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Jan. 1, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

03:18:43

2573 Are All Soldiers War Criminals? - Sunday Call In Show December 31th, 2013

A parenting intervention, the immersion of free market solutions in Detroit, dont be an asshole of the future, is Adam Kokesh a war criminal, Noam Chomsky and anarcho-syndicalism, feeling stuck about why you are stuck, I can not explain why I love my Mother and respect your elders dammit!

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	Good morning, everybody.
	Oh my goodness, it's the last show of 2013.
	And hopefully it's one year better than the first show.
	That's the plan.
	What an exciting year it's been.
	Highs and lows.
	And everything in between.
	But apparently, Mike tells me, we have lots of people who wish to ask questions, make comments, criticisms, and generally mark my beard.
	So, Mike, who do we have?
	All right, Oscar.
	Go ahead, Oscar.
	Hey, Stefan.
	How are you?
	Hello.
	Hey, Stefan.
	Thank you so much for taking our call.
	Actually, this was...
	And I want to thank you for all the wonderful information that you've made available for free on your website.
	I've actually just recently come across your information.
	I think it was...
	How did you find us?
	Through the Tragedy and Hope community.
	I think my first introduction was when you debated Tom Wolcott's And a great debate.
	I feel like you've won, hands down.
	But I've just been recently, you know, exposing myself to your information for the last few months or so.
	And one of the things that really attracted me to the information that you were giving was, you know, was because we're parents, you know, my wife and I, We have a 13-year-old and a 3-year-old.
	She's going to be 3 next month.
	We just actually started watching your Bound in the Brain series.
	We watched the first two parts and slowly taking in this information and you've really lined up a lot of things with with anarchism and atheism and just you're a real powerhouse in regards to philosophy and it's kind of what I've been looking for for a very long time And I'm very grateful for that, so thank you for being who you are.
	You're welcome.
	Thank you.
	Actually, my wife prompted this question, and she was the one that wrote into Michael, mostly because we've recently, as I mentioned, we watched the Bomb and the Brain series, or at least the first two parts, and we recently ordered and received the PET effectiveness training.
	Your perspective on I'm parenting and not spanking.
	It's amazing stuff.
	We've come across this information.
	If it's okay, I'm going to let my wife speak as well.
	She's right here with me.
	We've just been having a hard time with our three-year-old's tantrums.
	She goes just absolutely ballistic.
	It's so hard to control ourselves and not act out in aggression.
	My wife's a yeller.
	She will freely admit that.
	And, you know, we have spanked her.
	We've hit her because of the...
	just...
	the profound emotional space that we find ourselves in, that we just kind of react in this way.
	And so many have been...
	I mean, for myself, I only did it once, and I'm just ashamed.
	Any time that I think about it, it kills me.
	More specifically, my wife recently had a particular episode where she spanked her and she even said that she hated her and we're just like, we're doing something wrong.
	Sorry, your daughter said that she hated your wife?
	No, my wife told our three-year-old that she hated her out of just despair in dealing with her tantrum.
	Well, actually, technically not out of despair, but out of hatred, right?
	I mean, despair would be, I feel despair, not I hate you, right?
	I mean, not to throw your wife under the bus, but we have to be honest, right?
	I assume she felt hatred in the moment, which is actually better than she didn't, but was being manipulative, right?
	Well, yeah.
	I mean, I... I don't want to speak for her, so if...
	Oh yeah, put her on.
	Hi Stefan.
	Hello, hello.
	How are you doing?
	I'll be much better if you can help me.
	Yes, listen, I appreciate this is really tough stuff.
	I hugely appreciate you calling in.
	I can't imagine how tough that must be, but I just wanted to say massive kudos up front for calling in because it's really tough.
	I mean, it's an incredibly tough thing.
	It's a very humble thing to do, and I just thank you for taking the risk, and hopefully we can be of some help.
	But I just really wanted to say that right up front.
	Well, thank you.
	And I apologize if I feel like I'm going to cry.
	Don't apologize for your emotions here.
	We are an emotional-friendly show.
	So if you weren't crying with upset about what's going on with your daughter, that would be really alarming.
	So you can cry.
	That's no problem.
	Well, I just feel like that it was the second time that I've ever gotten really angry with her and you hit it on the spot where in that particular moment I did feel like I hated her.
	And I want to correct this.
	I don't want to be a bad mom.
	Right.
	So, I guess I'm looking for how can I, what can I do to deal with her her tantrums and my thing behind it is my oldest daughter she was I mean you know pretty normal tantrums growing up you know just normal stuff but I feel like our second daughter is really extreme and I
	I'm the type of person I feel responsible for other people's happiness and I really want her to just be happy all the time and um You know I whatever I can do without my fear too is I don't want to spoil her to a fact to a point where I have somebody in the family that she did not turn out very good because of the way
	her parents let her have whatever she wanted and she's even inconsiderate of other people and I don't want I want my children to turn out like that, but I also don't want to ruin them either.
	So I'm at a point where I just don't know what to do.
	And with Olivia, she's the youngest.
	She's the one who I need coaching on how to parent her.
	Her tantrums and I don't know if this is normal maybe I just never experienced a child with extreme tantrums but I mean she like she throws stuff she I like to call her the Tasmanian devil because when when we When she's in her room and she's mad at us and she slams the door,
	we hear stuff going on and when we open the door, she has ripped off all her clothes, she has thrown everything that's on a shelf on the floor, all her bedding is off, her little toddler bed.
	I mean, she's just crazy!
	And I guess I have this fear that, is there something wrong with her?
	Medically or, you know, I don't want to go to a doctor because all they're going to do is try to prescribe something to turn her into a zombie.
	I want to get to the root of the problem along with, I want to get to the root of the problem with me.
	How can I Do, you know, deal with this where I'm helping her eventually get out of the crazy tantrums and teach her to be, you know, a considerate, like, loving, you know, person as she gets older.
	I mean, I know the tantrum doesn't last forever.
	I just, I want to make sure that, you know, she grows up to, she can grow out of this in a good way and not like I'm How do I say it?
	I don't want her to You don't want to, if I can jump in, you don't want to like squelch her behavior or mask the symptoms.
	You want her to actually grow out of this and not be repressed, is that?
	Yes, yes, exactly.
	Okay, yeah, I got it.
	Good, good.
	I mean, I think that's definitely wise.
	You don't put a band-aid on something like that, right?
	Because it's going to, particularly when she becomes a teenager, right?
	Teenager is like the second toddlerhood, so to speak.
	And you definitely don't want to have these mechanics in place when she's like five times the size and can go do what she wants, right?
	Yes, exactly.
	Right, right.
	It's great.
	Quite a party here.
	The whole family.
	Very nice.
	Very nice.
	All right.
	And...
	This is to the wife, and again, I'm happy to use your name, but if you want to stay off names, that's totally fine, too.
	How were you disciplined when you were a child?
	I mean, we were hit.
	We weren't, like, beaten or anything, but, you know, a smack in the mouth if you smarted off or, you know, grounded.
	You know, I guess the normal, I mean, of what...
	What I thought was normal back in the day.
	You know, nothing too extreme.
	We weren't like...
	My mom was a huge...
	Her bark was worse than her bite, put it that way.
	She...
	I'm a lot better than her, but I'm still a yeller.
	And I have...
	I've been in a self-growth for many years now, me and my husband together.
	We started doing seminars, anything to help us become better people.
	So I'm not as bad as she was, but I still do yell when I get to my short fuse, so to speak, which I'm not totally sure what What triggers that, which I guess is kind of where I'm at.
	She was a huge yeller, like screamer, more verbal than anything.
	That was like our discipline.
	Right.
	Now, you are still in the phase of justifying what was done to you as a child.
	I don't know if you know that or not or whether this is common knowledge, but you basically said we would get a smack in the mouth if we smarted off or something, like if you were wisecracking, if you were being a smartass, right?
	Yes.
	Yes.
	Right.
	So, in other words, you were causal in your parents hitting you.
	You made it happen because you were doing something, right?
	Yes.
	Yes.
	In other words, the aggression is the child's fault.
	Oh, I see where you're going with this.
	And do you know how you described your daughter?
	You said, my daughter is the Tasmanian devil, my daughter is crazy, my daughter has extreme tantrums, my daughter...
	In other words, what you're doing is an inevitable response to what your daughter is doing.
	In the same way you justified what your parents were doing as you mouthing off, right?
	Stop!
	Does this make sense?
	Yes.
	I'm here to tell you, my sister, that your daughter is not causal in what you do.
	Okay.
	You are not doing what you're doing because your daughter is doing anything, but because of the values that you have.
	Okay.
	She is not making you yell at her.
	She is not making you lose your temper.
	That is based upon the values that you have, but not based upon her behavior.
	Got it.
	Your parents hit you in the mouth because of the values that they believed in, not because you were doing X, Y, or Z. Because it's so funny, we tell our children to be responsible, and then we say to our children, you are responsible for my dysfunctional parenting, right?
	Yeah.
	In other words, you as a 3-year-old are really responsible, but me as a 30-year-old, or however old you are, I guess probably a little older, you got a 13-year-old, anyway.
	But you, my daughter, as a 3-year-old are responsible for what you do, but my reaction to what you do, I am not responsible for.
	I see.
	You are modeling irresponsibility and an abdication of self-control to your daughter, and then you wonder why she has tantrums.
	She has tantrums because you have tantrums.
	Right.
	Wow, that makes a lot of sense.
	And it's completely obvious when you see it, right?
	Yeah.
	But what happens is we don't meet our own standards.
	Look, you don't want to be yelling at your daughter.
	She's three, for heaven's sakes, right?
	I mean, you don't want to be yelling at her at any time, but she's three.
	Right?
	So you are not living up to your standards.
	For what you want.
	And this is great.
	I mean, it's fantastic that you're calling in.
	And again, I hugely admire the courage that it takes to do that.
	But if you self-indulge in aggression and then blame your daughter, you are putting the weight of your decisions upon her tiny frame.
	That is unbearable for her.
	If your daughter thinks she's in control of you, she is going to panic.
