing the project.
	I just mean in terms of communicating with the client.
	So, you know, this is the time to, you know, pull out the map, pull out the compass, maybe the GPS, figure out where you are, you know, stop walking and get the big picture overview to make sure that when you continue, you're in the right direction.
	So, to me, this would be the time in the project where you, you know, force your hands away from the typing keyboard, the coding keyboard, and just go to the typing keyboard, and the typing keyboard would be...
	I don't know if you have this kind of project document that you share with the client, but here's what still needs to be done.
	Here's my time estimate.
	Here's 50% more of my time estimate just because that's what always happens in IT. Yeah.
	So, I mean, to sort of stop the sort of forward careening of coding, which is really just around anxiety management and doesn't help your client to understand when this damn thing is going to be done, right?
	Because it's already late, he probably doesn't have a due date that he feels comfortable about, and the problem is when you're coding, you can show some progress, but of course a lot of stuff is under the hood, optimizations and all that kind of stuff, so...
	I would call this client up and say, listen, I've been coding to try and get this thing finished and I feel good about our progress.
	You can say, I want to take a day to write up the progress that has been made and where things are still deficient, where there are still problems and give you a sense of time estimate and also to help you to prioritize What I'm going to be working on, right?
	Because, I mean, there's stuff that...
	He's going to make the website work, and then there's stuff that makes it work even better.
	And I guarantee you that at this point he wants it to work, and he'll have it work better later, so to speak.
	There are also going to be things that are more important and things that are less important in terms of functionality.
	So I would do this in a face-to-face, or at least over Skype and share a document and that kind of stuff, so that he gets a sense of the big picture.
	Because people freak out when they feel like they don't have...
	Knowledge or control over something that is essential and expensive to them.
	And so, I mean, I hope this makes some kind of sense, but I think it would be a time to stop and do the project planning to give this person a sense of where things are, how much more time can be expected.
	And, I mean, there are necessary compromises in business.
	I mean, it's funny, you know, we all sort of understand this when we go buy a car, you know, it's like, hey, if I want that, Blindspot computer laser, then I'm going to have to either cough up more cash or get rid of something else.
	Because tech people sometimes aren't always the best.
	In fact, a lot of people go into tech because they prefer computers to people, at least in terms of conflict.
	Because if you have conflict with a computer, you can do a workaround.
	I remember many years ago, We had a web program that produced reports in Microsoft Access, but unfortunately, on the Windows servers at the time, if you weren't logged in, the Access runtime wouldn't work.
	This was something completely unanticipated, and the client didn't want, of course, to leave A logged in server because that was a security risk.
	And so we ended up having to create a huge workaround where we basically would figure out the coordinates of the report and reproduce it using RTF. But how could you know?
	You can't test everything.
	And I swear to God, it seems to me like half the time with me with computers, shit just doesn't work.
	It just doesn't work.
	I mean, I'm still struggling to record video after, you know, four or five years of working.
	I still, I've tried so many different programs, and they're all great until one of them doesn't work.
	And then you freak out about it because it's like, well, if it doesn't work, then what am I going to do?
	Right?
	What am I...
	If it doesn't work...
	Like, I tried to...
	I mean, I'm down to the point where I'm doing screen recorders of the video.
	I'm actually trying to think of how I can simply point a freaking camera.
	At the screen and record that, because then at least I know I have something, even if it's not great.
	But for my debate with Stormcloud's gathering, debate is probably too kind of a word, but for my flyby frown at Stormcloud's gathering, he's in Google +, I don't know how to record Google +, so I did a screen recording, and it came out one frame a second, even though I asked it for 25 frames a second.
	It came out, and why?
	I don't know.
	Right, so stuff, I mean, I'm seriously considering doing a Mac.
	You can do a GoPro.
	I'm sorry?
	You could use a GoPro camera.
	That would work.
	What's that?
	Oh, a GoPro.
	They record independent of the computer itself, but you could use it as a secondary camera, that sort of thing.
	Oh, okay.
	Thanks, Tom.
	I can order that.
	Literally, half the day, it feels to me like half the day, it's just things don't work.
	Right.
	This is just IT. I mean, a lot of stuff does work, and with a certain amount of muscle and ingenuity, you can make things work.
	I had my first three-way with Girl Writes What and Dr.
	Warren Farrell the other day.
	And I used Uvu, which records to FLV. I've used it before, never had any problems.
	And Mike recorded on his end, too.
	But then his internet crapped out when he came back in.
	Uvu said it was recording, but then it wasn't.
	So we got the first 20 minutes of that.
	I got the whole thing, but then when I asked it to convert from its internal format to FLV, it got to 49% and then said, error occurred, which is spectacularly not helpful.
	I got a company, I uploaded it to their site, and they did fix it.
	They got me the whole video.
	It took about a week and lots of back and forth, but that's just the kind of stuff that happens all the time, and it makes you incredibly frustrated.
	Tech just doesn't work fundamentally very well.
	It works for the majority of people, web browsing, email, At word processing and so on, it works fairly well, but unfortunately for a lot of the stuff that you want to do that's claimed, it just doesn't work.
	I've probably tried now five different video recorders And all of them have problems.
	All of them have problems.
	Pamela records just a quarter of the screen.
	I use one called VaudeBurner that stops recording sometimes after about half an hour.
	And I've used one called Ivera, which sometimes the audio and video goes out of sync, no matter how fast a computer you're using.
	I mean, it just is...
	Sorry, I don't mean to get into my issues, but in tech, there's just a lot of stuff that hugely doesn't work.
	It's just annoying.
	It's distracting because I just want to do an interview and publish a video.
	It shouldn't really be that hard.
	I'm running it on an i7.
	It should have the power to save some video.
	The point is that from a customer standpoint, which is who you're facing, it's really frustrating.
	What you want is the big picture stuff.
	I mean, I personally, I just give up, you know, because I'm going to spend $100 on a program and it doesn't work.
	What am I going to do?
	Get them to build me a new version that does?
	I mean, I guess I can wait for the next version.
	But half the time, a new version causes more problems, right?
	I use a program called SuperTintin, which used to work with Pamela OK, because I want a separate audio recording from the video recording, because the audio recording is in WAV form and has two channels.
	And it used to give you a warning saying, well, I'm working with Pamela, therefore...
	And so I upgraded to a new version because...
	Sometimes Super Tintin wouldn't stop recording.
	It wouldn't stop recording when you hung up and you couldn't stop it by clicking on anything and so you'd have to reboot but then it wouldn't close the Video file with all the correct information, so then you have to upload it to someone, spend a hundred bucks to get them to process the video for you, and then it always comes back slightly too fast or too slow.
	Anyway, so these are just problems that tech has that You know, sometimes it's almost worse than just not having a solution because you spend a lot of money and time and energy just trying to get something fairly simple to work and then it just doesn't work and then you're like, okay, so if it doesn't work one out of ten times, do I just throw out one out of ten interviews?
	Anyway, again, so the point is that it is unknowable in some ways to get tech to work, but I think spending a lot more time communicating the project as a whole is probably The best way to go to insure.
	And so sit down with the person and say, okay, here's what we've gotten done.
	Because a lot of times people forget about that, right?
	So here's what we've gotten done.
	Here's what we haven't gotten done.
	What are your priorities?
	What is it that's the most important thing?
	The priority for the technical person tends to be a combination of that which you're good at and that which is interesting and challenging.
	That may not match the business objectives of the person who's paying you.
	I would really sit down and say, here's the things that still need to be done.
	Here's my time estimates.
	What do you think?
	What would be working on?
	What has the greatest business value for you?
	Because the purpose of technology is It's productivity, it's efficiency, it's profit, fundamentally.
	Now, the guy is not making any money out of paying a whole bunch of people for a website that he can't send clients to.
	That's a huge net loss, right?
	Yeah.
	Try and figure out what gives him the best drivers for his profit and try to view the project through the lens of your customer's profit and then I don't think you can particularly go wrong.
	Does that make any sense?
	Alright, so just go over what has been done, what is yet to do, and also explain to him what value is provided by what has so far been done?
	Well, yeah.
	I mean, I think you really want to understand the business purpose and the profit driver of the website, and that will help you drive what you're working on.
	on.
	So if he can get 80% of his profit from working on the next three things, then you need to know that because then the other stuff you can probably get done and he can pay you from the profit he's making from his website.
	But if he's mortgaged his house to pay you for a website that isn't coming, I mean, I trust you, he's going to go mental.
	And again, I can understand it, of course, right?
	But really try and focus on, you know, and you can ask him the basic question, what is going to get you the most money?
	What is going to make you the most profit?
	What is going to help you pay for this thing the quickest?
	Really focus, of course, on that stuff.
	Okay.
	I guess that makes sense.
	You sound entirely skeptical.
	Well, I definitely want to address the things that he wanted, the specific fixes.
	Afterwards, I mean, I guess we could discuss what he would, you know, would be overall the most beneficial.
	I guess we could discuss afterwards what would be the most beneficial to the, you know, I guess for revenue generation, as you put it.
	As long as I'm just trying to make sure I understand you correctly.
	Well, yeah, I mean, look, there's, I mean, there's, the order button makes you money, right?
	Yeah.
	So if the order button doesn't work, it's a huge loss, right?
	Right.
	The about button doesn't make you a lot of money, right?
	Correct.
	And again, I'm not saying you would, but if you're working on the about button rather than the order button, then...
	Or if you're saying, well, I'm not going to have the order.
	The order button can't work yet because if somebody's running Firefox 3 on a Newton, then there's a problem.
	And he may say, I have like three customers out of 10,000 who have that configuration, so please get me the order button working.
	And we'll fix the rest later, or we'll just tell them they need to upgrade to a Newton 2 or something like that.
	Sure.
	And I say this from experience in that when I was working on a program, I mean, just the most obscure errors might come up.
	And I was like, well, I've got to fix those, because they're errors.
	And QA has sent them back as errors.
	But then shaking my head from the business standpoint, saying, well, wait a sec.
	This is going to happen like once every six months.
	And so let's get this thing out, trap the errors, and send the people back and say, this is not a feature that's available.
	You know, that kind of stuff, right?
	Just get it working.
	And so I would really, really focus on that kind of stuff.
	To look for heaven is to live here in hell, right?
	To aim for perfection is to live in a state of perpetual discontent and deferment of profitability.
	I remember one, another job I had once said that the perfect is the enemy of the possible.
	I remember once hearing that one.
	I don't know if you've heard of that.
	Yeah, I've heard the perfect is the enemy of the good.
	And so, yeah, again, computers are a tool that...
	Should be driven towards profitability, right?
	So profitability is the driver of technology, not coding.
	Coding is a means to the end, and the end is profitability.
	Now, there's profitability for you, and there's profitability for your clients.
	And I would argue that if you're focusing on profitability for you without driving that Through the lens of profitability for your client, then you won't succeed for long as an entrepreneur.
	And again, I'm not sort of saying you, I mean, in particular, just as a general principle.
	You know, if you're not making money for your client, but you're making money for yourself, then clearly that's a win-lose.
	And I'm not saying that you're trying to do anything negative.
	Please understand that.
	I mean, it's just that you have to view yourself as a means to an end, right?
	So...
	So, way back in the day, this would be sort of very early in the podcast stream, you know, I used to record two podcasts a day in my car and one time I went through the podcast and it was about a 45-minute podcast.
	This took about two hours.
	I went through and I took out all of the errs and the ums and one or two tangents and the breaths and I, you know, really just cleaned it up so that it went really more smoothly.
