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Aug. 7, 2013 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:02:15
2448 When Principles and Relationships Collide
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Time Text
Hello, hello.
Hey, Steph.
How are you?
Not too bad.
How are you doing?
I'm doing okay.
Long day at work.
Ah, okay.
Well, we'll try and be rapid, let's say.
I don't mean to kiss your butt, but this actually makes my day way better, so...
Oh, good.
Good.
Well, let's hope we'll keep it that way.
All right.
So, yeah, what's on your mind?
I guess there's a lot of things when I think about relationships with your wife or with my wife, I mean with my parents, things like that.
Can you hear me okay?
Yes.
Okay, so I guess about a year ago, you know, my wife was doing things that I thought were, you know, borderline, I guess, crazy things.
Like, you're kind of out of your mind.
And it just...
I kind of got the state involved.
I was trying to go towards getting my son out of the house for safety reasons.
Is this your wife that you live with?
Yes.
No, we're still married.
We're making it work.
And to be honest, I listened to what you said about if you divorce, statistically, my son is going to be the one that really suffers.
I can kind of stomach things for a while.
I'm pretty good at taking pain.
I was a Marine, so I've been dealt shitty situations.
That'll do it, yeah.
But my son is really the one that I don't want to be dealt a horrible hand.
He didn't have a choice in any of this.
That's where...
After going through all the pain of having the state involved, having a mediator, having lawyers, they don't have the best interest for me or my son or my wife.
At some point, I can't just turn my back on my wife.
I stopped everything.
I decided that we should Stay together and do what's best for my son.
Well, we decided, but But my parents didn't agree with that.
You know, there were things that my parents financially helped me to try and get the lawyers, to try and get the divorce, to try and get custody of my son.
And once I decided against that, you know, my parents didn't agree.
And I'm a grown-ass man, but I did take money to help me pay for these things because I couldn't afford them.
And...
It just...
They're not in my shoes.
They don't have...
I mean, my son, I can't just take him away from his mom is the way that I started seeing it.
I really started to apply...
I started to be aggressive.
I think I started to turn my back on non-aggression.
And I guess that's really what turned me around is you can't do this to people.
You can't You just can't aggress.
It's not the way that you want to live, so how can you treat people that way?
Right.
And how do things stand with your wife now?
They're getting better.
I mean, here and there, I don't think I'm as in love with her when we first met 10 years ago or when we first got married.
But as far as being able to communicate these things, We're able to...
When I talk about...
When I witness anger or frustration in her and she raises...
My son's three and she starts getting loud with him or starts to put him in situations that are lose-lose.
It just...
I just...
It kind of makes me cringe.
I am the only one that goes to work.
So...
She's at home all day with him.
Sometimes kids don't listen.
Sometimes parents don't listen.
You're right.
We're the adults.
That's something that I try and convey.
When I say we, my wife and I, Trying to convey that we can't aggress against him.
He has no choice to be here.
He has to be here because he can't take care of himself.
It's frustrating because everybody I deal with sees things that way.
Sees that we should be able to aggress towards other people.
Well, mostly they mean kids though, right?
I mean, they don't mean you should go punch some guy in the parking lot.
They just mean...
But I guess I mean aggress in the way that...
Well, if somebody makes a bad tweet, you know, I heard one of my co-workers, that guy should be hung or I should be able to shoot that guy or something.
I'm like, that guy tweeted.
He's a keyboard warrior.
Wow.
And I'm like, no, you can't do that.
It must make you feel really great to have gone and put your life on the line to defend everybody's freedom of speech when people want to shoot each other for tweets.
Jesus.
Yeah, I guess I've totally just forgotten that...
I don't know, I feel like I'm...
I didn't really serve...
I don't know.
To me, serving in the Marines is now serving the death merchants.
You know, I feel like...
No, no, I know, but I mean, even by the standard narrative, right?
You're supposed to have got to protect all these people's freedom of speech, and they all want to kill each other for tweets.
Anyway, yeah, it's just...
Yeah, no, exactly.
Yeah, in their mind, they think that I'm serving somebody, but yeah, I agree.
Yeah, the...
Well, listen, just before we move on, I wanted to say, like, I mean, I don't know, you know, what the status of your marriage is.
And of course, nobody knows in the long run where it's going to go.
I hope it goes to a good place.
I hope it stays in a place that's working.
But I really did want to say that it was a very courageous thing to do to try and work it out, especially when things had gone so far down that road.
I mean, you know, I can hear when you're talking about your son, like your love and commitment.
To him.
And he is one lucky kid to have you.
And I'm really, you know, all other things being equal, you know, it's better for the parents to stay together.
That doesn't mean anybody individually.
Who knows, right?
It's tough.
You can't tell other people what to do in those situations.
But I really do respect your willingness and desire to work it out.
And I'm glad that it's gotten to a place that's better.
Yeah, it's much better.
And that part, I guess a lot of these things, they kind of just, as long as you're communicating with the other person, they seem to figure themselves out, at least when it's my wife and I. It goes in cycles.
Sometimes there's bad days.
Being in California, I just don't run into many people who are voluntarists or who think the state is just a figment of imagination.
I tell my wife that it's a figment of imagination.
It's state of mind.
It's just evil people.
Want power and money over another person and to me that's that's just the way that I sum it up it and I hate it and It I I guess a lot I don't know many I don't know I could give you a narrative all day, but It's one of those things.
That's just frustrating with my wife that that stuff's gotten better I guess My parents, my mom, she's now, after I asked for their help, they also helped with daycare when I was trying to get the lawyers and the legal proceedings together.