	Because you're the one who's supposed to be in control.
	You're the one who's in charge.
	You're the mom.
	If she thinks that you're not in charge, that you're just reacting to what she does, she is going to freak out.
	It's like being told that the pilot is dead and you can't open the door to the airplane.
	Okay.
	You are the one who needs to be in control.
	You are the one who needs to be setting the standards.
	If she feels, as you describe it, that it is her behavior that is triggering your meltdowns, she is going to panic because she's going to feel like nobody's in control, like nobody's in charge, right?
	Right, right.
	He's running, he's running!
	If you want her to have self-control, you must model self-control.
	If you want her to not have aggression, you must model non-aggression.
	If you want her to have self-ownership, you must model self-ownership.
	If you want her to have respect for other people's emotional sensitivities, you need to model that.
	She's doing what you do.
	Believe it or not, I'm a little bit less bossy than my wife when it comes to my daughter.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	Because I'm a dad.
	And I was talking about this with my daughter just yesterday.
	We were having breakfast.
	All three of us were having breakfast.
	And we were chatting about some stuff.
	And I said, how bossy is daddy?
	And she put her hands together, right?
	And I said, and how bossy is mommy?
	And she put her hands like, I don't know, a couple of inches apart.
	And I said, and how bossy are you?
	And she put her hands right in the middle.
	They know.
	Yeah.
	They know that they're just modeling and absorbing.
	She absorbs your behavior like she learns English from you, unconsciously, repetitively.
	The weird thing is, I don't know where my daughter gets her language from.
	I think she's joining some secret language gang.
	You know, I'm not sitting here.
	She'll ask me, you know, I'm reading some books to her.
	She'll ask me a word here or there.
	But I don't know where the hell she's getting all these words from.
	I don't know if she's stealing them from me or getting them on the black market.
	She's probably buying them with bitcoins, that little witch.
	Right, but if you want her, you have to model the behavior that you need from her.
	And if she feels that she is in control of you or that you are passively reacting to everything that she does...
	Then she can't drive the relationship.
	You're driving the relationship.
	Yes.
	And she doesn't know how to drive the relationship because she's three, right?
	Right.
	So if she's in control of the relationship, in other words, if you're just bouncing off whatever she does, she's going to keep panicking.
	Okay.
	It's deeply terrifying for a kid to feel that they're in charge.
	Yes.
	Right.
	And again, if somebody put you at the controls of a fighter plane and said, land this thing, what would you do?
	I'd have an anxiety attack.
	You'd freak the F out, right?
	Yeah, I would.
	I would, too.
	I mean, we have nightmares about things like that, right?
	Yeah.
	Now, again, you know, medically, I don't know.
	I mean, I would try a bunch of stuff before, you know, I mean, if you need to see a doctor, take a seat, obviously, right?
	But there's a whole bunch of stuff that can happen that can change things.
	Moms are...
	Okay, putting on a massively sexist hat for a second, right?
	So this could be nonsense, but I'm going to say it anyway, right?
	What I said to my daughter was, I said, your mom and you used to be the same person.
	Okay.
	Because you grew in her belly.
	Now, you and I were never quite the same person.
	You didn't grow in my belly.
	You didn't feed from my boobs, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	So I said, mom is a little bit more controlling, let's say, because you used to be the same person and so it's hard for moms to separate from kids, especially at the age of three or four when they start to have their willpower, they start to have their independent thoughts, they start to challenge boundaries and resist instructions, right?
	It's hard for moms to separate themselves.
	Like when she's two weeks old and you're breastfeeding her, you're kind of like one person, right?
	It's like I have this limb that I have to, this detachable limb that I have to keep going to get and take care of, right?
	Yes.
	And that's perfectly natural.
	That kind of bonding is, to me, that's wonderful, beautiful.
	Now it's the dad's job to kind of peel moms away a little bit during the toddler phase.
	Give her some space.
	Give her some room, right?
	She's not a reflection of you.
	She's not an ego part of you.
	She's not resisting you, but being herself.
	And if you try to control her, think of having a U five times your size walking around bossing you all day.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	NSA got nothing on them arms sometimes, right?
	Yeah, yes.
	Do this, don't do that, control.
	You can't, like, at this age, does she make fairly good decisions?
	I mean, is she constantly throwing herself downstairs and trying to play with tigers and set fires?
	No.
	No.
	I would assume, like, work empirically.
	If she's making some pretty good decisions, if she's playing pretty safely, if she's, you know, whatever, right?
	Then, you know, relax the control and And recognize that she cannot push any of your buttons.
	You have no buttons.
	You only have your own values.
	Right?
	So you have to then be in charge as a parent.
	You have to be modeling the behavior that you want.
	We always want to change our kids.
	We always want to change everyone else around us.
	But the only way to change the world is to change yourself.
	It's a cliche, but it really is true.
	Yes.
	Now...
	Tell me about her last three years, right?
	So, breastfeeding, how long were you at home, where has she been taken care of, all that kind of stuff?
	Breastfeeding, I... Well, I had a little problem breastfeeding, so I only did it for about two months.
	Apparently, I did not have the supply that...
	I needed for her.
	So I had to incorporate some formula.
	I did half and half.
	And I did it as long as I could until I just naturally had nothing left.
	So that was about two months, two and a half months.
	And you were home during that time?
	Yes.
	Yes.
	I was home during that time.
	It was just me and her.
	I mean, that was a great time.
	I mean, I loved that.
	Even though I was a little disappointed in myself, I didn't have the supply to feed my child.
	I still did what I could, what I had for her.
	And we got the best formula we could find for her.
	And then I went back to work shortly after that.
	How old was she when you went back to work?
	It was just within three months I went back to work after having her.
	So I was 33, 34, something.
	No, but sorry, why did you go back to work?
	For money.
	No, I understand that.
	I mean, I assume it's not a hobby, right?
	But why did you need the money?
	Or what?
	I mean...
	Yeah, why?
	Why?
	We were in the process of buying a house.
	And, you know, we didn't feel confident on my husband's income, so I went back to work.
	But buying a house...
	Sorry to interrupt.
	Again, I'm just going to be an annoying guy here, so I apologize in advance.
	But why buy a house when you're just having a baby?
	Because isn't that the difference between staying home and going back to work?
	Yes, that's true.
	Well, my reason was because we were, you know, temporarily...
	You know, living with my mom after our wedding, and we didn't expect to have Olivia if she was a surprise.
	No, I get 10 years is usually not how people plan that stuff, right?
	Oops!
	Well, you know, sometimes the Pope just puts a hole in a condom that bastard.
	Anyway, so, but, I mean, why at that time, right?
	Because, I mean, obviously your daughter doesn't know anything about anything other than mommy's gone, right?
	Yes.
	Yes.
	And how long were you home with your first daughter?
	I was actually home with her about the same, about three months, but I was also a single.
	I made a bad choice in men at that point.
	So he wasn't around after her.
	So I had no choice.
	I had to go back to work because I was even the income.
	Right.
	Well, you had no choice as a result of your prior choice.
	Yes.
	So you had a choice that then resulted in less choice.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	I'm going to be annoying whenever you say I had no choice.
	I just want to remind you because what we're trying to do is give you back more sense of power, right?
	More sense of control.
	Okay.
	So where did she go when you went back to work?
	My first daughter?
	No, sorry, second.
	Okay.
	My mother-in-law is retired, so she has been kind enough to raise her, you know, babysit her while we're at work.
	So we drop her off while we go to work and then we pick her up after.
	And how is your mother-in-law with regards to parenting?
	What is her philosophy of parenting, of discipline, of interaction and all that?
	Um, I'm gonna...
	I mean, from what I know of her, she seems to be fine.
	I don't really know exactly how she...
	Was she a spanker when your husband was little?
	Let me ask her, would you answer that?
	Yeah, I'll answer that.
	Yeah, she was a spanker.
	They were few and far between.
	And does she still justify the spanking, or does she think that maybe it was not the best thing?
	No, we've actually had several conversations about this, especially since I've been exposed to your information.
	And, yeah, she feels remorseful about her decisions in regards to spanking.
	And...
	We've had those conversations and she understands that spanking is not allowed and that we won't have it.
	And she doesn't spank Olivia.
	And I didn't have much of a worry or resistance from my mom in regards to this.
	Especially us, over the last few years, she's been very open in regards to The things that I've been learning and she's somebody that I can actually talk to without fear of belittling or any kind of feud, for lack of a better term right now.
	But she understands that spanking is detrimental and we've explained that.
	And what about raising her voice?
	Oh no, my mom, she doesn't yell.
	Okay, so how does she deal with, let's just say, undesired behavior?
	She talks to Olivia.
	She tries to explain things to her.
	Like, no, you're going to hurt yourself.
	Please come over here and please don't do that.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	Does Olivia have tantrums with your mom?
	It's kind of funny because she tends to behave a lot better with my mom than she does with us.
	Well, the Latin phrase, well, duh.
	Okay, so it's not a personality issue, right?
	So because with her caregiver, right, with the grandma, she doesn't really have the tantrums.
	She's better behaved, so to speak, and so on, right?
	Right.
	So with the woman who's treating her gently, she does not have tantrums.
	With the woman who's more aggressive, she has tantrums, right?
	Yes.
	Right.
	So it's not her fault.
	Right.
	I mean, other than the fact that she's three, even if we take that significant moral consideration aside, right, so she is responding to an environment.
	Right.
	Do you think, in hindsight, I'm not trying to lead, right, maybe there's good reasons, but do you think, in hindsight, it would have been better to stay home longer, especially because she wasn't being breastfed?
	Yes.
	Absolutely.
	Because, I mean, three months old, I mean, kids are not designed to be separated from moms at three months old, especially if they're not being breastfed, right?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	So that will have had some effect on trustness.
	Let me just make up words now.
	Trust truthiness.
	But in terms of trust and bond, right?
	Lost breastfeeding, lost mom, right?
	Yes.
	Yes.
	That's, again, quite terrifying.
	And also, she may feel some resentment around that, right?
	Because she doesn't understand about houses and she just knows that mom had somewhere else to be.
