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Oct. 13, 2013 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

03:01:25

2506 Victims as Victimizers - Sunday Call In Show October 13th, 2013

Parental responsibility, the difficulty in seeing victims as victimizers, change coming from within communities, historical philosophers, the mecosystem, respecting your elders, internal critics as external protectors, religious libertarians, sympathetic witnesses as the cure to evil and being weighed down by history.

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	Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
	It is Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Made Radio.
	Hope you're doing well this fine, well, not that fine, kind of rainy, cloudy Sunday the 13th of October 2013.
	No particular news and weather, just continuing to plug away on the documentary.
	I spent a good portion of the weekend Making funny noises, making funny sounds, and we're going to be layering those into the background, somewhat audibly, but it should give a slight Monty Python-esque comedic element to certain sections of the documentary,
	because Lord knows, dealing with the death and decline of Western civilization can use a few laughs, sort of reminded of what What was it Gandhi said?
	Somebody said, what do you think of Western civilization?
	He said, I think it would be a good idea.
	So, yeah, thanks so much for listening.
	Of course, thanks so much for your donations.
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	That is appropriate for us.
	We would really appreciate that.
	Upvoting and positive reviews is very helpful.
	There's a reason why they put it on movie posters, and I would like to get them all tattooed on my forehead.
	Ah, yes, I think there's room.
	All right, Mike, I believe we have, in fact, shaking the trees, and we have veritable bushels of listeners calling this morning, so let's start with number one.
	All right, Jan, you're up first today.
	Go ahead.
	Hello, Stef.
	Can you hear me?
	I can.
	Go ahead.
	Oh, yeah.
	It's an honor to participate in your show, so I'm very glad for that.
	Thank you.
	I have been listening to your show now for half a year, and there's so many topics that I find very interesting, and you add so much more to them, and I think a lot about this.
	Just to follow up on a question that I've been thinking about is that you say that parents are 100% responsible for Their actions and their children are 0% responsible.
	And to me, that's kind of hard because my parents, they were maybe more traumatized by their parents than I've been.
	So I've had a really hard time confronting them with their shortcomings.
	So I would like your view of that.
	I think that's a great question.
	So the question, of course, is if my parents were harmed as children, then the resulting dysfunctions in their parenting, are they responsible for them?
	And the first standard that I would put forward is, did your parents, when you were children, assign responsibility to you for your behavior?
	Of course.
	Well, no, I mean, I guess theoretically it might not be the case.
	But of course, if you didn't assign a child responsibility for his behavior, then you couldn't punish that child.
	So your parents, at what age did they start assigning responsibility to you for your behavior?
	Maybe around three or four.
	Okay, okay, great.
	And how old were your parents roughly when they began assigning you responsibility for your behavior?
	Twenty-eight.
	Okay, so let's say more or less they were ten times your age, right?
	Yeah.
	Can you conceive of a rational philosophy wherein you would assign a three-year-old more responsibility than a thirty-year-old?
	Not really, but I don't see it as they ever had a fair chance in developing that Pattern of behavior.
	Well, no, no, no, no.
	Sorry.
	I just said this is the first way that I would look at it.
	I didn't say it was the only way or the final way, but it's the first way.
	This is not the be-all and end-all.
	What I'm saying, though, is that if you assign responsibility to a three-year-old, then you have established many, many, many, many, many times greater responsibility for yourself.
	You understand that rationally, that would follow, right?
	Yep.
	Like you can't say to a three-year-old, well, you're three and your brain is still 22 years away from maturity.
	I control your entire environment.
	You have no independence.
	Your brain is still like a half the size it's going to be when you grow up.
	You have no economic or legal independence of any kind.
	You have no money of your own, no house of your own, no options of your own.
	But you have more responsibility than I do.
	That could never follow, right?
	No.
	So, your parents, whatever their traumas, your parents fully accepted personal responsibility for behavior.
	Because whatever you inflict on a three-year-old, you inflict infinitely greater upon yourself, right?
	Yeah.
	Now, I would argue that no matter what traumas your parents experienced as children...
	It did not leave them with less freedom and less responsibility and less independence and fewer choices than a three-year-old.
	Would you agree with that?
	Yeah.
	Right.
	So, if your parents punished you for what they claimed you were responsible for as a three-year-old, and since they, at the age of 30 or so, Had infinitely greater freedoms and choice and independence, then they are infinitely more responsible for what they did to you when you were three than whatever you did when you were three.
	Does that sort of follow?
	Oh yeah.
	So trauma is definitely something I hugely sympathize with, right?
	I hugely, hugely sympathize with it.
	But trauma increases Responsibility.
	It does not decrease responsibility.
	And let me give you, it's an analogy I've used before, but I'll mention it here briefly.
	So if you knew that in your family, men tended to die of heart attacks in their 40s, and you knew that, what would you do?
	Take extra good care of my heart.
	Of course you would.
	You'd sit down with the doctor and you'd say, hey, you know what?
	My family, they tend to do this like a Ridley Scott alien exploding out of the chest thing when they're in their 40s.
	So, Doc, what can I do to make sure that this doesn't – I have the least chance of this recurring for me?
	And as a result, you may end up and you probably will end up healthier than the average person, right?
	Yeah.
	And now, do you think that there's anyone of reasonable intelligence who doesn't know that a traumatized childhood can lead to some problems in adulthood?
	No, everybody knows that.
	Everybody knows that.
	I mean, this is literally thousands of years old.
	Shakespeare wrote about it, the ancient Greeks wrote about it, and even the modern discipline of psychology, which you could really date back to Sort of mid to late 19th century Vienna is 150 years old or whatever.
	The studies have been out for over 100 years.
	So this is even much better established than the link between smoking and lung cancer.
	The link between smoking and lung cancer was only really effectively studied and propagated in society in like the 60s, right?
	But this childhood trauma stuff...
	The child is the father of the man.
	Wrote, I think it was Wordsworth, many years ago.
	So, the link between childhood trauma and adult dysfunction is one of the most established foundational canons of human thought.
	Right?
	Socrates is know thyself, know thy history.
	And so, Is there anyone who had a traumatized childhood who can claim a lack of responsibility based upon a lack of knowledge?
	Because if somebody has a lack of knowledge and says, well, I'm not responsible for what I did as an adult because of what happened to me as a child, can they then inflict responsibility on a child?
	Absolutely not.
	Can they punish a child without inflicting responsibility on that child?
	Absolutely not.
	Can someone claim that they didn't know their child abuse?
	Was going to cause them problems as an adult?
	Absolutely not.
	You see, the responsibility for getting help with childhood issues at this point, that the fulcrum tipped decades and decades ago, you are more responsible as an adult For the dysfunctions you inflict on others as a result of unprocessed child abuse than at any other time in history.
	It does not decrease adult responsibility.
	It increases it in the same way that if you know that your male heirs, sorry, your male ancestors tend to die of heart attacks in their 40s and you know that and it's all clear and it's causal, why then?
	You are more responsible, not less responsible.
	Like, if you know all of that and then you say, well, I'm doomed to die of a heart attack in my 40s, I'm not going to take any steps to avoid it.
	In fact, if anyone suggests that I should get some help to avoid dealing with this reality, Of the genetic or heritable heart condition in my family.
	If somebody suggests I do get help with that, I'm going to viciously attack that person.
	What you would say to somebody who said that or who did that, what you would say is, well, clearly, you just want to die, right?
	Because you know what the problem is.
	You know exactly at least the steps to take to begin to solve the problem.
	Go talk to a heart specialist.
	Go talk to a nutritionist.
	Go talk to an exercise person.
	But if somebody says, well, I am damn well not going to even admit, even though I've been told many times, I'm not going to admit that there's any heart problems in my family.
	And anyone who suggests I get help from my heart problems is an asshole who I'm going to attack.
	You would say, well, you just want to die.
	And so for parents who had themselves traumatic childhoods and who've not sought help, and the help to seek is not that complicated, Mind you, statistically, a competent therapist, a talk therapist, is the best way to deal with these issues that I know of.
	Again, these according to the studies that I've looked at, the experts that I've had on the show, Gabriel Disher, who you can, D-I-C-H-T-E-R, you can do a search for his interview on my show, has, I think, fairly conclusively given a strong, strong case for talk therapy.
	Talk therapy is definitely in the popular idiom.
	It's in Woody Allen movies.
	I mean, the longest-running sitcom character in the history of television, I believe, was Dr.
	Fraser Crane, who gave psychological advice or psychiatric advice on a radio station in Seattle for a good run of that show.
	You've got Gabriel Byrne in Therapy.
	A series, I think, that originated out of Israel.
	You have, gosh, there was that Mary Tyler Moore and Donald Sutherland movie where Judd Hirsch played an extraordinarily untidy therapist.
	You've got Good Will Hunting where Robin Williams plays a therapist to the young and scintillatingly great Matt Damon.
	This just goes on and on.
	This is not a mystery.
	This is not something that people aren't aware of.
	And so, to parents who themselves had traumatized histories and who then have children without processing that trauma, who then inflict trauma upon their children with full knowledge of the fact that therapy is available, the fact that most insurance companies will give you some therapy sessions for free, for free!
	It means that they just have made that choice To inflict their trauma on their helpless children rather than deal with the issue.
	See, there's one thing if you say, well, I'm not going to get treatment for my heart condition or my genetic or potentially genetic or heritable heart condition, at least then it's just you that dies.
	But, of course, if you don't process your childhood and you end up inflicting it on helpless, independent children, well...
	That's a different matter.
	Then you just say, all you've basically said is, I don't want to go through the discomfort of dealing with what happened to me as a child.
	I find that a little uncomfortable, a little inconvenient.
	I could go to free therapy if I have any kind of workplace insurance or any kind of insurance for these issues.
	I could go to therapy, but that's a little uncomfortable for me.
	And you know what?
	There's something really great on TV tonight.
	And I'd like to go to a disco and there's a good movie that's opening up.
	And there's a great restaurant that serves fantastic Thai food.
	I just, I've never gone there.
	So I just, I don't quite have time to go and deal with my childhood stuff.
	Even though I'm fully knowledgeable of what'll happen if I don't.
	Even though I'm fully knowledgeable of what therapy is if I've watched even any of these shows or any of these movies.
	So this is not a huge mystery.
	And I'm just talking about the tip of the iceberg.
	There's literally hundreds and hundreds of movies that have been very popular which depict Therapy in what I would assume is a fairly reasonable way.
	And so I just have made that decision to not deal with any of this stuff.
	And instead, you see what I'm going to do, is I'm just going to scream at and hit and abuse and bully my helpless, dependent, tenderhearted children.
	And so the idea that if you have had trauma, then you have less responsibility is quite the opposite.
	If you've seen...
	Like half of your relatives die painful deaths from lung cancer, then you are more responsible for your choice to smoke, not less.
	Does that make any sense?
	Yeah, of course.
	Well, you say of course, but it might not.
	This is part of the issue actually, because to me everything like this is obvious, but for my parents it obviously wasn't that obvious for them.
	Wait, wait, wait.
	How do you know it wasn't obvious for them?
	It's hard to tell.
	It just don't seem like they sort of see in that way.
	But for me, I see everything that me and my brother is not getting.
	I see that I want to provide that for my own children.
	That's fantastic and that's incredibly noble and that's very responsible.
	But I was always told, and this is the way I was raised in school and in culture.
	Did you ever hear this tasty little phrase from authority?
	It says, ignorance of the law is no excuse.
	Did you ever hear that?
	Not quite like that.
	But the idea is that just because you don't know that something is illegal, it doesn't mean that you are not fully responsible for breaking the rule.
	Oh, yeah, yeah.
	Right?
	Yes.
	And so ignorance of the law is no excuse.
	And if your parents...
	Remain ignorant of decent or best parenting practices, I don't see how that excuses anyone from anything.
	I mean, if I'm blind and I just decide to get into a car and hit the gas, am I responsible for the resulting damage?
	Yes, you are.
	And do I get to then say, well, but officer, I can't see.
	How can you expect me to drive well?
	What would the officer say?
	Oh, that's a great point.
	I didn't realize you were blind.
	Off you go.
	Let me top that gas up for you to make sure that you don't have to stop again for anything other than mangled baby carriages and shredded cyclists, right?
	He would say, look, you know that you're blind.
	You got into a car and you hit the gas.
	The fact that you're blind is exactly why you shouldn't get into a car.
	And if you've had a bad childhood and you make the very specific set of choices that are necessary to become a parent, right?
	You have to meet someone, date someone.
	I assume your parents are married.
	You've got years and years from the age of sexual maturity to the time that you have children.
	You said your parents had children when they were 25.
	Most people reach sexual maturity in their early teens.
	And so even if we just say from the age of 18, To the age of 25, that's seven years wherein your parents had some idea that they may want to have children.
	Your parents met, they dated, they got engaged, they got married, they decided to have children, they had unprotected sex, maybe a whole series of unprotected sex in order to have children, which is even more of a conscious motive and motivation and sequence than a blind guy getting into a car and hitting the gas, right?
	Yeah.
	And so parents who...
	Like, if I decide to get into a tractor and I don't know what the hell I'm doing and I push a bunch of random buttons and hit a bunch of pedals, then, I mean, I'm obviously responsible for doing something without knowing how to do it.
	Now, parenting is something that we need to know how to do.
	I mean, it's the most important job that there is.
	And the funny thing is, you know, I mean, I've heard stories...
	I'm sorry for giving such a speech, but I've heard stories on this show of people whose dad would yell at them for not trimming a hedge correctly.
	Call them stupid.
	Get really angry at them.
	Make their day completely shitty when they were like 10 or whatever, right?
	And so what the father is saying, basically, is it's really important to do a good job, son.
	You've got to do a good job.
	None of this half-assed stuff.
	You've got to do a good job.
	Okay, well, what's more important, raising a child or trimming a hedge?
	If the good job, if the perfectionism, if the high standards are so important, well, People are responsible for becoming parents and not knowing how to parent.
	People are responsible for having had bad childhoods and not dealing with those childhoods before becoming a parent.
	Nobody puts a gun to your head and makes you become a parent.
	It's absolutely people's choice.
	You know, rape victims excluded, I'm going to assume that was not the condition or the situation in your family.
	So, I don't see how Your parents aren't actually more responsible than the average because they actually lived through bad childhoods.
	And I don't see...
	Now, we can say, okay, well, your parents just weren't responsible.
	Well, then what other consequences does this lack of responsibility incur, right?
	So if your parents were incompetent to choose to raise children and how to raise children, Then should we strip them of their right to sign contracts?
	Should we also strip them of their right to vote?
	Should we strip them of their right to live independently?
	Should they be put into a home?
	But no!
	They would be rail against that.
	So what they want is, I'm not responsible just in this area, but I still want to be able to drive a car and have a job and sign contracts and have a credit card and vote and all these kinds of things, right?
	It's like, okay, well then you are responsible.
	If you want all the trappings of adult responsibility, except for the one where you have to be a good parent, well, I think you know what my opinion of that Weasley sophistry is.
	But anyway, that's enough for me.
	Tell me what you think.
	No, I totally agree.
	This is exactly how I see it, but I've always been wondering why my parents don't actually see it like that.
	You're not wondering that really, are you?
	No, we never really talked about this.
	I've just tried to actually avoid that issue and just try to make it work for myself.
	Well, yeah, I mean, I'm sure you would like to talk about the issue.
	I would imagine that it's your parents who want to avoid that issue, right?
	Yeah, that might be true.
	Do you think it might be true?
	Come on.
	Of course it's true.
	It would be advantageous for you to talk to your parents about this, but I would imagine it's not particularly advantageous for your parents for you to talk about this with them, right?
	No, I think that this will bring them back to a painful part of their lives, and I think they have a strong feeling of doing this, but since we never spoke of it before, it's pretty hard to just make it Part of a natural conversation.
	Wait, so if your father or your mother, if they broke his or her leg and then they were going to walk with a huge limp unless they went to somewhat uncomfortable physiotherapy, do you think they would then choose to walk with a limp?
	No.
	They would go and get the physiotherapy and they would go, right?
	I mean, so the idea that your parents are Averse to discomfort for the sake of health is false, right?
	Yeah.
	So, the idea that it will take them to a painful place.
	Pain is not the worst.
	Irredeemable guilt, I think, is the worst, which is why I've studiously avoided it my whole life long.
	Irredeemable guilt.
	And it's not to say that I've never done wrong, but I have certainly tried to do restitution wherever I have done wrong.
	And the wrongs that I have done have generally not been because I have been avoiding knowledge.
	I think I've worked pretty assiduously to act in a forthright and upright manner, perhaps even noble manner, Certainly, I think I can be more charitably be given the label of making mistakes because I do seek to gain knowledge and act accordingly, which is why I come from one of the worst parent marriages in the history of the known universe and now have had a very happy marriage and relationship with my wife for 12 years.
	Why I come from some of the worst parenting in the known universe to being a very peaceful, positive, loving Parents and all of that.
	I mean, this is just what you do.
	I'm a much better parent than I would have been if I hadn't been raised so badly, just as you, if you had a history of heart disease, would be a healthier person as a result of that knowledge.
