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June 16, 2013 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:37:17

2408 Freedomain Radio Call In Show June 16th, 2013

Stefan Molyneux, host of Freedomain Radio, discusses broken thinking, reason versus emotion, being a magnet for virtue, does a dream analysis, elevating children to the moral status of your average pet and ending childism worldwide.

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	Hello, hello, one and all.
	Welcome to the Free Domain Radio Sunday philosophy call in megaborg brain extravaganza.
	I hope you're doing very well.
	It's me.
	I feel so familiar with you now.
	Not only would I not introduce myself, but that is my hand on your thigh.
	Oh, yes.
	So, you've been working out.
	Flex for me, baby!
	So, I hope you're doing well.
	I wanted to mention that on the 30th of this month, the one, the only great Jeffrey Tucker will be co-hosting the Sunday show.
	If you would like to ask him questions, About how to achieve his kind of magnificent sartorial splendor, please email operations at freedomainradio.com.
	As usual, of course, if you have questions that you'd like me to throw my frontal lobes at and tackle, much like a squid taking down a ghost, you can email mailbag at freedomainradio.com.
	So, I hope you're doing well.
	I hope you're having a great, great week.
	My week is not bad.
	Not bad.
	I feel the treatment for the cancer is...
	Wearing me down just a little bit.
	I've done three out of four and just one more to go early next month and then I'm done that and then a little bit of radiation because I really feel that the back of my throat has not received sufficient tanning during the course of my life so I will be rectifying that and so I feel a little bit it's just a little rundown.
	What happens of course for those who don't know all the excitement of this stuff is that I mean, you have your white blood cells and your red blood cells, and your white blood cells fight infections, and your red blood cells carry oxygen, of course, around your body, and the production of these is interfered with through chemotherapy, so the white blood cells replenish relatively quickly.
	I think it's sort of around a 10-day, 15-day cycle.
	But the red blood cells are much slower.
	It's, I think, about a 60 to 90 day cycle, so you get progressively a little bit less energy as you go along.
	As yet, it remains somewhat variable, like yesterday, so I had like an hour and a half nap in the afternoon, and then I had a pretty hard workout so it's hard to know but I just yeah I'm feeling a little bit a little bit rundown and that's gonna last a little bit after the chemo and yeah in our socialist paradise Of free healthcare here.
	I was offered a treatment which is supposed to stimulate white blood cell production, which will set me back over two treatments.
	Only about $3,000.
	Isn't it great when you pay over 50% in taxation that you don't have to pay for any other healthcare?
	Oh wait!
	Except for the $3,000 worth of treatment.
	That reduces the chance of infection when your white blood cell count is low.
	So I remain mulling that one over.
	But anyway.
	Other than that, things are going well.
	Of course, I really appreciate everybody's kind, well, and wonderful wishes.
	It does me good to feel everybody's love, and of course I return it as well.
	We are engaged in an incredibly gripping and powerful conversation here, a paroxysm of rational geister thought the world, I think, has scarcely seen before, largely as a result of this technology.
	The kindness, wisdom, generosity of you, the listener.
	You know, this show is driven by your energy.
	I sort of feel sometimes like those old western movies where a guy is standing on like two horses trying to catch two other horses and this show feels a little bit like I'm Hosting it, but mostly it feels like I'm just hanging on and trying to make sure it doesn't go off a cliff or into a wall, because you guys' energy drives so much of this conversation, and I really appreciate that.
	I just did a video, Life in a Mental Zombie Apocalypse A Day in the Life of YouTube comments, and I even appreciate the people who who comment in these terrible ways and I actually don't mean to sort of mock them or anything like that but I mean I guess I do a little bit but but the reality is what I think is is so terrible about modern thinking is the degree to which we think we can think when we can't right that's that's the problem all right irrationality is the new religion in that religion
	gives you answers that prevents you looking for more answers and in fact makes you hostile to more answers to real answers that give you the illusion of answers And modern vanity, the modern vanity of thinking because you can type, you can think, the modern vanity of thinking that because you're good at video games, you're good at philosophy, that modern vanity prevents people from realizing how not good at thinking they are.
	And irrationality is fundamentally the new religion that prevents the exploration of real answers by providing illusory answers.
	Look, I can get angry.
	Look, I can type in caps.
	Look, I can nitpick.
	Therefore I can think.
	And it's really tragic.
	You know, when you do...
	I think I understand why people feel this way.
	Because having gone through it myself, once you realize...
	You know, it's like if you ever like to sing.
	I love to sing myself.
	It's a great joy in my life.
	There is always that moment.
	I guess, you know, Pavarotti, Freddie Mercury, other people, Michael Buble, people with Josh Groban, people with great silvery pipes, they probably don't feel this when they first listen to a recording of themselves.
	Singing back, they think like, wow, that's even better than I thought.
	But for most of us who like to sing, you will record yourself, you'll hear yourself back, and you say, oh, that's why I don't feel stadiums.
	And it's almost like you think you're sounding like Sting and then you end up hearing yourself back sounding like William Hung and that's really tragic.
	So when people do get a sense of how badly they think or how really what they do is anti-thinking, it's really painful.
	I mean, it's humiliating, it's humbling, you know, our first exposure with that which humbles us always feels humiliating because because we haven't been told that we're not good, right?
	I saw a It's a dance contest.
	It's some reality TV. It's not Dancing with the Stars.
	It's just some...
	Oh, So You Think You Can Dance, I think it's called.
	I was flipping through the channels one day and I watched an audition and there was this guy.
	He was terrible.
	And, you know, wrongly dressed for the occasion and so on.
	And the judges actually, and he was a pretty young guy, not too young, but pretty young.
	And the judges actually turned to his mother and said, why are you bringing him here?
	Why are you encouraging this?
	You can see from the outside what he's doing.
	This is not good for him.
	They weren't actually that upset with him.
	They were upset with his mother for filling him so full of these delusions that he literally thought he could go and win a dance contest when he barely knew how to move from one side of the stage to the other.
	And he wasn't mentally handicapped.
	I mean, he had a conversation with them.
	But once you realize how badly you can think, it's incredibly painful.
	Because you're supposed to have been taught how to think.
	Wasn't that the whole point of our education was to learn how to reason, to learn how to think, to learn how to question?
	But no, that was the exact opposite of the point of our education.
	It was to turn us into nice little Prussian worker ants and lead toy soldiers to be hurled into whatever welfare, warfare, fire the leaders happened to have on their itchy trigger fingers at the time pointed at.
	It's very humiliating when you realize what's been taken from you.
	By being trained to not think.
	By being trained to react.
	By being trained to be emotional.
	By being trained to attack.
	By being trained to deflect and divert.
	Once you realize how you've been crippled by the system, it's incredibly painful.
	And you realize how complicit everyone is in you becoming crippled.
	The school cannot break you if your parents are making you.
	But I don't think school can make you much if your parents are breaking you.
	But it's impossible to grow up not knowing how to think without almost everyone in your life being complicit in that process.
	For their own reasons, whether they're selfish or defensive, doesn't really matter.
	But once you realize that you have had your birthright, I mean, is this not the essence of what it is to be a human being is to reason?
	Is this not the essence of what it is to be human to know how to reason?
	Is there anything else which differentiates us fundamentally from all other carbon-based life forms than our ability to conceptualize, to reason, to philosophize?
	Philosophy, for want of a better phrase, is the soul of the species.
	Philosophy is the soul of the species.
	It is what differentiates us from all other animals, as a soul differentiates us from all other animals in theological terms.
	And when your natural capacity to reason is blocked, is overturned, is crushed, is turned into a fine powder of insomniac regret, Your soul has been taken from you.
	This is why, of course, the stories of the undead who thirst for brains but never get their fill are so common in the world because this situation is so common in the world and so tragic and so necessary for the horrors of the system that we live in.
	So once you realize that your ability to reason is gone has been stripped away from you the way it always seemed to me was that my brain was removed from my skull pushed up against a cheese grater and ground until there were huge gaping craters in it where my essence my humanity my soul should have been and you can reclaim it and you can rebuild it and you are stronger you are the six million dollar man you are stronger afterwards
	But it is a gruesome and grueling process, right?
	The undead don't look dead if you walk with them.
	But when you walk against them, well, you see them for what they are and they see you for what you are.
	And you're like Samwise and Frodo walking with the orcs.
	Do not let them see too deep under your helmet.
	Just pretend you're a very short goblin.
	Cross your fingers and hope to cross through.
	So here, we resurrect.
	Here, we recover.
	Here, we regrow.
	And here, we do save the future.
	Speaking of which, let's bring up the first caller.
	First up today is Danny.
	Hello Danny.
	Hello.
	Hi.
	What's on your mind?
	Okay, you can hear me, right?
	Yes.
	Okay, all right, I wasn't sure.
	All right, Stephan, I've tried calling him a few times in the last couple weeks, and for various reasons, it just doesn't come to pass.
	The last year, maybe two years, after I'd become kind of an avowed atheist, And staunch, very staunch anarchists, both very staunch militants even.
	I've been kind of circling this, the notion of nihilism after I had become an atheist and it's driven me to a point where I don't know if it's an empathy issue or an emotional issue, but I see myself as...
	Have you ever seen the movie The Watchmen?
	I think I watched the first third of it.
	I did not find it very gripping and I never finished it, but I think I remember the basic idea.
	Okay.
	Well, one of the characters, Dr.
	Manhattan, as you watch him, he is increasingly detached and just interested in human affairs.
	He's the guy who looks like the God of the Blue Man Group, right?
	Yes.
	Yes.
	To that degree, or to analogize, that's kind of where I've been I'm kind of feeling myself out as, the more I look at things in a very scientific and fundamental way, the less I see...
	I don't see life as not worthwhile.
	I guess I would put it, no reason to live, no reason not to live, if you will.
	And that has been causing distress within myself and it seems to me people I associate with.
	What you're talking about is an issue of happiness, not an issue fundamentally of philosophy, right?
	I mean, if you were happy, then you would have good reason to live, right?
	Like, right in the middle of a great orgasm, we don't sit there and say, well, what's the point of it all, right?
	Why am I even doing this, right?
	Because it's like, that's a great orgasm, so, yay!
	Let's do that again, you know?
	If we're 17 in 10 minutes, and if we're not, then, you know, 12.
	But the issue here, fundamentally, I would imagine, is not philosophical.
	I mean, just not to say happiness is not philosophical, but if you had the emotional experience of happiness, gratification, satisfaction, whatever it is that you'd want to call it, then the purpose of living The purpose of living only arises for us within our minds, I think, when we lack happiness, right?
	It becomes a bit of a death spiral then, right?
	Because it's like, well, I'm not happy, so what's really the point of being alive?
	And then you start to question the meaning of everything and you go fully introspective and so on.
	And then you have a secret you have to hide from everyone, which is that...
	You're not really sure what the point of being alive is, and that makes you feel more isolated, which often drives further detachment and so on, right?
	I suppose.
	I mean, it's not that I... I mean, some people have said I'm unhappy.
	Other people, when I go to work, I seem to have a very joyous and extroverted, and I talk a lot on the phones.
	I like talking to people.
	I like in people's company.
	But at the same time, I find it...
	It's a little stressful just because when I approach things logically and I approach things in a very rational sense, I find a lot of people seem to really not like that.
	It seems to be very off-putting.
	I don't allow the emotional aspects of my life.
	I don't allow emotions to govern my thoughts.
	And as a result, people see that as me being Unemotional, detached, cold.
	Whereas I'm just looking at things much like you look at a math equation.
	Okay, so I just...
	And I think that's where...
	Sorry, just a sec.
	I just asked people in the chat room, a quick poll.
	Does he sound happy?
	We've had some responses say, no, no, very flat.
	No, he doesn't.
	His voice sounds depressed.
	No, and so on.
	Now, that's not scientific.
	I just wanted to give you...
	You don't sound happy to me.
	And you don't sound happy to anyone else in the chat room.
	So that may be something that doesn't prove, right, any sort of emotional state.
	But it's pretty consistent that...
	That you don't sound happy to other people.
	But now, you say that when you approach things in a rational context.
	Now, rational is a word that's very heavily laden.
	Very heavily laden.
	And I will share with you something that may be entirely too much information.
	So when I was younger, I was directing a play and I ended up having an affair with The set designer.
	At one point we were in bed and I sucked her toes because they were just cute.
	And she said, hey, I thought you were all about reason and rationality.
	You know, what are you doing with my toes?
	And I said, what's irrational about sucking toes?
	It was a lot of fun.
	And that always struck me as a very sort of like, well, you know, Spock wouldn't suck toes because that's irrational.
	Whatever it is, you know, like, it just seems like, so what is irrational about sucking toes?
	And there, of course, was, there's absolutely nothing irrational about sucking toes.
	And so that is something that is important to, at least was important.
	It was sort of an important point for me in my life where I realized that people have this Prejudice, in a sense, against rationality, right?
	I mean, it's the reason-emotion dichotomy or the mind-body dichotomy or the soul-brain dichotomy that has been plaguing all of humanity forever.
	But when you say, well, when I approach things in a rational way, well, what does that mean to you, to say I approach things in a rational way?
	Does that mean feeling free, like without emotion?
	I would say just looking at things very objectively, very fundamentally, without trying to not let the emotional aspect of, let's say, a difficult situation govern anything.
	Okay, so what's irrational about the emotions?
	It seems to me that, and this is just my experience, but when people get emotionally charged, particularly when they're making decisions, I've always had a very good knack for being able to not predict, but kind of seeing the logical consequences of their behavior.
	And it struck me as very wrongheaded, If not a little on the stupid side.
	So I don't want to make mistakes.
	I hate mistakes.
	I hate inefficiency.
	I guess, if you will, I like the mechanical side of things rather than the fuzzy Muggy, dirty, muddy, emotional side of things.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	I get it.
	I get it.
	But I want to interrupt you because I think that you may be mistaken.
	You may be fundamentally mistaking two things, which are really, really important.
	And I'm going to be an annoying lecture head, but I'll keep it brief.
	But this is really, really important.
	No, let me stop by asking you a question, though, because I want to make sure that this is going to be of value to you.
	So, in the people in your life, we are all surrounded by people who have emotions, right?
