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Sept. 29, 2013 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:57:38

2495 Having Standards in Romantic Relationships - Sunday Call In Show September 29th, 2013

Stefan Molyneux takes listener questions and discusses difficulty connecting to family members, an inaccurate picture of childhood, emotional paralysis, the non-existent parental apology, pursuing casual sex, having standards in romantic relationships, adoption, self-sacrifice and making excuses for bad behavior.

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	Good morning, everybody!
	Stefan Molyneux.
	Oh my god, it's one day until the end of the month.
	So, we have a lot to celebrate, my friends.
	We have a lot to celebrate.
	So, within one week, Stefan Molyneux, that would be me, you, us, together, was featured on the number one downloaded podcast on all of iTunes.
	Yes, yes.
	I mean, obviously, I was pulling Joe Rogan along.
	That guy riding on my coattails again!
	I can't believe it.
	Obviously, I was riding on Joe Rogan's coattails, but we rode all the way to the number one downloaded podcast in all of iTunes, and the Freedom Aid radio show itself was last, well, we missed the peak.
	It's probably around 50, but it hit 67, number 67, all of iTunes, and I think iTunes is the biggest podcast distributor in the world, so that's That's pretty good.
	A number one hit.
	That's fantastic.
	Thanks, Joe.
	We passed 20 million YouTube video views and also passed 100,000 YouTube subscribers.
	Just fantastic.
	Now, check this out.
	Also broke our daily record with over 800 gigabytes of downloads in a single day.
	800 gigabytes of downloads in a single day.
	Well, that's really quite something.
	Now, what we've done, unfortunately, GoDaddy just can't handle that kind of throughput.
	We're at the highest tier, and people were still taking it.
	It took them six hours to download a podcast, so Mike and James upgraded.
	And what we've done is we've gone to a different kind of system where the podcasts are distributed across a variety of servers, and a sort of server handles the Downloads by checking out which server is the least busy and doing that.
	And now people are getting their podcasts in minutes, not hours.
	Now that did cost close to $5,000 and will continue to cost close to $5,000 every year if you would like to help out with that.
	These are the kind of problems that we want to be having, right?
	But if you would like to help out with that, we would really appreciate it.
	FDRURL.com forward slash donate.
	Of course, you might want to check out the new video on bitcoins.
	That's, I think, useful and very helpful.
	And thanks to Christoph, of course, and Mike for putting that together.
	I'm pretty much a sock puppet with their hands on my ass these days.
	So that's wonderful.
	And I think that's really it.
	I think I will do a – I don't want to do a rebuttal.
	I don't like doing sort of post-debate rebuttals.
	I've done a couple in the past, but it always feels a little bit Like going back into the ring after everyone has left and redoing the fight, you know, the debate with Peter Joseph.
	But I would like to do an analysis of it from a rational standpoint, you know, these were my premises, this is what was rebutted, so people can see the ebb and flow without the language, right, and without the charisma and without the jokes and all that.
	And I think that's important, just to see sort of the positions that were taken and the rebuttals that occurred and didn't occur and so on.
	I think that's important so that People get used to looking at debates from an analytic standpoint.
	And, I mean, Peter is a very florid communicator.
	I have my own particular style.
	And, of course, I've developed a style that's supposed to be entertaining and enjoyable, right?
	I mean, a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.
	So, stripping it down to its bare bones, which was an exercise I did, of course, many years ago in my class on Aristotle.
	You strip down the I think that's worth doing because it's not something tragically which we get taught to do in school.
	It's entirely natural.
	I mean, can you imagine politicians facing an audience who knew how to strip down, flowery, florid, charismatic speech down to its bare-bones essentials?
	I mean, dear lord, they wouldn't be politicians.
	They'd have to be philosophers, and then our society would be quite different.
	So, yeah, of course, in a democracy, the last thing that the people in charge want to teach you is how to analyze.
	a position or speech or an argument but it's really really important to do so so I'd like to I think I'll do that sort of later today and put that out again this is not a sort of rebuttal I'm just sort of pointing out this is the the points that were made and the arguments that were put forward and the rebuttals that occurred or didn't occur which I think is well worth reviewing just to get used to getting down to the bare bones of a particular rational interaction There was some sort of question about,
	well, a debate is an exchange of information.
	Well, a debate is a fight.
	And I have been debating.
	I was debating in high school.
	I was on the debate team.
	I was in the top ten in Canada my very first year of debating in college.
	So I've been doing this for, I guess, literally 30 years off and on now.
	And a debate is two people who disagree with each other.
	Presenting their best arguments to attempt to get to the truth.
	And that's really what a debate is.
	It's not trying to beat the other person or trying to win.
	It's trying to get to the truth.
	Now, of course, both people who come into a debate both believe that they have the correct position.
	And they have a methodology, hopefully of reason and evidence, to get to that position.
	And they have to have a debate and they have to use commonly accepted terms.
	If you don't have...
	Commonly accepted terms, you actually can't have a debate.
	I mean, assuming you don't speak Swahili, you cannot have a debate with someone in Swahili.
	And so this is one thing that is, if you're not experienced in debates, then you wouldn't know this in particular.
	But you do have to have commonly accepted terms.
	Like if I'm using the term freedom to mean freedom from coercion, and you're using the term freedom to mean freedom from want, or freedom from poverty, or freedom from ignorance, then we're just not going to have A productive debate.
	So this is why commonly accepted terms are very important to agree on at the beginning.
	And, of course, one of the things that I was doing in the Peter Joseph debate was attempting to get commonly accepted terms.
	Now, when he first used the term anarcho-capitalism, I said, well, this is what it is for those who don't know and also to make sure that we agreed on the definition.
	And then he said, well, I'm just going to assume that everyone is familiar with what I'm talking about.
	And that's called preaching to the choir, right?
	Because everyone who's familiar with what you're talking about probably has a like-minded view.
	And this is why it's really important to have common definitions if you're going to have a debate.
	Otherwise, it's sort of like saying, okay, you know, we're going to have a boxing match and then you show up in a very fast car saying that you're going to lap me.
	It's like, well, no, these are not the same.
	These are not the same things.
	We can't have a boxing match with a sports car.
	So that's important.
	It's two people who both believe that they're right but who have differing perspectives attempting to convince the others and also open to being convinced by the other.
	That's obviously important.
	Otherwise, it's just head-butting.
	But commonly agreed on terms is really the essence.
	If you don't have that, Then you can't have a debate.
	And unfortunately, that sort of is what happened.
	Anyway, well, thanks so much.
	I know we've got a whole bunch of callers today.
	So, Mike, if you'd like to queue up the first one, I will set up my t-ball bet.
	All right, Stephen P., go ahead.
	You're up next.
	Hey, Steph.
	How many Stephens do we have on this line that we need to go with last?
	Anyway, go ahead.
	Stephen, how are you doing?
	Well, we have an entire legion of Stephens.
	The Steven army, I have heard tell of this.
	It's split into factions, though.
	There's the Vs, there's the Phs, there's the Fs, there's the...
	Anyway.
	So, what's up, my friend?
	There's the Stephans.
	The Stephans.
	Oh, yeah.
	We're a splinter group.
	I just want to say that your conversation with Joe Rogan was really amazing.
	I think that's probably one of the best things I've seen you involved in, and I really want to congratulate you on such a great conversation.
	Well, thank you.
	I mean, obviously, I'd share the thanks with Joe, and in more particular to Mike, who set it all up and pestered Joe.
	Until Joe said, well, it's either a restraining order or a show.
	And I feel I'm glad that he went for the latter because Lord knows we have enough of the former.
	But thank you for that.
	I appreciate that.
	Feel free to share it wherever you can.
	Yeah, I have and I will continue to do so.
	But my question involves dealing with self-expression problems in terms of family members and, yeah, mostly family members.
	So I have this kind of problem where it's hard for me to express myself to really anyone in my family.
	I guess mainly my mom and my brother.
	Why is that your problem?
	What do you mean by that?
	Well, you said I have this problem where it's hard for me to express myself.
	Because I can't identify anything that I can attribute it to.
	And I think that's one of the reasons why I'm calling is to maybe...
	See what you think is going on.
	Oh, so you don't know of any external history of an interaction that might cause any difficulties in this area?
	No, that's the weird thing because I really...
	My relationship with my mom used to be really fantastic and she has no history of hitting me or really abusing me in any verbal manner.
	Well, I mean, this is...
	I just really want to...
	Let me just point something out here.
	Sure.
	I'm probably jumping the gun in entirely the wrong direction, but I want to point out that there are billions, literally billions of people in the world who've never hit or yelled at me.
	That doesn't mean that I have a great – I mean it's so sad with parents that this is where we are, where you say, well, okay, but she hasn't hit or yelled at me.
	Like that, and therefore love.
	Yeah, true, true.
	But I mean, in addition to that, she was with me my entire childhood.
	She was a stay-at-home mom.
	She played with me.
	We played video games.
	We played with toys, pretend, all that good stuff.
	So, I mean, it didn't really start becoming a distance thing until we moved into this new house.
	Well, not really new house, but we moved in with...
	With my grandparents and I guess since I live a floor away from her I just kind of like shut off and...
	What do you mean?
	So you live in an apartment building and you live in another floor?
	I live in the second floor.
	She lives upstairs and I guess I rarely go up there unless it's for like to access the kitchen or something like that and I guess over time it's just been this continual distance and it's gone to the point where I feel like I'm in this mold where Where she doesn't expect me to express myself, and I feel like if I violate that mold, there's not even any consequence.
	Hang on, hang on, just before, I just need a few more facts.
	So, when did you move into your grandparents?
	Let me see, three years ago.
	Alright, and is it your mother's parents?
	Yes.
	Where's your father?
	He's not here.
	My mom was divorced from him.
	And when did she get divorced?
	How old were you?
	And when did she get divorced?
	That's the weird thing.
	I really can't pinpoint it because it's always been with them a declining relationship.
	So it's like, I don't even know when I can pinpoint the official divorce.
	They've always sort of been at odds with each other.
	And if it wasn't moving out, he was either in another room in the house or just...
	Well, but there must have been a time where he moved out for good, right, I assume?
	And they actually went through the legal process of divorcing, right?
	That was also like six years ago.
	So we sold the house and we moved in with my mom's parents.
	So you were an adult by this time or were you still in your teens?
	I was 14.
	I'm 21 now.
	And so you certainly do have a model of distance in a relationship, right?
	Which is your mother with your father, right?
	Yes.
	And how was your father's relationship with you?
	Not so good, but not as bad as it could be.
	He hit me a few times, but not in any consistent way.
	It was just kind of like, I guess, when I did something that really upset him, which is pretty bad.
	But other than that, he was pretty big in the verbal.
	Abusive aspect, not so much towards me, but towards my mom.
	But he did yell at me, just not like name-calling, just kind of like raising his voice.
	And how would he verbally abuse your mother?
	You know, I don't remember.
	I kind of blocked it off from my memory.
	But I remember just constant...
	Like, would he call her stupid?
	Would he call her lazy?
	Would he call her a bitch?
	I mean, what would...
	Just out of curiosity, I mean, because it's maybe important, but why...
	What would he say?
	I don't remember specifics, but if I could guess, it would probably be towards the last thing you listed.
	A bitch.
	Yeah, and it was like back and forth arguments, but he was obviously the instigator in a lot of them, if not most of them.
	Well, instigator is a very tough phrase when it comes to married couples, but alright, okay, I have no problem with that in particular.