	And I put it out there just as an experiment.
	And nobody noticed anything at all.
	And that was sort of instructive for me because, of course, if I had spent, you know, I had a full-time executive-level time-consuming job at the time, and if I had spent two hours per podcast, which would be an additional four hours of work a day cleaning up the podcast, my guess is that they would be 5% or 10% more enjoyable to listen to, but I wouldn't have had any time with my wife.
	You know, and since part of what philosophy is to help improve the quality of your relationships, that would seem to be counter-philosophical.
	And so anyway, so the point is that if you look for perfection, then you can very often end up With paralysis.
	And the purpose was, of course, to get the podcast out there rather than to edit them down to a state of potential perfection.
	But also the other thing too is that when you edit what you say, like when you edit a podcast, you're also editing your thinking process.
	And so it may actually be counterproductive to try and aim for perfection from a concision standpoint.
	Because even the pauses can be pregnant, so to speak.
	So anyway, I would really, really focus and say, look, I get this must be driving you crazy.
	Try and put yourself in the other person's shoes.
	And really try and figure out, if you don't know as yet, you can make your assumptions and then confirm them, which is probably the best thing to do, but really try to understand...
	What is the button that needs to be working that's going to make him the most money or the page or whatever the database reads and displays?
	And really, really focus on getting him profit as soon as humanly possible.
	All right.
	Yes.
	Yeah, that would definitely make sense.
	All right.
	Well, yeah, do drop me a line.
	Let me know how it goes.
	And, you know, be aware of some flack.
	Just because it is going to be a...
	If he's already in the state of frustration, then it's going to happen, right?
	So I just sort of point out that it's okay if he's frustrated.
	It's not going to kill anyone, but it's certainly understandable from what he's invested.
	Anything else you wanted to ask?
	Yeah, one thing I know, well, just to be clear, this guy, he's not really the...
	I don't know if I would call him a client.
	He's more like the guy who's above me.
	I'm salaried, and this guy is a, I guess, I don't know, business development or whatever.
	I'm not...
	Okay, but he has his profit, which is called his paycheck, right?
	Okay.
	So it's pretty much the same thing.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Which is that he's in charge of this and he's going up to the big boardrooms and all the big boardroom people are saying, what the hell is going on with this project?
	And he's saying, what is he saying?
	He's saying, it's not done yet.
	And they're saying, well, why isn't it done yet?
	And he's saying, because there are problems.
	It's like, well, were these problems foreseeable?
	I don't know.
	Like, at some point, he's, you know, why not just talk to you?
	He's either going to understand what's going on, Or he's going to look kind of extraneous, right?
	Sure.
	So he needs more information.
	He needs to say...
	If he can go up and say, look, I've had a talk with the developer.
	We figured out here's the profit goals that we're trying to achieve and here's how long the time is going to be and all that.
	Then he's doing something.
	He's actually...
	Got something of value.
	And he can, you know, check with them about whether it's the right stuff or not and, you know, whether he's doing the right thing.
	So I think all of that stuff is important.
	Give him something of utility.
	Sure thing.
	All right?
	All right.
	All right.
	Well, thanks very much and best of luck with it.
	I hope it works out well.
	Well, thank you very much.
	You're very welcome.
	All right.
	We're going to add Kimberly via phone.
	Hello, hello.
	Oh, hang on.
	I am just queuing up.
	Okay, it's going to be ringing.
	Just a moment.
	Kimberly, call on me.
	Kimberly, I'm the same boy I used to be.
	Hello?
	Hello?
	Hello, Miss Kimberly.
	Hello.
	How are you doing?
	I'm good.
	How are you, Stefan?
	Good.
	I'm just calling to find out if you're currently happy with your long-distance service provider.
	No, I'm kidding.
	No, I'm not actually.
	You are?
	Okay, good.
	Good.
	So, what's on your mind?
	Well, I had emailed about wanting to talk about how to sustain a healthy relationship in today's society.
	I... I have recently, over the past two years, completely changed how I think and treat other people and treat myself, but I still have problems with self-abuse whenever I do something that goes against how I feel now.
	Sorry, that goes against what?
	How I feel and try to live my life now, as opposed to before.
	How does the self-abuse show up?
	How does it show up?
	Yeah.
	Whenever I do something that I believe is wrong, I think and think.
	I'm sorry, are you back?
	Well, I was bad, you know, why are you doing that way?
	And I'm going over and over and over again in my head about it.
	And kind of talking bad to myself about myself at some point.
	Like, I can't believe I did something like that, what an idiot, that kind of stuff?
	Yes.
	Why didn't I do X or Y or I should have said so-and-so or such-and-such, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	Yes.
	Oh, yeah.
	No, I... Trust me, I... I know the feeling.
	I know the words.
	They are...
	I mean, they're very common.
	I hope you don't feel alone in this.
	I mean, the whole point of self-abuse, like all abuse, is to isolate you, but I hope you don't feel too alone in this because, of course, a lot of people...
	Yeah.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Maybe a little because...
	Maybe a little because maybe somebody really agrees with...
	...with me or how I'm wanting to live, so I try to defend myself.
	I agree with me...
	Right.
	Well, I mean, I'm going to just give you a little bit of sort of what I've seen and experienced as a parent.
	I can see myself moving into my daughter's brain every day.
	You know, the door's open, she's got movers, and my words are moving into my daughter's brain and carving her identity every day.
	The words that I use, and not just the words that I use to her, but the words that I use to myself, the words that I say about other people, the words that I say about the world.
	The attitude that I have towards the world, I am moving in to my daughter's brain every day.
	And everyone around her is moving in.
	Now, of course, she's moving into my brain too, but the real focus is the parent down.
	And so, this is the one thing that, as a parent, you just have to be very conscious of and to understand, right?
	So, you know...
	We've always had a thing in our household where she drops something, it spills.
	Even if you told her five times to be careful with something, then she drops it and spills.
	No, it's okay.
	I mean, it's a cup.
	It's sweeping up.
	You get to talk about the properties of whatever it was that broke.
	In the big scheme of things, it doesn't matter at all.
	It's like an ant's fart in a windstorm.
	It doesn't matter.
	And so the it's okay thing, she says that now.
	So she drops something or she breaks a pencil and she says that to herself.
	It's okay.
	She doesn't get too bothered by things.
	That, I think, is key.
	The degree to which parents move into the minds of their children is really interesting.
	Of course, when you look at culture and you see the replication of particular ideologies or superstitions around the world, you can see This is just the parents moving in, right?
	So why do some cultures have their kids in that topknot on their head with the cloth?
	Well, because the parents have moved into their child's brain, right?
	Why are the Jewish kids wearing the yamalki?
	Or whatever, I can't remember what it's called, the little hat.
	Well, because the parents have moved in.
	Now, sometimes the parents move in, like in terms of circumcision, a little bit more aggressively.
	Most times, It's more subtle.
	Like, why do you stand and salute one flag rather than another?
	Because your parents have moved in, and your teachers have moved in and taken up residence.
	And we are, of course, hysterical sometimes as a society about what goes into our children's bodies.
	And we are less concerned about what goes into their minds.
	And, you know, like, I mean, certainly for...
	We would very rarely give our kids over to just have somebody feed them whatever that person wanted and which we had no control over.
	We wouldn't do that.
	But we put our kids in public school and let the teachers fill their minds up with all kinds of horrible garbage, which is actually, in many ways, more dangerous to them than what could go into their bodies.
	And so, the way that I sort of view a childhood is you are a big hole as a child, and there are all of these conveyor belts, putting people's words and attitudes and prejudices and superstitions and screwed-upness and positivity and reason, and there's a big conveyor belt, and it's just moving all this stuff in.
	And tragically, because we still live in an anti-rational society for the most part, It's garbage.
	And it's toxic.
	Right?
	So one of the things that I sort of did in therapy and continue to do is figure out when we are in proximity to people, they imprint on us whether we like it or not.
	Whether we agree with them or not.
	Whether we agree with them or not, they imprint upon us.
	Like if someone's around us, their conveyor belt is going into our brain.
	And permanently.
	Because even if we disagree with it, we have to push back and disagree, and it reminds us of all the other things we disagree with, and sometimes that can be a bit of a struggle.
	And so, when we're around people, we are absorbing.
	We are being imprinted upon.
	You know, the sort of Randian superhero of perfect abstraction is not a true state.
	It's not real.
	It's not valid.
	Right?
	I think it's really important to recognize the degree to which what happens in the world around you is you are absorbing and you have absorbed throughout your history.
	If you look at these voices as that which you have absorbed involuntarily through proximity, it's one of the reasons I talk about the quality of your relationships is very, very important.
	The people you have around you are very, very important.
	If there's some kid with a runny nose and coughing and sneezing and having ice-plosions, as you used to say, then I wouldn't want that person around my child because my child's going to get sick, right?
	But we don't think necessarily of emotional contagion or irrationality contagion and so on.
	Yes, we should.
	Yeah, it's more harmful for my child to absorb a hostile inner voice than it is for her to get a cold.
	So, sorry for the long rant, but it really just is around that issue.
	Go ahead.
	It makes sense.
	No, it makes sense, and I appreciate it, because I honestly haven't really thought about it to that extent, or in that way, to that extent, and it is helpful.
	I feel as though my upbringing with my mother and She forced me to go to church for a really long time, and even if I disagreed with it, or if I disagreed with it, it was worse on me.
	You know, she would be worse towards me.
	She's abusive and all that, and I feel like what she did to me and forced me to do, as hard as I try, it just comes up again, and I guess those things that happen to me, I bring it up every time that I'm doing something wrong towards my daughter or my loved ones.
	And how do you get past that?
	How do you push that away?
	Right, so how do you deal with the inner critic, right?
	Or the inner abuser, right?
	I mean, critic is good, right?
	Critic is good, but abuse is not...
	One of the things that happens that's really tragic to victims of verbal abuse is that they don't have a differentiator between the inner abuser and the inner critic.
	They push both away as toxic, which means that they can't grow, because without the inner critic, you can't grow.
	This is one of the worst things that happens.
	It's sort of like if you have someone in your life who puts diuretics into your vegetables, then as an adult, you just avoid vegetables because it's like, well, they gave me the trot something fierce, right?
	Yeah.
	And you don't differentiate that they were mildly poisoned vegetables and you kind of need your vegetables, right?
	So when you get a lot of verbal abuse, then you can't hear the legitimate critic, the legitimate self-evaluator who actually wants you to improve and all you hear is the voice of somebody who wants you to put you down.
	So this, of course, it's hard to have a healthy relationship with self-criticism when you've been through a lot of verbal abuse because the milk gets – the mother's milk gets mixed up with the poison and you just avoid both.
	So I really – I mean it's a real challenge.
	I don't – I mean there is no magic answer but I will tell you two perspectives that I have on dealing with inner critics.
	I actually just have done a podcast recently which hasn't been released yet on how to deal with criticism.
	But I'll give you two perspectives.
	Yeah, so I'll give you two perspectives and hopefully they'll be of help.
	They're not entirely complementary, but I assume it's a multi-layered problem for you as it is for me, as it is for everyone who's been through these kinds of histories.
	So the first is that the inner abuser, the abusive voices, they are a toxin.
	They are a virus.
	And what do we want our body to do with viruses?
	Well, we want our body to isolate and kill them, right?
	So part of me has a pretty aggressive stance towards the inner abusive voice.
	Which is that it is an external toxin that was injected into me that must be killed.