	Yes.
	And kids feel very, they take that very personally, right?
	Yeah.
	Because again, they don't have any clue about the outside world and its demands, right?
	Yes.
	So, mom takes boob away, mom takes mom away.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	And then she's with this gentle saint of parenting during the day, and then mom's kind of screechy at times, right?
	Yes.
	So I would imagine that the bond is a challenge for her, to put it mildly, right?
	And these are the results of your decisions.
	She's not at fault in any of those decisions, right?
	Yes.
	And so it's really going to be harmful to To your relationship.
	And that harm is going to continue for the rest of your life if you can't find a way to make it up to her.
	And how could I do that?
	Well, I don't know exactly how to do that in a positive sense, but I know that you have to stop yelling at her.
	Okay.
	You have to stop yelling at her.
	And you have to recognize that the tantrums are a symptom of the choices that you've made.
	Okay.
	You own the tantrums.
	Yes.
	I know you want her to own the tantrums, but she's three and you're the mom.
	Yes.
	And the dad.
	I'm talking to both of you, right?
	Yes.
	You own the tantrums.
	Now, you can talk to your stepmom about how she does things.
	Because you need to mirror that.
	You can't have inconsistency in the parenting.
	That's like people randomly turning the wheel when you're in a cab, blindfolded.
	Yes.
	You cannot have inconsistency in the parenting.
	So you guys need to sit down with the grandmom and figure out how she can have consistency.
	How do you deal with this?
	Okay, well, I'm going to deal with that the same way.
	Or maybe there's adjustments to be made on both sides, but she needs to have a consistent environment.
	Yes.
	It's like, imagine going to a Muslim school in the morning and an atheist school in the afternoon.
	A little freaky, right?
	For a three-year-old.
	So she needs the consistency.
	She needs to know the rational expectations.
	Otherwise, her personality will change or fragment based upon the environment that is different or fragmented.
	Kids adapt to wherever they are, right?
	And if you're making her change who she is based upon different parenting styles, that's going to be alarming for her.
	Right.
	Do you have much one-on-one fun time with her?
	Where you're not busy, where your other daughter's not around, where you just go out, the two of you.
	Not as much as I'd like.
	Okay, well then, because she needs to have a lot of positive experiences with you.
	Okay.
	Right, so if most of her experience is you being busy, you cooking, you cleaning, you yelling, you being short-tempered, you being busy, you being distracted, right?
	Yes.
	Then it's going to break her heart, right?
	Yes.
	Because she needs to know that you take enormous pleasure in who she is.
	That is the greatest security a child can have, is the positive reaction of the parent to their presence.
	Yes.
	Okay, tell me what you're feeling.
	It's okay, you told me you were going to cry.
	I know.
	It's fine.
	But what am I saying that struck you?
	I just, deep down inside, I kind of felt like...
	I needed to spend more time with her and develop a relationship, but because I had other responsibilities, I had to get them done first, and sometimes I just wanted to say, to hell with the clean house.
	No, I get that.
	And also, of course, it becomes a bit of a vicious cycle, right?
	So the less positive fun you have with her, the more you feel a bit anxious about spending time alone with her in case it goes wrong, right?
	Yes.
	And then it gets worse, right?
	And then you less want to have that positive fun time.
	No!
	Yes.
	No!
	And look, I get.
	I get.
	I mean, I've now lived with a wife for 11 years, and I dated lots of women before that, and I get that women are completely insane when it comes to that.
	I've accepted that.
	I don't fight it anymore.
	It's just something...
	You know, because you never know, like at any moment, the Architectural Digest helicopter might come up and take photographs of your house and send them to your mom and to your childhood female friends, right?
	And to the woman who bullied you in junior high school, right?
	So this, you may be exposed at any time.
	The internet is a very public place.
	So I, you know, I mean, I get that, like, like how women say you need to have clean underwear in case you're in a car crash.
	You know, they have to cut your pants off.
	They don't want to find skid marks, right?
	Look, I get.
	I get that the bed is going to get messed up again, but it needs to be made with the precision of a military operation.
	I get that.
	I'm not saying I understand it.
	I just accept it like a fact of gravity.
	But you know, and I know, that the clean house ain't going to hold your hand when you're dying, right?
	Yes.
	Right?
	You know that you don't want little hallmark moments a week or a month apart of great times with your daughter.
	Like, my wife's battles to keep scuff marks off the hardwood is like some Old Testament pitched war of eternity.
	It's hardwood.
	It's okay.
	I give up, right?
	I mean, I just have to accept that.
	Like, it's a fact of gravity.
	I'll talk to her about it sometimes, and she'll nod politely and go back to scrubbing the hardwood like she's Cinderella with OCD, right?
	Yeah.
	But you know that those standards, which women have, I think, natively, right, keep a clean house, generally meant don't get bubonic plague.
	Right.
	Right.
	Women are hardwired to clean the environment because you want people to stay alive, right?
	But we do have disinfectants now.
	We have antibiotics and all that.
	Men are hardwired to go and have sex with everything that moves.
	That doesn't mean to do it.
	I saw her twitch.
	I'm going in.
	So you know that you need to cool some of that stuff back down a little bit, right?
	Yes.
	To make sure that you spend quality time with your daughter and have a great relationship rather than have a perfect house that's going to get messed up in three minutes anyway.
	Exactly.
	Exactly.
	Right.
	And that's just a challenge that, you know, men have taken on their challenges.
	This is one for women, right?
	Relax about the house.
	Have quality time with your family.
	Yes, exactly.
	Exactly.
	Because it becomes avoidant and it also creates the very problems that you end up running from, right, with your daughter.
	She needs to know that you take an enormous and deep delight in her presence in your life.
	And that needs to be real, which means you've got to work to create that delight, which means no distractions, go do goofy things, go, you know, take bubbles to the play center, go whatever it is going to take that is going to cause you to have delight in who she is as a person.
	If she knows that you delight in who she is as a person, She will be secure enough to express her feelings without having to dial them up to nine million, right?
	Yeah.
	Because no one's listening, right?
	Don't moms yell because they feel no one listens?
	Yeah.
	If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times.
	And you know what the fact is?
	Nobody listens after that.
	I mean, the subtitles might as well be in Klingon, right?
	So you yell because you're not being listened to.
	She's doing the same thing, right?
	Yes.
	What does she want from you?
	If she could speak right now, what does she really need from you?
	What does she want from you the most?
	My love and attention.
	Yeah, that's pretty abstract.
	But what would she say?
	It's very specific.
	Well, I mean, I guess it depends on the time.
	You know, sometimes, you know, maybe she just wants to play or...
	You know, sometimes there's a particular, like, she likes to play on my husband's iPad, so she has all these apps on there and, you know, shapes and ABCs and this, this and that.
	And then, you know, with the free ones, a lot of times if you go into the wrong cart, all these little windows start popping up and she gets upset that it's not letting her play with the, you know, so there's, you know, sometimes she just wants help, you know, or it's different things.
	Right.
	So she wants time, she wants attention, she wants connection.
	Yes.
	Right, you know that children, she needs your open heart even more than she needs food.
	Yes.
	Right, she needs a connection with you like you need oxygen.
	Yes.
	And if somebody holds you underwater, you're going to start kicking and screaming too because you need air.
	And if she feels separated from you, if she feels unconnected with you, she doesn't have the resources to reason that out and to figure that out and to compare your priorities with her priorities.
	She doesn't have that yet.
	So she is going to kick and scream at the deprivation of that which is essential to her, which is you and your husband.
	Yes.
	So, you know, my amateur idiot prescription, as usual, is you have to not yell.
	Okay.
	That's just going to be a teeth-gritting, don't smoke kind of thing, right?
	Right.
	Yes.
	You have to...
	And I don't know what's going to come out of that, but what's going to come out of that is going to be way better than yelling.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	Right?
	Like I was saying something earlier in the show, I don't know if you were hearing about...
	A couple goes to a marriage counselor and they're screaming at each other and throwing things at each other and he says, don't do that.
	And then they say, well, what would we talk about?
	He says, well, I don't know.
	But it's going to be a lot better than what you have.
	So you have to stop doing that.
	And I think you need to...
	I imagine that if you're into a clean house, you're not unfamiliar with the schedule, right?
	So you need to make sure that you schedule as a very high priority.
	Yes.
	Schedule one-on-one time with your daughter...
	Where there's no distractions, no busy work, no phones, no pop-ups.
	And it can be time on the iPad, you know, whatever she wants to do.
	Okay.
	Does she get a lot of say in what she wants to do, right?
	Yeah.
	Like, so yesterday, we were doing some traveling, and at the end of the evening, my daughter really wanted to go to a play center, a playground.
	Okay.
	And did I want to go to a playground?
	No.
	I've been up early, traveling all day, you know, tired.
	I want to just...
	Kick back and chat and relax and go to sleep.
	But she's a great traveler.
	We got her up.
	We got her traveling.
	She was in the car half the day.
	And we had a great chance and all of that.
	But she really needed to go to the Play Center.
	Because the day had been about my needs, which is getting from A to B, right?
	So we went to the Play Center.
	And it turned out to be a huge amount of fun.
	Right?
	But her needs have got to be a high priority.
	Right?
	Yes.
	Because she's going to take it personally and she's going to resent you if you're not focusing on her needs.
	Because then she'd be like, well, why am I here?
	Yes, that makes so much sense.
	And schedule that time.
	Figure out what she's going to do that's going to be the most fun and ask her.
	You know, sometimes for my daughter, it's going out.
	Sometimes she wants me to stare at the Dragonvale icons for an hour, right?
	Okay.
	I'll learn about that game.
	It's important to her.
	I've got to figure out why it's important to her.
	Right.
	And it actually is teaching her quite a bit.
	But, you know, meet her where she is.
	Figure out what she wants to do.
	Find ways to enhance it.
	And really take that time.
	Once she gets that you're taking a deep pleasure in who she is as a person, she will be so easy to negotiate with, you will wonder what peaceful demon possessed your daughter.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	Thank you.
	How do you feel about what I'm saying?
