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Sept. 4, 2013 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:49:01

2474 You Cant Change Other People - Wednesday Call In Show September 4th, 2013

Stefan Molyneux speaks to listeners and discusses free market defense solutions, the modern utopia, why you cant change other people, avoiding bad romantic relationships and connecting to your physical self.

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	Good evening, everybody.
	I hope you're doing well.
	This day, Anno Domini?
	A.D. It is the 6th of September, 2013.
	Hear that breath?
	Feel that breath?
	That, my friends, is the breath of a man who has finished his cancer treatments.
	Oh yeah, baby.
	Oh yeah.
	Three months of chemo, 17 radiation treatments, and still no superpowers.
	I can't tell you the rage that brings in me.
	Oh, maybe rage is my superpower.
	No.
	No, I guess it's philosophy.
	Guess I already had it all along.
	So thank you, of course, for everyone's kind words.
	Thank you for your support, financial, emotional, sexual, and otherwise.
	And looking forward to putting this little rat bastard of a health scare in deep into the rearview mirror.
	So with that said, let's move on to the brains of the outfit, shall we?
	And talk to our fine listeners.
	Mike, who do we have first?
	All right.
	Emil, go ahead.
	Stefan!
	Emil!
	Do you know that your name spelled backwards is Lime?
	Anyway, never mind about my games.
	I'm just reading Emil and the Detectives by Erik Kastner for the fourth time to my daughter.
	She's quite enthralled by it.
	And so I'm glad speaking with someone who has the same name.
	What's on your mind?
	Well, I've been thinking a bit about the stateless society and how it's morally the right thing to do and how I can see it would benefit the people living in it.
	But...
	I can't help but seeing it as sort of a utopia where it would only happen if every society or every state on the earth today decided to do it more or less on the same time.
	An example could be if the US today or any other country decided to go stateless.
	If that miracle were to occur, what would prevent another nation or another people who've Sort of aggregated their resources into a state formation and the military to come and dominate that people are to come and Exhort some kind of power over the free society.
	So my question is I guess is it will it even be possible like in the world we live in to To see a society like that No, I hear you Let me ask you a question If the government had a billion dollars to invest in its own resources like its own entirely government run company and it said we're going to compete with Google.
	What kind of market share do you think that a purely government competing with a relatively free market entity like Google if a government bureaucracy and a government corporation a crown corporation how well do you think they would do competing against Google?
	Probably pretty poorly, I would say.
	Yeah, I mean, there was a government-run little internet around in the 80s in Canada called Teledon, which, I mean, was terrible.
	Oh my god, it took like half a day to render a screen, and everybody just wanted text, because we were all on like, what is it, 2400 board modems.
	And, I mean, it was terrible.
	And can you think of a time...
	In which a government-run organization has successfully competed with a free market organization?
	Probably not, but seeing as I haven't really got any examples of private militaries other than maybe like the West Indian companies back in the days, I don't know if you can actually use that example,
	or at least I have a difficulty seeing how How people in an individualistic free society would have incentive to aggregate resources on something like an army or a navy or an air force compared to a more top-down society of a regular state, if you know what I mean.
	So do you think that the current way that the government organizes the military is...
	Even more efficient than something that the free market could come up with?
	Maybe.
	On what possible grounds could you say that?
	We're not talking about an example like the military.
	We're talking about a principle.
	If no government organization that you know of has successfully competed with a free market organization, what makes you think it would be any different?
	How would this free market organization sustain itself in a free society when there is no war then?
	Come on!
	Would you like to be invaded by a government society if you lived in a free society?
	No.
	So what would you do about it?
	I'm not sure.
	Would you pay 50 bucks a year to have a military around that would protect you?
	Yeah, maybe.
	Probably.
	What, you wouldn't?
	Are you saying that your entire freedom from statism is not even worth 50 bucks a year?
	Why are we even bothering having this call?
	Well, I'm not talking so much from my own perspective, from my own situation.
	I'm more like trying to imagine the situation as such and seeing that in one society everybody would be forced to kind of pull their resources into this thing that can just drain resources out of the society for as long as necessary while being dormant, whereas in the free society...
	I can see that you could have like almost this kind of insurance where you pay 50 bucks or whatever you'd say.
	But then maybe the incentive for people to pay for this unless there's an imminent threat is not that great.
	Look, everyone understands That you need insurance for life.
	You need life insurance before you have a heart attack, right?
	But if you call up the insurance company and say, I'm having a heart attack, sell me a million dollars worth of life insurance, what are they going to say?
	Yeah, I get that point.
	I get it completely.
	So everybody knows that in order to be protected from a statist society, you need to have a military of some kind and you can't just pay for it when the threat is imminent.
	Everyone understands that, right?
	Yeah, hopefully, I guess.
	I still have a bit of difficulty seeing that everybody...
	I mean, maybe it's because I don't have that great of a faith in, like...
	Well, wait, wait, sorry.
	Wait, wait, wait, hang on, hang on, hang on.
	Yeah.
	Why do you think everybody needs to pay?
	I don't understand that.
	Because if...
	If not everybody pays, then the amount of resources that this defense have would be less than if everybody paid.
	I'm not saying that everybody would, but because everybody...
	Wait, wait, wait.
	Compared to what?
	Wait a second here.
	How many people pay for the government in a statist society versus receive more benefits than they pay in?
	Yeah, true.
	That depends on the society.
	No, seriously.
	Less than half the population of the United States pays any federal income tax at all.
	So, I mean, if you can just get 40% of the population to pay, you're doing alright.
	It doesn't have to be everyone, because it's not everyone in a state of society.
	I guess.
	I guess.
	It's a good point.
	Wait, wait.
	I guess means what?
	I'm either right or I'm not, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, you're right, assuming that, say, 40% would pay, which, I mean, that's right.
	But I can't really imagine it right now, a society where you kind of shut off, like, the official, like, the military organization structure that you've had, and then You have people pay in for like an insurance in that way and then expect that a lot of people would do that because I don't maybe think that people,
	most people, they look that much into the future when they make their decisions that they would rather pay up now to reap the benefit in the future, if you know what I mean.
	Are you saying that people don't think ahead?
	Some people don't.
	Of course some people don't, which is why you can't have a government, right?
	Because if some people don't, then they're going to want to, say, get a whole bunch of goodies in the here and now and just shovel off the national debt to the next generation, right?
	So, I don't see how some people don't think ahead as an argument for any kind of statism, right?
	No.
	Okay.
	So, again, I guess that a problem, I'm just trying to, like, be the devil's advocate or whatever, but a problem when you pool a lot of resources into this, like, now voluntary system that somehow someone would be in charge of, like, a lot of power, that I guess the funding could be cut off quite easily, but I don't know if you see any problems in that or any challenges.
	Well, look, I'm no military expert, so obviously I don't know how all of this stuff would work fundamentally.
	But I'll tell you this.
	Why do you think it is that the cause of war are political leaders, right?
	They are the cause of war because only they have the power to declare war, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	So why do you think it is, and this is not a rhetorical question, I'm genuinely curious, why do you think it is that governments don't target the political leaders who have the power to declare war if there is war amassing on the borders or something?
	Why don't they target the political leaders?
	I'm not sure I understand that question.
	Well, I mean, if Hitler is becoming dangerous, why don't you just shoot Hitler?
	Yeah, that's a good question.
	I mean, there's an old story, maybe it was Arthur C. Clarke, it's basically a science fiction story where a guy was becoming dangerous and so an assassin used a laser rifle to blind him.
	And this made him politically untenable in some way, I can't remember.
	With the light of a thousand suns, his vision was sealed or something like that was the line at the end of the short story.
	And it's an interesting question, which is why, I mean, if you're faced by a threat, why wouldn't you target the political leader of that threat?
	A good question.
	It's not something I've been giving much thought, to be honest.
	No, but it's an important question, right?
	Because if that is the person, if there's one person or one small group of people who can declare war against you, then why wouldn't you target those people?
	I mean, going for the soldiers just seems to me entirely counterproductive.
	But wouldn't, say, in the Second World War, if the United Kingdom or the Allies, if they had the chance, don't you think they would have...
	Pull the trigger and Hitler say, for example, it's maybe not as much not doing but not having the opportunity to do it.
	I don't know.
	Honestly, I don't know.
	Certainly now, it's a lot easier because you've got spy satellites and you can find people who are outside of a building or above the ground.
	You can find them.
	It's not impossible to do it, right?
	So it's a lot easier now.
	But throughout history, it's just interesting how few political leaders who are bellicose and warmongers have ever been assassinated for the cause of peace, right?
	It's quite the opposite.
	You know, like the Serbian king Archduke Ferdinand in 1914, who was...
	Killed by an anarchist, so they call him or whatever, right?
	I mean, that started a war.
	But it's just interesting to me that you never hear in history of like, well, you know, so-and-so was rattling his saber, and so the country next to him just, you know, rolled a bomb under his carriage or something like that.
	Like, you never hear about that.
	But I think it's quite interesting.
	Yeah, it is interesting.
	It's a good point.
	And I think I know the answer.
	I mean, I think I know the answer.
	Okay.
	So if you have two mafia groups competing for a particular neighborhood, there'll be lots of skirmishes among the sort of rank and file.
	Like the local guys, the guys at the bottom will have like drive-by shootings and stuff.
	But you very rarely see, or at least I've never really heard of, a situation where somebody tries to take out the head of the gang.
	It's rare.
	I mean, they talk about it in The Godfather, but it's a work of fiction and so on.
	But it's kind of rare.
	And I think that's because nobody wants to start the precedent of taking out the guy at the top.
	Because the only people who could give that order would be guys at the top.
	And they don't like to put themselves much in harm's way, right?
	Excellent point.
	So one of the reasons why governments find it very difficult to deal with competing governments is because they're both governments and they both have one guy at the top.
	And if the way you deal with a bellicose government is to – I mean it doesn't have to be kill.
	It could just be kidnap.
	It could just be render incapable in some manner.
	Mm-hmm.
	I think this is kind of gentlemen's agreement.
	We'll throw the citizens at each other, but we don't focus on each other.
	Because once that starts, where does it stop?
	True.
	I never thought about it like that.
	A stateless society has no such vulnerability and no such compunction, right?
	Right.
	So that's one possibility that a political leader who targets a stateless society knows that there can be no gentleman's agreement to not take out the political leader who's threatening war.
	So wouldn't that make him a little more hesitant, knowing that he or his family or whoever could be targeted?
	Again, I'm not suggesting go and attack kids or anything like that, but if he knows his wife might be kidnapped or whatever, right?
	And only released if he disbands the war effort or demobilizes the troops or something like that.
	He might, again, I don't know, but he might be a little bit more hesitant to attack Yeah, it makes perfect sense.
	So that's one possibility.
	Sorry?
	Yeah, I'm just saying that you usually make sense in your arguments, so...
	Yeah, now, tomorrow you might say, what a load of crap, and come up with some great counter-argument, which is great.
	You know, I have no problem.
	I mean, we're theorizing 100 or 200 years from now.