And it tore up my mom.
It really hurt her.
She's depressed to a point where she can't function anymore to this day.
So it's pretty much been a year.
And she's been battling depression for the last few years.
And I guess I have another question about if you ever feel like You can't help somebody.
As a person who looks at things logically and reason, how do you help somebody if you feel like you can't help them?
Right.
Well, I mean, for me, and I'll try and keep this brief because I want to make sure we get to all you want to talk about, but for me, I try to figure out Where the person's perspective is.
Where is this person coming from?
For instance, if I have an uncle and he's really into the government and politics and this and that and the other, I sort of have to ask myself, why?
Why is he that way?
Well, people don't get into that stuff because it's true.
Because, you know, everyone in different countries, everyone in different cultures, they all believe different things.
It's like religion.
I mean, I don't get into that because it's true.
It's not like Jesus comes down and performs miracles for everyone and introduces himself personally.
It's all cultural hearsay.
It's all just what people are told, right?
Yeah.
And what happens is that most people's beliefs, I mean, like the vast majority of people's beliefs, they don't think about them from the beginning.
Like, they don't sit there and say, okay, if I had a blank page, What would be true?
How would I know what was true?
How would I know what was false?
They don't start working from that stuff at all.
What they do is they say, what is going to cause me the least grief and get me the most acceptance in life?
It's not like if you change their thinking, you will change their beliefs because their beliefs don't come from their thinking.
I was watching this show the other day called Rectify.
It's about a guy who gets out of prison.
It doesn't really matter what the show's about.
But one of the guys in the show, he runs a tire store.
And the guy who's coming out of prison is a controversial figure, and the guy might come and work in the tire store.
And then his wife wants to take him to get baptized and so on.
And the guy says, well, wait a second here.
Half the congregation is not going to come buy their tires from this store if this guy goes to get baptized in this church, because they're going to be upset and offended, right?
Yeah.
Now, that's not a very theological argument, right?
He wants to sell some tires.
And he knows that in the church he's at, people will come and buy his tires because he goes to that church.
And they'll even lose money.
To go, like, they won't order them online or, you know, drive 20 kilometers to get them 20 miles to get them 20 bucks cheaper or something like that.
They'll come and...
Right?
So, his religion is a consequence of his desire to sell tires.
Yeah.
And so, arguing for him about the, you know, the existential truth or non-existence of God or anything, it's like, it's missing what his religion is for.
His religion is to sell tires.
And so some people's religion is to meet women, right?
I mean, the church has lots of women, and they want to get married usually, and they want to have kids and so on, particularly the Catholics, right?
So you go to church to meet women and to know that the women are going to share some values and whatever it is you're going to say, right?
And so when you say to people, like, so somebody says, well, I really want to go meet a woman, so I'm going to go to this church.
You say, well, I don't know if God is real or not.
He's like, I know the women are real, and I know that they're at the church.
So what have I got to say to open the why?
So from that standpoint, for me, in terms of the content of somebody's belief, what is it coming from?
What is it supposed to achieve?
Almost nobody has beliefs...
Based upon some objective methodology that they've worked out from first principles and they've studied a whole bunch of stuff, it's just what gets them along in life and what gets them the most good stuff and what prevents them from getting the most grief.
And then people will say, well, that which gets me the most good and prevents me from getting the most grief, that I'll be called the truth.
But then when you start bringing first principles into that, like...
How do you know even what is true or not?
I mean, you've heard this a million times with me on the show.
I had this conversation with a Buddhist the other day.
How do you know what is true or not?
She had no clue.
So why is she a Buddhist?
Well, I don't exactly know, right?
But I do know that it's got nothing to do with the fact that she's reasoned things out from first principles or she started with a blank slate or she studied a lot of philosophy or anything like that.
I know that for sure.
So there's a whole bunch of other reasons out there.
That would give her some desire to be a Buddhist.
But it's like for me, the last thing I'll say, sort of too many metaphors, but it's like going to someone who lives the other side of town and they cheer for a different sports team.
And you say to them, well, you know, if I lived here, if I lived where you are and you lived where I was, we'd just be cheering on the opposite sides, right?
Like it's totally arbitrary.
It's just where you happen to live, right?
Well, of course.
I mean, they know that, but in a sense, to think that is kind of weird for people because they forget.
They have to forget that it's bullshit.
Everything that they believe, they have to forget that it's bullshit in order to believe that it's true.
But when you actually start to bring some standards to what people believe, then the bullshit, they start to smell it.
Like, hey, I thought I was standing in a sunny meadow.
I'm standing in a waist-deep in manure.
And so, trying to figure out what...
Now, I mean, how do you change people's minds?
Like, how do you change the guy who wants to sell tires to the people in his church?
I don't know that you can, because his beliefs are not serving any truth purpose, they're just serving some economic interest.
You know, like, why do the public school teachers like public school?
Because they get summers off and they have to work like four or five hours a day, right?
It's a pretty sweet gig.
And so, anything that's going to change that, they're just going to kind of be against.
Now, they'll claim, well, it's because we care about the kids and we're civic duty and, you know, the foundation of democracy and a well-informed citizenry, you know, but that's all crap, right?
I mean, and almost everything that you hear from people when they say, when you say, why do you believe what you believe?
I mean, it's the most ridiculous, embarrassing nonsense.
So when it comes to, like, how do you change people who are beyond reason?
Well, the reality is you can't.
I think what you can do is you can live a life that they may find admirable.