	And I do not and will not dehumanize others.
	I will not and do not take away moral responsibility from all but the insane and completely feeble-minded.
	I won't do it.
	There is no amount of contempt in me.
	There's no depths of contempt in me that will strip other people of moral responsibility, no matter how desperately they may want to.
	And by far, the vast majority of evil in this world is committed because people will willingly strip moral responsibility from other people.
	Oh, you're a soldier.
	Well, you were just following orders.
	Well, you're a prison guard.
	Well, you don't make the rules.
	You just enforce them.
	Oh, well, you're a parent who was abusive, but you had a bad childhood, right?
	Oh, you're a single mom?
	Well, you know, the guy left you.
	It wasn't your fault for choosing a guy who was going to leave you.
	Oh, you're a single mom and the deadbeat isn't paying his child support.
	It's not your fault for deciding to have unprotected sex with the deadbeat and not giving the child up for adoption.
	That's not your fault, honey.
	They'd be just not paying.
	Poor thing.
	Here.
	Here's some money.
	Like, I won't do it.
	I won't do it.
	I cannot treat adults like children, and I cannot treat children like adults.
	I just can't do it.
	I can't do it, because that is an argument for totalitarianism.
	The moments that you say to people, well, you know, you're not responsible for your decisions.
	I will cover The costs of your mistakes.
	You are treating them like dim-witted children.
	And the moment you start treating people like dim-witted children, you open the gates to totalitarianism, to central planning, to fascism, to a government that orders people around.
	Now, of course, people are desperate to avoid the consequences of their decisions, their bad decisions.
	Of course they are.
	Of course they are.
	You know, people want to Want to smoke and then they want other people to pay for their treatments.
	Of course they do.
	We are advantage-seeking mammals.
	And so naturally, people will want to do that.
	Like, do you know that the average working week for a household of poor people in the United States, in other words, the average amount that both parents work in a household classified as under the poverty line in America Most two parents would work 80 hours a week.
	Most one-parent households will work 40 hours a week.
	The average amount of work that the parents do in a poor household in America is 16 hours a week.
	16 hours a week.
	In fact, if only one person who was an adult in a poor household got a full-time job, 75% of those households would no longer be poor.
	And so poor people are like, well, I don't really like working.
	And sure, when you're poor and you have low skills, working kind of sucks.
	Because the jobs that are available to you, when you are that way inclined or you are that way, they're pretty crappy jobs.
	I know.
	I had 15 years of those jobs.
	Waiter.
	I cleaned people's offices.
	I had a paper route.
	I painted plaques.
	I worked in a bookstore.
	I mean, I worked in a hardware store.
	I mean, they're crappy jobs.
	Got it.
	Got it.
	And so people don't want to work them, so they want to work these 16 hours a week.
	And then they say, oh my goodness, I'm poor.
	It's like, well, yeah, that's because you're not working very much.
	This is not all the poor, of course, right?
	This is just average.
	And so people are like, I don't want to.
	I don't want to have those stinky jobs.
	I get it.
	I get it.
	I didn't want to have them either.
	But I took them, and I worked.
	And now I'm not poor anymore.
	Because I worked.
	And people say, well, I don't want to work.
	Okay, don't work, but then you're going to be poor.
	No, I want welfare.
	I want food stamps.
	I want free health care.
	I want, I want, I want.
	It's like, well, then, I mean, shouldn't you in general at least start to work for those things?
	No.
	Right?
	And I just, like, I can't.
	I can't look at the poor people and say, well, you're not responsible for what you do.
	Because the consequences of that are that they need to be institutionalized, that more intelligent people, more free people, more free will people, more responsible people need to take care of these poor little helpless infants.
	And I don't want that society where we say to people, well, you're not competent to live your life, you're not competent to make your own decisions, and you're not competent to reap the rewards or the punishments of what you sow.
	You are.
	I'm going to shield you from the consequences of your own actions, and I'm not going to call you a human being with choices.
	I'm going to call you a victim of circumstances, of class, of capitalism, of structural violence, of whatever.
	Whatever you want to invent that strips people of their free choice and their free will and their moral responsibility.
	Okay, well, then people don't have moral responsibility, but obviously some people do.
	And therefore, in the sort of platonic republic-style society, The philosopher kings need to herd up the ignorant masses and put them in camps full of rubber rooms and soft toys so they don't hurt themselves too much.
	I can't do that.
	I cannot open the gates to totalitarianism, to communism, to fascism, to RBE, by stripping people of their moral responsibility, particularly when those selfsame people hellishly inflict moral responsibility on children.
	I can't treat people as children who treat children as adults.
	I won't do it.
	So, as far as your parents go, yeah, of course they don't want to have the consequences of what they did return to them.
	Of course not.
	You know, a kid with his hand in the cookie jar will pretend he dropped a ball in there.
	I mean, lying to avoid the effects of what you do is natural.
	And people do it to see if it works.
	The other day my daughter, I was holding two things and she sort of ran in to give me a hug and ran straight into my groin.
	And normally I'm like down there shielding myself like I've got the permanent cup hands, you know.
	It's the no sibling constant assault on the nads that children do.
	And so I said, Isabel, what are you doing?
	Why would you just run into me like that?
	My hands were full.
	And she said, it was an accident.
	It wasn't an accident.
	She's lying through her lovely little teeth.
	I get it.
	It's what people do.
	They made bad decisions, harmful decisions, and then they want to be stripped of the responsibility for those consequences.
	Of course they do.
	And then they want to claim consequences and responsibility and freedom in every other aspect of their life.
	And if you go to them and you say, Well, okay, if you weren't responsible for becoming a parent, and you weren't responsible for not processing your child, and if you weren't responsible for abusing your kids, and if you weren't responsible for all the choices that you made in those areas, and you weren't responsible for having children, then you are not responsible.
	And if you're not responsible, then you can't be free.
	Because freedom is the privilege of responsibility.
	But then you start to take away their freedoms because they're not responsible, and they say, hey, what do you mean?
	Okay, I can be a shitty parent and abuse my kids, but obviously I get to vote on foreign policy.
	Obviously I get to vote on Obamacare.
	Obviously I get to vote on the national debt.
	Obviously I get to vote on Social Security.
	Obviously I get to vote on far-reaching and widely consequential social, economic, educational, and fiscal policies.
	I'm responsible for that.
	I'm just not responsible for yelling at and hitting my children.
	Well, I mean, you get that's nonsense, right?
	Of course they want to avoid the consequences of doing bad things.
	I mean, that's why most bank robbers don't turn themselves in, right?
	Right?
	Because they don't want to get caught.
	They work very hard to not get caught because they want to avoid the consequences of the wrongs that they've done, of course.
	And it's up to you whether you allow that.
	But if you allow that, if you allow for people who do harm, particularly harm to children, to escape the consequences of their actions, Well, you're colluding.
	You're enabling.
	And you are contributing to the cycle that tends to make these things possible.
	With the due respect and caveat that I hear your commitment to not repeat that to your children, which I think is wonderful, is fantastic, noble, heroic, and good for you.
	Does that help?
	I'm not saying this is all the final answers, but I think these are reasonable perspectives to start from.
	No, I really respect your view, so I think it's very nice to get to discuss this specific question since it is important to me.
	So I'm very grateful for that.
	You're welcome, and congratulations on identifying it.
	I would strongly suggest you sit down with your parents and be honest with them because I don't know how you can be really honest with people when there's huge elephants in the room that everyone's stepping around.
	That, of course, is your choice.
	But thank you so much for bringing up a question that is certainly oft-repeated and very seductive for people.
	We feel the yearning of irresponsible people to escape the consequences of their irresponsibility.
	That's natural.
	But I think we need to resist it.
	Thank you so much, Mike, if we can move on to the next call.
	Alright, Rose, you're up next, Rose.
	Go ahead.
	Hi, how are you?
	I'm very well, Rose.
	How are you doing?
	I'm doing well, too.
	Thank you.
	Hey, I just wanted to let you know I've been vegan for like six months.
	I will not give you all the credit because I've seen all those movies so many times, but it was the cows because I really like cows and cow stuff.
	And I was like, I never realized that they did that, the cows.
	And then after that, I was done.
	And I thought it would be hard.
	But turns out it wasn't, so six months.
	Weird.
	And how do you feel?
	Do you notice any big changes in your energy, in your body, and any of that?
	You know, initially, you know, I don't perspire as much, and my bursitis went away.
	Oh, that's a joint inflammation, is that right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	I had bursitis.
	You don't sweat as much.
	Boy, that's good.
	I could use me some more of that.
	I tend to be a bit of a human sprinkler, so...
	Like, you see these videos where I've got these pit stains.
	I'm just sitting there chatting with someone, but it's so much work.
	It's like I've just climbed Mount Everest in a sauna.
	Anyway, so...
	I know.
	That's fantastic.
	Yeah, I went to Tom's.
	I was like, oh, wow, I don't have to use the ones that always have aluminum in it, you know, antiperspirant.
	I was like, hey, I'm not going back.
	Yeah, that's my choice in my household is antiperspirant or a continual stream of laundry that never ends.
	That just doesn't seem to be much around.
	I have to mop.
	I have this little stationary bike machine, which I use, of course, for exercise.
	And I have to mop around it sometimes.
	Anyway, I've got a sweat moat around it.
	But anyway, we don't have to get into the gruesome details of my physiology.
	But that's great.
	Good for you.
	Thanks.
	Hey, I guess to sort of go on what your other caller was talking about, but, you know, where he said he was trying to talk to his parents about it.
	But in my case, like, there's me and my sister...
	And we were raised by our mom.
	But she is and still is an illogical person.
	So there is no way to ever bring up any of these subjects with her because it's just, I don't know, it just seems like it's impossible to have a logical, you know, meaning or conversation.
	No, I am serious!
	Let me ask you a question, my dear Rose.
	Is your mother consistently illogical?
	In other words, is she continually illogical or consistently illogical about the same topics?
	I guess I need more of what's considered topics.
	Okay, so let's say you bring up issues about your childhood.
	Is it random?
	Is it like rolling a dice half the time you can talk about it in a positive and productive manner and half the time you can't?
	And sometimes when you bring up the weather, half the time she gets really offended and upset, and half the time she's happy to talk about it.
	No, no, she's not.
	Ah!
	No, she's not that way.
	So she's not logical.
	Alright, so then I'll explain it in another pattern, where when we grew up, it wasn't like she was the...
	You could go to her to ask her advice or she would help you do stuff.
	It was pretty much my sister and myself.
	Do I want to go to college?
	What are the options?
	Mom, she's got nothing for me.
	What do you mean?
	She wouldn't talk about it?
	No.
	She would say she wants you to go to school, but as far as saying, well, where should I go?
	What should I take?
	Should I go?
	How much debt?
	Nothing.
	There's nothing.
	Even as far as filling out the applications...
	You know, we got student loans.
	Mine has been paid off for years.
	My sister's still paying on hers.
	You know, all those things, you know, as far as asking for advice, what should I do?
	She offers platitudes and cliches.
	There is no, there was none of that, you know, back and forth or conversation of any kind.
	Okay, so I don't understand how that's...
	I mean, I'm sorry for that.
	I certainly should have had guidance.
	And of course, your mom doesn't need to have gone to college in order to provide you guidance about going to college, right?
	Because there's a whole series of steps and things that even a person of average intelligence can figure out as to whether it's worth it and debt and paybacks and so on.
	So I don't see the illogic yet, but I'm certainly happy to keep listening until we kick it over.
	Okay.
	Well, so...
	Even today, we don't really have that type of relationship.
	We'll just talk about things.
	What type?
	You're trying to slip something by me here, I feel.
	I don't want to say she doesn't love us.
	She's there for the affection side of it, but all the rest, there really is nothing there.
	Again, that's far too vague for me to make any hit or tail of if you don't mind me saying so.
	Okay, well what do you talk about with your mom?
	So you have a Sunday dinner, right?
	No, she's in Pittsburgh and I'm in Virginia.
	Okay, so you're somewhere else.
	But when you get together for whatever, right?
	What do you chat about?
	Work, my dog, like a book I read.
	We'll talk about my sister.
	I'll talk about my nephew.
	Things like that.
	All right.
	And what is the, I guess, the content of these things?
	Because, you know, talking about work is, you know, can be anything from I have an ethical issue at work to I can't believe this woman who works next to me is always late, right?
	I mean, it could be any number of things.
	So what is the, I guess, the emotional or conceptual content in your conversations?
	Um, I don't, they don't really delve deep into everything.
	Okay, wait, wait.
	See that?
	Go ahead.
	Because my conversations with everyone don't really delve deep into everything, right?
	Because that's impossible.
	That's an impossible standard.
	So let me ask you another way.
	When was the last time you did have a deep, satisfying, and meaningful conversation in an uninhibited or non-self-sensorious manner with your mother?
	Um, I guess the one, um, It was during the time when she was still living in our childhood home.
	We were trying to get her to move out.
	Growing up, it was me, her, my sister, and then my aunt.
	She lived with her sister.
	Then when my aunt passed away, she was still living in the household.
	At the time, it's an old house.
	There's issues with the house.
	She's still trying to manage it on her own, which was a financial impossibility, but she still couldn't grasp that.
	She's still thinking she's doing it on her own, but meanwhile, she's calling everybody in the family and asking for money or asking for this or doing that.
	For me, I was just like, you're going to have to let go of the house because we don't have None of us have the resources to support you.
	We all have our own households to maintain.
	So, my sister was playing the good cop and I was playing the bad cop.
	I'm sorry to interrupt.
	I'm not entirely sure that that qualifies.
	Okay, well, I'm just...
	Right, because that's you attempting to correct what you perceive of as your mother's really bad decisions and your mother resisting that, right?
	Okay, so then I'll just...
	Jump ahead then.
	And then we just moved to, you know, where I was just trying to explain to her why it was, you know, impossible and all the problems in the house.
	And then we just got to the point when I just said, look, I said, if it all came to it, and your dad was here, do you think he'd really want you to stay in this house, given the condition of the house?
	And then, you know, and then she was crying and she was upset.
	And then finally, you know, we were able to move ahead.
	And she is a lot happier being in, you know, the senior high-rise and all that.
	But, okay.
	All right.
	So let me ask it another way.
	Yep.
	Can you remember a conversation that you've had with your mother where she has been curious about your thoughts, feelings, and values?
	Um...
	Hmm...
	You know, I guess she'd probably ask.
	And, you know, I'll admit to not being as forthcoming on my own.
	So maybe that's it.
	I'm less forthcoming, but I don't realize it or something.
	I don't know.
	Well, why do you think that you're less forthcoming?
	I don't know.
	Well, I know.
	I just don't think what I have that's going on is, you know, relatively interesting or important to talk about.
	Wait, wait, do you mean relatively interesting?
	So you mean it's interesting to you, but not to your mother?
	No, just not interesting to have a conversation about.
	I mean, I find myself extremely interested in what you're saying here.
	Oh, okay.
	Thanks.
	I do.
	I know, I do.
	I mean, I think this is fascinating.
	I think this is the meat and butter.
	I shouldn't really use that to a vegan.
	It's the kale and gravel of conversation, right?
	I mean, this is what we're here for, is to actually connect at a real level, at a level that involves deep thoughts, feelings, and values.
	And it doesn't mean that it has to be 24-7 or every single time.
	But it is really, really important.
	I mean, I'm completely fascinated about what my daughter thinks.
	You know, like I have to make notes during the show because she's going to ask me after the show, how was your show?
	Oh, okay.
	And I'm going to say, well, I talked about this and I talked about that.
	And I will actually ask her what she thinks.
	And a lot of times she has really, really wise and intelligent things to say.
	Mm-hmm.
	Now, most people don't find four-year-olds that interesting.
	Right?
	You see most...
	I mean, just have a look around, right?
	I mean, don't take my word for it.
	Every time you go to a restaurant, you'll see family sitting there and try and find how many parents are engaged in really...
	Interested conversations with their children?
	Or are they just managing them and throwing crayons at them and iPads and, you know, telling them to shush and sit nice and eat their food and finish their vegetables?
	I mean, there's a constant stream of Little orders and control mechanisms and distractions, or is it actual engaged conversation?
	Now, sometimes we don't have engaged conversations.
	Sometimes, like, I was playing with a friend of hers and her last night, and they were kitties about to be eaten by a dragon.
	And so that was great fun.
	But there are times where that is occurring.
	So what I guess I'm concerned about, Rose, is the degree to which you might Have a mother who's not particularly interested in your thoughts and feelings, and therefore you may have concluded that your thoughts and feelings aren't interesting.
	It's possible.
	I mean, you know, an extrovert type of person anyway.
	So I'm more of a listener.
	Yes, but that doesn't exactly break the thesis, right?
	Right?
	You understand that, right?
	You're not challenging my core thesis here.
	Hypothesis, I guess I should say.
	Okay.
	Right?
	Because if you have a mother who talks a lot and is not particularly interested in your thoughts and feelings, guess what?
	You may turn into a bit of a listener, right?
	Yeah.
	Oh, okay.
	Yeah, that's possible.