	But let me just make one little comment about the utopian word, because you used it, and therefore I'm going to rag on you.
	I apologize for that in advance.
	But look, utopian, you know, we're talking for free across the world.
	We could do video if we wanted.
	We're talking for free across the world.
	And yet we say that something is utopian.
	I mean, compare now to 200 years ago.
	Hell, compare now to 100 years ago.
	We're just getting off the ground in terms of flight.
	Right now, we have space shuttles.
	We've been to the moon.
	We have jets that can carry 400 people.
	If you didn't have to deal with taxes, you could basically fly around the world for a couple of hundred dollars.
	You know, we have cars that drive themselves.
	We have GPS satellites that guide us around.
	We have surgery on the heart that starts in the leg, for God's sake.
	They go up the arteries in your leg and do surgery on your heart.
	People get gallbladders taken out through their belly buttons.
	I challenge anyone to compare where we are now with where we were a few hundred years ago.
	And say the word utopian and mean it.
	Because what we live in now is an undreamed of utopia compared to a hundred years ago.
	That's true.
	So who are we to say that anything that happens a hundred years from now could possibly be utopian when we ourselves are living in the most unbelievable utopian fantasy?
	Oh, do you have a UTI? It's not going to kill you.
	Here are a couple of pills.
	Oh, did your tooth fall out?
	No problem.
	It'll drill some bolts into your jaw and make you new teeth.
	There are prosthetics that let people paralyzed from the waist down walk, for heaven's sakes.
	I mean, we're probably not far away from shrinking down the shrunken corpse of Isaac Asimov and have him enter our bloodstream to fight cancer.
	As far as I can imagine, right?
	Hopefully.
	I mean, we have the most astonishing...
	Capacities in a mere 100 years, which is a tiny blink, not just in world history but in the history of our species, it is a tiny blink since writing was invented.
	It's almost 6,000 years from writing to getting off the ground in self-sustained flight and then less than 100 years, you know, was it 60 years or 50 years to then go to the moon from not even being able to fly at all to going to the moon was 50 or 60 years.
	The word utopian, I find not from you, but I find it offensive because it is so blind to how far we've come in such an incredibly short period of time.
	Ten years ago, we couldn't have even had this conversation.
	Or maybe 15, right?
	15, yeah.
	When I started this podcast, you would not believe the amount of money I had to pay for bandwidth.
	Now I've got like 20 terabytes a month.
	I mean, it's literally lunatic.
	Human knowledge doubles every 18 months.
	Every 18 months, human knowledge doubles.
	Moore's law with semiconductors' processing power doubles.
	You know, I had to get a new computer.
	I picked up like an i7 with 8 gigs, a 2 terabyte hard drive, a good video card.
	It was 600 bucks.
	Only in America.
	Well, I mean, good God, you know, when I bought my first notebook, it was a 386 SX, not even DX, 25, 640 megabytes of RAM, a 60 megabyte, not gigabyte, megabyte hard drive.
	40, no, 40 megabyte hard drive.
	It did have a modem.
	It was secondhand and it was $1,400.
	It took about four minutes to boot up and another three minutes to open up Microsoft Word.
	It had no built-in mouse.
	It was a black and white screen.
	I believe it had 16 shades of gray, which was quite the upgrade.
	But I mean, that was a second-hand notebook computer from Mighty Max.
	I don't even know if they're still in business.
	Probably not.
	Maybe.
	Who knows?
	And now, for like $350, you can pick up like an i3 with...
	Anyway, I don't want to go over all the specs, right?
	We have no right in the amount of acceleration and the amount of wonder and astounding progress that we have.
	I just got treated for cancer that 20 years ago would probably have killed me.
	Now, I had some discomfort and some tiredness.
	And added bonus, I'm not dead.
	Yay.
	So, you know, Utopia, my God, anybody who says something is Utopian, I just want to send them back for 100 years, for just a week or two.
	That would be pretty cool.
	Just a week or two.
	But what about, like, I read somewhere that, which is kind of self-evident, if you think about it, like, for 98.6 or whatever percent of the human history we've lived in stateless societies as tribes and whatnot, hunter-gatherers, and then...
	Yeah, but that's not anarchy, right?
	No, but I mean, without, like, a proper state, it's not anarchy, but it's not...
	I don't know.
	I guess it's the closest...
	Anarchy doesn't mean no state.
	Anarchy means no rulers.
	And sure as Sherlock, there were tons of pretty hellacious rulers.
	If you've ever been to the Chichen Itza ruins in Mexico and you see the giant football field where they beheaded the losers, this was not a ruler-less society.
	I'm talking...
	Here I'm talking a bit further back, without knowing that much about this subject, where it would seem to me that it would be more like a family type situation than a more like social stratification.
	If you know what I mean, it would be like rowing around with your tribe family.
	Sorry, let me just go back to the military thing for a moment.
	I can tell you what the great risk would be for a stateless society next to play your side, which I think is a good side to bring up.
	So let's say Canada tomorrow just decided to disband the government, recognizing it for the ancient Balrog-style historical evil that it is.
	So it disbands the government, and that means no border controls.
	No work permits, no visas, no social security cards, no, you know, whatever, no green card with the equivalent that's in Canada.
	So, what would a lot of very intelligent people in America immediately do?
	Move to Canada.
	Exactly.
	There's a hole in the electric fence, right?
	The old cows may stay behind, but the youngest and most fertile and most milk-producing and most productive and most tender and meaty, juiciest cows would get the F out, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	And all that the… All that the American government would be left with is a bunch of welfare dependents, a bunch of old people, and you can't bribe old people with old people's money, right?
	Because you can't bribe welfare people with welfare people's money.
	You have to bribe those people with the money of the productive.
	So what would happen is when a state society was declared in Canada, if America was still the way it was, Then, you know, with the hole in the fence, they would just – people would just pour into Canada.
	And the people that America most desperately wanted to keep as tax cattle would flee America and just stream, you know, into Canada.
	Yes.
	And America would really, really want to plug up that gap.
	And they'd try and do it by saying to people, okay, you can't take your property with you.
	And people would say, fuck that.
	I'm going to go without my property.
	Right.
	Fuck, if I got to swim naked, I'd make it a break for freedom.
	There'd be an underground railroad.
	There'd be tunnels.
	There'd be catapults.
	People would build giant forks and jump on one end and fling people over the border.
	I mean, if you think about the dangers that people did to get out of Cuba or Mexico or wherever the Vietnamese boat people are, I'm not comparing America to all those countries, but the comparative degree of freedom would be staggering.
	So there'd be no way to plug the hole.
	And America would continue to lose its most productive tax cattle to the free wastelands of Canada, right?
	So, what would America have to do?
	They would have to try to keep their tax cattle in America, I guess.
	Well, they couldn't.
	No, they couldn't because the more they tried, the more it would become cool to get out, right?
	I'll tell you what I'd do if I was the head of America and evil, right?
	I would manufacture some sort of terrorist incident which gave me the pretext of invading Canada, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	And once I invaded Canada, I would either declare it, you know, the next American state or I would install a puppet government or, you know, the usual crap like they do all the time.
	Actually, that's when you're getting to what I was trying to get to with my question, I guess.
	Right.
	Right.
	So, I mean, so what I was really trying to ask was seeing as you sort of need more than, you need to be on friendly terms or your neighboring countries need to be benevolent or Not have a lot of arms to come and conquer you in the process of going from a...
	No, but it's impossible.
	Hang on.
	As I'm saying, it's impossible for a status society to remain benevolent next to a stateless society.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Because a stateless society would grab all their resources, right?
	Yeah.
	Well, not grab, but the tax cattle would flow across the border, right?
	Yeah.
	So...
	Yeah, so that's a challenge, right?
	And, you know, do I know how this is going to play out?
	Well, I severely doubt or sincerely doubt that Canada is just going to pop into being a stateless society and America is going to remain exactly the same as it is now.
	This would have to be a general human evolution, right?
	Like, after thousands and thousands of years of multiracial slavery, you know, blacks selling whites, whites selling blacks, blah-de-blah-de-blah, slavery ended all throughout the world in about 100 years.
	Right?
	And there was, of course, a civil war, the War of Northern Aggression, as it's sometimes called, in America, but this really didn't, to my limited understanding, and you can look at Tom DeLorenzo more for this, but this had more to do with collecting taxes and maintaining the death grip of federal power over the southern states and so on.
	But with the exception of that, there were not huge wars fought, like the British Empire ended slavery without really much of a shot being fired.
	And in Brazil, they just stopped catching the slaves, and lo and behold, you were all done.
	So I would argue that it's quite possible that a tyrannical ancient institution, whether it's slavery or the state, can end slavery.
	In a geographical area without massive amounts of sort of weaponry and gunfire.
	So, yeah, again, I don't have answers as to how all of this would be dealt with.
	But I do certainly have faith that if a free society were even remotely concerned with being threatened, then it would develop the most targeted and lethal force That could possibly be imagined.
	And I believe that instead of tyranny spreading over into freedom, freedom would spread over into tyranny.
	So, of course, there is the impulse when you're losing your tax cattle or you have an excess of dependent tax cattle.
	The impulse is to go to war, and it always has been.
	But what I would argue is that the free market society, the free society, would develop specific targeted weapons that would be It would pose a direct threat to the ruling classes in the statist society.
	And as a result, the statist society would not be able to use war, or the leaders would not have much incentive to use war, but instead they would have to liberalize their economy to keep the tax cattle at home.
	And so I think freedom would spread rather than tyranny.
	Now, the precedent, the historical precedent, which is I think a strong case for this idea That if the ruling classes are threatened, they don't go to war, is the fact that nuclear powers don't generally invade each other, right?
	Why?
	Because even for a political leader, there's no escape from a nuclear weapon, right?
	I mean, they can go into a bunker or whatever, but I mean, whatever, right?
	I mean, the whole society is wrecked.
	They've got nothing left to rule if they even survive.
	So, you know, the grand era of Western European peace for the first time in thousands of years was ushered in With weapons of mass destruction.
	And weapons of mass destruction, why are the rulers so against them?
	Why is Syria being threatened with tomahawks, not scuds, thanks everyone.
	Why are they being threatened with, you know, ship-to-ground missiles because of chemical weapons?
	Because weapons of mass destruction threaten the leaders.
	I mean, they don't care about 100,000 Syrians getting mowed down, but if there's a precedent for using chemical weapons, Then that could be unleashed anywhere near leaders.
	So that, I think, is a very important point to consider.
	Interesting.
	That leaders, when they're threatened, they find ways to use nonviolence.
	And so I think that that would be well understood by a free society, and that's the kind of military that would be...
	And that's very cheap, right?
	If you want to go invade a country, that's hugely expensive.
	But if you want to target political leaders, it's incredibly cheap, right?
	Yeah.
	Bye.
	Yeah.
	So again, I'm not going to give you perfect or complete answers, but I hope that helps to some degree.
	What I'm really after is kind of a discussion also to just hear your words and my thoughts, basically.
	Yeah, so basically, I don't know, it doesn't matter, but it's fun to chat about.