	They get angry, they get frustrated, they get upset, they're happy, they're giddy, they're dizzy, they're drunk, they're in love, they're out of love, they're crying, right?
	Now, of these emotions, what percentage of the emotions of the people around you do you feel are deep, genuine, heartfelt and non-manipulative?
	And by that I mean non-self-manipulative and non-manipulative towards others.
	Just genuine, spontaneous expressions of emotion.
	Okay, you cut out.
	So are you referring to me when I express something or when someone else expresses something?
	No.
	When other people express things around you, when other people express things around you, what percentage of the emotions that you experience from those around you do you experience as deep and genuine and spontaneous and not manipulative?
	What percentage?
	That's a very interesting question.
	It's not something I've thought much deeply of.
	You're basically asking me what percentage do I feel is genuine, honest expression, right?
	For instance, let me give you an example.
	When you go to buy a car, the car salesman is very friendly, right?
	Of course.
	Is that a deep and genuine expression of emotion?
	I suppose.
	I suppose.
	I'm a little bit...
	I'll be honest, I'm a little...
	Look, look, look, you can't possibly claim to be intelligent and have trouble with that question.
	If the guy is trying to sell you a car and he's being friendly towards you, is it a deep and genuine expression of his concern and care for you as a human being that he's just met who he wants to sell a car to?
	No, I don't think so, no.
	Okay, thank you, thank you.
	This is 101, right?
	So you can get these ones, right?
	Okay.
	If someone wants something from you and they're very nice to you, is that a deep and genuine expression of concern and care for you as a human being, separate from their needs?
	Thank you.
	No, I don't think so.
	If somebody feels threatened by something you're saying, and you know this as an anarchist and an atheist, if somebody feels threatened by something that you're saying, they feel emotionally threatened, and they react with anger, is that a deep and genuine emotional experience, or are they reacting out of defensiveness?
	Then I would have a hard time distinguishing whether it be defensive or just they were angry.
	That's, I think, one of the struggles I have as a person...
	Sorry, let me give you...
	Sorry, I have to just stay...
	I don't want to go off on a tangent.
	The way you know is if you're saying something that makes them angry that they cannot answer, that's defensiveness.
	Okay.
	Right?
	Because if somebody gets angry at a position that you're taking that they cannot answer, then anger is an inappropriate Genuine emotion to have, right?
	Right.
	So if I say to you, you know, what's the square root of 12,600,000,000,000, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and you don't know, you're not going to get angry, right?
	No.
	If I say to you, you know, what's the longest street in...
	I wouldn't get angry.
	Yeah, if I say, what's the longest street in Warsaw, you're not going to get angry, because you may know, but if you don't know, you won't get angry, right?
	But if I say to you, how can a loving God drown babies in the crib during the Great Flood, and you get angry, that's a different thing, right?
	Yes, yes.
	Okay, so when someone gets angry when they don't have an answer to a question, that is not a genuine emotional response.
	That is them being pissed off that you've called out some bullshit in them.
	That's irritation.
	That's not the same as anger.
	Okay.
	So, I will ask you...
	I'll be honest.
	So, with these rough frameworks in mind, what percentage of the emotions that you experience from those around you do you feel are deep and genuine, spontaneous, non-manipulative, non-defensive emotions?
	Probably...
	20-30% on a daily basis.
	Wow.
	You must be emotionally rich people.
	Yeah, go ahead.
	Well, where I work is a very stressful environment.
	Not stressful, precisely.
	It's very busy, very chaotic at times.
	And we deal with a lot of people who call us and say, you're responsible for this mess, fix this and everything like that.
	Most of the time, the only outlets that I have when I'm at work are when I can joke around with friends and tease each other and mock each other.
	That seems to be a genuine response where there is no form of manipulation or anything like that.
	But aside from that, if my boss approaches me, my first thought is, okay, he wants something from me.
	He's trying to be friendly, but he wants something from me.
	And when I was dating, when I have dated, and whoever it seems to be I'm dating, I see this in relationships, and I find it kind of, this kind of irks me,
	and maybe I'm reading it wrong, but the relationships that I seem to be involved with, you know, there's moments where it's just genuine, like, oh, this is really cool, and I'm really happy, and I don't know.
	Deep, personal, fundamental, loving type of thing.
	It seems to be more of a meat market to me.
	Because the partner, one partner always seems to demand...
	The partners always demand things of each other, it seems to me, anyways.
	And if those demands are met, then the...
	The relationship is, in my view, done for.
	It almost seems to me like people treat each other in relationships as a commodity.
	Well, maybe I'm...
	Sorry, let me just ask you then.
	So when you were growing up with your mother and your father or whoever was around, did you feel that emotions were Were they generally real or were they generally manipulative?
	That's a tough call.
	My mom is a highly emotional woman.
	She wouldn't use them to manipulate and other times it seemed to me that she was trying to be genuine and honest.
	My dad was a rather staunch skeptic and very much governed his...
	He never saw much of an emotional response from my dad, really.
	There's only been a few times where I've actually seen him, like, emotional.
	Mama, on the other hand, has been just a tornado of emotional reasoning, emotionally charged arguments.
	To say the least, it wasn't exactly a conducive environment for a child to grow up in.
	Sorry about that.
	Can you think of an example where your mother's emotionality struck you as deep and real and genuine?
	And I'll give you an example because it's kind of abstract.
	Sorry to interrupt, but let me give you an example of what I mean by that.
	A deep and emotional reaction is not something that can be turned off when the phone rings, right?
	This is this so I mean if you've got some terrible news and You know like my okay, so my mother she would be like really angry or whatever and she'd be screaming at the top of her lungs and then the phone would ring and it would be some Trashy asshole that she wanted to have an affair with And she would then immediately switch over to, you know, sugar and spice and all things nice.
	And she'd be like, hello, it's me.
	How are you?
	Right?
	So she would switch from this, you know, blazing demon from hell to, you know, Blanche Dubois on a...
	So that's one of the reasons you know that it's not real.
	Unreal emotions change course very quickly depending upon the self-interest of the moment.
	Real, genuine emotions don't.
	Right?
	So she would not take the call if she was genuinely upset.
	She would either not take the call or she'd take the call and be unable to mask her upset.
	But when emotions can be masked, when emotions can be changed to pursue or to facilitate the self-interest of the moment, then they're bullshit.
	They're not emotions.
	They're manipulations.
	They're self-indulgences.
	So with that in mind...
	And again, these are just my definitions.
	It could be wrong, but this is the way that I've approached it.
	Because I grew up with a hysterical mom, and I really had to differentiate real emotions from bullshit emotions, right?
	Manipulations.
	I don't even give them the respective emotions.
	They're just manipulations.
	It's just acting.
	It's just play-acting.
	And people can really believe in their own play-acting.
	Sure, people get Oscars for being good actors, right?
	But if you think about genuine emotions, emotions that can't be switched on and switched off based upon the self-interest at the moment.
	So, like, if someone is intimidating you and then you give them what...
	If somebody's angry at you and then you give them what they want and then they're no longer angry at you, then that was a manipulation, right?
	So that's something that I wanted to mention.
	Or if somebody is really happy about something and then they don't get what they want and they're immediately unhappy about something, then that's a manipulation.
	Because their emotions are just trying to get them what they want and they're just trying to play on other people's Pseudo-empathy to get them to get what they want.
	It's not real emotions.
	It's not a genuine emotionality.
	If it can be turned on, turned off, switched around, changes back and forth, that's all.
	Just people spinning spiderwebs in your head.
	That's all they're basically doing.
	So that would be my suggestion of Ways in which you could differentiate real emotions from manipulations.
	So thinking about your mom, can you think of times, if this is a valid way of looking at it, and just if you could try it for now, I'd appreciate it.
	So thinking about your mom when you were growing up, can you think of times where there were genuine deep emotions that didn't change depending on the circumstances?
	The most recent one that comes to mind, and maybe I'm mistreating it, so correct me.
	When I graduated college, I was 22 and I had earned my MBA. And my mom seemed really, really happy and very, very proud of me because of that.
	But I can't help but think if given what you've told me from an analysis point of view, If it was just the fact that I just met her expectations and she was happy because of that.
	Yeah, I'm sorry to interrupt, but this sort of reminds me of trying not to confuse our parents and different people, but when I was in grade eight, I was taking an adult computer science course and I wanted to learn how to program games, and I thought that's what it was going to be.
	But we ended up on these pet computers, and we were learning how to do sequential and non-sequential five and a quarter inch floppy disk read IOs, which was unbelievably dull for me.
	So all I did was sit in the back and program games, and they kept coming back and saying, hey, you're playing a game.
	I said, no, I'm programming it.
	And they're like, no, you're not.
	Come on.
	You're 12 or whatever, right?
	And my mom was so incredibly happy that I was taking an adult computer science course when I was 12 that she would tell everyone, you know, oh, my son, you know, he's taking this advanced computer science studies when, you know, just blowing it way out of proportion.
	And so anyway, I ended up not getting the credit because I just didn't care about non-sequential discrete IOs on a five and a quarter inch floppy.
	And eventually I had to tell my mom this because she kept saying, and then she got really angry.
	She got really angry.
	And now she didn't, of course, say, well, why didn't you like the course?
	Or what was the problem with it?
	Or, you know, oh, that must have been disappointing.
	Or maybe show me the game you programmed or something like that, right?
	It was nothing like that.
	It's just that I had taken away from her something that she wanted, which was...
	Pride in me doing this computer science course when I was 12.
	And anyway, so that was not, you know, her pride was not real because she didn't have any clue what I was doing.
	And her anger was not real either.
	It had just that now she didn't have something that she could use to puff up her own vanity about her son.
	So none of those were anything real because it didn't have anything to do with me.
	It was only to do with her own narcissistic needs.
	But anyway, I don't want to sort of confuse the two, but that's what popped into my mind.
	Right.
	I don't know.
	I guess she tells me frequently that she's proud of me, that she loves me and everything.
	I have a hard time believing that that's not true.
	Well, but that's not that hard to figure out.
	Sorry, if somebody says I love you, then it's not hard to figure out whether that's genuine or not.
	I mean, it's actually very easy, which is why most people don't want to do it, because it's too easy.
	I mean, if you want to find out whether someone loves you, all you have to do is ask them questions about you.
	Right, so I say, oh, I love the band Queen, right?
	And then people will say, well, what are their biggest hits?
	And I'm like, uh, I don't know, actually.
	Two out of three ain't bad?
	Paradise by the Dashboard Light?
	Stairway to Heaven?
	I don't know.
	Right, then clearly I don't really love the band, right?
	If I don't, you know, how many people are in the band?
	I don't know.
	The Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Three Priests in a...
	One of those baying goats from YouTube, I don't know, right?
	Whereas, you know, if I say, oh, a huge fan of the band Queen, hey, do you actually know what Freddie Mercury's original name was?
	Yeah, you know.
	It's, you know, you actually, if you know his original Zantavar name, I can't remember, Farooq Bulsara, I think it was.
	And, you know, well, what are their greatest hits?
	Oh, here are their greatest hits.
	Where did they meet?
	Oh, they met here in the college and all this kind of...
	Like, whatever it is that you would know about the band.
	So, if I say I love something, then I should know something about it.
	I love philosophy.
	Oh, who's your favorite philosopher?
	Tony the Tiger?
	The elf from the leprechaun from the cereal box?
	I don't know.
	Josh Groban?
	I mean, if I don't have any clue about what I claim to love, then obviously I don't.
	I don't love it.
	So if someone says that they love you, then you can just ask them, well, what are my five favorite books?
	What are my five favorite authors?
	Do I like fiction or nonfiction?
	What's my favorite music?
	What are my values?
	What would I really go to the wall for and what am I willing to let go of?
	I mean these are all just questions you can ask someone who claims to love you.
	And they should be ridiculously easy to answer.
	I mean, I could sit here and respond to Queen trivia all day because it's embarrassing but true.
	This is what I stuff my brain with, which is the fact that it took three weeks to get the guitar dubs right for Killer Queen.
	I'm sorry, it's just...
	I can't find my wallet every other day, but I do know all of this ridiculous nonsense about how Brian May went back to school to finish his PhD thesis only a few years ago.
	Anyway, so...
	But the point is that if you want to find out if somebody loves you, it's easy.
	Just ask them a whole bunch of questions about you.
	And this should not be offensive to people who love you, right?
	I mean, of course, there may be things that you miss.
	There may be things that they'd like to know more of about you.
	But do they spend a lot of time asking you questions about yourself independent of their needs?
	And do they know a massive amount about you, some things that you don't even know yourself?
	When was I the happiest?
	When was I the most upset?
	When was I the saddest?
	What makes me the most angry?
	What makes me the most happy?
	Right?
	These are all things that somebody who loves you should be able to rattle off like nobody's business.
	Right?
	And so these questions, I mean, just sit down for 20 minutes with someone with a bunch of questions.
	I mean, geez, we could even come up with them now.
	It doesn't really matter.
	They're pretty easy to figure out.
	You know, what's my biggest blind spot?
	You know, what are the three most important things that I don't know about myself or that I continually forget about myself that are really important?
	Biggest strengths, bigness weaknesses, right?
	What have I worked the hardest on to improve?
	You know, these things are just ridiculously...
	You can just keep asking these questions of people around you and you'll very quickly find out whether people actually really love you or if they're just saying the words because that's what you're supposed to say and it gets them stuff.
	And I, you know, I wonder, I genuinely wonder how many relationships would pass this test.
	That's interesting that you bring that up.
	I think I've known more about my ex-girlfriends than they ever knew about me.
	But then again, I have the, I have a very observant I guess not outlook.
	I observe people very carefully.
	And now I think of it, you've given me a useful tool.
	I have a tendency to introspect and dissect and look back on the flaws in my life, errors, mistakes, things that have gone wrong.
	In fact, you're probably going to find this somewhat amusing.
	I thought I could work it out, but I guess I couldn't.
	God's too powerful, apparently.
	I actually dated a Christian girl.
	We were both anarchists, and I really thought, I was naive enough to think that I could kind of get her to at least be skeptical on God.
	By kind of making light-hearted jokes about religion.
	She claimed to be a Christian, but she was a Christian that doesn't A, read the Bible, B, believe in hell.
	And on top of that, all other religions will somehow manage to get their followers to the one true God, which is the Christian God.