	I mean, my sister does it all the time.
	She just takes over the conversation and I just let her go.
	Now, listen, I want to make sure that we don't get distracted by my observations.
	Was there a sort of central question that you wanted to pose?
	Sure.
	What I'm trying to do now is, you know, after doing the whole, you know, being debt-free and then, you know, coming to a point and realizing that, gee, you know, my job kind of sucks and being here in the D.C. area sucks even more.
	So, you know, I'm trying to Transition, you know, sell my condo so I can get to wherever it is I'm supposed to be going to, but kind of just like to alleviate all the barriers before so it's a lot easier to move forward.
	But for me, it's hard for me to find, you know, what I enjoy because it seems like I don't enjoy a lot of things.
	So it's kind of hard to get that.
	You mean sort of like what it is you want to do with your life kind of thing that's going to be the most satisfying?
	Yeah.
	Right.
	And do you know people who have achieved what you want to achieve?
	No.
	Why do you think that is?
	Do you think it's that rare or do you think that's just the circle you move in?
	No.
	Yeah, it could just be the circle that I live in.
	You know, most people are, you know, just working and, you know, I don't want to be the...
	You know, what do you call it?
	The government worker sitting there.
	You know, this sucks, but I'm going to sit it out until I retire and then I get to live my life.
	And, you know, I just see that all around me and it's just like, Jesus, I don't want to be that pathetic.
	Yeah, no, definitely.
	Certainly the best thing we can hope for from government workers is laziness.
	Yeah.
	That's what I want the most from people who work for the government.
	I just go play Minesweeper all day.
	Seriously, surf the net.
	Don't do anything.
	Don't do anything.
	Don't file any paperwork.
	Don't have any meetings.
	Don't make any resolutions.
	Here, I'm going to give you a screensaver of Barack Obama intoning his sophistic nonsense into your ear.
	You can watch that all the year on YouTube.
	Your computers only go to YouTube.
	and that way you can do a lot less harm to the rest of humanity.
	So unfortunately, you know, industriousness, which is praised as a general virtue.
	I remember a Jewish friend of mine saying, ah, Hitler worked all the time.
	What's the big deal with being hardworking?
	Anyway, but so you don't know people who have achieved something a little out of the ordinary that is sort of satisfying to them, right?
	Yeah, I mean, I have envy of my neighbor and she just up and quit her job.
	Because she just said she couldn't take it anymore.
	So she's just like, she's not working, but it's not like she needs to work.
	So, you know, I just look at her and just like, I wish I could just do that for a year.
	Wait, you mean she's sort of independent means or something?
	Yeah, well, she was a federal employee and she just got sick of the BS. And then so she just quit.
	And that was a year, more than a year ago.
	So, yeah, I would say...
	What's she living on?
	I want to say she's independently wealthy, but she had enough money in her savings where, you know, she's looking for work, but she doesn't need to look for work.
	And without asking you to reveal your age, could I just generally get sort of in what phase of life you are?
	Am I 40?
	44?
	I think I'm 44.
	I love it when you don't remember, you know, because...
	You know, when you're a kid, you're like, I'm not six.
	I'm six and two-thirds.
	You know, I'm six and, you know, 88, 99 or something like that.
	But when you're older, it's just like I'm in my 40s somewhere towards the sunset side of 40.
	I don't know.
	Who are you again?
	What are we talking about?
	I can remember.
	So I just think that's a kind of funny phase in life.
	We measure things in these big, wide swaths and chunks and all that.
	I give up counting the tree rings after 40.
	But anyway...
	Okay, so...
	And do you have any idea what might be the most interesting or exciting thing for you to do?
	Like my whole life, I would love to talk about ideas, but I, dear God, do not want to be an academic.
	So is there something that you would really like to do that you've sort of had in the back burner, or is that not something you've got on your plate?
	No, I mean, sometimes I think, hey, I could be a writer, but then I feel like I have...
	An idea, but I just can't take it any further than just being an idea.
	So...
	Okay, let's take that.
	That's the first thing you mentioned.
	And I don't know, obviously, whether it's the thing you're going to do or not, but it's the first thing you mentioned.
	So a couple of the 101s, right?
	And again, this is stuff you should have got from your mom.
	This is stuff you should have got from your school.
	This is stuff you should have got from your friends.
	But we can't all invent this stuff.
	And this is stuff I had to learn the hard way.
	So I hope it's helpful.
	So, if you want to do something, particularly if you want to do something professionally, then the first thing you have to do, assuming it's not like brain surgery, you have to start doing it.
	Right, like if I said, oh, Rose, I'd really, really be interested in being a guitarist.
	What's the first thing you would tell me to do?
	Practice playing guitar?
	Pick up a guitar and start playing, right?
	I mean, nobody's going to put you on stage with the Led Zeppelin reunion, right?
	If you don't know your C from an E chord, right?
	Unless it's just there to smash up Pete Towns' guitar at the end, which is probably...
	Millie Vanilli.
	You can just pretend to play.
	Yeah, look what happened to that guy.
	Jumped out of a hotel window and died.
	So that's not where you want to be, right?
	You know, dreads and cheekbones is not the substitute for practice and talent, right?
	So, you know, if you want to write, you know, there's this funny thing about writing.
	And this is my pet peeve.
	I'll try and keep it brief.
	But it's a funny thing about writing.
	Because people can write, like, grocery lists.
	And because people can write letters.
	And they can write cards.
	And they can write emails.
	And they can write memos.
	They somehow think that they can, like, really write.
	Like, really write.
	I'm sorry?
	I said, like, L. Ron Hubbard books.
	They're awful.
	No, but L. Ron Hubbard, I mean, look, L. Ron Hubbard, first of all, he wrote a lot.
	He wrote, I mean, he wrote, I think he was getting paid like two cents a word.
	I mean, you crank it out.
	Now, of course, he did find that religion paid better than hackneyed writing, for sure.
	Not that religion isn't hackneyed writing, but anyway.
	The point is that he just, he wrote.
	I mean, he just kept writing, kept grinding them out.
	And that was the same thing with Stephen King.
	You should read his book on writing.
	It's actually very good.
	I read that Ayn Rand.
	I read hers on non-fiction, writing non-fiction or fiction.
	It was interesting.
	Yeah, and I mean, the Beatles, after playing for years, eight hours a day, they came up with great stuff.
	Stephen King, you know, sent out story after story after story before finally getting some good stuff.
	And of course, Stephen King's big breakthrough was the novel Carrie, which he had the idea for, but he couldn't get anywhere in it because he didn't know how to write the inside of a locker room scene full of teenage girls, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	And so, of course, he asked his wife, Tabitha, who was also a writer, and she helped him with all of that stuff.
	And, you know, so leaning on people and just keep doing it, just keep doing it.
	And so there is...
	This thing around, it's 10,000 hours, right?
	It's supposed to be until you get really good at stuff.
	And I don't think that's necessarily the case in every situation.
	But if you want, like if you say, I really want to run a marathon, people would say, well, go buy some sneakers, pick up a book on running, maybe get someone who can help you go and keep you motivated and someone you can pair up with.
	But you've got to actually go put foot to pavement, right?
	That's how you've got to do it.
	And just because I can run to get a bus, it doesn't mean that I can run a marathon.
	Mm-hmm.
	And, you know, I'm now at the age where it's like if the bus is more than 200 feet away, it's like, well, forget it.
	Right?
	And so just because you can write a letter or a memo, it's like running for a bus.
	It doesn't mean you could run a marathon.
	And for that, you've really got to train for it.
	So whatever it is that you're interested in doing, the best way to do it is to simply start doing it.
	And there's a pretty good book called The Artist's Way.
	And so just write down two pages a day, like no matter what.
	No matter if you're completely dry...
	And I think as some writer said, it's easy to write.
	Just sit and stare at a blank piece of paper until beads of blood begin to form on your forehead.
	Sometimes it can feel that way.
	But the first thing to do is you just sit down and write.
	And you may find if you like it, you may find that you don't like it.
	Like I picked up guitar when I was a teenager.
	I found that I didn't really like it very much.
	And so I, you know, still can only play like two songs.
	And...
	So you just start doing it and see if you like it.
	That's the key thing for trying to figure out what it is that you want to do.
	All dreams are just mirages.
	You have to walk to them and see if they're actually lakes or just illusions.
	And so I would really recommend it.
	If you're interested in writing, get the books on writing.
	I signed up for a writing class.
	I took actually two, I guess, of the best writing classes around.
	One was at the National Theatre School.
	The other was the Humber School for Writers.
	And so just, you know, and of course my writing was always reviewed when I was in college and graduate school and all that.
	I got lots of tips and tricks and all that.
	And just keep writing, just keep writing, just keep writing, just keep writing.
	Okay.
	And it may help you succeed or not.
	And so that's the case with whatever it is that you want to do.
	But it's very hard to do this stuff in isolation.
	That's really, really important.
	Like if you don't have somebody who's interested and who you can share your goals with...
	Your goals will almost never materialize.
	So I would say that it's really important to, and they don't have to be people who are writers or who, but people who are really interested in what it is that you're trying to do.
	Success is a personal drive, but social feedback and social support.
	I think, like, so Bill Gates, right?
	So Bill Gates, of course, you know, he was one of the most successful software entrepreneurs of all time.
	And He was engaged in these heavy negotiations with IBM about the license fees for DOS. Now, his father was a patent lawyer, right?
	I mean, it was like Bill Gates was just born knowing how to do this stuff.
	So when he was negotiating with IBM, he was running out of the room to call his father, and his father was giving him the wisdom of 20-plus years of experience in how to do this stuff.
	It doesn't come out of nowhere.
	It doesn't just happen.
	It has to do with social support for what it is that you're trying to To achieve.
	I don't do what I do in isolation.
	I am very much, you know, supported by friends and family and get the feedback.
	Oh, I don't know if this is a good topic or should I talk about this or is this too far or is this not far enough?
	All that kind of stuff.
	And thanks, Mike.
	Thanks, everyone.
	No, it's really, really important.
	It's really important to make it part of your social circle.
	Now, if your social circle is bored and uninterested in your dreams and goals, Well, you know, then you're trying to water ski with a boat anchor.
	There's only one way to go.
	Down.
	Does that help at all?
	Yeah, that does.
	Join a writing club.
	You know, there's online writing clubs if there's no one around.
	You know, write stuff.
	Submit.
	Get feedback.
	Okay.
	Read the books on how to write.
	But most importantly, just keep doing it.
	All right.
	You know, there's that old song by Bryan Adams, Summer of 69.
	Yep.
	And he says, you know, got my first real six dream, ooh, at the five and dime.
	Played it till my fingers bled.
	Well, yeah.
	Yes, you play it till your fingers bleed.
	That's how you get things done in the world.
	And so, but if people are indifferent to you, indifferent to your success or your failure or your dreams, your ambitions, your thoughts, your feelings, then...
	You're not being a painter.
	You're just taking a bunch of paints and pouring them down a well.
	Mm-hmm.
	Okay.
	You sound entirely depressed by these thoughts.
	No, I'm not.
	Okay.
	Okay, fine.
	I don't want to do it.
	All right.
	We're going to bite it.
	Do you think you have, just because you're vegan, like you just know energy?
	Because that's the stereotype, right?
	Vegan is like, well, I'm not eating meat, so my body's going to start consuming my own marrow, bone marrow, until I turn into a jellyfish.
	I'm sorry?
	I get teased a lot about it, but it's okay.
	But you don't sound at all like I don't feel any windspits converging.
	I wouldn't.
	Don't take it.
	I get that a lot.
	Everyone's like, you're very monotone or you're, you know what I mean?
	They're just, my friend of mine, Dino, he used to always say I was Daria.
	He said I was the living, breathing Daria.
	And I would just laugh.
	What's that?
	Daria?
	Yeah, there used to be this MTV cartoon, and you should just look up an episode when you have some time.
	It was called Daria, and so he used to call me Daria.
	Oh, it's a monotone?
	Yeah, just because she was never excited or enthused about anything.
	Yes, and I would argue, based on what you said, just a little bit that you said about your mom, that your mom would not be very enthusiastic or excited about...
	What you're doing?
	I don't...
	You know, I didn't really tell her that I was trying to move or, you know, sell my condo or anything like that.
	But, you know, I didn't tell a lot of people, so I didn't feel like...
	A lot of people?
	This is your mom, for God's sakes.
	I didn't tell the guy on the bus.
	I didn't tell the guy at the pizza place.
	So why would I tell my mom?
	Yeah, but I didn't even bring it up to my sister.
	It was just, you know...
	Right, but this is sort of confirming the thesis, right?
	Yeah.
	That I think you deserve to have people interested in what you're doing.
	Look, my mom was not a great mom.
	I've made that pretty clear.
	But she was very enthusiastic about my writing.
	You know, her dad was a writer, her uncle was a writer, and quite well-known writers in Germany.
	One of them won The National Prize for Poetry and that German poem was hung on my wall when I was a kid.
	And so she was very enthusiastic.
	You know, she read what I wrote.
	She made suggestions.
	She comes from a very literary family.
	So again, that didn't pop out of nowhere either.
	And so her enthusiasm and skepticism and, you know, sometimes very insightful reviews of what it is I was doing was very important to me.
	And so if you don't have people who are enthusiastic about what you're doing, the defense that we generally have is to not be enthusiastic about what we're doing.
	You know, like if you're the rock guy, comes out, and this is completely, you know, you're like the rock and roll singer comes out and says, are you guys ready to rock?
	You know, and everyone goes like, right?
	Because then that makes them play better.
	Uh-huh.
	If he's like, are you guys ready to rock?
	And it's like everyone just brings out a cricket.
	Then it's hard to launch into the big number and ferociously attack the joy and excitement of the crowd, right?
	And Freddie Mercury said, he said, I can only sing as well as the crowd wants me to.
	I can only sing as well as the crowd wants me to.
	And it's why I constantly thank listeners for, like you, for calling in with these very interesting, challenging things.
	Exciting questions.
	And people say to me, Steph, you should talk less about this and more about that.
	You know, it's like, well, I actually listen to my audience.
	You know, why am I doing four to five hours of call-in shows a week?
	Because I want to know what you guys are thinking about.
	Because I'm interested in what people are thinking about.
	If people want to call up and talk about personal issues, which philosophy certainly has some stuff to say about, then that's what I will talk about.
	Because...
	People say to me, you should talk about X, Y, or Z on your call-in shows.
	It's like, you don't really understand how call-in shows work, do you?
	Rose, I know you want to talk about your ambitions, life's work, and maybe even avoid talking about your mother, which you've been very good at, but let's talk about the epistemology of Babylonian sorcery, because I'm going to impose my job.
	So I would really focus and sort of sit down and try and figure out the degree to which people have been interested in what you're doing.
	Okay.
	And you need people, right?
	Because you're like halfway through the game, right?
	I'm in the mid-40s.
	You're halfway through the game.
	You don't have an infinity of tomorrows to make all this happen, right?
	I always make the comment of everything and I'd say seconds off my life.
	So, you know, stuff would happen.
	Well, did you look at that?
	I was like, no, I don't have seconds off my life to give it.
	Oh, yeah.
	So people, you know, if they think they're being intelligently caustic about my videos or podcasts, they're like, well, that's 20 minutes of my life I want back.
	It's like, I can't get them.
	You're not going to get that added onto your life.
	Sucker.
	Make better choices next time.
	Don't blame me.
	Right?
	If my videos suck, don't find some cat playing piano in a tutu.
	Right?
	I mean, but 20 minutes of my life back.
	Nope.
	Not going to get them.
	Yep.
	Too late.
	Not going to get them.
	So anyway, I would hope that you can find people who are on a similar kind of path or who are interested in that.
	You deserve people who are interested in what you're In what your dreams are, in what your goals are, I think.
	And I don't know that it's really easy to get them otherwise.
	I'm sorry?
	I said, can I talk about one more thing?
	Sure.
	I was on your website and I was talking to this one guy and he was talking about the football player and his childhood.
	He ended up dying.
	Oh, he didn't end up dying.
	He was murdered.
	Murdered, yeah.
	Sorry.
	Murdered.
	This is the NFL football star.
	I don't know.
	I don't remember his name.
	I don't remember his name.
	And he has a two-year-old kid with, I think, an ex-girlfriend.
	I don't think they were even married.
	Yeah.
	And the ex-girlfriend ended up shacked up.
	I wouldn't say ex-girlfriend.
	It was just like, I think he was married at the time.
	Oh, he just had a hookup kind of thing?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	So then this girlfriend ends up...
	And the man is...
	Is culpable.
	But to me, you know, and again, I don't want to sound like I'm sort of bashing on women thing, but I really think this is important to focus on.
	You know, if you invite a guy in to your home as a mom who has a known history of violence against children and women, and then you leave, and I think that the boy had already been assaulted by the man one time before, but they decided...
	To not press charges if he got some counseling.
	Yeah.
	Which is, I mean, if the guy's a complete sociopath, which I think you'd have to be to be a toddler, you can't cure that with therapy.
	Nope.
	Right?
	Therapy can't fix, like, you know, you can't regrow a limb with physiotherapy and you can't regrow empathy through talk therapy.