	We can't imagine what weaponry or defense might look like In, you know, like 100 or 200 years.
	We have no idea whatsoever, right?
	So it's fun to theorize, and there's certainly some historical examples.
	There's some principles to build on, but it's not a huge concern for me.
	But I understand it's an interesting theoretical thing to chat about, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, it's just coming from where I come from in Denmark, one of the highly praised social democratic countries, and where...
	It's quite difficult to talk with people about this because, I mean, it's just this knee-jerk reaction that it's impossible and it's never going to happen and blah, blah, blah, blah, all the usual counter-arguments.
	And then the only thing I've kind of thought about in my mind is about what would be the challenge for a state of society.
	Where would it be a problem and that would be maybe The other peoples around them where they sort of aggregate their resources into, yeah, as I said, militaries that could be used offensively, but I think you've made some good points.
	Yeah, the other thing, of course, the other thing you could do is you could say to any army mass on your border, to all the troops, you know, you get, you know, 20 acres free if you just come on over.
	Just put down your weapons and come on over.
	I'm sure people would be happy to do that rather than have, if I'm going to get this, There's so many different solutions that could be put into place.
	I can't imagine what they all would be, but I think that the combined ingenuity of tens of millions of incredibly wealthy and self-interested people would solve it.
	Well, great.
	Well, thank you.
	A great question, and I hope that you'll be able to call back in.
	I do so enjoy batting around the theoreticals, but thank you very much.
	I appreciate that.
	And who do we have next?
	All right, Susanna, go ahead.
	Oh, Susanna, won't you podcast for me?
	Hello, how are you doing?
	Oh no, we have lots of mimes on the show today.
	I can't see what you're miming.
	Susanna?
	Susanna, Susanna, Fofanna, Fanna.
	Okay, Mike, can you be Susanna?
	Hi, Steph.
	You're so hot!
	I can't do that.
	Wait, so you all can't, can you hear me?
	Oh yeah, I can hear you now.
	Oh, okay.
	Alright, so I'm on my phone.
	So, yeah, I was laughing at the phone.
	I've never heard that before.
	Oh, so sorry.
	We don't do much originality here, I'm afraid.
	That's okay.
	There's a lot of them, so it's funny to see which one people pick.
	But I have two questions.
	And I guess the first one...
	So, like, my parents...
	They, like, work in international development.
	I'm from Washington, D.C., and they work for the World Bank, and they just, like, I guess, long story short, went through, like, a bad divorce, and, like, they now...
	My dad has, like, a really big house and, like, a basement apartment that they don't even use, and, like, everywhere now, like, these houses are worth, like, a million dollars, and they rent out the basement for, like, $2,000, and my dad just doesn't want to be bothered.
	And I've been trying to convince him to, like, just let me live here.
	And he's all like, you know, that's your problem.
	I don't want to deal with you.
	And it's, like, really weird.
	Like, you know, his friends and family, like, it's sort of like a pride thing.
	Like, they don't want to help their kids even...
	Because they're also, like, insulated because they're just making so much money and just, like, I don't know.
	Wait a second here.
	Wait a second.
	Are you saying that your dad works for the World Bank and is really into helping the underprivileged, but he doesn't want to help out his own children who are kind of underprivileged relative to him?
	I keep saying that.
	And they've, like, taken my savings bonds and, like, all growing up, they were like, you know, you don't deserve your clothes.
	Like, you know, it's just craziness.
	So I'm just trying to figure out, like...
	I guess at this point I've been, like, talking about it to everyone because I'm really annoyed.
	And I, like, want to write, like...
	First of all, like, I'm going to make a documentary because I have, like, video footage of this, of, like, me cleaning and my dad coming and, like, being really mean and just being like, I don't care about you.
	And my mom's even worse, unfortunately.
	And, like, I've been fine in life.
	Like, I graduated early and I always have, like, one or two jobs and...
	But I'm just, like, I'm just so tired of, like...
	Ignoring the, um, emotional, you know?
	Go on.
	What are you feeling at the moment?
	What?
	Sorry?
	What are you feeling at the moment?
	You just, uh, your voice broke up for a moment there.
	You sounded quite emotional.
	Um, yeah.
	I mean, I am, like, becoming emotional, but I'm also just, like, like, I always used to defend my parents, and now I'm kind of feeling like this is really important for me to tell people about this and, um, I don't know, maybe if you had, like, ideas and thoughts and also, like, suggestions, like, persuasive.
	I'm thinking about writing, like, a letter, I don't know, to, like, my family.
	Because it's like my grandparents gave my dad the money for this house, and they want me to stay, and he's just like, no.
	No, they shut it off.
	Oh, so your dad and mom took charity from their parents but won't provide any for...
	Right.
	Oh, man, that's wretched.
	I'm so sorry.
	I'm so sorry.
	I mean, I really am.
	It's okay, but...
	No, it's not.
	It is not okay.
	I'm a dad.
	It is not okay that this is happening.
	Look, I'm not saying your parents got to bankroll you all the way through life.
	Of course, I'm not for that in any way, and I'm sure you're not either.
	But this level of hypocrisy and coldness, you know, it's one thing to say no to your kids.
	You know, parents say no to kids all the time.
	And to be fair, kids say no to their parents all the time, right?
	But there's ways of saying no that are very gentle, that are very helpful, that are very positive.
	There are ways of saying no that really help people.
	And then there are ways of saying no that make people feel like shriveled up little cockroaches in the desert sun.
	Do you know what I mean?
	Yeah, no, I do.
	But I'm just wondering, like, I don't know.
	I mean, do you think, like, writing a letter to, like, my family and, like, my neighbors?
	Because, like, I've, like, lived here forever until, like...
	I've already been talking to them, but my dad lies a lot, too.
	He's just like, oh, she's terrible.
	So I just want to set the record straight.
	I don't know if that's weird or...
	I don't know.
	What is it that you're hoping to achieve with the letter?
	I just like...
	I mean, I wish that my parents would change, but I also just want to tell the truth, sort of.
	Because I always used to defend them.
	Wait, wait.
	So, no, I appreciate that.
	You want to tell the truth to who and why?
	What are you hoping to achieve from it?
	I'm not saying there's nothing to it.
	I just really want to understand what your thinking is in this.
	Just because I always would defend them.
	And I just, I see that, like, my dad's friends, you know, they're, like, my aunt.
	She's not my aunt, but, like, I've known her forever.
	And, like, you know, she works with Hillary Clinton and, like, You know, they, in politics, and, like, my stepmom's family, they, like, are in with Sidwell.
	It's, like, all these big, like, people, and a lot of them have this mentality where they're, like, proud to not take care of their children.
	They'll, like, deny that they ever helped them.
	Like, I don't know.
	And I just want people to just stop thinking like that.
	So you want to change what other people think?
	Um, yeah.
	Yeah.
	I guess.
	Wait, when I say that, and you say, you know, what occurs for you?
	That, you know, you should change yourself instead of other people.
	You know you can't change what people think, right?
	I've been doing this for 30 years.
	I'm telling you, you cannot change what people think.
	Well, I don't know.
	So you think it's just, like, useless to tell everyone, to tell people, or to talk about it?
	Well, I don't know that talking about it is useless.
	I mean, I hope that at least you'll get some comfort out of this conversation.
	But when we are doing things in an interpersonal context, that sounds like a pretty clinical term with your family and all that, but it's important to understand why we're doing them and what we hope to achieve.
	So it sounds to me, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds to me like you have a history of feeling rejected by emotionally unavailable parents.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	Now, is it not possible that you may be repeating a pattern by being so locked in to trying to change them or expose them or reveal who they are or whatever?
	Is it not possible that this might be a continuation of that history of being rejected by emotionally unavailable parents?
	Like, the more you strive to try and change them, the more you're setting yourself up for more rejection, right?
	I don't know.
	They reject me, like, if I go along with their plan.
	So, at least now they, like, pay a little bit of attention to me.
	What?
	You mean they pay attention to you if what?
	Like, now?
	Because now I've been, like, calling my family and, like, telling them and, like, exposing past or whatever.
	Now, like...
	Oh, you mean they pay attention to you if you're causing trouble for them?
	Yeah, exactly.
	And since they had 20 years of, like, silence, that's kind of, like, weird for them, I guess.
	You mean they had 20 years from you of silence?
	Yeah.
	Alright, so you have their attention, and how's that working out for you?
	Is it helping?
	Does it make you feel better?
	It makes me feel way better.
	Why?
	Just because, like, I mean, most of all, I just miss them, but...
	I don't know.
	What do you miss about them?
	What do you miss about them?
	I just miss, like, I think probably just the idea of just feeling stable.
	Well, okay, but hang on, hang on.
	You're talking about two different things here, right?
	I know.
	Wait, wait.
	So there's one thing to say.
	Like, I grew up without a father, and...
	I missed having a father, but I did not miss my father.
	Does that make any sense?
	Yeah.
	Right.
	These are two very important things, right?
	Because you're basically saying, well, they're cold and they mistreat me and they don't care and this and that and the other, right?
	And then you say that you miss them.
	And I say, well, what is it about them that you miss?
	And you said, well, the idea of, right?
	Maybe of better parents or a better childhood or a better family situation or whatever, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	I mean, it's true, but...
	But these are two very separate things, right?
	Now, if you miss someone, you can reconnect with them.
	But if you miss someone who was never there for you, then you can't reconnect, right?
	Because there was no...
	Okay, tell me if I'm wrong, but it would seem to me like if these are the habits of your parents, they probably weren't that different when you were 10 or 5 or whatever, right?
	Yeah.
	Is that fair to say?
	That is fair.
	Okay, so you are missing what could have been.
	You are missing different kinds of parents.
	You are missing a childhood that could have been so much better.
	But that's not the same as missing your parents, because your parents were there the whole time, right?
	No, you're right.
	I don't really miss them.
	I just, like, miss my brother and sister and, like...
	Because my dad, they have like two more kids.
	But yeah, I mean it's weird.
	No, no, no.
	Sorry, I have to interrupt you because I hate to be annoying and lecture you, but I think you're incorrect about this.
	Because you say that you missed your brother and sister, but who you're talking about and focusing on is your parents, right?
	Well, that's true.
	Right, so if you missed your brother and sister, you just call up your brother and sister and we wouldn't be talking about your parents, right?
	Yeah, I guess like I don't miss my parents.
	I just like...
	Miss what I wish that it would have been.
	I can tell you what you're doing if you like.
	Yeah, sure.
	What you're doing is you're avoiding legitimate grieving.
	Right?
	You had it hard.
	You had it lonely.
	You had it tough.
	You had it unsupported.
	You had it cold.
	And that's never going to change.
	Right?
	Childhood is done.
	You can't go back and fix it.
	It's done.
	And I think that you are avoiding the suffering of what you experienced as a child.
	And the way that you're doing that is by pretending you can fix it in the future, which you can't.
	Yes.
	Right?
	If you had a bad childhood, then that is a fact.
	Wishing it away, dreaming that if you change people, you can make it different, dreaming that you can fill up the holes in the past with the shovels of the present and the soil of the future is not possible, right?