	And he's an alcoholic, or I think he was.
	I really don't know the status of his addiction to alcohol right now.
	But he was an alcoholic when you were a child?
	Yes.
	I'm so sorry.
	That's a curse and a plague and a half.
	I mean, I've said this before, I'll say it again.
	I really hate alcoholism.
	I really, really, really hate alcoholism.
	I don't have any alcoholics in my family, but I've heard enough.
	I have one too many and I have not touched alcohol.
	It's just like I have no attraction to it at all.
	Yeah.
	Well, that's probably good, right?
	Because, you know, given the genetic history.
	Anyway, so how old were your parents when they married?
	Did they marry young?
	Um, let me see.
	I guess they would be in their late 20s.
	Their late 20s, okay.
	Or mid-20s, maybe.
	I'm pretty bad at math, so I'm going to pin it around there.
	And you're in your early 20s, is that right?
	I'm 21, yeah.
	Okay, okay.
	And do you know why they got married?
	They were childhood friends, actually.
	And was your father an alcoholic when they got married?
	Not sure about that.
	You know, it's funny.
	I mean, it's so funny, eh?
	Just sort of by the by.
	I mean, it's so funny how often so little we know about our family history that it's really kind of essential to know, right?
	Yeah.
	You know, there's part of me, you know, and I sort of think about families.
	I sort of think about, like, well, what the hell are you talking about?
	I mean, you're with each other for decades.
	You eat meals every night.
	You live under the same roof.
	Like, what the hell have you been filling your mouths up with, other than food and trivia, if you don't really know much about your parents' history and about how you came to be in this world, right?
	Yeah, I mean, if you're asking me particularly, we don't really sit around at dinner or I don't spend much time around my family.
	No, now, but I mean, in the past you said you had a good relationship, right?
	Oh, yeah, yeah.
	And when you were a kid and your mother was being verbally abused, would you say that you had a good relationship with her then as well?
	Yes.
	And tell me how that's possible.
	The reason being that if you love your mother and she's being verbally abused, that's going to be very upsetting to you, right?
	Yeah, it was pretty upsetting.
	And so...
	Did you do anything about the verbal abuse?
	I'm not saying you should have.
	Obviously, you were a kid.
	I'm just curious.
	I mean, there were times where I probably confronted my dad about it or yelled at him or tried to intervene in some manner, I'm sure.
	I can't remember specific times, but I remembered something about that general behavior that I might have done.
	Right.
	What happened to your relationship with your father when your parents finally separated permanently?
	Well I mean for the first few months we did the thing where I saw him every week but then I just didn't really want to see him anymore so I kind of made up excuses like oh I don't feel like going out or I don't feel good and eventually like he he caught on so I mean I didn't need the excuses anymore so I haven't really had a relationship with him in seven years no six years whatever it was that Sorry about that.
	And what's your theory as to why you're not talking so much with your mom anymore and why this changed when she moved back to her parents' place?
	Well, I don't know if the parents' place has much to do with it particularly.
	I think the arrangement, me being on a different floor and...
	And just being kind of a private person in general has a lot to do with it because this also happened with my brother.
	Like I used to share a room with my brother and maybe four years ago we kind of moved into different rooms and now this whole thing is developing with him as well.
	So it's a strange thing that I experienced and I'm not really sure what to attribute it to.
	I mean, I've been in therapy and my therapist kind of has a theory.
	I'm not sure how much I agree with it, but she seemed pretty sure about this.
	And what she thought was that I had a lot of dependence on my mother.
	And that's why I'm kind of distancing myself from her because I'm angry at the level of dependence that I have.
	Well, I don't know about that.
	I'm not your therapist, but let me ask you this.
	What's your mother's relationship like with her parents?
	Very good.
	Go on.
	She talks to them often.
	She goes downstairs and sees them often, and they're...
	Well, see, I'm not really sure exactly because I'm pretty sure she was hit as a child as a disciplinary mechanism, which really is no excuse.
	So I'm not really sure how that played out with her, but she has a good relationship with her parents now, and I can't really imagine the...
	I can't imagine that it was relatively too bad.
	I mean obviously the spanking introduces some level of dysfunction, but relative to maybe other people who were spanked, I don't think it was too bad.
	But I'm not completely sure.
	Okay, so you have a good relationship with your grandparents, you have a good relationship with the mother, or at least you did.
	Your mother has a good relationship with your grandparents, right?
	Yes.
	I'm going to ask you to perform a little exercise we call moving the bar.
	Okay.
	Let's do it.
	All right.
	Here we go.
	Let's put our shoulders to the wheel and move the bar to mix my metaphors in a truly gruesome way.
	Okay.
	This would be my argument.
	You can't live in a house with your mother and your brother and your grandparents and this has been going on for years where you've become progressively more distant and nobody has sat down and had a pretty strong intervention about this growing distance and call these good relationships.
	Are you asking me?
	Because I'm not sure how the exercise works.
	No, I'm telling you.
	Oh, okay.
	No, I'm telling you.
	We can move the bar together.
	So if you were my son...
	And the weird thing is I'm actually old enough that that could be the case.
	Anyway, but if you were my son and we lived under the same roof and we used to talk a lot and I began to notice that we weren't talking as much, do you know what I would do?
	What?
	What would I do?
	Well, I guess you would have an intervention as you said.
	Yeah.
	We would sit down and I would say, I missed you.
	We're not talking as much.
	What's going on?
	Is there something I've done that's bothering you?
	Is there something in the environment that bothers you?
	Are you depressed or sad about something else in your life?
	When did this happen?
	Why did this occur?
	Let's put our heads together and rescue our relationship.
	Yeah, and the thing is, my mom has done that many times, and it's kind of me who has not accepted the offer to kind of repair things, and I don't—honestly, I can't figure out why, and that's kind of why I'm calling in.
	I mean, I've heard my therapist's take on it.
	I don't really think she's onto something, so I'm kind of like— Would you characterize your childhood on a scale of 1 to 10?
	Sure.
	With, say, one being the last caller and ten being my daughter?
	Would you classify your childhood on a scale of happiness from one to ten?
	Where would you put it?
	Six or seven.
	Oh, come on.
	Well, that's my subjective...
	No, come on.
	Look, you had an alcoholic father.
	Yeah.
	Who hit you, who yelled at you, who verbally abused your mother.
	Your parents did not love each other.
	There was constant instability in their relationship.
	It took them forever to divorce.
	And you're going to say that that's a six or a seven?
	Well, I mean, if you put one as the last caller, but I guess, yeah, I guess it would be a little bit lower than that.
	I'm not trying to tell you you're wrong or rewrite your experiences, but just based on what you've told me, I mean, alcoholism is automatically pretty negative, right?
	Yeah.
	Because it means emotional unavailability, and it means confusing, chaotic, and sometimes deranged behavior, right?
	Yeah.
	And then not having a relationship with your father at all now, not wanting to see your father, That's pretty tragic, right?
	It is, yeah.
	So I'm trying to figure out how you have all these great relationships in the midst of all of this mess.
	I mean, I don't.
	I have no great...
	No, but even in the past when you were a kid.
	Oh, okay.
	I had a great relationship with my mom.
	I had a good, okay relationship with my dad.
	I had a great relationship with my brother.
	It's like, well, there was alcohol dependency, addiction, abuse, abandonment issues...
	Where are all these great relationships?
	You're basically telling me I grew a wonderful flower out of this piece of rock.
	I don't understand it.
	I guess it was probably because my dad wasn't – he was at work most of the time.
	So it's kind of like the dysfunction didn't really kick in until he came home.
	So, I mean, there was a whole rest of the day to kind of develop relationships.
	And obviously the dysfunction pervades the whole day, but it's kind of like – There's some room to grow flowers, and my dad didn't really trample on them all too much because he was also pretty distant.
	Like I said, he would live in a different room.
	Well, you think distant is not a form of abuse?
	No, I do.
	I just mean, to go with the metaphor, I don't think he came into our thing and started trampling our flowers.
	It was more like...
	The relationship that I had with my mom was a very close one.
	Like I said, she spent all her time with me.
	She played with me a lot.
	She pretty much did a lot of the things that I would characterize as good parenting.
	And my relationship with my brother was very good as well.
	We were best friends for the longest time.
	We played video games together all the time.
	We played make-believe, whatever, and all these kind of Good things.
	But did you talk?
	Yes.
	You're just talking about stuff you do together.
	Yes.
	Did you talk about the biggest issue in the household which was the abuse and the alcoholism?
	I couldn't really because my brother is quite a few years younger than I am so it was kind of like I don't know how I could have a sort of profound discussion about that but we did obviously like when there were Kind of like events going on, like when there were screaming matches, my brother and I would kind of just be in the room and kind of talk about it to the best of my ability, given his age and given my age.
	So screaming matches, this would be your parents screaming at each other?
	Yes.
	And did you talk to your mother about how that bothered you?
	No, because I guess it was kind of a given, because she would try to actively shield me from it.
	She would kind of like...
	Okay, look, I mean, you can keep fogging.
	I mean, I'm not blaming you, but you understand.
	You've given me a map of a significant dysfunction within the family, which is not really being discussed in the family.
	It's not a topic of conversation.
	And I think that you have some rose-colored glasses on that is not your true lived experience.
	I don't think you have an accurate intellectual view.
	That's kind of what I want you to shed some light on.
	You shed all the light on it because you've told me all the facts and then you tell me that the reality is somehow the opposite.
	You've told me about significant dysfunction within the family, screaming matches, hitting, alcoholism, a terrible parent relationship and so on.
	And then you said, but I had great relationships with everyone except my dad.
	And the second simply does not follow from the first.
	And so If you have an emotional experience that is not part of your intellectual view, then what usually results is emotional paralysis.
	And it would seem to me that where you're stuck in is a kind of emotional paralysis, and that's because your emotional experience of your childhood is different from your intellectual perspective.
	And what that usually means is that You are following your parents, or I guess in this case your mother and your grandmother's preference for how you should view your childhood.
	So let me sort of take an extreme example that's not meant to be obviously direct, but hopefully it will clarify this abstract crap that I'm talking about.
	If you grew up in Stalinist Russia, then you would have to publicly portray a very positive view of living under communism, right?
	Yes.
	I love it here.
	America is the devil.
	Capitalism sucks.
	There's nothing better in the world than waiting three hours a day to get your bread, right?
	Uh-huh.
	Because if you didn't do that, you could get severely punished, right?
	You could just be disappeared by the NKVD. You could end up sharing a cell with Solzhenitsyn in the Gulag, right?
	Yes.
	So your emotional experience of communism would be quite opposite from your intellectual or at least your public experience.
	Portrayal of your judgment of communism, right?
	Yeah.
	And that disconnect is very hard on the system, right?
	The mind and the heart are supposed to work together, right?
	The heart is supposed to process the emotions and the head is supposed to extrapolate those to principles, right?
	Yes.
	I feel bad when I'm yelled at.
	People feel bad when they're yelling at, when they're being yelled at.
	I don't want to make people feel bad, therefore I will not yell at people.
	So the heart says, being yelled at feels bad.
	And the empathy says, people who are yelled at feel bad.
	It takes your subjective experience and universalizes it emotionally to all other people.
	Then your moral sense, your intellectual sense says, I don't want to make people feel bad.
	And then the philosophy says, therefore don't yell at people.
	Yeah.
	Now when your emotions and your intellect are in opposition, then you end up with paralysis.