So if you've got a friend who's really heavy into drugs, smokes a bowl every day or something like that, you can say to him, this is not the best thing for you and there's better ways to deal with your problems or whatever, but you can't lock him in your basement and keep him clean.
It's not going to do any good.
It's probably illegal anyway.
But what you can do is you can remind him of all of this and you can live a life not doing that yourself and have some success and have some You know, positivity in your life and achieve some stuff in your life.
And at some point, when he hits bottom, he's going to say, oh, that guy who was telling me not to do this stuff and who hasn't been doing it, he's doing all right.
And so maybe I'll go talk to him.
But even that's pretty rare.
Like, I mean, I've got friends or had friends.
I don't have them anymore.
I had friends that I've known since I was like 11 or 12 years old.
My life's been going better and better and their lives have not and still can't get them to see reasons.
I still can't get them to even have a shred of curiosity about things like philosophy and self-knowledge and all that.
I mean, they're just dug in.
And you can't change that.
And the last thing, sorry, I said the last thing, is that, I mean, for me, I was just thinking about this today.
You have to really be committed to changing the world, but you have to be indifferent about whether the world is going to change.
Right.
So obviously you want to change people around you.
You want them to see reason and light and truth and goodness and all that kind of good stuff.
But you have to be kind of indifferent as to whether they do or not.
Because if you take on their change energy, they won't feel it themselves.
You know, like if someone's just badgering you to change all the time, all that happens most of the time, but people just resist it.
They're just like, well, fuck you.
I'm not going to...
The more you bug me, the less I'm going to want to change.
And I think that's something that's like...
And it's a weird thing to try.
I mean, I guess it's some sort of weird Zen thing.
You have to say, I'm going to train for 20 years to get a gold medal and then I have to be indifferent as to whether I win the gold medal or not.
I mean, it's weird.
I get it.
I mean, it's a weird thing to do.
Because if you try to change the world and the world doesn't change, which most times it won't, then you kind of live a life of feeling futile and frustrated, right?
Anyway, that's the brief thing that I would say about that, if that's of any use.
Yeah, definitely.
I guess ever since I started accepting that non-aggression principle is really the right way to live, I just find myself trying to get as far away from people who I guess try and tell me what to do or try and run my life and I find myself Flocking to people that actually have something to offer me as
far as information that I think is the right way to live.
Have a message that...
I don't know, sometimes I feel like a parasite in that sense.
What do you mean?
Well, I don't want to...
I guess if somebody's talking and they're just talking about something aggressive, I guess, Like, oh man, that guy.
Like somebody tries to say this Snowden guy is some sort of traitor when, you know, the NSA is snooping on everybody.
Like nobody sees the whole part of the Constitution or basically that spying on somebody is wrong.
You know, they want to focus on Snowden because he turned in some papers to some reporter.
I'm like, no, what about these assholes who are listening to every word that you're saying or just infringe upon your privacy?
Has that part not even, has that part not even, like, That's just one example.
I mean, constantly, I can't have conversations like, what good is the government?
It's everything.
I mean, when I hear people talk, and I know what they're talking is just nonsense or bullshit, I just find myself tuning them out, and I don't know.
What's the point of having a conversation with some of those people?
I don't.
And I find myself listening to people who Who are voluntarists and I only listen to them because they actually have something to offer.
There's words of wisdom or there's information that can help me with a business or there's knowledge there that actually helps me to feel free or brightens my day or something like that.
Is that wrong?
No, God.
Look, first of all, I don't think that's wrong at all.
I mean, that's my experience too, but I just wanted to know what you meant when you said that you felt like a parasite.
Well, I feel like I only want to have conversations with people who are voluntarists, or people that have something to offer me, like a perspective that aligns with my perspective.
Well, okay.
First of all, I hope it's not just aligning with your perspective.
I mean, we've all worked pretty hard to try and make sure this shit is true, right?
I mean, hopefully it's not just I like beige or whatever, right?
Yeah, I don't mean it like it's my perspective.
No, no, but I mean, it's important for you to remember that.
Like, it's not because this is something that people do a lot.
I see this in comments on the stuff that I produce all the time.
So somebody agrees with me and, oh, you're just a Steph bot fanboy or something, or you just agree with everything he says or stuff like that.
And that is a way of turning something that is true into something that is prejudicial, which is a great insult to the truth, right?
Like, I mean, you hear this with Randroids, they're called, like the people who are really into Ayn Rand or whatever, right?
And, you know, Paul Tards, the people who are really into...
Ron Paul or Rand Paul or whatever.
Yeah, it's just a way of saying, well, you're just slavishly conforming to some dominant personality and you can't think for yourself and so on.
And I mean, to my mind, it's just what they call projection, right?
Which is that anybody who criticizes somebody else for adhering to a position that the first person can't criticize is the one who's not thinking, right?
So if somebody says to one of my fans...
likes what I do, which is probably more accurate.
If somebody says, oh, you're just a fanboy, well, that's not – you're just a fanboy.
You can't think for yourself.
Well, the reality is that that person who's calling someone a fanboy, they're not thinking.
They're just doing an ad hominem, right?
It's just an argument from intimidation and an argument from – it's an ad hominem and all that, right?
So the person who's saying, well, you just follow Steph.
Well, the reality is that's not actually an argument.
They're displaying the very characteristics, as is so often the case, that they're criticizing, right?
Yeah.
So we are not, you know, geez, if it turned out that everything I did was based on an opinion, I don't know what the hell.
I'd have to shut down the whole website and give everyone their money back.
I mean, it'd be terrible.
Yeah, exactly.
So I just wanted to point that out.