	When you were five, you needed certain things.
	When you were two, you needed certain things.
	When you were one, when you were eight, when you were fifteen, you needed certain things.
	If you didn't eat for five days...
	There's no way you could gorge yourself so that you would have been full on the first day of not eating, right?
	You can't throw food back through time and fill an empty historical belly, right?
	And no matter what changes now, you have to accept the suffering and the loneliness and the isolation or whatever it was that occurred for you as a child.
	You have to.
	Because I'll tell you what, Suzanne, there is no way to avoid that suffering.
	You may think that if your parents change tomorrow into the most loving and wonderful parents that you could imagine, you may think that that will make you feel better about your childhood and you would be exactly wrong.
	I can tell you, if you really wanted to get angry about your childhood, you would find that that would happen if your parents changed into wonderful people tomorrow.
	Do you know why?
	Does it be like it never happened?
	I don't know.
	Yeah, because if you could be wonderful people, why the hell weren't you wonderful people for the last 20 years?
	Because no one demanded of them.
	I don't know.
	Well, you can't bully people into being nice people, right?
	You can't hold people's feet to the fire and have them become virtuous, right?
	I don't know.
	You know, you can starve a fat man, but you can't threaten morality...
	Into a bad man, right?
	They just seem so reasonable on the outside.
	And then, like, really, they're not.
	But that's the camouflage, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, that's the camouflage of mean people.
	I was just watching the movie Epic with my daughter, and the Boggins are like the bad guys, and they have bad teeth, and they look like goblins, and they ride black crows, and they live in shattered and smoking dead trees.
	It's so obvious.
	Evil people love it when the movies portray bad guys as obvious.
	You know, because then everybody looks for, like, the guys with bad teeth who are riding crows, who have little Hitler mustaches and KKK outfits, right?
	Everybody looks for those people, and they miss the true evil in the world, which is...
	I'm not saying this about Japan, so I don't know them, but the true evil in the world is the very sophisticated people who appear extremely reasonable.
	I mean, geez, look at Tony Blair on...
	The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
	I mean, he's affable, he's chatty, he's funny.
	This guy ordered a war that contributed to the deaths of a million people.
	The banality of evil, the presentability of evil, the plausibility of evil.
	Is what is so dangerous, right?
	There's a book called, which you might want to read.
	I don't know if it applies to your parents or not.
	But it's called The Sociopath Next Door.
	Because, you know, one in 25 people are, you know, even by the most conservative estimates, are this way inclined.
	And it really does teach you some very interesting things about how to spot these kinds of people.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	How are you supposed to deal with them?
	What are you supposed to say to them?
	Is it in my DNA? You cannot deal with people who are selfish.
	You can accept them for who they are, and you can try and find some value in the relationship if you can, but you cannot change them.
	You tell me, how many people in the world do you know of who have radically changed who they are?
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	Nobody?
	Yeah.
	I don't know.
	It's extraordinarily rare.
	Look, I mean, I obviously think that I've changed quite a bit from having had such a terrible childhood to, I think, doing some real good in the world.
	And I, you know, came from a totally broken up, not just household, but environment.
	I mean, all the people around were like single moms and just broken up crappy households and all that.
	That was just...
	And it was an epidemic where I was in the 70s and also in the...
	Economic class that I was living in all these low-rent matriarchal manners where the vainglorious and vindictive single moms come to lick their wounds before reattacking the ex-husbands.
	And, you know, I have now a sort of stable and happy marriage and I'm a peaceful parent despite having come from a very violent parenting...
	So, I mean, I've really...
	But my God, I can't tell you the amount of work it took.
	I mean, it's staggering, the amount of work it took.
	I mean, I started when I was like 15 or 16, right?
	And I got married like 20 years later and then I was just about ready.
	Any sooner it wouldn't have been any good and any later it would have been maybe too late to have kids because I sort of wanted to marry someone in my age bracket.
	But it took like 20 years to go from Cold-hearted youth to reasonably warm-hearted adults.
	And it was literally hundreds of books, tens of thousands of hours, years of therapy, three hours a week, $20,000 sunk into therapy.
	I mean, dear God, it was work and a half.
	And I had not done harm to others.
	Like I was never mean to little kids.
	I never beat people up.
	So even without the guilt of having harmed others and without the guilt of having harmed children, because if you've harmed children, I think it's virtually impossible to come back.
	I mean, I don't mean like once in a while or you've apologized or whatever, but I mean if you sort of systematically mentally or physically torture children, I mean, there's no restitution for that, right?
	You can't come back from that.
	And so even without the weight of guilt, it took me like 20 years and I'm still working on it and thousands, $20,000, thousands of hours, right?
	And that's without guilt.
	And everybody knew...
	That I was going through that process, right?
	Because I would say to people, oh my god, I just read this great book by Freud or Jung or Adler or another book by Brandon or, you know, whoever, right?
	John Bradshaw.
	I mean, all the people whose books I plowed through and all the workbooks that I did and I had a whole therapy journal, a dream journal, an intellectual journal.
	I wrote and I talked and I was constantly talking about personal growth with people.
	I was an annoying guy, you know?
	There's this little meme I saw on Facebook, you know, how do you know somebody's into cross-training?
	You know, because they never shut up about it.
	You can't miss it.
	And I was like that with sort of personal growth.
	And so the point is that even if your parents – this is my opinion, you understand.
	I'm no expert.
	This is just based on very hard-won experience.
	And, you know, I think you're a lot younger than I am, so this is, you know, I was probably a lot further behind than you are where you are now.
	But I'm telling you, Suzanne – Even if your parents woke up tomorrow morning and, through some bizarre brain alchemy, suddenly decided that they wanted to strike out the path of virtue and righteousness and goodness, it will take them...
	Sorry, go ahead.
	I just want them to be reasonable.
	Well, yeah, come on.
	Oh, come on.
	I mean, have you ever talked to a lot of religious people and say, well, I just want you to be rational?
	Yeah, okay.
	But yeah, so you're saying even if they did change, it wouldn't...
	Well, even if they started tomorrow, there's no switch, you understand.
	Like, you're mistaking you for them, right?
	So let's say you have empathy and you're a kind person and you're a reasonable person.
	Don't mistake them for you.
	They may be.
	I'm not saying they are, but they may be an entirely different species.
	And even if they were...
	Sorry, wait, wait, wait.
	Let me finish my point from earlier.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	But even if they tomorrow woke up and said, well, my goodness, we have not been doing the right things as parents and blah, blah, blah, blah.
	Well, it took me about 20 years without guilt.
	With guilt, I consider it functionally impossible, but what do I know, right?
	It's not scientific.
	But what I'm saying is that even if they accepted your arguments tomorrow...
	They would not be able to reprogram their brains in anything less than years and years and years.
	You know, there is neuroplasticity.
	People can change their brains.
	But my God, what you're basically saying to someone is, okay, I know you've been eating crap food and smoking a pack a day and sitting on the couch for 20 years, but I really want you to join me in this half marathon.
	Right?
	The odds of them saying, sounds great.
	Are tiny.
	But even if they do say, sounds great, and they wake up with some bizarre epiphany, and they suddenly want to become healthy, how long is it going to take for them to actually be able to join you on that half marathon?
	If they weigh like 300 pounds, and they basically have smoky, bacon-flavored lungs from a pack a day for 20 years?
	Yeah.
	How long is that going to take for them to join you in the half marathon?
	If they commit tomorrow?
	I don't know.
	I mean, not to be annoying.
	It would be years, right?
	No.
	I don't know.
	Sometimes people change right away though.
	Sorry?
	Sometimes people change right away.
	Like my dad used to be like super against dogs and then like next thing you know he's like married right away to a lady with like three dogs.
	I don't know.
	I just feel like people only change the hard way.
	Wait, wait.
	How do you know?
	First of all, how do you know if he ever was against dogs?
	Maybe he was just mean.
	And maybe somebody wanted dogs and he says, well, I hate dogs because he just doesn't want to be nice to that person.
	Yeah, that's exactly what it is.
	Anytime you ask for something nicely, he takes joy in shutting it down.
	And then there's some woman he wants to be with and now suddenly he's all pro-doc, right?
	That's not changing, right?
	That's true.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Well, I don't know.
	It was great talking to you.
	I had a funny question.
	Okay.
	Well, first I was going to say congratulations on finishing your cancer treatment.
	And then...
	Good luck.
	But then also luck.
	Do you think luck is being prepared for opportunities?
	I always thought that was funny, but I never really thought about it.
	Yeah, I don't like the word luck.
	You know, luck is...
	I mean, there's some stuff that, you know, I'm lucky that the cancer hadn't spread anywhere and I'm lucky that I live in a time where there's effective treatments for it and so on, right?
	But it's not all luck.
	I mean, one of the reasons why my treatment was relatively mild and why I've bounced back so quickly is because I've spent 30 years working out three times a week.
	So my body is very strong and it can handle this stuff quite well.
	So there's some luck and there's a lot of preparation, but luck is just a meaningless term, right?
	There's no good luck, there's no bad luck.
	Yeah, that's true.
	I've been learning Greek and it's so much fun to see the languages.
	No, I'm saying the definition of luck is being prepared for opportunities.
	Yeah, but then it's not luck.
	Then it's preparation, right?
	I was in the Boy Scouts.
	I know the motto, right?
	Now, let me just tell you something about this family situation.
	I'm going to be really annoying here.
	I'm not going to tell you what to do.
	I can't.
	I mean, it's ridiculous, right?
	I mean, you're an intelligent woman, and it's your family, not mine.
	But I will say this.
	If you focus on your past pain rather than trying to change things in the present, I personally feel that you will get to a lot greater truth and freedom than if you continue to try and change people.
	See, let me tell you something, Suzanne, about when you try to change people.
	When you try to change people, do you know what you give them?
	You give them power over you.
	Yeah.
	Now, it doesn't sound to me like people in your family, parents in particular, are particularly gracious when it comes to To handling power over people, right?
	So, be very careful about who you try to change because if you try to change someone, you are giving that person power over you.
	Now, if they're a good person, that's, I think, fine, although I'm still not sure it's great to explain.
	If they're a good person, you don't even want them to change that much, right?
	Because they're already good people, right?
	But if they're mean people, you know, you give mean people power over you, and your life just is going to get worse and worse and worse.
	And if you try to change someone, if you want to change someone, you are automatically giving that person power over you.
	Because you're saying, my happiness and satisfaction in this interaction is dependent upon what someone else does.
	That gives away your power, it gives away your freedom, it gives away your authority, and it gives away...
	Your capacity to feel secure in the situation.
	Right?
	And so don't be very careful about who you want to change.
	Right?
	It is literally like handing a gun to someone.
	Now, if you're handing a gun to a good person, that's no problem.
	They'll just go lock it up.
	If you're handing a gun to a guy who wants to rob you, well, your life just got a whole lot worse, right?
	Yeah.
	So really, really be very, very conservative and hypercritical.
	About who it is that you want to change in your life.
