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Sept. 12, 2013 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:08:21

2482 The Truth About 9/11: The Aftermath - Wednesday Call In Show September 11th, 2013

Stefan Molyneux speaks to listeners and discusses the twelve year anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks, the non-aggression principle, avoiding physical conflicts, the challenge of physical injuries, the narcotic of creativity, finding a healthy romantic relationship and penis negotiation.

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	Good evening, everybody.
	Is this the fourth thing?
	The fourth, I think, Wednesday night show from Freedom Aid Radio.
	I just couldn't take going seven days without talking to the smartest, wisest, and most curious listeners in the known universe.
	So it's time for the midweek dip into the crack bag of listener questions for StephBot.
	And thanks, Mike, of course, for manning the helm as always.
	9-11.
	9-11.
	I feel maybe we should say something.
	9-11, is that the convenience store two doors up from the 7-11?
	No.
	I believe it is the anniversary of the Attacks on the World Trade Center.
	Can I tell you?
	If you were to head back, but in time, my friends, let us take ourselves on an ELO-style journey.
	The music is reversible, but time is not.
	If you never had an LP and are under 40, you have no idea what that joke means.
	But anyway, if you'd have gone back...
	Lo, these 12 years.
	And in the aftermath, this would have been the evening of 9-11.
	Now, I was actually, I was at work back in the days where I had any kind of regular employment.
	Before I became a shiftless internet begging bum, I was at work.
	And one of my programmers, who's actually a good friend of mine, he came in I don't know, I guess shortly after 9 said, a plane flew into the World Trade Center.
	I was like, well, that's not good.
	That's not good at all.
	But I mean, you know, a plane flew into the Empire State Building some time back.
	And, you know, these things, you just chalk it up to pilot error, I suppose.
	And naturally, of course, he came back shortly later saying, a second plane has flown in, at which point my pack in recognition kicked in and thought this probably was not a statistical coincidence.
	And we actually were kind of lucky in a way in that I mean, this is so far back in the internet days.
	We managed to get one of the last feeds from a local news station that was airing everything.
	And, of course, we saw the Palestinians cheering and we watched the whole thing.
	And it really was creepy and crawly and horrifying and sickening and repulsive and vile and felt like...
	I didn't really understand much about foreign policy at the time.
	I mean, my job for 70 hours a week was entrepreneur travel manager guy, so I didn't really...
	I don't know much about US foreign policy and what it caused in the background, the backdrop, all that kind of stuff.
	But I do remember calling out my therapist that day and saying, listen, I can't come in for therapy.
	This is like my personal problems.
	It just don't seem that significant relative to what's occurring in the world today.
	And she was quite disappointed.
	We did talk about it later.
	And if you went back in time, To that day.
	To that evening.
	To the evening of that day.
	And you said, in 12 years, an American president is advocating the allying with Al-Qaeda representatives to overthrow...
	The president of a nation that has been cordially received by Nancy Pelosi, who has dined with John Kerry and his wife.
	People would not believe you.
	People would never believe that a US president was considering throwing his lot in and supporting and maybe even arming al-Qaeda operatives to overthrow The president of Syria, Assad, with whom there are – and you can find these on the internet – beaming and joyful and happy pictures of him shaking hands with Nancy Pelosi.
	Somebody made a good meme.
	I love the cynical bitterness of political memes.
	It was like, hey, if Assad was so dangerous and such a horrible dictator, why didn't we just grab him when he was shaking Nancy Pelosi's hand?
	Or when he was dining with John Kerr and his wife.
	Statism, because it is so amoral and so power-hungry and so manipulative and so false and it has all of the moral conscience of a water spilling on jagged rocks attempting to find the deepest hole it can fill.
	It requires a continual process of self-erasure, of the erasure of memory and of history and of context.
	It requires that you live in the kind of now that even spiders eschew.
	Spiders will build a web and they've got to be patient and birds will build their nests.
	They've got to be patient and ants have to go out and get all their stuff and bring it home.
	They've got to be patient.
	They live in the future.
	Animals which only live in it now.
	I guess it's down to an amoeba state.
	That's the kind of now, the kind of pure, blind, history-less, memory-less, retarded moment that you have to live in when you live in the constant vile flow of status propaganda.
	The idea, 12 years ago, if you go and say, in 12 years, an American president will be aligned with Al-Qaeda, potentially arming Al-Qaeda, performing airstrikes on the part of Al-Qaeda against a president courtly received by the most senior of American diplomats and politicians.
	People would say, that's treason, blasphemy.
	If you had made that, the plot, Of Alias or 24 or a movie or something like that.
	If you made that as a plot, that an American president is allying with Al-Qaeda.
	Twelve years after 9-11, when the official story of Al-Qaeda was 9-11?
	I mean, you would have been accused of the most bitter, cynical, revolting, nihilistic perspective on the world, that you would have been boycotted, you would have been shouted down, people would have booed you, people would have said, what a black and vicious portrait of the American political system.
	There is no one alive who could have been so cynical as to imagine.
	They're not twelve years after they claimed That this terrorist organization murdered in cold blood over 3,000 Americans, that the president would be allying with the rebel forces in Syria, which are not just representatives of al-Qaeda, not just kind of knotted up with al-Qaeda, but are actually al-Qaeda.
	But this is the weird thing that has to happen to your brain when you live in a state of society, is that you have to live in this amoral, empty, vacuous, soulless, postmodern hell of nothing and no one but the power and the lie of the moment.
	That is all you live on.
	That is all you breathe.
	That is all you feed to the blind, faceless, Pink Floyd school children falling into the meat grinder souls.
	Of the democratic citizenry.
	There's an old statement that people, it's been quoted many times, if people knew how the Federal Reserve really operated, there'd be a revolution tomorrow.
	Come on.
	US President is allying himself, is desperate to ally himself with Al-Qaeda forces.
	And who's really talking about it?
	You can't hear about it.
	You can't really talk about it.
	Have we lost completely our capacity for moral outrage?
	Have we lost completely our capacity to get generally fucking pissed off at the psychotic nature of the system that we live under, that grinds us down?
	And grinds us down fundamentally with irrationality and immorality.
	Even so, more so than mere force.
	Force is just an effect of our internal forgetting, of our eternal ignoring, what Ayn Rand called the blank out.
	Do you remember what George Bush said?
	Ah, George Bush the Younger, the shrub.
	of the family.
	What did he say?
	He said, in ringing tones, anybody who aids and abets the terrorists is a terrorist.
	Anybody who aids and abets the terrorists is a terrorist, and he who is not with us is against us.
	So, terrorism is something to be solved by kidnapping, extraordinary rendition, torture, arbitrary imprisonment, drone strikes.
	Against terrorists.
	And anybody who aids and abets the terrorists, you see, is a terrorist.
	Al-Qaeda is pretty much a terrorist organization according to all U.S. documents in foreign policy for the last, oh, say, 20 years.
	Anybody who aids the terrorists is a terrorist.
	Who's aiding the terrorists now, my friends?
	So, can we expect Barack Obama to be shipped off to Some godforsaken CIA hellhole in a country with no extradition treaty.
	Waterboarded and asked to reveal his sources and asked to reveal his intelligence and asked to reveal the cells operating at large.
	Of course not!
	You see, that was then, this is now.
	And now can never be referred to then.
	Now can never be combined with then.
	There is no throughput of anything.
	We live the lives of, like, abused spouses.
	Abused women.
	Well, he beat me up yesterday, but he's really nice today.
	He beat me up two days ago, yesterday, and this morning.
	But this afternoon, he gave me the most beautiful rose.
	And all is forgotten.
	And now you can't even mention these about faces, these turnabouts.
	You know, you read this stuff in 1984, and it is a portrait of insanity, right?
	We are now at war with East Asia.
	We have always been at war with East Asia, whereas yesterday it was Eurasia.
	This constant erasing of the past, this constant living in the propaganda of the now, it squeezes and shreds and crushes Any capacity for moral integrity in the heart of mankind to such a degree that I almost don't know the degree to which I would
	seriously get behind and push for the continued success of the species as it stands.
	It is repulsive.
	It is repulsive the degree to which we have forgotten all the moral absolutes of yesterday for the sake of the complete opposite moral absolutes of today.
	And we don't even know that we've forgotten them.
	Look, it's one thing to say, I betray my principles.
	It's another thing to say, I have no principles.
	It's another thing to say, I will have these principles which are the opposite of yesterday's principles because these principles are more useful for me today.
	Those are all crazy principles.
	But functionally crazy.
	What is not functionally crazy, what is psychotic beyond reason and evidence and empiricism and survival, is to say, these have always been my absolute principles, even though they were in fact the opposite of the absolute principles you had yesterday.
	To believe that universality and eternity can be opposite from day to day and have no sense of their opposition and have no sense that they've switched It's like watching a compass swing round wildly and believe in the moment that every time slice is it perfectly pointing north.
	No matter where it is, no matter where it is in a second from now, no matter where it was a second from, now in the past, in the future, in the present, it doesn't matter.
	You just glance at it for a second, that's north.
	Swing in wildly, glance at it for a second, that's north.
	This is how insane we've become.
	And it is hard not to feel.
	Despair.
	After all the lessons of the past 12 years, after the war in Afghanistan, where the US spent about $30 million per al-Qaeda operative, of which they estimated there were about 100 in the country, spent about $30 million per al-Qaeda and still really only caught a few of them.
	If we can even believe that any of them were caught, who knows?
	We don't believe anything these people say.
	After the horror of what happened in Iraq, after the unbelievable devastation that occurred in Fallujah, white phosphorus depleted uranium, to the point where geneticists who study what has happened to the Fallujah population say that it is the most genetically wrecked, genetically wrecked, Not individually murdered, but genetically wrecked population that has ever been studied.
	Half the babies born after the Fallujah attack in 2007 were born with birth defects.
	Significant birth defects.
	You can just have a look for pictures if you don't want to hang on to a huge amount of your lunch.
	It's horrendous.
	After the lessons that the press swore that they weren't going to repeat after the Iraq war, Who's even bringing up in the mainstream media that the president is allying himself with terrorists and therefore, under the definition of US law and US policy, is himself a terrorist?
	Can't bring that up, right?
	Can't be mentioned.
	It can't be mentioned even that the policy has changed.
	You can't ask for a formal definitional change in the policy.
	You understand?
	this is how insane we've become in 1984 they said we are now at war with East Asia We have always been at war with East Asia.
	The second part is the clue that something has changed.
	We don't even have the second part of that sentence anymore in this disintegration of our brains that is casting as fine a dust around our heads as Saturn's rings.
	We don't even have that second part.
	The press has learned nothing.
	We have learned nothing.
	We have simply become progressively more disintegrated because the horror of the system that we sweat, groan, bleed and die under has become so great that all we do is take refuge in distractions.
	All we do is escape into the imaginary, into the made up, into the scripted, into the fictional, into the pixelated, into the invisible, We have abandoned the world that we are supposed to have defended for our children, that our children rely upon us to defend.
	We have given up.
	We have faded away.
	We have collapsed.
	We have turned ourselves into ghosts in order to escape the bloody sun of our rising awareness of where we are and what we are doing as a species to each other, to our children, to the future.
	Of course, this makes it much easier for us at the moment, but what our children are going to have to deal with if we don't change, if we don't wake up, if we don't start demanding even a modicum of integrity or at least pointing out a deviation in policy from those around us, from our leaders, from our rulers.
	If it's so hard for us that we can't bear to stand tall, to stand straight, and to speak truth to power, if it is so unbearable for us, Then we've given up on the future completely because it's not going to be any easier in the future than it is now, you understand?
	To speak the truth about our system, to speak the truth about our addiction to violence, to speak the truth about the psychotics who rule us, the evil unreality of those in power and all of their huddled and typing minions and their bleating and broadcasted lackeys, It's not going to get any easier tomorrow.
	It's not going to get any easier the day after tomorrow.
	And it sure as hell isn't going to get easier when my daughter becomes an adult.
	The weight that we're throwing off is only going to land with ever greater heaviness on the next generation.
	So we better damn well take a verbal stand with integrity now.
	Now.
	The weight that we want to throw off is only getting heavier.
	So we need to carry it now.
	We need to carry it now.
	We must carry it now.
	And that's it for my introduction, Mike, if you would like to bring up the next caller.
	All right, Sam, you're first up today.
	Go ahead.
	Hi, Steph.