	So, I'm telling you, this is part of my perspective, which is that it is dangerous to me, it is harmful to me.
	It is toxin.
	And that to indulge in it is like to...
	I mean, it's far worse than indulging in something like smoking, right?
	Yes.
	And, you know, like, I mean, Christopher Hitchens smoked and drank like a chimney and a fish, respectively, but he had a pretty great time of it.
	Until he got sick, I guess, in his early 60s and died.
	It's not quite the same with the inner critic voice.
	If you indulge in that, you may live forever, but you're not going to have much fun.
	Because you always feel unsettled around yourself.
	You always feel like there are landmines scattered throughout your living room.
	And so it's hard to just relax.
	So it is a toxin.
	And of course, the inner critic has specific, as far as I understand it, self-attack produces toxins after a while in your body, right?
	Stress hormones, cortisol, and so on, which can be damaging to your health, which can interfere with your sleep, which can suppress your appetite, or can make you addictive in various ways.
	So the inner abuser is a toxin, is a virus that must be attacked and strongly resisted, isolated, and killed off.
	So that's sort of one perspective.
	So don't be afraid to yell at your inner critic.
	Fuck you if you don't have any proof.
	Fuck you, if you don't have any proof.
	I don't mean you, of course.
	No, I understand.
	Yes.
	Yeah.
	Like, okay, I'm this, I'm that.
	Where's your proof?
	Well, fuck you, if you don't have any proof.
	Back the fuck off.
	Back the fuck off, you asshole.
	Don't talk to me like that.
	Why would you talk any differently to your inner voice than you would to anybody else?
	That's true.
	Right?
	Like, fuck, you don't get to talk to me that way.
	Give me a fucking break.
	Talk to me respectfully.
	Bring me something that's helpful, and I will be happy to listen.
	But don't you dare yell at me.
	Don't you dare yell at me.
	Right?
	And then the inner voice is all like, well, that's fine.
	I'm here.
	I can just wait.
	Nope.
	I'm going to draw this line.
	This is the boundary setting.
	Right?
	I'm going to draw this line.
	I am not going to listen to you if you're yelling at me.
	And also, that's partly out of love, right?
	Like, if someone in our life is abusing us, allowing them to continue to abuse us is harmful to them.
	Obviously, it's harmful to us.
	But if you have any shred of love for anyone in your life, then you simply cannot let them speak to you in an abusive fashion.
	It's true.
	Abuse is more damaging for the abuser than it is for the victim, right?
	It is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong.
	It is better to suffer evil than to do evil, because suffering evil does not provoke your conscience against you.
	Exactly.
	And so, yeah, so as far as the inner critic goes, you know, fuck you if you don't have any proof.
	Right?
	And if you have proof, then it better not be because you were doing what you were doing, right?
	It's like, well, you're a failure in life.
	It's like, well, partly it's because you keep yelling at me that you're a failure.
	So fuck you if you don't have any proof that isn't completely self-defined and a self-fulfilling prophecy, right?
	Yeah.
	How about getting behind me?
	How about helping me?
	Now, your inner critic, I believe, sorry, the inner abuser, does actually want to help you.
	But you have to help the inner abuser too.
	Now the inner abuser does want to help you.
	And the inner abuser is in fact trying to help you.
	This is the second perspective and this has to do with your relationships.
	So the first thing is, you know, fuck you if you don't have any proof.
	Like back off.
	Don't talk to me that way.
	But the inner abuser is in fact trying to help you.
	This is the weird thing.
	So my inner mom was actually trying to help me and protect me from my real mom.
	So the reason that we self-attack is that self-attack is safer than external attack.
	So if you're in a relationship with some parent...
	And the parent is attacking you and putting you down and so on, right?
	Then your self-esteem is going to be a threat to that parent, right?
	So if you confidently stride up to that parent and say, you are treating me incorrectly, you are not being a good parent, you are being abusive, this is unacceptable, blah-de-blah-de-blah, what does the abusive parent do?
	Beats you down harder, right?
	And beats you down until you submit.
	Usually.
	Right?
	Yes, they do.
	Very much so.
	Right.
	So, the self-attack is there to diminish the possibility of the external attack.
	Right?
	So, it's like this.
	Somebody says, listen, you are going to get slapped in the face.
	Now, either you can do it or I can do it.
	Which would you choose?
	You choose you, right?
	Yeah.
	Because you have some control if you slap yourself.
	Now, if you don't slap yourself, the other person is going to slap you, and God knows what the hell is going to happen out of that, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	Right, so we choose to self-attack because we're going to get attacked either way, but if we self-attack, we are less likely to be externally attacked.
	It is a form of self-protection.
	So on the one side, I do have the aggressive boundary setting, fuck you if you don't have any proof.
	And if you do have a proof, it's 99% likely self-fulfilling based upon your attacks.
	So there is that, setting a boundaries, and I think it's okay to be aggressive with those aspects of yourself.
	But at the same time, there is also...
	Thank you for helping me.
	Thank you for saving me.
	Thank you for making me hit myself because that's safer than being hit by someone else, right?
	Now, what to say to the inner critic, to the inner abuser, sorry, what to say to the inner abuser to me was, and I kind of got this through therapy, but what to say to the inner abuser I think is fundamentally this.
	The inner abuser It's constantly scanning, not you, not your internal environment, but your external environment.
	And the inner abuser is constantly saying, are my protection services needed?
	Are my protection services needed?
	Are my protection services needed?
	Now, if you remain in the proximity of unrepentant verbal abusers, and you say to your inner abuser, it's time to let down your guard, Your inner abuser will say, fuck you if you don't have any proof.
	It's not safe to let down our guard because these people are still in our environment.
	Your immune system doesn't stop attacking the cold virus until the cold virus is gone, is dead.
	That's why they always say, take your antibiotics till the end, otherwise you're just breeding resistance.
	So if you are still in the proximity of verbal abusers, you cannot say to your inner abuser, it's time to lay down your arms.
	Because it's not going to be possible because the same environment that provoked the inner abuser is still in effect and therefore you cannot disengage The inner abuser, when the environment that caused him or her to come into being is still around you.
	Because he's going to say, basically you're in the middle of a battle saying, it's time to put down your arms and get a nice massage.
	Time to put down your weapons and get a nice massage.
	You know, while spears and axes are whizzing by your head.
	It's like, no, I'm not taking off my helmet.
	While spears and axes.
	Now leave the battlefield.
	Leave the battlefield.
	Then you can say, it's time to take off your helmet, put down your arms and get a nice massage.
	But while you're still in the proximity of verbal abusers, you cannot, I believe, you cannot disarm your inner abuser because he's there or she's there to protect you.
	And while the battle is still raging, the helmet cannot come off.
	And this is why I say, you know, talk to people who have been verbally abusive, either get them to see the error of their ways, get them into therapy, get them to stop doing what they're doing, or disengage at least until you have found a way to calm down the inner critic.
	So I think we can practice assertiveness with abusers by drawing the clear lines around our inner abuser, but the way that you get credibility with your inner abuser and get him or her to lay down his weapons is you say, I have accepted that you were a response to trauma and I have healed or removed the source of that trauma now.
	Now we have been months free of verbal abuse, so now we can have a conversation about what we can do differently with your psychological energy.
	That's the end of my speech.
	That's my thoughts on it, and you can tell me what you think from here.
	It makes total sense and actually helps a lot, what you said.
	I haven't done the sit-down, because it has been months and months since I've been around that person.
	I haven't been around my mother in years, honestly, but we still talked on the phone.
	And then I quit talking to her for a while while I've been working on myself, and it definitely helps not being around her and not talking to her.
	Even when I just talked to her on the phone, she's abusive in that way, too.
	But I haven't sat down with myself and said that to her.
	I mean, I just never thought about it that way, about the inner critic and the inner abusive And your inner critic is probably getting kind of frustrated, sealed up in this tomb of historical repetition, right?
	He's kind of like, why do I have to keep doing this?
	We've not been a child for however X many years now, so why do I keep having to do this?
	You keep saying you want peace, so why are we still on a battlefield?
	Yes.
	Hmm.
	Why?
	Why?
	That's what...
	So I'm saying I... I mean, since you said this, I mean, I don't understand why I keep pulling it up when it's not necessary.
	She's not here anymore, I don't...
	Well, she is, in terms of the fact that you're having conversations with her that aren't about what's really important, right?
	If an abusive parent or an abusive anyone can cause you to lie or to falsify, then they've kind of won, right?
	Like, I mean, if you have important things to talk about with your mom...
	And your mom causes you to drift into inconsequential topics or gossip or, oh, my hip hurts when it rains or whatever is going on, nice weather for this time of year, then you have lost.
	Right?
	I mean, tragically, when you have an abuser in your life, everything is a battle.
	And it's a battle between history and truth.
	It's a battle between suppression and honesty.
	It's a battle between dominance and egalitarianism, right?
	So when you're on the phone with your mom, it sounds like maybe you're having a nice chit-chat, but there's a battle going on, and the battle is thou shalt not talk about history, thou shalt not talk about what's important, thou shalt not talk about thy feelings, thou shalt not reveal thy discontent, thou shalt not cause me any problems, and thou shalt not ever, thou shalt not cause me any problems, and thou shalt not ever, ever be emotionally honest with me, and that's my victory, and that's how I dance on the grave of your heart from the beginning to the end
	It may not be conscious, but that is what happens when you have somebody in your life who's done you significant harm.
	I can say they're still that way when I'm on the phone.
	Right.
	And the way you know that is the moment you start bringing up something that's honest, you can feel the whole tension, the whole resistance, the whole energy gets locked, right?
	Because that's right below the surface all the time.
	All the time.
	And leaving stuff right below the surface is like trying to walk over a shark tank.
	I guess if you're Jesus, you can get it done.
	But other than that, he's probably going to lose a heel.
	If someone can get between you and your honesty, that is pretty tragic.
	Yes, it is.
	And the thing is, too, is that you don't often feel the limitations of dysfunctional relationships until you try to break the mold, right?
	I mean, so for me, with my own history and my own family and friends and so on, I just said, you know what?
	Life is really short sometimes.
	I mean, it feels that way sometimes.
	Life is short.
	And I'm going to be honest.
	I'm going to be honest.
	And if people like the honesty, fantastic.
	If they don't like the honesty, that's important for me to know.
	Right?
	So, you don't have forever to be honest in your life, right?
	Death approaches and follows us all.
	And there is a kind of...
	In the repetition of abuse or putting yourself in self-alienating situations, there is a very early sense of eternality.
	Of immortality.
	Later.
	Get it later.
	Deal with it later.
	Fix it later.
	I'll be honest later.
	I'll have this conversation next time.
	Well, you know, one day there will come a day where there is no next time.
	And then you will probably look back and say, Jesus, what the hell was I deferring for?
	Death certainly wasn't deferring with me, but I was deferring forever.
	That's too late.
	Thank you.
	Very true.
	Hello?
	Yes, I didn't want to keep talking over you.
	I do have a problem with speaking my mind and how I feel at the time.
	Can I be really annoying?
	I'm so sorry, I just asked you to speak, but I don't know if you saw the way you phrased that.
	No.
	You said, I do have a problem with.
	Oh.
	You're talking about yourself in isolation, as if there was no influence on your upbringing.
	Would it not be fair to say, I was punished for speaking my mind?
	Yes, that's a pretty accurate description.
	Yeah, and if you say, well, I just have a problem with, I think that's a maternal voice, right?
	I mean, bad parents will do this all the time.