	That was her belief system, which I couldn't comprehend for the life of me.
	She left a very big hole in me.
	And particularly the way she executed that hole was just perfect, I guess.
	She introduced me to her new boyfriend when we were supposed to go out on a date.
	Why nothing?
	Anyways.
	I'm laughing because it's...
	I haven't...
	Maybe I shouldn't...
	A side note, I tend to laugh at things that are a little on the dark side.
	No, very much on the dark side.
	I laugh because I can't believe I was that foolish.
	No, I don't think that's true.
	I mean, I don't think that's true.
	I think you laugh because you don't have anyone there to support you in dealing with your pain.
	Wow, right for the jugular.
	I guess that's true, but that's not something I haven't thought of.
	Yeah.
	I mean, look, having your heart ripped out, that's an incredibly sadistic thing for someone to do.
	You're going to go on a date, she introduces you to her new boyfriend.
	That's fucking psycho, man.
	I mean, that's just evil.
	If people had been there to really help you, support you in experiencing that kind of pain and processing that kind of pain and helping you to figure out what you missed so it doesn't happen again, then that would not be something to laugh about, but that would be something that you'd be, you know, Wiser and deeper and potentially happier as a way of avoiding it, but I I mean I always hear that when when people laugh and it's happened a lot of times in the show and people laugh about Awful things that have happened to them.
	It just tells me that there's nobody there to help support them and and protect them and work through this This pain and I'm really sorry for that because we we do need We do need other people's you know, we're always looking out from inside.
	We're always looking out from inside We can't see ourselves from the outside And we really need other people's perspective.
	You know, this Randian superhero of perfect integrity is a myth.
	It's a fantasy.
	It's not something that even Ayn Rand could achieve and she created these damn characters.
	And we do need other people's and we do need other people's insights.
	And if you don't have that...
	I mean, and the other thing I wanted to say is that, you know, religion doesn't solve the problem of isolation.
	You say, well, what's the meaning of life?
	But religion doesn't solve that stuff at all.
	Like if I said to you, listen man, I'm really interested in helping the ghost riding on your back get to Narnia.
	You'd be like, no man, every time we get together I'm going to make it my life's mission to get the ghost riding on your back to get straight to Narnia.
	You'd be like, what the fuck are you talking about?
	I mean, what?
	How has that got anything to do with me?
	Ghosts on my back get to Narnia.
	What the hell?
	What are you talking about?
	That's your own shit.
	That's your own needs.
	I don't have a ghost on my back and there's no such thing as Narnia.
	But the problem is that Christians fundamentally, if they're following the theology, and this is true of all the religions that I know of, where the goal is some sort of afterlife or some sort of reincarnated perfection or whatever, So you don't come back as Lindsay Lohan's lymph nose or something.
	So...
	I mean, the whole purpose is to help shepherd the soul, which doesn't exist, to heaven, which doesn't exist.
	That doesn't solve the problem of intimacy and getting to know someone.
	Because you're trying to herd ghosts to paradise.
	But that's not the same as having a relationship with a person.
	Because you're having a relationship with metaphors that eclipse the individual.
	I mean, this is...
	What Mother Teresa would say, I think she was in Calcutta, she said, I don't help the poor, I help Christ in the poor.
	I see Christ in the poor.
	Well, you know, don't look into my flesh and find...
	You know, undead Jewish zombie ghosts.
	That's not me.
	That's your own fantasy, right?
	That's your own delusions.
	And we can't ever meet in illusions and delusions.
	We can only meet in reality, which is who we are as people.
	Anyway, so, I mean...
	And the idea, of course, that...
	That you would make jokes about a deep belief that the woman has is a way of avoiding her as well, right?
	Because this is something you need to tackle, I think, pretty early on.
	And of course, because she was not self-expressed, she accumulated all of these barbs and stings that you had towards her and then turned them back on you with full searchlight frontal ferocity by inviting you on a date and introducing you to her new boyfriend.
	But I'm really sorry that happened to you.
	I hope that helps you take philosophy more seriously, right?
	Because these are not insignificant differences.
	Are you familiar with what an ENTJ is?
	It's a personality classification, if I remember rightly.
	Yes.
	And I've taken several tests and it seems to pop up that I am one of those types.
	In fact, one of my weaknesses is registering people's emotional needs or emotions in general.
	I would like to consider myself very mechanical in thought and I don't really take into account people's feelings that well because I see logic and hard reasoning and facts as more essential and more useful than Emotional responses to situations and I was trying to guide the conversation earlier towards that.
	For example, when I was dating her and I was making these little quips, I wasn't making them directed towards her.
	The quips were usually when I was with a group of friends and maybe she was there and it wasn't in any way directed.
	It was just Me cracking a joke.
	It was only later that it kind of dawned on me that she took those very personally, which I didn't really understand or realize at the time.
	No, no, sorry.
	Again, I have to interrupt you because you're missing...
	So this is, you know, you're mechanical smart, and unfortunately, because if you had a mom who was hyper-emotional and a father who was emotionally shut down, you say your father was rational, but if he was rational, if he was so rational, what the hell was he doing married to a woman who was so emotionally irrational, as you say?
	But anyway, that's neither here nor there.
	No, the issue is that you can't be direct.
	And one of the problems with dealing with emotionally manipulative people is that you can't ever be direct with them.
	Because everything you say gets twisted and turned and slanted into something else.
	And this is why you end up with this oblique stuff like making jokes about core beliefs of a woman you're dating.
	Because you can't be direct.
	Because if you're direct with emotionally manipulative people, they panic and attack.
	Because the whole point is it's got to be this hall of mirrors where they just kind of manipulate you into doing what they want.
	People who are emotionally manipulative are manipulative because they can't be direct.
	They can't just ask for what they want.
	They drive me nuts.
	So I put this forward with all the prejudice so you're aware of where I'm coming from, but they drive me nuts because it's just, just ask for what you want.
	Just ask for what you want.
	And people get mad at me.
	I'd say, hey, donate to my show.
	I'd like to eat, you know.
	I'd like to have money to expand.
	And people are all like, oh man, you're constantly begging for money.
	It's like, no, I'm telling you what I want.
	I think I'm providing some incredible value.
	I think I'm providing a unique show, a unique broadcast, and, you know, donate if you find it valuable.
	I'm just asking, I'm telling people, bad, evil, if you don't or anything like that, I'm just telling people what I want.
	And If you grew up with an emotionally distant father, an emotionally manipulative mother, and I know I'm reducing it to a stereotype, and I apologize for that, but it means that it's really hard for you to be direct, because if you are really direct, then you risk volatility.
	When you're direct with emotionally manipulative people, they tend to get very aggressive or shut down, which is really terrifying for a child.
	And a lot of what you say is about not being direct, right?
	You analyze, you introspect, you overthink, you try and reason things out and so on.
	Well, that may, I would argue it does, but I don't know for sure, it may come out of just living in an environment where you can't be direct.
	Well, I've been accused of, I mean, not accused, I don't want to say accused, that sounds bad.
	My friends, and my aunt, and my grandmother, and even my dad, and also that I have a very direct, when I speak to people, I'm very direct.
	I think, though, you are correct in the analysis regarding my My ex, I was trying to, and I know this by myself, I was trying to please her while getting away with the fact that I tend to ridicule religion.
	I guess you're right on that context, but on the whole, I've been told that I'm a rather direct person and I have a tendency to make people uncomfortable.
	Would you be more direct with that?
	Not because I want to.
	It's just if I say something that I believe is factually...
	I wouldn't say women are far behind.
	And in fact, I would honestly argue that.
	One of my exes I still talk to.
	I've been meaning to make sure that I get to other callers without spending the majority of time on the first caller, though I certainly appreciate your great conversation.
	I hope that you've found it to be of some value.
	And I really appreciate your openness.
	I really do.
	This is hard stuff to talk about.
	Particularly if you have If you have strong cognitive or reasoning abilities, then it's tough to dip into the crazy world of emotions sometimes and feel that they can have any value.
	But I would argue that emotions...
	I mean, if you want science, right?
	I mean, the unconscious has about 6,000 times the processing power of the conscious mind, and it's been around a whole lot longer, right?
	There's a second brain in the gut called the gut, right?
	A gut instinct and so on.
	It's not just made up.
	There is some significantly scientifically validated experiments which show people have incredible intuitions, but that requires that we have genuine and deep connection with our emotions.
	I think it is essential in life.
	I don't believe in the in the reason emotion divide but I think it's really important to recognize that there are real emotions and then there are bullshit manipulations and from my experience in life the vast majority the vast majority of interactions that I've had,
	and this is outside this show, and this is outside my family, and this is outside, I mean, my current family, and this is outside, you know, I have great conversations with people on these shows, and when I meet people when I'm at conferences and stuff, great, great interaction.
	So outside, just among the muggles, right, among the rank and file, and certainly on the internet, I mean, the vast majority of Emotions are simply bullshit manipulations.
	They're just pretend emotions.
	They're warning shots.
	They're appeals to sympathy.
	They're all this nonsense.
	They don't have anything genuine behind them.
	It's all just smoke and mirrors.
	And that stuff is really important to understand.
	It's really important to be skeptical about emotions, but to be receptive to genuine emotions.
	Because if you can cut through people's habitual manipulative bullshit, you can usually get to some fantastic and genuine and real place.
	But don't confuse manipulation with emotion, because otherwise you'll lose all respect for your own capacity to reason emotionally.
	You know, when you hear this prejudice against emotion all the time, people say, oh, my mother was a highly emotional woman.
	What does that mean?
	She was dingbat, right?
	Usually that translates to she was batshit crazy.
	Highly strung, highly emotional, highly volatile, highly, you know, people use emotional reasoning.
	Well, what that means is that they're not reasoning, right?
	This prejudice that we have against emotions is really tragic.
	And it's one of the ways in which emotional manipulators win, is they get us to be skeptical of all emotions.
	But reason is not the best way to combat manipulation.
	Real emotion is the best way to combat manipulation.
	So if you're trying to figure out If someone loves you, well, that's really hard to do, right?
	They say it, they provide you, your parents, whatever, they give you food, shelter, they send you to school, come to your graduations and, you know, all that kind of stuff and cheer and praise.
	But the actual genuine emotional experience of being loved and exploring that, that's a whole different thing.
	So the manipulators make us confuse their manipulations for real emotions.
	They make us skeptical of real emotions and that's how they disarm us against further manipulations.
	Because it is only our deepest emotions that can reveal manipulations.
	Because our deepest emotions can see, very clearly, false emotions.
	Only somebody who really loves art can spot a fake.
	And only somebody who's got a genuine deep emotional connection can spot the fake bullshit that most people porn off as emotions.
	You know, only the geologist can tell pyrite or fool's gold from real gold for the most part.
	So I would really caution you against disrespecting emotions because you've been manipulated or because you've seen hysteria.
	You know, irritation is not the same as anger.
	Frustration is not the same as anger.
	Neediness is not the same as love.
	Right?
	Anxiety is not the same as fear.
	Right?
	So, I just would really caution you on that.
	I know this is all pretty useless, but it's just hopefully something conceptually to work on and recognize that anybody who strips, anybody who Gets you to distance yourself from your emotions is doing so because they want to plunder you, in my experience.
	So I just wanted to sort of mention that and point that out.
	Well, thank you, Stefan.
	It's something I hadn't really thought about.
	I've always been on the reason versus emotion divide.
	So you gave me a lot to chew on.
	Oh, I'm very glad it helps, and thank you so much for opening up.
	Do give me a chance to drop me a line if you can, and let me know how it goes.
	Okay.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	All right.
	All right.
	All right, next up, we have Sebastian.
	If we have trouble with his connection, I have the phone number on standby.
	All right.
	Hello.
	Go ahead.
	Sebastian, you may want to unmute your microphone.
	Can you hear us?
	Hi.
	Good morning, everyone.
	Hello.
	Can you hear me?
	Sort of.
	Okay.
	Good morning everyone, good morning Stefan.
	Thank you for having me today.
	My pleasure.
	I'm a 36 years old registered nurse who has recently immigrated from Western Europe to Australia and I've got three masters from British University.
	Having watched your analysis about the fall of Australia and the decline and fall of Canada, can you tell me which countries I should immigrate to so I can secure a better and more stable future?
	Thank you.
	Yeah, that's a good question.
	I don't know.
	You might want to check out a lady called Macarena Rose.
	I did an interview with her in Belize when I was there earlier this year.
	I think that there are expatriation experts that can more closely tailor suggestions to where you are and where you want to be in life because it has a lot to do with Are you going to retire soon?
	Are your kids young?
	Are you going to homeschool?
	What kind of climate do you like?
	Summer, winter sports?
	What languages do you speak?
	So I really would have a tough time tailoring it.
	But you can find some very good expatriation experts who can really step you through that process.
	But I wouldn't even consider myself close to having a good enough skill set to help you out with that.
	I like Canada in many ways.
	I like the lack of an empire.
	It's good.
	The only empire we generally have is the domestic one with the native Canadians.
	The taxes are very high, but the taxes at least go to healthcare rather than blowing up people for the most part.
	The healthcare is certainly not great, but if I had to choose about where my money is spent, I'd rather it be spent on healthcare than There's something to be said for Canada.
	If you structure things right, if you can be self-employed, there's a lot you can do here to mitigate taxes, all fully legal.
	There's lots of different things that you can do to try and sort of help make that decision, but I don't think I would be very able to give you that good.
	Canada's got an interesting...
	What I like about Canada, too, is that it's got...
	A very interesting kind of frontier practicality or pragmatism to it.
	Canada's never had a world mission, a sense of manifest destiny like America does.
	You know, the founding principles of Canada were not life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but peace, order, and good government.
	You know, okay, so three things.
	So does Australia.
	Yeah, yeah, so I mean...
	So, Canada's got a kind of a very frontier, because it's remained a pretty frontier country in many ways, because, you know, 90% of the population is within a few degrees of the American border.
	And I certainly got that sense when I was working up north as a gold panner that the vast majority of Canada is just this unbelievable wilderness.
	But there is a pragmatism, and there is a kind of savage pragmatism to Canada, which is only belied by its supposed British politeness, you know?
	Like, there's this whole joke about Canadians.