	Are you useful, helpful?
	It's exactly what I needed to hear.
	Tell me what you're feeling, sister.
	Big hug.
	I'm so sorry.
	I mean, I'm happy right now.
	I just want to be a good mom.
	Of course you do.
	And I want to...
	I want to make a difference in my children's lives.
	I just want to do something different, which is what I always wanted, you know, than when I was younger.
	I just wanted something different for my kids.
	I didn't really know exactly what that was, but I've spent so much time trying to grow myself, you know?
	And when I got to this point, I realized, wow, I need further coaching.
	I need something.
	Even though deep down inside, I felt like that's kind of what she needed was my quality time.
	And I think, you know, and I would ask myself, why?
	Why don't you just try that?
	But then that whole guilt of, you know, not, oh, I got to get this done or that done or You know, work and whatever, you know, always putting all that other stuff first.
	And then, yeah, I mean, a lot of that, a lot of that has been bottled up.
	And I just at this point, I just want to be done with all that.
	And I just want to move forward and help both my children, you know, as best as I could.
	And so I really appreciate this call.
	And you want to be close with her.
	I mean, you know, and I know.
	And look, I face the same thing as a parent.
	And we all do.
	We all have the distractions of everything else.
	And those distractions can feel overwhelming and we all fall prey to them.
	So I get, I mean, I get that.
	I really do.
	But you know deep down, you know that there's nothing more important than your connection with your daughter.
	Not the house you live in, not the money that you make, not whether your car has a ding or how clean your hardwood floors are.
	There is nothing more important than your connection with your daughter.
	Yes.
	And if you make that the priority, the amazing thing is you will have so much more time for the other things.
	This is the weird thing that we do.
	And I do it too.
	I get it.
	If we have that connection with our children, our parenting becomes so ridiculously efficient that it's like we're using a word processor rather than scratching things into granite with an awl.
	Because you spend a lot of time fighting and dealing with tantrums and that's so time consuming that it cuts into everything else you need to do.
	There's nothing more efficient in a family than connection.
	Because you can resolve conflicts so much easier.
	You don't have big problems with blow-ups.
	You don't have big problems with resentment.
	I mean, this is really freaking you out, right?
	I mean, your daughter's tantrums and that, very time-consuming, consumes your mental space, makes you inefficient in vastly other areas.
	We think we're being efficient by not focusing on our relationships, but you know we're not, right?
	Yes.
	It's ridiculously inefficient to try and get things done other than work on the relationship because it crowds everything else out in your head, right?
	You're less effective at work, you get less stuff done around the home, and you're not happy with yourself.
	That's not efficiency, right?
	Connection is efficiency.
	Yes.
	Yeah, I knew I had to do something.
	I knew that, just like you said in the beginning, it's not her, it's me.
	I mean, at one...
	When I confess to my husband, I'm like, oh my God.
	I'm like, that's it.
	I gotta do something.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	And look, we all need to be reminded of what's important.
	We all get distracted by the details of the everyday, right?
	Yes.
	I mean, you just, you need that reminder.
	Your husband is going to be a great guy and remind you as well.
	You know what your real values are.
	You didn't have this daughter...
	To yell at her.
	You didn't have this daughter to be frightened of her because it's scary when they have tantrums like that, right?
	You really feel like they're in control and it really does feel kind of like you've got your mini mom yelling at you again, right?
	Yeah.
	Suddenly she's the mom and you're the parent and then all reason and evidence goes out the window, right?
	You're lost in space, drifting away like Sandra Bullock going round and round with her perfect legs, right?
	I mean, her tiny pants.
	I always wondered what they wore under those suits.
	Now I know.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	So, I mean, you just, we all need to be reminded of what's important.
	I mean, the world is a dizzying set of distractions from the essential.
	And we just need to reconnect.
	And of course, you know, with that connection, your whole life is going to get a whole lot easier.
	But that's my advice to you for what it's worth.
	Thank you so, so much.
	I really appreciate it.
	You are very welcome.
	You are very welcome.
	And thank you so much for calling in.
	My goodness.
	And give that kid a big hug for me.
	I will.
	And for you too, guys.
	Thank you so much for calling in.
	And if there's anything else I can do, you know, and you find it useful to dip into the random idiot advice over the web, please feel free to call back in.
	No problem.
	Thank you so much.
	Thanks.
	Take care.
	Okay.
	Bye-bye.
	All right.
	Oliver, go ahead.
	Howdy, Steph.
	Oliver, yes.
	How are you doing?
	You can have some more.
	What's up, my friend?
	I'm really awesome.
	How are you?
	Well, thank you.
	First of all, thanks for all the free goodies and education that I have been gorging myself on.
	I'm a subscriber, but a small subscription.
	I've definitely over-indulged compared to my...
	A donation, but I want to say that there's some increased opportunities for income for me in the future, so I will make it up to you.
	And it's one of those repairing R2D2? Sorry, that was my...
	That was just R2D2 telling me I have a text message.
	Sorry about that.
	But anyways, I have two questions, and if they go by quickly, which the first one might go by quickly, I have a third one too, but yeah.
	Okay, thanks.
	And I'm sorry, just by the way, I really appreciate your support.
	I appreciate the subscriptions, no matter how small.
	And One of the aspects of self-knowledge is knowing when something bothers you and when someone else is bothering you.
	And just let me make two seconds on that just because I've got a bunch of YouTube comments.
	We just released the truth about Gandhi.
	And some people are, you know, they get upset.
	Don't beg for donations.
	Don't, you know, it's humiliating.
	Don't do this.
	Don't do that.
	Just put some ads on your YouTube videos, you know, and so on.
	And it's because people are feeling bad and they're feeling bad because I made an honest and open and I think fair request for support for the show.
	I'm not, you know, I'm not the government going by with taxes, right?
	I'm not putting tariffs on your emails to pay.
	But I'm making an honest and open request for support for the show.
	That's not an unreasonable thing to do.
	People are culling, you know, these shows don't come out of nowhere.
	It's a lot of research.
	It's a lot of experience.
	It's a lot of knowledge about how to communicate in an enjoyable way.
	Some very challenging ideas.
	So making a request for money Yeah, people are free to ask for whatever they want.
	You know, you ask some woman out, she might ask that you bring Jim Carrey and four penguins with you.
	You know, people are free to ask for whatever they want.
	And if people feel bad about being asked, that's an important thing.
	You know, people have an interesting relationship with their own conscience.
	They get mad at anyone who pricks their conscience rather than just realize that their conscience is being pricked and learning how to deal with that.
	And for the people who say, well, just put ads on, that's not my choice to make.
	Fundamentally, a lot of people have donated and if I put ads on, then what I'm doing is punishing the people who have donated and I'm rewarding the people who haven't donated.
	I'm also punishing the people who have more money and I'm rewarding the people who have less money.
	But most fundamentally, if I put ads on, it's going to be much more time-consuming.
	Around the world every day.
	What do I do?
	Every month or two, I'll put in a minute or two of asking for donations.
	And if I put ads on everything, then that's about a million and a half ads that people will have to watch every month, whether they've donated or not.
	That's much more of a waste of my users' time Than once every month or two, spending a minute or two asking for money.
	So I just sort of want to point that out to people.
	If you feel uncomfortable, that's a your conscience issue.
	Don't project it on me.
	And number two, asking me to reward you and punish donators is not really a very kind or sensible or rational thing to ask.
	I mean, so anyway, sorry for the interruption.
	I wanted to sort of mention that, but go ahead with your questions, Oliver.
	I'm calling as a Detroit resident, and I was wondering if you had heard of the Detroit Threat Management Center?
	No.
	Really?
	Well, it's really, really exciting.
	It's basically, okay, we think of Detroit as being kind of a statist.
	It's the extreme end of state control and all that.
	Oh, sorry to interrupt.
	Is this the place where people are sort of getting together to provide their own security?
	Yes, it is.
	Oh, yeah.
	I've heard a little bit about that.
	Not much.
	I've heard a little bit about it, but I think it's really fantastic.
	I'd love to hear more about it.
	Yeah, it's ironic that Detroit is one of the most statist places ever, a lot of government.
	But it's ironic that it's also very anarchist at the same time.
	There's so much opportunity in Detroit.
	I kind of wish that the Free State Project was in Detroit instead of New Hampshire.
	There's a lot of stuff going on where the city government falls away.
	People spring up behind it to pick up the slack.
	It's pretty amazing.
	The Detroit Threat Management Center is basically...
	The closest thing to a DRO that you can possibly think of, and if you want to see what free market policing and keeping people safe on the streets and all that, and even ensuring people's homes and property from vandalism and theft, all that's already happening in Detroit.
	Fantastic.
	Just for those who don't know the inner acronym circle, DRO is Dispute Resolution Organization.
	It's something that I put together in Practical Anarchy and Everyday Anarchy and a bunch of different articles about how this stuff might happen in the absence of estates and protection of property and enforcement of contracts and so on.
	So what are they doing?
	That's very cool.
	What are they actually doing?
	So if you are in Detroit and you recognize that the police are only going to come there to I guess identify your charred body from your dental records.
	What do these guys do that's cool?
	This guy, he started this company about over 10 years ago, and he just saw that there was a need for security in Detroit.
	Even if the Detroit cops were good cops, which they're not at all, they're in such few numbers that the average waiting time for a 911 call is an hour.
	And he saw a lot of police brutality and that kind of thing, so he decided to come up with his own way to doing it.
	And they use a whole philosophy of nonviolence and de-escalation that is extremely effective.
	They've never in a decade, in all their time of operation, never had a lawsuit.
	They are, in 2014, switching completely to nonlethal weapons.
	If you're too poor to afford their services, they provide it for free.
	They do everything from protecting neighborhoods to protecting witnesses and domestic violence and they take calls and they respond to emergency calls and they insure your property if you're a subscriber.
	I could talk for a while about it, but it's really, really amazing what can happen when security providers are When their true purpose is to serve and protect and they're beholden to customers and competition, You know, voluntary payments instead of taxation and monopoly and all that.
	And it's amazing.