	Six sessions and you're, yeah, and your life changed now.
	Yeah, no, this is not how it works.
	It's a basic human predator.
	So this guy, of course, is completely responsible.
	But if I drop my kid off at the local Satan Torture Society for babysitting...
	And they pay me, right, to get at her.
	I know I'm going to get a whole bunch of email from Satanists.
	I'm just using the cliche.
	Please don't get too offended.
	But then, yeah, I mean, whoever tortures my kid is definitely morally responsible.
	But, you know, I mean, I'm the one who dropped her off.
	Yep.
	And so if you're a mom, you are responsible for keeping your kids safe.
	And if you end up inviting a guy into your home with a known history of violence with previous acts of assault against your child, then guess what, honey?
	You should go to jail, too.
	Mm-mm.
	Anyway, of course nobody's going to talk about that.
	Yeah, and the thing that I've had was...
	No.
	No.
	And I guess the only thing that I just took issue with was just the whole, you know, the incident happened.
	And then the saying, oh, this happened.
	So therefore, the high incidence of child abuse in the African-American community, you know, when will people recognize this?
	And for me, it just it bothers me to an extent because it's like the African-American community is like this collective, like we're the Borg floating around in some giant cube and we're all connected.
	We're all responsible for something that happened.
	Are you kidding me?
	This is how the whites do it.
	We all have this mental mind meld that you're not supposed to know about.
	That's how we all make decisions.
	We all get together and we think about dancing badly and it all just comes to us, what we as a collector should do.
	You guys should really hook into that matrix.
	So yeah, it's like we're all linked up to this thing.
	But it seems to be only...
	You know, there's a Muslim community, a Latino community, an Asian community, an African American community.
	But then at the same time, like when that one lady who drowned her kids in a tub and she was white.
	Oh, Yates.
	Angela Yates or something like that?
	Yeah.
	Oh, she suffered from mental illness.
	But if you change that same woman and make her black with kids, then it's the African American community.
	It's like, I didn't drown my kids in a tub.
	I don't even have kids.
	That's good to know.
	So how am I? These are all things that I like to hear my listeners say.
	No, but look, I mean, statistically, wait, wait, wait.
	I agree with you that you certainly can't judge, I mean, any member of a collective by any collective trends, for sure.
	Yeah.
	But it is true, and it's not entirely explainable by racism, but it is true that reports of child abuse within the African American community tend to be double that of other communities.
	Now, that, of course, doesn't mean that, you know, all black parents are immigrants, right?
	Absolutely, of course.
	I mean, it's just double, which is still a pretty low incidence, but there is higher incidence of it.
	I agree.
	But at the same time, when you say higher incidence, it's almost like people can't That turns into awe.
	So there's never a higher incident.
	It always turns into awe.
	So, you know, like for me, I don't see the point of watching news anymore.
	Because in the long run, if I'm looking for any type of role model or some clear picture of some happy event going on within my collective boar cube of the African American community, I'm never going to see that on television or the news.
	So why bother watching it?
	Well, I think there's a challenge that people have in conceptualizing things.
	So, there is this basic challenge, which is that victims, people believe, cannot be victimizers.
	Right now, of course, historically, I mean, blacks are from astounding racism and slavery and all that kind of stuff, for sure.
	I mean, wretched.
	And had, you know, big, significant effects on black families and conceptions of things and all.
	But that doesn't mean that blacks can't be abusers.
	I mean, just ask the Palestinians whether victims can turn into victimizers, right?
	I mean, what the hell did the Palestinians have to do with the Holocaust?
	I mean, why not carve off a section of Germany and take that or go to Brazil or Switzerland or other countries that offered land?
	No, gotta go to Palestine.
	What the hell do the Palestinians have to do with the Holocaust, right?
	And now, of course, Jews, while certainly not, they haven't turned into Nazis, but I mean, the way that they treat these Palestinians is wretched and brutal for the most part.
	And so we have this idea that once somebody has established themselves as a victim, they can no longer be a victimizer.
	And that's just false.
	In fact, most of the people, this is back to the first caller, most of the people who end up victimizing others were at one point victims themselves.
	And so the idea that victims can't be victimized is actually quite contrary to just about everything we know about the cycle of violence.
	And so, but yeah, I agree.
	Definitely.
	I mean, Bill Cosby is actually a huge hero of mine, who as far as I understand it was a great dad.
	I mean, books on fatherhood and all that kind of stuff.
	And that to me is as representative as almost anything else.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	But there is, of course, again, there are all these massive problems with illegitimacy and single parenthood and all that kind of stuff.
	And I think in general, I don't know that...
	I don't know that outside communities can fix problems within communities.
	Like, I don't know.
	I don't have any real clear answers on that.
	No.
	But I don't know that, like, a bunch of white people like me can go and start lecturing the African-American community about better parenting.
	Like, I just, I think that it's too easy to dismiss.
	Yeah.
	You know, I mean, you wouldn't believe the number of emails I get for basically saying, well, you're just a rich, white child of privilege, so what do you think?
	Really?
	Come on.
	Yeah.
	Give me a break.
	I mean, we were stopping half the time I was a kid.
	We got eviction notices, so we broke completely.
	My sister puts it down.
	She says, you get kind of...
	She says still, if you look at even, it's, you know, corporal punishment.
	And she said there's still a distinction within classes because she says if you look at, she said it all depends on, you know, within, you know, even on the race side, depending if you are upper middle class or middle class, there is less of that than it is the lower you, you know, than someone who's poor.
	They beat their kids more than the middle class parents do.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, for sure.
	And of course, given the, you know, greater preponderance of poverty in the African American community, that goes some way towards explaining.
	I don't think it covers the whole topic.
	No, it doesn't go wrong.
	Yeah, it is.
	So I don't know, you know, like it's the same problems with, you know, this idea of, you know, there are some challenges in sort of modern extremist feminism and so on.
	I don't think like middle class, at least now middle class, white guys like me can go and lecture women about feminism because it's just too easy to dismiss.
	And so I think that it has to be within the community that this kind of stuff.
	And I think, I mean, as far as I understand it, the sort of black community is aware of that.
	You got the Million Man March and the Sister I'm Sorry movement, you know, where Black men are sort of apologizing to the ringer they've put black women through over the years.
	And so I think there is some recognition of that.
	But I think I'm personally I think I would encourage for there to be more, you know, with full recognition that I have almost no credibility in that community.
	There was this guy that I used to read and he used to be on.
	I can't remember.
	He used to have this.
	Oh, he wrote the book like Taking America Back.
	But he had this website and then there was this reverend.
	And I kind of agreed with what he said to a certain extent where he just says that, you know, within, you know, African American parents having a lot of single, you know, parent homes with women, that it's really difficult for you to raise male child, a male boy, because they're missing all that because there's so much I really can't define it, but he...
	Well, the male role models and learning how...
	Men are very, I think, fairly important in teaching boys how to handle aggression.
	Like when my daughter's around other boys, I'm spending a lot of time with those boys, helping them to temper their aggression.
	And turn it into a more positive force.
	I don't know if it's just this Lord of the Flies birth thing or maybe they grew up with some dads who weren't around.
	Some of the kids that we know, their dads are sort of working all the time kind of thing, the boys.
	But I do spend a lot of time saying, you know, more gently, more focused, more or less wild, you know, calm down, that kind of focus some of that wild energy into something more positive.
	And I think that this is a constant course correction that a lot of boys need, which of course they often won't get.
	Yeah, they won't get that under the single mom.
	But it's praised so much, you know, because even for me, I roll my eyes at it, you know, with the whole single mom, the strong black parent and all that other garbage.
	And I was just like, really?
	No.
	But make better life choices is what I always say.
	Yeah.
	And of course, I mean, there is to some degree the modern, I mean, slavery-slash-racist-entrenched bureaucracy of the war on drugs, which of course is disproportionately heavy-handed on the black family, and that's just brutal.
	And again, I mean, the degree to which society allows that to sort of continue and expand is the degree to which I think significantly in charge...
	Yeah, well, taxes get rich, right?
	I mean, if we hit the white that hard, I'm not sure it would be the same indifference.
	I'm sorry?
	I said, Texas is getting rich.
	I mean, they house most of the prison systems now.
	Everybody goes down there.
	Send their prison.
	Send your prison to Texas.
	That's horrible.
	That's horrible.
	Anyway, listen, Rose, I'm so sorry to interrupt.
	A very enjoyable chat.
	I certainly wish you the best with your dreams and goals.
	Whatever you're going to do, you know, I hate to say this as a tautology, whatever you're going to do, Just do it.
	Sit down and make yourself do it and get better at it and find people who could support you.
	And I think the sky's the limit.
	So thank you so much.
	Great, great chat.
	Thank you.
	Nice talking to you.
	Nice chatting with you, too.
	And Mike, who have we got next?
	All right.
	Mike is actually up next.
	Not me.
	Another one.
	Go ahead, Mike.
	Hi, Stefan.
	Can you hear me?
	Yes.
	Hello?
	Hello.
	Great.
	Greetings from down under.
	It's great to talk to you.
	Wow.
	I just wanted to say thanks for putting out your show.
	Philosophy, for me, is something that I think the world really needs, and it's something that is very important to me, and you're doing great work.
	I just wanted to mention that right off the bat.
	Thank you.
	I appreciate that.
	No worries.
	My question is sort of a general question about philosophy, and I hope it doesn't come across as being too idle, but I think that, you know, it could generate an interesting discussion perhaps.
	My question is this.
	Who are your favorite philosophers in the history of philosophy?
	Whose influence do you the most?
	Sorry, was there more to the question?
	I don't want to interrupt.
	I know we got the cross-ocean lag, but that was the question?
	That was the question.
	I'm particularly interested in your take on a particular philosopher, but if you just want to talk in general about who's really influenced you a lot and who you feel is the most important among all the philosophers in history, then that would be great.
	Yeah, I mean, I only got into philosophy really because of Ayn Rand, because of objectivism.
	And she is, without a doubt, and with, you know, almost completely unrestrained great praise, the greatest influencer.
	Influencer.
	And by that, I don't just mean Ayn Rand.
	So the objectivist movement, particularly with Nathaniel Brandon early on in the movement and his focus on self-knowledge, his focus on the psychology of self-esteem.
	Now, self-esteem, I think, is a concept that has had some challenges of late.
	And I had a critic of self-esteem, which I found very compelling on the show recently.
	But I think that Ayn Rand, you're not going to get a lot of focus on self-knowledge.
	And she herself said she didn't really understand psychology at all.
	But I think that sort of the metaphysics epistemology, to a large degree, the ethics, to a large degree, the ethics, To a smaller degree, the politics.
	Although to a large degree, the politics is still too relative to the general matrix mayhem.
	I think that is a fantastic grounding and gives you really great ways of approaching philosophy.
	And if you combine that with this sort of self-knowledge goal that Nat Brandon and other people in the movement came out with.
	And I think some of the cultural criticisms of Leonard Peikoff, particularly His book on the similarities between Nazi Germany and the trends within America, I think are fantastic, great groundings.
	And that's what sort of really opened me up to that world.
	I found that, I mean, Plato's dialogues are, you know, I mean, they're just essential.
	And it's too bad they're not studied more.
	You know, it's tragic that they're not studied more, though it's pretty, it's kind of inevitable, right?
	I mean...
	I'm actually going to do a show on the Socratic method because I've just been in it so long.
	I was reading this stuff in my teens.
	I've just been in it for so long that, I mean, I just get it, right?
	I mean, it's just sort of part of my DNA by now.
	That's fantastic.
	I'm really glad to hear that.
	Yeah, I forget the degree to which people don't recognize the nature of what is going on with the Socratic method.
	So for those who don't know, just very, very, very briefly, the Socratic method is somebody proposes a general...
	And then you seek to find exceptions to that general rule.
	And I deal with these all the time.
	You know, these lifeboat scenarios, these hanging from a flagpole scenarios, these do property rights still count if you're dying of thirst in a desert and somebody wants to sell you a bottle of water for a million bucks.
	These are tests of the general theory.
	And this is the same thing that occurs in mathematics.
	It's the same thing that occurs in the sciences, the hard sciences, in biology and even anthropology.
	You propose a rule called, let's say, evolution, and then if you want to debunk that, then you simply have to find fossils or indicators of life where more complex...
	Predates less complex in every conceivable way, and then you have a serious blow against it.
	But instead, people just chant, well, how do you know?
	And super stupid stuff like that, the creationists and all.
	So whenever you propose a general rule, then you try to find exceptions to find out if it's in fact a general rule.
	And so, you know, with Peter Joseph, just the most recent example to point out, you know, people would sort of accuse me of interrupting him And sort of throwing irrelevant questions.
	It's like, no, they're not irrelevant questions at all.
	At all.
	I mean, this is how you test a general theory.
	So if somebody says, trade is violence, then you say, well, if my daughter's trying to sell lemonade, is that an act of violence in the same way that if somebody hit her with a tire iron?
	Well, that's how you test the thesis.
	I mean, that's the essence of philosophy.
	It's really the essence of human thought.
	Propose a general rule, try to find an exception.
	And so I just – people don't really understand that.
	They also don't understand that categories are composed of people, not concepts, right?
	So when Peter Joseph says, well, my boss cheated me at work and therefore all boss are cheaters, I think how he put it was that's the reality of the market or whatever.
	So all bosses are cheaters.
	You know, he's talking to me.
	I was actually a boss for 15 years.
	I hired people.
	I was in charge.
	I determined their salary.
	I gave them performance reviews and feedback.
	I was their coach and so on.
	So he's saying to me that I, Steph, am a cheater, that I am dishonest, that I'm going to be forced to exploit people, that I put profits over people, and I was harmful and destructive and so on.
	He's saying that to me as a person based upon one guy who cheated him.
	That was a really interesting debate.
	I really enjoyed that, actually.
	And when that part in the debate came up where he explained that, I feel like I learned something about the Zeitgeist movement and maybe some of where it comes from.
	I think so.
	And I think that people were – I mean maybe some people were sort of confused by why – That bothered me.
	I mean, it bothered me at an emotional level just because I don't like to be called, you know, a cheat and corrupt and an exploiter and things like that.
	And I mean, if somebody makes a case for it in general, that's one thing.
	But if somebody says, well, I knew a guy, a boss who cheated me, therefore all bosses are cheaters, which really was his, I mean, that was the extent of his argument at that, at least encapsulated in that moment.
	Well, again, that's like me, you know, like with this last caller, you know, this is African-American woman.
	I said, well, you know, a black woman cheated me once and therefore all black women are cheats.
	I mean, of course we would expect her to get offended by that, right?
	I mean, that's a pretty offensive thing to say.
	So if somebody says to me, Steph, you were and are...
	Because now I'm the boss of Free Domain Radio and I got an employee and all that.
	So you were and are a cheat and an exploiter and selfish.
	And since I operated in what was mostly the most free market of the free market, and he said the free market causes mass murder, he's calling me and basically he's saying, I'm a cheat, I'm a liar, I'm an exploiter, and I'm an enthusiastic participant and advocate of a system of mass murder.
	Right.
	I mean, that is worse than calling someone a Nazi.
	That's calling someone a Nazi who's actually got a uniform on and is at the concentration camp, not just a sort of internet Nazi who just is probably a troll.
	And then people like a genuinely bewildered one, I might get upset by that or might find that that's offensive.
	And, again, it's just because they don't understand the Socratic method, and they certainly don't understand the concepts that are composed of people.
	You can't insult a category without insulting everyone in that category.
	So if I say, all black guys are cheats, and then I'm talking to some black guy, and I say, well, why would you take that personally?
	It's like, because I'm a black guy.
	And you said, all black guys are cheats, so you're calling me a cheat.
	And again, people, they just live so much in abstracts that they forget the people.
	People on the other side of these abstractions.
	Anyway, so definitely the Socratic method, a huge, huge influence on me.
	I think John Locke had a great influence on me.
	And certainly the people I read with who I disagreed with.
	And when I disagree with someone...
	I mean, to me, it's like a visceral horror.
	The disagreement is not usually, because I sort of, I mean, in my mind at least, I sort of trace the steps from what they're arguing to what the result is.
	From what they're arguing for to what the result is.
	You know, like, so Peter Joseph, he responded with a video calling me like a douchebag and a piece of shit and stuff like that, right?
	Now, can anyone imagine if Peter Joseph was in charge of resources in society?
	You know, how full would my food cup be?
	No, I'd be sent off to a re-education camp.
	I mean, this is the kind of stuff that actually happens in reality.
	When you put people with really bad tempers in charge of society's resources, then people tend to, like, it's very personal.
	If he was in charge of stuff, I guarantee you.
	I guarantee you.
	I would have trouble in his society, for sure.
	He wouldn't have trouble in my society, because I don't have a society.
	So when I read people who I strongly disagree with, I get a very visceral, because I sort of see the tracks that it leads to, and so on.
	But the people I've disagreed with, the challenge is, why?
	Why do I disagree with them?
	And is it an emotional thing?
	Or are my emotions processing the consequences of the principles?