	You end up with people getting stuck.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	And the story that you're telling me about your childhood versus the facts of your childhood seem at opposite ends of the spectrum.
	Yeah, I see what you're saying.
	I think emotional paralysis is a very good way to characterize it.
	I think that's pretty much spot on.
	Well, you're not in the relationship with your mom, but you're not moving out, right?
	So you're stuck, right?
	In a sort of distant orbit, right?
	Yeah.
	You can't break free, you can't connect, right?
	That's limbo.
	Yeah, and I sort of—what I want is to repair the relationship, and I know my mom is— No, no, no, no.
	Oh, God, what a terrible thing to say.
	I'm sorry.
	I'm sorry I had a visceral reaction to that.
	Sure.
	That's manipulative.
	You can't repair a relationship.
	You can't.
	It's not a car.
	I mean, a relationship is not an object that you can fix.
	There's only one thing that you can choose to do in a relationship.
	Then that is you either choose to be honest or you choose to lie.
	Now, the choice may not be conscious, and you may think that you're being honest when you're not, but the reality is you either choose to be honest or you choose to lie.
	And if you don't know, you then make the commitment to figure out which is which in what you're saying.
	Okay.
	You cannot repair the relationship.
	It's not a thing.
	I want to choose to be honest then.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	So, you say that your mother has been trying to work things out with you, and...
	Have your grandparents been trying to intervene in this way as well?
	No.
	Right.
	Okay, so I'm going to tell you some things that I would say if I were your mom.
	Go for it.
	And maybe this will strike a chord with you.
	Maybe it's complete nonsense, but I will tell you things that I would say if I were your mom.
	I would say, Stephen, I've got some things that I need to apologize for about your upbringing.
	First of all, I had a child with an alcoholic.
	And he was not emotionally available.
	It was not a positive for us usually when he came home.
	He was distant.
	He was unpredictable.
	He hit you.
	He yelled at you.
	And I also exposed you to verbal abuse against me, which is very toxic for children.
	And that was not your fault.
	I chose a bad father for you, which I'm very sorry about.
	I mean, you don't have any relationship with him at all anymore.
	And a boy needs his daddy.
	We didn't model for you what a healthy adult love relationship looks like.
	We didn't model for you how people solve problems when they have disagreements.
	We didn't model for you a commitment to honesty.
	We didn't model for you best behavior in a relationship.
	He was drunk and I put up with it.
	He was verbally abusive and I put up with it.
	And I was verbally abusive at times because sometimes there were screaming matches which were very destructive for you and your brother because it threatens the family unit when you see your parents screaming at each other.
	I'm sorry that I didn't Lay down the law with your father and tell him to get into an alcohol addiction treatment program.
	I'm sorry that I let this drag on and on and on.
	I'm sorry that I put my financial needs and maybe even your financial needs ahead of what was actually healthy for you.
	I'm sorry that I modeled putting up with this kind of behavior.
	I'm sorry that even when I separated from your dad that I didn't really push for him to get into a treatment program so that he could have some kind of relationship with you.
	And I'm really sorry that we didn't, as parents, when we had problems we could not solve, that we did not turn to experts to help us solve those problems.
	I'm sorry that we didn't go to family counseling.
	I'm sorry that we didn't go to therapy.
	I'm sorry that we didn't go and get the help from the professionals that we needed in order to either keep the family together or have a breakup, which would not kill your relationship with your father.
	I'm sorry about the mistakes.
	I'm sorry for hitting you.
	I'm sorry for yelling at you.
	I'm sorry for being your playmate instead of your mom.
	I'm sorry that I didn't act in ways that would naturally evoke respect in you, even in difficult situations.
	I'm sorry that I put my daily needs for anxiety avoidance ahead of what was best for you as a child.
	I'm sorry that I put my fears ahead of what was best for you as a child.
	And I can understand why you're having trouble talking to me because I'm also sorry that I haven't said this to you before because you needed to know this years ago.
	You needed to know this in the breakup.
	You needed to know this when you were a teenager.
	And the fact that we haven't talked about what is really important in our shared experience is why we're not having a relationship right now.
	Because these are the things that we need to talk about.
	These are the things that were my responsibility, not your responsibility as a child, not your responsibility as my offspring.
	This was my responsibility as the adult, as the mother, as the parent to do what was best for my children and having a drunken abuser around my children And letting him abuse me and choosing to abuse him, letting him hit you, letting him yell at you, letting him frighten you, letting him bully you, was not what I should have been doing as a mom.
	And there's no way for me to undo that.
	Yeah.
	Now that's what I mean by a relationship.
	Yeah.
	And what would that conversation be like for you?
	Um...
	If she had initiated that sort of thing, I'm not...
	I think I could open up to her in that case.
	There have been similar conversations in the past, not quite like that, but maybe fragments of that, where I have opened up.
	And we kind of had this visceral emotional moment where we're honest with each other.
	That has happened, but it's very rare.
	And it's a combination of her not taking the initiative and me kind of just being emotionally repulsive, as in, I don't want to talk about it right now, or that sort of thing.
	So I think that it could...
	Well, I would imagine it's because you don't think that the conversation...
	It's going to continue.
	You know, there's a funny thing that's hard for people to understand, which is you do something until it works.
	You do something until it works.
	If you want to break through to someone emotionally, you keep doing it until it works.
	I mean, particularly parent-child, and it's all on the parent.
	It's all on the parent defines the whole relationship.
	That's why you, at the beginning, you said, I have this problem connecting.
	It's like, well, how do you know that it's your problem?
	Your parents, your mother defines your entire relationship with her because she was the parent and you were the child.
	She defines the whole relationship.
	If there's a problem in your relationship with your mother, it's your mother's fault.
	Yeah.
	Let me say that again.
	If there's a problem in your relationship with your mother, it's your mother's fault.
	And when you become a parent, it will be your fault.
	And I'm a parent.
	My relationship with my child, the quality of my relationship with my daughter is 100% me.
	Yeah, that's a good point.
	100% me.
	So don't say, I have a problem talking to my mother.
	It's 100% her.
	She is the mother.
	She defined the whole relationship.
	She defined the whole history.
	She was the adult.
	She shaped you.
	She formed you.
	She instructed you explicitly or implicitly 16 hours a day.
	Or eight or whatever, out of school or whatever.
	But even choosing the school that you went to is her effect.
	Parents are 100%.
	If there is a problem in the parent-child relationship, I don't care if the parent is 80 and the child is 60.
	If there is a problem in the parent-child relationship, it is the parent's fault.
	100%.
	Because the parent has the ultimate authority as the parent.
	And I thought this before.
	I'm even more sure of it now that I'm a parent.
	She's so – my daughter is so dependent, so helpless, can't go anywhere, doesn't know anything.
	I mean whatever, right?
	I mean so inexperienced, so – right?
	I mean it's all what I choose to talk to her about, the way that I am around her, the way that I communicate the questions.
	I mean I'm shaping the whole thing.
	She takes almost no initiative in our relationship.
	Of course.
	She's four, right?
	I mean she'll say what she wants to do and this and that but as far as the relationship as a whole goes, she's got no comparator.
	She doesn't – right?
	Yeah, you're absolutely right.
	That's true.
	So what would you suggest I do because I can't obviously… Do you miss her?
	Yeah.
	And that's the whole reason I'm… Okay.
	I get that.
	That's why you're calling, right?
	If you didn't miss, you wouldn't call, right?
	So say that you miss her.
	Say that you've been talking about your childhood with your therapist or whoever and say there were some problems that I don't think we've ever really talked about.
	And I think that's probably why we're not talking.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I mean, and that's the hard part.
	I mean, it's like I have this emotional paralysis, so just to make that engagement is difficult for me.
	And it's not like, like I know that if I were to do it, my mom would be completely open to discussing it, because she is a very open person.
	Look, let me tell you something.
	You cannot have a relationship with someone if you're completely sure what they would do or say, because then there's no point.
	That's true.
	Right?
	You have to be...
	I mean, if you already know exactly what someone's going to say, then you're not having a relationship with anything other than their defenses.
	Well, I guess I'm just...
	I'm just reasonably sure that she would be open to it as opposed to a parent who would typically kind of like get defensive and...
	Well, she might, but don't focus on her.
	If you have a relationship with someone, you don't focus on the other person.
	You focus on your commitment to honesty.
	The moment you start focusing on the other person, it comes at the expense of your own directness.
	Again, sorry, this is just the stuff that you didn't learn as a kid, right?
	Because of the environment, right?
	But if you want...
	Like, I'm focusing directly on my experience, and I'm certainly listening to you.
	I'm comparing it to principles...
	But I am not trying to change you.
	I'm not focusing on what you're going to say or what you – I'm not anticipating or focusing on what you're going to say and do.
	I don't know.
	That's why we're having a conversation that's kind of – I mean I don't know if you feel the energy, like a live conversation in the moment.
	I don't know what you're going to say next.
	I've been surprised like 10 times in this conversation, right?
	Yeah, and the strange thing is I have these conversations with friends, but it's like when it comes to family, I'm just completely paralyzed.
	Well, then cast aside your prior judgments about what happened in your childhood and simply be as honest as you can and as emotionally open as you can and see what happens.
	When you go in new territory, right?
	You go to some place you've never been before, you're more alert to your surroundings, right?
	Yeah.
	Because it's new.
	And this is how we stay alive, is exposing ourselves to new things.
	And this is why people die in defensive relationships because it's just the same signposts and landmines over and over again.
	If I say this, they're going to blow up.
	If I don't say this, they're going to – if I make this joke, they're going to – you know, right?
	It's like playing tennis with yourself.
	Fundamentally kind of boring, right?
	And – To stay alive, we need to be exploring new territory.
	And the way that we explore new territory is we learn and we grow and we share as honestly as we can.
	And that makes new conversations all the time.
	I mean, my wife, after like 10 or 11 or whatever years of our relationship, 10 years of marriage, she's heard all my stories.
	I got nothing.
	Every now and then I'll say something.
	She's like, oh, I've not heard that before.
	And she's like, whoa.
	And we're all kind of surprised.
	Does she listen to all your podcasts?
	Because that would...
	No, she's no possible time to listen to all my podcasts at all.
	But no, I mean, But I talk about what I'm thinking, what I'm learning, you know, I just learned about bitcoins, more about it, talk about that.
	So it's because there's new stuff and new experiences that we get to talk about with each other.
	And that's how you stay alive, is growing and talking honestly.
	And that's how relationships stay alive.
	And that's how we stay alive, which we expose ourselves to new things, new experiences.
	Yeah.
	You know, we have comfort in the familiar, but we have life in the new.
	And that's sort of the yin and yang of the pendulum, right?
	So when you sit down with your mom, focus only what is in your heart that you want to share with her.
	And that is, I mean, I got a whole book on called Real-Time Relationships, which might help.
	It's free.
	Yeah, I think I've read through half of it.
	Oh, good.
	Okay, so there's half a commitment.
	Okay, so you've gone to the realtor.
	Yeah.
	Well, there's an I'm relationship to the last part that's actually quite helpful.
	Anyway, I've got to get on to another caller.
	I wish you the very best, as always.
	Drop me a line if you can.
	Let me know how it goes.
	And it is so important to connect to people.
	We've got the history, if at all possible.
	All right.
	Thank you so much.
	You're very welcome.
	All right.
	All right, Pablo, go ahead.
	How are you?
	I'm well, how are you doing?
	It's so amazing, actually, talking to you.
	Well, I wanted to talk about dating, love and sex.