	How are you doing?
	I'm all right.
	How are you doing?
	I'm not too bad, thanks.
	Not too bad.
	That's quite the intro.
	That's a tough act for your callers to follow.
	So, I was hoping we could have a little look at the non-aggression principle.
	Let's have a look.
	Yeah, if it's a principle, surely it should be universal and apply to everything.
	Would you agree with that statement?
	Well, I would say that the theory should be universally applicable, for sure.
	Now, can the theory be defined and applied in every conceivable situation?
	No.
	So, to take an analogy, the physician's motto, do no harm, is universal.
	We should not have physicians plotting to, say, remove half a baby's penis or something like that.
	Indeed.
	But does that mean that it is clear and unambiguous in every conceivable situation?
	Well, no.
	In individual situations, there can be complexities, but the implementation of ethical standards is sort of like engineering as opposed to physics.
	In physics, it's really engineering as opposed to mathematics.
	In mathematics, you have these universal rules.
	When it comes to applying them In the real world, there are times where even with the best of intentions, even with the best of planning, stuff can happen.
	You say, well, I'm going to build this bridge so that it doesn't fall down and then some fault in the tectonic place that can never have been anticipated causes the bridge to fall down because there's a massive earthquake there but there's never been an earthquake before or something, right?
	So I just want to point out the first test is can the theory be universalized in the abstract and then you can look at the vast majority of cases where it can be And then what people do is they say, well, I can think of some bizarre, weird, extremist, potential space alien situation where the NMP may not be – but that doesn't – you can always picture a situation where a bridge falls down.
	I've built the bridge out of the strongest materials.
	It's been bolted nine miles into the rock.
	And they say, well, what if an asteroid a third the size of the moon hits the bridge?
	Well, then the bridge is going to...
	You know what I mean?
	So I think that's what I want to be clear about that.
	So it certainly, as a theory, it must be universalizable.
	I agree.
	Well, my hypothetical is not quite so hypothetical.
	Certainly in the areas around where I live, it can be a bit rough at times.
	And as someone who's been studying martial arts for a while, I was always told it's better to be tried by 12 than carried by 6.
	If you think someone's going to initiate the use of force against you, even if they haven't given you anything empirical yet, it's better to strike first.
	Get in there, smoke and be done.
	And that's something I can agree to.
	So...
	The next step for me there is, does that mean I do not agree with the non-aggression principle, or can it be improved?
	I'm sorry, how does that violate the non-aggression principle?
	Well, I would be the initiator of force.
	They haven't used force against me yet.
	I suspect they may.
	Well, hang on.
	To suspect they may, that's a pretty rolling standard, right?
	So if somebody's running at you with a chainsaw, right?
	Then you can shoot him in the leg.
	Yeah, of course.
	I'm thinking more loud, being loud and aggressive.
	Not any intention of violence shown physically, but giving you enough verbal and body language clues that you might suspect them to be...
	But you just leave, right?
	That's not always an option.
	Well now, if they bar you from leaving, then they've initiated force, right?
	Hmm.
	So if a bunch of guys are standing around you and they're verbally taunting you or whatever, right?
	Like they're saying to me, you have so little hair, that's not a forehead, that's a five head or whatever it is, right?
	So if they're circling you and you're in a bar or something and you say, I would like to leave, could you please stand aside?
	And you start walking forward and they block your exit.
	Well, now they've initiated force, right?
	I can see your point.
	Perhaps I don't want to leave.
	Perhaps I feel I have a right to remain in that location and I do not want to be intimidated by morons.
	At what point does it become my error?
	If you have the chance to leave...
	A violent situation, and you choose to stay, then it becomes more ambiguous, right?
	I mean, obviously, you have a right to stay in the bar, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
	And if they're in your house, then you don't have to leave your house, right?
	I mean, there's a law, I think, I can't remember where, I think it's in Florida, but there's a law, basically, which says, anyone who enters your house against your will, you assume that they're going to kill you.
	You act on the assumption that they're going to kill you, and no jury can find otherwise, right?
	In other words, it's as if they had a gun to your head.
	Obviously, if you're in a place which is yours and your car, you'll have to run out of your car and so on.
	But if you're in a situation where you could leave and the person has not physically aggressed against you… Then you are initiating force.
	Even if they're taunting and even if they're, right, whatever, right?
	Verbal taunts are obviously not the initiation of force.
	So if you're in a situation where you could leave and you strike when the other person has not specifically indicated an imminent attack, then...
	I mean, the other guy is a jerk, right?
	And he's not exactly uninvolved in the situation, but I think that would be...
	That would be pretty tricky, right?
	I mean, so, you know, a woman having a fight with her boyfriend or whatever, and he's like, oh, man, I could just kill you sometimes, and she shoots him in the head.
	That obviously is a bit extreme of a response.
	Does that make any sense?
	Yeah, it does.
	It does.
	Well, I had a solution to this.
	I thought maybe we could have a little look at that.
	Sure.
	So I was looking to propose perhaps a relative aggression principle.
	A definition might go something along the lines of, it's morally inexcusable to present aggression greatly exceeding that which you perceive to be in receipt of, or others if you happen to be defending them.
	Well, no, but perceived to be in receipt of, you're talking about situations where you're not in receipt of any physical aggression, right?
	No, but you perceive to be, if you are, because there's a lot more to aggression than just, is it physical, is it verbal?
	There's body language indicators, how they're posturing themselves, how they position themselves.
	There's a lot of factors.
	It's not so...
	Oh, look, sorry, just to be clear, if a guy drops into a Bruce Lee fighting position and says he's going to knock your head off, Right?
	Then he's imminent.
	It's like if the guy pulls the gun out, you don't have to wait for him to shoot it.
	And if a guy sort of drops into a fighting position and says, I'm going to kick your ass up and down the street, then obviously you can attack him, right?
	Preemptively, so to speak, right?
	And that is recognized from both, you know, common law to international law.
	You don't have to wait for the country to invade.
	You can, you know, if the troops are massing on the border, you can go in and do your airstrikes or whatever it is that you're going to do.
	So imminent aggression is, I think, well recognized.
	It is, of course, a tricky situation.
	Especially when the language isn't verbal or as obvious as adopting a fighting position.
	Well, yes, but of course, the other question is, too, is to what degree are other people there, right?
	So if other people are there, what you would generally do, I think in a sort of peaceful system or a voluntary system, what you would generally do is you would canvas everyone and you would say, did you think that there was about to be a fight?
	Did you think that this guy acted like, did he just haul off and...
	was the guy basically about to attack.
	And if the majority of people said, oh yeah, that guy was totally going to, I mean, my hackles went up, my heart started pounding, I mean, I felt like somebody had loosed a tiger in the room, then I think that if enough people had the same response or reaction, Then I think you'd be in the clear.
	Now, if nobody else is around, then it doesn't really matter, right?
	Because you can say anything you want.
	I mean, assuming you killed a guy, right?
	Then, you know, you can say anything you want and nobody really can contradict you.
	So that's sort of a...
	Again, there would be certain challenges involved.
	So I think that there would be a sort of canvassing of the collective experience to sort of back up.
	And if everybody else said, oh, the guy was completely peaceful, he just looked up and said, hey, move it, jerk, or something, you know, the guy just...
	Popped his head off or whatever, then I think that would be a way of validating your experience.
	Yeah, I suppose.
	But it's not necessarily just about legal repercussions.
	It's about a question I have for my own moral sanity because it's a tricky one getting through life in the pursuit of moral excellence.
	I wake up every day thinking, how can I be a better person today?
	I'm not looking to just coast through.
	This is just one of the questions that came up for me.
	Is there a better way than just saying it's always wrong?
	Sorry, to be more specific, can we have a clearer definition of what's morally acceptable?
	No.
	No, no.
	Listen, you can't.
	Exactly.
	You can't because you're looking at the gray area of predicting aggression.
	And, you know, we hope that people will be right.
	Gut instincts have a lot to do with this.
	You know, we have really good instincts about aggression and so on.
	But there are some people who go through life seemingly from one fight to another.
	Now, are they completely innocent?
	They're just, oh, it's bad luck.
	I keep getting people.
	I keep getting into fights, right?
	Whereas I've never been in a fight.
	I plan to go to my grave with that exact same batting of zero.
	So, in terms of moral excellence, my question is, why are you living in a neighborhood which is dodgy?
	I live with my parents.
	I'm only 23.
	I'm not far out of uni, and there is no housing in this country that's affordable.
	UK, right?
	So, there's nowhere to go.
	Yeah, there's nowhere to go.
	It is so crowded over here.
	It is unbelievable.
	Right, right, right.
	Well, I mean, you know, hopefully you came up with some degree that's going to give you some skills, or you have some skills or some goals that give you some remuneration.
	But, of course, you can always get out of England, or you can, I'm sure that things are quite cheap in small villages in Dorset, or something like that.
	I hear Canada's nice.
	It's pretty nice.
	It's pretty nice.
	You know, we sort of accidentally parachuted into a fairly decent situation.
	And so, yeah, so I mean, you know, to me, prevention is always better than cure, obviously.
	And if you can not be in neighborhoods where there's lots of fights, if you can not be in situations where there's lots of fights, if you can not...
	I mean, I'm perfectly willing to be intimidated and walk out.
	I had a theory sort of when I was younger that it's better to have some teeth broken than to suffer with the negative repercussions emotionally of walking away.
	But I don't.
	I mean, that's when I was a teenager.
	I don't really believe that anymore.
	I mean, if somebody wants to have a fight, I'm perfectly happy to...
	I remember reading about Marlon Brando got into some fistfight with what was the paparazzi at the time and just punched him in the face.
	And the guy literally spent 10 years in and out of dentists trying to get his jaw fixed, his teeth fixed.
	You know, it was in blinding pain.
	I know he sued the guy and all that.
	I'm sure he got some money or whatever.
	You know, sort of bad things can happen in a fight that are entirely unexpected.
	Somebody could be armed.
	You know, there's lots of times where a guy just, you know, pushes one guy off a bar stool.
	He goes back off the bar stool, cracks his head, you know, on the bar and dies.
	And then, fuck, you're in jail for 30 years.
	Yay!
	But at least you've got your pride.
	So, a fight is like a hand grenade rolled into a room.
	I mean, you never know what's going to come out of it.
	Or you never know what psychotic demons might light beneath the fists of the guy.
	Suddenly, you're his rapey grandfather or something, and all bets are off.
	Yeah.
	So, yeah, it is a...
	It's a chilling situation.
	I mean, the Zimmerman thing is sort of one example of that.
	So, yeah, I think just trying to be out of situations where any kind of fights can occur, I think, is the best of just walking away.
	Yeah, no, I do a fairly good job nowadays.
	Not so much when I was younger.
	But I have a select group of friends in select places which are not quite so fisty.
	Right.
	Good.
	It's...
	It is a sad fact of life.
	It's something we may all have to face at some point.
	And I wanted to be mentally prepared for it.
	Yeah.
	I mean, I think just a dedication to not being in that position, I think, is just really important.
	I mean, just don't go to the dodgy areas.
	Don't go to the dodgy bars.
	Don't hang out with the dodgy people.
	If there seems to be even a whiff of trouble, just leave the situation.
	I mean, I don't know.
	I don't sit there in the morning saying, how am I going to be mentally prepared for my next fistfight?
	Unless I turn into the fight club guy and start punching myself, it's just not going to happen.
	Yes, I think it's probably a time of different points in people's lives as well.
	No, no, no.
	Listen, I mean, I grew up in a very rough neighborhood and in a variety of rough neighborhoods, both in England and in Canada.
	It was all low rent, single moms, loony kids, dangerous kids.
	I mean, I grew up in that whole environment and, you know, managed to make it the whole way through.
	Without getting in any fights.
	I mean, I had a friend who, you know, basically something happened with him and the biggest kid in school, and they arranged to have a fight, and there was a fight after school, and they were going to show up and have a fight, and I can't honestly for life remember what happened.
	But, I mean, I remember one time I was playing a defender at the bowling alley, which is now defunct in Don Mills, and some guy came along and unplugged the machine because I was doing really well, and he wanted to play.
	He unplugged it and plugged it back in.
	And I called him a jerk or something like that and stormed off in a sort of 12-year-old huff.
	And he had an older brother who was just nuts, cold-eyed, dangerous, had a whiff of predator coming off him like a stink bomb.