	Which is sort of the basis of my thesis, where I examined Yeah, look at the conclusions of the premises.
	Yeah, it's all about dialogue, obviously.
	And, you know, you can't really have a dialogue with someone who has, well, it's not really a dialogue if you're talking to somebody who agrees with 100% of your points.
	So, you know, basically learning from and challenging and being challenged by people that you disagree with is a big part of the Socratic method.
	And, you know, I'm really looking forward to that video that you're going to be posting on it.
	Oh good, yeah.
	I think it is important and it's my failure as a communicator.
	I mean I've done the whole introduction to philosophy thing which I did years and years ago.
	It's like an 18 part series all the way from A to Z. But of course, that's sort of been buried in the internet sludge.
	And it's still, I think it's 40,000 or 50,000 views at the beginning or whatever, which is not bad.
	But I sort of forget the degree to which people are just completely untrained and don't really understand what...
	Now, they do...
	I mean, people do have...
	I mean, they have the statistical challenge of...
	I mean, people...
	This is the way they operate.
	They operate at the level of like...
	Chinese people are on average shorter than Europeans.
	Well, I know a tall Chinese guy.
	I mean, it's literally, this is where people's level of thinking is.
	And that's a challenge.
	And so, you know, my job, and again, it's been my failure as a communicator to recognize this and really understand it.
	But I do need to sort of, I don't want to do an introduction to logic, because I think you can get a lot from the Socratic method.
	And of course, there's lots of great introductions to logic out there.
	But Aristotle had some effect on me, but there's too much about Aristotle that is Just so openly offensive, you know, contempt for women and advocation of slavery and so on, that it does render the whole thing into a suspect category.
	Same thing, of course, with Plato.
	I mean, I understand that democracy killed his, you know, the love of his life, his mentor Socrates, but still, you know, the resulting totalitarian streak has had, you know, cost hundreds of millions of lives throughout history.
	And so that's some pretty dangerous stuff.
	I mean, you see the role of...
	Yeah, go ahead.
	Oh, sorry.
	I was just going to say, you know, coming back to the idea of dialogue and, you know, with people with whom you disagree to some extent, I mean, for me, reading Plato was really instructive because, you know, reading The Republic, a lot of it is just absolutely appalling as far as I'm concerned, as far as the political suggestions, like what he actually puts forth as a positive statement.
	Solution, but there's a lot in there that's really, really just absolutely priceless as well.
	And, you know, critique of democracy in particular is one thing in the Republic and some of these other dialogues as well, like maybe the Sophist?
	One of the later dialogues anyway, where he really, really does explain just why democracy is not a very good solution.
	To me, that's amazing.
	In Plato, there's a lot that I disagree with, but what I do disagree with has really challenged me, and that's incredibly valuable.
	Yes.
	So a lot of the Germanic philosophers are incredibly challenging because, I mean, Germans are fantastic with language.
	I mean, they produced the greatest demagogue in history, Hitler, right?
	Well, I guess he was Austrian, but heavily German-influenced.
	So Germans are fantastic with language.
	I mean, read your Faust and...
	The German poets and so on.
	I mean, they're just incredible with language.
	And so the Germanic style of philosophers can tend to be incredibly convincing But, you know, it's horrible stuff.
	Like, in general, like the Hegelian stuff, it's just, I mean, it's deeply insane.
	I haven't quite got there just yet.
	I haven't actually delved into Hegel.
	You know, philosophy is a deep love of mine.
	I've loved it since I was a teenager, but, you know, it's tough going sometimes, and I'm only partway through it.
	Well, I mean, Hegel is, I would say, I would argue, is the most responsible for...
	The intellectual environment that accepts something like America's manifest destiny and the idea of being the world's policeman and the idea that God chooses particular countries to lead the world at particular times.
	I mean, that comes straight out of Hegel and his world spirit inhabits particular leaders and inhabits particular countries to lead mankind forward in particular ways, which, of course, Hitler used to great effect.
	I think that some of the contempt that Nietzsche had for the society around him leached over into this idea that you have to just overleap everything that is.
	If you're basically born into a pile of shit...
	You can't reform it.
	You can't fix it.
	You just shower, scrub like hell and don't turn back.
	Just get out and don't turn back.
	And I think that that was a lot of what he felt at the time.
	And of course, because Nietzsche's intellect was so extraordinary and his facility with language was so deep, it was very hard, which I think was also true with Ayn Rand.
	It was hard for people to challenge them on an emotional level, on a sort of self-knowledge level.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Because we're talking about Nietzsche, he's the philosopher that I wanted to ask you about in particular, because to me, I think it's fairly obvious as far as what I was, my impression of your philosophy, Philosophy show that Ayn Rand is an influence.
	She's an influence to me.
	I read her in high school at the behest of my high school English teacher.
	And in Canada, I went to the blender of state-sponsored schooling that's obviously fairly uncommon.
	But I did read Ayn Rand in high school.
	And to me, it looks like Nietzsche is a fairly substantial influence on her, although she kind of didn't really claim him or she called him a He's a mystic, basically.
	But I was interested in your take on Nietzsche, because for me, he's one of the greatest philosophers of all time, and he certainly has some parallels with libertarianism, I would say.
	But he also has some other ideas that I think you would vehemently disagree with.
	Let's say, for example, his critique of reason, which is he's one of the only philosophers that I know of that's actually...
	Sorry, his criticism of who?
	You just garbled there for a second.
	Sorry, his critique of reason itself.
	Oh, yeah, yeah.
	Yeah, I mean, I would put Nietzsche actually closer to the Oriental style of aphorism than I would the Socratics.
	And he wrestled with Socrates his whole life.
	I mean, this is what he himself patently admitted.
	And so, of course, in the Eastern philosophy, you don't tend to get arguments, you tend to get insights, which is why people post like Lao Tse and they post Confucius and they post some of these sort of Indian philosophers and so on, like, where they say, "Ooh, isn't that interesting?" You know, "Ooh, that makes you think." And of course, this is what Nietzsche does a lot.
	And so I would put him more on the aphorist side, which sounds like fortune cookie, but it's obviously a little richer than that.
	I would put him on the aphorist side, which to me is closer to religion than it is to philosophy.
	In other words, there are...
	Isn't that interesting considering he's the atheist par excellence in some ways?
	Well, sure, but I mean the substitution...
	Sorry, the end of a belief in God creates in most people a vacuum.
	And into that rushes the state.
	And now, again, Nietzsche was anti-state in a lot of ways.
	He was anti-religious in a lot of ways.
	I mean, he said that the state is a thief and everything it has is stolen and all that kind of stuff, too.
	But he was not somebody...
	I mean, if you read the LSD trip of Thus Spake Zarathustra, you can get a lot of really interesting and provocative things out of it.
	But...
	It is not a reason philosophy from first principles, which is what he struggled with.
	And I think it would have been fascinating to see him try to do that.
	And I'm sure he could have done some very interesting stuff with it.
	But to me, that was a kind of, you know, he liked to go for these long walks.
	And he liked to then write down his thoughts.
	And the one thing that always frustrated me with Nietzsche is that his, the fertility of his analogies are almost second to none.
	And I learned a lot from Nietzsche about how powerful it is to have a great analogy, which I also learned from Plato.
	What do people know about Plato?
	Well, they know the allegory of the cave.
	What do they know about Aristotle?
	Because he didn't have a great allegory, right?
	And even Atlas Shrugged, which is a great allegory, people kind of get that or whatever, but she didn't have a central, a great allegory.
	So one of the things that I've tried never to be frightened of in philosophy is having a great allegory, really working at the realm of...
	Analogies and allegories and poetry and all that kind of stuff.
	Because Nietzsche, I mean, the quality of his thought in terms of his reasoning, I don't find particularly great.
	But he's so stimulating because he has these great analogies and shakes you out of your preconceptions.
	And it's like, so he unplugs the matrix and leaves you with static.
	That's kind of a problem.
	Because then people kind of want to go back in the...
	At least I can see something there, right?
	And so my sort of concern about Nietzsche is that.
	He's a great...
	He's what I call a great toilet philosopher.
	And that sounds bad, but what I mean is if you're going to have a long dump, you don't want to bring Aristotle because you're not really going to be able to have a great read of Aristotle in the 10 minutes it takes to have a good dump.
	But if you bring a bunch of Nietzsche's books by the toilet and you leave them there, you can flip through those and get some very interesting thoughts out of Nietzsche, which are going to be enriching and all that.
	And he certainly has given me some real guidance in my life, particularly around vanity and conformity.
	But it's not an argument from first principles that he operates on.
	And that is frustrating for me.
	I think if you could combine Aristotle's rigor with Plato and Nietzsche's capacity for allegory...
	I think you could get something really powerful.
	And I don't claim to have the facility of allegory that Nietzsche or Plato have, and I may not even have the rigor of Aristotle, but I certainly do try and combine these things to communicate, because the value of a philosopher is measured by the degree to which other people become interested in philosophy.
	I mean, the point is not to appear smart to other people.
	The point is for other people to become interested in being smart.
	That is, I think, the purpose of any kind of teacher.
	And so I've always tried to...
	I measure my success by the number of people who become interested in philosophy, in thought.
	You know, the same conclusions are not good heavens.
	Who cares?
	Who cares?
	Nothing I say other than the methodology is any kind of be-all and end-all.
	Everything I say may be overturned tomorrow, but it will only be overturned by reason and evidence, the methodology that I propose.
	So I can't be beaten in methodology.
	I can always be beaten in conclusions, of course.
	I'm going to make all the mistakes in the world.
	But the degree to which I can get people interested in the power and value of Of reason and evidence is the degree to which I think a philosopher is successful.
	How is somebody who's aiming to combat a disease, how does he measure his success?
	By the elimination of that disease and by no other standard fundamentally.
	Everything that he does is towards the elimination of polio or smallpox or whatever.
	And that to me is really the most important thing.
	The degree to which I can Help diminish the danger and literal capacity for human destruction that irrationalism and statism and violations of the NAP and property rights have in the modern world is the degree to which I will count myself successful as a philosopher, and I bend almost every fiber of my being in order to achieve that.
	People get distracted by conclusions which are complete red herrings.
	It's like saying science is invalidated because the theory of relativity has supplanted No.
	Science is validated by that very process.
	And in the same way, if you can get people to focus on the methodology rather than conclusions, then I think that has been a success.
	And of course, you know, the vaccination is more important than cure.
	An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
	That's what I was...
	What would the analogy be for people who don't know what the imperial system is?
	A centimeter of prevention is worth a kilometer of cure.
	And I was always told that the greatest advances in medicine were those which are the vaccines and those which prevented people from even getting the disease, washing your hands and stuff like that.
	And so when it comes to human aggression and so on, you want to work at prevention more so than you want to work at cure because sometimes cure is impossible.
	So that's why I've always focused on childhood, child development, and the application of philosophy to parents, to parenting.
	Because if there's one place where philosophy should be put in place, for Plato, of course, philosophy should have been put in place among the ruling classes.
	We shall not have peace in the world until the kings are philosophers or the philosophers are kings.
	He wanted to put philosophy, the main point, put philosophy in the hands of the rulers.
	And for Aristotle, it was put philosophy in the hands of those who are most capable.
	And for Nietzsche, it was put philosophy in the hands of syphilis-ridden wanderers who danced around isolated on a moor.
	And for me, it is put philosophy into the hands of parents and of the adult children of parents.
	That was the beginning call this week.
	That is where the greatest inoculation against future human violence and irrationality can occur.
	If you look at ancient China, where they bound these women's feet and all this terrible stuff, Well, you could do some work to help these women unbind their feet and somehow regrain, but it would be really painful, really difficult.
	Most people wouldn't bother.
	But if you can convince parents to not bind their children's feet, then the feet will grow naturally and healthy, and you won't need to fix them later.
	And that really has been the biggest goal.
	And I think that the application of philosophy to parenting is...
	The biggest connection in some ways that I've really, really worked on trying to make is the most controversial, which means hopefully it's the most useful.
	Well, I would agree with that.
	It's very important to parenting because children are just naturally, philosophically curious.
	I know I was as a child.
	When the child asks the question, why is the sky blue?
	There's a lot of answers to that question.
	It's a very good question.
	It could be answered in a...
	A materialistic way could be answered in a metaphysical way, like, you know, do I see the same blue that you see, etc., etc.
	So it's for parents to be more educated in terms of philosophical principles, especially the Socratic method of give and take, dialogue, question and answer.
	It's something that I think is really important.
	For me, I was lucky enough to grow up in a family where that was something that was present.
	Good, good.
	Well, congratulations to you.
	And of course, congratulations to your parents for bringing this kind of stuff.
	And I assume that you're not out there wanting to impose endless levels of violence on other people to get your way because you can reason and therefore you don't need to bully.
	So I hope that that's a validation of the theory.
	Absolutely.
	And if I could just make a quick suggestion here, just as humbly as possible, you're saying that you're going to do an intro to philosophy or you're going to sort of do another one in the future?
	I'm going to do, no, I want to do the Socratic method explained.
	Oh, okay.
	Okay.
	I was just going to suggest that if you were going to do another intro to philosophy, it would be really good to focus on individual philosophers, but I guess if it's an intro to the Socratic method, then there's pretty much just one.
	Don't get me wrong, I would love to do, and I've had suggestions from good friends for years, and random listeners, can you please do a history of philosophy?
	I would love to do that.
	I would really, really, really love to do that.
	I can guarantee you it would get very few views and it would take a huge amount of time to get it right.
	And so that's sort of my concern is, is it going to serve the cause?
	In other words, is it going to make people better parents?
	Is it going to make people understand their society better if I do a history of philosophy?
	I don't know that it necessarily would, but it would be a fascinating thing to do.
	And of course, that was my training in grad school was really the history of philosophy.
	I would love to do that.
	But a huge amount of work.
	I'm not sure that it would help prevent the spread of violence in the modern world.
	And I don't think that a lot of people would particularly watch it.
	And so that's sort of my concern.
	Maybe I'm wrong about that.
	And if lots of people would watch it, let me know.
	But I would love to do that.
	But in terms of priorities, I'm not sure where it is.
	Perhaps, but let me just take this opportunity to thank you for what you are doing.
	Oh, I appreciate that.
	Well, I appreciate that, and it's really great to hear that.
	Thank you so much.
	And I'm afraid we're going to go a little over, of course, but I'm certainly happy to move on to the next caller.
	All right, Ben, you were up next.
	Go ahead, Ben.
	How's it going, Steph?
	It's going well.
	Sorry, somebody just mentioned Dr.
	Elvis H. Christ IV. I'm pretty sure that's not a screen name.
	He said he already did a pretty good history of philosophy at the Texas Conference.
	Yes, that was in Nagadoches, I think it was.
	You can find that on YouTube.
	But sorry, go ahead, Ben.
	Yeah, my question has to do with IFS therapy.
	I've been in therapy for two months now, and it's definitely one of the best decisions I've ever made in my life.
	So I'll have you to thank for that, for getting Dick Schwartz on the show.
	All right, so just for those who don't know, and I'm sorry to, again, I'm trying to be cognizant of all the new listeners, IFS therapy is internal family systems therapy.
	And basically, you can look for Dr.
	Richard Schwartz has been on my show to talk about it.
	And the idea is that we internalize these characters based upon our family history and other histories in our childhoods.
	And that we are kind of a, I call it an ecosystem, but we are an ecosystem of competing characters, all of which need to have a voice, none of whom should be dominant, but all of which must be negotiated with.
	That's a totally quick summary, but that's the general idea.
	No, I think that's bang on.
	And it has to do with your parts.
	And I'm just curious.
	I know that you talk a lot about how children will always idealize their parents.
	And I'm just wondering if you still have those parts that, you know, potentially idealize your mother.
	I know you mentioned about she was really supportive of your writing.
	So I'm just curious to know if a lot of those parts come up or maybe parts come up when Isabella runs right into your groin.
	And you think, ah, what are you doing?
	And I'm just curious to what type of ecosystem conversations you're having, even these days.
	You know, one of the challenges that I have is I've always been kind of a light sleeper.
	Sometimes I get a good night's sleep.
	So last night I got like six, six and a half hours.
	Not quite enough.
	For me, seven, seven and a half is great.
	When I'm tired, I tend to get irritable.
	Now, when I'm irritable, that can actually be a very productive thing.
	Because stuff that's been lying around or stuff that needs to get done, I sort of get annoyed at and get done.
	So it's not like the irritation is a really bad thing.
	So yeah, my challenge is when I'm a little bit tired, I tend to be a little bit more short-tempered.
	I'm sort of aware of that, and I don't always view it as a bad thing.
	But that's sort of my personal challenge.
	I don't feel that I idealize my parents' feelings.
	And I don't know, because, I mean, my mom always told me, she said, well, you know, you basically raised yourself.
	I mean, you're the one responsible for you turning out the way you are.
	I mean, I was not, you know, and you basically did it all yourself.
	And so, because my mother didn't really take much credit for how I've turned out, she took pride in it, but she didn't take credit for it.
	And so, if she had idealized herself, then my inner mom would be much more likely to idealize her, if that makes any sense.
	Yeah.