	If you want someone to change a whole lot, you're asking the impossible.
	If you want someone to just change a little bit, well, that's alright.
	I guess you can talk about that.
	You can negotiate that.
	But if you want someone to change fundamentally, I would guess that you've given some pretty bad people a whole lot of power over you.
	And I would hate for that to be a repetition of what happened to you as a kid.
	I would hate that for you.
	Okay.
	My suggestion would be, if you can, try and find a good therapist.
	I've been to a therapist since I was six years old.
	I've been to all the therapists.
	Not saying all of them, just that I moved.
	No, look, internal family systems therapy, I think, is very good.
	I've got lots of really great reports of it from listeners, so you might want to look into that.
	You might want to, but wanting bad people to change, to me, it's way too close to being under their power as a child for me to ever feel comfortable with.
	I don't want bad people.
	I don't expect bad people to change.
	I don't imagine that it's ever going to happen.
	I'd be kind of disappointed if they did.
	It wouldn't make any sense to me.
	And so, I've never seen it happen.
	I've never seen, you know, again, I'm not the sage of all things human, but, you know, in 30 years and I don't know how many thousands and thousands of conversations I've had with people over the years, including the ones on this show, I've just never seen a bad person change.
	And, uh...
	Particularly the older they get, right?
	Like, you know that habits are habits.
	And, you know, the Spanish proverb says they start off as cobwebs and end up as chains.
	And if your parents have been like this for 40 or 50 years, and they're very successful, right?
	Then what's going to make them change?
	They have no reason to change, yeah.
	They have no reason to change.
	And in fact, they have every reason to not change.
	I mean, you can't work for the World Bank and have a conscience, for God's sakes, right?
	I mean, the amount of evil that institution does is staggering.
	They call themselves the Death Star.
	I don't even...
	They call themselves what?
	The Death Star, because they're connected by tunnels and because it's like a joke.
	Yeah.
	But what about shaming them?
	Why can't I just expose their secrets?
	I don't know.
	Do you want to be better at being bad than bad people?
	Is that what you want?
	Oh, I want to be like upset.
	No, no, but look, they've got way more experience.
	At bullying than you do.
	Yeah, so listen, you don't step into the ring with Mike Tyson, right?
	Unless you want to get your head knocked off, right?
	Or your ear into somebody's digestive tract, right?
	But you don't...
	I mean, if you're a decent person, I mean, God, don't start competing with bad people on how to be bad.
	They've got way more experience.
	They've got way less conscience.
	They'll always beat you, and you'll then feel that good is hopeless, and you'll join their zombie ranks of the Death Star, where I guess Africa is all Debaron, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Don't try.
	Don't try that.
	That's a funny game.
	The only way to win is not to play, right?
	Don't try and out evil.
	And please understand, I'm not calling your parents evil.
	I don't know.
	I'm just saying that if your parents have been cruel, don't think that you can be better at cruelty than they are.
	Makes sense.
	I don't know.
	Things are getting hard, though.
	So many people live at home with their parents, and so many parents are just like, Not really caring.
	It's really weird.
	They're just, like, obsessing themselves.
	I don't know.
	Well, I mean, I imagine in particular circles where this may be more common and so on, right?
	You know, mean people have made the world.
	Mean people run the world.
	And so the fact that mean people are very successful in this world is entirely...
	It makes sense, right?
	I mean, it's like if you design a zoo, you don't put the...
	You don't put the elephants in the office and you in the elephant cage, right?
	If you're designing the zoo.
	If you design the zoo, you put the animals in the cages and you in the zoo director's chair, right?
	And the world has been designed by bad people and is run by bad people.
	And so, naturally, bad people do very well, and that's just one of the camouflages that they use, is their success and all this, that, and the other.
	So, yeah, they have no incentive to change.
	I mean, that's like asking the zookeeper to switch places with the ostrich in the cage.
	I mean, he's going to look at you and ask, what?
	The zoo's not for that.
	The zoo's for me to make money, not to...
	Sit in a cage, right?
	So I would not try to, you know, out-mean the mean.
	There's just, you know, they've had, you know, even if you were as mean as they are, they've still got twice your experience and experience counts, right?
	Yeah, that's true.
	Okay.
	Well, thank you very much.
	And I'm very sorry.
	You know, I really, really want you to understand how incredibly sorry I am for the...
	For the history that you had, that's not how it should be.
	And I do get a sense from you that you are tender, vulnerable, open-hearted, and all of the fertile soil in which the great sunflowers of a happier future can grow.
	I'm incredibly sorry that this is the experience that you had.
	I'm incredibly happy that you are to some degree conscious of that experience and not still defending things that were done to you that were Destructive and hateful, I dare say.
	So, congratulations on joining us.
	I am glad to see our numbers.
	I'm so happy to find you guys, you know?
	I'm sorry, you were so happy to what?
	To find people that like, you know, think in a better way.
	I'm glad too.
	I know, before the internet, we were all mighty hard to find, and I think that we all expired in the wilderness alone, but now at least we do have a sometimes geographically distant but spiritually very connected tribe.
	And we can certainly thank the cold-hearted engineers of technology for spreading the warmth of human contact around the world.
	Well, just that they stopped suppressing it, but yeah.
	Yeah, that too.
	Well, thanks, Suzanne.
	Keep me posted if you can.
	I wish you the very best with this, and I'm incredibly sorry that you faced these choices, but I'm very glad at how conscious you're becoming of it.
	Great.
	Thank you.
	Bye.
	Thank you.
	All right, Nathan, you're up next.
	Go ahead.
	Hey, Steph, can you hear me?
	My God!
	How many listeners do we have who are named Nathan?
	Are you people cloning yourself?
	No, I've never talked to you before, I swear.
	All right.
	Well, I called in last week to talk, but I got in late, so I wasn't able to get on the show.
	And my question that had the time was, it's been a long time since I've been in a romantic relationship, and the question was, you know, how do I find the right person?
	Because I don't know how to do that.
	I don't know how to vet people.
	I can't trust myself to make the right decision.
	And once I do find the right person, how do I open up?
	Because I don't do that either.
	Why don't you know how to do these things?
	I'm not saying you should.
	It's good that you know that you don't, but why don't you know?
	I've had a week to really process it.
	I mean, I've known, but it's basically both my parents abandoned me.
	I mean, they're still in my life or whatever.
	They didn't actually abandon me, but my mother's mother, by clinical definition, was probably psychotic, lots of hard drugs, Men, whatever.
	My mom was repeatedly raped by her stepfather, which is why when she turned 18, she married my dad, who was the safest guy she could marry because he was a closet.
	He's gay, but he was in the closet at the time, and he became a Baptist minister, so there was no sexual tension there.
	There was no fear for her to marry him.
	They were married for about 10 years.
	When I was six, I had an older sister who was seven at the time.
	My mom basically kidnapped me and my sister.
	Drove away in the middle of the night.
	I didn't see my dad for a year.
	So from the age of like six to...
	Why did she leave so suddenly?
	That's how she makes decisions.
	They had been fighting for a while, I suppose.
	It was never a healthy relationship.
	No, I get that.
	Daughter of a psychotic plus repressed gay man usually does not equal Hallmark cards and marital bliss.
	No joke.
	But go on.
	Anyway...
	So from the age of 6 to 15, I lived with my mom and I saw my dad over the summer and at Christmas.
	When I was living with my mom, she was working 60 hours a week and then would spend her off time at the community theater.
	She liked being on stage and singing and whatnot.
	So it was babysitters and, you know, she was basically not there.
	Do you, I'm sorry if you don't mind me asking, do you feel that or do you think that your father is in fact your father?
	Because as far as I understand it, it's a little tough for gay men to get too excited by women in the same way that it's tough for straight guys to get too excited by men.
	Well, he was raised or he was in a family with eight brothers and sisters and a mom who's also physically abusive.
	So he got the masculinity beat into him.
	So he found it in himself to be able to do it twice.
	I look just like my father and my sisters.
	I mean, it's I was just wondering, because that would be one other possibility.
	Okay, go ahead.
	Anyway, I didn't have my father there.
	My mother was basically not there.
	At the age of 15, when I started high school, I moved in with my dad.
	He was out by this time, but he was a pretty bad alcoholic.
	His partner was doing hard drugs.
	It was just a wreck.
	My mom had been into psychiatric hospitals.
	My sister went into psychiatric hospitals.
	She didn't even complete high school.
	Anyway, I'm 31.
	My last relationship was when I was 22.
	There were three kind of serious relationships in a row, starting when I was 18 and ending when I was 22.
	And I realized after the third one that, you know, I've got some issues that I've got to work through, so that's kind of what I've been trying to do.
	I haven't really had any direction because I stopped talking with my dad about the same time.
	I've actually reconnected just a few months ago with him.
	Wait, sorry.
	Wait.
	You say you didn't have any direction because you stopped talking to your dad?
	Did you feel that your dad was going to give you lots of productive direction?
	That's interesting.
	I'm not sure...
	Could you...
	I don't know.
	Like, you know, a repressed gay, married 10 years, ex-Baptist, drug addict.
	At the time, I didn't...
	At the time, it wasn't processing for me in that respect.
	Now I understand that I never had a masculine role model in my life.
	And I get that.
	I mean, I understand that.
	But at the time, it was just, I've got to get out of here.
	I don't want to be abused by this guy anymore.
	You know, there was a time when he came home, he was so drunk...
	I thought I was going to have to kill him just to protect myself.
	He was a violent drunk?
	He never...
	Oh, did we lose him again?
	All right, can you hear me now?
	Nate, you are giving us a very, very exciting time to re-edit this show.
	Sorry about that.
	It makes some kind of sense.
	Do you know why you were dropping?
	Just out of curiosity.
	I have no idea.
	I just started a new internet service two weeks ago.
	It should be awesome, but it's not so much.
	Right.
	What they mean is, aww, sometimes it works.
	That's what their awesome is.
	Anyway, okay, so we were talking about your father as a role model, and you were saying that you grew up without a masculine role model, and you used to have some belief in the need for him as a presence to help you, and now you certainly seem a little more skeptical about that.
	Well, I completely acknowledge that I have nothing to gain from my parents at all whatsoever.
	I realized that reconnecting with them a couple, I guess it was maybe two or three months ago, was the first step in finally defooing from them.
	Because I thought what I had done was defooing, but it wasn't.
	So it's like I'm having to reconnect with these people that I know I'm going to say goodbye to.
	You always warned about getting stuck in the null zone.
	I've been stuck in the null zone for about 10 years.
	I've been so angry in the past week.
	It's kind of weird to think that your gay dad with you and your sister had more sex in his 10 years of marriage than you've had over the last 10 years of your 20s, right?
	Yeah, that's bullshit, isn't it?
	Yeah.
	No, it's like your sex life has been what a friend of mine joked about once where he said, oh yes, I remember my first sexual experience.
	I was scared.
	I was nervous.
	I was all alone.
	But that is where you are and I'm sorry for that.
	So the question that you started with was how do I identify somebody who's decent, somebody who's good, somebody who is suitable, right?
	Yeah.