It's not just like you want to just talk to people who are like you.
It's not like you're just some, I don't know, some asshole racist.
I don't want to hang out with other asshole racists because those other guys who aren't asshole racists, I don't have much in common with.
It's not that.
It's like if you live among a whole bunch of superstitious people and you have a friend who's a scientist like you, then...
You're not saying, well, I just want to hang out with someone who's got the same superstition called science.
Like, no, that's not right.
I mean, we've worked pretty hard to...
At least I think we've all worked pretty hard for thousands of years to make sure this shit is not made up or subjective or whatever.
So the other question, though, is that you said I only want to have a conversation with voluntarists.
And that's really interesting.
And let me put an extreme way of looking at this.
And I don't think it's extreme like...
I think it's extreme.
People don't like to hear it.
Maybe you will.
But it's like saying, I only want to date people who won't rape me.
I only want to have a conversation with voluntarists because, of course, when you're having a conversation with your statist, you're not having a conversation because they want you thrown in jail for disagreeing with them.
When you say to someone, I don't think that the state is legitimate, and they say the state is legitimate...
Then what they're saying is, yeah, I support this monopolistic group of sociopaths having all the weapons of the world to come thundering down at you at 3 in the morning and drag you away in a paddy wagon to a rape room because you disagree with me.
That's not a conversation.
Yeah, it's you want human bondage or you want people in cages for smoking a plant or whatever and I just want to be left alone really.
Yeah, it's like having a conversation with a guy who's got a knife to your ribs about who gets your wallet.
It's not a conversation because there's a knife to your ribs.
Yeah.
I mean, you might, with a little verbal dexterity, maybe you could not get stabbed, but that's not the same as a conversation.
That's just talking your way out of getting stabbed.
Yeah.
Right?
So, I mean, at a very—and this is something that's mostly invisible here and now.
But in the future it will be incontrovertible.
Like, I mean, the evils of slavery were invisible in the past and now they're incontrovertible.
But this idea that you can have a civilized conversation with somebody who wants you thrown in jail for following your conscience is an illusion.
And the degree to which we participate in this illusion of pretending that we're having civilized conversations with people about politics is the degree to which we are statists.
Like, the degree to which we provide a cover For the brutality of this incredibly violent system is the degree to which we are, in fact, still statists.
We provide legitimacy.
We say, oh, let's have a discussion about foreign policy.
Let's have a discussion about whether there should be a surge in Iraq.
Let's have a discussion about Benghazi.
Let's have a discussion about the IRS. No, there's no discussion when the state is involved.
And the degree to which we legitimize this by pretending there is a discussion is—and I do this myself.
I fall into this trap as well, so I'm not trying to preach from some high mountain here— But I have to remind myself that this is not a civilized interaction.
And the degree to which I help cover it up is the degree to which I still remain in the Matrix.
Yeah, how many people would leave Galt's Gulch if it was its own place or its own civilization?
Like, oh, I'm going to take a vacation to good old, you know, USA or something like that.
It's like saying how many people will go and voluntarily check themselves into prison for the weekend or for a week vacation.
Yeah.
Sandals, yeah.
Sandals and shower rape.
People wouldn't do that.
They wouldn't go and voluntarily check themselves into a coercive institution as a vacation.
But the idea that when we enter into conversation with people that they are...
This is straight out of Atlas Shrugged.
There's not anything I've thought of.
But this is the degree to which we legitimize The use of force by pretending it's a debate or a conversation is significant.
But unfortunately, and this is, I hope I'm not talking too much, but the reason that this is so hard is it's so freaking early in this stage.
You know, I mean, libertarians for the most part are very positive on having, quote, civilized discussions with people about politics, even within the libertarian movement where we damn well should know better.
Yeah.
The idea that we should not provide cover for violence by pretending it's some sort of conversation, you know, it's really new.
And because it's so new, it's really hard to feel that it's not insane, right?
Yeah.
Like, I'm just taking some bizarre otherworldly stance.
Like, if you don't talk to my pet fairy, I'm never going to talk to you again because I'm mad, right?
I mean, that's what it feels like, right?
Yeah.
I guess this is on, I guess most of this last conversation was on grand scale.
What?
I guess the way that I see my daily life between my wife and my son, just to bring it back to what I originally had contacted you about, was I grew up Catholic, Christian, and I went, instead of shunning it right away I try to find more answers in the Bible by studying it more.
For years and years.
It's a good way out.
It was, it just took, you know, all my, I'm 34, it took me You know, 25 years to figure out, you know, when somebody had a perspective that, or showed me a perspective that, wait a minute, if this invisible guy can be real, then yeah, a leprechaun sliding down a rainbow can be real too.
So, I don't know, just looking at it that way, I was like, wait a minute, it's all a farce.
It's all just, and that's the part that That I deal with it on a daily basis between my wife and I because it's how do we teach, you know, from my wife's perspective, that's God.
From my perspective, he's just as fake as Santa Claus now.
And that to me is, you know, when his favorite book is Mama God, Papa God, which isn't even a biblical book.
It's just some Caribbean whatever nonsense.
It's still like there's some guy bigger than me who rules over me instead of I don't rule my own life type of thing.
I guess it's what starts to be played over and over.
That's just one example, but those are the things that That are close and close-knit, you know, that we should be on a similar page.
If we live in the same house, you know, we should kind of grasp at something that is kind of uniform, I guess, type of thing.
And your wife, is she religious?
Yeah, I think slowly going away from religion, but yeah, she is.
Right, okay.
So, I mean, there's some of that at least, right?