	And so I don't have an inner alter ego called parental idealization.
	I also wasn't exposed to a lot of that stuff.
	And so I didn't know a lot of parents who had a lot of vanity.
	And I think that had a lot to do with the fact that, I mean, I just grew up in such a broken down, single mom, wrecked up kind of I just wasn't around a lot of parents who viewed themselves as, you know, all that is noble and glory worthy.
	And so I just, I didn't really grow up in an environment of respecting your elders.
	Now, I mean, when I was in boarding school, and you get this a lot, of course, it was very much like, you know, you must respect your elders and so on.
	And I don't know why, but I never felt that that was particularly compelling.
	I mean, I knew I was scared of them because they had the power to sort of beat me with canes, as happened.
	And they had the power to withhold food.
	They had the power to whatever, right?
	Cause negative repercussions for me.
	So I was definitely scared of them.
	But I never felt that fear and respect could go really hand in hand.
	And that was sort of my basic issue with religion as well.
	When I was a kid, was that I just, I could never really understand how somebody could confuse fear with respect.
	That just seemed to me like a very cowardly, a cowardly thing to do.
	And I think because I, for whatever reason, have a natural bent towards seeing the conclusions in the premises, I could not see for the life of me how I could have a happy life while yearning for death, you know, in the religious paradigm.
	The veil of tears that we struggle through, the test of Satan that we have to pass in order to get into God's paradise.
	I couldn't quite get how I was supposed to have any kind of happiness in this life if I was supposed to be in an environment ruled by Satan where I'm yearning for death to set me free and go to heaven.
	And also how I could love any kind of entity that What's going to threaten me with eternal damnation?
	Because, you know, I mean, with my school teachers, I was threatened with various punishments, both corporal and, you know, lines and detentions and so on.
	And so I'd get threatened by these people, but I couldn't.
	I could never imagine how you could love someone who would threaten and hit you.
	And so from that standpoint, I couldn't quite understand how you could love someone who Who would threaten you with hell or allow that to happen, given that he's all-powerful, and who wouldn't give you good reasons.
	Because when I was a kid, if I do something, people will always say, well, why did you do that?
	Why would you do something?
	People are always asking me to explain myself as a kid.
	And the people in authority never explained themselves to me.
	So I don't quite get that.
	And this was all...
	It originally started as confusion and just kind of, well, let me sort of think about this.
	I didn't sort of say, well, I don't believe in God anymore.
	I was just like, well, let me just sit on this.
	Let me just mull this over.
	Let me just...
	I don't get this.
	I'm willing to be converted.
	I'm willing to...
	But I don't see how that works, right?
	And of course, I was always told, and I was never a bully, but I was always told, you know, bullying is bad and don't use...
	Forced to get what you want and don't push and don't threaten other children and don't say, you know, whatever, right?
	But then I was threatened by people in power and by gods and their devil, minions and all that.
	So I just, again, I don't quite get how this all fits together.
	And again, I was willing to, you know, maybe I don't get something.
	Maybe there's some piece of the puzzle I'm missing.
	But I don't know.
	I just...
	I just didn't...
	I couldn't put it all together, and I was willing to wait and see, and, you know, because people said, well, you understand when you get older, which always seems like a, you know...
	If I fail a test, I don't get to say to the teacher, well, you know, in two weeks, don't worry, the same test will pass.
	I don't get how things reverse later on.
	But I was willing to, you know, okay, well, maybe, you know, because it's a pretty big thing to say, like, everyone in charge of me is corrupt.
	So I was...
	Willing to wait and see.
	But that wait and see didn't get me any closer to society, if that makes any sense.
	Yeah, totally.
	Does that help at all?
	Yeah, totally.
	And I also think, what is your stance on...
	I know in IFS, it's very much, if you want to talk to parts, it's all about compassion and curiosity.
	And then it's tough to have those conversations without having that almost agenda.
	You're being curious, but with an agenda, you're trying to almost fix that other part.
	If they're saying, I obviously do have parts that either...
	Have conversations where it makes excuses for them and think, oh, well, they're traumatized too and they have their own parts and blah, blah, blah.
	Do you think that there needs to be more of an...
	Of a back and forth yelling match?
	I know that you...
	I don't know about yelling, no.
	I don't think the yelling is good.
	But I'll tell you, I mean, to me, and Mike actually helped me with this to some degree, but the important thing that I sort of get now is that the scab is not the stab.
	The scab is not the stab.
	So I have an inner mother, and my inner mother is not my mother, obviously, right?
	That's the IFS thing, right?
	You don't steal their souls.
	Ghost house of history, right?
	Yeah, so my inner mother was a scab caused by my mother's assaults, attacks, and indifference towards me as a child, right?
	And so I can deal compassionately with my inner mother because my inner mother doesn't want to be there and doesn't want to be the way that she is.
	She was just simply a reaction to my mother's danger, the danger of my mother and who she was.
	And so I don't confuse compassion with my inner mother for compassion with my mother.
	Right?
	The scab is not the stab.
	And so that differentiation has allowed me to have compassion with my inner mother who doesn't want to be there, who didn't want to react, right?
	So for those who don't know, right?
	So if you have somebody around you as a child who's dangerous but with whom compliance reduces the danger, you internalize their personality and So that they can tell you not to do that which annoys the outer person before it annoys the outer person, which keeps you safer.
	Right?
	So if you have a parent who hits you for talking back to them, then you internalize not talking back to your parents and that will cause you to have fear or anxiety or dissociation to not talk back so that you don't end up provoking an external attack by applying the same standards internally to prevent The action which causes the external attack.
	Sorry, you can play that back three times if it didn't make any sense, but hopefully it makes...
	So my inner mom, which was a reaction to the attacks and danger of my outer mom, is an aspect of myself I can have real compassion for.
	Because, you know, no piece of the skin wakes up and says, I really get to hope I form a scar and a scab today.
	The skin doesn't want to do that.
	Skin only does that because you receive an injury.
	Right, so if I tend my wound...
	Gently and carefully and with compassion, that's not the same as tending my wounder carefully and gently and with compassion.
	If somebody stabs me, I can take care of that stab and get better and this and that and the other.
	But that's not the same as having compassion for the man who stabbed me.
	It's just having compassion for the wound.
	Does that make any sense?
	Yeah, no, totally.
	Totally.
	So for my inner parents, I actually can have compassion to them.
	When I was younger, I confused that with having compassion for The outer parents, but that's not the same thing.
	I can be very gentle and compassionate with my inner parents without having that same confusion and loss of moral standards with my outer parents.
	And so I hope that sort of helps in terms of that.
	The need for compassion for internal alter egos is not the same as compassion for the abuse that provokes them.
	Does that help at all?
	Oh, it totally makes sense.
	And lastly, like, Before I got into free demand radio and IFS and all that stuff, I was the typical minarchist or even anarcho-capitalist, but still having this, I guess, projection against the government.
	And I think it really helped when you started explaining, you know, concepts don't exist.
	The government's really just a group of individuals.
	And I've never had really any sort of relationship with...
	I know you talk about the zeitgeisters and the central planning people who have these unmet childhood needs that they're yearning for to be fulfilled forever in the future.
	I'm wondering how that theory or that potential underlying theory would apply to, say, the libertarians and And anarcho-capitalists who are big into the political aspect, and they seem to be screaming about being controlled, but really it's that they're almost screaming about their parents and the way that they were brought up, because you don't see them follow those principles through.
	You still get a lot of heat from just saying that hitting your kids is an act of aggression.
	Even libertarians, that would be for the non-aggression principle.
	I don't all seem to get that.
	I'm just wondering how you see that line of thinking, if that makes any sense.
	No, that's a great question.
	Yeah, I mean, Walter Block was recently basically saying, well, children are animals.
	They need to be civilized.
	You need to hit them, right?
	And this to be would be, I mean, say this about wives, and I mean...
	Good luck, right?
	Or husbands, for that matter.
	Or employees, or students, or anything, right?
	Students are, you know, as far as anarcho-capitalism goes, my students are animals.
	They're all statists.
	I've got to beat them until they recognize the value of the stateless society and so on.
	It's terrible.
	And then, you know, all the walking back statements.
	Well, you know, spanking is not the same as beating and a little light swat and this and that and the other, but just complete bullshit.
	Anybody who talks about spanking is a little...
	Light swat is a sophist and a corrupt dissembler of the truth.
	The whole point of spanking is to change a child's behavior permanently.
	You don't do that with a little light swat on the butt.
	You do that by inflicting sufficient shame and pain and fear in order to alter someone's behavior permanently.
	And so the idea that spanking is just this little light corrective swat is just bullshit.
	I mean, if people did that, they weren't spanking, and if they were spanking, they didn't do that, and they should just damn well say that I hit my child hard enough to permanently change his or her behavior.
	Yeah, I mean, if there was people walking around right now that are three to ten times bigger than you and I, and they gave us a little, what they consider a little swat on the butt, it probably wouldn't feel like a little swat on the butt for us.
	No, no.
	And of course, then what should happen is those people should say, well, to deal with speeders, we need to get rid of tickets and just, you know, have a little warning.
	Or maybe the ticket should be like 20 cents for speeding.
	And people would recognize that wouldn't be a deterrent at all.
	Right?
	I mean, economists should be the least facile with this stuff because they're the ones who say people respond to incentives, one of the basics of economics.
	But the incentive has to be big enough for people to change their behavior.
	You know, if you offer one penny off the Maserati, you don't double your sales, right?
	It has to be a big enough incentive for people to change their behavior.
	And so spanking has to be a big enough incentive or negative repercussion in order for children to permanently change their behavior.
	Which economists know is a very big thing.
	I mean, good lord, people who have heart attacks continue to smoke and eat red meat or whatever crap causes your heart problems.
	70% of Canadians don't follow their doctor's advice.
	You know, Tom Hanks' doctor said, well, you just have to weigh what you weighed in high school and you won't get diabetes.
	And what did he say?
	I guess I'm going to get diabetes.
	And so he did.
	And so even those negative repercussions won't change people's behavior.
	As adults, when they can reason and have independence, so imagine the amount of negative repercussions you need to inflict on a child to permanently change that child's behavior.
	To then call that a light swat on the butt, it's just a filthy, guilt-ridden lie, basically.
	Sorry to be so blunt, but that's just what it is.
	No, yeah, I totally agree.
	I brought a case up with my mom when she'd hit me, and that's kind of what she tried to say, is that, you know, we only give you a little spot on the butt.
	And I just pointed that exact thing out, that it's totally subjective to her how hard she thinks, you know, she'd hit me, right?
	Obviously, she'd hit me.
	Well, and look, if it's in...
	And people bring up these extreme examples, you know, kids running into traffic and boiling water on the stove or whatever.
	Well, if spanking is supposed to change the behavior, if you believe in spanking and you give only a tiny little light swat on the butt, then you are a bad parent even by your own definition.
	Because if that's the way that if you have to change your child's behavior permanently in order to keep that child safe and all you give is a little light swat on the butt, then even by the standards of spanking, you are a terrible parent because you're not applying enough force to permanently change the behavior to keep the child safe.
	So even if we accept all the standards of spanking, a parent who doesn't spank with sufficient force to permanently change behavior is a bad parent.
	They're a bad status parent.
	They're a bad spanker.
	So there's no conceivable way that a parent can get away with spanking.
	If they use the little light swat thing, then they say, well, then you're bad at spanking.
	That's terrible parenting.
	How the hell am I supposed to get safe, stay safe, if you don't apply enough force to make me change my behavior?
	Anyway, so yeah, it just doesn't work in any...
	So the libertarian thing, and I'm going to speak in complete generalities, and this may not apply to most of the listeners here, and these are just my thoughts.
	This is not any kind of syllogistical argument, but a lot of small government types are driven by a religious fear of the secular nature of the state, right?
	Yep.
	And there is a strong streak of Christianity and Judaism in libertarianism.
	And their fear that the government, the secular government, is taking over, has taken over education, of course, is considerable.
	And a lot of homeschooling, not all, but a lot of homeschooling is driven by a fear of secular status values or non-values, as they would say, being inflicted on children.
	And so there is a small government movement, not because people reject irrational authority, but because they reject competing irrational authority, right?
	A guy who runs a competing taxicab company is not against taxicabs, he just is against the other taxicab company, right?
	He just wants people to take more of his taxis, less of the other guys, right?
	And so a lot of the libertarians, particularly those who are fundamentalists, are not against irrational authority.
	They just prefer a deity to a state.
	And they recognize that there's some incompatibility between the two.
	And of course, in a lot of...
	And particularly, of course, in one of the great shapers that is relatively unacknowledged, unexamined, and undiscussed.
	One of the great shapers...
	And the reason why I think it's undiscussed is that communism created great fear and anxiety among the religious because it was explicitly atheist.
	And so there was a great fear of A great fear of totalitarianism that came out of the religious circles, not because they have any problem with totalitarianism.
	You fundamentally cannot be religious and have a problem with totalitarianism because the deity is totalitarian.
	He creates laws that he is exempt from.
	He punishes arbitrarily without forewarning and in terrible, incredibly destructive ways that a secular Or a human totalitarian dictator could only imagine in his wildest fetishes of sadism, concepts of hell and so on.
	And the people say, well, the Catholic Church has retreated from the concept of hell and the Pope has even now said that atheists can go to heaven if they're good and so on.
	Well, that's kind of new, right?
	And it's certainly not supported by Scripture.
	So I think that for a lot of libertarians, they would be raised religious, and their parents would have a great deal of problems with the state, because the state has become increasingly secular, of course, over the years.
	And so the hostility that they would have gotten from their parents towards the state would have resulted in political libertarianism, But metaphysical totalitarianism, which means, of course, that arbitrary and brutal coercive authority is not on principle any objection to them,
	but in the way it manifests itself in the competing secular state as opposed to the religious environment that they prefer, well, you know, it's a cab company that hates another cab company because it's taking business away.
	Not a cab company that hates cab companies, right?
	And so to genuinely oppose arbitrary, irrational, and coercive authority is to genuinely oppose it on principle.
	And then when any metaphysics or epistemology or ethics or politics is proposed, we run it through the ringer.
	And we say, is the standard universal?
	Thou shalt not kill.
	Well, no.
	God kills everyone in the Bible except Noah and some animals.
	And that's just one example of many where God openly advocates.
	Is slavery immoral?
	Well, yeah, of course, slavery is immoral.
	Does God advocate slavery?
	Yes, He does.
	Is selling your daughters into sexual slavery immoral?
	Yes.
	Does God advocate that and approve it?
	Yes.
	Is killing women and children of a city you've conquered immoral?
	Yes.
	Does God advocate that?
	Yes.
	Well, actually, He advocates killing the male children and taking the women as sexual slaves.
	So, if you approach it objectively from a principled standpoint...
	Then the religious worldview is as ugly and destructive as the worst totalitarian nightmare you could conceive of.
	As Hitchens used to call it, a spiritual North Korea where everything you do is watched, everything you do is judged, and the punishments are permanent, fierce, and somewhat arbitrary.
	And then you would say, okay, well, is...
	Is torturing someone immoral?
	Of course, torturing someone is immoral.
	Is threatening someone with torture immoral?
	Well, of course it is.
	Of course it is.
	And so, any ideology which threatens people with torture is immoral.
	Therefore, you know, easy peasy, nice and easy.
	Sad to see the exit of the great deity, but like all primitive superstitions, we must examine them with the clarity of reason.
	And, I mean, you can go on and on.
	Lord knows I've been known to, but these are just some of the issues and questions.
	You'd say, well, okay, so what is sin?
	Well, is there a soul?
	And you would simply look for the objective evidence for these things, and you can't find them.
	And therefore, a man who offers you to cure you of an imaginary illness is a fake and a charlatan.
	And then you say, well, how is this all perpetuated?
	Well, it is inflicted upon children.
	For a man to cheat a man?
	That's terrible.
	For a man to cheat a child?
	Come on.
	I mean, how reprehensible is that?
	For a man to threaten an adult with torture?
	Reprehensible.
	For a man or a woman to threaten a child with torture?
	Perpetual torture by demons in hellfire?
	Come on.
	It's psycho.
	I'm reading a book for the nth time, Izzy really likes it, called Emma and the Detectives.
	It's a fun book.
	It's a good book.
	It's about a boy who gets robbed on a train and his efforts to get the money back.
	It's well worth reading, I think.
	I mean, it's kind of sad because it's written in Germany.
	I think in the late 1920s or early 1930s, and these kids are all going to get blown away in the Second World War.
	So it is pretty tragic to read about their idyllic and fun-filled childhoods, knowing what is in store for them down the road.
	It is also interesting to see the author's descriptions of parenthood in Germany.
	I'll talk about that another time.
	But this story is particularly heinous because the man robs a child.
	12-year-old little boy.
	Terrible.
	So it's very easy if you just take objective standards and apply them to the concepts of religion and how it flourishes and how it reproduces.
	It's very easy to recognize the deep immorality of the structure.
	And so anybody who opposes the state and praises the Judeo-Christian Islamic deity is not at all even close to universalizing the principles that he claims are universal.