	They will create problems in their children, and then they will blame the children for those problems as if the parents had nothing to do with creating them.
	Right, so for instance, right, people will say, It's my kid.
	My kid.
	My property.
	Don't you dare interfere with my parenting.
	If I think it's a good idea to smack my kid, I will smack my kid.
	It's my kid.
	I'm the parent.
	My child.
	And I mean, there's such a fundamental contradiction.
	Because if you treat something as your property, it cannot have independent moral agency.
	Right?
	No.
	Like, if I stab someone wearing a glove, do I then get to say, it wasn't me, it was the glove?
	Because the glove is my property, and therefore it cannot have independent moral agency.
	That's the whole point of someone or something being your property.
	Right, so, like in the past, if a woman got into debt, the man was responsible for her debts.
	Because she was part of his property.
	So if she didn't have independent moral agency, she wouldn't go to debtor's prison, right?
	He would.
	And similarly, slaves.
	Well, I guess with slaves it was a little different because they were slaves and all that.
	So if someone says, it's my kid, my child, in a sense, basically my property, then they can never punish the child For a moral transgression.
	Because by saying the child is my property, they're saying the child has no independent moral agency.
	But if the child has no independent moral agency, then you can never punish the child for doing something wrong.
	That's like sending your glove to prison because it was on your hand when you stabbed someone.
	But the paradox, of course, is that the parents generally punish the children for moral transgressions while saying that the children are property and have no independent moral agency.
	Exactly.
	Anyway, so I just sort of...
	That was my childhood.
	Yeah, you'd be punished for stuff that was morally wrong, but at the same time, you would not be given the independence of a free moral agency, the capacity to make your own decisions.
	And the free moral agency, of course, means being able to challenge those around you.
	Oh, no, I didn't.
	Right.
	I really wasn't even allowed to talk unless they talked to me, and Anytime I had an opinion about anything or wanted to talk about how I felt or what was going on, I was dismissed and told, you know, some excuse or, you know, she has made something out about why I was having emotions.
	It was because of something else, you know?
	And I could not talk to anyone.
	I had no one around me to talk to.
	For real.
	I'm so sorry.
	I'm so sorry.
	I'm just unbelievably wretched.
	It's unbelievably wretched.
	I mean, children are so hungry to talk to their parents.
	I was saying this to Isabella just last night.
	My daughter loves to talk so much.
	I said, you like to talk so much that I've noticed something about you.
	She said, what?
	And I said, well, you will say, Daddy, I just had this idea that I really wanted to just tell you about this one thing that I just like.
	She is so afraid of being interrupted that she will pant a breath in just to make sure that because if she breathes any more slowly, somebody else might get a word in edgewise.
	She loves to talk so much.
	I'm afraid she's going to hyperventilate herself into a coma.
	Yeah, I took a rock climbing, and that's amazing.
	I mean, she made a total tangent of parental pride, right?
	So I took a rock climbing, and I helped her up at the bottom, and she just battled her way, and she almost got to the horn.
	And she's four!
	I said, how many four-year-olds get up there?
	And she said, I've never seen a four-year-old get up there, ever.
	Ever.
	Six-year-olds, maybe, but certainly not four.
	And she would not let me help her.
	She was fierce about that.
	She was going to do it herself.
	And, I mean, that's the only time that she didn't talk, was when she was concentrating on trying to.
	But other than that, it's like, Daddy, I just had this dream last night, and I really wanted to tell you what it was, because I want to make sure that...
	I promise not to interrupt you, but please don't pass out.
	That's my thought.
	And I'm sorry to bring up something happy when you were talking about something sad, but I just really wanted to reinforce the degree to which...
	I mean, boy.
	Kids so much want to connect with their parents.
	They do.
	I mean, my daughter, which is kind of an invisibility, by the way, but...
	She's always wanting to talk about anything and everything, and...
	I love her perspective on life.
	And I see her and how...
	And then I see me as a child and how my mother treated me and everyone around me treated me.
	And I just don't understand...
	I can't fathom how they thought that was okay.
	I mean, because I would never...
	I don't...
	I don't want to hurt her in any way, you know?
	Right.
	And whether it be emotional, verbal...
	Physical, you know, I don't want to hurt her in any way at all like that, and...
	I try to fight against everything that was done to me, you know, because I know how horrible it is, and...
	Every once in a while, you know, I'll get the whole self-abusive thing going, and...
	And then I'll raise my voice, and then I immediately apologize, and then...
	Even more self-abuse happens and it's like a vicious cycle.
	Well, you know, if you've had a history of starvation, it's impossible to provide a banquet for others without feeling hungry again.
	Because you remember, right?
	So, I mean, it's magnificent what you're doing with your daughter.
	It's magnificent.
	Boy, you know, if there's ever any way to combat the inner abuser, it's like, you can say, listen, I'm providing to my daughter what was not provided to me.
	What have you got to say about that?
	That's really good.
	Do you have a shred of praise for the most important revolution in the history of the world, which is to reverse the bad treatment of children in one generation?
	This isn't an incremental thing.
	This isn't like, well, you know, I was hit with a belt, so I'm only going to hit with a hand.
	And then next generation, you know, they'll hit less with a hand.
	A generation after that, they'll just scream.
	And then a generation after that, they'll just yell.
	And a generation after that, they'll just use emotional manipulation and bribes and punishments.
	And a generation after that, and then in 10 generations, we'll have peaceful parenting.
	No, this is like a one-generation revolution, which is what we need.
	I mean, the technology of fascism and suppression...
	It's moving a hell of a lot faster than parenting, which is why I think it's really important to hit the damn gas on parenting improvements.
	We don't have time for incremental changes because the powers that be are not getting incremental changes in control technology.
	So, you know, or in the weapons of destruction that they possess.
	We have to have parenting move as fast as the market, because the market is constantly spitting up shit for the rulers to use to control us.
	So we've got to move parenting faster than it's been moving, right?
	You can have a linear progression in parenting when there's a linear progression in state, but now there's massive expansions.
	It's not a straight line, right?
	A rapidly rising curve and we've got to move parenting along the same lines so we're doomed.
	Parenting will have no chance for success.
	I agree.
	That's where everything begins and you can set them up for a positive future or completely negative and struggle the rest of their life or Yeah, so you can talk to your inner critic and say, what praise do I get for the changes in parenting?
	So, I mean, I think that's magnificent.
	You should take immense pride in that.
	And I'll just...
	I have a couple other calls, but I just wanted to mention one other thing that I think is really important.
	Okay.
	If you get the difference between yourself and your parents, if you truly understand how different that is, how different that situation is, Then I think that's a huge step forward.
	I mean, I don't think that there's any greater emotional and psychological, spiritual and moral difference between a peaceful parent and an abusive parent.
	I think about this at least once a day, right?
	I think about myself and my own father.
	I think about myself and my own father, which is important.
	You probably know, my own father left when I was a baby, and I saw him a couple of times.
	And I thought, well, okay, under what circumstances would I... Leave my daughter and move to Australia or something like that and see her once every year or two or three.
	Under what circumstances would that occur?
	None.
	I cannot imagine under any circumstances under which that would occur.
	And that helps to understand the gulf.
	It helps to understand the difference.
	The reason you want to understand the gulf and the distance is this is what I say to my inner abuser.
	Oh, do you have a problem with me?
	What do you think of my parents?
	But in order to get that, you have to get the difference between you.
	The empathy versus the coldness, right?
	The connection versus the control.
	The warmth versus the viciousness.
	So I say to my inner critic, maybe I'm doing something wrong.
	Absolutely.
	Certainly could be.
	Certainly have reasons to apologize to the world, and have.
	But let's keep things in perspective.
	Let's keep things in perspective.
	If you have criticisms of behavior, am I really the person you want to be focusing on, given where I came from, given how I was raised or tumbled up as Dickens would have it, and given the behavior of those around me, am I really the person you want to be focusing on?
	Is that fair?
	Bring perspective and philosophy to your inner critic and they will have no choice but to back down.
	Because the inner critic, if you have improved what you're doing, the inner critic has no just or fair leg to stand on criticizing you above the circumstances of your origins.
	Right?
	But it's a challenge, right?
	Because the inner critic attacks you so that you will submit to the parents.
	So if you say to the inner critic, What about my parents?
	You're kind of crossing their wires, right?
	Because they're there to protect you from ever criticizing your parents.
	They're there to beat you down so you don't provoke the narcissism or vanity or psychopathy or sociopathy of the abusive parent.
	And so if you say to the inner critic, let's start focusing your supposedly objective judgments on the parents, they're like, does not compute, not what it was designed for.
	But it's important to break that programming.
	And to say, look, the inner critic gains power by pretending to have universal standards that you fall short of.
	Okay, but if those standards are universal, let's find other people in my life who fell short of them when they were adults and I was merely a child.
	Right?
	If you're going to have these objective standards, let's focus them not just on me, let's focus them on everyone.
	And then the inner critic has to admit that the standards were not objective, and that causes the inner critic to lose his power.
	The only power the inner critic has is the power of UPB, is the power of objective standards, is the power of ethics.
	So you say, okay...
	So if doing wrong is why you're getting mad at me, if being stupid or incompetent or whatever, why the hell did you never speak up when I was being yelled at or hit or abused or ignored or raped or whatever the hell was happening as a kid, right?
	Why are you so silent on the crimes of the parents and so vocal on the mistakes of me?
	How is that any kind of moral claim?
	How is that any kind of moral standard?
	It's like when people talk about, oh, I found this atheist kind of aggressive.
	I don't think any atheist has ever written books saying, let's put all the Christians to death.
	No.
	That's what the Bible says about the atheists, so let's have some perspective here.
	Exactly.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	Thank you.
	And once you can break the moral authority of the inner critic, you can actually start to have a conversation about the genesis and the purpose of what the inner critic is up to.
	And I would strongly suggest that.
	It's just scar tissue.
	It was necessary scar tissue, but it's no longer necessary, right?
	You can take your hands from your ears once the loud sound is further away.
	Thank you.
	You're very welcome, and thank you so much for bringing it up.
	It's a very, very important topic.
	I appreciate you listening and helping me.
	I do have a very positive outlook on where I'm going now, more so than I did before, which is very helpful.
	And the last thing I'll say too is, If you were to ask your daughter, how much fun is mommy when she's self-attacking, what would your daughter say?
	Not fun at all.
	Do you think it's fun?
	Do you think it's fair that your mommy self-attacks for the family she happened to be born into through no fault of her own?
	Very true.
	Is it a good thing for mommy to self-attack?
	Is it a fair thing for mommy to self-attack?
	Is it a right thing for mommy to self-attack?
	And also, what would your daughter say for mommy to self-attack?
	If you were to ask her, do you think that you might end up self-attacking if you see or feel mommy doing it all the time?
	And there are times when mommy's not emotionally available because she's self-attacking.
	Are there times when mommy has to self-manage because she's self-attacking?
	And would you like mommy to do that or to not do that?
	And do you have sympathy for what happens to mommy against her will when these beasts rise up in her chest?
	Yeah.
	Thank you.
	I mean, when she gets older, I mean, of course you can tell her and she'll understand, but I'm sure she would have nothing but sympathy.
	And she'd hold her hands and she'd give you a big Dora-covered band-aid for your heart and say, it's okay, Molly.
	Yeah, she's very sweet.
	I'm sure she is.
	I know she notices.
	I know one does.
	Sure.
	Okay.
	Sure.
	Alright, well I'm going to move on to the next caller and I hope that if you get a chance to listen to this again I would certainly recommend it but thank you so much for talking about what you're talking about.