I mean, that's something to be grateful.
I mean, I get lots of emails from people who are like, my wife's Fundy and I'm atheist and dear God, right?
Yeah.
Now, how is she in terms of discipline?
I think it's better.
I mean, sometimes there is some frustration and some loud, stern talking, but very...
I don't know.
To me, I'm just learning these things, so sometimes it's a feeling that, man, that feels pretty tough or that just feels...
I don't know, kind of tyrannical, I guess, or kind of pushy, too aggressive.
But I think it's okay, I mean, to a certain extent.
But yeah, when he gets too frustrated, he turns to crying.
It's kind of one of those things.
It's like, yeah, let's tone it back.
Let's...
Okay, but she's not like a spank or anything like that, right?
No, we're...
I can't remember the last time he was spanked.
It's been a long time, so...
Good, good, good.
Okay.
Okay, fantastic.
Fantastic.
Now, where...
In sort of...
Like, if you had sort of had to think about your wife's cultural background or backdrop, like, who is she embedded with?
Who is she...
In other words, what kind of...
Would there be people who would make her pay, and how would they make her pay if she really started thinking for herself, like in her life?
Nobody.
She...
Nobody.
She doesn't really have...
Oh, okay.
I mean, she feels that she has an...
This is one thing that...
Appreciation...
You know, do I really need to appreciate my parents?
Do I need to do things like I feel like strings are attached?
And I guess if I'm gonna apply a principle across the board, I really started telling myself like, no, there's no strings attached.
And I don't have to change myself to appease others.
And that's something that I guess we talk a lot about.
Because appreciation is a buzzword that I hear a lot.
And yeah, I appreciate if somebody was to make me food or I appreciate certain things, but I mean, to appreciate something that I guess changes what I believe or principles that I try to adhere to.
It just starts to feel weird.
It feels wrong.
It feels like somebody's trying to hold power over another person to say, you should appreciate me type of thing.
Is that what she says or is that what you say?
That's something that she says.
Right, right.
And what do you think she means by that?
I know there is some appreciation.
My wife and I chose each other.
We love each other.
But I guess it's to what extent is it appreciation and what extent is it control?
Let's be specific.
What is it that she would like to be appreciated more for?
I'm not saying you should.
I'd just like to understand where she's coming from.
What would she like to be appreciated more for?
- I guess more hugs or she wants to hear that.
No, appreciation is usually for something specific that she's doing, right?
Oh.
Yeah, well...
Like, my wife runs laundry, right?
And I'm like, just like a conveyor belt that never ends, right?
And so, I mean, I like every day, like, man, thank you so much for doing this laundry.
Because, you know, it's pretty boring shit, right?
But it's one of these things that it kind of makes sense for one person to do it because there's just this continual flow.
And if two people are trying to do it, it doesn't work that well, right?
And I went, because, you know, I've been not well this summer, so I went out this summer.
I went out today and I mowed grass that was like up to my tits.
I mean, it was crazy, right?
And so she said, well, thank you for that, right?
So it's usually for some sort of specific stuff that she's doing.
But the one thing I find, I'm trying to bring my sort of own prejudice into this, but the one thing that I find is challenging is, you know, how often do you get appreciated for going to work every day?
Not really.
I do that.
I really hate what I do for a living.
I'm trying to get out of it.
For the people you're talking about, I can understand why.
If I can chainsaw someone for a Twitter comment, I can understand this is not the most pleasant environment to be in.
But it's a serious question, though.
If she wants appreciation, I think that's fine.
Does she actually say, thank you for going to work for 10 hours a day or 8 hours a day or whatever?
No, but I... I never really...
To me, that's something that I don't really...
I guess I don't really care if somebody appreciates me or not.
No, you care.
Come on.
Come on.
Look, you are providing for your family.
I mean, she'd be eating a whole lot of gravel, right?
In a parking lot without the money coming in, right?
I guess sometimes when we do stray away from I guess living in a budget or we get a little too we spend or she spends and Because I can have the conversation with myself to like, hey, you know, I know when I've gone too much, you know, I've spent too much.
And sometimes, yeah, I guess...
Sorry, you're avoiding, I don't know what you're talking about now.
You're avoiding this thing where I'm saying, look, I'm saying that, let's say that you and I were roommates, right?
And I was, you know, doing stuff around the house, but you were paying all the rent because I was looking for work, right?
Yeah.
I mean, wouldn't I owe you, like, a big vote of thanks for that?
Yes.
Right.
Now, let's say I said, geez, man, you're paying all my food and rent.
I'm looking for work here.
It's been a month or two.
I appreciate that.
Let me do your taxes.
Let me do your laundry.
Let me do your whatever, right?
Well, I mean, I guess I could say, like, then I'd say, well, I just don't feel appreciated for the fact that I'm doing your laundry and doing your taxes and whatever, right?
But at some point you'd say, well, yeah, but I am in fact paying all the food and rent, right?
Yeah.
I agree.
It doesn't feel that often, but I guess...
It doesn't feel that often.
The appreciation.
Yeah, I don't really hear much of appreciation for going to work.
I guess the only time...
Look, and I think that...
I'm not trying to make any fights between you and your wife.
Like, I really...
I understand.
But I'm trying to find a way for you to...
To provide more of what your wife wants to her.
Now, one of the problems with men and women is that women notice all the stuff that they're doing and they expect to be appreciated.
But men, we're just like fucking dray horses.
We're like machines.
We go out.
We plow the back 40.
We fix the fence.
We milk the cows.