	How do you get 500 Canadians out of a swimming pool?
	You say, excuse me, could you get out of the swimming pool?
	They'll come.
	But there is a savage pragmatism to Canada so that when government spending got too high in the 90s, I mean, they just cut it.
	I mean, and they cut it in a way that's like 20-30% of real cuts as opposed to this, you know, bullshit cuts that America talks about where they cut the growth of spending by one or two points and it's, you know, considered to be cutting to the bone or something like that.
	So there is a real...
	Kind of savage pragmatism to Canada that does right to the ship of state from time to time.
	And we actually have some fairly genuine conservatives in power as opposed to the, you know, I mean, social spending, entitlement spending goes up faster under Republicans in the US than under Democrats, right?
	They're not in opposition, right?
	So we don't have the play-acting conservatives.
	There are some sort of real conservatives who genuinely do try and cut things, and there is quite a lot of pragmatism to Canada.
	It's a resource-rich country, and certainly as the Chinese and Indian economies, I know that they're faltering at the moment, but as they grow, they will, of course, require huge amounts of resources, and Canada has those.
	So there's a lot, there's a fair amount to recommend to it, and So, you know, if you don't mind the cold, and I, you know, I like skiing, and I like winter sports, so it's fine for me, but there's a lot to recommend it, but I know, of course, you know, emigration is always a pain in the ass, right?
	I mean, it's really brutal to try and get from one country to another and stay there, so I would really recommend, again, the only person I know is the woman I interviewed, Macarena Rose, so you can just Google her.
	And I would have a conversation with her because she's got the real skinny on all of the places that, you know, these people have researched places all over the world, and they know really how to fit people in well, I would assume.
	She certainly seemed very nice, genuine, and knowledgeable as hell about this kind of stuff, so you might want to check her out.
	I don't recommend because I haven't gone through her services because I haven't changed countries, but if I were to say someone, that would be a good person to talk to.
	Okay.
	So do you still believe in the fall of Australia and the decline and fall of Canada?
	Oh, yeah, no question.
	This stuff is inevitable.
	I mean, mathematics are inexorable, right?
	That which mathematically cannot continue will not continue.
	And, excuse me, so without a doubt, these countries are going to go through some significant changes.
	It's inexorable.
	The only question is how is it going to be dealt with?
	Are they going to inflate?
	Are they going to default?
	Are they going to cut benefits?
	I don't know.
	It's almost impossible to predict.
	Here's one of the many problems with the welfare state.
	One of the many problems with the welfare state is that It really slashes and burns our empathy for the less fortunate.
	Because to help the less fortunate, you really need to get involved with them as human beings.
	Just paying your taxes and assuming some government agency is taking care of them is a great way to not give a shit about people.
	And so what's happened is, I mean, there are people who have genuine misfortunes and genuine bad luck and who make genuinely bad choices, largely as a result of being raised genuinely badly, who deserve a huge amount of sympathy.
	But the welfare state strips our sympathy because we don't have to get involved.
	We don't have to care.
	Because there's a government agency doing it for us, right?
	I pay my taxes, right?
	So the poor are taken care of.
	And we lose contact with the poor.
	They become the other.
	They become alien.
	They become people somewhere else.
	In ghettos and they become vaguely scary and we don't have any connection with them, right?
	Welfare is apartheid for the poor.
	It keeps them segregated.
	It keeps them distant from us and we don't have to get involved.
	And then what happens is when the government runs out of money, we don't have the same empathy that we used to have when we had friendly societies, when we had charities, when we had religious and secular organizations genuinely involved in caring for the poor.
	And so it becomes a whole lot easier to cut and blame and, you know, it's a kind of emotional, mental and to some degree physical segregation, the welfare state, and particularly when you combine that with things like government subsidies, government housing.
	We herd the poor into these little enclosures and we give them shitty schools and bad services and Bad roads and bad policing and all that.
	We lose our empathy for them.
	They become very foreign, very dissimilar, very other, as they say in the postmodern parlance.
	And so, you know, my concern is that, and I've talked about this for years, that when When the crunch comes, the poor are going to suffer the most because we've detached ourselves from any genuine human connection with them through the welfare state, which has put us at a bureaucratic arm's length from what is really driving poverty.
	So I hope that makes some sense.
	So I don't know what's going to happen, but it's going to be particularly brutal for the poor.
	And naturally, of course, libertarians will get blamed for that, I'm sure, as well.
	Okay, thank you for your time.
	You're very welcome, and best of luck pursuing it.
	Thank you.
	Bye.
	Alright, next up we have Dimitri.
	Hello.
	Hello, hello.
	Can you hear me?
	I can.
	Excellent.
	I can't hear myself.
	Alright, so my question today is, I grew up with, well, let me give you some background to help you understand better as where I'm coming from first.
	I grew up being unschooled in my teen and I'm a polymath right now with multiple degrees and stuff.
	I mean, I've done quite a lot with my life, but I grew up with very different values because my mother taught me to think critically from a very young age and gave me a, well, a core belief that's based on the universal truth.
	The universal truth being that no one knows everything, which means everything that I believe It's subject to change based on what evidence I get, be it logical, rational, empirical.
	Everything else I believe is changeable.
	So I don't really fight a whole lot of other things and it makes it really, really hard for me to relate to some people because I find that a lot of people don't have that as a core belief.
	They hold really, really tight to what they believe and And simply won't listen when you try to explain something to them.
	It's really simple to understand, but they just don't get it.
	So as a result, recently I just ended a friendship with a guy who was my best friend for like 10 years because it turned out he was just faking things for a long time.
	He's a statist and Doesn't really believe in all the crap I believe evidently, you know, and I was just like floored by it.
	Because I really, I can't tolerate statists and because, or anyone really, who thinks that the abhorrent man of this world is somehow virtuous.
	It's just pure corruption.
	People revel in it and think it's like the greatest thing ever and I'm just like, why can't you see how horrible it is?
	Um, so part of my problem is I'm having a really hard time finding good friends.
	I mean, so far I have like two people in my life that are awesome.
	I have my mother who obviously she unschooled me as I was growing up and taught me to think critically.
	So she's an awesome person.
	She's more of a friend of mine as opposed to being a mother or anything like that.
	And then I have my wife, which is like the only person that I know of who...
	Who agrees and thinks the way that I think and has the same problem.
	She's like lost all of her friends and half of her family and she's just like, why are there idiots?
	And I think the same way because most of the other people I run into, they're just idiots.
	And it's like, why can't you think?
	It's really, really simple to understand.
	Why do you have such a problem with it?
	So we've been thinking for a while, where could you find friends?
	You know, and friends, local friends, we can hang out, maybe have a barbecue with and go and do stuff with.
	I don't know.
	It's kind of frustrating.
	I was wondering if you had any thoughts on it.
	Yeah, I mean, lots of thoughts on it.
	I mean, you know, first of all, you know, massive kudos to your mom.
	I mean, holy crap.
	Yeah, she's awesome.
	She really is.
	Yeah, I mean, you know, we get our grim tales of bad parenting on this show, but, you know, let's pause and worship before the altar of the goddess of reason that moms can be, right?
	So, I really wanted to...
	My dad was the other side.
	Yeah.
	Wait, what's the story with your dad?
	Oh, my dad was the other side.
	He was the abusive person.
	But as I grew up, basically I hated him and everything that he stood for without never to be like him.
	And I never have been.
	So, he died a few years back.
	Slight tarnishing on the goddess of rationality if she was married to an abusive guy.
	But anyway, she did right by you in keeping you away from the toxic brain chemical dissolving of the identity known as public schools.
	Yeah.
	And, you know, homeschooled and taught you how to reason.
	So, with the exception of marrying and having kids with an abusive guy, obviously you're happy to be alive, so that's not the end of the world.
	I really wanted to point out great stuff.
	And of course, that makes it a whole lot easier for you to meet and marry someone like your wife.
	So, yay!
	Good things for that.
	Now, I was thinking about this the other day.
	I was with some friends, and we were at a barn, and Isabella was climbing up the bales of hay.
	I can't look at a bale of hay without remembering that needle in a haystack thing.
	You look at a bale of hay, and you're like, wow, that really would be hard to find a needle in a haystack.
	There's lots of different ways you can calibrate this.
	You can have friends that You like to go and see a movie with, right?
	And you can chat about the movie without getting all philosophical or whatever.
	And I don't, you know, not my particular cup of tea, but not, you know, not bad or anything like that.
	Right.
	I don't know if you're into sports or whatever, right?
	I mean...
	No, not so much.
	No, me neither.
	But, you know, I mean, if you are and you're willing to put aside the...
	The military essence of sports.
	But anyway, I mean, so there's, you know, maybe you just like to all go horse riding together, or maybe the people like to go skiing together.
	So you can have acquaintances, and I say you can have, like, this is somehow my permission.
	I don't mean that at all, but you know what I mean?
	Excellent.
	I'll take three.
	Yeah, yeah, so three acquaintances to go.
	Now, the problem is, though, of course, that you're limited, right?
	If you go in, you know you're limited ahead of time, right?
	Right?
	I mean, and you're limited until one of them has a problem.
	Right, so then, you know, someone says, you know, you have these acquaintances and, you know, maybe then one of them, you know, I don't know.
	Has a problem.
	They have, you know, a problem in their marriage or the problem at work or whatever, and they start to share their problems, and then you're supposed to give feedback if you're a friend, whatever, right?
	And that becomes progressively more difficult if they're irrational and all that kind of stuff, right?
	Exactly.
	So as long as you know that going in, then that's, you know, I think that's, again, there's nothing good or bad except self-deception.
	I mean, fundamentally when it comes to relationship, the only thing that's bad is avoiding the truth.
	Everything which is conscious, everything which is known, everything which is explored, everything which is understood is the good.
	Which is why I never try to aim at decisions.
	I only try to aim at enlightenment.
	Because with enlightenment comes good decisions.
	And if you aim at decisions in the absence of enlightenment, you will never get good decisions, at least in my experience.
	So as long as you're aware and fully conscious of the fact that these relationships are limited, I don't think there's any particular problem with them.
	And, you know, it's like your neighbors, right?
	Chat with your neighbors over the backyard fence.
	You're all living in close proximity, but, you know, you're probably not...
	Doing group publishing in the basement or whatever, right?
	Right, right.
	So I think to have that is fine.
	You know, again, as long as you're aware and steer clear of any of the dangerous depths which are going to expose the limitations of the relationship, I think that's fine.
	But I do think that if you are looking for a needle in a haystack, the one thing you really need is a magnet.
	So if you're looking for somebody who's deeper, you're not looking for agreement, obviously you know this because you know how to think rationally, you're not looking for agreement in content, you're looking for agreement in methodology.
	If you look for agreement in content, Well, that's just verbal masturbation, basically.
	If you're just looking for somebody who just agrees with you all the time, that's just a yes, man.
	And that's really not what I'm looking for.
	I'm looking for other people who have the same caliber of being able to hold a rational conversation so that we can actually discuss things that Like if I were to sit down and have dinner with you and your family, and it would be me and my wife, we would have a wonderful conversation, I mean, in my mind, because we could all think on the same kind of level in talking, not really...
	We could debate things without having to, you know, get all pissed off because...
	You know, I'm saying something you don't agree with, you know?
	Right, right.
	Because we would have a methodology, right?
	And this is the key.
	Looking for somebody who, you know, oh, people say, you know, I want to find an atheist anarchist who's into self-knowledge and has gone through therapy.
	It's like, no, you don't.
	You don't want to find...
	Because that's like saying, I want the wind to blow a hole in a sail that's my exact outline.
	Well, good luck.
	That's never going to happen, right?
	Right.
	I mean, but what you want is somebody who is...
	You don't want somebody who's got the same destination necessarily, but you want to have somebody who's got the same transportation.
	So if you want to fly somewhere, there's no point trying to hook up with someone who's going to hitchhike, because you don't have the same transportation.
	You may say, hey, maybe we'll meet in Vegas when you get there in three weeks or whatever, but I'm going to fly there and be there in two hours.
	And the transportation is the essence, right?
	And what I mean by that, of course, is the methodology, right?
	You don't want an atheist.
	You don't want an anarchist.
	You don't want somebody who's, you know, all kinds of fired up and committed to self-knowledge.
	What you want is somebody who's able to think.
	Because people who are able to think will generally arrive at similar values, right?
	Like scientists generally arrive at similar conclusions when they're not completely warped by state funding or whatever.
	And mathematicians in the same way as well will generally arrive at similar, if not the same, conclusions because they have the same methodology.
	So what you're looking for is not does somebody have the same conclusions that I have, but does somebody have the capacity to experience doubt without self-collapse?
	Does somebody have the ability to entertain opposing thoughts without aggression?
	Does somebody have the ability to recognize that being offended is a very poor substitute?
	for being right.
	And so, is somebody able to process information And is not wedded to conclusions.
	So the mystery, like, why are people so wedded to conclusions?
	That's not that hard.
	It's hard emotionally to figure out.
	Intellectually, we know, pretty much.
	People are wedded to conclusions because they're punished for not having those conclusions.
	You know, why?
	Right.
	I mean, they grew up thinking that, you know, if they're wrong, they're going to be punished in some way or another or ostracized or whatever.
	So, yeah, they hold on to what they believe very, very strongly.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I mean, it's like you watch someone standing in the park in some bizarre shape.
	They're sort of in some mid-taichi pose.
	You don't know why, and then you realize, you know, they've got a laser on their forehead.
	It's like, oh, that's why they're doing that, right?
	Because they don't want to get shot.
	They're obviously obeying some guy's orders, right?
	That's why they look so weird.
	So we're growing up and it's like, well, no, you have to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and you have to fold the flag this particular way and you have to say that the military are heroes and you have to say that your teacher is good and you have to say that public school is right and you have to say your country is the best and your culture is the best.
	Because if you don't, you'll get punished.
	And this is why people just get addicted to these conclusions.
	It's just a form of Stockholm Syndrome.
	It's just a form of of fear paralysis because they're attacked and punished and ostracized and bullied and mocked and excluded and you know for not you know like like you know I mean the guy who just rolls his eyes when the football team comes out It's like, you know, it's the guy who everyone's like, oh, he's weird.
	You know, why isn't he cheering when the football team comes out?