	And I was walking down, like, up the stairs, and he was walking down the stairs, and he punched me in the shoulder and said, you're dead, man, for what you did to my brother, or whatever.
	I guess maybe his brother was acting out some frustrated Napoleon complex and getting his dad to do that beat-up-other-guys-for-him kind of thing.
	And, you know, I worried about it, and, you know, oh, my God, you know, what's going to happen?
	And I just kept out of the guy's way, and, you know, if I'd see him, I'd go somewhere else, or whatever it is, right?
	I once even ducked into the girls' washroom...
	That's the level of avoidance that I had.
	Was that the only reason?
	Yeah, let's go with that.
	And nothing ever happened.
	And actually, years later, I met the guy at a friend's place, and he didn't remember me at all.
	Seemed pretty nice.
	And again, a couple of different times I got targeted.
	But you just avoid, you just minimize, you just steer clear of it.
	I mean, maybe I was just lucky or whatever, but I'm pretty good at it.
	And of course, I was pretty funny too, right?
	So I was pretty well liked in my school.
	I did lots of goofy, funny things.
	I showed up in my high school one day with a little outfit that my brother and I had stitched together, which is where you've probably seen something like it.
	You have like your legs become the ostrich legs and then you sew a pair of pant legs on the side so that it looks like you're riding an ostrich and you sort of put these white stockings on and stuff like that and we went in and I went in and sort of dressed like that and went like they do that to school.
	I had some pictures in the yearbook from it and stuff like that and pretended to be having an ostrich race at the cafeteria.
	I would go down to Goodwill and pick up the tackiest, nastiest, spilt condiments, herbtalic polyester suits that you could imagine.
	And show up in school.
	Once I showed up when it was the UN day for, like, income disparity, I put a tuxedo top, all down to the nines, put a tuxedo top on top and then, like, a pair of jean shorts and sandals.
	And people were like, well, what are you doing?
	It's like, well, the bottom half of me is poor, the rich half of me is rich, and I just wanted to, you know, so people kind of got it.
	I was sort of like a little...
	I was an attention whore slash entertainer slash thought provoker when I was in high school.
	So people kind of liked me, and so it generally didn't seem to be a big, you know, let's get Steph kind of thing.
	And so, again, there's just different strategies that you could do to sort of stay away from that.
	But I just want to point out that...
	It's not because I grew up in some privileged, gated community or anything that I never ran into that I knew this kind of stuff.
	You just do what you can to stay clear of it.
	Sure, sure.
	No, it's fairly solid advice.
	For sure.
	So what do you think about our perception of aggression?
	Because most of what humans do is based on our perception and it varies so wildly from person to person.
	Would you care to cast any comments on that?
	I'm not even sure what the question is.
	Our perception of aggression?
	I mean, that sounds like something I could pour anything I wanted into.
	Well, so let's take an example here.
	Say someone's trying to cut you off in traffic, right?
	Yeah.
	You've got, if it's an old guy, chances are you're not going to react as hostilely to them as if it's a young lad in a calved up Right.
	Would you care to comment on that?
	Yeah, I mean, I sort of understand that.
	I mean, the only time I've ever actually wished I had a bazooka is when guys come through with really souped up, unbelievably loud motorcycles and go like down the main street.
	To the point where your chest rumbles and your ears half bleed, I consider that such an invasive act of aggression.
	It's one of the few times where I feel genuine rage.
	I do feel quite angry at people who drive carelessly because it's just such a dangerous thing to do.
	It is such a dangerous thing to do.
	And of course, you know, I mean...
	The police is completely useless.
	I remember walking with Christina when we were still dating up Young and Edmonton as a sort of street in Toronto.
	And some motorcycle went speeding up way too fast.
	And this is the only time in my life I've ever seen this.
	Some cop car actually went after him.
	And the whole street cheered.
	Like, yeah, you go get this motherfucker, basically, right?
	Who is, you know, kids cross these streets.
	I mean, you can get someone killed.
	You know, people who drunk drive.
	So I do sort of...
	And the old people, too.
	You know, like, know when you can't drive a car anymore, you idiot.
	You know when you're too old, right?
	And so I do feel that.
	And it is, you know, the carelessness and so on is definitely a form of aggression.
	You don't have to have...
	Concentrated malevolence in order to cause people irreparable harm.
	So yeah, I do feel angry at that kind of stuff.
	But the reality is that I know that there are really shitty drivers out there.
	So whenever I'm turning, if someone has their signal on, I never assume that they're actually going to turn.
	I mean, that signal could have been on for three blocks for all I know.
	I never assume that they're going to turn.
	You know, whenever I'm taking a left...
	Oh, sorry.
	Whenever I'm coming into an intersection and somebody on my sort of front left wants to make a left turn from his standpoint, I always have my foot on the brake.
	Like, I assume at some level that he's just going to try and do it even though it's the most retarded thing he could possibly do.
	Whenever I take a left on a sort of semi-highway, I assume that there's a great possibility that somebody is going to try and pass me while I'm making a left.
	So I check my rearview mirror, make sure it's signaled.
	Make sure everyone's slowing down behind me.
	No one's cutting around.
	And if there's any hesitation, I simply go to the next intersection and take my left there, right?
	So I always assume that everyone is on their cell phone.
	I always assume that everyone's, you know, masturbating with a kumquat while trying to drive.
	I always assume that there are bad drivers out there.
	And given that that's a reality, I mean, I'm an incredibly defensive driver.
	Like, I've never been in an accident.
	And so it's my responsibility because I know there are bad drivers out there to really focus on being a very careful driver, which is why I spent a lot of time driving while holding a microphone in one hand.
	But I was being very careful while I was doing that.
	So yes, it does make me angry, but if I forget that there are bad drivers, then I'm probably going to end up more angry at myself.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	I think you misinterpreted my question slightly there.
	The driving example was more of an allude to circumstance, so where the older guy is less of a threat physically.
	Oh, older guys are huge threats.
	I mean, no, older guys are huge threats.
	Oh, no, no, no, sorry.
	Not in the context of driving.
	No, no, no, politically.
	Because older guys always vote to take money away from the young, right?
	How's your future looking, right?
	What's your national debt looking like?
	How much money is being pillaged from your...
	Meager savings and income to pay for the retirees of civil servants who are retiring at the tune of 40,000 or 50,000 quid a year, right?
	So I consider old people extraordinarily dangerous because it seems that they're just continually addicted to voting more and more benefits for themselves at the expense of the young.
	And the concept of...
	Any kind of self-sacrifice has entirely gone out the window and they've just turned into these brain-eating zombies of ancientness.
	And so I consider them enormously dangerous.
	We have an enormous problem with that over here.
	I don't know if you have trade unions in Canada, but...
	Oh, yeah.
	Yeah, yeah.
	The NHS over here is...
	They're always striking, always looking for more pay.
	And rather than getting paid – and they probably should be paid more.
	I mean they are medical professionals after all.
	They get more in a private system for sure.
	But rather than pay them – The point is we have no idea how much people in the public sector should be paid.
	We have no idea.
	They could be paid a lot more.
	They could be paid a lot.
	Who knows?
	We'd have no idea.
	Because, of course, in a free market system, the whole point would be to prevent health problems, not cure them, whereas the whole point of a government system is they get money from curing or from maintaining people on drugs or from expensive surgeries.
	They don't make any money from prevention.
	Insurance companies make money from prevention, but government systems make money from disasters, which is why they continually make more of them.
	Indeed, indeed.
	But they strike looking for more pay, and they're palmed up with better pensions.
	Sure.
	And pensions are great.
	Every time.
	Pensions are great because current politicians don't have to pay for them.
	Yeah, it's beautiful.
	Kick that can down the road.
	It's wonderful.
	So, yeah, no, I mean, I consider the elderly to be among the most dangerous members of society, for the young in particular.
	I mean, it's just brutal.
	And, of course, the bill is yet to really come due, but it sure as hell will over the next five or ten years.
	Yeah, I don't look forward to that either.
	Slightly sidetracked again, though.
	Okay, listen, we've got to get on to another caller because we've had a good old chat.
	Ah, no problem.
	And I want to make sure we get to everyone who's patiently waiting on the line.
	But it's great questions, and I'm sorry if I swung and missed a few times, but I've had a coffee.
	So thanks for your call, and please feel free to call back anytime.
	Nice to talk to you, Steph.
	Have a lovely evening.
	Take care.
	Thank you.
	All right, Brian, you're up next.
	Go ahead.
	The man they called Brian.
	Yes, my friend, what's up?
	Well, before we get started, I just want to thank Michael for setting this up and thank you, Stefan, for taking the time out of your evening to listen to my question.
	Well, thank you.
	I appreciate that.
	Okay, well, so I have quite a situation going on here and I have quite a history, so I'm going to try to be as concise as possible, but feel free to interrupt me if you find something that is pressing to talk about.
	Basically, I've been in chronic pain for the last four and a half years.
	I was a competitive athlete.
	I played goalie in hockey.
	You played goalie in hockey, right?
	Yes.
	And I was a career athlete and I quit when I was 18, but later on in my life, I'm 27 right now, so when I was 22 or 23, I started experiencing hip pain and it was not severe enough.
	My hip pain was not severe enough to be taken seriously for two and a half years.
	Wow, so it's more like an ache kind of thing?
	Yep.
	And then...
	Sorry, why did you quit when you were 18?
	Did you not able to transition to pro?
	I was not emotionally or mentally mature enough to keep playing.
	Alright.
	So you had the skills, but you didn't have the emotional whatever X factor to continue?
	Yeah.
	I mean, sports is fun until it becomes a career, but then it's not about having fun anymore.
	And I wasn't able to, I had the skills to cope with that at 18.
	Right.
	Yeah, I mean, the life of professional athletes is pretty rough.
	I mean, some soccer player just got $175 million because, you know, guys who kick balls are way more important than philosophers.
	I mean, it's just the world we live in.
	What can you do, right?
	But yeah, I mean, for the most part, it's pretty rough.
	And I mean, the second half of the lives of pro athletes is, you know, almost unrelentingly horrifying.
	I mean, just in terms of the physical damage that they've sustained and the money that they've blown through and the lack of skills for anything else that they've achieved.
	But anyway, go on.
	Yeah, well, I mean, that's pretty much where I'm at.
	I mean, over the course of those two years, my hip symptoms got a lot worse, where I had to stretch a minimum of five hours a day just to be able to sleep at night, and it really interrupted my life.
	It made my life unmanageable.
	So, probably almost two years ago, I had an MRI arthrogram, and I had a torn ligament in my hip socket.
	In my right hip socket.
	So without that ligament keeping my femur in place, my acetabulum, my hip was dislocating.
	And so that was what I had going on.
	And that's something that doesn't heal by itself.
	So I had a surgery done in March 27th of 2012.
	And they reattached the – it wasn't torn completely.
	It was just torn like half a rope tear, right?
	Well, it ended up being much different when they got inside.
	There was fragmented bone, there was fragmented cartilage, it was peeled off the lining of my acetabulum.
	So the cushion that allows the joint to move in some relatively friction-free environment was all compromised and junked up with crap, right?
	Yep, that's right.
	Man, I'm so sorry.
	And this came out of hip checks and so on in hockey, right?
	Because this sort of slamming into the side is a big part of the game, right?
	And into the walls, right?
	I never got hit.
	I guess it doesn't really matter how it happens.
	It just happened, right?
	Well, sorry, but it wasn't one hit that you remember.
	It was just some accumulation of...
	Because goalies do get hit, right?
	I mean, people skate into them by accident or whatever, right?
	Yeah, there tends to be fights after that, so I was relatively pretty safe on the ice.
	But yeah, yeah, absolutely.
	It's a contact sport.
	All right.
	So in any event, yeah, I mean, I never really got better.
	I found out I had a tear on my left hip.
	I had another right hip arthroscopic surgery.
	You know, the cartilage damage in my hip was so severe that I was told if I was 50, I would need a total hip replacement.
	And so the next surgery I had was on September 29th of 2012.
	And the surgeon I had, he was really trying to allow me additional spacing in between the head of my femur and acetabulum where the cartilage damage was taking place.
	And so he did a pretty drastic revision and it's really changed my life.
	I wasn't able to walk for eight months.
	I was bedridden for four of those months.
	I was on narcotic medication for six of those months.
	It's a hell of a heal, right?
	It's a long, slow, painful healing.
	Plus, of course, you've got to do your rehab during it, which is, I imagine, teeth critically horrible.