We come in like that's just what we have to do and nobody should say thanks to that because that's just what men do.
Yeah.
You know, whereas women a lot of times will want, you know, hey, I baked your special dessert, you know, how come you didn't notice kind of things?
Like, well, that took you like 20 minutes and I appreciate that, but I have just been working at a shitty job for 10 hours.
And I think, don't take that for, like, what you provide is really, it's the foundation of that whole family structure.
I mean, that's like, let's say she does the laundry.
Well, who's paying the electrical bills?
Who bought the laundry?
Who's paying for the detergent?
And it doesn't mean that what you provide is more important than what she provides.
But I would really caution you to avoid falling into, and I fell into this trap in past relationships, much to my chagrin.
But don't fall into the trap of what the woman does is important and what the man does is completely to be taken for granted.
Let me just say this last thing and then I'll shut the hell up.
If she had spent 10 hours doing something that was mostly for you, like 10 hours straight of stuff she just didn't like to do that was benefiting you in some significant way, I mean, you'd come home and say thanks, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like, there was some god-awful job that you hated doing around, I don't know, cleaning out the eavesdrops, and she was just up there for 10 hours.
She hates it too, but she knows you hate it even more, and she just went up there for 10 hours and cleaned out those dead rats and, you know, whatever, squirrel tails that stuck up there.
You'd come home and you'd say, damn, honey, that was incredible.
What a wonderful thing to do.
Thank you so much.
I'm, like, I'm moved, I'm touched.
But you do that every day.
Yeah.
And if she can't see that, Again, I'm not trying to cause trouble.
It's not her fault that she can't see that because men are disposable.
We're just machines.
You don't thank your grass for growing.
It's just what grass does.
You don't thank men for working.
It's just what they do.
It is important That she recognize what you're doing.
Because otherwise what happens is women start to feel hard done by.
They start to feel like they're the only ones doing the work.
They feel like they're the only ones making the sacrifices.
They feel like the only one.
Then they start to feel underappreciated.
And then they start to resent, you know, and it's like, that simply is because they're not processing how much work the man is doing to make everything go, to make everything work.
I mean, in this particular, it can be the reverse, I guess, if the man's staying home and the woman's working.
As far as appreciation goes, I think that's important to just have a discussion and say, look, I mean, I think we need to work on appreciation.
You know, tell me the things, and you ask, what are the things that you feel that I don't appreciate or that I don't notice?
I want to notice them.
And then, you know, if what I'm saying to you makes any sense, you know, and the fact that I'm going out for work for eight hours a day with an hour commute or whatever, that's hard.
You know, I'm away from you.
I'm away from my son.
I'm with all these shitty people who are I'm saying all this crazy stuff, and that is a huge contribution to the household.
I mean, I've yet to meet a woman who does as much work around the house as a man does in his average full-time job, and yet we're only ever supposed to focus on the housework, not the full-time job.
Anyway, I hope that's not my particular axe to grind, but I just wanted to sort of mention that.
I don't...
No, my wife is a great person.
I guess I start feeling that sometimes just like...
I try to only have conversations with voluntarists.
I know she's my wife, but sometimes when the conversation gets into where there needs to be control or there needs to, you know, we need to control our son, you know, those are things that it's like, it's just flat out wrong.
We can't treat him like he's a prisoner here.
But I understand that.
He's a clay.
Yeah, yeah.
Right, right, right.
Well...
Well, the other thing, too, with that, I mean, usually when people feel the need for control, it's because there's some worst-case scenario that's floating around in the back of their heads.
You know, like, I mean, again, I see this on YouTube comments all the time.
People say, well, the problem with modern kids is that their parents don't discipline them enough, so they grow up lazy and entitled and...
Selfish and, you know, no community spirit, no ethics, no self-sacrifice.
And so the kids are coddled and spoiled and, you know, basically they need to be spanked or hit or whatever or heavily disciplined in some way.
And then they'd have the kind of straight spine self-respect that the greatest generation did.
You know, you see this sort of stuff all the time.
And so what's happening is people have this worst case scenario.
Like, if I don't control my child, what?
What?
What happens then, right?
And that's probably something...
She'll run amok, I guess, is what every...
Yeah.
Right, but I mean, you can ask her, right?
What...
I mean, these would...
If I was, you know, sitting down with her, I'd say, okay, well...
And with an open mind, right?
Like, tell me what happens if we don't control him.
Well, this happens, and then this happens, and then he joins a gang.
And not the green gang that you joined, but some other gang that's even more nefarious, perhaps, right?
But there is some domino thing that happens with your wife in her need to control.
I control my child so that This terrible thing doesn't happen, right?
Like, I put my child in a car seat and strap her in so that if I have to stop suddenly, she doesn't end up going through the windshield or something like that, right?
So you restrain your child physically in your car because the car is fast moving and blah, blah, blah.
So if your wife doesn't control your son, there is some consequence that occurs for her.
You know, like, you know, we've recently given my daughter full access to her candy, right?
And, of course, you know, your scenario is, well, she's just going to eat candy all day.
You know, her teeth are going to fall out.
She's going to get diabetes.
She's going to die an early death.
All from having a couple of M&Ms at eye level, right?
Yeah.
And it's important to explore what the worst case scenarios are in these kinds of situations.
I mean, of course, people have this.
You know, this isn't just to do with parenting.
People have this, well, without the government.
Right?
Without the government.
Yeah, if we don't have the government, then all hell's going to break loose.
Everybody's going to Kill and rape and mohawks, chainsaws, Mel Gibson, you name it, right?
Actually, I think Mel Gibson is the most scary of all of us.