	Right.
	And I realize I've got to figure myself out, the virtues that I hold, and living the philosophy that I believe in, that kind of stuff.
	And I'm working on that.
	It sounds like you're reading from a pamphlet or something.
	I must find out about things that I'm good at.
	I'm sorry, I don't mean to mock you.
	It sounds very mechanical.
	You're mocking yourself.
	Self-knowledge.
	Yeah.
	The last two months, I've gotten through the first 500 of your podcast listening at work.
	Okay, so a little personal mockery.
	That's the kind of personal touch we like to bring to this show, where rather than mock other people at a distance, we'll bring it right to your doorstep and face-to-face mock you.
	No, it sounded kind of funny.
	It sounds like a Catholic when the nun is saying, well, what do you have to do to get into heaven?
	Well, I'll not touch myself, and I've got to...
	Not fantasize about you and a thong and I gotta get married.
	Intellectually, I know what I gotta do, but I don't know what to do.
	I don't know what to do.
	Okay, but where are we starting in this question?
	Are we starting from like, do you know how to meet women?
	Do you know where to go to meet women?
	Do you know how to talk to women?
	I mean, where are we starting from here?
	No judgment.
	I'm just curious.
	I have a serious fear of abandonment, serious fear of abandonment, and I think that's the fear that I'm always feeling constantly.
	There was this girl earlier this year that she and I started connecting and started out just as friends, and then it became obvious that there was attraction there.
	For the life of me, I actually do pretty well flirting.
	I'm not an ugly dude, kind of charming.
	I've got dimples, I've got decent hair, whatever, and I've got the personality that...
	Wait, so what's this decent hair talk around attractiveness?
	I'm sorry.
	I'm afraid your internet is cutting out again.
	Mike, cut him off.
	No, I'm kidding.
	Go on.
	But the problem is I attract women that are my mother when she got married.
	They're between the ages of 18 and 24.
	They've been abused, sometimes sexually, and it's like they latch on to me.
	I don't know what I'm putting out there to attract these women, and I can't spot it.
	That's the problem, and that's why I asked the question I did because I think, oh, she's really sweet and really nice, and then I figure out later, no, she's exactly what you don't need.
	Yeah, I know.
	It's tough.
	I'm just trying to think of all the emails of sympathy that I'm going to get when you say that there's all these 18-year-old women throwing themselves at you.
	No, no, no.
	They're not throwing – it's not like that at all.
	I'm just saying when you look at the women in the past – and it's not many.
	It's not many.
	They all have the same MO. It's the same personality type.
	You know, it's tragic, sorry to interrupt, but it's tragic, you know, when you grow up in the stink of crazy, like, it seems like there aren't enough loofahs in the world to get that smell off you, you know, that attracts, like, disjointedly-minded people from coming along.
	So, yeah, no, I get that.
	It's going to be – this is why I also recommend things like yoga and gymnastics.
	I did circus camp, if you could believe it or not, with doing trapeze and all this kind of crap.
	Body work is important because when you grow up – and look at people when you're out looking around.
	This actually has relevance, believe it or not.
	But look at people.
	Look at them and try and figure out what childhood they had just based upon how they walk.
	If you knew nothing else – like imagine you just seeing the robo-skeleton of how they walk or whatever – And I bet you, 99 times out of 100, you can see it.
	You know, that slouched shoulder staring at the sidewalk.
	People who look kind of wobbly on their legs, who don't look grounded in their hips and all that kind of stuff.
	People who are either moving, you know, like icebreakers through the crowd of the world and, you know, they grew up with a lot of aggression or people who are kind of tentative and slinking sideways through crowds and all that.
	If you look at body language, you can really get a whole map of childhood.
	This is why, you know, I was fortunate to, you know, when I went to theater school, I thought it was all going to be about learning Shakespeare, and some of it was, but a lot of it was body work.
	Gymnastics and sword fighting and yoga and stretching and massage, and a lot of it was really trying to get you rooted in your body, which, you know, a...
	A bad childhood kind of startles you out of your body.
	It's like a gunshot with birds in a tree.
	Off you go.
	And then you're kind of outside your body but still trapped in your body, so to speak.
	And also, of course, if you have a bad childhood, your body is your enemy.
	Because it is through the pain of your body that you experience the pain of your childhood.
	Right?
	I mean, so, you know, if you're spanked, then it is your body's neurology that is used against you.
	If you're hit, it's the same thing.
	If you're sent to bed without dinner, it's your body's need for food that is used to punish you.
	Right?
	You are in a cage and the only way that people can hurt you is through your body.
	Right?
	And so, when we have bad childhoods, our relationship with our body fundamentally changes.
	It should be a delightful instrument of self-achievement.
	And, I mean, it's glorious to watch my daughter, you know, how she runs and skips and jumps and is excited to learn new things.
	Her body is her friend.
	Her body is her greatest toy.
	But for those of us with these Gestapo-style childhoods, our bodies are predators that are used to hurt us.
	And this happens also at an emotional level, like if you live in anxiety, you know, that churning stomach, the sweaty palms, constant anxiety, constant, like, oh my god, constant anxiety.
	You know, I just did an interview last night with a professor of psychology from the Department of Notre Dame University, and she pointed out that when children, when infants experience chronic anxiety, the genes are turned on in their body that will produce anxiety for the rest of their lives.
	That's some more bullshit.
	Geez.
	No kidding, yeah.
	Well, it's kind of a relief, right?
	Okay, so I'm not going to wait for this to stop tomorrow, right?
	And so even at an emotional, biochemical, deep gut instinct level, our bodies are used against us, right?
	I mean, without the body, what harm can be done, right?
	That's why the great dream of escaping abuse is heaven.
	It's consciousness without a body.
	Oh, I'm escaped from the body.
	The body is my enemy.
	The body is my torturer.
	The body is used to cause me harm, to make me scared, to make me anxious, to make me blush, to make me shame, to be hungry and not fed, to be lonely, the yearning for contact.
	My body needs skin against it.
	When I'm a baby, when I'm a toddler, my need for human contact.
	If it wasn't for my body, I'd be free of all this.
	There's this yearning in religions and in spiritual practices, these out-of-body experiences.
	Oh my God, wouldn't it be great to have astral travel to be out of my body?
	This torture chamber where the vices are constantly closed on my fingertips and the toenails are constantly pulled off by my abusers.
	The body which squats over me like a spider and constantly shits negative sensations on me through the wand-like commands of the evildoers around me.
	So the fact that people are able to spot your history through your body, my God, we're tattooed with it.
	We are carrying ten coffins.
	And then we wonder why we attract undertakers and gravediggers, right?
	That's why I think body work is important, not just therapy like for the head, and that's all important.
	But find a way for your body to be your friend.
	Find a way for your body to be pleasurable.
	Now, I've got masturbation, of course, is one of those things, but it looks like you're looking to move a little bit beyond the tennis racket of self-indulgence, right?
	I should give classes.
	You should give classes, right?
	I believe for most men, it's like, no, I... I got that one.
	I had a PhD in this.
	I really don't need that.
	First, you warm the pomegranate to 150 degrees.
	Anyway, so this is sort of what I want to point out.
	When you say it's a mystery, you think it's like, oh my god, are they psychic and all that?
	Well, no.
	I mean, they read the body.
	The body is a tapestry.
	Of our history.
	You know, like they used to tell stories in tapestries in the Middle Ages, you know, the stained glass, they'd tell stories.
	Well, this is what our bodies are.
	Everything is written on our bodies.
	Everything is written on our bodies.
	And it's visible to everyone else.
	And I don't know if you've ever had this too.
	I mean, if you're a guy...
	There are times when you don't want an erection.
	I used to have this.
	We had this, I think, grade 7 or grade 8 class where it was the first time we'd seen all of the girls in bikinis or bathing suits or whatever.
	You know, every guy had a boner.
	Guys were all in the stalls trying to bend their boners backwards.
	If I break it temporarily, I hope it fixes itself, but at least it will be down for a little bit, right?
	Because this was not the age of the baggy pants.
	This was the age of the Speedos where you couldn't just tell whether someone had a boner.
	You could tell whether he was Jewish or not.
	And so there was just no hiding it in these big-ass California shorts that hang down past your knees.
	And so you're even embarrassed by that kind of stuff.
	Sweating can be embarrassing.
	Blushing, you know, there are people in Japan who will actually have surgery to remove the blood vessels' connections that cause blushing because they don't want to show when they're ashamed.
	And this is how terrified we become of our own bodies when they're used against us.
	When they smell, when they have erections, when they're used to hurt us, to embarrass us, to cause us emotional, physical, spiritual, sexual pain.
	This doesn't even count to things like sexual abuse where the body is literally violated to the intense horror of its occupant.
	And the inescapability of the body, I think, is one of the reasons why suicide becomes such an attractive option.
	It's like, okay, well, if the only way to stop this is to leave my body, I will leave my body.
	In the same way you jump from a burning building.
	Like on 9-11, the guys jumped out of the burning building.
	Well, if there is to be no respite in the self-suffering of this demonic body that has literally been inhabited and possessed and taken over by the demons of my youth, well, I'm out of here, right?
	So, I'm sorry, I don't mean to over...
	To go over this topic in such depth, but this was a question that you had.
	It seemed to me like, how did they even find me?
	I guess I'm not very aware of my body.
	I'm not active.
	I'm not obese, but I'm overweight.
	I hide it well.
	I don't exercise, and I don't eat well, and I realize that that needs to change or whatever.
	Dancing is the way to go.
	I'm with Marlon Brando on this.
	I mean, yeah, one of the great pleasures that I got out of my youth was I just went to discos all the time.
	I mean, like Friday night, Saturday night, three hours of dancing a night.
	I just loved it.
	I still love it.
	I've still got a couple of videos where I do goofy dancing.
	It's a wonderful way of taking pleasure within the body as well and getting the body to have fun.
	Let your body have some fun.
	It's not just you in there.
	There's another brain in your gut.
	Every organ wants to move around.
	Your muscles all want to shift around.
	It's really, really important to To have fun, we had some guests staying with us over the last week and there were like six adults in the house and my daughter put on her favorite song and we literally spent about 45 minutes dancing in the living room and trying that sort of whip the horse Gangnam style dance and everybody came up with different dances that they knew and we all tried to copy them and it was a blast.
	And anyway, just wanted to put a little pitch in there for dancing, which I think is just a completely delightful way to let the body play after it has usually gone through some significantly difficult stuff.
	But anyway, so I would recommend that.
	I mean, do some yoga, do some body work.
	Try a hip-hop class.
	I took one a couple of years ago and felt relatively white.
	But, you know, it was a fun thing to try.
	And if you want to do some seriously goofy stuff, you know, which is really enjoyable, as I I talked about before, try circus class.
	You go do trapeze and stuff like that.
	I mean, it's a blast, and it's a way of letting your body play, which I think is important if it's been used to hurt you.
	Okay.
	That had nothing to do with your central question, which was...
	A little bit, but...
	Well, no, I mean...
	If you do that body work, you'll find that I don't...