	So I'll make a little introduction.
	I'm approaching the middle of a two-month trip around Europe, which I saw as an opportunity to sort of improve my dating life, given that no one knows me here.
	I should know that my dating life has not done well because I'm 24, I never had a girlfriend, and I have a very poor dating life.
	Well, obviously I want to do something about it, and I'll pass the ball on to you to ask me a few questions.
	Well, you know my first question, right?
	Yeah, it's probably going to be about the family, huh?
	Sure.
	What model do you have for the value of romantic relationships?
	Obviously my main model are my parents.
	I have to say that they do not display a lot of sexual attraction toward each other beside the usual I don't know, I don't get a feeling that they have a sexual interest in each other.
	Now, we obviously don't want a lot of parents playing grabby ass around kids, so it's not like you wanted them to sort of show naked mammalian lust for each other, but sort of a romantic and happy pleasure in each other's company.
	You didn't see that so much?
	Yeah, I do, but maybe not so much hugging or inside jokes or anything like that.
	It's almost as if my brother and I are at the center of their lives.
	They don't have anything going on between them.
	Like, for example, when we are not at home, I mean, they will text us and see how we're doing, but I get the feeling that they are not doing anything like fun between them, you know?
	What do you mean?
	You get the feeling.
	Do they ever talk about, well, we went to the opera, or we went to a disco, or we went to play laser tag, or I mean...
	No, no, no.
	They usually sort of stay in, you know, and my dad fixed some stuff around the house, and my mom, I don't know, wrote a few emails or cooked something, but...
	Yeah, not that much going on.
	And apart from that, I would have to say that sex is sort of a taboo at home, you know?
	And when it's talked about, it's usually very uncomfortable.
	Like, for example, it was only two years ago that I was very worried about this.
	And so...
	I had a conversation with my parents because they saw me that I was like a very, you know, depressed.
	I was going to a therapist.
	You mean about not dating?
	Yeah, about dating.
	I mean, sexual contact with women, you know, contact with women.
	It's almost like I see them as part of a different species.
	When I talk to them, I feel like I find that enjoyable or Sorry, did you say you do or you don't find it enjoyable?
	I find it pleasant, but I don't know.
	I don't know how to pick up from just regular conversation to something a little bit more romantic or sexual, you know?
	Right.
	So you feel that you've had an issue.
	I mean, I don't know when kids should start dating.
	I mean, I don't know.
	I think I was like, I was 15 or 16 when I started dating.
	And, I mean, nothing particularly hot and heavy.
	But certainly it's something that, you know, once kids reach puberty, it needs to be a topic that is available to children and to parents.
	And preparing your children for sexual maturity is a fundamental – it's as fundamental a component of parenting as preparing them for economic productivity.
	Yeah.
	If you raise a kid who's just an unemployed couch surfer or whatever, and not because they're working on the great world novel or something, but if they're just sort of – then that's not good, right?
	And if you raise kids who are unable to date, that's equally bad, right?
	Because there's two things that we need according to Freud.
	I think it's probably quite true.
	There's two things that we need in life to be happy.
	One is love, and the other is meaningful and productive work, right?
	And if you raise your kids to have meaningful and productive work but they can't fall in love or they can't date, then that's as bad as teaching them how to date and never teaching them or giving them the skills necessary to be economically productive.
	So I'm sorry about that.
	That's definitely not good.
	And I'm sorry that your parents' anxiety about saying, are they religious by any chance?
	My mother is Catholic but not very practicing.
	Well they certainly are practicing in their anxiety about sex.
	Yeah, I guess so.
	Well, for example, my mother usually boasts of the fact that she was a virgin when she got married.
	And my dad, for example, didn't have a girlfriend before my mother.
	And from what I know, all his sexual experience was having casual sex with some girls in his neighborhood when he was young.
	And so that's your plan is to replicate your dad's fine start by going to Europe, right?
	Banging your way across the continent?
	Is that the plan?
	No, and it was actually kind of different because the girls that he was having sex with were girls that came from other parts of the country.
	No, but it's casual sex, right?
	So because if you're traveling through Europe in search of sex, then you're not probably going to end up with a long-term relationship, right?
	Oh yeah, I see what you mean.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	It was a fantasy of man to come here and have all this sex.
	Right, right, right.
	Okay.
	And is your question...
	I don't want to anticipate...
	What is your major question for me?
	I'm not saying you haven't asked a bunch.
	I just want to make sure we focus on the right one.
	I want a long-term relationship with a woman.
	I want to know what that feels like.
	I don't know.
	And why do you want a long-term relationship?
	Because I feel that it's a part of me that's missing, you know?
	For example, I go on the subway and I see couples and I see them joking and having fun and laughing and I say, I want me some of that, you know?
	I know some happy couples and they look very happy.
	I definitely want that.
	I want to experience being very vulnerable and someone to be generous to.
	I don't know.
	I think that I'm missing out on so many good things.
	Do you want to be a father, do you think, in the long run?
	Oh yeah, absolutely.
	I fantasize about this regularly.
	Right.
	Okay.
	Well, you know that the Europe sex trip is not the way to achieve your goals, right?
	I'm realizing that.
	I've been realizing that for the past weeks.
	I'm not – look, obviously, there's no moral problem with casual sex.
	I mean it's consensual, it's voluntary, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
	And I'm sure it's fun.
	But in terms of achieving your goals, are you concerned that if – because the great challenge, of course, with getting into your mid-20s with no romantic or sexual experience is – Trying to find somebody who's not going to be like, huh?
	Why have you not to?
	Yeah, absolutely.
	And sex itself is – there's some technicals involved in sex, right?
	I mean it's not exactly like cracking a safe but it's also not like just opening a soda can, right?
	So you need to – there's some technical stuff that you need to know about sex that you really can't just get from books, right?
	Yeah.
	And so, sexual experience is sort of important.
	Nobody's really great at tennis the first time they pick up a racket.
	And, you know, the first time you fall into bed with someone...
	Yeah.
	If you're an expert, you want to go play with a beginner.
	Right, right, right.
	So, again, if it's, you know, sex and...
	I guess they both involve a grip.
	Getting a good grip.
	But...
	Yeah, there's experience and there's technique and there's things that you like and things that you don't like.
	That are important to figure out when it comes to sexuality.
	Now, of course, if you're both 20 and you're both exploring sexuality for the first time with each other, there's an understanding that you're both learning tennis together kind of thing, right?
	Yeah, exactly.
	And then, of course, the ideal is to have a threesome with Jimmy Connors so he can teach you the right grip.
	No, I'm kidding.
	So there is a challenge, right?
	As you go forward, other people are getting better at tennis and you're not, right?
	Yeah, I see everyone on the highway, you know, just flying past me.
	Right.
	Right, right.
	So there is some urgency here, right?
	There's some – like you don't want to be like this in five years.
	It's going to be completely disastrous, right?
	Because then you're going to need to find a 30-year-old virgin woman and then you're both going to have to awkwardly explore this stuff together and then there's all the dysfunction of learning and why and all that.
	Or somebody is going to be more experienced in which case they're going to – you're going to feel catch up.
	It's going to be pretty important, right?
	Yeah, and so there's this balance problem in which, on the one hand, I would have to sort of put it in simpler terms.
	I would have to get all the sex to get all the experience and sort of catch up.
	But on the other hand, I don't know if it's the best strategy to find a long-term partner.
	Now, why?
	I mean, what happens if you see a woman that you feel attracted to or you're around a woman that you are attracted to?
	What happens?
	Why?
	What's the...
	So I think I could separate them into two groups.
	The first ones are the really attractive women, which I'm terrified of speaking to.
	And the other ones are Yeah, because you're out of show, right?
	Make some small talk, make some jokes.
	After a while, you're out of show, right?
	I don't know what the next move is or anything like that.
	Right, because you think it's a move, right?
	Like, who do I have to pretend to be in order to get this woman to like me, right?
	Exactly.
	Yeah, that's not going to work.
	I'm trying all this different shit, you know, these different approaches and stuff.
	It's a train wreck, basically.
	It is, yeah, because, I mean, you're trapping yourself, right?
	I mean, it's like lying on a resume.
	Yeah, they're going to find out eventually.
	Brain surgery?
	Here's a scalpel.
	Here's a knife.
	Oh, shit.
	Right?
	I can't even cut a sausage without half of it ending on the ceiling, right?
	And so, because you approach with bullshit, you can't sustain it because you sound like an honest, decent man, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Now, what is your view of women that you think that the best thing to do to get them to be interested in you is to be, like, empty-headed joke-and-show guy?
	Do you think that's what women like?
	Well, yeah, because I've been reading a lot of this literature about pickup artist stuff, and I tend to see women like this, excuse my French, but come home.
	Yeah, they're considered to be like empty-headed sperm receptacles that you manipulate into various positions, you know, deposit your joy juice and flee into the night, right?
	Yeah, exactly.
	So it's basically sort of figuring out which tricks, which mental tricks… But wait, you want to be a husband and a dad and then you want to basically treat women as urinals?
	No, well, you see, this was until about, I don't know, some weeks ago.
	It has been sort of on and off.
	When I get really frustrated because I cannot get dates or something, then I will turn to this pick-up artist thing, and then I'll realize just how sick it is, and I'll drudge my feet to work.
	Oh, yeah.
	Listen, a lot of my parenting has to do with making sure that my daughter can spot phonies and manipulators, you know, like the sun on a sunny day, right?
	So, yeah, I mean, it's going to be funny watching a pickup artist in the future attempt to work my daughter.
	I mean, she's just going to be like a Jedi knight, you know, like those lasers coming from those robots, right?
	I hope.
	Yeah, you don't want to be going down that road.
	I mean, any woman that you sleep with is going to be – using those techniques is just going to be an empty-headed germ danger fest, right?
	So don't do that.
	I mean, that's just – be honest.
	Be honest.
	I mean, I hate to say it.
	I mean, a lot of it just comes down to this.
	It's my whole show.
	It's just tell the truth.
	How about the truth, right?
	Hey, I find you really interesting and attractive.
	I'm curious.
	Well, let's chat.
	Just like that.
	Well, isn't that the truth?
	Yes.
	And you know what the great thing is about starting a relationship off with the truth?
	You'll never run out of things to say.
	Because you're always thinking something, right?
	And so you're always thinking something.
	You're always reading something.
	But if you start off with manipulation and lies, the reason that the pickup artists have one-night stands is you can't keep that stuff up for long.
	I'm an airline pilot.
	I mean, come on.
	I mean, it's ridiculous.
	Yeah, it doesn't feel good.
	I don't feel good trying to be someone else because...
	No, that's like pretending – look, being a pickup artist and thinking you're doing something of quality is like pretending to be a great fisherman because you order a fucking fish filet at McDonald's.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Well, I've got a fish in my hand, haven't I? Well, yeah, but it's kind of cheesy and processed, right?
	So I just – You know, be honest.
	If you find somebody attractive, I mean, you don't sort of have to walk up to a woman on the subway and say, hey, want to start a family?
	Right?
	I mean, you know, I mean, but be honest because you don't know if you want to, right?
	But just say, well, you know, you seem very interesting.
	Let's chat.
	I mean, I'm interested.
	And look, women are not stupid.
	They know that when a man comes up to chat with the woman that he's interested in romance of some kind, whether it's short-term sexual or long-term marital or whatever, right?
	But You don't walk up to like 80-year-old Chinese men on the subway and say, well, you have a nice smile.
	Let's chat, right?