	I went to their headquarters myself with another group of libertarians and got a whole big long presentation about how it all works and I was absolutely blown away.
	I couldn't believe that that was happening.
	Happening right you know down the street pretty much from where I live in Detroit and a place that needs it so badly and So I figured that would be relevant to your show and And also, it would be really awesome if you could speak with that guy, although I don't know if he wants to.
	I actually brought it up in a little meeting we had.
	There were some other libertarians, and they were starting to talk about You know, hinting at, well, you know, the reason why Detroit cops are so horrible is because their purpose is not to serve and protect and, you know, their monopoly and all that kind of stuff.
	And finally, I just said, well, I think what a lot of people are trying to say here is that we just kind of want you to just replace them and do their job.
	And he immediately changed the subject.
	And, you know, he's probably under a lot of scrutiny from the city and, you But yeah, it's pretty amazing that we always talk about free market ways of protecting the streets against crime and all that kind of stuff, but it's happening right in Detroit as we speak.
	It's pretty amazing.
	Yeah, I've also heard that they have these private buses.
	Where you get Wi-Fi, you can have a drink on the bus, you can text them to have the bus come and pick you up, they'll drop you off, even off-route and stuff, you know, just useful, helpful, non-union, non-government unionized Buses.
	And look, they are operating in a very risky business environment.
	Because it's still not a free market environment.
	It's fantastic what they're doing.
	I was actually thinking of heading down to Detroit with a camera and just talking to everyone and trying to get a sense of how all of this experiment was working.
	I think that'd be a lot of fun and useful for people to understand.
	But...
	Yeah, that's definitely true.
	It's called the Detroit Bus Company, and that's not all.
	There's a bunch of other stuff, and interestingly, none of these people are libertarians or anarchists.
	But yeah, there's the Detroit Bus Company, and there's the Detroit Mower Gang, where people are taking care of all the parks that the city has abandoned just by cutting the grass and doing basic maintenance like that.
	Lots of other projects of urban farming and helping the homeless and art communities and all kinds of cool stuff.
	I'd definitely recommend a visit to Detroit.
	It's pretty cool.
	I'd love to help out with that if I could.
	Yeah, no, I appreciate that.
	And I think it's worth a little more research.
	It's worth a little more explication.
	The interesting thing, you know, one of the things that really motivates me and which I feel very emotionally strong about, Oliver, is just how much human potential decays in a statist environment.
	How much human creativity decays in a human environment.
	Sorry, in a statist environment.
	It's so wretched.
	I don't know.
	I sort of think of the world at the moment like some couple that's screaming at each other, you know, throwing things at each other, screaming at each other.
	And they go to some marriage counselor.
	Marriage counselor says, well, you got to stop screaming at each other, people.
	You got to stop throwing things at each other.
	Like I can't even give you marital therapy if there's emotional or physical violence in the relationship.
	You have to stop doing that.
	And they sort of look at the therapist dumbfounded and they say, well, what would we talk about if we're not doing that?
	And the therapist, of course, is going to say, well, I don't know.
	And you don't know either until you stop screaming and throwing things at each other.
	What do you do in the absence of centralized coercion?
	This is a question we always get asked.
	How will this work and how will that work, right?
	But the point is that we don't know what amazing, creative, fantastic solutions are going to come out of putting down the coercion of statism.
	We do know it's going to be incredible stuff.
	Because that's what always happens in the absence of coercion.
	Creativity happens in the absence of coercion.
	And these guys are operating under the shadow of one of the most dysfunctional states, And municipalities in the entire Western world and they're under threat of shutdown at all times and they are prevented from some solutions simply through having to skirt around the existence.
	And this is still what they're able to come up with.
	And their creativity generates an emergence from the cocoon in everyone else in the community.
	They can come out, they can be part of a solution, they can Involve themselves in a community again.
	The amount of shattering of our tribal instincts that occurs through the state where everyone says, well, it's all taken care of.
	Everything's getting taken care of.
	The poor, they're, you know, they're getting taken care of.
	The sick, they're getting taken care of.
	Crime, it's, you know, it's on the list of things to be taken care of.
	Everybody just holds up in cocoons, watches TV, plays video games, surfs the net.
	Crushes their candy.
	And what happens when the power of the state is not as present?
	In Detroit it's become so dysfunctional that it's not quite as present.
	It's become more of a benign tumor.
	And what happens, people sort of emerge like gophers, you know, out of the snow.
	They emerge and they begin to participate.
	And they begin to problem solve and they begin to get to know their neighbors.
	And you begin to have a human community.
	Rather than a sardine-crammed chicken farm of mutual isolation.
	So I think what's happening in Detroit through these things is really quite beautiful.
	And I think it's extremely impressive.
	And I take my hat off to the practical creativity of people who are actually trying to solve these problems in a very tangible way.
	So yeah, I appreciate you bringing that up.
	Wendy Backelroy's got some articles on this and other people have written about it.
	So you can do a search for that.
	But thank you.
	It's a great thing to be reminded of.
	Totally.
	Can I change the subject real quick?
	Please do.
	Okay.
	This is a little more important to me personally.
	It's about spanking.
	And so I was all about spanking, you know, throughout my childhood and stuff.
	You know, I never heard any effective arguments, but I... I was convinced that, man, the problem...
	Sorry to interrupt.
	It was a bit confusing the way you put it.
	You were all about spanking throughout your childhood?
	Yeah.
	You mean you were spanked a lot when you were a kid?
	Not quite a lot, but I believed that it was effective and that kids just weren't spanked enough these days.
	And after listening to you came around, it took me a while, really only because I avoided listening to anything you had to say about spanking, but when I finally did, it didn't take long.
	But now I have a...
	I'm 25 years old and my father is remarried and I now have a two-year-old half-sister.
	And I'm in the process of trying to persuade him to not spank my sister.
	And I've been talking to both my stepmom and my dad.
	And I think I've made a lot of progress with my stepmom.
	But my dad is a lot tougher.
	And specifically, I already know, I sent him a big long email with lots of studies, lots of evidence, and some kind of heart-to-heart stuff from me, and he hasn't responded yet, but I already know what his rebuttal is going to be.
	Include, and I want to know what you think of it.
	Well, yeah, sorry.
	First of all, congratulations on what you're doing and on navigating a somewhat challenging family structure.
	So good for you.
	I mean, way to go.
	Again, practical, fantastic things that you can do to reduce violence in the world is talking about this with your dad.
	That's a courageous thing to do.
	I think it's fantastic.
	I hope you understand that the most likely reason why your father is resistant and your stepmother is not is because your father has a bad conscience, right?
	We just talked about this.
	It's funny how these all tie together, right?
	But we just talked about this at the beginning of this show and talking about my little donation request pitch, FDRURL.com forward slash donate.
	But people will often mistake having a bad conscience for being attacked.
	And in avoiding the topic, they're avoiding the bad conscience.
	In attacking the messenger, they are trying to attack and stave off their bad conscience.
	So if your father was involved in spanking and all that kind of stuff, then he's going to have a bad conscience.
	So he's not going to be able to view things as objectively and as rationally as your stepmom.
	Who may have been spanked as a child, but has not, I assume as yet, inflicted it upon other children.
	Does that...
	Does she have any other kids, or is this her first?
	No, this is her first kid.
	Oh, good, because otherwise my theory would completely blow up in my face.
	I'm glad that we managed to at least, you know, poke one bear back from eating up my nice theories.
	So that's something to understand, you know, whether you want to sympathize with that or not is obviously up to you.
	No, I agree with that, definitely.
	Yeah, so just when people, yeah, when people, when you bring these topics to people, you have to, I think, you need to be aware of where their conscience is and where you are.
	Most people are debating with their own conscience.
	They're not debating with you.
	And it's easy to take things personally that aren't personal.
	So forgive me if I've missed this somewhere and you've already talked about it, but I know that he's going to, his argument is basically going to consist of Oh, sorry, yeah, that was right.
	Well, why don't we do a roleplay?
	So, I'll play you and you play your dad.
	Okay, alright.
	It's usually easier then, because then it gets, well, he would say this and I would say that, right?
	So, we'll just do it directly and everybody can roleplay their parents, usually two and...
	Wait, which one did you want me to play?
	Oh, okay.
	You want me to play my sound?
	Yeah, you play your dad, so I'll play you.
	All right.
	So, Dad, I hope you've had a chance to look over the email that I sent.
	I think it's really, really important.
	Your wife seems to be mostly on board about the spanking stuff.
	What do you think?
	Yeah, that's good to know and stuff, but I don't know if a lot of these studies and stuff...
	Take into account how the spanking is done.
	It needs to be done in moderation and with lots of love and conversations.
	Remember when I spanked you, I wasn't real hard on you and we would always have a conversation afterwards about how you did something wrong and I don't like to spank you and it hurts me to spank you but this is what I have to do to keep you from You know, being a bad child.
	And so, you know, if I didn't do that, I would just be, you know, beating you and causing you lots of pain.
	And that wouldn't be good, but it has to be done correctly.
	Okay.
	Well, there's a lot of stuff that you're talking around, right?
	So don't do it in anger and talk about the reasons why and follow it up with the conversation and so on.
	But it's the actual act of spanking, not all the stuff that goes around it.
	There's no study that I know of that has ever been able to show that if you talk around the spanking thing, that the spanking thing is still not problematic.
	Because you still are hitting a child with the intention of changing behavior by causing significant pain and fear.
	So it's the pain and the fear That is harmful, right?
	Because you're so much bigger than the child.
	And so they've not found, well, if you spank, but you talk about it, or if you spank, but you're not that angry, or if you spank in whatever you say, moderation.
	There have been no studies that have ever found that that reduces the harm of spanking.
	And I mean, you understand that if you were hitting your wife to change her behavior, Or if you had some elderly relative who had some mild dementia or something, and if you hit that relative, there's no judge in the world.
	That would accept that argument with regards to an adult.
	If you were to say, well, yes, I did hit my wife because my dinner was cold, and I've asked her repeatedly for a hot dinner.
	I did hit her, but judge, I explained beforehand why I was hitting her.