	No, it's terrible.
	Yeah, I mean, as with that surgery, my leg would slip out of my socket on a regular basis, and I was on crutches for like eight months, and I didn't think I'd ever walk again.
	Wow.
	And things are better now?
	No, things are not better.
	You know, I ended up consulting with like 15 or 20 different physicians and actually signed up for an experimental procedure.
	I had to fly out of the country.
	I ended up signing up for stem cell injections in my joints, in my hip sockets, in order to rebuild the connective tissue and the cartilage.
	The US FDA has deemed it illegal to culture stem cells for over 48 hours, even though they're my stem cells.
	I mean, I didn't collect chickens at someone's farm.
	I didn't murder babies to get the stem cells.
	I mean, they were extracted from my bone marrow.
	You know what I mean?
	So yeah, I was injected with stem cells and I mean, there's so many nitty-gritty details.
	I'll spare you and everyone listening to a lot of those details, but the reason why I'm calling is because this has been a close to two-year experience for me, and I'm not out of work, I'm not out of school, and it turns out there's a component in my back that is resulting in my hip pain.
	I have torn ligament, I have a torn disc, I have bulge disc, it's a wreck.
	You know, I spent $40,000 these past five months on medical bills alone.
	So I mean, I got a whole lot more concerns than I'd ever want to have.
	I'm so sorry.
	Yeah, look, I just, before we move on, I mean, that is a brutal price to pay.
	And, you know, I mean, this is a lesson that you don't see a lot of when you see young athletes in their prime and you think, oh, they're so fit, they're so healthy and so on.
	But, you know, depending on the sports, and most sports have at least some level of impact and trauma and stress, sports as they're sort of currently played, not really what the human body was designed for.
	I mean, some of them are more obvious, like Muhammad Ali can only speak out of one nostril or whatever the hell, because he's got so much brain damage from having his brain punched around his skull for decades.
	But I mean knee problems among football players, back and hip problems among football players, Knee problems and hip problems and back problems among hockey players, knee problems and ankle problems among soccer players are huge.
	And it is a high-risk occupation.
	And the risk, of course, is that you end up with these chronic debilitating injuries that there don't seem to be a whole lot of medical miracles to help it.
	But so I just – I really want to say like I'm incredibly sorry that your body has been damaged in this way and that it is such an interference with anything you want to be doing.
	You're a young guy.
	You want to be out there conquering the world and stuff, not counting your toes for the 40th time that minute, right?
	Yeah, thanks.
	Yeah, that's pretty much it.
	It's been a real game changer for me.
	I just can't get out of this funk.
	I'm totally depressed and I don't find any joy, excitement in life anymore.
	I feel socially isolated.
	I told you about my financial insecurities.
	I have fears like you wouldn't believe now.
	I've been listening to your podcast and you really are a bright spot in my days when you upload, so I really appreciate it.
	But I know that you've been struggling with cancer and, I mean, it's apples and oranges, but they're both fruit.
	So I was hoping that… Well, look, frankly, I'd rather have what I had than what you have.
	So, I mean, no, you know, I hope you get that because what I had was like, well, I'm going to get better or I'm going to die.
	A life of chronic pain and chronic uncertainty, it's the no end in sight.
	You didn't mention what happened with the stem cells.
	My understanding, which is pretty rudimentary, is that stem cell research, although it looks great in a Petri dish, has not actually produced anything of any significant medical value as yet.
	How did it go with the stem cells?
	It's changed things for me.
	I have better mobility or better positions.
	I can walk for about two hours and I can sit for about 30 minutes.
	So that's a big difference from having to pretty much spend the majority of my days on my back.
	So that's been a blessing.
	I mean, I can't tell you how great it is to be able to walk.
	I mean, there's something that I had no idea that there's something to be grateful for.
	Oh, yeah.
	Yeah, I'm a big fan of the breathing.
	I still enjoy that every day.
	Like, hey, you know what's not happening is me not breathing.
	That's a really good thing.
	So, yeah, I get that.
	How things that you take for granted just become amazing when you've gone through something debilitating.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I get that.
	Not throwing up is always a daily plus.
	I'm going through puberty in ways I won't even describe here.
	We're going through puberty.
	I've never felt younger.
	But all the hairs growing back and all that, well, not all of it, but I guess all that was there before.
	So yeah, I really get it.
	You don't want to learn these blessings through these kinds of traumas, but they are a sweet spot in the cloud, right?
	Yeah, for sure.
	Yeah, for sure.
	Now, what is the case with your social life?
	Well, I've moved in with my parents because it's just a financially smarter decision for me.
	You start selling kidneys on eBay, right?
	Yeah, right.
	So, I mean, my social life is pretty much my parents and my brother and I'm not really able to get out a whole lot.
	And so my social life, I mean, the communication with my...
	I have one parent where I have really good communication, well, better communication.
	That's my mom.
	And then the other relationships I have...
	You know, it's like I had other people in my life that I would interact with.
	And these people I can interact with on the phone.
	You know, I can call them.
	But because I spend time with my parents all the time, my brother all the time, you know, there are other things that I need to talk about besides just fluff.
	You know, and when everything was going cuckoo-ca-choo in my life, I was able to talk, you know, at infinitum about sports, about the weather, about this new shirt you got on, you know, about shoes, about whatever you want.
	But now that I'm like just miserable and very, very depressed, I have a really hard time participating in fluff.
	So my relationships are really, I mean, it's got to be taxing for my family.
	I mean, I know it's taxing for my family to see their, you know, their brother or It's heartbreaking, I'm sure.
	Yeah, it's heartbreaking.
	This is not, of course, what any parent wants for their kid, right?
	I mean, you raise your kids with the expectation they're going to go out into the world and hopefully do some reasonably great stuff.
	And, I mean, it's got to be, I mean, obviously it's hell for you, but it's obviously emotionally difficult for those around you.
	I mean, everybody just wants it to be done.
	done, everybody just wants to sort of have it over with and move on.
	But the problem with this kind of chronic stuff is it's really hard to tick the done box, right?
	Because it's uncertain, it's wavering, it's back, and then it's not back.
	And yeah, no, I get it.
	It's all-consuming, but it's also something that you get tired of talking about and dealing with, so then what the hell are you supposed to talk about?
	You don't have much else going on, but you're tired of this, so the rest is silence, right?
	Yeah, that was very difficult.
	And then, I mean, it's great talking with my mom because she's actually done some work on herself.
	So she doesn't have as many skellies in her closet.
	She's not carrying a huge monkey on her back of emotional baggage that she's been carrying around.
	So we can engage in, you know, some meaningful conversation, you know, to a point.
	But I don't know, man.
	I just...
	Things have changed for me.
	I have insomnia.
	I just don't feel right anymore.
	I really just miss my life.
	I know you...
	I don't even know why I'm even calling in.
	It's not like you can just fix my health for me right now.
	I'm just out of options and people to go to, and I don't know how to get help anymore.
	Oh, God.
	You're so out of options, you're calling this show.
	Holy shit.
	I'm sorry.
	No, that's tragic.
	I'm kidding.
	Yeah.
	Now, is there anything that you can do that engages...
	Your mind to the point where you get that kind of sweet relief of the out-of-body experience, like you get so absorbed in something.
	Like, I mean, this is a stupid example, but, you know, I'm not a big fan of exercise, though I've been doing it three times a week for 30 years, right?
	I just...
	It's just one of these stupid-ass...
	Like, nobody wants to go change the oil of the car.
	It's just you have to, right?
	And it's not a lot of fun.
	So, I got a bike machine, and I play...
	Like little tablet games or whatever.
	If I find one that's absorbing enough, I'm currently playing Radiant Defense.
	I guess it's on all three platforms, the Windows, the Android and the iOS.
	It's a fun game.
	I put a little pitch in for it, though I'm not invested in the company in any way.
	But it's kind of absorbing.
	So what happens is I look up and I'm like, oh, my workout's done.
	Even though I'm just grinding away and sweating like a pig, I do half an hour at the highest level and just call it a day.
	And is there anything that – but if I just sit there and watch the clock, I mean the workout would be pretty unbearable.
	But if I get something that's absorbing enough that I can sort of forget about this grinding stupidity of moving my legs, is there anything that interests you or absorbs you enough intellectually that takes you out of the moment?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I've been studying a lot of economics.
	I didn't know anything about economics, so I've been learning a lot about that and history.
	And I've been teaching myself Spanish.
	And does that do it?
	Does that give you some relief from the moment?
	Yeah, sometimes it does.
	I play video games now, something I never really did before.
	I mean, that's entertaining.
	I had no idea how...
	Some games I can play, some games I can't.
	I can't play shooting games.
	It's too realistic for me.
	I used to be an EMT, so...
	Oh, right, right.
	Yeah, so you don't want any sort of...
	I can't play Call of Duty or any of that kind of stuff.
	The blood splatters and all that.
	It gives you all these flashbacks, right?
	Yeah.
	I know you don't mean like PTSD kind of flashbacks, but...
	No, no, but just like...
	Yeah, I mean, just like, why would you want to watch that if you lift it, right?
	Yeah, that's right.
	Yeah.
	So you do have some things.
	Now, this is mostly absorbing for you.
	So you're absorbing other people's knowledge, the economics, the Spanish, and so on.
	Is there anything that you think you could create?
	Because I'm telling you, the act of creation is astonishingly absorbing.
	Astonishingly absorbing.
	When I'm writing, I used to write at a Starbucks.
	I'd be in the corner having my 20th Cafe Americano of the morning.
	Actually, I only had usually two.
	Sometimes somebody would recognize me and come in and say hi, and they could be standing there for two minutes before I'd even noticed there was a body.
	I've got my headphones in, I'm grinding away on my book, and it's such a ferocious act of...
	You know, orgasmic production that it really is the most absorbing thing that I know of.
	And I sort of feel the same when I'm podcasting.
	And so, is there anything that you think you might be able to do in terms of creativity that might be more of a distraction from the moment?
	Because, you know, your body hopefully is going to continue to get better over time with the stem cells or whatever.
	But there's things that you can do that you may otherwise never have done.
	I'm sort of thinking of Robert Louis Stevenson as a famous writer, Treasure Island and Kidnapped and so on.
	I mean, he started writing because he was laid up for most of his childhood literally in bed.
	I don't know if he had tuberculosis or some god-awful 19th century shitbox of a disease.
	And so lots of people who've had these kinds of illnesses and who were laid up Can come up with something or some way of being or some way of doing or something that they can do that they never would have really considered otherwise.
	Is there anything that you think of?
	Do you like to write stories or poetry?
	Would you like to write a book on your experiences?
	Would you like to write a book on economics or anything like that?
	Or politics or whatever?
	Is it philosophy?
	Anything that's interesting to you?
	Would you like to contribute to the world in that kind of way?
	Because the best narcotic is creativity as far as I've ever experienced.
	Yeah, it's a really good suggestion.
	I appreciate it.
	Unfortunately, I don't know what I'm into anymore.
	I quit playing sports and I went to undergrad and then I dropped out and I worked for three years and then I returned to school.
	So I started undergrad when I was 23, and I felt like I was so behind on life, which is just goofy because here I am laid up.
	But I was so obsessed with my career, and I was so obsessed with work and with school.
	I was a full-time student, and I worked full-time, that I didn't have any time to develop any hobbies.
	I mean, my hobbies were work, and my hobbies were my education, and I mean, it's been a real challenge.
	What did you want all of that for?
	I mean, jeez, being a full-time student and a full-time worker, I mean, that's...
	Jesus, when the hell did you sleep?
	Yeah, no, it was...
	So what was it for?
	What were you saying you were obsessed with getting ahead?
	What was your vision?
	What did you want on the other side of all that concentrated effort?
	What was that going to get you?
	I got into medical school.
	I was just starting medical school.
	I keep deferring, but three summers ago, I was just starting medical school.
	Maybe two summers ago.
	Now, is that possible in your current situation?
	If you didn't defer, is it possible for you to do it?
	Not in my current situation.
	Hopefully, I'll be able to be healthy enough to start in Japan.
	I'm going to assume that it's a big passion of yours, medicine and doctoring and all that?
	Try that one more time.
	It was a bit choppy, sorry.
	It's a big passion of yours to...
	I mean, the medicine, doctoring, that kind of stuff.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, that was something that I learned that I was interested in.
	I had many different career changes and it took me a while to...