	So women, they know for a simple fact that when a man of approximately their age group or whatever, if a man comes up and chats with them, he's interested in something romantic.
	So you don't have to say, I'm interested in something romantic, right?
	Any more than when I come up to a convenience store with a pack of gum, I don't have to say, I'm interested in this pack of gum.
	I would like to pay for it.
	Will you take my cash and give me the gum?
	That's understood.
	You just give the gum with your buck and you get the gum.
	I mean, that's understood.
	So you don't have to say, I'm interested in my penis beating your vagina for the possible procreation of the species.
	Want to get a latte?
	Because that's understood.
	You don't have to be obvious about stuff which is already understood.
	It's like getting into a cab and saying, I believe I will owe you what the numbers say at the end of this trip.
	Is that acceptable to you?
	It's like, no, we all get that, right?
	So...
	Yeah, so showing interest, you don't have to sort of be explicit about the romantic or sexual interest.
	That's understood, right?
	Show interest.
	Go ahead.
	That's what you mean.
	And that is kind of liberating because I don't have to explain myself.
	Oh, God, no.
	Look, look, I mean, a lot of our focus as human beings is on romance and sex.
	You know why?
	Because there are human beings, right?
	Which is only produced from romance and or sex, right?
	Are we not brains in a jar?
	No.
	You may be my friend, but me not so much.
	Also, my jar is really good.
	But no, there are people because we're all interested in sex and romance.
	As all – there's that great quote about if you stand in a forest glade and listen really quietly and enjoy the bathing of the sunshine and the gentle breezes, you can hear the sound of thousands and thousands and thousands and possibly millions of tiny little plants and animals all trying to get laid.
	Yeah, I heard that.
	It's true though, right?
	That's what we're all about.
	And so that's understood.
	Okay, so step number one, it's understood.
	So, for example, I woke up to a girl, and what would I say?
	Well, the first thing you say is hi, and then the moment you say hi, She knows that your penis is waving like little proboscis in your pants trying to find something warm to nestle in, right?
	And there's nothing wrong with that.
	I mean, yeah, to be offended by that is to be offended by the fact that you exist, right?
	Which is the result of somebody else's penis waving at somebody else at some point, right?
	So you walk up and you say, hi.
	And then you say, my name is Pablo.
	And, you know, I would like to chat with you.
	Or how is your day?
	Or, you know, what are you looking at?
	Or where are you from?
	Or are you traveling like me?
	Or whatever, right?
	And if the woman is stone cold and uninterested, then fine.
	Her loss and you move on and you leave her to date somebody of much lower quality since that's clearly what she's interested in, right?
	Okay.
	And if she's interested in chatting, then you have a chat.
	And if she's willing to do the dance of getting to know each other, then that's fantastic.
	And if she's not, then you sort of move on.
	But you just chat.
	And what you're doing is you're looking for some basic things.
	You know, like guys are always feeling like, well, we have to go out there and sell ourselves, right?
	No, no, no, no, no.
	That's like going to a job interview and saying, you're going to be desperate for the job.
	That just means you're not going to get the job.
	Because people will know if you're desperate for the job, then you don't really think you have anything to offer and you're trying to get something for nothing.
	So when I would go and chat with women, back in the days of my singledom, I would look for politeness.
	I would look for verbal skills.
	I would look for a good sense of humor.
	I would look for a sense of self-knowledge.
	I would look for a sense of irony, which is a sign of intelligence.
	I would make a literary reference and see if she knew anything about that kind of stuff.
	So I would be looking for that kind of stuff.
	I'm interviewing to see if she wants the job of making kissy face or something, right?
	And you're doing an interview.
	You are an employer.
	You have a lot to offer.
	You're smart.
	You're sensible.
	You're well-read.
	You're educated.
	You listen to a philosophy show.
	That's fantastic.
	So you want to be a dad.
	You're not a player.
	You have a lot to offer a woman.
	And so you interview the woman to see if you're interested in taking the next step.
	But you don't sort of sit there and say, well, I'm desperate for some sexual experience.
	Please, please, please.
	Right?
	I mean, women – I mean, there's this thing called hypergamy where women want to obviously trade up, right?
	So men are interested in women who have fertility and women are interested in men who have resources.
	That's kind of what we're programmed to respond to and it makes perfect sense when you think about it a lot more.
	And so if you're like the sort of begging, whining puppy dog thing, then that's obviously repulsive to a lot of women, whether they like it or not, whether they believe in it or not.
	We had penises and vaginas long before we had philosophy, and they still kind of run the show, and you have to deal with the rules of the penis and the vagina.
	And the rules of the penis is fertility, and the rules of the vagina is confidence and resources.
	Now, resources don't have to be actual, but they do have to be potential.
	If you're confident and self-possessed, present yourself in a That's a clear sign that you are going to be economically successful, or at least as clear a sign as possible.
	And so that's going to be interesting to the majority of women.
	And so, yeah, so I think just that kind of stuff is really important.
	You are looking to find – and to your mind, you're like, well, my virginity is a precious gift.
	I wonder who I'm going to give.
	And look at it like – Like you're an investor looking to invest in a company and lots of people are pitching you.
	That would be my suggestion.
	Sure.
	I have had sex with a couple of girls.
	I'm not a virgin.
	Okay.
	Well, fine.
	Okay.
	But you're looking to pop your romantic cherry rather than your sexual cherry, right?
	Yeah, exactly.
	Okay.
	So that's an even higher standard, right?
	And if you're looking to just lose your virginity, you want somebody who's really, really good at sex.
	But if you want to get into a relationship, then you want somebody who's really good at virtue and integrity and communication and blah, blah, blah.
	So those are my suggestions.
	But yeah, don't go the pick-up artist route.
	That's just a guaranteed way of getting yourself as level of quality as possible.
	I mean, you can eat, but why eat at McDonald's when you can eat at a really great restaurant?
	I guess I'll just have to go out and practice a little bit.
	Well, yeah.
	I mean, basically, it's just a matter of courage, right?
	I mean, everything that you want that's worthwhile in life takes courage.
	It took courage for me to start this show.
	It takes courage for you to go out and meet women.
	But so, I mean, that's good.
	Yeah, it's scary, but...
	No, it's good.
	No, you know why?
	Because the woman who's got real quality is waiting for you to show courage.
	Because if she would just settle for a guy who wasn't courageous, then she'd already be taken, right?
	Oh, I see what you mean.
	You want your woman to be hard to get.
	You want it to be scary.
	You want your woman to be hard to get.
	Otherwise, she's already taken and she's not got a high sense for herself.
	Oh, oh, oh.
	No.
	Okay.
	This is a whole different perspective.
	No, listen.
	If you want the job, the best job ever, Then you want that job to be really hard to get and really hard to do.
	Otherwise, that job is going to be taken like that.
	So you want it to be scary to approach the woman.
	You want her to be skeptical.
	You want her to be hard to win to some degree.
	I don't mean like playing games or something like that.
	But you want her to know the quality that she has.
	And you want her to have high standards for who she's going to date.
	Okay, good.
	Obviously, it translated into being somewhat hard to get.
	Well, somewhat challenging to get, yeah.
	I mean for sure.
	And now you want the key to – you don't want her to be challenging to get like she just says no to everyone.
	And you don't want her to be challenging to get because she's vain or narcissistic or you don't have enough abs or whatever it is, right?
	You're not tall enough or you don't make enough money.
	You don't want her to be hard to get because she's shallow and you don't fit whatever that stereotype is of whatever, right?
	You don't – just because she's beautiful, you don't want her to be hard to get just because she's physically beautiful, right?
	So what would the science be – Well, the science would be self-confidence, a good sense of humor, and a sense of standards in relationship, which means friendly, but somewhat reserved until she warms up, right?
	Oh, I see.
	I see.
	Like, Natalie, her whole life history on the first date are...
	Well, yeah, I mean, certainly she can talk about her history, but the other thing, too, is you want somebody who has a sense of how they land for other people, right?
	So you remember this earlier caller who was talking about his terrible childhood and giggling pretty much at the same time.
	That's not somebody who knows particularly well, for reasons that are obvious and for which I sympathize, how he lands for other people.
	And listen, I will make a suggestion as well that you, I assume, what's your cultural background?
	Oh, I'm from a South American country called Uruguay.
	Oh yeah, I know that.
	Okay, so, I mean, I've been there, but I know the country.
	You make it sound like a tiny town on Mars, you know, which I can only describe by clicking and slapping my ass, right?
	But, so, my suggestion would be that the highest quality women come out of the least abusive environments, right?
	In general.
	And so, what you want to do is do the research and figure out which culture is least abusive towards their children.
	And then focus your efforts on women who come from that culture.
	By culture, you mean nationality?
	Ethnicity, nationality, it doesn't matter.
	It can be a black woman from that culture, or if a white woman was raised in China, then the Chinese culture is kind of rough on kids, right?
	And black culture is very rough on children.
	And Indian culture, like Indian from India, they're very rough on their children.
	And so the likelihood is you're going to get traumatized victims who've had IQ problems because they've been traumatized.
	And unfortunately, there's not a cultural push in those cultures against that kind of harsh treatment of children.
	In fact, it's celebrated and praised.
	I think it was Olivia Wilde who was on Conan O'Brien.
	Somebody correct me, Mike, if you can just watch the chat room.
	I think it was Olivia Wilde who was on Conan O'Brien.
	And she was talking about how she comes from an Asian background.
	She was talking about how her mom would hit her and throw things at her and stuff like that.
	And she was, of course, joking about it.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, she was laughing.
	Was it Olivia Wilde?
	Yeah, it was her.
	I remember that.
	Yeah, okay, okay.
	And it was fascinating because you could see her laughing about it, but you could also see her looking sideways, like, please stop me from laughing about it.
	And to his credit, you know, Carrot Top did...
	Did say, I don't hit my kids.
	And she said, oh yeah, yeah, white people don't hit their kids.
	Everybody else does, but white people don't hit their kids.
	Now, that's not exactly true, but it's probably more true of sort of white Western culture than it is of, say, Ugandan culture.
	Right?
	So, and again, this doesn't have anything fundamentally to do with the whiteness of the person.
	Can I try to find out a little bit more about...
	Yeah, what are their cultural beliefs?
	What are their cultural backgrounds?
	Definitely ask women about their childhoods, for sure.
	For sure.
	And if they're like, well, I was raised by an alcoholic and I'm proud of it, it's like, check, right?
	Thank you for playing the sit-on-my-dick game, but you get a big fan zero, right?
	Yeah, I'll definitely learn a lot from that.
	Oh, you'll learn everything you need to know within the first 20 seconds of somebody talking about their childhood.
	And, for example, I will give you, right, my history of writing.
	So, I mean, the fact that you have an asexual life and you grew up in an asexual household is as predictable as sunrise, right?
	I don't mean it's obvious, right, but it's definitely predictable, right?
	Really?
	How do you create that?
	Well, you have an asexual life, which means that you grew up in an asexual household.
	I mean, like, you know, it's about as complicated as you saying, well, my native language is Spanish.
	And I say, well, then you grew up in a Spanish-speaking household.
	I mean, it's almost embarrassing to even point that out, right?
	Yeah.
	Because it's so obvious now.
	Do they speak Spanish in Uruguay or is it Portuguese?
	Spanish.
	Spanish.
	Okay, good, good.
	I might get confused with that.
	Right.
	But so if you say, well, Spanish is my native language, and I say, well, you must have grown up in a Spanish-speaking household, you'd be like, well, duh, right?