	There's a famous picture of Ron Paul at his desk.
	Don't steal, the government hates competition.
	Well, the government is stealing Children from religion and replacing it with, of course, patriotism.
	Patriotism is the faith of statheism, which is the irrational worship of the arbitrary authority of the state, rather than the irrational worship of the arbitrary authority of religion, of the gods.
	And I view it as a reaction formation to An encroachment of a competitive irrational authority.
	I don't view it as any principled rejection of irrational and abusive authority.
	Does that help at all?
	No, yeah.
	What do you think about anarchists who obviously oppose the state but then still they obviously don't apply that same principle to the family?
	Is it that they're recognizing maybe the immorality of the way that they're brought up but they're too afraid to bring it up with their parents and therefore they You know, kind of vent those negative emotions on the other parental, I guess you could say, state.
	You know what I mean?
	Does that make sense?
	It could be.
	I haven't talked to enough of those people to know for sure.
	And again, to know for sure is a really challenging phrase in these kinds of environments.
	But I will say that the cure for exposure to evil is the sympathetic witness.
	Let me sort of say that again because it's a lot of thoughts and facts crammed into one sentence.
	The cure for exposure to evil is a sympathetic witness.
	And the degree to which society denies the evils that people have been exposed to is the degree to which those people will cause problems within society.
	When we deny the evils that people have been exposed to, we create great hatred in them.
	Because To be harmed in society is one thing, but for society to deny that you were harmed generalizes the hate and fear from the abuser to society as a whole, who enables and sides with the abuser in denying the victimhood of the abused.
	And I mean, this is, I think, true for lots of things that have occurred throughout history.
	I mean, after apartheid They set up the Truth and Reconciliation Committee, which was supposed to uncover all the crimes committed by the apartheid regime and so on.
	And the idea that you must connect with and talk about the harms that you've experienced to a sympathetic witness, again, to the films that I have talked about before, Ordinary People is the one with Mary Tyler Moore, I couldn't remember the title at the time, is that you must speak about the evils and harms that you have received, but you must speak about that with a sympathetic witness.
	Somebody who's not going to explain it away.
	Somebody who's going to be on your side in sympathizing with the effects of the evils that you've experienced and who's going to identify those things as genuine harm.
	Yeah, I guess that's how Alice Miller explains it.
	That seems to be Alice Miller's stance.
	Is that what you would say, too?
	That's Alice Miller's stance.
	You need this enlightened witness to listen to the trauma and not push it away.
	Yeah, not push it away, not excuse it, not avoid it, to accept it, to help you, to reinforce your judgment, right?
	Because when we are harmed, I mean, just think of how we evolved.
	When we are harmed as children, the most important thing we need to figure out is not, are we harmed?
	We know that already.
	But what does society think of the harm that we've experienced, right?
	I mean, that can literally save or kill you.
	So if a parent cuts a child and the child knows that this is considered completely immoral in society, the child goes to get help, then the child will be helped.
	And hopefully the parent will be helped.
	If the parent can't be helped, then the child will be moved to someplace more secure where that kind of harm will not occur.
	However, if the child is in a society where the ritual cutting of children is part of the religious edict, and if the child complains about being cut, Then the child will be the next human sacrifice.
	Then it's pretty important for the child to figure out what the status is of the harm he's received in society as a whole.
	Is it accepted?
	Is it denied?
	Is it praised?
	Is it condemned?
	Or do people just say they condemn it but don't actually do a goddamn thing about it?
	And so the exploration of the relationship between one's own personal abuse as a child and the standards that society actually acts on with regards to that abuse is very essential, and every time stories are communicated in the media,
	in movies, in stories, in TV shows, every time stories about the harm towards children is communicated, there are billions of abused children out there, both child and adults, who are scanning that to find out what society really thinks and is willing to act on with regards to abuse.
	Everybody's constantly probing everyone around them I was abused.
	Do you know?
	Do you care?
	Will you act?
	Will you listen?
	Will you side with my experience?
	Or will you side with the abusers?
	And if society, even if society proclaims sympathy for the victim, but in practicality sides with the abuser, well, the victims all get that.
	And they get that society is largely composed of abusers and those who sympathize with abusers and those who collude with abusers and those who hide abusers and those who excuse abusers.
	And there will be a giant tsunami of teenage and adulthood fuck-used society as a whole.
	Especially if society proclaims about how much it loves and values children and how much child abuse is immoral and so on.
	But if society is hypocritical in addition to To siding with abusers and evildoers, there is going to be a massive degree of hatred towards society.
	Because then the values of society will be recognized as a trap and a further situation of abuse.
	You know, there's a very subtle and sophisticated form of abuse where you invite someone to ask for your help and then you don't provide it.
	Right?
	Like if I say to you, I had to pick you up from the airport At 7 o'clock, and I'm not there and I'm not there, you might wait until 8 or 8.30 before you call a cab, right?
	So I've actually harmed you by offering to help, right?
	Because you're sitting there in the fumes for an hour, hour and a half.
	Whereas if I'd said, I can't come pick you up at the airport, I'm not going to pick you up, you just get a cab, right?
	An offer of help that has not followed through It's a subtle and sophisticated form of harm to another.
	And sometimes it's not even that subtle.
	So when society says, well, child abuse is really bad, and then you start talking about it with people that get really uncomfortable, don't want to talk about it and reject everything you're saying, that is another form of abuse.
	Yeah, or they use, you know, the typical self-help line is, you know, you're abused or you're traumatized, but you just need to forgive and forget.
	Yeah, I genuinely believe that that is another form of colluding with the abusers.
	Because, of course, if forgiveness was such a virtue, well, the whole reason that the child was abused was because the parents didn't forgive.
	So where's the condemnation to the parents for not forgiving the actions of the child?
	It is collusion and it is a further form of abuse.
	And it makes people literally feel like they're falling into a black well of evil with no bottom.
	That there's no sympathetic place, there's no ledge to catch on to, there's no decent human soul that will give them even a wink of sympathy in their plight.
	It's like if I set up this giant fake hospital, advertised it all over the place, we got the best surgeons, we got the best doctors, and inside it was only filled with janitors.
	All these ambulances would come screaming up, all these people would come in with their wounds, And I wouldn't have anyone there to help them.
	What I would have done, though, is I would have diverted them from a real hospital where their lives could have been saved.
	The offer or the pretense of help without the follow-through is destructive.
	And I would argue that that is the main cause of allowing the abuse to continue.
	Parents can harm their children knowing full and damn well That society is going to hurt their adult children back to them, that the society is going to command their children to forgive and forget, that society is going to react with horror if after due consideration and therapy they decide not to see their parents anymore, if their parents are irredeemably abusive or unrepentantly abusive.
	They know all of this, which is why they can do what they do.
	It's easy to steal from the bank if you know that you've got someone on the inside who's going to erase all the security cameras, all the evidence, all the objective proof.
	Anybody who's willing to do that increases the odds of a bank theft.
	And all those who are not sympathetic listeners, doesn't mean you have to agree with every particular, all those who are not sympathetic and empathetic listeners to the victims of child abuse are on the side of the abusers and are creating the conditions under which abusers can get away with what they do.
	And I think some of that does result in this Anger towards authority that comes out of some of the more extreme, you know, sort of garbage can throwing elements of the anarchic movement.
	Yes.
	Yeah, I totally agree.
	All right.
	I'm so sorry to cut you off.
	I think we've got one more caller.
	But I really appreciate it.
	It's a great question.
	Great questions as always, everyone.
	My God.
	I just want to try to catch up.
	I just want to say one last thing, and that's, you know, even if you're wrong about ethics and all that jazz, what you're doing for children is just...
	Words cannot describe the admiration that I have for you and how much you've changed my outlook on relationships and even the thought of having a child.
	So thanks a lot.
	And I hope you enjoy your weekend with your family.
	Oh, thank you.
	I appreciate that.
	And it's actually interesting.
	I just met a listener.
	We're going to have lunch.
	Anyway, but I appreciate that.
	And this is what's great.
	You know, so people can nitpick at the edges of UPB all they want.
	And I think that's great.
	And I definitely can work to improve the way I communicate that for sure.
	But no one can ever take away from me the very fact that the work that I have done has resulted in tens if not hundreds of thousands of parents not hitting their children.
	So, you know, people can rail and do all they want against what I do or how I do or whatever.
	But nonetheless, I go to sleep every night with a smile on my face because I know that hundreds of thousands of children are not being hit as a result of the work that I've done and the receptivity of parents towards changing their behavior.
	And so, you know, I challenge anybody else in the libertarian movement, tell me how you have reduced violence in the world to that degree.
	Tell me.
	I'm willing to hear.
	You tell me how much you have reduced violence in a measurable, practical, brain-shaping, future-changing way to the degree that I have, and I will do what you're doing instead of what I'm doing.
	So, Mike, next caller, please.
	Taylor, go ahead.
	Oh dear, we have another mime.
	Taylor?
	I can hear you.
	I can.
	How are you doing, my friend?
	Pretty well.
	How about you?
	Well, thank you.
	I'm kind of nervous.
	As soon as he said that I was up, my heart kind of started racing.
	And actually a little bit before that.
	And I actually have been feeling...
	having...
	I've been following FDR for over two years, and I haven't really been that active.
	I've read RTR three times.
	I listened to it on audio once, so four in total.
	I've read UPB. I've read God of Atheist.
	That's an amazing book.
	I can't tell you how many times I cried during it.
	Thank you.
	Is it like excitement nervous?
	Or is it like, dear God, don't rip out my kidneys nervous?
	Or what do you think it is?
	I don't know for sure.
	I think a part of it is the excitement.
	I think it's a mixture maybe.
	I know that my false self definitely doesn't want me to talk to you.
	You're kind of like the self whisperer, I guess.
	There's been a pretty strong resistance to self-knowledge.
	I've started journaling, but I'll think about journaling and then I'll get a knot in my stomach and then try to distract myself with anything that comes to mind.
	So...
	Well, let's get to the meat of the matter then.
	Sure, yes.
	What do you think you are avoiding self-knowledge because?
	What is the cause of your avoidance?
	Well, I'm going to say I don't know and you're going to say that I do know.
	Okay, you are a listener.
	Good, we can be efficient then.
	We can be efficient.
	Yes, I want to dig as deep as possible.
	Look, people aren't afraid of the truth and you're not afraid of the truth.
	You're afraid of the effects of the truth.
	Right.
	The truth has no power to harm us whatsoever.
	It's the effects of the truth that have the power to cause us discomfort, right?
	And so my guess would be, if you're afraid of something in yourself, my first question would be not what is it, but what would be the effects of accepting whatever it is?
	Right, right.
	Like, I spoke to my friend about a similar issue, and he He said something similar to what I said, and I said, well, you're not afraid of the truth.
	Who is it that you're afraid of, as far as relationships go?
	What are you afraid of being done to you, or what...
	Alright, so maybe we'll stop dancing around the topic and you telling me about an expert you are with your friends and get to your topic.
	What happened to you as a child?
	Quite a bit, actually.
	I had a fairly rough childhood.
	How so?
	Well, my parents divorced when I was half a year old, six months to a year.
	I don't really recall.
	That's just what I've been told.
	And I live with my mother, who is a single mother, and I think in total now she's been married five times.
	So when I hear you speak about your mother, that stirs up some really heavy emotions for me.
	Did your father, and I'm incredibly sorry to hear about this, you know, to me when I hear like, oh, my parents got divorced, I sort of, to me I hear it as, you know, my family died.
	There was a death in the family called my family, and I'm really, really sorry about that.
	Did your father then absent himself from the picture entirely, or was he around at all?
	Your biological father, I mean, all these stepfathers you had, I don't know that.
	No, he was, actually what happened, he got a job in another state, so I would see him every other weekend.
	And he would drive.
	It was about an 86-mile drive, so he would drive down every other weekend.
	And actually, he would drive to my daycare to see me without my mother knowing, but just to pop by and visit just about every weekend, 86 miles.
	Well, good fam.
	So, yeah, he was there.
	And then, I guess, when I was about 12, I actually moved to live with him.
	And that wasn't a very pleasant experience either.
	But yeah, my mother was ridiculously abusive, loud, screaming, yelling, cursing.
	I'm so sorry.
	I'm so sorry.
	That's terrifying.
	That was completely terrifying.
	To think that your caregiver is unhinged is one of the most terrifying things children can experience.
	Right.
	And she would listen to a lot of...
	Very inappropriate music, like Eminem and stuff.
	And if you're an adult, that's fine.
	But as a kid, I heard a lot of sexually explicit songs and also kind of just borderline psychotic songs.
	She was really into...
	She was heavily into, I guess...
	Edgy, very edgy music.
	Right, yeah, that's very disturbing.
	I mean, it's a clear communication to the child as well, like it or not, right?
	Which is, this is the stuff I value as a parent, and it's fun.
	It's fun psycho, right?
	That's the way it's communicated.
	Right, like she was very flamboyant, you know, she was really dancey and had a good smile.
	And men fell head over heels for her.
	Stupid men did anyways.
	Sure, sure.
	Was she physically violent at all?
	Oh yeah, I was spanked quite often.
	There was one instance, if you don't mind me getting into explaining that if you'd like.
	No, no, not at all.
	Sure, okay.
	Well I was about six or seven years old and Where the air conditioner was, or the central air, outside of the house, there were bushes and rocks, and I used to like to turn up logs and look for bugs and worms and all that boyish stuff.
	And a strange man came walking up to me from the street, and I didn't know who he was, and I can't really recall what he looked like, but there was a glass pony bottle of Sundrop.
	It's kind of like Mountain Dew, but Um, I picked up the bottle and I threw it at him because he didn't say anything to me.
	He just kept walking towards me.
	And, um, he, he said, you know, where do you live?
	And I just kind of pointed, you know, right to my house.
	And, uh, uh, he, he kind of, I don't remember if he grabbed me by the arm, but I remember going inside and my mom, um, Him telling her what happened, that I'd thrown the bottle at him, and she didn't ask me why, but she asked me, you know, she said, did you throw that at him?
	And it was like, she wasn't even asking out of curiosity, she was asking because if I told her no, Then she would have an excuse to spank me more.
	And, of course, I told her yes.
	And, you know, she pulled down my pants and spanked me just completely bare-assed in front of this strange guy.
	And so I haven't...
	There have been multiple issues, and I haven't spoken to her in Almost three years.
	But that was kind of the kind of thing that would happen.
	Yeah, and how old were you when that deplorable incident occurred?
	I don't know, second grade, maybe six or seven, maybe eight.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, and I would assume that you, having internalized the lesson, that if something happens that could be negative, you respond with violence, right?
	Oh, definitely.
	And there were other instances where she was just really loud and verbally abusive.
	I have a little sister She's about four years, five years younger than me.
	I have two I have two half sisters, but this is from my half sister from her second husband.
	We would I think we would fight over the computer, but I don't I don't really remember me fighting over computer time.
	But I remember, you know, Her wanting me to get up and I'd be preoccupied and fascinated with surfing the web and sometimes I wouldn't get up when she wanted me to and that was kind of taken into retaliatory action because soon enough when I wouldn't start getting up she would just scream mom,
	mom really incessantly I guess and My mom would get mad at both of us and scream and just yell, like, just yell, God damn it, at the top of her lungs in this blood-curdling, just really raw and terrible way.
	And so my sister would start screaming and crying because, you know, my mother would do things like that and I remember just crying in my room.
	She'd send me to my room to clean it and shut the door, slam the door.
	I just remember crying for my dad.
	Just saying, I want my dad over and over.
	It is one of the things that's pretty tragic about Where parenting is, not all, but a lot of it, is that children will do stuff and then they will be, you know, blamed or even attacked for what they do, which is a symptom of dysfunction, right?
	So you throwing a bottle at a guy is a symptom of some problems in your upbringing, right?
	Right.
	And, I mean, I remember when I was a kid, maybe a little younger than you, about five or six, I threw rocks all the time.
	Love to throw rocks.
	I threw rocks walking down the sidewalk.
	One went up.
	Landed on a guy's, the hood of his car.
	Created a dent.
	There's a big problem and all that.
	I threw a rock when I was in Africa when I was six.
	Hit my brother in the head.
	It went down like a dropped sack of potatoes.
	Nobody ever talked about it.
	Nobody ever asked me, why?
	Why are you throwing rocks?
	Why are you throwing rocks?
	And in the same way, why would you throw a rock?
	I mean, there's curiosity, just basic curiosity.
	Why?
	Well, of course, the people who provoke this kind of behavior are the least likely people to be curious about the effects of that behavior, right?
	Or the causes, really, of that behavior.
	People should have been asking you, like, what's going on?
	I can't imagine my daughter throwing a bottle at someone, right?
	So if some kid's throwing a bottle, ask why?
	But no, you provoke the symptom and you punish the symptom, which provokes another symptom which you punish, right?
	It's just like playing whack-a-mole except your hands actually up underneath the thing pushing the moles up, right?
	Right, yeah.
	What was it like with this five stepdads rolling through your life?
	That's a good question.
	and I didn't really care.
	I didn't care for any of them.
	And how were they for you?