	Understand what it was that I wanted to do with my life.
	I didn't really have very...
	I had very, very oppressive parents, you know, that pretty much micromanaged all my activities for me.
	So by the time I left their house, I mean, I didn't have any skills on how to...
	So yeah, I mean, the only thing that I can suggest...
	I mean, obviously, you say you're not sure what you're into, but you're listening to this show, right?
	Yeah, sure.
	Yeah, sure.
	I've got so much time.
	I'd like to show with the most volume.
	They sort by length, and there it is.
	But, and I also want, so, you're into philosophy, self-knowledge, and so on, and you talked about your mom having made some positive steps towards self-knowledge, perhaps even as a result of some of this stuff.
	And I also wanted to point out that, you know, what's triply tragic, of course, is you say that you had a micromanaged childhood, which obviously you didn't feel free, and then you have these debilitating Chronic problems with your hips and your back and so on, which is not exactly adding to your freedom.
	So you've lived a life where freedom is like an over-the-horizon kind of situation, right?
	Yeah, I mean, there have been many different things like that.
	I got a pretty fucked up life, man.
	What do you mean?
	I feel like I've been through my fair share of stuff, man.
	I just do.
	I just do.
	Yeah, I hear you.
	I get that twinge from time to time as well.
	But, yeah, so, I mean, look, I wish I could, obviously, you know, I wish I could offer you some other than sympathy, understanding, and, you know, like, incredible, incredible empathy for this incredibly difficult situation.
	The only thing I can tell you is the way that I approach it.
	I try to find a way to have negative things provoke a virtue in me that otherwise would have remained unprovoked.
	So I said to myself, with the cancer, I said to myself, I'm willing to go through it if on the other side I can be fearless.
	That's what cancer can give me as a gift.
	And it actually is kind of true.
	I'm speaking my mind more clearly and more plainly.
	I'm allowing my passions to reign more freely.
	I am trusting my impulses more deeply, my instincts more deeply.
	And I think that the show's quality has improved.
	Over that.
	I mean, it's not like, you know, get cancer to up your quality, but if I can, through the process of facing a deadly disease that can recur any time, if I can allow that to stimulate a virtue in me that otherwise would have remained less stimulated or maybe even dormant, then, right?
	But I've had this wonderful fuck it thing since the cancer.
	Which is, I don't know.
	You know, now mortality is not a matter of statistical averages.
	Like, oh, well, you know, Canada is 78 for men or whatever, so blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	Well, no, I don't have that anymore.
	I mean, nobody ever really does, but this is a bit of a vivid way of not having that anymore.
	And...
	So, for me, it has to be a process where...
	I can turn something negative into the provocation of a virtue that I otherwise would not have possessed.
	And for yourself, I'm not talking about any particular virtues, but I would definitely explore the possibility of allowing creativity to come out of I'm not saying you snap your fingers and start writing sonnets or whatever, but you have had a pretty powerful set of experiences with this.
	You are facing some pretty significant demons, right, as you talk about the depression.
	You, in particular, wanted to rush to get out and into your life, and now you just keep hitting these soft walls of...
	Barely manageable pain.
	That's hell.
	I mean, that is a kind of soft hell.
	And, you know, it's not as decisive as, oh, a shark bit my leg off.
	Okay, well, I'll put on some prosthetics and move on with my life, right?
	It is, it's always, it's indecisive.
	It's like a wall.
	You try and climb over it and it just crumbles and another one grows up.
	You're never over.
	You're never done.
	And so you're crossing your fingers and you're obsessed.
	Is it better?
	Is it worse today?
	Yesterday?
	I don't know.
	I can't tell.
	But you're constantly testing it.
	It becomes the little sun that you orbit around.
	I've got that lump in my neck for a year and I'm like, is it bigger?
	Is it smaller?
	And you just want to be free of that shit.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Yeah, I was just corroborating what you were saying.
	It can consume.
	Oh, it's all consuming.
	Is it better?
	Is it worse?
	Is my life going to start?
	Is it not going to start?
	Is this pain?
	Is this a setback?
	Is this a pain because I'm walking more?
	Is this a pain that's going to make me walk less?
	I mean, your mind goes round and round and round, right?
	You know, one of the things you were talking about...
	Thanks for sharing all that.
	You know, one of the things that I can relate to is the disinhibiting of...
	Like many of the reluctance conversations that I would have with people.
	I mean, I crossed the Rubicon with a number of things that you were talking about in previous podcasts.
	I brought up to my mom and my dad.
	I was verbally abused, emotionally, physically abused, sexually abused as a child.
	Oh God, I'm so sorry.
	I brought all that stuff up.
	It's It's like...
	Yeah, I don't know.
	I mean, I've always known that stuff happened and went on, but now that I bring it up, and...
	Other than that, I wish there was a better word to use besides a derogatory word like that, but...
	I'm sorry, I missed that word.
	If you could just repeat it?
	The word was fuck.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	But...
	Yeah, so I mean, my mom's very receptive about it, but the narrative I get from my dad is like, if I wasn't such a bad kid, then I wouldn't have been hit so much, and I wouldn't have been yelled at as much.
	And if he didn't hit me like he did, then I probably would have went to prison.
	I mean, that's the narrative I get, you know?
	And so it becomes like a person I don't even really want to interact with, you know?
	And even on the topics that my dad wants to engage on, it's like he's not really investigating the quality of the content of the words I'm using, you know?
	It's like he relies on ad hominem attacks.
	And I get it.
	I mean, he has emotional investments in politics and money, and that's where his emotional well-being is at.
	And so when I bring up, you know...
	What I consider to be some of the facts of the financial state of the United States that I live in.
	I'm sorry to interrupt.
	I'm real sorry to interrupt because, I mean, don't get me wrong.
	I love a political discussion as much as the next guy.
	But back to the hitting.
	If you were to ask your father, how does he know that that's true?
	Like, how does he know that if he didn't hit you, How does he know that hitting is beneficial?
	And how does he know that not hitting children sends them to prison?
	So, for instance, you could mention, say, in Sweden or other places, the hitting has been illegal since the 1970s.
	Does he consider Sweden to be a country full of rapey, murdery criminals?
	Like, under what theory?
	So he can say stuff, right?
	It's like, okay, well, I can say that the moon is banana-shaped and that the sun is made of post-Indian food gas, right?
	I can say anything I want, but what's the proof?
	So how do you know these things?
	How do you know that hitting is good?
	Well, I was hit and I turned out fine.
	Well, that doesn't make any sense.
	That's like saying, well, I smoked and I lived to a ripe old age, therefore smoking is fine.
	So how do you know?
	What facts are you referring to?
	I think this is important because if you stay in the realm of opinion, you can never resolve disputes.
	This is really important with all disputes.
	Disputes are resolved by facts.
	Disputes are resolved by rationality and evidence.
	So he's making a claim, a causal claim, which is that spanking leads to, or hitting, you say, leads to beneficial outcomes and that children who Are not hit, are far more likely to end up in prison, right?
	Well, that's a testable claim.
	Like, there's literally been 60, 70 years of research on this very issue.
	So, I mean, again, were he to be my father, I would simply say, well, what is the basis for this claim?
	What facts do you have?
	What research do you have that supports this causality that you say?
	And I can guarantee you that he has none.
	I can guarantee you that he has none.
	But it's important that he knows.
	It's important that he knows he has no facts to back up this bullshit.
	So I started drinking when I was 11.
	And then I started doing drugs when I was 12.
	I think the technical term is you started self-medicating due to extraordinary personal agony, right?
	Yeah, no doubt.
	I mean, I developed an alcohol and drug addiction.
	I mean, I had a full-blown problem by the time I was like 14.
	And, I mean, I got sober when I was 20.
	Sorry to interrupt, but you mentioned the sexual abuse, and you don't obviously have to share anything you don't want to, but I would imagine that of all of this stuff, that the sexual abuse was probably most closely related to this self-medication.
	I honestly don't even know.
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	What was the problem with the sexual abuse and who was the perpetrator?
	My brother.
	My older brother.
	He's two years older.
	Wow.
	And is this the brother that you still live with?
	No.
	Well, he just moved.
	We don't live together anymore.
	Wow.
	I'm sorry about that.
	Gosh.
	Gosh.
	That's monstrous.
	I don't use drugs.
	I don't drink anymore.
	I got sober when I was 20.
	I'm 27 now.
	That's all done.
	When I talk about my childhood, when I burn it up, I was a delinquent when I was a teenager.
	I can't even go there.
	The narrative that I'm told is that if I wasn't such a fuck-up, then all of our holidays wouldn't have been ruined.
	All of our family vacations wouldn't have been ruined.
	I'm just tired of hearing that shit.
	Hang on a sec.
	What was the form of the sexual abuse at the hands of your brother?
	My brother would show off his erections and then he would convince me to give him oral sex.
	Gosh.
	And did your family ever know anything about this at the time?
	No.
	And did your family know about it now?
	No.
	Why not?
	That's why you're calling now, right?
	This is why you're calling here now.
	We got to it.
	Yeah.
	I don't know why, man.
	Yes, you do.
	I'm not saying you have to tell them, but you know why they don't know, right?
	I mean, I feel ashamed.
	I feel like I should have been smarter.
	I don't know, man.
	I feel ashamed about the whole thing.
	No, no, no, no, no.
	No, because your family is big on shaming you, so if you said something in which you felt ashamed, then they would not have a huge problem with that.
	That's not why you haven't told them.
	Well, I don't think it would be a very accepting place.
	And I already feel like the relationship I have with my family, which is the only relationship I really have right now, they're already like rocky because I have an interest in talking about circumstances I remember when I was hit or when I was yelled at or when I was manipulated into acting ways and behaviors that my mom or my dad didn't like.
	And, I mean, they want me to talk about it.
	They're like, you're always negative.
	Why don't you talk about some things that are positive?
	And I just feel like I just want to talk about it objectively.
	What will happen if you tell them?
	Again, I'm not saying you should.
	I can't tell you what to do, but what will happen?
	What do you think will happen if you tell them?
	About the sexual abuse?
	Yes.
	I don't know.
	Yes, you do.
	You certainly have a theory, right?
	This is the part of the show or the conversation where I refuse to accept that you're not smart about your family.
	Because if you're not smart about your family, you're not smart enough to tie your own shoelaces, right?
	I mean, you've had 27 years of exposure, right?
	It's like you've lived in Vietnam since you were born for 27 years.
	And I say, well, what's Vietnam like?
	You say, I don't know.
	Well, yes, you do, right?
	What's your family?
	What's the reaction of your family going to be if you tell them?
	Well, my brother's going to feel like he's betrayed because I'm talking about this.
	Oh yes, betrayal.
	Betrayal is so important to protect your brother from betrayal.
	So important to protect a molester from feeling betrayed.
	Because betrayal, they're so sensitive to betrayal.
	And betrayal is such a negative thing to people who prey on children sexually.
	Betrayal, you see, it's such a terrible thing.
	It's such a negative that you have to protect abusers from any feelings of being betrayed, right?
	Sorry to be sarcastic, but you get that that's – No, I get it.
	I just have a hard time seeing that there's going to be something like a nice outcome from this.
	I mean, do people have nice outcomes from bringing stuff like that up?
	Let's go back to the reactions.
	Forget about the outcomes.
	Let's go back to the reactions.
	Sure.
	So your brother's going to feel betrayed and you're going to say, well, fuck you.
	If betrayal is such a big value for you, why the fuck did you betray me as a child by making me suck your dick?
	Right.
	Don't give me this, oh, betrayal is bad bullshit.
	Come on.
	There's no bigger betrayal than sexually molesting a child, particularly a younger sibling who you have authority over.
	so don't give me this betrayal bullshit right but sorry come on So I mean, I bet my parents would probably be shocked.
	My dad will...
	My dad will probably not want to talk about it.
	My mom will feel sorry that it happened.
	Now, did your brother show any deviant or perverted behaviors in any other way?
	It's hard to believe this is just isolated, right?
	What do you mean?
	I mean, did he have any bizarre behaviors other than this?
	He ended up having an alcohol and drug problem as well.
	I don't doubt it.
	But I mean, when he was a kid.
	I mean, for the most part, I... My brother just stayed out of the way.
	I mean, there was so much lying and manipulating going on in my childhood that...
	I took the opposite extreme my brother did.
	My brother just found a way to ignore it and to pretend like everything was fine.