	It's like, because I'm not a fucking ape.
	That's why.
	Excuse me for evolving slightly beyond our common chimpanzee cousins.
	But I'm not an ape who's going to worship physical size and strength because I'm not...
	I'm not primitive that way.
	I've gone a little bit beyond the Stone Age, and we're looking for something a little bit more refined than testosterone-laced, steroid-infueled mussels.
	But of course, people are just punished for not conforming to the collection of wild prejudices Called culture, and so then they're afraid to think because thinking is going to detach them from those conclusions and thus invite attack and, you know, the viciousness of culture.
	You know, so somebody was emailing me this long email about, and every time I mention Native Americans, I get the same thing on Native Canadians.
	Well, the Natives were gentle and wonderful with their children, and they were very peaceful, and they were, you know, they didn't attack them, and they didn't lecture them, and they didn't punish them, and I just know that's not true.
	How do I know that's not true?
	Because in a free society, culture changes all the time.
	And technology progresses all the time.
	And when people can think for themselves, they tend not to do exactly what their parents did.
	Of course not!
	Of course not!
	I sure as hell hope my daughter doesn't do exactly the same things that I'm doing.
	That would be tragic.
	Oh, I know, right?
	Yeah, the fact that their culture stagnated for thousands of years is a direct measure of the brutality and viciousness that the parents had towards their children.
	You know, why are they all doing the same stupid rain dance that doesn't work?
	Well, because they're punished if they don't.
	I mean, so people tell me all these facts and, yeah, I mean, you know...
	Oh, a good example.
	Hang on just a moment.
	A really good example of what you're actually talking about right now is a conversation my wife and I had recently.
	She was telling me about when she was young, maybe like eight or nine years old, she was talking to her mom and thought she would give her mom a really good compliment, right?
	And so she tells her mom, you know, when I get older, I'm going to do my best not to make any of the mistakes that you've made.
	And of course, she thought she was giving her mom a really good compliment.
	Her mom got all sorts of upset.
	It turned out to be a tragic thing in her life.
	And I said, well, that's interesting because I had the same kind of conversation with my mom.
	And my mom was like, oh, thank goodness.
	I don't want you to make any of the mistakes I made.
	And if you can just jump over those and just make your own mistakes and learn from those, you'll be much better off.
	And it's just like worlds of difference.
	Now my wife loves my mom and she's like, why is my family stupid?
	But yeah, I mean, that's an example of what you were talking about there.
	Yeah, so when it comes to having the magnet to find the needle in the haystack, if you don't want an acquaintance but you want more close friends, then I think the best thing to do is to put your beliefs out there on the internet and find people who respond geographically.
	That would be a good idea, I suppose.
	I mean, I have acquaintances.
	I mean, I make friends at the drop of that.
	It's super easy for me.
	Mainly because the key to getting respect is giving it, and I give everyone respect to begin with.
	And that's just the way that I was raised.
	You're a whore.
	Yeah, right?
	You slut!
	You give everyone respect to begin with.
	Come on.
	Doesn't it have to be earned a little bit?
	Well, no.
	You see, I have this thing where I start off and I give them a little bit of trust and a little bit of respect and I see what they do with it.
	And there's three things they do with it.
	I mean, if they take it and throw it on the ground, spit on it, whatever, well, they just trashed the only respect I was going to give them.
	So they don't get any more and now they don't even have that that I gave them to begin with.
	If they take it, tuck it into their pocket, hang on to it for later, well, they get that amount of trust and respect and it never grows.
	But if they add a little bit to it, polish it up some and hand it back, well then that's trust that goes back and forth and builds over time.
	But you have to start with that small trinket.
	And when I meet somebody from the beginning, I give that and I see what happens.
	It's really amazing.
	You give the respect first, and people will respond by giving it back.
	It happens more often than not.
	The problem is that most people are trying to demand it instead of commanding it.
	Well, no, see, but hang on.
	See, you're contradicting yourself a little bit.
	I'm sensing Dale Carnegie's ghost swirling around this conversation, right?
	Because you're saying, why are most people idiots?
	But I do give people respect.
	Well, no, I mean, but my assertion of most people being idiots is basically seeing what they do with it afterward.
	and what they say afterward or when I argue with people not argue in the term of like yelling and fighting but argue in the term of like debate with other people and I'll say something it's like they either they didn't hear what I said or they didn't think about what I said or they'll just repeat the same mantras back and you know the same things back to me and I was like I already addressed that and you seem to not listen to it and That's what I
	mean by people are stupid and people are just being idiots.
	They're just like mental zombies that just parrot these things back that they've learned, whether it be they've learned it in church or they've learned it in school or wherever it is that they've learned some of the stuff that they just say over and over again.
	So what I'm looking for is that I make friends easily, I have lots of acquaintances and stuff, but what I'm looking for is how to find those, like the magnet you're talking about, right?
	Yeah.
	How to find a few, just a few people who I wouldn't mind hanging out with a whole lot more.
	I mean, my wife and I, we go camping.
	We're hanging camping, which is basically we do hammock camping.
	So we go out into the forests here in the northwest of the U.S., which is absolutely beautiful.
	We camp with hammocks and we have a bunch of friends we do that with.
	And sometimes there's a good conversation that happens.
	Most of the time it It goes weird.
	I'm trying to find those few things and I think the internet is really good.
	I found a couple of people to talk to on the internet but it's kind of like one person is in Australia and another one is in the Netherlands.
	Which is great but it doesn't really make for like, hey, how about coming over for a barbecue this weekend or something.
	Yeah, but I mean, I would focus on, and there are websites that can help pinpoint you geographically and so on, and just put in your sort of rough neighborhood.
	And I would, you know, start a group and say, look, I want to find like-minded people who are interested in talking about, you know, real things in a real context.
	And I'm in this area.
	And, you know, just, you know, find some neutral place where you can meet, you know, can...
	I throw barbecues at a public park or something like that, or someplace where people can meet.
	And just invite.
	And then, you know, just make it a project.
	Which is, you know, I'm going to find some friends.
	It's like finding a job.
	I mean, you know things that you've got to do.
	And the internet has made it really quite amazing to get meetup groups going in geographical areas.
	And I would really focus on that.
	I mean, certainly you can't wait for people to fall in your lap.
	You can't wait to...
	Right.
	Just randomly, right?
	I mean if you're looking to fill A position called close friend, then you're basically looking for somebody with two PhDs in disparate fields, you know?
	Molecular biology and art history, you know?
	Well, you don't just wander around, you know, saying, hey, I just met a guy at the coffee shop.
	I wonder if he has degrees in molecular biology and art history, right?
	If you're looking for something really specialized, then you have to cast your net as wide as possible, and you have to openly state what you want and what you need, what you have to offer, and then just wait for the, quote, applicants To pour in.
	But if you're looking for things really specialized, cast the net wide.
	Make it geographically specific and be very open and clear about what your needs are.
	And then, you know, prepare for the inevitable disappointment when somebody says, oh, I only have a master's in molecular biology.
	Get out of here, you punk!
	Or whatever it is, right?
	But I would say use the web.
	Work the web to find geographical similarities.
	Because, you know, there could be a guy four doors over.
	Who's in exactly the same boat, who could be a great friend, but you're just not going to know.
	Putting yourself out personally face-to-face to me is a bit random, and given the rarity of what you're looking for, probably is not going to be that great or useful an approach, so that would be my suggestion.
	Hasn't turned out to be the best approach so far.
	That's why I figured I'd call in and ask.
	Meetups.com is a good place.
	Somebody has mentioned Meetups.com.
	I just thanked them there in the chat.
	I noticed they mentioned that.
	I'm going to go and have a look at that a little bit later on.
	Okay.
	Yeah, I hope that helps.
	And of course, if you do find a group that you like, please feel free to come to the Free Domain Radio Message Board and talk to people who may also be around as well.
	I mean, we've got, I don't know, not, you know, it's not obviously that many active members, but it's like 10 or 11,000 people who've signed up and I'm sure they would like to, there must be at least a few who'd be around from a geographical standpoint.
	And so, you know, you can work that resource as well.
	Yeah, that sounds absolutely great.
	Thanks a lot for your help, and your chemo and everything like that, and I hope that continues along that same positive pathway, your family.
	Oh, thank you.
	Thank you, I appreciate that.
	All right, have yourself a good time finding your friends, and if you find some, please feel free to share the goodies with others, and I hope it works out.
	All right, thank you very much.
	All right, take care.
	You too.
	All right, next up today we have Seth.
	Hello, hello.
	I love all these non-WASP names.
	It's good.
	I feel like we're really dipping into the cultural mosaic.
	Hello, Seth.
	How are you?
	Pretty good.
	Yourself?
	I'm well, thank you.
	You're welcome.
	All right, I have to apologize in advance.
	I know a lot of the fans don't like Dream.
	I mean, if you don't want to do this, that's fine.
	No, the problem with the Dream Calls is that I end up doing Steven Tyler's Shriek from the end of Dream On.
	And that's hard on people's ears.
	And it's also hard on my voice.
	So I won't do that right now.
	But it's going off in my head.
	Those who are not into their 70s rock, this will make no sense.
	But no, I'm fine with them.
	And it's been a while.
	So Dream On!
	No!
	I knew I shouldn't have tried.
	I knew I shouldn't have tried.
	Anyway, go ahead.
	Alright, so, excuse me.
	I've been having this barrage of really off-the-wall dreams as of late, and I'm not necessarily good at analyzing them, but most of the time I just take them for face value.
	However, this recent one, the one I could remember anyways, I wrote down and it felt pretty significant to me, but I don't know where to go from I figured I'd throw it by you.
	Is that alright with you?
	Yeah, please.
	I wrote this down, sorry.
	Throughout the whole dream, I had a nagging feeling that I was missing, forgotten, or had lost something.
	I had borrowed a kid's tricycle from my Uncle Cody.
	The bike was just big enough for me to ride.
	I had to go and get something from somewhere, but I don't remember what or where.
	I rode on a sidewalk along a neat, well-kept road.
	It was a residential area of upper middle class, complete with white picket.
	How old were you when you were doing this?
	In my dream?
	Yeah.
	I would probably say just like a couple years younger than I am now, like maybe two or three years.
	Okay, so it's not like you were dreaming you were a kid.
	No, no, no.
	I should say, because I'm 23 now, so I would say early 20s.
	So yeah, the kid's bike would be very out of place, and it felt very out of place to me.
	Got it, okay.
	So it was a residential area of upper middle class, complete with white picket fences, trees, beautiful gardens, and all that.
	I don't remember getting to the place I needed to go, nor do I remember getting to whatever it was that I needed.
	The dream just segued right into my way back home.
	The tricycle was now a kid's bike.
	I wrote that down wrong.
	The bike was now a tricycle, which I was getting...
	The bike was a tricycle before, right?
	No, did I say it was a tricycle?
	Yeah, I did.
	Okay.
	I thought...
	I thought I had done a typo there.
	I'm sorry.
	Which, as I was riding it, I was getting sleepier and sleepier.
	As I fell asleep, it transformed into a massive Jeep, like an oversized Jeep Grand Cherokee as I fell asleep at the wheel.
	I slept-drove home, which, in the process, I took a wrong turn and ended up at a railroad crossing.
	I kind of knew whereabouts I was as the same railroad crossed the road I lived on.
	I woke up as I was pulling up to the tracks and had trouble stopping the truck.
	The brake pedal was real stiff and I had to use both feet just to slow the truck down and even then I still couldn't stop completely.
	I pulled up next to a motorcyclist from behind.
	He glared at me irritably once he realized I couldn't stop completely and that I had just woken up from falling asleep at the wheel.
	A train was coming so he and another cyclist pulled off onto a side road.
	A moment later, I decided to do the same and did a U-turn onto a parallel road to the right.
	I wrecked a little bit in the process as the Jeep was turning into an infant's toy bike that had like trains and stuffed animals on the front.
	Some of the kid's stuff and a wheel fell off, but I hadn't realized it yet.
	The kid's bike was turning into a mountain bike as I was retracing my way back to the correct path home.
	I ended up following a van on my mountain bike and was a bit confused as we pulled through someone's yard.
	We went through an archway made of vines and I realized that there was a little road just bisecting this yard.
	It was gorgeous, full of colorful plants on both sides.
	The road was made of these flat PVC vinyl two inch wide cross crossing fencing slats with grass growing up in the squares between them.
	We pulled onto the road I was supposed to be on and the van disappeared.
	I went down the road on my bike until the chain fell off, so I got off and started putting it back on.
	I was confused because the chain was weird.
	It had a hook that went into the gears instead of the way they normally go on.
	An eight-year-old-ish black kid came out of the house that I had stopped next to, along with his much younger sister.
	He asked me what I was doing, and after I told him, he started describing how he did horrible things for his parents.
	But that he was a nice person, just quote-unquote gangster, and how he wanted to be friendly and be nice to people.
	He was nice enough that I didn't want to blow him off, but the stuff he was describing was fairly off-putting.
	Eventually he got bored and went back in his house.
	What was he describing?
	Basically just stuff like running drugs and watching his parents kill people.
	It was kind of weird.
	It felt very out of place.
	Eventually, he got bored and went back in his house, and I finished fixing my bike chain.
	The dream segued again to where I had gone back for the wheel and stuff that fell off the bike.
	There was a couple of stuffed animals from the kitty toy bike thing soaking up pond water.
	I picked up something like a toy train or car, something that was fairly important to the original owner.
	The dream then segued back to my home where I was in a room I've never had, but I knew it was my room.
	My uncle Cody and my friend Chrissy were sitting on my bed Maynard Keynes?
	No, Maynard James Keenan, the lead singer of Tool, Perfect Circle, Pucifer.
	Yeah, music reference.
	Was he into stimulus spending as well, this lead singer?
	No, just kidding.
	I think Memorial is like stimulus drugs.
	Right, right, okay.
	Less harmful in general.
	Okay, got it.
	Yeah.
	And I enthusiastically asked if he had heard new stuff he's done with his side projects while digging into my CD collection.
	Cody asked if I had something from the kiddie bike, and I remarked that I had it and even cleaned it, and was looking for it while looking for my Tool CDs.
	Cody then said to Chrissy that no, he's never heard anything commercial from Tool.