	Thank you, I appreciate it.
	Thank you so much.
	Okay, we've got time for another caller or two.
	I don't mind if we got a little bit over because, of course, we were talking to some pretty in-depth topics, but thank you so much for the listeners.
	All right, next up we have Andy.
	Hello, Andy.
	Hey, guys.
	How's it going?
	Well, thank you.
	And you?
	I'm good.
	I'm a little sick, so sorry about my voice.
	I've kind of got two questions lined up here.
	One of them is A little more in tune with what we've been talking about so far today.
	I'm wondering if you want me to go with that or you want me to go with something that's a little bit more politically motivated?
	It's your choice, whatever is going to be the most value to you.
	I'll go with the latter then.
	So I'm going to sort of give you the question and then I'm going to elaborate a little bit on the background so it's a little easier to answer.
	Does that sound good?
	You still there?
	Yeah, sorry, go ahead.
	Yeah, okay.
	So, the question is, like, do you know of any ways, or just I want to hear your thoughts on how to perhaps bring Marxists and socialists into the anarchist and volunteerist sort of background.
	And the background for this, so that it's a little bit easier to approach, is I'm an undergraduate in college, so there are lefties everywhere.
	Specifically, it's more of an environmental type thing.
	Sustainability is a big issue.
	Cooperatives are a topic of much interest.
	I've sort of noticed that the Republicans on campus, I sort of see them as almost too far gone.
	And I should preface this, like I'm part of an activist organization on campus, sort of one of the ringleaders in the liberty activism on our campus, and I'm trying to, basically the goal is to try to, you know, bring these ideas and sort of create a more liberty-focused community within our population and try to make, you know, the youth of our generation, you know, more in tune to these ideas, which is difficult on a college campus, but I think we're making some headway.
	But anyway, The Republicans, you know, it's almost like if at this point you don't see something wrong with the paradigm that's established and you still think you can solve the problems through the established sort of pathways, then it's almost like it's going to take something very significant, personal, and close to home to shake that loose.
	You know, which is sort of what happened to me.
	My dad's business sort of tanked in 2008, and that's what kind of...
	Brought me around these ideas.
	Before then, I was a pretty staunch Republican.
	But the socialists and the Marxists, at least they know something's up.
	At least they recognize that there's a philosophical and principled problem within our society.
	I've spent a lot of energy trying to understand where these guys are coming from so I can better communicate the ideas of market anarchism and involuntarism to these guys.
	And I sort of run into two problems.
	The first one is based around the worldview.
	That these guys seem to have, and this is particularly, I've noticed, in the more intellectual people, the people that are involved in science and the people that are involved in academia.
	It's like these guys have the worldview that people suck.
	People are shit, and they're always going to be shit, and that's just how it is.
	You know, and I was listening to one of your podcasts that was on streaming before the show started about how, you know, the line of like, you know, how bad are people in the world or most people are really bad.
	And, you know, I see where that's coming from, but I also see a lot of good in people.
	And I think the motivation, one of the biggest things that's stopping some socialists from coming over to our side is this idea that people are awful and are always going to be awful.
	And the second bit is the language barrier.
	I think there is a sort of language barrier within – you can't say the word capitalism to a Marxist and have him not run away screaming.
	So I was just wondering about your thoughts on that sort of thing.
	I don't want to take up too much time with my talking.
	I want to hear your thoughts on it.
	So, yeah.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I mean, it's a good question.
	And I mean, of course, it's been discussed a number of times before in the movement as a whole.
	Murray Rothbard was very interested in joining up with the left-leaning anarchists and left-leaning communists in sort of criticisms of the system.
	But that is to assume that, let's just say somebody's a communist, that is to assume that the communists Has arrived at his communism through a process of reasoning, and not through an emotional predisposition to these ideas.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	So, there is a temptation, and this is part of the confirmation bias.
	So, we're critical of the system, so we think other people who are critical of the system must also be critical thinkers.
	In other words, they're critical of the system because they think well.
	And it's not true, for the most part.
	It's not true for the most part.
	Why are people...
	Critical of the system?
	Well, because for the most part, unless they've done a pretty extensive amount of self-knowledge and probably some therapy or at least some significant journaling and self-understanding and put politics aside and try and figure out why they're drawn to the ideas that they're drawn towards, Well, it's just emotional bias.
	People have reasoned into communism, right?
	One of the reasons that people don't like the free market is that in the free market, you either have to bring value or gratitude to an interaction.
	These are the two ways to get resources in the free market.
	You bring value or you bring gratitude.
	And for people who've had really shitty backgrounds, both of those things are really hard.
	Right, so bringing value is you bring something that you've created that you can trade with someone, right?
	So that's the win-win.
	The gratitude thing is, I mean, if you're walking down the street and you give five bucks to some panhandler and he says, fuck you, it wasn't 50 bucks, you asshole.
	I mean, how likely are you to give him five bucks tomorrow?
	Mm-hmm.
	Not hugely, right?
	Yeah.
	Whereas if he says, well, you know, thank you, brother, I appreciate that, I'll pray for you, or whatever, right?
	He's showing you some gratitude.
	Right.
	Now, people who are entitled, which means it's just like, well, I just deserve stuff because I'm alive and people should just give me stuff, they don't like to have to bring value to an interaction because that goes against their sense of entitlement that they just should get stuff.
	Right.
	They also don't like to bring gratitude, right?
	So you can be an asshole to people at the welfare office, or they still have to give you welfare, right?
	Yeah.
	But if you're an asshole to a charity, it's a little tougher.
	To keep it flowing, right?
	And so, for people who have grown up and they really are messed up to the point where they have fundamental character logic disorders and just lack empathy, they don't like being in environments where they have to provide value or gratitude.
	And so, this is one of the reasons why people are drawn to this.
	The idea that corporations Oh yeah, so sorry, somebody typed in sort of like people that arrive at atheism because they have bad experiences with religion rather than coming to atheism through rationality.
	Yes, absolutely, that's really, really important to understand.
	And so, I mean, the whole psychological mindset behind communism is a big topic.
	It might be worthwhile doing a show on this, but...
	Yeah, I think you did do a podcast on, like, psychological, like, why would someone be a Marxist?
	I looked that up and I found that, and that was interesting, yeah.
	Yeah, so if it's family stuff masquerading as political stuff, there's not much point talking about the political stuff.
	And the criticisms of the existing system don't have anything to do with, right?
	Like a lot of people fail in the free market, right?
	Now if you fail in the free market, that's a shock to the system.
	It's a shock to the system, especially if you're really vain.
	Like if you have a sort of hyperinflated sense of your own self-worth, then if you fail in the free market, that's really kind of tough, right?
	So I did this show, I don't know, a week or two ago with Skeptic Lures, with Demand of Atheist Comics.
	And one of them was screaming that the club owners all collude to keep people out of the clubs.
	And I think the dean reasonably said, well, maybe you just didn't have what the audience wanted.
	Yeah.
	So that's important.
	That's really important to understand, that when people fail in the free market, it's a blow to their vanity.
	It really is a blow to their vanity, particularly if they've been sort of a big fish in a little pond or particularly if they've been praised excessively as a child.
	You know, everything they do is wonderful.
	They're the smartest things ever.
	Ooh, that's so creative.
	That's so wonderful.
	But that's their parents, right?
	And, you know, there is kind of like a fun thing My daughter has recently started drawing real things, birds and butterflies, and I think what she's doing is beautiful.
	It's never going to hang in an art gallery, but it's great.
	She puts a lot of effort into singing and she makes up her own songs and stuff like that.
	I think they're cool.
	She's not going to fill Carnegie Hall anytime soon.
	Right?
	But I think they're great, just because I've been around from the beginning, and it's amazing to watch this kind of progress.
	But kids who are praised excessively end up with a very shallow vein false self, which is going to be unsupported by people uninterested in others.
	You know, one of the things that's really fundamental, I'm sorry to hijack, but I think it's important.
	One of the things that's fundamental that I've been thinking about in life is the degree to which, like, Other people don't really care.
	Like, so, if you move into an apartment building and you're lonely, nobody else in the apartment building really cares.
	And I don't mean, you know, because they're mean or cold or anything like that.
	It's just because people got their own lives.
	They got their own stuff.
	They got their own problems and successes and challenges and sick parents or whatever going on, right?
	So, if you move in and you're lonely and it's like, oh, the loneliness is really important to you, but nobody else really cares.
	Like, You want to be a model or an actor or a singer or you have this driving ambition to do something, to create something.
	You want to be a writer.
	Well, nobody cares.
	Really.
	I mean, you know, family and friends probably care, but, you know, unless they run publishing houses and are willing to take a real gamble, probably doesn't mean that much that they care, right?
	But when you get out of, you know, the sort of warm, gooey, amniotic sack of family, which is, you know, not good or bad, it's just your family's going to take an interest in you, hopefully, because they're your family, right?
	But when you get out into the, you know, the big people's world...
	Nobody really cares that you want to be a musician.
	Nobody really cares that you want to make your own jewelry.
	Nobody really cares that you want to design your own clothes.
	Nobody really cares.
	Not until you offer them a value.
	I mean, that's the point.
	That's what Rand said.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, offering value is not wounds.
	Yeah, nobody cares that I wanted to do a philosophy show.
	Until you have something.
	Nobody cared.
	Until you have something to offer.
	I mean, no.
	Of course.
	Why should they?
	Yeah.
	You can't universalize that.
	I mean, do I care that someone in my apartment building wants to be a great yodeler?
	I don't know.
	I guess I'll listen to them yodel, and I'll tell them if I like it, I guess if they ask me.
	But I'm not going to sit there and say, well, let's sit down and plan how you're going to get this yodeling dream of yours.
	Right?
	You know, in life, in freedom, you must be a self-starter.
	And if you praise people excessively, you are actually crippling their ability to become self-starters because you're saying you're great for breathing.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	But in the real world, nobody's great for breathing.
	Everybody does it.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	Everybody does it until they don't.
	Right?
	But nobody's great for breathing in the real world.
	To praise people excessively, to build them up, this was a danger for me when I was a kid.
	My mom wasn't ignoring me.
	She was taking massive egotistical vanity drugs from my abilities.
	When I was in grade 8, I was taking a grade 13 English class because I was a good writer.
	I took adult computer science courses when I was 13 or so.
	And all that.
	And she'd just say, oh, my son, he's doing this.
	My son, he's doing that.
	She'd just take such ego gratification out of the things that I did well.
	I wrote my first novel when I was 12 or so.
	And by the light of an alien son.
	Actually, if you think of the word son in more than one way.
	Anyway, but so...
	And I really have to make sure, I have to be careful about this with my own daughter to make sure that...
	I don't praise her for breathing, although I think it's fantastic that she does breathe, and I think she's an amazing kid.
	But I want to make sure that I don't.
	Because then what happens is I'm actually preventing her from learning how to earn things, right?
	If she just gets praised for breathing, then, like, you know, she makes some squiggles.
	She says, hey, what do you think of my squiggles?
	I say, I think they're nice.
	I like them.
	I mean, I said, personally, I prefer when you draw something that I can see that's real, although I like these colors, but that's my preference.
	Right.
	And it's not, you know, so she doesn't have to then draw anything in particular, but I'm just sort of being honest with her.
	Or, you know, if she sings a bad note, I'll say, whoa, I think that was a swing and a miss, but before it was really good.
	That kind of stuff, right?
	So there's stuff for her to work towards, there's stuff for her to progress towards.