	Yeah.
	So if you say, well, I have an asexual life, say, well, you grew up in an asexual household, didn't you?
	Well, duh, right?
	And so you'll see this very clearly with women and with people you might potentially date.
	And just be aware that if you are looking for something very specific, you can't spend a lot of time looking, right?
	Yeah.
	And so be efficient, be efficient, be efficient.
	That's my suggestion.
	And be honest and be brave.
	That's my basic thought.
	What about the honesty about the lack of social experience?
	I mean, it will obviously show on practice, but...
	Well, no, but you will, of course, you will...
	That's not a first date conversation.
	If you're interested in pursuing that, then as you get further along...
	If you want to, you can talk about a lack of sexual experience, but you've slept with a couple of girls in your 20s.
	It's not like you're a monk, right?
	No, absolutely not.
	Martin Luther started off as a Catholic monk and ended up with a wife and kids.
	I mean, do you think he had a lot of sexual experience when he made the transition?
	No, but he still was able to do it, right?
	So don't worry about that too much.
	And the important thing with sex is that you get good at it with each other, not that you get good at it in the abstract, right?
	I see what you mean.
	Sort of like a process that you do together.
	Well, you're only going to end up playing tennis with one person, right?
	So it doesn't matter how good you are at tennis in general.
	And of course, you don't want to be with a woman who's got so much sexual experience that she's contagious, right?
	Contagious how?
	Biologically, right?
	I mean, or whatever.
	Oh, like an STD or something like that?
	Yeah, something like that.
	Or just who's been with so many guys that she obviously has low standards, right?
	Oh, okay.
	It's like being with someone who says, I have thousands and thousands of friends, right?
	It's like, well, then you obviously have no standards for friendship, right?
	Absolutely, yeah.
	Alright, now I think we have one more caller, so I'm going to have to jump.
	Absolutely.
	This has been very helpful, and I appreciate everything you do.
	Thank you so much.
	You're welcome.
	The only thing I will stipulate is your firstborn has to be named Free Domain Radio.
	That's the only thing that I would suggest.
	Because, you know, I give free advice, but in return I expect free advertising.
	Thank you very much, and I'm sorry for the tattoo that the kid's going to have to get on his forehead, but it is a pretty blue globe.
	All right, take care.
	All right, Stephen, you're up.
	Hi, Steph.
	Hello.
	I have plans on naming my firstborn Free Domain Radio already, so you don't have to convince me.
	Oh, we've got to get a numbering system then, right?
	Yeah, I guess I'll do Free Domain Radio 7.
	I think 7 is a pretty lucky number.
	Fair enough.
	And interestingly enough, the reason why I'm calling in is to talk about Firstborn, having a child, there's something that I've been, it's something that I've been thinking about when I consider relationships with women, is do they want to have a child?
	And then, so I've been kind of...
	Do they want to have your child?
	I think it would be right.
	Right, sure.
	So, but I kind of I've sort of bumped into this pattern or this sort of thing that's inside of me that's like, I want to have my own child.
	Because adoption is sort of put on the table.
	And I'm like, there's a part of me that's like, I don't want somebody else's kid.
	I want my own kid.
	Right.
	And then there's a part of me that's like, oh God, how selfish can you be?
	You know, what do you think this is?
	Like, you know, there are lots of other kids out there in the world that need love and they didn't do anything wrong.
	Like, they're in the situation that they're in through no fault of their own.
	Like, you know, don't look at them as sort of like these throwaway kids or like they're not good enough.
	And so I've been kind of confronted with the No, it's quality control.
	No, no, no.
	It's just a matter of quality control.
	Yeah, that's what I was thinking.
	I wouldn't want to bring home a broken computer and then fix it.
	I would rather just have a brand new computer.
	Sorry to be – and this is with all due sympathy to the kids who have it tough.
	There's nothing wrong with adopting.
	I think it's a fine thing to do.
	But you don't have quality control.
	You don't know if the mom smoked or drank or did drugs or was highly stressed during her pregnancy.
	But you do know for sure that if she's giving her baby up for adoption, then it's most likely that she was going through a highly stressed pregnancy, right?
	Because she's giving her baby up for adoption, which means she wasn't in a good place in life, right?
	Sure.
	So you just – you simply do not have control over the quality of the prenatal environment.
	You don't have control over the quality of the first day or two of the kid's life and you don't really have quality – sorry, you don't have control over the quality of the sperm that was used to impregnate the egg, right?
	Maybe the father's sperm was compromised because he was on drugs or maybe he was an alcoholic or maybe he's got – his family is prone to cancer.
	You simply don't have quality control.
	Over the creation of the human life.
	And that doesn't mean that, again, there's nothing wrong with it to adopt and all that.
	But if you're looking for sort of a sensible reason as to why, this is going to be the most important relationship outside of your wife that you're going to have in your life.
	And you probably wouldn't just pick some random woman and try and have a kid with her.
	Because you can't control for quality in terms of getting the right woman.
	And so when it comes to children, the quality control is very important in the creation of a human being.
	And that would be my suggestion as to why.
	I don't think it's selfish at all.
	Sure.
	And even if it is selfish, that's not necessarily a bad thing, I suppose.
	But I guess...
	I agree with you, and that's come to my mind also, but what comes along with that as well is...
	Why do I want a specific quality in a child?
	It seems like the parents that are like, I want my child to be the best, like an A student, and I want my child to be the healthiest kid, and I want my kid to be the happiest kid.
	I don't know.
	I feel like parenting is not so much about what I want.
	It's about What do you mean it's not about what you would want?
	I don't understand that.
	Sure.
	So it's like… I mean do you want to have a good time as a parent?
	Do you want to enjoy being a parent?
	Sure.
	Well, are there certain things that you know are going to enhance your enjoyment of being a parent?
	I mean if you and your kid are fighting all the time, then that's not going to really help you enjoy being a parent, right?
	Yeah, but I don't...
	I see...
	Why would I be fighting with my adopted child?
	Well, I mean, what if your adopted child has a biologically low IQ? Right, then the child is not going to be able to...
	It's not going to be as good at deferring gratification.
	Now, don't get me wrong.
	I think that IQ has a fairly significant environmental component...
	But there is a genetic component as well.
	And some of those genes are actually quite well identified in terms of how genes affect IQ, right?
	I mean, like my family have been really smart cookies on both sides for, as far as I can tell, a couple of hundred years.
	I mean, one of my ancestors was John Locke's best friend and was a philosopher in his own right, William Molyneux.
	On my mother's side, there are writers and academics and poets and all this.
	So we've been – my father has a PhD and all that.
	So we've got smart cookie-ville on both sides of our genes for hundreds of years, at least as far as I can tell.
	And even further back, there's actually a Molyneux newsletter which goes around talking about all the great things that the family ancestors did and I'm sure there's something similar on the other side.
	And so my IQ is not just as the result of my environment.
	My environment in many ways was very underprivileged because I had a working mom when I was a kid and it was not high stimulus or high, right?
	So there's just some biological horsepower between my ears that comes out of the gene pool.
	And if you adopt a kid, then you don't know a lot about it, but what you do know is that the parents of the kid decided to have a child Or did what was necessary to make a child without being able to keep that child, right?
	Which means that they either didn't use birth control because they're too dumb to use birth control or they're too impulse driven.
	And impulsivity has a lot to do with low IQ, right?
	The higher IQ you are, then the more you tend to be able to defer gratification because you can see what's over the hill and you can measure the cost of the present versus the cost of the future and so on, right?
	Lower IQ people tend to be more impulse driven.
	And so almost by definition – and again, I could be talking completely out of my eyes.
	So this is just all – just what I've theorized.
	I don't know of any studies and I could be entirely wrong.
	I just want to be really clear about that.
	But it seems to me kind of by definition, people who are giving up their kid for adoption decided to do – Mm-hmm.
	And so that would be one challenge.
	And of course, if you are a very smart person and you're raising a kid who's not very smart, I think that would be kind of a mismatch.
	And I think that would probably be quite frustrating for the child and quite frustrating for the parent.
	So that would be...
	And why would you...
	I mean, this is a lifelong relationship.
	And if you're a good parent, I mean, you're a parent until...
	And you're a parent intimately involved in your children's life and decisions until you fucking die.
	Yeah.
	Hopefully that's 50 years after they're born or whatever, right?
	40 years after they're born.
	So I don't think it's selfish to say I want as good a relationship as possible with my children.
	Therefore, I want to control the quality of their creation and I want to make sure I marry a woman who's smart and wise and healthy and all that.
	And we raise the kid to be smart and wise and healthy and we control the quality of the production of a kid.
	Because you're talking about a 40 or 50 year relationship.
	And so why wouldn't you want to have as much control over the quality of what you're creating and as much influence over the genetics of what you're creating?
	And that would seem to me to involve being a biological parent to a child with a woman of high quality.
	Sure.
	Now, if you care about the kids, fantastic.
	Then you can mentor a child.
	You can join Big Brothers.
	You can donate.
	There's a wonderful charity in Harlem that teaches good parenting to underprivileged parents and all that.
	So there's lots of great things that you can do to help out other kids.
	I mean, different to them.
	But if you care about poor people, that doesn't mean you have to invite three homeless people to come and live with you.
	Sure.
	It's not so much of like a have to or a should.
	It's more like if I meet a woman and she – and we get along really well and we're having great conversation and she's into a lot of the same things that I'm into in terms of not like she needs to be an anarchist or an atheist or anything like that but she's just kind of – But she can think.
	She can reason.
	Right.
	Right.
	Um, and, and then I come to find it's like, you know, she doesn't want to have kids or she, um...
	No, you don't, you know, you don't come to find that.
	Or she can't have kids.
	I mean, that's what you talk about at the beginning.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	And this is, this comes up at the beginning.
	So like, you know, like you don't, you don't take a job without, hang on, you don't take a job without discussing salary, right?
	Sure.
	And you don't get involved in a woman without discussing long-term goals.
	Right.
	Right.
	So, go ahead.
	Yeah, no, you're right.
	I guess I've sort of learned that recently, but I guess I'm looking for a way to decide or determine if I'm getting along really well with a woman, And she's got all the, you know, philosophical thinking goodies.
	And for example, she can't have a child for biological reasons.
	It feels like that desire in me is very strong to have a child.
	But it's like, Do I, you know, and I know that there's no right or wrong answer here, but I'm just, you know, kind of asking for your thoughts on it.
	Yeah, I mean, you're asking me, you know, whether you want to be with the woman with an adopted child or no child.
	I mean, I can't answer that because I don't know the degree of love and compatibility and all that.
	But, you know, and if you, of course, if you're very concerned, then you can...
	Go and get tested for fertility.
	I mean, you might be shooting blanks too.
	Who knows, right?
	So you can go and get a sperm count done.
	She can go and get an FSH test and so on.
	And you can, to some degree, determine fertility levels prior to getting married.
	And you can make your decision based on that if that's obviously very important to you.
	But I mean, obviously nobody can tell you whether it's worth staying with a woman who's infertile.
	I mean, that's up to your degree of love and passion and commitment and connection and so on, right?
	Sure.
	So, I guess...
	I don't know.
	I guess I'm sort of wondering, like, this need to have a child, I guess the reason why I'm concerned about it is, like, because it feels like a very strong need.
	So I'm wondering if this is sort of something that is...
	Like, people really, really want to have kids so that they could, like...
	Because, like, they—I don't know.
	Like, they want something to use as a poison container.