	And I replied, I never said anything about commercial, but I asked if he had heard any of the new stuff.
	Cody started getting snarky and mouthy, which is when I realized I was dreaming about Cody got pissed off and woke myself up.
	And is this a repetitive dream?
	No.
	This was a one-time thing.
	So I can't really say it's repetitive.
	Alright, can you just put it into Skype or you can whisper it to me in the chat.
	You've got it typed out, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	So I can reference it.
	Because I was writing stuff down, but there was a lot...
	Yeah, sorry.
	There you go.
	I think that got all of it.
	Yeah, that looks like it.
	Oh, wait, hold on.
	There was a typing error.
	I accidentally drag and drop something.
	Okay, never mind.
	All right, sorry.
	Well, I mean, obviously the most striking thing here is the black kid, right?
	Thank you.
	Uh, yeah.
	Alright.
	Now, are you black?
	No, no, I'm a redhead, so.
	Yeah, I was gonna say, I mean, I don't want to judge based on stereotypes like accent, but you didn't sound particularly brotherly.
	Okay, so, um, did you have black friends when you were a kid?
	Um, not until high school.
	Okay, so this would be much earlier.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Does this black kid, did he remind you of anyone that you knew when you were younger?
	Not that I can think of, no.
	Although, actually, now that I think about it, I mean, maybe this is just like, you know...
	Just a random association I made, but maybe he did kind of remind me of the kids of neighbors I used to have in the last place I lived, and we had these downstairs neighbors, and the parents were total scumbags.
	So that might be the association there.
	Okay, so tell me a bit more about these neighbors.
	And no names or geography, I just want to get a sense of the family that you remember.
	Well, fortunately I didn't know their names.
	But I remember I'd wake up at 4am and I'd hear the chick's boyfriend either beating on her or her kids or something or arguing and all that.
	And then I would come downstairs because my apartment was upstairs.
	I would come downstairs and there would be a freshly stolen bike spray painted and everything.
	There was like a different bike on the porch like every other week.
	Wait, so you get the bike reference here, right?
	Because your dream has nothing but bikes in it, right?
	Yeah.
	Well, my buddy John, he said that maybe it's more indicative of maybe like a progression of time or representative of a progression of time, which seems to make more sense to me.
	Yeah, but progression of time, I mean, dreams don't need to tell us that time passes.
	Dreams need to tell us stuff that we don't know consciously but which is essential to us, right?
	You don't need a dream to say to you, hey, you know what, time passes.
	At one point you were younger and now you're older.
	At one point you had smaller bikes and now you have bigger bikes, right?
	I mean, you don't usually dream that it's raining because we know that it rains, right?
	Unless it's significant in some way.
	But the first thing you mentioned, of course, was the criminality, right?
	Which was the beating on the kids and the beating on Were they married?
	Were they boyfriend, girlfriend?
	No, no, no.
	It was boyfriend, girlfriend, and I think she had like two or three boyfriends in the year and a half I lived there.
	Right.
	Now, you know, this is terrible for children, right?
	Yeah, absolutely.
	I think that the highest multiplier of the risk for child abuse is Is a single mom with multiple boyfriends?
	Like a single mom with a non-biological father, sorry, with a man who's not the biological father.
	A single mom with a man who's not the biological father of her children where he's cohabiting raises the risk of child abuse by what ratio do you think?
	I actually remember reading something on this.
	I can't remember what exactly it was, but I think it was like something around in the 40 percentile range.
	No, it's 33 times.
	Oh, wow.
	Yeah, 3,300%.
	Wow.
	Right, so 33 times.
	I mean, just being a single mom raises the chance of child abuse 13 times.
	13 times.
	Not 13%, 13 multiples.
	And having a non-biological...
	Non-biologically related man in the house is 33 times higher child abuse risk.
	This is why the nuclear family is kind of important.
	It's the thing that protects children the most.
	Biological mom and dad together is the greatest chance for children to...
	And these are just statistics.
	It doesn't tell you anything in particular about any individual.
	But it certainly does tell you the general patterns are brutal on children for family dissolution.
	This is why anything which dissolves the family when children are young is incredibly destructive as a whole for children.
	I mean, 13 times just for single parents and 33 times for this situation that you're describing.
	And that's with one single non-biological Really non-biologically related father.
	With a series of them, I'm sure it's much higher.
	I mean, this would be just brutal.
	So the bikes that showed up in the front yard or the backyard, they were stolen by the children, is that right?
	Stolen by the parents, actually.
	Stolen by the parents.
	So the parents were basically stealing bikes and repainting them, and then they would sell them?
	Give them to the kids, usually.
	Ah, okay.
	And you said there were two or three children?
	Yeah, yeah.
	I was a little boy.
	He was about the same age, about eight.
	And then I remember a daughter, yeah, a daughter, who's, I wouldn't say the same age, but just like a couple years younger than him, probably like six or seven.
	And what's your memory of these children?
	Well, I didn't, I really like the kids themselves, but I couldn't really hate them because they were just victims of their parents, so to speak.
	But the daughter had a bad habit of going out into the backyard and actually just pooping in the backyard for no reason.
	Wait, what do you mean for no reason?
	Like, I would ask, like, you know, like, one time I caught her, and she's like, I'm like, you know, wouldn't you want some privacy?
	Like, don't you want to use your bathroom?
	She's like, no, I'm just doing it.
	Just...
	Yes, but you understand that's not no reason.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	I mean, this is a completely brutalized childhood, right?
	And this is...
	This is basically shitting in the yard so that people will try and save her, right?
	Okay.
	She's saying that this is the level of dysfunction that I'm experiencing.
	Mm-hmm.
	Like, I'm being shit on by my parents, I'm going to shit on the yard so people can see and do something.
	Okay.
	There's not no reason, right?
	Hmm.
	All right, sorry, I was thinking about that for a moment.
	No, no, take your time.
	Show where we try to think about things, so those poisons are totally fine.
	Um...
	Okay, so, sorry, go ahead.
	Now, was this a relatively...
	Because in the dream, you're going through some pretty nice neighborhoods.
	Yeah.
	What was the neighborhood, the real neighborhood that you were living in with these basement dwellers?
	Um, it was actually a pretty beat-up neighborhood.
	Um, it was just, like, a couple blocks away from, like, uh, basically, like, a big gang area in the neighborhood I live in.
	Um, like, lots of shootings and drug busts and all that.
	Um, there was a high school, you know, a couple blocks down, too.
	Um...
	But the neighborhood was basically like lower, lower, lower class.
	You know, it wasn't a good neighborhood at all.
	Am I right in guessing that these children did not receive a ton of support from the adults in the neighborhood?
	Um...
	No.
	I mean, they would just pretty much roam free around the neighborhood and people would just ignore them.
	Right.
	And what do you think of that?
	Um...
	I don't know.
	I kind of have a disconnect on that one.
	On one hand, I can understand why people don't want to associate with the kids because the kids themselves were very irritating to deal with and frustrating to be around.
	But on the other hand, I don't see why people weren't empathetic enough to at least try to reach out and do something for them.
	Well, there's six million social agencies that would go and help these children, right?
	I know that they're government and blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
	But this is within the paradigm of people who are statists, right?
	In this neighborhood, one call to child protection services would have gotten a huge amount of resources towards these kids, right?
	I suppose.
	I never thought of that before, actually.
	Well, it's not...
	I mean, you understand why that's an important question, right?
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	Why?
	Well, because these kids need those resources.
	And people who, as you said, are obviously statists, they would think of calling CPS or some charity or something.
	Yeah, you know, children in foster care have only 10 times the risk of being abused.
	So it's going down from 30 to 40 times to 10 times.
	Yeah.
	The risk of being abused.
	Now, these are all government numbers, so I, you know, I put them forward with all due blah, blah, blah, right?
	But looking from the standpoint of people who are statists, right, there are endless agencies to deal with these situations wherein the statistics would be that the children would have a much better outcome.
	Than staying in this kind of environment where they're being exposed to thieving and violence, brutality, emotional abuse, God knows what other kind of abuse is going on in that situation where you have six-year-old kids shitting in the yard that is indicative of some unbelievable levels of abuse, like fucking third world, ninth layer of hell levels of abuse.
	Okay.
	And the cry for help that the children are putting out there is being uniformly ignored in the neighborhood, right?
	Yeah.
	And I'm just...
	and by you.
	And look, I mean, you were obviously How old were you at this time?
	About 22, yeah.
	When you knew these kids?
	Yeah, it was just like a year or so ago.
	Why didn't you act?
	Please understand, I'm not trying to put you on the spot, and I'm not trying to say, you know, ooh, bad, right?
	I'm genuinely curious why you didn't act.
	Two reasons, mainly.
	For one, like, I didn't want to make anything worse for the kids.
	I mean...
	I wouldn't say I've had personal experience with CPS, but I have had friends who've been through the CPS system, and they basically were horribly abused, and I didn't want to risk putting these kids through more abuse, so to speak.
	But on the other hand, I suppose I didn't really know what to do in the first place.
	If you had concerns about CPS, you would...
	You would do some research, right?
	Yeah.
	And again, I'm not trying to pick on you.
	I'm just sort of pointing out, like, you would look up and say, okay, well, what happens with kids in the CPS system and how does it work and all that kind of stuff, right?
	And it's hard to imagine how it could be worse than them shitting in their own yard, right?
	True.
	And again, I know I'm going to get lots of emails from people who are like, oh, CPS is terrible.
	I understand all of that.
	I understand all of that.
	And I'm just asking the questions, right?
	I mean, there may be fantastic reasons as to why these kids remain in this unbelievable fucking dungeon, right?
	Maybe there's really great reasons.
	And maybe this is the very best our goddamn society can do, is to leave these kids in this wreck, right, of a situation.
	But the question is interesting to me.
	More than interesting, it's fascinating why nobody in the neighborhood acts when they see this occurring.
	So your concern was that they may end up in some worse situation?
	Worse situation or that CPS won't do anything and the parents they are with will end up escalating because someone called CPS on them.
	Now, in terms of giving the kids a little bit of support yourself, you know, being a bit friendly, providing them some alternative...
	I'm not saying, obviously, you're being sort of a caseworker or anything, but providing some sort of alternative view of what it's like to be around other human beings.
	Because, right, the kids are...
	From the kids' perspective, they're being horribly abused in full view of everyone.
	Yeah.
	And nobody's doing anything.
	I mean, what relationship do you think that's going to give them to the society that they live in?
	I would guess fairly, I want to say apathetic, but fairly hostile towards people.
	Oh, vicious.
	Yeah.
	I mean, vicious because they will grow up.
	I mean, I can almost guarantee you, right?
	I mean, that they're going to grow up with a completely feral relationship with society.
	Like, fuck y'all.
	Yeah.
	Fuck you all.
	I owe you nothing.
	I owe you no allegiance.
	I owe you no respect for property rights.
	I owe you no respect for personhood.
	Actually, it's funny you say that.
	I'm sorry to interrupt, but it's funny you said that because there were several occasions where the little girl actually would come into our apartment.
	Like, if we left the door unlocked at all, she would just walk right the fuck in.
	Sure.
	So, yeah, I can definitely see that, you know, manifesting already.
	Oh, yeah.
	Look, I mean, when I was in my early teens, I just shoplifted.
	Because it's like, I mean, fuck, society did nothing to protect me.
	So, I mean, what the fuck should I care about other people's property rights?
	I mean, nobody gave a shit about me being horribly abused in full view of everyone around me.
	So don't give me this bullshit about how I've got to do right by society.
	I mean, first, society should do right by me.
	And it's earned, right?
	The social contract is earned.
	And this is something that the kids will grow up and just, I mean, there's no relationship to society that is anything other than predatory.
	I mean, that's the vast likelihood, right?
	Yeah.
	And...
	The idea that all the social services are just going to do horrible things to the kids no matter what is not born out by the data that I've seen.
	And I think it's just a way that people say to themselves because they don't want to get involved.
	Because if you attempt to protect the children of abusive parents, those abusive parents may turn on you, right?
	Even if it's anonymous, even if it's whatever, right?
	Yeah.
	It's uncomfortable.
	And so we'd rather end up with like criminals than put ourselves through the discomfort of standing up for children.
	And what do you think of, I mean, all the other adults?
	Was this ever talked about in the neighborhood or was it like nobody talked about it?
	My roommate and I talked about it a lot, but beyond that I wouldn't know.
	I wasn't that close with any of my neighbors for the most part.
	What about your parents?
	My parents?
	My dad's in Utah, my mom's in Virginia, I think so.
	I don't really talk to them much.
	Do you speak about the situation with them?
	No.
	Why not?
	I don't really speak to my parents.
	Oh, okay.
	Sorry about that.
	It's fine.
	I'll talk to my mother once in a while, but my dad, I absolutely refuse to speak to them.
	And with you, when you talk about this with your parents, sorry, my apologies.
	When you talk about this with your friends, was it pretty much what you and I, like, this is terrible, but, you know, we don't want to get any agencies involved because it's just going to get worse?
	No, I don't remember anything like that.
	I mean, I remember, I wouldn't say I was just getting into Free Domain Radio or anything like that, but I was a couple months into it by the time I moved into this place.
	And so back then we would talk about how abuse affects the children, what behaviors would be reflective of what types of behaviors their parents exhibit, things like that.
	Yeah, more just like from an analytical standpoint, I would say.
	Right.
	Okay.
	And what does it do for you that this is a society that you live in where this happens to these kids, right?
	And nobody does anything?
	For me, I wouldn't say fairly, I would say it's extremely frustrating for me.
	I'll even try to talk about this kind of stuff with friends who do have kids, and I'm just amazed by the resistance I get just for talking about simple things like circumcision, spanking, stuff like that.
	So it's extremely frustrating, to say the least, that this happens.
	Right.
	So, throughout the whole dream, I had a nagging feeling that I was missing, forgotten, or had lost something.
	I had borrowed a kid's tricycle from my uncle.
	The bike was just big enough for me to ride.
	I had to go and get something from somewhere, but I don't remember what or where.
	Now, when you were...
	A kid's tricycle is around the age of three or four, is that right?
	Yeah.
	Was there anything significant that happened to you around the age of three or four?
	A lot of my childhoods flurry.