	I mean, I would imagine if they married your mom, they weren't exactly the wisest and most peaceful of specimens.
	And, of course, the chances of child abuse rise 20 to 30 times when there's a non-biological authority figure in the house, right?
	And so I don't know if that occurred in your case, but the odds were certainly higher that you would have had a harsher time with these guys than with your biological dad.
	Right, um...
	I don't think my mom is kind of a hyena, I guess.
	What?
	What does that mean?
	Well, hyenas have...
	Hyenas, I guess, they have an extended clitoris and they're basically the male dominant.
	They're the alphas, the females.
	So she...
	If any of the...
	She had a monopoly on the abuse of her children.
	Oh, okay.
	So some of them were indifferent.
	I'm here for your mom.
	You're just something I put up with kind of thing?
	Some of them were.
	I mean, when you're talking about five guys...
	You've got a sample size, yeah.
	Right, right.
	Yeah.
	And why, since you know this stuff, and for which I'm...
	I mean, of course, unbelievably sorry.
	This is not...
	Even close to what you should have experienced.
	It's almost diametrically opposite to what you should have experienced as a child.
	You'd had a stable, consistent, caring, loving, nurturing, healthy, funny, enjoyable house to live in.
	Why do you think there was anxiety in bringing this stuff up?
	It doesn't seem like it's a hard kind of knowledge for you to have.
	I mean, obviously, it's hard to have in you, but it's not like we had to fight tooth and nail to get this stuff out of you.
	Right.
	It's a little bit harder with my dad, and I haven't talked to him in a few months for similar reasons.
	But I'm not really sure what it is that I'm afraid of, or what it is that I would be giving up.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	Is there something that you haven't talked about that you'll kick yourself for not talking about?
	well, not if, when we're done this conversation.
	I mean, I'm sure there will be plenty of...
	I mean, that you know of now, what I mean.
	No.
	You didn't skip over number one on your list to chat about, right?
	No, I didn't.
	This is...
	Do you have a strong commandment for family secrets?
	No, I wouldn't.
	I wouldn't say so.
	All right.
	So, you weren't...
	You're not sort of breaking any family commandments by talking about this stuff...
	In this arena, did you have any concern about how I might respond or react to these tales of terror?
	No, no.
	I did feel a little anxious when I was talking about the chat I had with my friend and you said...
	Enough about...
	How you're good at other things in this conversation.
	Right, right, right.
	I did feel kind of tense when you said that.
	And what is your goal in communicating what you're communicating?
	And by that, I certainly don't mean that I... I mean, I feel very privileged that you would talk about this stuff with me and very honored that you would share these things with me.
	But...
	Is there a purpose?
	Because you haven't actually asked a question yet, which is, again, not the end of the world, but I still want to point that out.
	Is there a question that you have or something that I can provide some value to you other than listening?
	To be honest, I haven't thought of a question.
	It was just something that I've...
	I had a desire to do, and I've been met with anxiety about it, so I wasn't sure why that was.
	And so I guess to just, like you said to a previous caller, if you want to do something, then just start doing it.
	And my goal, I suppose, was to kind of open the floodgates or just become more involved and Well, but they're not open.
	And, you know, to be frank, you sound beaten down.
	I mean, it sounds like that the weight of the history is snuffed you out a little bit.
	Again, this is just my initial impressions.
	I'm not trying to define your whole life for you.
	I'm just telling you sort of my experience.
	You sound very monotone.
	You sound kind of depressed, low on energy, low on motivation.
	Is that...
	Where you are, or am I misreading?
	No, you're completely spot on.
	I mean, I work for the government.
	My job is definitely not what I want to do.
	I don't really know what it is that I want to do, but I do know that I want to be happy.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I mean, what I wanted to say to the woman earlier was, which I think is appropriate here too, is that ambition comes from intimacy, right?
	So the first question, sorry, the first word in I want to do something is I, right?
	And one of the problems in growing up with an aggressive or abusive environment is that it demands conformity over identity.
	In fact, an identity is a very threat to that.
	We can't abuse people who are real to us.
	Therefore, all people who abuse children Must erase that child's identity within their own mind.
	And there's no better way to erase someone's identity in your own mind than to get them to erase their identity in their own mind, right?
	For them to have no needs that oppose our desires, to have no opinions that oppose our prejudices, to have no perspectives that threaten our propaganda, and to demand conformity.
	All right, total self erasure.
	Yeah, it demands self-recession on the part of others.
	And this is basically the problem with living with a narcissist.
	You know, I just used that term as an amateur, but it is that you are not allowed to have preferences which inconvenience the narcissist.
	And what that means, of course, is that you grow up like with all the spine of a puddle of water, just looking for whatever convenient container can give you any kind of shape.
	And the idea of doing something on your own initiative Against the preferences or wishes of others is inconceivable.
	Everything of substance that we do is against the wishes of some people.
	And I don't care what it is that you're doing.
	Let's say you open a little coffee shop.
	Well, I guarantee you there's a coffee shop up the block that is upset about you opening up the coffee shop.
	Mm-hmm.
	I've just started to read Malcolm Gladwell's new book.
	I mean, I wish he'd tackle some more important issues, but nonetheless, he's got some interesting stuff to write about.
	He's talking about David and Goliath, and he's talking about some coach who'd never played basketball who got his inexperienced 12-year-old girl basketball team to basically run a full-court press, which is basically guarding the opponents in their own section the whole game.
	And this is considered bad form in basketball or whatever, and people were screaming at him.
	Other coaches were yelling at him.
	One coach demanded a fight in the parking lot because it's all perfectly within the rules, but it's just not good form.
	And he got a team with no real competence all the way to the Nationals because he was willing to do this and to take this stand.
	And everything that you do of any kind of substance...
	Is going to bother or anger or maybe even enrage other people.
	You know, you get rid of slavery, you piss off everyone who catches and collects and buys and sells slaves and everyone who relies on slaves and, you know, the whole industry, they hate you.
	They hate you.
	And one of the ways that society stagnates is we make people, we breed children who are terrified of upsetting people.
	You know, the people who invented the car really upset the people who made the horse and buggy.
	Right?
	Everyone who invents some great new cell phone annoys everyone who's got some more primitive cell phone out there.
	Every new cab annoys every existing cab driver, which is why they have these licenses to keep them out.
	Everything you do in this world, you almost can't take a breath without annoying somebody who wanted that same patch of oxygen.
	And one of the ways that society and people really stagnate is they are afraid of upsetting others.
	And one of the ways that society...
	I mean, if you think of sort of the great stagnant societies of history, you know, like 5,000 years of the Chinese society that barely changed.
	Well, it's because everybody was terrified of giving offense, of upsetting people.
	And the way that they're raised is in this, you know, strict oriental Japanese-Chinese style of extreme conformity and being afraid to upset others.
	But everything we will do of any substance is going to bother someone, somewhere, somehow.
	And of course, given the internet, you know, it can be hard to avoid the knowledge that what you're doing is bothering some people somewhere, somehow.
	I mean, good God, just look at Apple puts out a new phone and...
	All the Apple fanboys come out and praise it, which pisses off all the Android people and the Windows people have to defend.
	People even get upset about new operating systems or upgraded operating systems.
	And so if you are raised to be afraid of upsetting people, which is really one of the definitions of having been abused, it is almost impossible unless you confront and deal with that to achieve anything of any substance in your life.
	And so what people who've been abused, who are afraid of upsetting people do, is they live the most pasty-faced, bland, sorry-for-breathing, innocuous lives that you can imagine, where it's impossible to imagine that anyone could be bothered by what they're doing in any way, shape, or form.
	Does it sound like a description?
	Yeah.
	Is that what you want?
	Definitely not.
	The correct answer is yes and no.
	You want it to conform with the history that you have, and you don't want it to seize the future you could have.
	To be afraid of offense is paralysis of substance.
	I couldn't do what I do if I was afraid of offending people or upsetting people.
	I mean, that's why philosophy tends to stagnate the most of any science, because philosophy offends and upsets the most people.
	But I really could give a rat's ass about the people who are upset and offended by what I argue.
	They don't even show up on my radar.
	All I care about is, am I illuminating a path to less violence, particularly towards children?
	That's all I care about.
	I don't care about the people who are upset about what I do.
	What I care about is the children who are relieved by what I do.
	That's the only star I steer the ship by.
	But I couldn't do it if the upset of people was something I had to avoid.
	But I know the trick, which is that, as Eleanor Roosevelt said, no one can make you feel bad without your fundamental consent.
	And if you're afraid of offending people, it's you who is holding the whip now that you're an adult.
	Not history, not your mother, not the past.
	Not these five random literal motherfuckers who came through your life.
	It's you.
	And you can put the whip down and you can achieve things of substance with the inevitable ripple effect of offending idiots and jerks.
	But you can...
	Do that now.
	There is no need for you to live in fear of offense.
	Now, you can be driven by a concern for insignificance.
	Because you don't want to live your life barely leaving an imprint in the world, right?
	Right.
	Where at your funeral, there are three guys there who are like, yeah, he seems like a nice guy.
	I don't really know him very well, but I mean, I knew he was into, he liked TV, he was into computer games.
	But, yeah, I guess I'm sorry he's gone.
	I guess I wish I'd gotten to know him a little bit better, but he always seemed kind of standoffish, and I never really kind of knew what he thought, and I never really knew where he stood on things.
	But, yeah, I mean, a nice guy.
	You know, you could shoot the shit with the guy.
	You could have a coffee and talk about sports and stuff.
	So, I guess...
	Well, I don't really do that.
	But you know what I mean?
	Like, I mean, this doesn't have to be you specifically, but...
	You don't want to be that guy who passes through life like a javelin through air, barely causing a ripple, right?
	You want to be a helicopter that lands.
	Right.
	Oh, that makes sense.
	But to do that, you have to get over the fear of upsetting people.
	That's just the way it is.
	I mean, you can't lift a thumb in this world without 10,000 people screaming at you that you're an asshole for not lifting a finger.
	That's just the way things are.
	It's the way people are.
	It's the way society protects itself from change.
	Because change and progress harm those who feed off the existing system in usually destructive ways.
	Right?
	The remora don't want the shark to die.
	They're going to go find a new host, right?
	surviving the fear of offense is fundamental to growing virtue in the world.
	I mean, it's always a necessary, but in fact, almost completely sufficient need for that in order to grow the world.
	Do you think that that's...
	Sorry, go ahead.
	No, I was just going to say that that makes total sense as far as looking back at me being able to express my preferences.
	I really...
	I can't think of a time where I was...
	Where I was able to do that.
	Well, let me tell you a great secret.
	A great secret.
	My baby's got a secret.
	The secret.
	Here's the great secret.
	Here's the great secret.
	The great secret is that evil people hate enthusiasm for anything other than them.
	Right?
	So Hitler loves it when you chant Hitler.
	He doesn't like it if you have enthusiasm for something other than him.
	Which is why in totalitarian regimes you are not allowed to have any hobbies.
	Everything you do is for the state.
	Everything you do is meetings to go over the evils of the bourgeoisie, repression of the proletariat in the capitalist society.
	You are not allowed to have enthusiasm for anything other than the abuser.
	And this is why your voice has no enthusiasm in it.
	Because that was not allowed.
	For you to have enthusiasm for something other than your abuser is for you to have an identity and a personhood which interferes with your abuser's desire to vent their frustrations by harming you.
	So, I haven't defunded...
	I would say...
	Internally, I mean...
	Yeah, I would say that...
	To develop enthusiasms that go against the interests of your abusers.
	Not because they go against them.
	I mean, any enthusiasms you develop will go against the interests of your abusers.
	Right.
	Because if we see people as people, we cannot abuse them.
	We cannot abuse them.
	And so for you to have...
	And this was similar, I think, to what I was trying to say or didn't really get around to saying to Rose earlier.
	When I say that intimacy...
	It's the prerequisite for ambition.
	Intimacy is when you have your own thoughts, desires and feelings that are enthusiastically embraced by those around you and encouraged.
	Where you can be fully who you are.
	And people are fully enthusiastic for who you are and what you want in your relationships.
	Intimacy is the prerequisite for ambition.
	and where people lack ambition, I know historically they have lacked intimacy and most likely have been abused.
	And so I would say that for you to develop your own preferences with the full knowledge that your preferences, particularly if you're involved in this kind of conversation, that your preferences are going to be harmful and annoying and frustrating and enraging for shallow people around you.
	But that we hold fast to it regardless.
	I saw this little clip from one of the talent shows with this little kid from a roughneck section of England.
	He was like eight or nine years old, a little chunky.
	And he had this most beautiful, angelic falsetto voice.
	And he sang a short piece of classical music.
	And beforehand, he said, well, you know, I don't really like to sing.
	Sorry, I get teased and bullied a lot for singing because people say, well, it's not the kind of music that boys sing and, you know, you sound like a girl and that kind of stuff.
	And they said, and what do you do when you get bullied?
	And he said, "I keep singing." And I think Simon said, "You know why those people bully you?
	Those people bully you because they don't have a tenth of a tenth of the talent that you have.
	And I don't, I mean, whether that's true or not, I mean, I don't know for sure, but there was a kind of heroism in him keeping doing what he was doing despite the contempt and hatred and hostility and abuse from those around him for what he was doing.
	And that's getting anything done in this life You will get done at the expense of pissing people off.
	You know, you go buy a new car, everyone you test drove is upset that you didn't buy their car.
	You can't do anything in this world without upsetting someone because that's the world we live in.
	And the important thing is not whether you upset people.
	The important thing is who you upset.
	If you upset good people, that's a bad sign.
	If you upset bad people, that's a great thing to steer by.
	But sorry, go ahead.
	I've gotten better about that.
	And I have done some things that I think are worth noting or good.
	Just as far as trying to RTR more heavily with people that I think have the potential and to kind of examine my own potential as far as that goes and what I need to work on.
	And one thing that keeps coming back is just this really hypercritical voice in my head That kind of turns everything on its head, right?
	Like it turns everything into the exact opposite of what I initially think I'm doing.
	And listen, I'm very sorry.
	Maybe we can pick this up another time.
	I do actually have...
	I did say that I was going to meet somebody I met who's a listener for lunch.
	So I will, with regret, leave you with this one thought.
	And again, if this doesn't help you at all, please call in and we'll continue on Wednesday night maybe.
	But I'll tell you, don't try and change people into what you want them to be.
	If you're in some foreign country and you want to have a conversation with someone, you don't sit down with some local and say, hey, I'm going to teach you English.
	They may want to, they may not want to, but even so, it's going to take them years.
	Find people who speak English already and chat with them.
	It is not your job to go around teaching indifferent people to learn the language they don't care about.
	And that is another way of staying paralyzed.
	And that's another way of staying in the same situation you had as a child, which is not being listened to.
	Right?
	So I'm trying to RTR with people and, you know, I'm good at help.
	Right?
	Find the people who are already in motion.
	Find the people who are already living their ambitions.
	Find the people who are already doing something, anything.
	And join with them.
	Right?
	If you want to...
	You know, be a runner.
	You don't just sort of pick some fat guy in the neighborhood and say, come run with me.
	Go find people already running.
	Go run with them.
	Because you need their enthusiasm.
	You need their motivation.
	You need their experience.
	Right?
	Because this is something that you've historically not had.
	Right, which I'm not fluent in.
	Yeah, and the other thing too is that you even speak the language you want to teach others.
	So I would say, you know, surround yourself with people or find people, could be online, could be in your neighborhood, find people who are already in motion.
	And if you've got to sit, you know, cross-legged at the feet of their table for a little while to learn what they're doing, fantastic.
	You know, that's great.
	You offer to bring them coffees if that's what it takes.
	But don't try to turn the people who've stuck to you like birds because of your history into the opposite of your history.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah.
	Right?
	If you're in a motorcycle gang, don't suddenly try to get them to turn against motorcycles, right?
	Right.
	Well, if I do, that would be, I guess that would be some kind of an answer to, or some kind of a very small answer to, if you can convert the head of a gang to non-aggression, then maybe it'll work for the government, but...
	And this is why you were anxious, right?
	Because you don't want to make that leap.
	You were hoping that you can keep your existing social circle while having a completely different and opposite kind of life.
	Your social circle is with you because they like who you are or they're comfortable with who you are right now.
	And if you want to fundamentally change that...
	You need to find a new social circle.
	You can't hang out with anyone you already know.
	It just means that your motive power is going to be different.
	And you can certainly talk about your ambitions with those around you, but guaranteed they're with you because you aren't who you want to be.
	Right.
	And if they have the desire for the good old rational philosophy, then that's something they'll do on their own accord and not Well, they'll see you changing and they'll be curious and so on.
	And so if they see you learning Mandarin or whatever, maybe they'll be interested in coming to class.
	But you can't teach them Mandarin because you're still learning it.
	So that's my sort of thought and suggestion.
	And I hope that that really helps.
	And again, I'm sorry that we couldn't talk longer, but I don't want to keep the fellow waiting.
	Thank you everybody so much for this conversation.
	FDRURL.com forward slash donate.
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	Thanks Mike.
	Thanks everyone.
	Have a great, great week.

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