	And so the Marxists fundamentally want something for nothing, and why do they want something for nothing?
	Right?
	The welfare state people want something for nothing.
	Why do they want something for nothing?
	Look, I mean, if you're a Marxist, you're going to talk about people exploiting the workers.
	You'd never think about capitalists.
	You'd think about governments with their taxes on the workers, and you'd think about unions, particularly closed shop unions, with their taxes on the workers, right?
	I mean, that's because those are all involuntary relationships, right?
	The government, the closed shop unions, they're all involuntary relationships.
	And so, if you wanted to look at exploitation of the workers, you'd look at...
	And also, if you wanted exploitation of the workers, you would look at government schools, government unions, government taxes, government regulations, minimum wages, all the things that interfered with the workers being able to rise in society.
	But instead, they focus on companies where people work voluntarily.
	And they think that unions are the answers.
	And I don't just mean like people getting together and wanting higher wages, which is perfectly fine.
	Yeah.
	But government unions and so on, right?
	Well, it's profit versus power.
	And this is one of my biggest hangups is that they see the problem as profit, as people making profit.
	They see the profit incentive as an exploitive relationship, whereas we see violence and power as the problem, which, I mean, to me, it's obvious which one is correct and which one is totally logically invalid.
	Yeah, and I mean, I used to say to Marxists in college many moons ago, I would say to Marxists, well, are you hoping to get something out of this conversation?
	Like, are you hoping to change my mind or at least get some information that will be of value to you?
	Right.
	And they'd say, well, yeah, why do you think I'm in this conversation?
	I said, well, that's profit, man.
	Yeah.
	You operate on profit.
	Are you hoping to get something out of coming to school that's more valuable than not coming to school?
	Well, dude, you're here because of profit.
	You're investing X amount of dollars in your college, you're deferring a bunch of income, and you're hoping to get X, Y, and Z out of your college, right?
	Right.
	I mean, that's called profit.
	You're hoping to get more out of it than you're putting into it.
	So you're here because of profit.
	You're having a conversation with me because of profit.
	You may be hoping to go bang some communist chick because of profit because you hope to get something like sexuality out of it more than you're putting into it or whatever, right?
	And so everything that you're doing is sort of based on profit.
	And so how is profit such an evil since it's driving what you're doing?
	That's different!
	You know, that's the magic word, right?
	Yeah, that's different.
	Mama, why are you hitting me because I'm hitting another kid?
	It's different.
	Oh, okay, so it's universal, but it's also not universal.
	So my profit is different from the capitalist profit.
	And then they'd say, well, I'm not exploiting people.
	by coming to university.
	I said, are you kidding me?
	Have you thought about this even for a moment?
	Of course you're exploiting, and you're actually exploiting the workers, right?
	So how much of your college fees, how much of the cost of your college are you actually paying?
	And up here in Canada, it's about 10% or at least was back then, right?
	And who's paying the difference?
	Well, all the people who don't go to college, right?
	So, who tend to be the workers, as you call them.
	And also, it's kind of offensive to call people the workers when bosses usually work longer hours, and so on, right?
	But, you know, so you're going to college, and you're going to get a higher income, and the people who aren't going to college are the ones who are subsidizing what you're doing here.
	So how are you not, you know, they're going to work polishing floors and putting in HVAC units, and you're sitting here reading about Kierkegaard, Marx, and...
	Yeah, Derrida, and they're out there sweating, putting roofing up so that you can do this.
	How is that not exploited?
	Anyway, they just, because it's not, and this is back when I thought people could be reasoned out of things they weren't reasoned into, you know, fundamental naivete of the young.
	But, so, yeah, I mean, if you really want to get through to people, I mean, you can talk about all the abstracts that you want, but my first question is, hey, how was your childhood?
	Right, yeah, that's not something I can typically ask to these guys.
	Yeah.
	Oh no, you can typically ask.
	They may not answer, but you can certainly ask it, right?
	Yeah, I mean, I can ask them, then they're going to look at me really weird.
	But, yeah, I mean, that's an approach.
	I mean, and I think that has more to do with the worldview aspect of these guys, you know, that everything sucks.
	Life is suffering, and it's supposed to be that way.
	And once you accept that, that's the only time you can really operate and whatnot.
	I mean, I don't buy it.
	I'm wondering the level to which the childhood has had an effect on that.
	I'm sorry, I just missed that part.
	On what?
	Say what?
	Sorry, you said the effect of which childhood has an effect on that.
	Just remind me what that was.
	On the worldview, that life is supposed to be suffering.
	Oh yeah, people are assholes.
	Yeah.
	Well, look, I mean, there's two ways in which people are conditioned to believing that people are assholes.
	The first is that they're raised by assholes, right?
	Right.
	Everybody has a drive to normalize their parents' behavior, right?
	So...
	So, you know, if my parents lived to 90 and I say they died young, what are people going to say?
	No, they didn't.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	Because 90 is pretty good, right?
	Whereas if I say, oh, my parents died at 40 and they died young, people would say, wow, that is tough, you know, they died young.
	Yeah.
	My perception of the average human lifespan is going to condition my judgment of my parents.
	If my parents were jerks and I say, well, it's human nature for people to be jerks, then my parents weren't jerks any more than they would be short for not being 20 feet tall.
	Because if you can move the average, you can forgive the abusers, right?
	Because if you make the average abuse, right, or human nature abuse, then your parents or whoever don't stick out as different, right?
	Right, yeah.
	They're just being people, and you can't get mad at people for just being people, right?
	Yeah.
	You know, I can't believe, you know, my mom was, you know, woefully deficient because she...
	You know, she didn't have Wolverine talons for hands.
	And I'm really angry and upset with her because she didn't have these Wolverine talons for hands.
	Yeah.
	I mean, it was like playing Pop the Balloon was much harder than it should have been because no talon hands, right?
	And people would say, are you kidding me?
	What are you getting down on your mom for not having talon hands for?
	Nobody has talon hands.
	That's myth.
	Right.
	That's a story.
	That's makeup, for God's sakes.
	Right?
	And by the way, Hugh Jackman should have had those in Les Mis.
	It would have been a much better film.
	Anyway, so the point is, like, if we can normalize human behavior into all-round arseholery, then our parents weren't bad.
	They were just people.
	And that's the most fundamental defense, is to extrapolate the negative behavior of those around us into human nature, thus to forgive them, right?
	Right.
	Okay, yeah.
	So that's the first thing, and then the second thing is, if our parents over-praised us, and we feel that people owe us the exact same amount of praise when we get out into the free, independent world, in other words, if our parents or caregivers have given us the disservice of praising us for the average, then we feel that we're just owed a whole bunch of praise and stuff, and then people are assholes for not giving it to us, right?
	Right, yeah.
	Yeah, definitely.
	So vanity and trauma are the two ways in which people extrapolate individual experience into universal humanity.
	And, you know, fortunately, of course, with the modern research in epigenetics and so on, there's so much data around to discredit the myth of human nature.
	Oh, yeah.
	And that anybody who claims that is...
	They're shooting up a giant flare saying trauma or vanity, which is two ways of saying the same thing.
	Right.
	And so, what's that song?
	Don't you forget about it.
	It's a great line that says, I won't harm you.
	I won't something you and harm your defenses.
	Vanity, insecurity.
	And those two things, vanity and insecurity, are close together, right?
	Yeah.
	So, yeah, I think people then say, well, I'm great, but people aren't recognizing my greatness, even though I'm not doing anything to display it.
	And therefore, I'm going to be resentful that people aren't paying me a legitimate debt that they owe me because they're just welchers and assholes and so on, right?
	And people are going to get mad at those who I provide to them.
	But without ever asking, well, what are you providing to others, right?
	I mean, how are you engaging people's interest and attention, right?
	Right, yeah.
	I mean, it's got to be win-win or it's not valid.
	But see, this is sort of where I find a little bit of confusion is because, you know, a lot of these guys agree with that.
	And, you know, I've talked to them about how the state will get involved and then screw up things and the workers are actually being exploited more by the state in the form of corporatism than anything else.
	And they'll agree with me, and they'll go to the point to where basically I'll outline that if someone wants to form a cooperative or a commune and mark an anarchist society, then they can, and it'll be fine, and it'll work.
	And if it doesn't work, then that's tough shit.
	I mean they basically agree with that.
	The problem is I think this notion of needs as rights, which I think we've sort of covered already.
	But there's also – well, I guess that isn't the problem.
	That's a problem.
	The other problem is the other thing that I laid out is this issue of a language barrier and vocabulary.
	And because what we might call private property, they would consider state-granted property.
	And what we call private property, they would call possession.
	Yeah, and I mean, I would focus much more, I try to focus more on the non-initiation of force, like the non-aggression principle.
	And you can get into issues of property and so on, but I mean, the property issues can be dealt with pretty easily just by saying, well, you're exercising self-ownership over your body by making this argument.
	You're responsible for the effects of your argument, just as I am.
	Hey, look, we both created property.
	And we didn't exploit each other to do it, right?
	Yeah.
	But it's certainly in agreeing with them that vast amounts of property in the world are just the gravestones of ancient and modern crimes, right?
	I mean, I certainly agree with them with that, right?
	I mean, probably 70-80% of the shit that's owned in the world is stolen.
	From someone or other.
	I mean, we can't go back and unravel all the historical blood-soaked tapestries that produce the modern configuration of ownership.
	And the question of how we transfer from state-owned to privately-owned is a challenge.
	Is a challenge.
	Some technical, some moral challenges.
	But, you know, boy, wouldn't that be a great challenge to have?
	I mean, there's no moral choice in that situation.
	I mean, it's already been taken.
	It's basically a state of nature, right?
	Yeah, it's hard.
	I mean, if it's taken from someone who's still alive, then you have some choices around that.
	No, it's definitely a mess.
	So I certainly agree with them with all of that, for sure.
	But the solution, of course, that they generally have is more power to the state.
	The reason for that, of course, is that it just tells you about the moral hypocrisy of their upbringing.
	Because if people...
	What they do is they create the biggest authority that can be imagined, whether that's the communist state or a monotheistic deity.
	They create the biggest possible authority that they can imagine, and then they exclude that authority from all moral rules.
	Right.
	So they say, well, we need this authority to enforce moral rules.
	And then you say, well, how is this authority subject to the moral rules?
	And there's a blank here.
	Now, that tells you all that you need to know about their upbringing.
	It tells you that the authority figures in their life, right, parents, priests, and teachers, inflicted moral rules that they implicitly or explicitly excluded themselves from, right?
	Because how on earth could you be blind to the fact that That, you know, the Old Testament God does immeasurable evil, or that the state violates the respect for property that it claims to enforce.
	I mean, it's so obvious.
	I mean, it's so obvious that you have to have a massive psychological block, which is years of being conditioned to exclude authority from the moral rules they're imposing on you.
	I mean, there's massive amounts of history that goes into this.
	It's not just our personal history, it's our collective history as a species.
	I mean, Socrates did it, Plato did it, Aristotle did it, Kant did it, Luther did it, Hegel did it, everyone you can imagine.
	They all said, here are the moral rules.
	God and the prince and the state and democracy and the collective They're above those moral rules.
	In fact, it's incomprehensible even to try and apply those moral rules.
	Yeah.
	Now, if Einstein came forward and said, here's my theory of relativity, I am excluded from it, what would people say?
	You're crazy, and that's obviously not true.
	I mean, it's empirically not true, but the difference between morality and physics is that, you know, the empiricism is sort of almost, it's delayed, because you don't see You don't see the cost of the viable fraction.