	I think that was when I first moved in.
	I think I moved into the US for the first time when I was three.
	We lived out in Spokane, Washington.
	When I was four, because I lived on Fairchild Air Force Base, And when I was four, there was a shooting at the hospital and this big plane crash.
	Actually, those are my most significant memories of Washington, and that's about that time period.
	So your father was military, is that right?
	Yes.
	Okay, because you remember what the black kid says, right?
	The two things you told me that were bad?
	Yeah.
	One was running drugs, and what was the second one?
	Like seeing his parents kill people and stuff like that.
	Your dad was military, right?
	Yes.
	And I would imagine that your dad received a fair amount of positive reinforcement for that.
	Yeah, and I got a lot of like, when I was still living with him and talking to him, Before my parents got divorced, he was very encouraging.
	He would want me to join the military and all that when I got older and all that bullshit.
	Right, and at one point you're in a jeep, right?
	Yes.
	Now, I know it's a commercial jeep, but of course the jeep, as you know, comes from General Purpose Vehicle GP, right?
	Yes.
	It's a military.
	The massive jeep, you said like an overseas jeep.
	Were you considering joining the military at some point?
	When I was 16 and 17, I've actually been through the system like six or seven times because I've been homeless several times throughout my life and each of those times I was...
	You know, heavily considering going into the military, so I'd go through MEPS and take my ASVAB and all that.
	So, yeah, I would say, like, I got really, really close many times.
	And, yeah.
	Right.
	Yeah, okay.
	So, in a sense, then, because you have trouble stopping the truck, the jeep that you're in, your brake pedal is stiff, right?
	In other words, it's hard for you to resist that, and I'm really sorry to hear about the homeless thing.
	That's just terrifying and terrible.
	But you're having trouble slowing the breakdown, right?
	In other words, you're in the Jeep, and you're having trouble stopping it, and that may be to do with the temptation to join the military at some point, right?
	Yeah, that would make sense, yeah.
	And the motorcyclist.
	Do you know any motorcyclists?
	Or are you a motorcyclist?
	I would like to be a motorcyclist, but I just don't have the finances to buy a motorcycle.
	But I have known a lot of motorcyclists.
	I used to be friends with a motorcycle gang, so to speak, but not how people associate motor gangs.
	They were just like...
	An open air club!
	Yeah, yeah.
	So, yeah, I used to go shooting with this one guy and he had a giant motorcycle chained up in a tree, which was hilarious.
	Stuff like that.
	So, yeah, I used to have a couple of biker friends.
	Right.
	And did you talk to them about your history or what happened in your life openly or was it more a relationship around motorbikes and shared interests rather than intimacy?
	It was more like a shared interest, more than anything.
	I have a lot of difficulty making friends, so I'm very introverted, guarded, you know, that type of person.
	Yeah, because I'm just looking at this, like, so the brake pedal is stiff, that's not your fault, right?
	I mean, you just, you're kind of sleep driving home, and you can't stop the truck, you can't stop the Jeep, because the brake pedal is, you've got both feet on them, you're grinding in it still, right?
	Yeah, I still can't stop it completely.
	Right, but the motorcyclist, you said he glared at me irritably.
	Yes.
	Right?
	As in, you're doing something wrong, but this isn't your fault.
	And that reminds me a little bit of how people would look at these kids.
	They're doing something wrong, but we know it's not their fault, right?
	Yeah.
	Well, I mean, I think I used those exact same words earlier, so, yeah.
	Right, so this issue of assigning blame to people who are simply struggling to survive their circumstances is a very complex question, right?
	And the more complex the question, I think, the more that the dreams will examine them from a variety of perspectives.
	Right, I mean, the relationship that we have with kids who are being abused is complex and challenging.
	Yeah.
	Like, I remember taking my daughter when she was, like, 10 months old to the library, and she was drooling, and some older kid who was, like, four or five was like, stop drooling!
	And it's like, she's fucking 10 months, you little brat!
	Yeah.
	You know, but I get, so I get that he'd obviously been raised in a pretty verbally abusive environment, that would be my guess.
	You know, no empathy, and, you know, anybody who wants to feel superior to a 10-month-old is pretty pathetic, right?
	Yeah.
	But so at the same time, I felt annoyance at this little shit for saying something completely ridiculous, like blaming a 10-month-old for drooling.
	But at the same time, I felt this sympathy for where he was and where he was coming from.
	But part of me feels, well, he should know better at this age.
	And the part of me thinks, well, then it must be even more brutal for him because he doesn't know better, so to speak, right?
	Yeah.
	So it's complex and it's challenging.
	Because if we give people no responsibility for their childhoods, Right?
	Or for the effects of their childhoods, then we have no choice but to excuse everything they do as adults.
	And that's messed up, right?
	Yeah.
	Like, so if we say to someone, like we say to these kids, they become, let's say, thieves or drug runners or whatever, and then we find out about their childhoods and we say, you are not in any way responsible for what you do as an adult because you had a bad childhood.
	That's...
	That's dehumanizing them because it's taking away moral responsibility.
	And when we do that, we've completely given up on people, right?
	Yeah.
	But at the same time, we can't fairly judge people who come from really great households the same as we would come from people who are really bad households, right?
	Yeah.
	So it's complex and it's challenging.
	And I really wanted to...
	To point that out, and I get called out for this all the time, right?
	I'm not a determinist, but bad childhoods lead to bad outcomes, right?
	Yeah.
	Well, it's complex, and it's challenging, and there is...
	I think we want to give sympathy and responsibility at the same time, because if we give sympathy without responsibility, we are emasculating their capacity for change.
	But if we give responsibility without sympathy, then we're continuing the abuse by holding them to the same standards as people who came from good homes.
	Yeah.
	So it's a very challenging situation here.
	If I may interrupt, as a side note, you said bad beginnings have bad endings, so to speak.
	I think it would probably help or be more appropriate to say maybe it increases predisposition or risk factor or something.
	I think it would be a fair point to make that there are certainly exceptions to the rule.
	I myself would consider myself having a bad childhood and I came out Fairly functional.
	I wouldn't say functional, but fairly functional.
	So I'd definitely say there are exceptions to the rule.
	Oh, without a doubt, there are exceptions to the rule.
	But I would imagine that you got out, for which you should be incredibly proud, but I would imagine that you got out fairly functional because you held yourself to a higher standard than your history, right?
	And you did not give your history as your excuse.
	Yeah.
	So you had to hold yourself to a higher standard, but at the same time, you couldn't hold yourself to a standard as if you hadn't had a bad childhood.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah.
	Actually, sometimes I find myself a little jealous of people my age who had good childhoods.
	Actually, a little is an understatement, but that's a side note.
	No, absolutely.
	I mean, it's like you and I, we suddenly get kidnapped and put to Japan, and we've got to learn Japanese.
	It's like, fuck.
	It would surely have been a lot easier if we just grew up with Japanese, right?
	It's a hell of a lot of work.
	Yeah.
	So, yeah.
	No, I mean, there's some good stuff that can come out of all the work that you have to do to overcome a bad childhood, but it sure doesn't make the bad childhood A good thing.
	It just means you can get something good out of it.
	That's very different.
	Yeah.
	All right.
	So let's just see here.
	Because the environment is actually quite beautiful in a lot of your dream, right?
	Yeah.
	Actually, I would say the whole way through.
	Except maybe like the railroad.
	There was like dark and, you know, rainy.
	Hey, Rowan.
	Sorry, my niece just came in my room.
	I am here.
	No problem.
	Is Alex watching you?
	Well, I'm on the phone at the moment, so would you ask him, and when I'm done with the phone, I'll come out and play with you?
	Thank you, Rowan.
	I love you.
	Sorry about that.
	Oh, no problem.
	So, yeah, when I was at the train tracks, it was very rainy, kind of.
	There was puddles everywhere.
	I forgot to mention that when I wrote it down, but I definitely recall that.
	Being a little darker, basically.
	But for the rest of the dream, it is absolutely gorgeous, I would say.
	Alright.
	So, I mean, I think we have some framework that I think is It's worthwhile looking at.
	I'm not saying to do the whole dream would take a long, long time, but I do want to just, just before we end, I do want to dip into this bit at the end.
	Cody and Chrissy and Maynard James Keenan, the economically inclined self-medicating leasinger.
	Sorry.
	So this is a real guy.
	Does he actually do side projects?
	Is he doing solo projects?
	Yeah, yeah.
	I mean, he's got a lot of bands.
	I mentioned three before.
	He was lead singer of Tool.
	There's another band called Perfect Circle and another band called Pucifer.
	And then he has lots of individual solo projects that he does anonymously and stuff like that.
	So wait, Tool, Perfect Circle, and Pucifer.
	Yes.
	That's just Lucifer with the word poo in front, right?
	Yeah.
	If you listen to music, it's kind of like a pun on the term pussy and Lucifer at the same time.
	Oh, so P-U, right?
	P-U-Cifer?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Tool.
	Okay.
	Okay, so Tool reminds me of the black kid who says he does horrible things for his parents.
	Pardon?
	The little black kid who says he does horrible things for his parents, running drugs and all that, right?
	So he's being used as a tool, right?
	Yes.
	We have so many perfect circles in this dream, it's ridiculous, right?
	I mean, bike wheels are everywhere, car wheels, you do U-turns, right?
	I mean, so perfect circles are everywhere here, right?
	Yes.
	And Pucifer is the kid shitting in the yard, right?
	Yeah.
	Because she's under devilish influences and she's pooing.
	And it's a girl, so genitalia would also tie into there as well, right?
	Yeah.
	So the density of metaphors around the band names, I think, is...
	So Perfect Circle, to me, is the cycle of the generations, right?
	A Perfect Circle is you can't escape your history, right?
	It just goes round and round.
	Actually, I'm sorry to interrupt again.
	It's just like random thoughts coming to my head.
	The band Tool, they actually do have a song from their second album called Prison Sex, and it's actually about this topic, about the cycle of abuse, basically replaying itself over and over with an equally creepy music video, I might add.
	Even there, the metaphors are cycling in on themselves.
	Yeah, I've got to imagine that the video for the song called Prison Sex is not featuring a guest appearance from the Wiggles.
	All right, so you're saying, have you heard the side projects?
	He asked if you have something from the kiddie bike.
	And I remarked that I had it and even cleaned it.
	I was looking for it while they were looking for my tool CDs.
	I don't understand that.
	What from the kiddie bike?
	I said earlier that I picked up a bike or a train, some sort of small vehicle toy of some sort, because the Jeep, as I was doing a U-turn, turned into a kiddie bike, and as I wrecked it, parts fell off, including a wheel and all these toys, and it had fallen into a puddle or pond or whatever, and I picked it up and cleaned it once I got home.
	Alright, now, he's never heard anything commercial from Tool, so...
	Is this like a band that is alternative and their fans are paranoid about them selling out or getting a big hit or something?
	I was into them before they became big and, for God's sake, don't write something catchy, otherwise your street cred is doomed.
	Is that the kind of thing?
	Yeah, they're one of those alternative bands that were always mainstream, but their fans are convinced that they're not.
	You're one of those, actually.
	So it's actually kind of like an act of irony, I think.
	But yeah, yeah.
	Okay, so the idea that popular success for the band would be harmful to the self-image of the followers as outsiders, is that right?
	Correct.
	Okay, so commercial.
	So success is bad.
	Yeah.
	Now, obviously there's a middle ground here, and no success means that they never got out of the garage and nobody's ever heard of them, right?
	Yes.
	Right.
	So that's kind of a false self thing, right?
	Yes.
	I mean, to be invested in whether the band is popular or not is obviously kind of bullshit.
	Like, the music is the music, right?
	The number of people who like the music doesn't mean, you know, George Bournemouth Shaw said that any painting that 10% or more of the population likes ought to be burned.
	Because it just must be terrible, right?
	That's my definition.
	You know, this sad-ass pedophilic erotica of Fifty Shades of Grey probably falls into that category as well.
	Yeah.
	Worst, most infantile, horrible porn ever.
	But anyway, so the idea that you have to kind of closely guard the perceived success of the band in order to enjoy the music means that you don't actually have a relationship to the music directly, but more due to you have a relationship with the image of the band rather than the music itself.
	Mm.
	Does that sort of make any sense?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Well, again, this wasn't me, though.
	I very much enjoy the music, but that was my code of saying that.
	No, but this is your friend.
	So why does he start getting snarky?
	He says he replied, I didn't say anything about commercial, but that I'd asked if he'd heard any of the new stuff.
	And he started getting snarky and mouthy, and why?
	What was he saying?
	Anytime.
	I lived with my Uncle Cody for a year or two.
	I can't remember how long.
	This was before where I live now.
	And he was a very verbally abusive, very quick to anger.
	So me correcting him on anything would throw him off.
	And he would start getting upset and saying, fuck you, go fuck yourself, and mouthing off, stuff like that.
	So, and I think that shows because the second I realized I was dreaming about Cody, I got pissed off and woke up and was in a bad mood for the rest of the day.
	Yes.
	Okay, so he's actually just being an asshole, right?
	I mean, that's pretty horrible things to say to a family member, to anyone really, right?
	The sort of fuck you and go fuck yourself kind of stuff, right?
	Yeah.
	And he's the brother of which parent?
	Of my dad.
	And when were you living with him?
	I would say about, it was either three or four years ago.
	A while back.
	It feels like forever, actually.
	And he was not actually into this band, I would assume, right?
	No, he was very much into this band.
	Oh, he was?
	Yeah, like, I remember him telling me how he used to do Acid while listening to certain songs, or, you know, when he was in Utah, he'd saw them once, or something like that, you know, stuff like that.
	So he was actually pretty big into the band, like I was.
	Oh, yeah, I mean, if you're an alternative band and you haven't made a big in Utah, I mean, you just haven't made a big at all.
	Right, okay.
	Okay, so, I mean, obviously, this is...
	What's interesting is there are some serious issues in your family, and we don't have to get into them.
	I mean, obviously, if you're homeless and you've got, you know, uncles telling you to go fuck yourself, I mean, this is some seriously dysfunctional stuff in the family, for which I'm incredibly sympathetic and incredibly sorry, I mean.
	But what's interesting is...
	And I don't mean this sort of clinically or coldly or anything like that.