	Like, I haven't...
	Well, I don't get propositioned anyway.
	I mean, who the hell's going to proposition me?
	I'm, like, openly and happily married and all that kind of stuff, right?
	But, I mean, I have had, you know, messages to the fact that women like to masturbate to my videos, which I, you know, I guess I'll take that as a compliment.
	Nothing I could particularly reply to.
	But...
	I'm not saying I have, but it's been a while.
	I'm not saying you haven't either.
	I don't know.
	Maybe these women were raised by Conan.
	But the point is that it is the signals that you give out.
	If you change your relationship with your body, you will change the kind of people that you attract.
	That's been my very strong...
	Experience.
	And so, you know, if I were to just say, well, look for this or look for that, what I want you to do is to start attracting different kinds of women.
	And to do that, you have to be more comfortable in your body.
	The body has to be a source of pleasure and delight and fun for you.
	And you have to reclaim, inch by bitter inch, your nervous system from the abusers.
	It's a war of attrition.
	I mean, sometimes it feels like you're never going to win, but you've got to conquer your body back from the abusers because, you know, if you suffer enough as a child, they own your ass, right?
	They own your body.
	They own your nervous system.
	They own your endocrine system.
	They own your brain.
	They own it.
	You are a slave to history.
	You've got to reclaim the body bit by bit.
	Introduce it to fun.
	Introduce it to good food.
	Introduce it to exercise.
	I stretch like 20, 30 minutes every day.
	Just to remind my body to stay limber and it helps me with creativity and it helps me with even temperedness and so on.
	Not always the easiest thing for me.
	So I would just really recommend that.
	I did years of, I mean, I've talked about the therapy, the talk therapy I did at the same time I was doing that.
	I was also doing three or four hours of yoga a week.
	I was also doing an hour and a half of aromatherapy massages.
	Massage is another great thing.
	I mean, the body memory is very deep in muscle sometimes and you can work at massage.
	I found aromatherapy to be particularly helpful because it also engages the smell sense as well, which is positive.
	Bad childhoods usually don't smell very good.
	There's bad cooking, dirty houses and all that and body odor and all that.
	So introducing more positive scents and smells and all that.
	Just re-engage your senses in a positive way.
	And I think that will do a lot at least to beginning to attract different kinds of women to you.
	And you say you're pretty good at flirting, so you'll find that flirting with sane women is a whole lot more fun than flirting with crazy women.
	Yeah, I'm worried about that.
	I mean, it's like, do I know how to flirt with sane women?
	I mean, is there a difference there?
	Yes, there is.
	My sense of humor can be a little weird.
	Well, I think that's okay.
	I mean, as long as it's coming from a good place, like I make some really risque jokes.
	I guess you could call them jokes if you're feeling charitable, but I make some pretty risque jokes in this show.
	But as long as it's coming from a healthy and happy place, then I think almost every kind of joke can be pretty funny.
	So I wouldn't worry too much about that.
	But what I will tell you is that healthy women will not immediately try to engage you at a non-platonic level.
	So you may have noticed that these dysfunctional younger women, that flirting comes up quite quickly, right?
	Right, and the sexual innuendo gets in there pretty quick.
	Yeah, sexual innuendo, and basically what they're doing is saying, you know, if you look at the hole between my legs, you won't have to see the hole in my soul, right?
	Or my head.
	Yeah, or their head, right?
	A hole in their heart the size of their heart, right?
	The distraction of sexuality is, especially when it's introduced strong and early into a relationship, is really quite catastrophic.
	And people who rush to say, you know, okay, yeah, yeah, everyone's going to call me a prude and all that.
	Well, you know, basically, screw y'all.
	I have, I think, very healthy attitudes about this, and it's not like I haven't tried the man-whore thing in the past, but, you know, the hypersexuality is a sign of dysfunction, and if you all start with the sexual innuendo, then what you're thinking about is sex, not getting to know the other person, right?
	Right.
	It's a distraction from the person.
	Right.
	You know, like if I show up to a job interview, you know, in a thong with an inner tube around my neck, and I say, well, I want you to focus on me as a person, I think most interviewers would say, well, I could try, but I got to tell you, that thong and rubber tube around your neck, a little on the distracting side.
	It's getting a little tough to focus on what it is that you're saying.
	Yeah, that didn't work for me either.
	No, and you know, like women, you know, with a lot of decolletage, a lot of cleavage, right?
	They'll sort of lean forward and, you know, there's this old joke, hey, boys, boys, my eyes are up here, right?
	It's like, well, if you weren't pouring your boobs into my face, maybe I could look at your eyes.
	But I always find it kind of hypocritical when women, you know, they're dressed up in, I think, what one YouTuber's called, basically, it's like sexual harassment, the amount of, like, the heels that make their butt higher and more wiggly and the...
	Perfume, which is a form of imitation pharognomes, and the lipstick, which is to indicate sexual heat, and the tight dresses or the low-cut dresses or whatever.
	A man gets sexually harassed for making a joke, but a woman can basically put herself on full sexual display, and it's not considered sexual harassment in any way, shape, or form.
	And then the woman is offended if you look at the boobs that are pouring some flesh tsunami at you where you feel like you need to have some sort of umbrella.
	So you're going to get out of the situation somewhat dry.
	But the sexuality, front and foremost, is a way of distracting.
	Because once a sexual vibe kicks in, then the exploration of the personality and the exploration of the potential productivity and happiness of the relationship kind of goes out the window, right?
	Yeah.
	And again, lust is great.
	I mean, I sound...
	You know, it's funny, you know, I say don't gorge exclusively on drink food, on junk food, and then people say, well, that's deaf, he just hates eating.
	No, that's not what I'm saying, right?
	So, you know...
	Even junk food once in a while can be great, but just don't start off every day with a donut.
	Don't start every day off with a donut.
	He hates sugar.
	No, no.
	But anyway, I think flirting with healthy women is going to be fine.
	They will probably find it a bit off-putting if you start flirting quickly.
	Okay.
	I didn't actually flirt with my wife for a while when we first met.
	I was really interested in her thoughts.
	I mean, she was and is the best conversationalist that I've ever met.
	I just really wanted to get to know her as a person.
	I certainly found her attractive, but I was really interested in getting to know her as a person.
	I just never met anyone who was frank and forthright and curious and brilliant.
	She's just a delightful apple a day of great chit-chat.
	Focus on the person.
	And again, that doesn't mean you've got to be in the stall trying to break your boner into like when I was 13 or so.
	But it does mean, of course, focus on the person because the sexual high wears off and then you've got to live with someone for a long time afterwards if you want a longer term relationship, right?
	Yeah.
	All right, so focus on...
	Just be curious.
	Just be curious.
	Keep asking questions.
	I mean, I think that's a great thing in general.
	That's something else that I've noticed.
	It's a little weird for me.
	I'm used to...
	Part of the way these relationships have played out is that they will talk to me a lot.
	And I will listen.
	And that's, I think, part of what the attraction is.
	I'm not willing to just walk away.
	And then it'll come to a point and then they'll ask me a question.
	I have no idea what to say.
	Even though I know exactly what to say, I have no idea what to say in that moment.
	And it's not that I'm nervous or anything.
	It's just like...
	Can you give me an example of a question that they might ask that you have no idea what to say?
	It's just easy stuff.
	Two plus two is.
	A unicorn!
	A rainbow!
	A fist!
	Oh god, a Klingon!
	Oh shit, I should know this.
	Hey, what did you do this weekend?
	How are you this weekend?
	I can't even express it right now.
	That's how weird it is for me.
	There is a mental block on sharing how my experience of life is going with someone.
	No, I mean, it's a pretty dull question.
	Like, they were asking me, you know, my big plans for the summer has been, like, don't die.
	That's been, like, my big plan for the summer.
	I've got that written on every, like, to-do list, right?
	To-do, today, oh, right, get migs, get eggs, milk, you know, pick up something for the house, put the garbage out, oh, right, don't die.
	And, you know, so I was going to get my radiation treatment yesterday, actually the second last day.
	Oh, no, no, Friday.
	Sorry, it was Friday.
	It was a long weekend up here in Canada.
	And naturally, I didn't get any radiation treatments on the weekend because we all know that cancer takes the weekend off when there's a long weekend, just like the cancer technicians do.
	Socialized medicine, blech.
	Anyway, but they said, you know, any plans for the long weekend?
	And I literally have nothing to say.
	I didn't want to say, well, I have three plans.
	One for Saturday, don't die.
	Sunday, die not.
	And Thursday, stay alive.
	Oh, Sunday, stay alive.
	And I don't really have anything to say to that kind of stuff.
	To me, that's, you know, such a boring question that I don't...
	I mean, we're going to make chit-chat while my head is bolted down to the radiation machine with that special aerated Phantom of the Opera mask.
	But what are we going to say, right?
	But if you really, really want to find a healthy woman, right?
	So pretend to be a woman and ask me that question.
	I'll pretend to be you.
	Okay.
	How was your weekend, Steph?
	Wait, wait, wait.
	How was your weekend, Steph?
	Yeah, because all women sound like that.
	Okay, so ask me again.
	How was your weekend, Steph?
	You know, I don't actually know how to answer that question.
	I don't even know why.
	I don't even know how to answer that question.
	Now, I'm not saying we continue the roleplay, but what I'm saying is that, because clearly you just short-circuited your dysfunctional template for women, which is exactly what you want, because that's honesty, right?
	And if you want to be with a healthy woman, you be fucking honest.
	Because that's going to weed them out really fast.
	Oh, yeah.
	Oh, yeah.
	If you want to find out if you're with someone who lives in the moment, don't give a canned answer.
	Right?
	Now, how was your weekend?
	You say, I don't really know how to answer that question.
	That's an honest answer because that's how you feel in the moment.
	That's not a canned answer and you don't sort of make some shit up, you know, like I went with Mickey Mouse to Vegas or whatever, right?
	But if you want to be with a healthy person, just be honest.
	Relentlessly honest.
	If you don't know how to answer something, you say, I don't know how to answer that.
	Now, if that person is capable of living in the moment and is capable of having basic empathy and human curiosity, they'll say, well, isn't that interesting?
	I wonder why that is.
	What did you feel when I asked you that question?
	I mean, those are the questions that you're going to get from somebody who's got a decent amount of self-knowledge and curiosity and is able to actually not...
	Do you know what most people do?
	They basically have, you know, 30 or 40 little...
	Chat balloons.
	You know, like they have in comics?
	You know, those little balloons with hooks on the bottom.
	What they do is they toss them back and forth like Frisbees.
	Right.
	How about them Jays?
	Oh, I can't believe it.
	Oh, it's nice.
	Oh, I can't believe they invade Syria.
	Oh, George Bush was terrible.
	Oh, we should have longer maternity leaves like they do in Europe.
	They just have these templates.
	They throw these frisbees back and forth of chat balloons.
	And once you see that, you realize that you're just living in a world of...
	Linguistically retarded marionettes.
	Like zombies of endless echoes.
	Where they're just tossing this...
	They can't talk in the moment.