	And I took the opposite extreme.
	I just got honest with everything that was uncomfortable for everyone.
	Your brother found a way to ignore it?
	Yeah, he did.
	I really, really don't agree with that assessment at all.
	I mean, I don't think you could be further off.
	Your brother enacted it.
	That's not ignoring it, right?
	No, I'm talking about just the chaos in my household.
	You don't think your brother added the chaos in your household by sexually molesting you?
	You think he was ignoring the chaos?
	Wasn't he a core part of it?
	Wasn't he a core enactor of the chaos?
	Wasn't he inhabited and acting out the chaos completely?
	And creating a situation of further lying and manipulation on his part and on your part?
	How is that ignoring it?
	I don't know.
	I've never thought about it like that before.
	I mean, wasn't the majority of lying and manipulating at this time with this kind of abuse, wasn't the majority of the lying and manipulating happening as a direct result of your brother's sexual assaults on you?
	How is that ignoring it?
	It's like saying he's ignoring a fire by carpet bombing it with napalm.
	He's not ignoring the fire.
	He's adding to it.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	So what I'm asking is, was there any behavior?
	I know it's hard to say, and it's hard to say, and I'm looking back, blah, blah, blah.
	Was there any behavior that your brother exhibited that may have been any kind of warning signal to anyone else in the vicinity that something might not be all right?
	I'm really sorry, but I can't recall...
	I'm sorry.
	Was he aggressive in school?
	Did he steal?
	Was he a bully?
	Was he overweight?
	Was he underweight?
	Was he involved in violent sports?
	Did he fight?
	You know, go through the list.
	Anything.
	No, I mean, he was a model student.
	My parents were proud of everything that my brother did.
	He was very, very popular in school.
	He didn't get in any fights.
	He did not cause any trouble at all.
	At home he didn't cause any trouble.
	He played sports also.
	I mean, he didn't have any physical injuries as a result of playing, but he was great on the team that he played on.
	And things spiraled out of control for him when he left, when he graduated high school and he left our house.
	And do you know why that probably was?
	Probably because he was being micromanaged like I was, and he probably was just as ill-equipped as I was on how to handle life.
	Well, that's one possibility, and I'm sure that had something to do with it.
	I would probably throw my dot somewhat randomly and try and hit the picture, which was that by torturing and molesting you, he got to pour all of the crazy he had inside out into you, right?
	Because he felt out of control and powerless and blah-de-blah-de-blah, and therefore by exercising a brutal and vicious sexual control over you, and I'm sure it manifested itself in other ways as well, then he got to feel a whole lot saner because he got to pour all the crazy shit out through controlling and then he got to feel a whole lot saner because he got And then when you don't – like when the abusers run out of victims, you know what happens?
	They collapse.
	Right?
	I mean one of the reasons why an abusive husband is so desperate to hunt down and recapture a wife who escapes is he knows that he's going to go insane without someone to abuse.
	Right?
	So where does that leave me?
	I mean, how do I bring up this conversation in a healthy and productive way without Well, first of all, you don't need to manage the health and productivity of your family.
	That's not your job.
	That's your parents' job.
	Okay.
	I know you're not four, obviously, but it's like my daughter saying, well, okay, Dad, how am I going to pull my fair share of the rent?
	That's not your job.
	Not your job to worry about any of that, right?
	You have fun.
	You enjoy your childhood.
	It's mommy and daddy's job to think about finances and bills and write paperwork and all that stuff, right?
	That's not her job.
	And it's not your job to manage the emotional and mental health and happiness of your family.
	You're the kid.
	It's your parents' job.
	Right.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	I was just going to see how you recommended for me best to proceed from here then.
	Well, look, I don't know.
	And I'm not saying you should or you should not tell them.
	My personal preference is just honesty no matter what.
	Yeah.
	And this is a true and powerful and shaping experience.
	Of your life, which to some degree you are still being blamed for, right?
	Don't tell me, of course, you would never tell me that this didn't have an effect on the degree to which you acted out, right?
	Got into trouble, got into drugs, of course, had a huge impact.
	And also, this fundamentally fucks with your sense of the world as a whole, right?
	So your brother was very popular, right?
	Which means that, you know, intrafamily pedophiles, you know, people love them in society.
	Very popular.
	What does that tell you about society?
	And its values and its perception of exploiters and abusers.
	I mean, as I say, the experience of being abused as a child, it changes your relationship to yourself, it changes your relationship to your family, but in a very fundamental way, which is often overlooked, it changes your relationship to society.
	Yeah, no doubt.
	No doubt.
	I mean, I have a hard time bringing this stuff up.
	Well, I don't have a hard time bringing it up, but I have a hard time bringing it up in a way that it gets heard and gets respected, you know?
	Yeah.
	I'm also trying to be respectful of...
	I live here now, but for the most part, I turned 18 and I got out of Dodge.
	Well, and now this is the consideration, right?
	Which is that you're kind of stuck in Dutch, right?
	I mean, I don't know if you're in debt or whatever, right?
	You have $40,000 in the hole in one form or another.
	And obviously you are relying on your parents' hospitality and so on.
	And this definitely could be, you know, this stuff is always risky.
	I mean, it's a pin in the, it's a grenade in the tent, right?
	It can be a breakthrough.
	It can be a healing time for your family.
	It can be an understanding.
	It can be a real connection.
	Or it can blow everything sky high.
	Right.
	So my suggestion would be this.
	And I don't know how you can manage this or what you can do.
	So I'm just going to give you my suggestion and you're a smart guy.
	See what you can do if you agree with it to figure it out.
	But I would even try and see a therapist a couple of times.
	Before deciding to broach the topic with your family or not.
	Like a good therapist, somebody who's got some experience in sexual abuse, particularly sibling sexual abuse, which is depressingly common.
	And really try and work through it a little bit.
	I mean, your $40,000, it'll only be a couple of hundred bucks to see a therapist a couple of times.
	And I think it would be really crucial to talk about this stuff, to try and figure out best approaches.
	I mean, I'm not a therapist, obviously.
	I can't advise you on any of that stuff, or even whether you should or shouldn't, right?
	I mean, it's sort of hate for you to charge off this call, confront everyone in your family, and end up with your half-broken ass out on the street, right?
	Because that would not be a triumph for your life, right?
	So, I would go and talk to a therapist about this and figure out if she's got or he's got any best experience about ways to deal with it or the timing.
	It's been 27 years.
	It's 27 years and a bit.
	Really going to make a big difference?
	Maybe not hugely, but I would certainly write it all down.
	I would write down everything.
	That happened.
	You know, some secure, keep it on an encrypted thumb drive or whatever you've got.
	Use TrueCrypt or something to keep it locked.
	But I would write it all down.
	I would get it all out.
	Write it all down.
	Everything.
	Everything you could remember.
	You'd be surprised at the degree to which your life can come back into shape and into focus.
	And I also believe this is complete bullshit on my part.
	So, you know, there's no, I don't think there's any particular proof for it.
	That's some sort of scientific suggestion that it's valuable.
	But I think that honesty and directness, even if it is just with yourself and your own history, I believe it speeds the healing process.
	I know it's all kinds of screwed up, but we know that stress is bad for the health.
	We also know that keeping secrets...
	is a very powerful source of stress and reductions in stress decreases cortisol which allows tissues to repair and to heal better so even if you just get it all talked out with yourself if you talk it out with a therapist whether you go to your parents or not when or whoever that's your decision obviously but I wouldn't take it in isolation certainly wouldn't take any advice from someone like me but maybe somebody who's really competent in the field could help you out but I would strongly suggest that if you take this approach I would argue that there's strong
	evidence that it could really help speed the healing process.
	Okay.
	Maybe that's what your body's telling you to do.
	Yeah, that's something tangible that I can do.
	I really appreciate that suggestion.
	You're very welcome.
	And do drop me a line if you can and let me know how it goes.
	And listen, my thoughts are really with you, brother.
	You are suffering as a human being at still a relatively tender age, more than 10 lifetimes of bad people should ever suffer.
	And I'm incredibly sorry for all of that.
	And I do genuinely believe that if you take...
	The confinement and the pain and the lack of opportunity to focus inwards and to rebuild yourself and to gain the real truth about your life and your relationships.
	It's not like you'll ever look back and say, well, I'm really glad that happened.
	But you will look back, I think, and say, I made the best possible use of all the bad things that happened to me.
	And that, I think, is the greatest nobility there is.
	Yeah.
	Thank you very much, Steph.
	I really appreciate it.
	You're very welcome, man.
	Keep me posted, and best of luck to you.
	I really mean that, and I'm so sorry again.
	Thanks, Steph.
	All right.
	Thank you for the patient callers.
	I'm sorry that that was a long call, but I took a while to get to the heart of the matter, as the song says.
	So I am happy to chat with whoever's next.
	All right.
	Go ahead, James.
	Hey, Steph.
	Thanks for taking my call.
	I'm calling about Relationships, essentially, and specifically romantic relationships in the confines of political beliefs.
	Specifically, I subscribe to a similar set of principles that you espouse, nonviolence, kind of a libertarian viewpoint.
	Not really a big factor of statism, or a big fan of statism.
	So I've come and Kind of coming to my own in the past four years.
	I got married when I was really young, ended up getting divorced, and I've been single about three and a half years after that divorce.
	And in that time, I've done a lot of self-exploration, kind of realized what I'm looking for.
	One of the things that I'm starting to look for again is another relationship.
	And I'm finding that My political views are not very popular, and I guess I'm trying to figure out whether I can enter into a relationship with someone who is a statist, because that's the majority of people.
	I know that it's taken me a long time to come to where I'm at to solidify my political views.
	I'm kind of interested in your viewpoint on, the person I'm dating is a medical student and she is very passionate about healthcare reform, specifically single payer option.
	On a lot of different fronts, you know, military views, she's Not a fan of the military, a lot of different statist activities, even in public school, which is something that I'm really not interested in.
	She's willing to hear that viewpoint and say, you know, I agree with you.
	The public school system is definitely, you know, a major problem.
	But specifically on this, I mean, this is something she's very passionate about and is pursuing.
	And I've definitely told my viewpoints on it.
	And I'm very interested in entering into a successful, healthy, long-term relationship.
	And I'm wondering...
	Is that possible with someone who's a passionate statist?
	And what's your viewpoint on that?
	Well, look, I mean, I certainly don't believe that we need mirror images of ourselves to date.
	I mean, that would be kind of narcissistic, right?
	I mean, the differences of perspectives, differences of opinions are very important.
	You know, differences of facts, differences of logic, not so much.
	So, dating someone who's a statist, well, I mean, the question is, why are they a statist?
	And they are a statist because they believe that statism provides the best possible solutions, the most consistent possible solutions to whatever problem they face, right?
	So, you know, environmentalist says, well, the government has to pass a law because that's the only way that we're going to protect the environment.
	And if we let the greedy capitalists manage the environment, we're going to end up in a smoking crater called the world world.
	You know, eating dead maggots and baby toes and so on, right?
	So, the question is not, why is she a status?
	The question is, what does status mean to her?
	Well, I assume that she cares about the poor and the sick and the old and law and order and justice and whatever, right?
	And she believes that the state is the only method which can provide those things.
	And so if you don't argue about the moral root of her perspective or her opinion and you say, well, we should stop using the state and trust me, the poor will be better off and the old will be better off and blah-de-blah-de-blah, right?
	Well, I don't think that's true.
	At least it's certainly not provably true because you're talking about what might happen in the future, right?
	I mean, there's reasons to believe in the long run that the poor would be better off in a free society.
	I mean, I genuinely believe that and vastly better off.
	Like, mind-bendingly.
	Like, the very richest people 200 years ago had it worse than the very poorest people in the West today, right?
	I would rather be a guy living under a bridge in New York now than the king of France in the 18th century.
	Because the guy living under a bridge, you know, he can walk into Emerge and get healthcare.
	There's food flowing over.
	I mean, he can go get a job.
	There's lots of opportunities and lots of possibilities and so on that, I mean, you get a urinary tract infection as the king of France in the 18th century and you're like dead in a month, right?
	If you're lucky.
	Whereas, you know, you get one of those, you can just go into a homeless shelter, they take you to Emerge, you get your medicine and Bob's your uncle, right?
	Now, in the same way, the poor in 200 years will be vastly better off than the very richest people today.
	I have no doubt of that.
	No doubt of that whatsoever.