	You know, what's interesting is...
	The more dysfunctional the family, the more you fight over inconsequential shit.
	Oh yes, absolutely.
	You know, have you ever noticed that pattern?
	I noticed that when I was very young.
	Like, I was probably eight years old when I first noticed that.
	Right.
	Well, tell me what you noticed.
	Well, like, I remember one time, both my sisters, like, it was two of my sisters and I were living with my single mother at the time, and I remember...
	One of my older sisters, her bike got stolen, so my two sisters proceeded to have a fistfight over who would call the police about the stolen bike.
	Oh, that's interesting.
	Well, hang on a sec.
	It's always right at the end that you get the meaning of the dream.
	Tell me that again.
	How old were you?
	Eight, right?
	And your bike was stolen?
	Yes.
	And your sisters were fighting over who was going to call the cops?
	Yes.
	Okay, well that's the dream.
	Do you know what that dream is?
	I kind of like feel like I should, but I'm kind of having doubts.
	You know what we were talking about?
	Yeah, we were talking about calling the authorities earlier about the kids, right?
	Yeah.
	So even little children will call the cops over a bike.
	But no adults will call the cops to protect children.
	No, you don't get it yet.
	Because nobody sits there and says, "Well, if we call the cops, everything's just going to get worse, right?" Yeah.
	But that's the excuse that people make up about calling the cops about children being abused.
	Do you see what I'm saying?
	The cops are very helpful when it comes to your stolen bike, but the cops will not be helpful when it comes to protecting children who are being abused.
	And it's about a bike.
	I'm having a little difficulty with the self-referencing metaphors here.
	So when you were eight, how old were your sisters?
	One was, I think, 13 and 16 to guesstimate.
	Okay, so let's just say a 13-year-old knows that if a crime is occurring, you call the cops.
	Correct.
	Yes.
	Nobody in your neighborhood, including you as an adult, said a crime is occurring with these children that are being beaten.
	Let's call the cops.
	Correct.
	Do you not see the disparity here?
	I do.
	The bike should be protected and the cops will help you.
	The children can't be protected and the cops won't help.
	Yeah.
	So the dream is basically me kind of fighting up against my own apathy towards the situation, I would suppose.
	Well, it's not just yours.
	It's everyone's.
	Okay.
	That's the society that you live in, right?
	Yeah.
	Nobody calls the cops about kids.
	Well, very few people do.
	But if a bike gets stolen, everybody's fighting over who should call the cops, right?
	Yeah.
	In other words, a bike is much more valuable than a child.
	Thank you.
	A bike is much more deserving of protection than a child.
	We will use the state to protect a bike.
	We will not use the state to protect a child.
	Cops will help you with a bike.
	Cops will harm a child.
	That's actually pretty...
	That doesn't feel good to think about, to be blunt.
	No, but empirically, this is the case, right?
	Yeah, this is the case.
	I mean, your sisters weren't fighting about who's going to get to call the cops about the children being abused next door, were they?
	Pardon?
	I know it's not the same time frame, but your sisters wouldn't have been fighting about who's going to call the cops to protect the children being abused next door.
	Probably not.
	I can't say, honestly.
	I think you probably can.
	Okay.
	No, I mean, unless there are statistical anomalies compared to everyone else I ever knew as a child.
	Compared to everyone else you ever knew when you were growing up who knew about these kids being abused, right?
	Yeah.
	Unless they're wildly statistically anomalous, right?
	The essence here is something called childism, which is the incredible prejudice we have against children.
	Yeah.
	children are less than bikes.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	Sorry, I'm just...
	I understand what you're saying.
	I get this emotional block, but the emotions I am feeling are very hard to compute, so to speak.
	Sure.
	Yeah, well, I understand.
	Our society would be unrecognizable if we actually respected children.
	I mean, our society could not function for 30 more seconds if we actually had genuine empathy and sympathy towards children, right?
	I mean, the first thing we'd do is we'd stop national debts.
	The second thing we'd do is we would privatize schools.
	The third thing we would do is make sure that society was structured in such a way that taxes weren't so high that two people had to go and work where one person used to be able to stay home.
	We would unschool, we would homeschool, we would entirely organize our society around what would be best for children.
	And what's best for children is not that hard to figure out, because children are continually telling us, both personally and statistically, what is best for them.
	We would be very careful about who we got married to, we would be damn careful about who we had children with, because we'd know if we got divorced we'd be exposing our children to 13 times higher likelihood of being abused.
	So we'd simply ask children, what do you want?
	Hey, do you like school kids?
	No.
	What don't you like about it?
	It's boring.
	Oh, well, let's fix that.
	Because children are actually important.
	Because children, as the most helpless and most dependent members of society, are the ones we should be listening to first when it comes to designing our society.
	Because they sure as shit didn't choose to be here, right?
	Correct.
	They didn't choose the country or the culture or the religion or the family or anything that they were born into.
	So if we were to actually organize our society around that which was best for children, Our society would be utterly unrecognizable in less than one day.
	Hey kids, do you like being told about hell and going to church?
	No.
	Okay, well, we won't do that then.
	Do you like homework?
	No.
	Oh, well, let's not do homework then, because it statistically is not relevant to your success.
	In fact, it's counterproductive to your success.
	That's fairly well established.
	Right?
	Do you want mommy or daddy to stay home?
	Do you like being yelled at?
	Hey, do you like being spanked?
	Do you like being bullied?
	Do you like being neglected?
	Do you like being ignored?
	Do you want to spend more time with your parents?
	Most children would say, don't like being yelled at, don't like being spanked, don't like being ignored and I want to spend more time with my parents and I want my parents to not fight.
	Oh, well then we won't fight in front of you then for sure because that's not good for you, right?
	Hey kids, do you like it when your uncle says go fuck yourself?
	No.
	Okay, well then he won't do that because that's not good for you.
	Do you like getting on a school bus and going on a drive to a big old prison design system with a bunch of other kids you don't know?
	No.
	Oh well, let's not do that then.
	Let's do it the way it should be, which is you learn at home with your family.
	And let's for sure not use you as collateral to Pay off entitled fat bastards in the public sector in the here and now.
	No more national debt.
	I mean, that's terrible.
	It's completely dehumanizing children.
	If we actually humanized children and listened to them and designed our decisions as adults around that which was actually best for our children, society would be completely unrecognizable in less than a day.
	And the degree to which this doesn't even cross our minds is the degree to which we treat children as worse than slaves.
	Because at least the slave owner has some economic interest in the health of his slaves and has some incentive to try and get them to work.
	The degree to which we sacrifice our children for the sake of our own greed, need, defensiveness, illusions, the degree to which we view them as Irritatingly resistant vessels to be sanded down and shaped into a smooth mirror of our own prejudices is the degree to which we simply do not view children as human beings.
	Childism is the most fundamental prejudice in the world, and it is the root from which all other prejudices grow.
	Children are not deserving of our protection.
	We will call the cops over a bike.
	We will not call the cops over child abuse because children are less important to us than bicycles.
	As a society, we will sell off the unborn because they're not real.
	They don't exist.
	You know, we will tell our kids to do their goddamn homework and get up early when they're tired and go to school and be bored and be yelled at.
	I mean, in many places in the States, you still get hit even in school.
	We don't ask our children what they would like, what would be good for them.
	We don't even ask the experts.
	You know, people will, when buying a new car, do weeks or months of research.
	But parents, do they sit there and say, well, what's the latest research about child raising?
	No.
	It's a perfect circle for most parents.
	Just do the same shit that was done unto them.
	I am annoyed that my children don't want to go to church and be told that they're sinful.
	And that thinking about sex will make them go to hell.
	I'm annoyed and irritated that my children aren't enjoying school and doing well in school.
	I'm annoyed and irritated that my children are restless, that they don't want to go to bed, that they're unstimulated.
	I am bored and annoyed that my lack of contact with my children is driving them into video games and laziness.
	I am bored and annoyed that my children are not convenient to me.
	How convenient is our fucking society to children?
	How much of our society is structured around what children actually need and want and deserve as the most helpless and unchosen members of our entire clan, our entire tribe.
	They're the only ones who don't choose to be.
	If you're an adult, you can move someplace else if you want.
	You can get divorced, you can change jobs, you can move countries, you can adopt any religion or no religion, anything.
	You can change political affiliations to no political.
	You can do whatever you want as an adult.
	And we only extend choice to those who are choosing to be here we extend no choice to those who have not chosen to be here and this fundamental prejudice that we have against children the dehumanization of what it is to be a child in our society is foundational to our society because a society could not survive for one thin second if we actually lived By what we say we live by.
	Oh, I'd do anything for my children.
	Oh, children are the most important resource society has.
	Children are the future.
	Children are wonderful.
	Children are great.
	Children are the best.
	Well, how about we actually try living like that?
	No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
	We can't do that.
	No, because then we have to take on public sector unions.
	Then we have to take on national debts.
	Then we have to take on our entitlement, forced redistribution of wealth system.
	Oh, then I have to give up some of my material.
	Possessions, because I won't be as rich if we're not both working.
	Well, I actually have to call the authorities if a child is being abused.
	I have to treat children as maybe mildly more important than a stolen bike from an eight-year-old boy.
	Well, how could our society do that?
	What we have called society would not be society if we weren't so unbelievably bigoted against the needs of children and the emotional realities and rational preferences of children.
	We could not have the world that we have if we viewed children as the most important members of our society, as that which no aspect of society should sacrifice the needs of.
	Racism, we understand.
	Sexism, we understand.
	It's still there.
	Childism, we're not even exploring.
	The word was first coined in the 1970s.
	How many people have ever heard of it?
	This is the first time I've heard of it.
	The term has been coined 40 years ago.
	Prejudice against children.
	Jesus Christ, we can hit children legally in most places in the Western world.
	What other fucking group can you hit with legal impunity?
	And we don't even have a word for prejudice against children?
	The idea that a child should be free of the prejudices of his or her parents.
	Dawkins talks about this.
	You can't talk about a Christian kid or a Muslim kid.
	You can only talk about a child of Christian or Muslim parents.
	That's a tiny, tiny sliver of a possible awakening to the idea of prejudice against children of childism.
	But the very idea that a child should be allowed to develop free of the prejudices of culture and superstition and nationalism, religion, that the child should have an unfettered and free access to reason and evidence and develop as the child sees fit without irrational interference and bullying and ostracism from parents is incomprehensible to us.
	Because children are lumps of clay to be molded into the distorted shapes we call culture.
	And any child who resists that is a bad child and must be drugged or threatened or ostracized or beaten.
	Any child who fails to please the prejudices of the parents is by definition a bad child and must be broken on the wheel of those prejudices until they form the acceptable mold that they're supposed to.
	The idea!
	That children have things to teach us about reality because they have not been propagandized yet is so incomprehensible to us.
	I mean for most people they couldn't even imagine that.
	Children are just bad, unformed, empty, shapeless lumps of clay to be molded into the beautiful art of modern culture.
	But the idea that we should actually look at what is best for children scientifically and ask children what is best for them And designer society and our families and our lives that way?
	Incomprehensible.
	Because that would be to treat children as even vaguely approaching the status of pets.
	We have far more consideration for pets than we do for children.
	I mean, you post a video of some guy harming a dog, some guy kicking a dog, and everybody goes insane.
	You post a video of someone, this judge who beat his daughter with a rubber hose or whatever it was.
	And like, 90% of the comments are like, good for him.
	She was disrespecting him.
	You post a video of a guy withholding food from his dog for disobedience and everybody goes completely insane and they'll call the cops.
	But a guy shoots his daughter's laptop and people are like, yeah, you show him who's boss.
	If we could just even think about elevating children to the moral status of your average pet, the world would be unrecognizable.
	It would be a fucking paradise compared to where it is now.
	But children are less than inanimate objects.
	Children are less than pets.
	Children are simply things to be molded to suit our preferences and prejudices.
	So, this Maybe a bit more than the dream contains, but I think that there's a lot in there of that.
	But childism is something to really meditate on.
	To what degree, when we look around, do we see children as fully formed human beings who have more to teach us than we have to teach them?
	We would go further in assigning wisdom to children because we have withheld it from them for so long, we would go further, right?
	People who've been starved of humanity need extra humanity.
	So the idea, like yesterday, during dinner, We went through the Ten Commandments.
	My daughter is quite fascinated by stories of what we call the Big Invisible Guy.
	We went through the Ten Commandments, trying to figure out which ones make sense, which ones didn't.
	We tried to figure out, if we had Ten Commandments in our family, what they would be.
	She had incredible things to add.
	She's four.
	She had amazing things to chat about.
	Amazing things to chat about.
	And it was really fun.
	And startlingly original things to say that were incredibly helpful to me.
	Yeah, I actually...
	I mean, you heard my niece earlier.
	She's very much the same.
	Actually...
	That reminds me...
	You met my sister.
	And she called into the show before.
	So you might actually...
	I don't know if you've met my niece or not.
	You remember the...
	Girl who had the Panthers in her bed dream.
	Oh, I certainly do, yeah.
	Yes, that was my sister.
	And I believe you also met at Anarchy in NYC. And I don't know if she...
	Oh, yes, I do.
	I remember her.
	We were sitting there.
	Yeah, we had a beer.
	She was there with a fellow, and it was very nice to meet her.
	She's a very, very nice person.
	Yeah, she's awesome, actually.
	But her kid, Rowan...
	This kid's awesome, actually.
	I didn't used to like kids, but once she had Rowan, Rowan changed a lot of things for me and how I approach handling kids and how I talk to them.
	I try as much as possible to talk to Rowan as an adult and try to negotiate with her when I want things or when she wants things and so on and so forth.
	Well, that's good.
	And I know we've gone way over in terms of the show, but I really wanted to get that thing in.
	I just finished reading a book called Childism by a woman.
	It was a very frustrating read because I think she just missed so many essential points, just referring to the UN Declaration of Rights and all that, and just doesn't really understand...
	Yeah, look for those little disagreements that you have about things like bands and stuff, because usually there's a lot more important stuff to talk about.
	Thanks as always to James for manning the show.
	I hope that he's had a chance to pee.
	I know I'm ready.
	I feel like a hoover dam over here.
	But thanks to everyone who support.
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	Have yourselves a wonderful week.

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