So they say, well, we need a government.
And the government is like a magic spell that they use to keep demons away.
It doesn't actually keep demons away because there are no demons, but it helps keep their anxiety about demons away.
And so for your wife, rather than say, well, we shouldn't control him, I think it's really important to ask What emotion comes up if we don't?
I'm not saying we shouldn't or whatever, but let's say some scenario where he needs to be controlled.
Let's say we don't control him.
What happens in the long run?
He'll go run into the street.
We can build a fence or we can play in the backyard or we can always be with him.
He's not outnumbered yet.
But there's some domino thing that happens.
When you don't control other people.
And almost all hierarchies in the world are based upon our fear of what happens if we don't control people.
And this is why it's so cyclical.
So rather than talk her out of trying to control him, which doesn't deal with the emotions behind it, I would suggest try and explore with her what happens if we don't control him.
What is the worst case scenario?
What plays out if we don't do this?
And I think you'll get some very interesting stuff.
And rather than trying to focus on whether you should or shouldn't control them, just focus on what the fears are if you don't.
Does that make any sense?
Absolutely.
I'm just taking notes.
I'll send you the recording.
And this is true for conflicts.
I tend to, and I mean, God, it's embarrassing how ridiculously I fall into this trap, but I try to avoid conflicts at the surface level.
There's always something behind conflicts, right?
So underappreciation.
I feel underappreciated.
Well, what happens to someone who feels underappreciated?
Well, they just get taken advantage of.
People end up taking more and more.
They end up working more and more.
They end up getting resentful.
And then they end up not wanting to do stuff for people, but people are so used to them doing stuff for them all the time that the moment they try to put some boundaries in, people just accuse them of being selfish.
They get attacked, and then they end up not liking anyone in their whole life.
And their marriages break, and their friendships break, and they end up living in a van down by the river on a steady diet of government cheese, or something like that, right?
I mean, there's some scenario that plays out in people's minds if they're not Appreciate it.
And it's really, I mean, otherwise you're building fences against ghosts.
And, you know, ghosts can always get through fences, right?
Because they're ghosts.
So rather than say, okay, well, I'll try to appreciate you more or, you know, what is it specifically you want me to appreciate it and I'll do that and so on.
You know, okay, so what's the downside of not being appreciated?
What happens if you're not appreciated?
And really, this is where the curiosity in the relationship is so important.
What happens if we don't control our son?
What happens if we just speak our mind about our values to everyone in our life all the time?
What happens?
We are run by these invisible demons of disaster scenarios all the time.
It's why we have governments and wars and prisons.
What happens if we stop the war on drugs?
Well, five-year-olds will be snorting cocaine and society will collapse.
What happens if we don't have a government?
Well, the mob will take over and there'll be a war of all against us.
None of these are arguments.
They're just scare tactics and scare scenarios.
And when we lift the lid on our decisions in life and we say, how many of these decisions that I'm making are driven by reason and evidence?
And how many are driven by a scare scenario?
It's really shocking.
I mean, I still do this.
Oh, man, it's been two days since I put a video out.
I better put a video out or no one's going to donate and I will end up living in a van down by the river on a steady diet of government cheese, right?
I mean, it's not, oh, I have all this wonderful stuff I'd like to share with the world.
It's like, ah, I need donations.
I mean, it's sad just how much of our lives are driven by that.
It's, well, to me I feel like it's literally everything pretty much, except going to sleep and being able to shower or something like that and feed myself, I guess.
Everything else feels like the state is pretty much, or somebody's there overseeing what I'm doing type of thing.
What do you mean?
I swear it literally feels that way.
I don't know what you mean like I don't have any idea what you're talking about.
I just want to really make sure I understand what you mean.
Well, I guess with work, I'm still a statist.
I'm trying to get out of the work that I do.
It deals with stolen money, with money that's squandered from taxpayers.
I'm slowly crawling to get out of it, but all it is, I see it every day, just somehow we need to control it, or even driving to work.
I'm in California, we got traffic.
I'm just like, how much better would this be if I didn't have to drive on a government road?
I don't know.
I guess I just...
There's still the boogeyman out there.
It's just...
I know it's the people to my left and to my right that really make him real.
I don't really believe him.
He's just a figment of imagination.
But really, it's because everybody else supports it that I have to kind of deal with it, too, in a way.
I can't get around...
Certain things like, well, taxes.
I mean, what happens to me if I don't pay my taxes?
Or if I, you know, I could get thrown in a box and then what happens to my family type of thing?
You know, there's just...
I don't know.
Those are the types of things that...
I guess I get paranoid a lot because...
The whole three felonies a day type of thing.
At what point am I going to speak up or am I just going to tell somebody that they're a bleeping idiot?
I don't know.
I don't know.
I'm just ranting, I guess.
I'm tangent.
No, no.
I get it.
Some of the disaster scenarios are real.
I don't pay my taxes.
Some pretty significant dominoes start crashing into my forehead, right?
Yeah.
But some of them are not, right?
I mean, so, obviously, don't pay your taxes, bad things are going to happen, but if you don't control your son, I think the theory is, and it seems to work out pretty well, that good things are going to happen, right?
Except that your son will be incompatible with all the other human beings in the world who've been rigidly controlled with, you know, hey, look, I made a circle in a world full of squares, right?
I mean, but that's just a bullet you've got to take to change the world.
I mean, I don't know how we're supposed to just, you know, hurt our children because other people are hurt.
That doesn't make any sense, right?
I don't want to take up too much more time, but that's another thing.