	No, but you wouldn't need to, right?
	I mean, the theory was accepted as at least logically consistent before it was proven in a variety of methods, right, in the 20s.
	So it's not empiricism that would validate philosophy.
	If Einstein came up to me and said, here's my general theory of relativity, I am personally excluded from it, I would say, before I even looked at the theory, I'd say, well, which is it?
	Is it a universal theory or are you excluded from it?
	Because it can't be both.
	It can't be both universal and excluding you.
	Right.
	I mean, before you'd look at anything.
	And if you said, well, it's a universal theory, but it does exclude me, then I'd say, well, I'm sorry, you're not a competent enough thinker for me to even look over this document you've given me.
	Right.
	Because you're claiming universality and simultaneously denying universality, and you don't even notice that you're doing that, which means that your brain is too fucked up to make any sense, right?
	Right.
	Which is, you know, again, moving the average.
	I mean, that's generally what people do all the time nowadays.
	So...
	Well, it's how they're trained, right?
	It's how they're trained.
	So parents continually exercise mere power and size over their children and then say, don't bully kids who are smaller than you.
	Right.
	But if you disobey me, I'm going to hit you or take away your treats or sit you in the corner for 20 minutes or whatever, right?
	Or 10 minutes or whatever.
	But don't you bully.
	So I'm going to use my size, power, and authority to make you do what I want you to do, but don't you dare use your size, power, and authority to do what you want little kids to do, because that's called bullying and that's bad.
	And then if the kid says, well, wait a second, aren't you just using your size, power, and authority to make me do what you want to do?
	Well, then the aggression escalates, so kids don't do that.
	So you end up growing up with this blind spot, which is authority imposes values, authority can contradict those values, and you can never point it out, ever.
	Right, yeah.
	Otherwise, you will incur the wrath of those in authority, and that's all statism is.
	Yeah.
	That's all statism is.
	Is the unconscious flip when a certain amount of power is reached where moral rules no longer apply.
	They're universal but they don't apply to the state.
	They're universal but they don't apply to God.
	They're universal Like, all who would follow me says, Jesus, sell everything you own and follow me, and don't have a nickel to rub together in your pocket.
	Right.
	And that's Christianity, and the Vatican is worth, what, $30 billion, and there are thrones of gold?
	I mean, because when you get to a big enough authority, you inflict moral rules.
	You are not subjected to moral rules, you understand?
	Right.
	when a single person can come up with moral rules that are arbitrary and not derived from reason and natural law, then the person at the top automatically has to be exempt from it.
	Right.
	So there's a whole history that people have buried way down deep, almost into their very freaking DNA.
	There's this whole history that people have, which is moral rules inflicted on children that the moral authorities are excluded from.
	Right.
	So I was told not to bully children, but when I did something that wasn't even bullying, which was climb over a fence to get a ball, I was caned in boarding school.
	So which is worse, bullying a child or hitting a child for climbing over a wall?
	Yeah.
	But you see, you can't ever say to those in authority, well, aren't you just bullying me?
	I mean, if I caned a kid for doing something I didn't like that wasn't harmful to anyone, I mean, my God, I would be kicked out of school.
	But you as the headmaster can do that to me, and you're doing a good job.
	Right.
	And you and I have sort of, we've discussed that before in terms of the backlash from faculty on campus.
	And that's sort of another part of my question.
	There's some really smart people that I know that I discuss these things with.
	And I'm not just talking about people who do research.
	I'm talking about inventors, people who are really, really well versed in creative people.
	They're using both sides.
	They're doing things beyond just regurgitating material.
	They're actually creating, but they They don't think this way.
	And if you challenge it, then you're sort of demonized.
	Well, listen, all of society rests on this.
	Everything.
	Everything that is around us rests on this.
	And it also includes...
	See, people say, well, corporations are top-down.
	Corporations are hierarchical.
	But the question is, why?
	Yeah.
	How do we know that that is the best configuration for economic advantage?
	I don't believe that it is.
	I mean, I ran my corporation very flat, very participative, and we did very well.
	Better, right?
	So how is it, like, people look at corporations like they somehow impose things on everyone.
	Look, corporations have got to take the broken up, smashed up people that come out of churches and government schools.
	Right, who have screwed up relationships with authority, who have a distinct lack of capacity to negotiate, right?
	What is it Job says to the Lord?
	Can we not reason together?
	Yeah.
	Why are you blowing up my family and covering me in pustules, killing my farm, salting my earth?
	Why can we not reason together?
	Well, there's no reasoning.
	Right?
	God tells you he loves you, as the saying goes, and then he invented a hell, just in case you don't love him back.
	Right, yeah.
	So corporations, like employers, have to try and build their economic cathedrals out of Really, really smashed up rocks and bits of gum and bat's wings and goblin's teeth and all the other things you'd find in Gollum's pocket, right?
	So corporations reflect what employers inherit from superstition and statism.
	And so societal structures form around the impressions of early childhood.
	They form around them.
	them, they coalesce around them.
	Childhoods are the structures and the social structures, sorry, the childhoods are the objects and the social structures are like the ice that forms around the objects.
	And people look at the ice and say, well, the ice is the problem.
	No, the ice is going to cling to that which is underneath.
	And the early childhood experiences of authority, of morality, of universality, of power, of all that, of organization, of negotiation, That is what forms the structure, and everything else around in society forms around those structures.
	And that's how it perpetuates itself, right?
	It's a virus that perpetuates itself through early childhood experiences.
	And so when you're talking about communism, you're talking about an incredible divergence of moral universality, right?
	Which is...
	Well, you can't have anything that exploits the workers, so the government's going to tell the workers what to do.
	Wait a sec.
	You can't have private property, so the government basically is going to own everything.
	And it's like, are you, like, it's so insane that it only makes sense when you look at all of the history they've had, people have had.
	Yeah.
	What really gets me is when someone calls themselves a Stalinist, you know?
	And, like, I don't understand how you could...
	Blatantly ignore all of the death and destruction that was directly caused by the Soviet Union and still praise it.
	But no, dude, it's got nothing to do with the Soviet Union.
	They're saying, my dad was like Stalin and I want to be like my dad.
	That's all they're saying.
	It's all they're saying.
	I mean, again, most times when people are talking about politics, they're talking about themselves.
	Talking about their families, talking about their upbringing, talking about their priests, talking about their teachers.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Well, I mean, you're talking about themselves personally as well.
	I mean, ultimately, politics is just like everything else, is an attempt to universalize something.
	So, like, you sort of have to use yourself as a basis.
	Does that make sense?
	I don't know.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	Yes.
	And of course, when people challenge the state, right?
	So when you say, so UPB, you know, really messes with people's heads, right?
	Because you're breaking that whole pattern.
	This is why it was such a nerve-wracking book to write.
	I mean, because I'm breaking that whole...
	So if you accept UPB, I mean, of course, it's like the state, blah, blah, blah.
	But what happens is it really is a direct confrontation to your upbringing, to your history, to your parents, to your authority figures, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	And it's the most fundamental and direct challenge to the status of the world that exists, because if morality is universal, then all the rules that parents inflict on their children, the parents must be 10,000 times more subject to those rules themselves and 10,000 times more morally culpable for breaking those rules.
	Right.
	And the state is a billion times, so...
	The state is a billion times, that's right.
	Yeah.
	And the priests and the church and all this and that, right?
	Right.
	Yep.
	I mean, I guess the hardest part for me, you know, just in general, not even just dealing with communists and Marxists, but for communicating these ideas in general to the larger population as an activist for the time that I am able to be an activist, like, I, it's just, because I have these ideas in my head now.
	I've logically validated them.
	them, I don't want to use the word believe, but I do believe them because I've rationally thought it through.
	And I almost don't remember what it was like to think the other way.
	Right, right.
	I just completely don't remember.
	So it's hard for me to empathize because it's like my mind has erased all the smirches of it.
	Like it's just, it's all gone.
	Right, right.
	No, you're right.
	And that is, of course, one of the challenges when you have a great deal of knowledge is to remember what it was like to not have that knowledge.
	And that is a great challenge for people, of course.
	And this is why those who have great knowledge are often the worst teachers, because they forget.
	And I may not fall into this trap all the time myself as well.
	So I can completely understand that.
	Now, can I tell you something really silly and ridiculous?
	Sure.
	Yeah, I think I can.
	All right.
	I just looked this up while I was talking.
	Ah, I won't harm you or touch your defenses, vanity, insecurity.
	Sorry, I got the words wrong.
	What song is that?
	It was bothering me.
	Oh, that's Don't You Forget About Me by Simple Minds.
	Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Okay, all right, got it.
	I couldn't believe I couldn't remember those lyrics.
	It's a good song.
	I'm only 20.
	Although I prefer...
	I don't know these things.
	Gotta move on down to the waterfront.
	Anyway, so I hope that helps.
	Yeah, yeah.
	To process some of this stuff, but try not to get dragged into the defensive abstractions and go to the root causes of the belief.
	Yeah, I mean, I've gotten better at that.
	I mean, honestly, the biggest part for me, I think, recently that I sort of discovered is just to stop obsessing over the fact that somebody doesn't really buy it.
	I mean, the hardest thing is when your friends don't do it.
	But then it's sort of a matter of just like, okay, they're your friends for different reasons.
	Then philosophy, you know, and if it gets to the point to where you can't be friends with them anymore because they're just so blatantly statist, then just don't be friends with them anymore.
	You deal with it as you can until you can't.
	Well, actually, they're just revealing that they don't want to be friends with you because they'd rather see you locked in a cage with a potential rapist than being able to act on your own conscience.
	I mean, people think we reject others.
	It's like, no, no, no, you can go.
	This is what I talked about in New York, so I don't have to get into it here.
	But, you know, you can say to a statist, you can go anywhere, right?
	It's that line from the song, you can go anywhere you want.
	You just got to stay here, closing time, right?
	I don't know why it's a musical number today.
	But your status can go anywhere he wants, just not to your house, whereas the status says, you can't go anywhere except in this cage for disagreeing with me, right?
	Right.
	Anarchy says, go anywhere you want, just don't come to my house.
	The status says, sorry, you can't go anywhere you want except for a cage mate with Bubba, don't drop the soap situation.
	Yeah, yeah.
	So I hope that helps.
	And the other thing to remember, too, is that there's a great...
	I can't remember who said it, but there was a great piece of advice when dealing with sociopaths.
	And, you know, I'm not saying that all status sociopaths, that would be an insult to sociopaths.
	Oh, I'm just kidding.
	Am I? I don't know.
	Anyway, but for dealing with sociopaths, it's not that they don't see, it's just that they disagree.
	Right?
	Because there's this...
	When you have the truth, you feel that, well, if people can just see the truth, naturally they will love the truth.
	Yeah.
	Like if I can just find a way to make it entertaining or convincing or energetic or enjoyable or metaphor-laced or bad-song-laced enough, then they'll see the truth and then they'll get it and they'll want it.
	And it's because that was our experience.
	We see the truth and it's like, oh, got to get me some of that, some more of that.
	Oh, I'll take more of that.
	Put my head in the whole trough of truth and drink deep till I, you know, fart truth out of my armpits or whatever, right?
	Right.
	So we want that, but the reality is that it's not that they don't see the truth, they just disagree, fundamentally, right?
	And so I think, yeah, truth equals curry, thanks, James.
	And not a mild curry, either.
	So people may see this stuff, and...
	They like it.
	Lots of people like the state.