	But you can't prove it, right?
	You can sort of make arguments and blah, blah, blah.
	So, you cannot win a consequentialist argument.
	You cannot win a utilitarian or pragmatic argument with a statist.
	You can't because they already believe they have something that works.
	The welfare state helps the poor.
	An absence of the welfare state will create suffering among the poor.
	And there's no doubt whatsoever that if the welfare state ended tomorrow, there would be staggering suffering among the poor.
	There's no doubt that if the Social Security checks were not cashable tomorrow, there would be staggering suffering among the old, right?
	We can agree on that, right?
	Yes.
	So, a statist...
	Genuinely believes that they have something that works, that is sustainable, that is moral, that is agreed on, that is part of the social contract, that is voted for, and that is effective.
	And so, when a libertarian or an ANCAP comes up to a statist and says, we need a stateless society or vastly reduced government or whatever, this is like me going to you and saying, oh, right, you need to get to the airport, right?
	Okay, well, you could call a cab You could call a cab.
	Or what I could do is design for you a giant catapult that will be ready in about 150 years.
	I don't really know what it's going to look like.
	I don't really know how it's going to be powered.
	And I sure as hell have no way of knowing how it is you're going to land.
	But would you accept that instead of taking a cab?
	And the status is like, well, I guess it'd be kind of cool if you could catapult me to the airport in 100 years.
	But I kind of got to get to the airport now, and I know a cab's going to get me there in an hour, and it doesn't cost me 40 bucks, right?
	So that's how we look to status, if we argue from consequence.
	The Paul would be better off, the system is unsustainable, blah-de-blah-de-blah.
	This is why I focus on the argument from morality, which is the status coercion.
	And if you are okay with coercion, then you can be a statist, but you can at least be aware that you're forcing people at gunpoint to do what you think is right against their conscience, better judgment, and free will.
	Right?
	Every law that the state passes is against people's conscience, judgments, and free will, because if it wasn't, they wouldn't need a law, right?
	You don't need a law that says to teenagers be interested in sex and to children like chocolate.
	What they want anyway.
	Being a statist is fine.
	Being a religious person is fine.
	As long as you are aware of the deception and irrationality of religion and the coerciveness of the state.
	I've been reading some article about how atheists are bad because they're just not Moral or something like that.
	And it's all like, I mean, oh come on.
	I mean, so the average Christian considers himself non-atheist when he doesn't believe in 9,999 of the gods of the world.
	I mean, he's far more atheist than he is religious.
	So if atheism breeds immorality, you know, going one god further than those around you, what the hell does that mean?
	So you don't believe in 9,999 of them, I just don't believe in 10,000 of them.
	So what the hell difference does it make?
	Anyway, but so...
	It's the methodology that matters.
	If the person is...
	I started as a religious statist.
	I started as a Christian, and I started as a socialist.
	But the relentless commitment to reason and evidence brings everyone to the same place.
	All mathematicians end up in the same place.
	All physicists over time tend to end up in the same place.
	All biologists tend to end up in the same place.
	Engineers tend to end up in similar places, at least until new materials are invented.
	Not a lot of new elements being invented in the universe, but new materials are being invented for engineers all the time.
	And so, in general, any commitment to reason and evidence is going to end up with people in the same place.
	So, it doesn't matter where someone starts from.
	It only matters whether they're interested in reason and evidence as the methodology for resolving disputes.
	Now, if they are, it doesn't matter where they start from.
	They'll teach you some stuff, you'll teach them some stuff, and you'll end up in a much richer place.
	I mean, I learned a lot about it from my wife I'd never imagined or really thought about.
	She taught me some stuff, I taught her some stuff.
	But the methodology was reason and evidence.
	Now, if you want to date somebody who rejects reason and evidence, I would strongly suggest you might as well stick your dick in a wood chipper and hit Frappe.
	Because if you date someone Who rejects reason and evidence, your politics, your religion, your atheism, your anarchism, you name it, that is going to be the least of your problems, my friend.
	Because if you want to date a woman, and for women, for men, if you want to date a woman who rejects reason and evidence, you are going to end up with either an annoying doormat or a dangerous bitch.
	Because they reject reason and evidence.
	And they're not just going to do that in the realm of philosophy.
	They're going to do that in everything.
	Rejecting reason and evidence is a principle.
	I mean, it's a rejection of principles, but it's a principle called rejecting principles, which means if you disagree with her about something and she has no compunction with the rejection of reason and evidence, how the hell are you ever going to resolve a dispute?
	Because she doesn't just make up shit or reject everything you say or Even if you have a videotape, she'll say, well, that was doctor.
	Like, religion and policy is the least of your problems.
	It's a good litmus test.
	Is somebody able to accept that reason and evidence in these areas?
	And what the hell is it going to be like for your children?
	If you want to have children with a woman who rejects reason and evidence, how the hell is she going to interact with the children?
	She's going to be a bully.
	She's going to be an asshole.
	She's going to be fundamentally an abuser because she rejects reason and evidence.
	Which means that she has to have some way of convincing people without reason and evidence.
	I mean, I sit there.
	I try and convince my daughter of something.
	It can take me half an hour.
	I've got to think of every analogy.
	I mean, I'm a pretty good communicator.
	I sweat like buckets.
	Trying to convince her of stuff and to make my case and to make the point and to explain to her why she shouldn't eat too much sugar or why she needs to go to bed early or...
	You know, why she shouldn't wave paper around.
	She's got this habit of waving paper around.
	I'm just waiting for a paper cut to the eyeball and so on, right?
	Just why she needs to floss her teeth.
	I mean, making the case for that is really tough and complicated, but I'm always going back to reason and evidence because I never want her to obey me.
	I never want her to obey the facts.
	That's the point of, I think, being a good parent is to have your children obey principles and evidence.
	So that, I think, is a really important aspect of things.
	And if you don't have a woman in your life who's that way inclined, she's going to end up having to bully the kids.
	Man, her life, you don't want that.
	Then you're going to end up divorced.
	You're going to end up with a hateful bitch on your hands who's mean to your kids, who's going to just blow up your whole life, and you're going to end up paying alimony and child support for 20 years to someone you hate.
	And so, yeah, it's not statism that you would reject, or religion, or any of those things.
	You would reject someone who rejects reason and evidence.
	Does that make any sense?
	Yeah, it does.
	I guess it's kind of like when you're waiting for something to bake, you know, in the oven.
	You just don't know how it's going to turn out.
	And so maybe I'm at that stage where I want this pre-baked person who's not a statist.
	And whether logic or reason will take us there eventually, I can't see that.
	I guess that's maybe a future state that I definitely need to figure out before I commit significantly.
	It's very frustrating to see the emperor without their status, see the emperor without their clothes, and try to convince people that there's no clothes.
	It's just so obvious.
	That that's the case.
	And when you make these very simple arguments, like, for instance, against violence, it's incredible that this ends justify the means will come back at you.
	And it becomes very frustrating to continually need to say, well, not so fast, that sort of thing.
	But I do understand what you're saying.
	Well...
	I'm not sure that you do, with all due respect.
	The reason for that is because I'm telling you how the pudding is going to turn out.
	I'm telling you what the recipe is.
	So a woman who says to you, the end justifies the means, means that she's an advocation.
	She advocates and is perfectly comfortable with, and in fact, it's a positive thing.
	It's a good thing for her to use aggression to get what she wants.
	Right?
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Yes, yes.
	But as you mentioned, you were not a statist, or you were a statist when you were younger.
	This woman's 26 years old, so I don't think that maybe all the art...
	I mean, potentially.
	Potentially, and that's kind of what I'm trying to figure out right now.
	Has she heard the logic or the reason that could bring you to a place where you will realize that that's wrong?
	Well, I'm not sure what you're asking.
	Does she not understand?
	I mean, there's only a couple of different ways that you can reject a stateless argument, right?
	You can either say that the government is not violence, right?
	Or you can say that violence is the best solution.
	Right?
	Right?
	I mean, I guess in a couple, there's only two.
	And the way that you say that the government is not violence is your social contract, democracy, get to vote for people, blah, blah, blah, right?
	All that sort of crap.
	And that's pretty easy to rebut, right?
	Like, majority approval does not translate into morality, right?
	I mean, two guys and a girl vote on whether to rape the girl, and if the two guys are rapists, they win.
	That doesn't make it moral, right?
	Majority opinion doesn't achieve anything.
	Hitler was voted in, for God's sakes, right?
	I mean, the majority opinion doesn't make anything moral.
	Now, that fight, that argument was won in Western history a long time ago.
	It's unfortunately kind of backtracked now because we live in such a democratically heavy society.
	I mean, that's why America was a republic, not a democracy, because the problems of democracy, I mean, anybody who studied ancient philosophy and know that Socrates was voted to be put to death knows that there may be a few problems with democracy, right?
	The majority mob rule.
	So, they can say it's not violence, or they say, well, it is violence, but the alternative would be even worse, right?
	But either way, it doesn't really matter.
	If the woman has a fundamental inability to understand that people pointing guns at you is violent, then she really doesn't understand the world very well, and she doesn't understand what violence is.
	In other words, she mistakes voluntarism for violence.
	Which means that she's not going to have any red line in her soul which she will not cross, which is violence.
	Because she doesn't know the difference between voluntarism and violence.
	So then when she's dealing with kids, she's going to yell at them.
	She's going to bully them.
	She's going to think that's voluntary.
	She's going to think that's fine.
	That's not violence.
	It's discipline.
	It's not violence.
	It's the law.
	I'm not a bully.
	I'm an authority.
	Right?
	It's not spanking, it's discipline.
	It's not murder, it's war.
	It's not theft, it's taxation.
	It's not kidnapping, it's arrest.
	It's not caging people, it's prison.
	It's not enslaving the unborn, it's a national debt.
	It's not counterfeiting, it's the Federal Reserve.
	This blending.
	Of voluntarism and violence is going to have enormous repercussions in your personal life.
	I'm not yelling.
	I'm just trying to get my point across.
	You won't listen.
	I have to spank him.
	He's not obeying me.
	He's not listening.
	So not listening is in a less violent moral category than spanking, because there's this fundamental confusion between voluntarism and violence.
	That's not fundamentally about politics.
	Nothing is fundamentally about politics.
	Everything is fundamentally about the family.
	And I guarantee you, I guarantee you, I would bet my last kidney on this, that if you start examining this woman's history, You will find very quickly that this comes exactly out of her childhood where her parents confused voluntarism with violence, right?
	I mean, the fundamental confusion the parents make is that the child is not there voluntarily.
	Anyway, so I'm telling you what the recipe leads to.
	You know, it's like I'm telling you, well, look, if I take a deep shit in your chocolate cake, what's it going to taste like?
	Don't worry, there's still a lot of chocolate in it.
	And you're going to be like, well, I don't think that's going to be very good.
	But I still don't know whether it's going to come out good or bad.
	It's like, no, no, no, I'm taking a deep shit in your chocolate cake.
	It doesn't matter how much frosting you put on my doogie, it's still going to taste like doogie, right?
	Yeah, so I guess, is there a way that you've seen where if you're confronting with someone who you're interested in a romantic relationship?
	I mean, obviously you're not going to change them.
	Or do you just abandon early and say, you know, cut your losses, get out of here and search in a different pool?
	Because I'm finding that, I mean, particularly in very metropolitan areas, I live in Chicago, and I just actually moved here recently from New York.
	You know, if you want to find somebody who's attractive and not...
	You moved from New York to Chicago.
	Was New York not cold and socialist enough for you?
	I'm just wondering.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	I don't think we can get anywhere more socialist than New York.
	Actually, Chicago is slightly...
	I don't know.
	But I guess there's a mating pool.
	And I'm just not seeing this non-statist...
	Mating pool out there.
	I really don't see it.
	And then a lot of times you'll see somebody who...
	Look, there's no non-status dating pool out there.
	Right?
	I mean, you've got to be like Larissa, the real girl.
	If you want the perfect woman, you've got to make her.
	I mean, you're sorry.
	You're going to have to fashion her out of duck, butter, and goat parts or something.
	Or basically, you're going to just have to teach her some basic rationality.
	And she'll teach you stuff and instincts and all that.
	And maybe how to deal with negotiating in relationships better.
	Whatever she's good at, right?
	But you're going to have to teach her some reason and evidence stuff.
	I mean, of course, right?
	I mean, you're like the only Chinese guy in a Welsh village.