He needs to socialize.
He needs to socialize.
It's when he started going to daycare and spending time in kind of like a preschool type of thing.
He started doing weird things, thinking that it's okay to Why is he going to take care?
Because my wife thinks that he needs to socialize, and at some point I thought, okay, maybe it's okay for him to socialize, to get out.
Sorry, if you don't mind me asking, how many hours a week does he go to take care?
He doesn't go anymore, but it was like 15 hours a week.
All right, okay.
Well, I mean, I can certainly tell you that My daughter has been stay-at-home almost exclusively, and she's great at socializing.
Yeah.
I mean, you wouldn't expect the other three-year-olds to teach him language, right?
And you shouldn't expect other three-year-olds to teach him how to socialize, because they don't know.
Exactly.
Like, three-year-olds do not know how to socialize with each other.
I mean, my daughter didn't when she was three.
All they could do at the very best, they could do some sort of parallel play, but they can't.
If they're around older kids, maybe the older kids can organize them, but But they don't know how to socialize.
It's like, let's let the three-year-olds teach each other how to read.
It's like, well, that's not going to work because they don't know how.
And so I think that's not...
Now, as far as socializing goes, I mean, I don't know why parents feel that socializing with the parents is somehow not socializing.
You know, when you sit down and you play with your son, you're socializing him.
And you're socializing him, I bet, in a far better way than most other traumatized three-year-olds are going to socialize him.
Yeah, it's amazing reading a book or something and when...
I don't know.
There's nothing better than that.
That's...
Oh, it's great.
I mean, and I was watching my daughter the other day.
Some friends of us came over who are a little older.
And...
I'm just at the phase now where I'm becoming somewhat extraneous, which is good.
You want to work yourself out of that job.
And so I came down because normally my daughter will want me to play, and she basically couldn't give a rat's ass about daddy.
She's off playing with her friends.
They're inventing all these games and playing with her frogs.
I just sat there for 45 minutes watching them.
There's this big, shit-eating grin on my face because it was fantastic.
I didn't teach her how to do that.
But I have played with her for four and a half years straight.
And so the fact that she knows how to go off and play with other kids and they all have a great time and they're all negotiating, you know, all the time about what to play and what does this frog mean and who's the princess and all.
I mean, it's fantastic.
That's just going to happen.
But the idea that you put them in daycare to learn that I think is not...
I just...
I don't know.
I don't think that's true.
It's tempting.
But usually what people mean by socialize is conform.
I need him to conform with society around him, so I've got to put him in with other people like his age and so on.
Who probably don't subscribe to a principle of non-aggression.
Oh yeah, of course.
90% of those kids are being spanked.
Two-thirds of them are being spanked three or more times a week.
And these are the people you want your kids to socialize with?
We might as well have them join a gang.
Yeah.
So, I mean, it's tempting, for sure.
And it gives you a break as a parent.
I mean, I understand that.
I mean, it's kind of non-stop.
But I would...
I mean, I've made this comment before, you know.
Socialize to who?
To what?
Why?
How?
In what circumstance?
I mean, you know, I could go to prison for 20 years and I'd be really socialized in prison.
Like, I'd know all the ins and outs of prison.
But who wants that, right?
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, hey, look, I learned lots of...
I was socialized.
But no, I would rather not.
Thank you very much, right?
So I know, of course, you know, daycare is brutal on your kid's health.
I'm sure you noticed that.
I mean, 40% of parents drop their kids off even when they know they're sick because they don't have any alternate arrangements.
And one of the reasons why antibiotics are being so heavily prescribed is because kids are just constantly getting sick in daycare.
So it's pretty rough for your kid that way, too.
Yeah, yeah.
I did notice that he was sniveling regularly, too.
Yeah, I've got neighbors who don't see them all weekend because their kid picked up some bubonic plague from daycare and they're all thrown up all weekend.
It's just horrible.
Well, I don't know.
I Thank you so much for taking the call.
Was it helpful?
I know we jumped around quite a bit, but was it useful?
Oh, yeah.
I spent hours on YouTube listening to different volunteerists.
I don't know, that's kind of like a lot of what I do sometimes when I just want to unwind from work.
And I don't know, I guess sometimes it may be a detriment to the rest of my family, but it's...
It sounds like you're doing some really great stuff with your family.
It sounds like your wife is open to your thinking, which is fantastic.
It sounds like she's willing to explore non-aggression, which is great.
Again, lots of people don't have that.
You guys did manage to pass through that really terrible period where things were going really haywire, and you've got some kind of stability.
But the challenge now is just try and keep your heart open and try and be curious about what's behind.
We all have these compulsions and we all want to manage the effects of these compulsions.
Like, well, just stop controlling the kit.
But it's the underlying stuff that's really driving that.
It's like trying to stop an earthquake by jumping up and down on the ground.
You may feel like you're doing something, but you're not.
And I'd say just try and be open and curious and really try to learn about She's got a whole history of being controlled herself, as we all do, and all that.
So I would really just try and open your heart to her history, her experience, her thoughts.
And I think that's going to be a great way to undo this stuff.
You can never cut these knots.
All you can do is try and slowly pick them apart.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I can't thank you enough for the time.
I just...
You're very welcome.
And of course, I'll send you a copy.
You can have a listen.
Let me know what you think.
And do give my best to your wife.
I mean, she sounds like a cool lady in many ways.
She's great.
Yeah.
So, yeah, I'll send you a copy.
Let me know what you think.
And maybe keep me posted if you can.
Sure.
All right.
Take care, man.
Thank you.
Take care.
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