	They get stuff for nothing.
	They don't have to grow to mature to provide either value or appreciation for what they're given in terms of charity.
	They get power over others.
	They get lots of resources.
	Also, the other thing, too, is that When you challenge people's ideas about the state, particularly when they're young, you are challenging not just how they were raised, but how they're going to raise their children, right?
	So if you say, well, if you can convince them that rules are universal, the moral rules that are claimed to be universal should in fact be universal.
	Then what happens is they get an unconscious, oh shit, I'm going to have to parent completely different than how I was parented.
	That's what he was talking about earlier.
	That's really upsetting for people.
	They want to discharge all of the All of the stored up poison and venom that they got from the humiliations they experienced as children, they want to have children to discharge those, a lot of people, onto others.
	And if you block that and say, well, that's immoral, then they've got to deal with their shit themselves rather than discharging it on the next generation.
	That's tough for people, too.
	So, anyway, I just wanted to mention these things.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	I'll let you get on to your next caller.
	But thanks, man.
	I appreciate it.
	You're welcome.
	Great topic.
	And do we have another caller, Jim?
	Yes, we have Marcus online.
	All right.
	Marcus, let's keep it brief.
	Or Boxers.
	It's up to you.
	Go ahead.
	Hey, I wanted to talk about self-expression and maybe a little bit more about self-criticism and stuff.
	I've been trying to express myself more and more and I've been doing it with individuals and I've been managing to do that.
	I'm finding it really hard to express myself in groups of people.
	Maybe I want to ask why it's so hard to express yourself in a group.
	Why do you think it's hard for you to do that?
	Well, it might be related to my past with my parents, but I mean, maybe it has to do with the group has like this power, so maybe I'm afraid of this power over me, maybe something like that.
	All right.
	I mean, I can tell you some thoughts, or you can talk some more about your history, whichever you prefer.
	Well, I just maybe mentioned that my family was like, my mother and my father kind of hated each other and when talking to each of them, they would always like talk down about the other parents.
	It was like this kind of, whenever I was talking to one parent, I always had to hate the other parent.
	And, you know, so there wasn't any unity.
	There was this separation.
	I don't know, I'm still maybe confused, but maybe you can give yourself Well, I'm very sorry about that.
	I mean, talk about a no-win situation.
	I guess there's a momentary win of putting the other parent down, but how you can ever make a child happy by putting down half of their lineage?
	I think Dr.
	Farrell has pointed this out with regards to parenting, that if the mom puts down the dad to the son, Well, the son is half the dad, you know, genetically, hopefully, environmentally.
	And so you cannot insult the other parent without insulting the child.
	It's so ridiculously selfish and destructive that there are almost no words for it.
	So I'm very sorry.
	I'm very sorry that that was your experience.
	I mean, I, you know, I would say, you know, let's go home.
	I want to see mama.
	I want to chat with mama.
	You know, I miss mama.
	And I was constantly saying, and I think my daughter has the best mom in the world.
	I mean, She is the best mom in the world.
	Incredibly...
	You think you love someone before you have kids and you see them parents and it's just like, oh my god, I didn't even know what love was before!
	And now I want to know what love is.
	Oh, it's coming back!
	All the music.
	But...
	So I'm sorry that that was your experience of this cheap one-upmanship from one parent to the other, which you have – I mean, you get that it's, you know, partly about you, and it also means that you have to reject the influences of both parents because that's going to get you in trouble with the other parent, right?
	I mean, my mom was terrible that way.
	She's constantly talking about – I go to my brother, oh, you remind me so much of your father.
	You're exactly like him.
	And it's like, well, you got rid of him, right?
	So that's not good.
	So, I mean, he had a wretched time with my mom.
	Just terrible, terrible stuff.
	Whereas I was like the golden boy who reminded her of her father, who she had great respect for and all that.
	So we had quite a different Janus-faced mom.
	Could you give your thoughts about...
	I'm really sorry about that.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Could you give your thoughts about why would it be so hard to express...
	Express yourself in a group.
	Well, a group is almost innately, at least in the current world, a group is almost innately a vicious entity.
	Because a group is going to almost always move to the lowest common denominator.
	If you're in a group of 20 people, and it's a sort of randomly selected kind of thing, for sure, statistically, there's likely to be at least one sociopath.
	Sociopaths are 4% or 1 in 25.
	In a classroom, there's almost for sure going to be a sociopath.
	And that sociopath is going to be invisible.
	And it might be the teacher.
	He's part of the equation too, right?
	And so when you're in a group, there's this lowest common denominator.
	What people do in general, this is my observation, I'm not going to claim that this is proven universally, but my observation has been very consistent throughout my life, which is that when there's a problem in a group, when there's a conflict, when there's a problem, people figure out who has the most power and who is the meanest, and they then side with that person in the moment.
	That is almost invariably the way things work in almost any group environment outside of FDR and a couple of other ones, I'm sure.
	So when there's a conflict or a problem, people figure out, who can do me the most damage?
	I'm going to side with that person.
	Now, the tragedy is that good people don't generally Do a lot of damage to other people just for disagreeing with them, right?
	But sociopaths and psychopaths and other assorted evildoers will attack you for humiliating them as they perceive it, for disagreeing with them, for harming their interests, and so on, right?
	And, you know, most of suing, most of torts, and most of these, I mean, it's just driven by people taking vengeance on others for harming their interests.
	It doesn't have anything to do with justice or truth, but So in a group to, you know, again, if it's a very structured group where there are some particular rules like, you know, a group therapy or something like that, but for the most part in an unstructured average Muggle group, If you're putting forward new ideas, then the response will be the lowest common denominator.
	You'll pick the least creative, the lowest moral standard, the most vicious.
	That is going to condition the entire response.
	Most people, when there's a conflict in a group, who's going to do me the most damage?
	Who's the most dangerous?
	Who's the most irrational?
	That's the person I'm going to side with against whoever else, because the good people aren't going to do me much harm, but the bad people can do me a lot of harm.
	So, in a group it makes sense to me that you would have that kind of caution because that's how things tend to work out.
	Okay, there is indeed this one dominant and kind of mean person in that particular group that I'm trying to express myself in.
	But my question would be then, what would you do?
	Well, you can't do anything.
	No, seriously.
	No, you can't do anything with those groups, right?
	So if there's a dominant abuser in a group and that group is then harming you, you know, if you try and take on the dominant abuser, All that will happen, in my prediction, I could be wrong, this is just my prediction, my experience, all that will happen is that everyone will, consciously or unconsciously, they will side with the dominant abuser and they will participate in that abuser's attack upon you.
	And they may, you may get one or two people over a year or two who might offer you a little bit of private support, but...
	Never, ever publicly.
	And certainly if you remind them of their private support in a public arena, they will say that you just must have misunderstood them or whatever.
	But this is how groups...
	This is why we're put into groups fundamentally as children.
	We're put into groups fundamentally as children so that the local evildoer can do the work of harming us that the authorities don't want to make it too obvious that they're doing stuff that harm us, right?
	So we're put in groups because...
	Like, why are we all put in...
	30 rows in public school because everybody knows that the lowest common denominator is going to run the emotional interactions and that's how we are going to get brutalized and fenced in and that's how we're going to become afraid of our fellow slaves.
	And the near universality of betrayal in a tribal situation where everybody defers to the evil, attacks the good.
	Because, I mean, and that's just natural.
	I mean, it's self-protection.
	And it's a pretty sane thing to do in many ways, right?
	I mean, because the good person isn't going to try and fuck up your life, but the bad person might.
	From a cost-benefit analysis, siding with the dangerous person against the good person is the best way to keep your life on a safer course as possible.
	This is why authority loves groups, because groups will get you the slave-on-slave violence, and groups teach good people about the impotence of virtue when everybody sides with immorality.
	And, I mean, how many times have you ever seen it?
	And, I mean, you see this stuff happening all the time, like with cyberbullying and bullying in school and so on.
	Like, how many times do, you know, when one kid bullies another kid, do the other 30 kids stand up and say, absolutely no way, that is completely wrong, we're going to ostracize the bully until they do the right thing?
	No.
	They're all afraid the bully's going to turn on them next, and so there's a social calculation of, well, I better side with the bully, otherwise the bully's going to turn on me.
	And sorry about the victim, but, you know, I can't do anything to help them.
	Of course, if everyone stood up to the bully, the bully would be impotent and it would all end, but everybody makes a rational calculation of cost and benefit, of siding with the bully or opposing the bully, and so that's what they do.
	I'd like to mention one more thing.
	I understand that it might not be a good idea to try to enter the group, but I still have to try because there's this girl amongst the group.
	There is still something I can do.
	Maybe if I get more power than the dominant guy, Well, okay, but how are you going to get more power?
	Because power in a group setting contemporarily means the power to harm other people.
	Right?
	So you don't want that power in the group, right?
	But it could be courage.
	It could be courage to stand up for myself.
	That could also mean power.
	Oh, so you mean you stand up to the bully?
	Yeah, possibly, yeah.
	I mean, look, I stand up to bullies.
	I have no problem with people standing up to bullies.
	But just recognize that when you stand up to a bully, you will see the moral nature of the people around you.
	You know, most people taking huge steps backwards and pretending nothing's happening and watching you get mauled and all that and then patting themselves on the back for being such great people.
	Standing up to bullying, the most painful thing is not standing up to the bully, it's seeing everybody else's reaction to you standing up to the bully and how people, they don't join in, they don't help you out, they'll either go completely paralyzed or they will side with the bully.
	They'll support you privately and damn you publicly and so on.
	I'm sorry, go ahead.
	Isn't that too high of a standard to apply to people?
	For example, when I like a girl who's in the group, isn't that too high of a standard to expect from a girl to be that courageous, like stand up against police and stuff?
	Well, I don't know about too high a standard or not.
	I mean, don't fault me as a moralist for having high standards, but what I would say is that if you want to find out if the woman is worthy of your attentions, then if you stand up to the bully and then she helps you, well, you've got to keep her, right?
	But if she paralyzes, if she flakes out, if she backs down, if she won't support you, if she refuses to talk about it or avoids the topic and so on, then I would say not worth your time.
	So yeah, I think it's a pretty good way of figuring that out.
	Yeah, it is.
	Okay, I guess I got my help from you right now.
	Well, best of luck to you.
	I certainly wouldn't say, you know, stand up to the bully as a moral principle, because...
	Bullies can be harmful, right?
	Yeah, you just have to.
	I have to try because of this girl.
	Doing it because of a girl, you're doing a mating display, right?
	You're trying to gain the alpha male position and so on.
	If the woman is going to choose you because you've taken the alpha male position, I also would not recognize that As a particularly great way to start a relationship, but if she joins in with your moral courage, I think that would be great.
	So I wish you the best, and I hope it works out.
	Do drop me a line if you get a chance.
	Let me know how it goes, if you go ahead with it.
	Okay.
	Okay, thanks.
	Alright.
	Well, you're very welcome and thank you everybody for such a wonderful show.
	I just wanted to express my incredibly deep and sincere admiration for the wonderful listenership of this show.
	You guys have the best questions and the best comments and everything is just fantastic.
	I'm really, really privileged and honored to be a part of this conversation with you.
	Thank you for your trust.
	And your openness and your honesty in dealing with the natural trials and tribulations of living in a violent, soaked world.
	So, have yourselves a wonderful week.
	Once more, under the donations, dear friends, if you would like to help out, it's fdrurl.com forward slash...
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	Have a wonderful week.
	I'll talk to you soon.

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