	And he's like, well, nobody else here speaks Chinese.
	What am I going to do?
	Wait for someone to come along who speaks Chinese?
	No!
	Learn Welsh or...
	Teach them Chinese if you want to talk to someone and can't leave, right?
	So do not assume that anyone's going to fall in your lap who's an anarchist or an atheist or a clear thinker or a philosopher or anything like that.
	They may have some stuff you like.
	Like if they're on the left, you're like, oh yeah, they're critical of U.S. foreign policy.
	That's great.
	But they're all hot and bothered for carbon credits and progressive taxation.
	Yeah, okay, fine.
	Well, what's wrong with U.S. foreign policy?
	Well, they go and invade people.
	They go and use force, initiate force.
	Well, explain to me how that's different from taxation.
	And, you know, you don't have to be lecture guy.
	You can be ask questions guy.
	You can be the, they don't even know what you believe, but you ask a whole bunch of questions.
	Like that sort of maddeningly opaque Socratic method where you just keep saying, you just keep asking questions.
	I think that's a very helpful thing to do.
	But, yeah, if you're with someone who's committed to irrationality, you cut your losses and you don't get involved.
	The moment you stay involved with someone, you're saying you're fine.
	But you cannot get involved with someone and fundamentally want them to change.
	That's dishonest.
	I don't mean you're consciously being dishonest, but that's dishonest.
	If there are 10 restaurants and you go to one particular restaurant night after night and then say, well, this is not even close to the best restaurant of these 10, that doesn't make any sense, right?
	Yeah.
	And given that you're looking for a needle in a haystack, you can't sort of fondle every...
	Every piece of hay, right?
	You've got to be quick.
	You've got to have a metal detector.
	You've got to be, you know, discard, discard, discard to get to the one that you want, to get to the one who's right, to get to the one who's rational.
	Dating for people who think, and I don't necessarily mean who think correctly like us, but anyone who thinks.
	Dating for the intelligent.
	Dating for the critical.
	Dating for the skeptical.
	You know, most people, they just, like a Like a whole bunch of birds.
	You ever see those little starlings?
	They all fly around.
	It looks like they're being pushed around by some unseen wind, even if there's not a breath in the sky.
	Or just twisting and turning based on some inner instincts that, I don't know, people have gone insane trying to study.
	That's what people do.
	They just...
	They've heard that global warming is real and that anybody who's a skeptic is evil.
	And so if you say, well, you know, there hasn't been any warming for 16 years and now there's like 40% more ice on the...
	On the Antarctic or the Arctic, and do you know that the ice is also growing on Mars?
	There's some reasons to be skeptical.
	I don't know.
	Maybe it's real, but it's not unqualifiedly true in the same way that mammals are warm-blooded is unqualifiedly true.
	Oh, you're a skeptic.
	That means that you hate the planet and you probably get half your paycheck from the Koch brothers and big oil.
	They're just taught.
	They don't think.
	I mean, Leonardo DiCaprio is big on it, and therefore, it's got to be true, right?
	Like the protest against the Iraq War...
	With, you know, Bruce Springsteen and Sheryl Crow and Michael Moore and all the...
	They were incessant.
	And they're all completely missing in action.
	I think The Onion has a pretty funny article.
	I think it's The Onion, but basically saying we can only assume that these 16 anti-war celebrities have been kidnapped because they're nowhere to be seen in the run-up to the war in Syria.
	And Ed Asner has come out and said, well, we don't want to be perceived as anti-black.
	It's like, dude, if you're not criticizing a black guy for the same thing that you criticized a white guy for, you're a fucking racist.
	Do not treat blacks differently than whites.
	That's the very essence of racism.
	Whether it's giving them a free get-out-of-jail-free card or it's being assholes to them, it's equally racism.
	If you say, I'm not criticizing President Obama because I don't want to be perceived as racist, you're a racist!
	Because you have a different standard for a black guy than you do for a white guy.
	You're a racist.
	Sorry, you don't get solved that by making this stuff up.
	I'm gonna refrain from criticizing him.
	Anyway, so I just want to sort of point out that anybody who thinks is gonna have a challenge in the dating pool, but you sure as hell don't want to get stuck breeding with a muggle.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Here's my...
	I'm just going to look into the past at a younger Steph.
	I'm sure, given your critical reasoning skills, that you could put up a heck of an argument on the other side when you were on that other side.
	So, how do you know whether you've got somebody on your hands that is that person that can come to logic and reason and that sort of thing versus someone who isn't?
	That's what I'm struggling with.
	You know.
	You have to be stern with your penis.
	That's all.
	You know, like you have to be stern with your tongue.
	Your tongue loves sugar and your ass hates it, right?
	And so you got to be stern with your tongue.
	You say, listen, I know sugar tastes good, blah, blah, blah, right?
	But you're trying to kill us here, right?
	I mean, your brain loves nicotine and your lungs are like, stop at the nicotine kind of thing, right?
	And so you just have to say to your penis, like, you have to say to your penis, look, I know you want to dump your stuff, like, everywhere.
	I mean, if there was, like, a woodpecker hole in a fairly moist tree, you'd be spiraling me that way, like some sort of divining rod, right?
	Yeah.
	So, you just have to be stern with your penis, because, you know, your penis is like, I really don't care that much about her abstract positions on the existence, on the non-existence of the Old Testament deity, but she's got some, you know, some warm wetness there that would be great to sneeze at.
	That's all your penis is.
	And I'm not saying I was always successful in this battle, don't get me wrong, but I'm saying that with the hindsight and perspective experience, you want to date, which basically means you want to have sex, and there's a part of you that doesn't really give a shit about The woman's political viewpoints or whatever.
	Basically, it's the part of you that's on average five to six inches long and will drag you off a cliff with the lemmings of lust if you let it.
	But it's just a matter of recognizing that you can't live on donuts alone and you can't make your decisions based on lust.
	And, you know, you do the tricks, the usual tricks.
	You know, you imagine her when she's 80.
	You look at a picture of a mom and imagine her looking like that.
	Like, I saw this woman today walking around, and she looked great.
	And then her mom was with her.
	I mean, you could tell the resemblance and all that, right?
	The mom was with her.
	And the mom looked like, you know, nine miles of bad road.
	And you're just, okay, so now, but then, you know, this is who, if you marry, hopefully this is who you're going to end up with, you know, is...
	Is her hotness going to mean anything at that point?
	Is her hotness going to mean anything if you have babies with her and the baby's got colic all night?
	You've got to stay up together.
	Her cleavage ain't going to do you a whole bunch of good there.
	I guess it might do the babies some good if they're milk-filled or whatever.
	But you have to be stern with your penis and you have to say, look...
	Dickhead, which is actually not a pejorative for your penis because it is a dick and it has a head.
	But you say, look, dickhead, we got to negotiate here.
	Like, I get that you want to sneeze yourself into the universe is whatever, right?
	But we got to balance this a little bit, right?
	Like, I mean, you know, it's the same thing.
	I got a sweet tooth because, you know, I'm British and grew up with an anxious childhood, so I'm big on the sugar.
	And I say, look, I mean, yeah, we can have a little bit of sugar, but, you know, my God, I mean...
	We've got to go for some longevity here as well.
	And I don't like the dentist drilling into parts of my head or whatever, right?
	So we've got to have a negotiation.
	I mean, a lot of health, a lot of mental health, a lot of physical health.
	It's all just a matter of recognizing you've got these different parts of you, right?
	This is the internal family systems therapy approach.
	You've got a lot of different parts of you.
	I call them the mycosystem.
	And yeah, I mean, there's part of you that wants stuff that's really dangerous for you.
	And lust is one of these things.
	It's great.
	It's wonderful in a sort of virtuous and healthy and happy relationship.
	It's the best thing ever.
	But as a starting point, it's just not a good plan.
	And you want something not that's going to be quick, but that's something that's going to last.
	And for something to last, you simply have to have reason and evidence in common.
	Or...
	You're going to fight, fight, fight.
	I saw this, I don't know, the hotness thing, right?
	So I saw this, I don't know, only a woman's magazine could say something this retarded.
	I mean, men's magazines say retarded stuff too, but only a woman's magazine could say something this retarded about this subject.
	So...
	It was like the revenge picture.
	I can't even remember the woman's name, but it was some 27-year-old woman who was – some guy broke up with her.
	Some famous guy broke up with her.
	And it's like, she looks so great on this magazine cover that she – it's the best revenge.
	She looks so great that he must be eating his heart out.
	And it's like, not if she's horrible.
	He's not.
	I mean, I went out with a woman for a while and – Later she became a, and it was not a good breakup or anything, later she became a spinning instructor, you know, like an aerobics instructor.
	Yeah, she looked great, but, you know, the temptation was zero.
	Zero.
	Whatsoever.
	Like, no matter how good that piece of cheesecake looks, if you know somebody blew their nose into the mix, you just don't want to eat it.
	The very thought of eating it is going to look nauseous.
	It's going to make you feel nauseous, right?
	And once you know what's inside someone, the sex is just not that tempting because it's like, bleh.
	You know, like I could eat this wonderful sandwich with a thin line of maggots in the middle, but I know the maggots are there even if I can't see them, so I just don't want to eat it.
	I'm not hungry.
	And so that's why I think the sort of moral examination is really, really important.
	Your penis does not care about your future, fundamentally.
	It doesn't care about your happiness.
	All it wants to do is make another penis, and it will use any trick, hormone, delusory, whatever.
	It will use any trick in the book it can to make another penis, you know, with a U or with some mini U attached, right?
	And so, like, your tongue just wants the sugar and it wants the fat.
	And your body is like, well, maybe not so much, right?
	So you just have to have that negotiation and say, you know, you say to your penis, listen, I promise you, I promise you, man, I am going to get you a lot of great sex.
	I am going to get you a lot of great sex.
	But you got to be patient with me while we find the right person.
	A lot of great sex.
	You know, we're not going to get involved in this relationship where it's like an incredible amount of self-medicating, narcotizing, dissolve-yourself sex for like a month or two, and then nothing because we don't like each other.
	You know, like, trust me, slow and steady, you know, we'll get to the right place and we'll have great sex three or four times a week for the rest of our lives.
	We get to the right place.
	But dear God in heaven, Let's not go for the junk food of lust with no context for the person because then we might get a lot of sex in the short run.
	We also might get some STDs.
	We also might get someone pregnant.
	She might have some crazy ex who hunts us down.
	So trust me, we want to be around to raise our kids.
	We want to be with someone we love.
	We want to be with someone in the long term.
	Be patient.
	Let me ask a couple of questions.
	Let me find out the right person who's safe and healthy and fun and virtuous.
	And then trust me, we will have great sex for the rest of our lives.
	But if we go your route, you know, we're going to end up having, you know, maybe a lot of sex in the short run, and then maybe we'll get married, the sex will drop off because we don't like each other, and maybe they'll have a kid, and then we're going to end up divorced, we're going to have no money, and be unable to go out on any other dates and have no sex at all.
	So, you know, just be patient, Mr.
	P. I'll get us to the right place, but we've got to negotiate.
	Does that make any sense?
	Yeah, it definitely makes a lot of sense.
	What I'm saying is, on dates, talk to your penis.
	And anyone who finds that cute, just marry them.
	Like, just carry a ring with you at all times.
	And, you know, if you just talk down and say, well, you know, she's very attractive and you definitely want to put yourself someplace moist and dark, but, you know, still got a couple of questions to ask, so...
	You know, don't make me go to the bathroom and zip up on your head.
	You know, know something about merry scenes for us.
	So be quiet and just listen with me and let's find the right place where we can have great sex forever.
	You know, have that chat with your penis during the date and anyone who finds that helpful and useful, just propose on the spot.
	That's my suggestion.
	Fair enough, fair enough.
	Thank you very much for your time.
	I really appreciate it.
	You're very, very welcome.
	You're very welcome.
	And thank you, everyone.
	I'm sorry if we didn't get to everyone, but it's pretty late.
	I'm trying to give Mike some slightly less insane editing requirements or needs.
	But, yeah, have yourself a wonderful week, everyone.
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	And remember to check at freedomainradio.com.
	We will be posting, of course, information about upcoming speeches.
	I'll be actually speaking at Toronto, at the entire city.
	No, in Toronto, which we'll post more details about.
	And Joe Rogan coming up.
	Peter Joseph.
	And so have yourselves a wonderful week, everyone.

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