	I wasn't angry when I was hitting her, and we had a whole conversation about the need I have for a hot meal afterwards, and she knew the rules beforehand.
	You understand that what you do around that act of aggression, that act of coercion, A, it doesn't change the ethics of it, B, there's no study that shows that it makes it less harmful, and C, it would never apply to anybody else.
	I don't know what he would say to that, but one other thing he did say when I first introduced it to him, I don't know if he saw it coming, it kind of was like dumping him Bucket of ice water on his head.
	But I told him that there was lots of evidence that it was harmful.
	And he said, society is so bad these days that you can't, you know, trust these studies.
	And he said, you can do your experiment on that when you have a child, but I'm not going to do it with my child.
	Well, okay, so the first thing I would say is, well, Dad, if you're saying that society is really bad, that's an argument against spanking, not for it, because most people in society are spanked.
	So you can't sort of say, well, I have to spank my kid because society is so bad, or I'm not going to believe these studies because society is so bad.
	Because at least if you're in Canada or England or some parts of Europe or America or South America or Africa or Asia or the Middle East or Australia, you are in a society where most children get spanked.
	Most children get spanked.
	And in America, you know, I think in 22 states still, children are getting hit with implements in Government schools.
	And children are also being told about hell and hellfire and demons.
	So there is no shortage of aggression in the world against children.
	Well, right.
	That's because they're not doing it right.
	They're too harsh.
	Sorry to interrupt you, Dad.
	Let's say they're not doing it right.
	Let's say that they're doing spanking all wrong.
	Well, humanity has had about 100,000 goddamn years to get spanking right.
	Do you think if an entire species is still doing it really wrong, after 100,000 years, we might want to reconsider the practice as a whole?
	I mean, is 100,000 years and one going to turn it all around?
	No, we just have to stop doing it.
	It doesn't work.
	The world is evidence of that.
	Yeah.
	I don't know what he'll say after that.
	We'll just have to see.
	I don't think that he's a lost cause, though.
	There's a carrot and a stick, right?
	Everybody has the carrot and the stick.
	I mean, it's so funny how...
	It's tragic, of course.
	A government uses a carrot and a stick in everything.
	And usually the carrot is pretty much...
	Not having a stick.
	Although some, you know, the carrot is also, you know, vote for me and I'll give you an Obama phone and it's a little...
	But that's the carrot.
	The stick is always go to jail and stuff like that.
	So they...
	Governments operate on the principle that incentives don't matter.
	I'm sorry.
	Governments operate on the principle that incentives really matter.
	And then whenever you say, well, but...
	When you have unemployment insurance that reduces people's desire to get a job, they say, well, that's not true at all.
	You know, when it comes to the expansion of government power, incentives are everything, which is why there's jail.
	Why you get failed in school if you don't study for the stupid-ass tests that they give you.
	But then when you point out that, you know, taxation diminishes job creation, say, no.
	In those instances, whenever incentives can be used to extend government power, they really matter.
	Whenever incentives can be used to restrain government power, they're Inapplicable.
	Anyway, that's a point.
	But there's a carrot and there's a stick, right?
	And the carrot is...
	Almost every study shows that it's bad.
	It's clearly the initiation of force against a helpless and dependent and developing human being.
	It's not necessary for compliance because...
	For a parent to hit is a confession of inadequacy as a parent.
	I mean, we know that, right?
	A man steals because he cannot produce.
	A man rapes because he cannot be loved.
	Part of the reason he can't be loved is because he's a rapist.
	And a parent hits because the parent is terrified of asking the question of the child, will you respect me for who I am Do I have authority over you because of my virtue?
	Do I have substance with you because I'm a good person?
	Because you love me?
	You know, it's like those Crazy guys, sometimes women I guess, but these crazy guys you see popping up on Dr.
	Phil from time to time who put GPSs on their wives' cars and check their phones for texts from Spanish bullfighters named Rastafarias.
	And they do all this crazy stuff and all it is is a confession of saying, I cannot ensure your fidelity to me through being attractive to you.
	And because I can't really assure your fidelity by being attractive, I then have to control her.
	I mean, I have weight with my daughter.
	I have, I don't want to say authority over like I control her, because it's mutual.
	She has authority over me as well.
	But I have weight with her because I have spent years earning her trust and her respect for And her love.
	And so she will listen to me when I sit down and say, you know, here's what I think would be a good idea, here's why I think it would be a good idea, and so on.
	And she can negotiate with me, and she knows I will listen to her.
	And she also knows more than that I will listen to her, that I will listen to reason.
	Right?
	So if I say, oh, I'm not sure that's going to be so safe, she can say, Daddy, when was the last time I got an owie?
	I'm like, wow, you know what?
	It has been a long, long time.
	So you're obviously making really good decisions, so it's up to you.
	So, we both listen to reason is probably the better way.
	I don't have personal authority over her, like she'll do what I say because I say it, but we both listen to reason.
	And it has been years building that up.
	And you can't just snap your fingers and create that.
	You have to build that up over years.
	Now, parents who've done the opposite, who basically have said, well, listen to Mr.
	Open Hand rather than listen to Mr.
	Open Heart, well, How are they going to suddenly turn it around?
	Well, you can't.
	That's like being a chain smoker for 10 years and then saying, well, that's it.
	I'm going to go win the Boston Marathon.
	Well, the only thing you're going to win is a face full of concrete and a defibrillator, right?
	So, the carrot is good things and positive things and happy relationship and a life spent not bullying and controlling.
	Little children who get bigger and stronger while you get older and weaker.
	That's the carrot.
	But I'll tell you, or tell your father, what the stick is.
	And the stick is that it will not be very long before spanking is openly recognized as child abuse.
	It will not be very long.
	It certainly is in significant portions in the world.
	Northern Europe and so on, it is already recognized.
	I always get these emails from these people in Scandinavia, like, why do you focus on spanking?
	You know, it's like having shows where you constantly rail against witch burning.
	And it's like, well, yeah, because around here, they burn a fuckload of witches.
	And so, I know it's crazy for you people, but around here, yeah, a lot of witches going into the toasters.
	So, It will be openly recognized.
	And you will, as a parent, if you spank now, and I am working very hard to make this the case, you will be recognized as a child abuser.
	If you spank.
	Long time ago, they used to hit kids with knotted ropes, with leather swatches, and you used to have to go out and pick your own stick to be hit with.
	And that was considered to be discipline at the time, and now that's clearly recognized as child abuse.
	And, I mean, certainly in Canada, I don't know where else, it's illegal to hit your children with implements.
	So, and, you know, people get mad at me when you confront your parents if they hit you with implements saying, oh, that's terrible.
	No, it's not terrible.
	It's just what I was taught.
	I was taught not to hang around with violent gangs.
	I was taught to shun people who break the law.
	You know, if I said, oh, yeah, I got a friend.
	You know, I was, say, 13 or 14.
	Oh, yeah, I got a friend.
	You know, if he sees kids breaking the school rules, he'll beat them up.
	And, you know, my mom would have said, I didn't have such a friend.
	But she would have said, oh, if she had been an involved mom at all, she would have said, well, don't hang out with that guy, right?
	That guy's no good.
	That guy's trouble.
	Why?
	Well, because he's breaking the law.
	He's actually a criminal.
	So, I don't want my son hanging out with criminals.
	Well, if your parents hit you with implements, they're criminals.
	They may not have been caught, but they're criminals.
	Doesn't mean you can't hang out with them.
	If you can get them to understand and reform and reason with them and so on, I think that's great.
	You can hang out with them no matter what.
	I'm just saying that If you had a kid, if when you were a kid, if you had a kid who treated younger kids like your parents treated you, they probably would have told you to stay away from him.
	So the stick is that I and thousands of others are working very hard, very hard and taking at sometimes significant personal cost to get the message across to society that this stuff is abusive.
	And it will get across.
	It is unstoppable now.
	I mean, American Pediatric Society and vast numbers of other organizations have now openly come out and said that spanking is bad for kids.
	Spanking is destructive.
	Many legislators have come out and said that spanking is immoral, illegal.
	And If you spank now, I mean, where does your dad think that society's values are going to be in 20 years?
	Didn't he always tell you when you were a kid, think ahead?
	You know, when you were 12, or which college do you want to get into?
	Here's what you've got to do.
	Join extracurricular activities, get good marks.
	College, think ahead, think ahead, think ahead.
	Well, parents, think ahead, for God's sakes.
	Where the hell do you think society's values are going to be in 20 years?
	Or 30 years?
	Let's say your kid is, I think you said that you're Father's new kid was two and a half.
	So, you know, people having kids...
	Yeah, sorry, how old?
	Yeah, two and a half.
	Yeah, so let's say, you know, he has kids when he's 32.
	Where the hell does your dad think society's values are going to be in 30 years?
	What happened to the concept of racism from 1950 to 1980?
	Well, it changed so radically.
	That it really cannot be fathomed.
	What happened to the concept of sex before marriage from 1950 to 1980?
	I mean, huge, huge changes.
	What happened to music from 1950 to 1980?
	Well, the introduction of even more hair gel.
	So, the values are gonna change and If you are an unrepentant spanker in 30 years, you are going to look like a member of the KKK does now.
	And the odds of you having free and easy access.
	If you're an unrepentant spanker, then no responsible parent will leave their child with you alone.
	You will always have to be supervised because you are an unrepentant spanker.
	You know, if you have a history of feeding alcohol to children, you cannot be left alone with children.
	If you have an unrepentance banker in your household, you cannot leave your children alone with that person.
	So...
	Thanks for that, Steph.
	I just wanted to sort of point that out, because everybody thinks about, like, this is self-indulgent, this is why, this is why.
	Like, there are no consequences.
	There are going to be consequences, people think, down the road.
	Anyway, I hope that was helpful.
	Does that at least give you something to work with with your dad?
	Yeah, I didn't even think about that.
	That didn't occur to me at all.
	That definitely helps.
	I don't think it's a lost cause, so I'm fairly optimistic, and that definitely helps.
	Good.
	I'm glad.