	I don't think that I want— Yeah, most people—most people don't really want to have kits.
	I mean, that we just know for a fact, right?
	So there's a list, and I've got—I think I put this in the Bomb and the Brain series, FDRURL.com forward slash BIB. But women were asked about what they like to do, and, like, I don't think spending time with their own children was even in the top ten.
	So most people don't actually really enjoy spending time with their children.
	And, you know, don't take my word for it or even the statistics.
	Just look around.
	You know, when you go out for dinner, do you see parents having great conversations with their children?
	Do you see them chatting and laughing and making jokes and talking about important things?
	Every single day, my daughter will come back with my wife.
	They've gone to a park and they will come back and my daughter will say, tell me about all your callers on the show.
	I want to know everything that you talked about on the show.
	And we will chat for an hour about...
	I translate things to age-appropriate levels and all that, but...
	We have great conversations about that.
	And, you know, so I like going to a restaurant, just myself and my daughter.
	And having, we call them sweet chats.
	Having just chats.
	And we'll just sit there, sit across from each other at a little two-person table.
	Or sometimes she'll sit on my lap.
	And we'll just chat about stuff.
	And it's really, really enjoyable.
	Sure, I can imagine.
	Yeah, she surprises me.
	She instructs me.
	She illuminates.
	She's perceptive.
	I mean, she's a fantastic person to have a conversation with.
	And if you doubt whether or not parents really enjoy the company of their children...
	Just go to a park and see how many of the parents are in there playing with their kids and having a lot of fun.
	You will see it occasionally, but it's rare.
	You know, when we go to a McDonald's play center, I mean, I'm the only parent who's up there organizing things with the kids.
	I was at a swimming pool yesterday with my daughter, and she's just learned how to jump into the pool without a swimming ring.
	It's very exciting to her.
	And there were like, I think, 12 or 14 kids who were sort of eight or nine years old.
	There were two boys and 10 or 12 girls.
	And my daughter wanted to play with them.
	So we went over and I organized a game.
	And for about an hour, we just had a blast playing a game.
	And it was, I mean, it was a huge, huge amount of fun.
	I mean, like, I wouldn't trade that, those two hours for like anything.
	That was just a complete blast.
	And my wife was there too.
	And it was so funny and so enjoyable.
	And that's like, boy, it just doesn't get better than that in terms of life.
	And so...
	And, you know, the parents were all like, wow, thank you for organizing that.
	It's like, well, don't thank me.
	I mean, that was hugely fun.
	And, you know, they're all sitting there on their cell phones and, you know, all that kind of stuff, right?
	And it's like, but these are your, I mean, my God.
	I mean, it's like going for dinner with, you know, with a date that you've wanted to date for a long time.
	And then you just spend the whole date browsing the web on your phone.
	It's like, what?
	I mean, anyway.
	So, you know, I think that if you just sort of look around...
	I think that you will see that there's not a lot of parents who seem to be really enjoying spending time with their children.
	I see a lot of irritation.
	I see a lot of short tempers.
	I see a lot of sit stills.
	I see a lot of basically giving the kids stuff to play with so the adults can talk.
	I see a lot of kids at restaurants sitting in their seats staring off into space while their parents talk.
	I don't see a lot of full engagement between parents and children, and I'm trying not to be biased or anything.
	I'm really looking for it, but I don't see it a lot.
	I see a lot of activities where parents are like, oh, I've got to get her out of the house.
	I had to get her to do something.
	She was driving me crazy or whatever, right?
	Anyway, that's just sort of my thoughts and observations.
	Sure.
	I actually met her daughter at a swimming pool at Porkfest last year, and I was like, yay, Steph's daughter!
	But...
	It's not that I don't believe you.
	Sorry, believe me about what?
	I said a lot.
	All of it or just some part of it?
	Oh, I'm going to go.
	Let me continue.
	Sorry.
	It's not that I don't believe that parents really don't want their kids.
	It's more like I question my own desire to have kids.
	It's like...
	Oh, why would you want to have kids, right?
	Yeah, and I remember you had a conversation with Daniel Mackler where he seemed kind of skeptical about you having a kid.
	Yeah, he's an antinatalist, right?
	I think he thinks that people shouldn't have children.
	Yeah.
	Which is sort of a desire for non-existence, right?
	Because he's only there to say that because his own parents had children.
	But anyway, go on.
	Okay.
	I don't want to open the lid on that.
	But...
	So, yeah, I mean, it's like, you know, I guess his position was sort of like, if you want to do good in the world, if you want to have great relationships, there's lots of people out there to have great relationships with.
	You could do more good.
	Like, you could reach more people and spread more truth by using your time and energy to just, I don't know, gallivant the world.
	I don't know.
	I mean I'm not talking about Daniel Mackler here, but this do shit for other people stuff, I just – I fundamentally don't believe it.
	Do you know why?
	I don't, but I'd like to hear it.
	Peter Joseph, he never made the point and I don't know what point he was trying to make.
	But he basically said if there's a disease that's killing 200,000 people in one country and 200 people in another, which do you cure?
	Now, I thought he meant the same disease, but I think he meant – like he said the same disease.
	I think he meant different disease, right?
	And I said, well, it depends, right?
	I mean, what if you are one of the people or blah, blah, blah, right?
	And he's like, well, obviously you'd do the 200,000.
	It's like, but that's not true.
	I mean, A, that's not true because lots of diseases that don't affect a lot of people get funding, right?
	I mean, otherwise, all funding would go to the very biggest disease and no other disease would ever get funding and that's just not the way the world works.
	The second is, did you know that if you die and they can harvest your organs, you will probably save the lives of seven people?
	I didn't know that.
	I have that filled out on my ID card.
	I just went to renew my driver's license and it said that.
	I can't remember if it saved or substantially improved, but I think it would save the lives of seven people on average.
	Your organs will save the lives of seven people.
	So anybody who says, well, you've got to do things for other people at your own expense, it's like you realize that by continuing to breathe, you are condemning seven people to death.
	So why don't you just go kill yourself in front of a hospital with a note saying, use my organs for others, and that way you've become a hero who saved the lives of seven people.
	But they won't do that, right?
	Right.
	So this idea that – well, the numbers – like there was some comment on the Zeitgeist debate they had, Zeitgeist versus the market, which I really, really urge people to watch.
	Grit your teeth and get through it.
	It's worth it.
	It's very instructive.
	Who was like, well, I would kill myself for 200,000 people if it meant that they could live and this and that and the other.
	And it's like, no, you don't.
	It's not a theoretical.
	You can go save the lives of seven people today.
	It just means you'll be dead.
	So you don't have to have this theoretical situation.
	Just go do it.
	Or give so much blood that you're dead.
	You can save the lives of one or two people, right?
	So this idea that people say, well, I would sacrifice myself for others.
	It's like there's nothing stopping you from doing that right now.
	And if you're not going to do that right now – well, if you are, this conversation is over because you're dead.
	And if you're not going to do this right now, then perhaps you'd kindly take a big glass of shut the hell up about sacrificing yourself to others because you're not doing it.
	Yeah.
	I think that – I'm not sure.
	I think Daniel Meckler's approach was more like – If your goal...
	Sorry, I don't want to get into Daniel Mackler.
	I like Daniel a lot.
	I think he does a lot of great stuff.
	So I don't want to get into his particular...
	I don't know what...
	And he's not here to defend his argument.
	I'm just talking about the argument in general that you should sacrifice yourself for others.
	That possibility is available to everyone 24-7.
	Right, but I don't think that's...
	And particularly if you're young and healthy.
	You know, I mean, there are people who just need...
	Need an eye.
	There are people who need a kidney.
	I mean, are you signing yourself up for that?
	Well, no.
	Most people don't do that.
	And so if you're not going to give your eyeballs and kidneys and all that to strangers, then don't talk about sacrifice for others.
	There's other ways of doing it.
	And sacrifice is a pretty gruesome thing.
	And it's pretty monstrous.
	Are you going to die to save other people and so on?
	Well, we don't have to.
	That's the point.
	I would not die to save people.
	What I would like to do is live a life of value, live a life of creating wealth, live a life of love and having positive effects on others so that they can live happy and rich lives.
	And through that creation of wealth and through the inculcation of generosity, charity will take care of what needs to be done.
	Generosity, brilliance, intelligence will take care of what needs to be done.
	Sacrifice yourself for some other kid.
	What if you give birth to the kid who cures cancer?
	And what if it's that specific gene, your gene and your wife's gene combined with your parenting and resources?
	That's what creates somebody who's smart and dedicated enough to cure cancer.
	And then if you went and took some other kid from some chaotic woman and man who had a kid without even knowing how to raise it, maybe then we don't get the cure for cancer.
	And maybe that's just a massive disaster for the world.
	Maybe your kid It's such a powerful artist and communicator that he or she creates the movie that puts the nail in the coughing of spanking and creates monstrous, astonishing good for the world.
	So the antinatalists, I don't know.
	What if you just raise a child of such quality?
	That she spreads benevolence and joy and courage to fight evil around the world.
	And if you adopted some kid, that that would not have happened.
	So this idea that, oh, well, you know ahead of time how things are going to be sacrificed or what the effect is going to be or what's good or what's bad.
	No, no, no, no, no.
	I mean, we don't know.
	And so I think that if we do that, which is virtuous, that results in the best thing.
	Now, it's not virtuous to have your own kid.
	It's not not virtuous to adopt someone else's kid or anything like that.
	But it is important that you be a happy parent.
	And that, I think, means controlling for quality and controlling for compatibility.
	And the best way to do that is to choose a quality woman who you love to death and have a child with her.
	That is the best way to be a happy parent and that is the best way to raise a happy child who's going to do great good in the world.
	So it's selfish, not selfish, sacrifice.
	I find people like that, not you, but people who make those kinds of arguments about sacrificing for others and doing things for us, they're just kind of creepy.
	And I always view them as hypocritical because they could kill themselves and their organs could be used to save the lives of seven people.
	But they're not doing that.
	They're just telling me everything I need to sacrifice.
	And I think that's just bullshit.
	And I think Ayn Rand hit the nail on the head when she wrote about those kinds of creeps.
	Again, I'm not putting you in that category.
	I'm just pointing it out.
	Sure.
	I just wanted to...
	Point out that those creeps were probably...
	They had to sacrifice themselves for other people as children.
	And that's sort of how they developed that train of thought.
	They had to give and not get anything back in return.
	Or kill themselves for other people.
	Yeah, I get it.
	The self-sacrifice creeps were raised by...
	Bad parents, absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	And now they're adults.
	And now they are responsible for what they're doing and what they're saying.
	They are responsible for not passing on the abuse.
	And the most dangerous abuse that is passed along is the philosophical abuse, the abuse of concepts, the abuse of virtue.
	That is the most dangerous stuff.
	I mean, a drunk can only terrorize a family.
	An ideologue can terrorize an entire nation, right?
	Like Lenin.
	And so, yeah, so they are responsible for what they do and what they communicate as adults.
	And so I don't give them a get-out-of-jail-free card for bad childhoods.
	That gets them a get-out-of-jail-free card when they're kids.
	But when they become adults, then they are responsible.
	Sure.
	And I don't… Just as their parents were.
	I don't mean to imply that they get a jail-out-of-jail-free card.
	I'm just saying that sort of the core, like the… No, no, no.
	The first thing you did there was to make an excuse for them.
	I don't think it was an excuse.
	Yes, it was an excuse.
	It was because you were saying they had a bad childhood, right?