	They can't be curious in the moment.
	And they're like...
	It's like asking for a train to be spontaneous.
	Sorry, I've got these tracks.
	Spontaneity is not allowed except maybe down the road where maybe we can switch a track.
	But nobody like wanders and explores.
	They're just on these tracks.
	And you can see when you are in the moment with people who aren't in the moment...
	Right?
	You felt that in the roleplay, I would bet.
	Yeah, that awkward, that weirdness.
	Yeah, it's like, that's not a chat bubble.
	How do I, you know, I don't have a response for you.
	I'm not throwing you a chat frisbee.
	So, I don't, I mean, I'm rummaging around.
	I don't have one that responds to honesty because there's no fucking chat bubble to respond to honesty, other than honesty.
	Did you see what I'm saying?
	Yeah.
	And flirting, like sex-focused talk, is another one of these chat bubbles, right?
	Yeah.
	Oh, now I'll be sexy.
	Whatever, right?
	And it's all a way of avoiding actual human connection.
	It's all a way of just avoiding being with someone in the moment and talking about what you think and feel and asking the other person about what they think and feel.
	So, you want to weed out the crazies?
	Throw out all of your fucking thought balloons.
	All of your speech balloons.
	Everything that is pre-scripted, throw it the fuck away.
	That idea scares the shit out of me.
	Beautiful.
	Beautiful.
	But you know what should scare the shit out of you even more?
	Going to your fucking grave with all those thought balloons thrown in after you and never having uttered an honest or original spontaneous thought and had any spontaneous and direct human communication your whole life long.
	That's even more terrifying.
	This is like the end of the good, the bad and the ugly, you know.
	Is it?
	I don't know.
	I've never seen it.
	How does that end?
	It's a three-way duel, and everybody stares at each other for like five minutes.
	Oh, is it one of these Tarantino, everyone's got a gun to everyone else's head?
	No, it's a Western, right?
	Oh, no, this is Clint Eastwood.
	Man with no name.
	This was like the big one.
	The one is like three hours long.
	Anyway, anyway.
	It's an Neil Young song too, isn't it?
	I've been through the desert on a man with no name.
	Oh, all the Neil Young fans are going to email me now.
	Oh, I know I got it wrong.
	It's a joke.
	Anyway, like the number of people who corrected me about Sam Adams a couple of weeks ago.
	He wasn't the president.
	The president didn't have a brewery.
	That was John Adams had the brewery.
	John Adams was the president.
	Sam Adams had the...
	Oh my God.
	It's a fucking joke.
	Yeah.
	Libertarian robot brain exploding.
	But this is what I mean.
	Be honest with people.
	It's the ultimate force field.
	It keeps all the crazies out and invites all the sane ones in.
	How do I do that at work and not get fired?
	But you're not trying to find dates at work.
	I'm talking about when you're trying to find a relationship.
	So at work it's okay to have chat bubbles and everything?
	Because I'm not looking for a day to work at all.
	Yeah, work is work.
	Okay, okay.
	I mean, I didn't, you know, when the technicians asked me if I had any plans for the long weekend, I didn't know how to answer them, but I'm just there to get my radiation and get the fuck out of the hospital.
	Alright.
	Right?
	I mean, my dentist could be a communist.
	I don't give a shit.
	Just do well by my teeth and we're good, right?
	I mean, so at work, work is not, you know, honesty is something, it's not, let me sort of explain this.
	Sorry, this is the last thing I want to say.
	Honesty is not something that you just owe to everyone.
	Honesty is something that people earn from you.
	How do people earn honesty?
	By being honest.
	Now, in situations where you're meeting someone for the first time, I go with honesty.
	Now, if I have relationships where people have never been particularly honest with me and where the primary function of our relationship has nothing to do with honesty, I don't need to be honest.
	My primary relationship with my dentist is to keep my teeth in my head.
	You know, preferably in my mouth because, you know, up the nose it's hard to breathe.
	So, That's my primary relationship.
	And we've never had a relationship of closeness, intimacy, honesty, curiosity, right?
	And so that's my primary relationship with her is to teeth.
	She wants my money and I want to keep my teeth in my head.
	Yay.
	So we do that, right?
	So I don't, you know, and she would be completely shocked and it would be inappropriate to start, you know, hear my thoughts and fears about today or whatever, right?
	And so if you have a relationship with people, the primary relationship is to...
	Make money to stay employed, to get a paycheck, to all these kinds of things, right?
	So, honesty is not the foundation of the relationship.
	Obviously, you want to not be fraudulent at work and so on.
	You need to be honest about the things that matter.
	Can you deliver this project on time?
	Fuck no.
	Are you crazy?
	I told you, you can have it on time or you can have it right.
	You can have both, right?
	But you need to be honest about things, but in terms of emotional, spontaneous, direct, connected honesty, I mean, that's for the few close people in your life, the people who've earned it, the people who can do that, the people where that's the foundation of the relationship, that's the point of the relationship.
	What is the point of my relationship with my wife?
	Is it for us to both clean the house?
	No.
	Is it for us to both be parents?
	No.
	It is for us to love each other.
	And that requires honesty, openness, connection at all times.
	And I'm really good at knowing when that drifts astray.
	That's my job.
	Make sure we stay connected, right?
	But that's that, right?
	That's not the guy who's taking my credit card when I fill my gas tank, right?
	I'm not going to neck with him.
	I neck with my wife.
	Honesty is not this broadcast like a radio station.
	You just broadcast indiscriminately honest no matter what.
	That just becomes another rule, right?
	Yeah, okay.
	Honesty is like if someone at work that you barely knew said, listen, I'd really like you to come help me move and then drive me to the airport this weekend, what would you say?
	I would say, no thanks, I got plans or something like that.
	I feel very uncomfortable with you.
	And please take your hand off my leg and put it on the other leg.
	Anyway, but because you're not close, right?
	So you don't owe that person helping them move and driving them to the airport, right?
	Right.
	But if the love of your life says, you know, we need to move and we're going on vacation, you're like, yeah, I'll help move and let's drive to the airport, right?
	Right.
	Because, right?
	So, these are just things that naturally you should have got in your family.
	These healthy things.
	And this shouldn't even be something we need to discuss.
	But, you know, we both, sounds like we both grew up in, you know, with all the social cues of somebody undergoing electroshock therapy.
	And so, these are just things that we need to sort of figure out.
	And I think we can come to a sort of better place than even people who grew up with the standard social cues can get to.
	Because we really understand that we can go further.
	But I think this is, I think this is the level at which you need to start thinking if that helps at all.
	Well, yeah.
	I mean, I knew that something was missing from my upbringing.
	I mean, I understand that the abuse was there and the neglect was there, but I had no understanding of what I didn't get.
	So that's kind of been a focus for me the past few months is to figure out, you know, what am I missing?
	You know, I'm 31.
	I'm looking around.
	Other people seem to be getting on with their lives.
	I seem to be stuck.
	You know, what information do I not have?
	Well, look, first of all, I would also mention, first of all, we've just started talking.
	Sorry, sorry.
	I would mention that it might have been entirely appropriate for you to not date for 10 years.
	Oh, no.
	Because the only thing that's worse for you than not dating would have been to get married to some lunatic and have kids and then be on the hook for child support and alimony and all that kind of crazy shit for the next 20 years, right?
	I would have offed myself.
	I'm really glad that I didn't do any of that.
	Right, so now you're ready and that's good.
	But I mean, don't say, oh my god, everyone else was getting on with their lives.
	It's like all the other livings are getting on with their lives going over the cliff and I'm just sitting here and I'm not doing anything.
	They're all going to laugh at you.
	Yeah, look at all your friends.
	I mean, my god, I felt behind.
	My God, I felt totally behind.
	I mean, I'm sitting here doing fucking hours of therapy and I did 10 hours of journaling and I'm just trying to pick up the pieces and put them all back together and, you know, reassemble the Steph bot of our times and all that.
	And, oh my God, everyone else was getting married and moving on with their careers and I was just sitting there in a little apartment just trying to piece shit together, right?
	That's exactly what I'm doing right now.
	But, my God, I mean, the people who were moving ahead with their lives, I'm like, oh my God, you couldn't pay me enough to trade lives with them.
	Now, because they didn't do the work and they got married to the wrong people and they had children with the wrong people and they got divorced from the wrong people and, you know, they're living in little studio flats with neon signs outside the window like Kenny Rogers' Mars Planet from Seinfeld, right?
	And so, yeah, I mean, this lying fallow kind of thing is important and I think to have respected that and say, yeah, no, that was necessary because all the decisions I would have made in my 20s about dating would have been catastrophic.
	I didn't make them.
	Yay!
	Good!
	Thank God.
	Now we are ready, right?
	Right.
	Well, thank you for doing the work.
	Oh, gosh, you're welcome.
	Thank you for listening.
	How's the conversation for you?
	I mean, that's important if I'm going to talk about asking people their experience and their thoughts and feelings.
	How's it been for you?
	No, it's been good.
	It's been very good.
	Thank you.
	How could it have been great?
	If you'd asked me out?
	See, that was the weird joke coming out.
	See, people are like, oh my god, it's so weird.
	Are you kidding me?
	You grew up with a gay dad.
	Do you think that's a weird joke?
	No, I think it's freaking hilarious.
	I think it's freaking hilarious.
	But people are like, oh, you must be gay.
	No, no, it's funny.
	Anyway, it's funny.
	Oh, trust me, try having my accent and my form of moving and gymnastics and ballet and shit like that.
	I'm not gay.
	I'm just practicing the luge with my friend here in spandex.
	Anyway, well, thanks very much.
	And I hope it works out.
	Drop me a line if you can.
	Let me know how it's going.
	But yeah, just really keep focusing on the honesty.
	I don't think you can lose from there.
	All right.
	Thank you very much.
	All right.
	You're very welcome, man.
	I would really, really like to thank...
	The callers this week.
	What a great set of questions.
	A wide-ranging set of topics.
	And I think I got provoked to some seriously decent speechifying.
	And that's always satisfying to me.
	So, you know, once again, I just...
	I can't praise you guys enough.
	Best...
	Conversationalists in the known universe.
	You know, I listen to other radio shows, right?
	I've been holding my nose and dipping into Tom Likas recently because he's a very successful American radio talk show host.
	I listen to Howard Stern on occasion.
	I listen to Rush Limbaugh.
	I listen to Air America from time to time.
	I mean, you know, I'm kind of in the biz, I guess you could say.
	And, oh man, I mean, there's nothing...
	Nothing out there like these conversations.
	What an incredible group of people to have the intense honor and privilege of chatting with about these topics.
	So thank you, thank you, thank you, everyone who listens, who calls in, who is honest and open and just brings up the most amazing topics.
	You know, every time I listen to other types of shows, I am just...
	Incredibly proud of what we're achieving here in this incredibly essential conversation.
	So thank you everyone who calls in and thank you everyone who trolls and thank you everyone who shares and thank you everyone who donates.
	And hey, another day where I kept my promise to stay alive.
	Yay!
	Always a good day.
	Have a great week everyone.

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