	But one thing is because he spanks me and my sister, his toolbox, shall we say, doesn't have as many tools in it as, say, yours would.
	And in his mind, like the only alternative is like timeout or something.
	And so is there – can you recommend a resource about all the other stuff that you can do instead of spanking?
	Yeah, I mean parent effectiveness training is important.
	And for people who are parents later in life, right?
	You're in your 20s and his new...
	It's 20 plus years since he was a parent of a toddler.
	He's 45 now.
	Yeah, stuff changes.
	I mean, everyone needs...
	I mean, I can't believe I need to say this, but it needs to be said, I guess, right?
	I mean, if you last had a cell phone in 1983 or 1993...
	Do you just go back and get that same cell phone if you get one 20 years later?
	Of course not.
	You say, well, wow, let's see what's new in cell phones.
	Let's see what's new in cars.
	Let's see what's new in computers.
	Maybe I shouldn't get a Teledon terminal or a pet from Commodore.
	Maybe a Commodore 64 is not the way to go at this time in my life.
	Right?
	Everybody gets that if you're doing something again 20 years later, stuff has changed.
	So you go do the research and you go find out what's new.
	I mean, so just say to your dad, look, there's new stuff.
	There's new stuff.
	You know how when you go buy a car, you have to look up all these acronyms and, right, there's a Volvo out there that will stop your car for you if you're about to hit something.
	Next year's model will do your taxes and make your mother-in-law nicer.
	But you upgrade.
	I mean, you upgrade.
	You look at the latest research and you upgrade.
	You don't take the same medicines you took when you were a kid.
	You see what new things are out there.
	So...
	I mean, if he hasn't done it for 20 years, he needs to do the research.
	And parent effectiveness training, I think, is some really good stuff.
	But, you know, just peaceful parenting, positive parenting and all these kinds of things.
	You know, watch a couple of nanny 911s.
	They're on Netflix.
	Just watch a couple of super nannies.
	Just do your research.
	This is your child's brain.
	This is your child's heart.
	This is your child's personality and character.
	You know, I'd hope that people would do a little bit of research to figure out the latest stuff.
	I mean, the nanny...
	I mean, I was watching Nanny 911 the other day.
	And these shows were made over 10 years ago.
	And they are like, no, you don't yell.
	No, you don't hit.
	No, you don't...
	I mean, this is all so well known among anybody who spends any time around kids in a professional capacity.
	No, you don't yell.
	No, you don't hit.
	And the dysfunction of yelling and hitting is so clear.
	It's so clear.
	Now, they're more in favor of timeouts, but personally, I think that nobody's in favor of stabbing people in the throat unless they're actually choking on a chicken bone, and you know how to do a tracheotomy.
	And so, you know, they're bungeeing in there for a week, and if they can replace hitting with timeouts...
	So much the better, but timeouts are sort of the equivalent of, well, I really want to hit my wife, but I'm going to count to ten and take a walk instead.
	Well, it's great that you're not hitting your wife.
	Hopefully you can get to the point where you can deal with the emotional aggression that you feel to the point where you don't have to jump up and run out of the house so you don't clobber her with your fists.
	You know, that would be a good thing to move towards, right?
	And I think timeouts are better than hitting, but it's like a stopgap measure while you figure out how to become a good parent.
	So, yeah, there's lots of resources out there, but, you know, if he's going to place his judgment against the published opinions of the American Pediatrics Association...
	And the psychological associations and so on.
	If he's going to place his own judgment against the published findings of expert bodies of opinion, and these are not like climate change guys who get massive amounts of funding for scaremongering, the scientifically semi-literate.
	I mean, to come out against banking in North America...
	Is not an easy thing to do, even now.
	It's ridiculous that it's not an easy thing to do.
	But, you know, as I've talked about before, we are fundamentally programmed, particularly as men, to please women.
	And women, most women, they really like to spank.
	And spanking is more of a female problem than a male problem.
	And so to come out against hitting women is to serve the preferences of women.
	To come out against hitting children is to go against the preferences of women, and that's one of the reasons why it's so hard to change.
	Because anything which goes against the preferences of women is a very hard thing to change.
	You don't see a lot of organized boycotts against diamonds.
	There's a few, but not really that many.
	Because women, like magpies, like these sparkly things for the majority.
	Even though it's just a recent phenomenon that was created by De Beers after the Second World War, this give a diamond ring.
	It's all bullshit.
	It's all just made up stuff because they had too many diamonds and industry wasn't using enough.
	They had to create a whole bunch of nonsense about how a two-month salary for something that lasts a lifetime.
	Philosophy lasts a lifetime.
	I don't demand two-month salary from people.
	It'd be nice.
	So protecting the rights of children is going against the current desires of women.
	And, you know, it's a collective statement and there's exceptions and blah, blah, blah, right?
	And this is one of the reasons why it's so hard.
	But it is going to be very tough to justify and defend as an adult when he is questioned by his children.
	It is going to be hard to justify and defend what he did, which went against all of the science and expert opinion of the time.
	He's going to be in an indefensible position in 15 or 20 years, and that's something to be really cognizant of.
	Well, I'll call you back some other time with some more questions.
	I've taken up enough of your time, and that was helpful.
	Thank you very much.
	You're very welcome.
	Thank you so much for calling in.
	And thank you, thank you, thank you so much for doing what you're doing with your family.
	I think that's, it's very brave, you know, for people who haven't done this kind of stuff.
	It's, you know, it can be, like, heart-flutteringly anxiety-provoking to have these conversations, but I incredibly admire what you're doing.
	Thank you so much.
	Thank you.
	Cheerio.
	All right.
	Take care, Mr.
	Mike.
	All right, Kevin.
	You're up next, Kevin.
	Go ahead.
	Good morning, Steph.
	Good morning.
	I'm guessing from your accent, I will not be referring to you as K-bomb.
	No.
	My question has to do with Adam Kokesh, just by way of background.
	I grew up in a very left-wing household, so my way to adopting anarchy as a philosophy, I had to really give up heroes discovering that they beyond had feet of clay were these horrible monsters.
	And this has kind of left me a little Cynical and leery whenever anybody is presented as being virtuous, particularly in the mainstream media.
	And so during the recent beatification of Nelson Mandela, I really toned down my intake of media just to have it not make me too cuckoo.
	I did happen to catch your interview on The Alex Jones Show.
	And also the talk that you gave on Mandela.
	In that same week, I watched most of, unfortunately not all of, your interview with Adam Kokesh.
	And I was thinking that he talked about leading the virtuous life.
	He's doing things like civil disobedience, fighting for freedom, which I guess is one of the best things that you can do.
	But that having been said, one of the things that gives Him gravitas when he speaks in his anti-war work is that he is indeed a veteran.
	And I was wondering if, to a certain degree, does that make him a war criminal given the nature of the war that was being pursued when he served?
	Well, I don't think so.
	And I don't think that there are many legal systems in the world that would Disagree with me.
	It doesn't mean that we're all right.
	But basically the case is that ignorance of the law is no excuse, but ignorance of ideal law is.
	So this is really important.
	When you are a kid, you can catch a ball that's thrown to you, but you can't add 7 and 12, right?
	So you have an understanding of the laws of physics, but you do not have a conceptual understanding of the laws of physics.
	You have an empirical understanding of the laws of physics.
	I mean, even a dog can catch a Frisbee, right?
	Yep.
	So in that situation, the moral condemnation for war crimes does not accrue to the rank and file.
	It does not accrue to people who are forced to serve, of course, right?
	Right.
	Anymore than you would arrest Patty Hearst for kidnapping when she was kidnapped and brainwashed, and you can look that up if you need to, but...
	In a society where the military is praised...
	Probably not so much in your lefty household, but in a society where America, like in America, where the military is praised, venerated, where there's Veterans Day, where there are ticker tape parades, where in movies they're always portrayed as heroic and noble, or even in movies where the war is held theme is there, they're still not portrayed as criminals, but people struggling to survive an incredibly difficult situation.
	And because of that, in the Nuremberg trials of the post-Second World War, none of the rank and file were prosecuted for anything.
	If you could credibly make the case that you were on the receiving end of orders for which you would have been shot for disobeying, then you are not morally culpable.
	It is the people who are not On the receiving end of orders who are morally to blame for the atrocities of war.
	So it would be Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, all of the people who architected the war who would be morally responsible because nobody had a gun to their head.
	That was a choice that they made which was not required by law.
	So, no, I would not.
	I view him as I view most of the people in the military.
	As tragic victims of truly blood-soaked propaganda that is relentless and near universal in American society.
	This worship of the military.
	And again, Dr.
	Phil says it.
	I haven't watched his show in quite some time, but when I used to watch it off and on, he would say, You know, we get a military guy on the show, well, I want to thank you for your service.
	You know, I know there's some disagreements about the war, but nobody doubts the courage and dedication of the men in service and the men and women who blah blah blah blah, right?
	Yep.
	And it's because he's from the South, and the South is just a military bootlicking culture of a truly serpentine degree.
	Mm-hmm.
	I mean, about 99.9% of successful generals come from the South, where there is, of course, a lot more child abuse.
	But, um...
	So no, I don't.
	I think he's a tragic victim of relentless propaganda.
	The degree to which he has awoken is astounding.
	It's marvelous, and the work that he's been doing is great.
	I don't want to besmirch him or assail what he has accomplished at all.
	I guess by extension then, for those of us that are living here in what is nominally a republic, We bear, I guess, even greater responsibility for the horror which is done in our name by the U.S. government overseas.
	I'm sorry, how does Americans bear responsibility for their government?
	In that we're some kind of semblance of a republic.
	And the government is nominally our servant and is running around doing these things in service to us.
	Well, I would say that the Americans can feel guilty to the exact degree that the government is their servant, which is not at all, right?
	Boy, that's a pretty bossy-ass servant.
	But I will say this, too.
	And again, I don't know Adam Kokesh's deep feelings about this, which I'm, of course, always happy to chat with him about that kind of stuff.
	But there is a physics to morality that propaganda cannot surmount.
	In all but a few, the physics of conscience cares nothing about For pomp and circumstance and flags and ticket tape parades and so on.