	But they did.
	So what?
	So did I. There's no so.
	It's just a fact.
	Are you telling me that when I talk about people being creepy, self-sacrificing of others, and then the first thing you do is bring up their bad childhoods, that that's not anything exculpatory or anything to provide some sort of context that is supposed to reduce my negative judgment?
	To reduce your negative judgment...
	No, I think it's just opening up another aspect of that person.
	Like another aspect of where that comes from.
	No, no.
	What they say does not come from their bad childhoods.
	Bad childhood is not causal.
	Me pushing a rock down a cliff, that's causal.
	Because the rock has no free will.
	Right?
	So me pushing a rock down a cliff lands on your car, that's causal.
	I am 100% responsible for your car getting smashed with a rock, right?
	Bad childhoods do not cause toxic adults.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	That makes sense.
	Because we have some choice.
	No, no, this is an important topic.
	I'm very glad that you brought it up.
	Now, with the exception that, of course, if your parents batter you around the head to the point where your brain gets bruised and damaged, then yes, that is causal, right?
	And to the possible – and again, this is sort of the fuzzy edges, right?
	To the degree with which extreme, extreme abuse and deprivation in the first couple of years of life may end up with a brain that, as far as I understand it, can't be particularly helped, right?
	Some pure osteopathic brain or something like that.
	But for the most part, people do achieve responsibility as adults.
	And a bad childhood is not causal because there's so much that can be done.
	You know, it's like saying, well, I have a history of heart disease in my family, therefore it's causal.
	That causes me to have a heart attack in my 40s.
	No, it doesn't.
	Because if you know about the heart disease in your family, then you can take the extra steps necessary as best as you can to get yourself monitored, to adopt as heart-friendly a lifestyle as humanly possible, to not smoke, to not sit around, to not eat too much red meat.
	I don't know.
	I'm not a doctor.
	Whatever it is going to be, right?
	So then the fact that you have a history of heart disease is actually causal in you becoming healthier than the norm.
	Does that make sense?
	Because you've thought about it and you've reacted.
	But if you say, well, I have a history of heart disease, so I'm going to sit around, eat potato chips, never exercise.
	Well, look, I had a heart attack in my 40s.
	That's because of my history of heart disease in my family.
	No, it's not because of history of heart disease in your family.
	It's because what you did with your adult life, with your adult choices.
	Sure.
	So, I can understand like 200 years ago, sure.
	I mean, was it Wordsworth who was saying the child is father of the man?
	This sort of effect of childhood on adulthood has been known for thousands of years.
	But if you just sort of count the beginning of the psychological revolution from like 150 years ago or whatever, this stuff has been known for a century and a half.
	The childhood has a massive effect on adulthood and nobody can claim – I mean Dr.
	Phil is the number one show on daytime TV. Nobody can claim that they don't have any idea that a history of abuse is going to cause a higher possibility of repeating abuse as an adult.
	For people to not know that is as believable as people having no idea that smoking is bad for them.
	I mean it's just been so clearly explained and explicated for 150 years and in particular over the last 40 or 50 years.
	Since the 60s and since the self-help revolution of the 70s and all that, it's completely clear.
	Everybody knows if you had a bad childhood, you're likely to be a dysfunctional adult without significant intervention.
	And for people to not know that and not deal with it, They are completely responsible for that.
	Smokers 200 years ago, yeah, you could be forgiven for not knowing the causality.
	Smokers now can't really claim I had no idea that smoking was bad for me.
	I mean that would just be a silly claim to make, right?
	Sure.
	And people as adults, I mean they simply cannot claim anymore that they didn't know that a bad childhood might lead them to make bad decisions as an adult without intervention.
	So yeah, they – it's not causal.
	In fact, a bad childhood should be causal for you becoming healthier than the norm, right?
	So – or at least having healthier habits than the norm in the same way that if you have a history of heart disease, that should end up with you having heart-healthier habits than the norm, right?
	Sure.
	No, it's okay.
	Did you feel like I was condescending towards you in my comment?
	No, no, I didn't feel that it was condescending at all.
	It's just that...
	When I made a negative judgment, you stepped in with an excuse.
	And it's not understanding at all.
	I just – and you may be right.
	Maybe I'm completely – you got my head on my ass about this issue.
	But if we're going to say – see, here's the challenge.
	Just a rational challenge, right?
	If we're going to say that adults are less responsible for their bad childhoods, then there's a huge amount that we need to change with regards to children.
	Because whatever we reduce in terms of responsibility for adults, we have to reduce by about a thousandfold the responsibility for children.
	Because adults are way more responsible than children, right?
	I agree.
	Get off the hook to whatever degree for bad childhoods, then children get off the hook completely for what happens to them as children, which means we can't ever fail them in a test.
	We can't ever punish them.
	We can't ever speak negatively of them.
	We can't ever correct them because they're children.
	What people want to do – and I don't mean you – what people generally want to do is dial down responsibility for adults while still keeping it high for children.
	What I'm saying is that these two dials are not separate.
	Whatever you move by a millimeter for an adult, you move by a light year for a child.
	So if you move responsibility down for adults because of bad childhoods, then you have to much more passionately argue for no punishment of children in any way, shape or form.
	No negative consequences, no failing tests, no nothing.
	Because the children must be less, by definition, children must be less responsible than adults.
	And so if you dial down responsibility for adults, you have to dial it way, way, way down for children.
	And the interesting thing is that if you dial responsibility down for children, you actually dial it back up again for adults.
	Because if children should not be punished, but a childhood is defined as bad by excessive or abusive punishment, then if you dial responsibility down for a parent, it actually bounces way back up.
	If you dial responsibility down for an adult, then you have to dial it way down for children, which means children should never suffer any negative consequences for anything that they do.
	But the whole point of a bad childhood is you are suffering negative consequences for stuff that you do.
	So if you dial stuff down for the adult, you dial it way down for the parent, it bounces way back for any parent who punishes a child.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah, it does.
	I appreciate you...
	Explaining it, because I know you've said a couple of times that you don't mean me, but it could be me.
	Because I don't...
	I do tend to focus on, like...
	When someone is obviously displaying signs of childhood abuse, there is a tendency in me to...
	Forget about what they're doing now and talk to them about what, like, forget about the behavior now and just focus on the reason why that behavior is there.
	Well, it depends, because if what they're displaying is abuse that they've received, which results in dysfunction in the here and now that's not abusive, that's one thing, right?
	Right, so the guy called in earlier who said, I'm living in my car and so on.
	I mean, he's not abusing anyone, at least to my knowledge.
	So we can talk about his childhood.
	But when people call in and say, I had a bad childhood and I'm now hitting my children, what do I say?
	Stop hitting your children.
	Yeah, that's not an excuse.
	Don't give me that.
	You are hitting your children because you have chosen to hit your children.
	It is not the cause.
	It does not result from your childhood.
	Sure.
	It results from you not having dealt with your childhood, and I'm sorry for the childhood, but you cannot hit your children.
	That is a violation of the non-aggression principle, and there's no excuse called, I had a bad childhood, which gets you off the hook for hitting your children.
	And that's true in law, too.
	I mean, a guy who beats his wife who says, well, I grew up watching my father beat my mother, does he get out of jail?
	No, but I mean, we're talking about the state legal system here.
	No, but even in common law, even in common law.
	There's no excuse called I had a bad childhood for any crime that I know of.
	And that develops out of the common law, which is that you simply cannot create an excuse.
	Now, you can have sympathy for somebody who had a bad childhood, but that does not mean that what they're doing is any less bad.
	In fact, if somebody was hit as a child and is hitting their own children, it's even worse in a way because they know how bad it is to be hit.
	Because they were.
	Right.
	It's just that I found personally that taking that approach of, you know, you're hitting your kids and that's bad and you should stop because it's...
	And basically break down why it's bad and what the effects are.
	It's, it could raise defenses in people more so than sort of just skipping over that and going to the root of it, which is, like, it's kind of unimportant.
	Like, it's important to me and other people, but to that person that I'm, if I'm trying to help them, it's...
	No, no.
	You're not trying to help them.
	You're trying to help their children.
	First and foremost, right?
	You want to help their children.
	Because the children are being hit, right?
	And the best way to help people who are doing wrong things is you tell them that it's completely wrong.
	It's absolutely unacceptable.
	In most countries, it's illegal.
	And if they've hit their children in the face or hit their children with implements, they are actually criminals.
	And that is completely unacceptable.
	Now, then, you know, your history and your childhood and go to therapy and deal with it and so on, right?
	But you got to put that like, this is absolutely wrong.
	Absolutely unacceptable.
	It's immoral behavior.
	It's abusive behavior.
	That has to be clear.
	Because it's true.
	Sure.
	And I think that that could be made clear.
	By talking about the person's childhood.
	Like, what was done to you was not right and wrong.
	Like, forget about what you're doing now.
	But why does it have to be one or the other?
	All hitting of children.
	I mean, I'm a UPB guy.
	All hitting of children is wrong.
	It was wrong for you to be hit as a child, and it's wrong for you to hit your children.
	Sure.
	It's just that it raises defenses in people.
	So it's sometimes beneficial to focus on not talking about what they're doing with their children, but just talk about the, I guess, children in general, or what was done to them as a child.
	OK. Look, I mean I don't want to get into a particular debate about strategy.
	If that's what you're more comfortable with and if that's what works for you, I'm certainly not going to tell you that's bad, right?
	I mean the fact that you're having conversations with people about this in any way, shape or form I think is fantastic and I'm not going to necessarily get into a debate about strategy because maybe it's better for you to do it that way.
	I don't think there's any studies or proof either way but I have my approach and you have yours.
	I know that my approach works at least to a large degree because I get letters all the time from people saying, hey, man, I got what you're saying.
	I stopped titting my kids.
	However, I mean, I do it in a less confrontational way because it's usually some presentation that they saw or some conversation they listened to.
	Direct one-on-one, maybe you're right.
	Maybe your approach is better.
	So I don't certainly want to disagree with you on that because I don't have any facts to back up anything objective that I would say.
	Sure, and I think your approach is great, and of course you do a lot of good for children through your podcasts and all the work that you do, and I didn't call to debate you.
	I was really just calling to get your perspectives and point of view, so I think we might have gone off on a tangent a bit.
	There are no tangents.
	There are no tangents.
	That's what we needed to talk about in our conversation, I wouldn't say.
	It's necessarily a tangent.
	Well, that's what I'll name my second born.
	There are no tangents after Frida Maine Radio number seven.
	So, yeah, I think I appreciate the insights that you put forward on the topic, and I'm going to think it over and see how I can apply that to the way that I'm viewing, you know, having a child or adoption or women.
	Listen, I want to point out, Stephen, that your...
	Your kid's going to be lucky.
	And I think that the care and thought and attention that you're putting into being a father and the care and thought and attention that you're putting into building a family life and the fact that you're thinking about this stuff ahead of time is fantastic.
	And I just really wanted to point out that it is a very important job that you're thinking about taking on and your kid's going to be very lucky and this is going to pay off in a beautiful way.
	So I really wanted to point that out.
	Thanks, Steph.
	Tears are coming to my eyes now.
	Beautiful.
	That's very nice of you to say.
	I really appreciate that.
	And, yeah, I guess I can't think of anything else.
	I think you hit the points that I was trying to go for, so I appreciate it.
	And I guess I'm the last caller, so I hope you enjoy the rest of your day.
	I certainly will.
	Thank you, everybody, so much for calling.
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