	So people who kill in the military have killed.
	And they have not killed fundamentally in self-defense.
	Because Iraq was not threatening the United States.
	In any sense?
	No, not in any sense.
	In fact, Iraq was a creation of the United States.
	Right.
	Saddam Hussein installed by the American government, sold weapons by the American government.
	As they used to say, of course we know.
	Of course America thinks they have weapons of mass destruction.
	They have the receipts.
	Yeah, the receipts.
	So there is a physics to morality which surmounts propaganda, and this is why the world is so If physics didn't exist, if the physics of ethics didn't exist, then everybody who is propagandized would be happy.
	If the physics of ethics were not real and inescapable, then all of the labels we affix military people with, Would render them immune to alcoholism, to depression, to suicidality, to PTSD, to all of the dysfunction that comes back from having violated all of the moral laws.
	With the significant and fundamental excuse of propaganda.
	But propaganda doesn't change physics.
	You know, I can find some articles from the 1950s that say smoking is safe, but my lungs can't read them, right?
	My lungs can only find out whether I keep putting cigarette smoke or marijuana smoke into them, right?
	Right.
	Propaganda can screw with your brain, but it cannot screw with your conscience, because your conscience is the deep physics of the moral universe.
	The conscience precedes propaganda, because the conscience is the universalization engine which our brain It is fundamentally a universalization engine.
	It is constantly striving for universalization.
	It's why we have physics, why we have math, why we have language, for heaven's sakes, right?
	Why when we go into a store and say, I'd like to buy a pair of jeans, they don't send us to the candy aisle, right?
	So we have a universalization engine in our brain.
	It's called our conscience.
	It is immune fundamentally to the physics of ethics.
	It is immune, sorry, it is immune fundamentally to, I keep misplacing my metaphor, it is immune fundamentally to the froth of propaganda.
	It conforms to the ethics, to the physics of ethics fundamentally.
	I mean, we're told in kindergarten, we're told, don't do this, do do that.
	I mean, we have the universalization engine beforehand, and watching my daughter develop language is just astounding.
	She had an idea for A show yesterday.
	She said, Dad, we should do the bad philosophy show.
	And I said, well, what do you mean?
	And she said, well, the bad philosophy show where we tell people the wrong thing to do.
	Wouldn't that be funny, right?
	Because then, you know, they'd just flip it and they'd get the right thing.
	And I said, well, tell me what you mean.
	She said, well, you know, like if you want to lose weight, eat cheesecake.
	If you want to jump up, fall down.
	For like 40 minutes, we played this game of, oh, I've got a better one.
	And then she sang a little song which I thought was funny.
	She said, and if you want money but you don't want to work, then you can go and live in one of Peter Joseph's robot cities.
	But that universalization, that reversal and so on, it was just hilarious.
	And some of the stuff she came up with just blew my mind, as she regularly does.
	I blow my mind.
	Let me ask one more question.
	Building on the answer to the fellow before, and on the incredible creativity that your daughter displays the drop of a hat, in the interview that you did with Noam Chomsky, you asked him, I forget the exact question, but he was trying to cite examples of successful anarchist societies in history.
	There aren't a lot of them.
	And of course, as you were just saying, the human creativity is such that we can't really envision what answers they're going to come up to in things.
	But there are also, as you were saying about consciousness, conscience, Some fundamental principles that kind of constrain the creativity.
	And so in an anarchist society in which everybody is free and independent actor to make associations and contracts with whomever, what happens to The price mechanism, which in a market economy, at least, is an information distribution mechanism.
	Does this get supplanted by something else?
	Because I would think that that was one of those fundamental features of human society.
	Sorry, I just missed...
	Could you just boil the question back down again?
	I just missed the thread.
	I'll ask it in the middle if you could.
	In the ideal anarchist society...
	Is there something that replaces the price mechanism as an information distribution channel by which everybody gets to freely make their preferences known?
	Oh, there's your lefty household coming out.
	Yeah, I try and keep it under control, but I figured for you I could come out of the closet.
	No, no, but I'm sorry, an ideal anarchist society.
	Oh, so you mean like the anarcho-syndicalists or the left anarchists or the anarcho-communists.
	Why is that an ideal?
	It's a proposed ideal by some.
	No, but it's a violently and truly violently self-contradictory system, right?
	It lacks consistency in the extreme.
	In that, in an anarcho-syndicalist society, you have a private property in your personhood, right?
	Right.
	Nobody's talking about socializing eyeballs or vaginas or assholes, right?
	Right.
	So you have exclusive private property in your personhood.
	And you have exclusive private property, I would assume, in your clothing and your toothbrush and your hairbrush and whatever it is, right?
	So you have you and then a little penumbra around you of exclusive private property, right?
	Your shoes and hopefully the bed that you live in is not going to be socialized and so on, right?
	Everything within the bad breath zone.
	Yeah, everything within the bad breath zone in a roving little penumbra It's yours.
	It's private property, right?
	And then sort of outside of your bad breath zone, there's communal property, where the opposite rules apply.
	This is crazy.
	And it can only come out of the craziness of a crazy household, right?
	So, I mean, to look sane.
	I mean, how could that possibly...
	It literally is like me saying, it's going to rain tomorrow.
	Except, like all over the state, it's going to rain, but it's not going to rain around these nine guys.
	For these nine guys, it's sunny.
	I mean, if I said that, people would be like, what the hell are you talking about?
	Is it raining or not?
	Oh, it's raining!
	Except for these nine guys, it's going to be totally sunny.
	But they're in the same town I live in.
	I know!
	But like, well, how...
	How can you have a general rule with specific exceptions?
	It's raining or it's not.
	Or it's like saying the sun is going to rise at 7 a.m.
	tomorrow, except for these 12 guys where it's going to rise at 3 p.m.
	And that was a point you made very effectively in your discussion with Adam Kokesh when you were describing the current libertarian politics in the United States and the distinction between the very sense of the term libertarian here versus in continental Europe and elsewhere.
	Well, yeah, I mean, but that's why the communitarian thing.
	Now, I mean, again, if it's voluntary, who cares, right?
	Right.
	If it's voluntary, I mean...
	Who cares?
	So if everybody wants to set up a thing where they sign a contract which says the house is communal or the land is communal and my toothbrush is mine, I mean, you can voluntarily enforce property rights.
	You can voluntarily give up property rights, which people do all the time.
	You go to work for some company, usually whatever you make there belongs to them, not to you.
	That's what you sell to get their money, to get the stability.
	So I go and invent some super widget.
	For company ABC, the super widget belongs to ABC. So people give up their property rights voluntarily all the time.
	Which is why you don't get to charge a company with kidnapping you.
	So if people want to voluntarily create some anarcho-socialist, hippy-dippy, bed-bug-laced commune, fine!
	Because property rights are voluntary, they can be assigned, they don't have to be enforced, you know, whatever, right?
	But you cannot forcefully violate people's property rights.
	So as far as the price mechanisms go, nothing can replace the price mechanism.
	Nothing can replace the price mechanism because it's a pull economy.
	A pull economy is based upon the unreadable free choice desires of billions of people.
	There's no push economy that can replace.
	There's nothing which pushes things out which can replace pull.
	It literally is like trying to make anti-gravity.
	The solar system is a balance of centrifugal forces and gravity wells and all that kind of stuff.
	And I think that when you say pull economy, what you're referring to is I guess what Mises called praxis, praxeology.
	The things that people do as people that you cannot a priori dismiss.
	Again, I'm no expert, but I think praxeology, it refers to all of the things which are simply true by definition, right?
	That if you increase the money supply, you get inflation, right?
	I mean, these are things that simply are true by definition, and no amount of thumb jiggery or propaganda can surmount them.
	And there is no replacement for the price mechanism, because instead of people's unreadable desires, you are going to create some central push plan.
	This is simply impossible.
	It is the claim.
	Anybody who says that this is possible is making the claim that they know who everybody wants to marry better than that person does himself or herself.
	Anybody who makes that claim is literally insane.
	Like, not just kind of create...
	Like, if I were to say...
	Everybody needs to come through me, and I will tell everyone who to marry, even if I don't speak their language, even if I don't know their culture, even if I have no idea who they are.
	I know who everybody in the world should marry.
	Way better.
	Not just a little better, but way better.
	In fact, if everyone gets to choose for themselves who they want to marry...
	Chaos.
	Well, that's anarchy.
	It's anarchy.
	That's chaos, right?
	And they need to apply to central planners who are going to apply scientific principles...
	And figure out who everyone should marry.
	Want to be a monk?
	Too bad.
	I'm going to find you someone to marry.
	If you're gay?
	Too bad.
	I'm going to find you someone to marry.
	If you want to be single?
	Too bad.
	I've got to find you someone to marry, right?
	That literally is how insane central planners are.
	And they say if people choose who they get to marry themselves, that's evil.
	It's not just inefficient, right?
	They're saying we're rectifying a great immorality.
	And so central planning, there is no replacement to just people deciding who they want to or if they want to get married.
	What can we replace that with?
	You can't replace that with anything because the knowledge is simply not there.
	It presupposes perfect knowledge over the whole range of human interactions and potential.
	Central planning, yeah, it's just one of these...
	Bullshit structures that hooks into the idea of a deity, right?
	I mean, if we didn't have this conception of perfect knowledge, which comes directly out of religion, central planning would be revealed completely as the ravings of a delusional megalomaniacal psychotic.
	That's easy for you to say.
	Even Hitler didn't say he knew who everyone should marry.
	Okay, well, thank you very much.
	Those are the two questions that I had.
	You are very welcome.
	Thank you so much for calling in as always.
	Up next is Marius.
	Go ahead, Marius.
	Are you kidding me?
	We just did something on central planning and now we have someone who's named Marius.
	Are you kidding me?
	Could synchronicity be that kind to us?
	Hi, Steph.
	How are you doing?
	I'm well.
	How are you doing?
	Very nice.
	The first thing I wanted to say is donations.
	I want to share how I see them.
	It's a three-way win situation because you get to eat, we get to respect our values so we feel integrity, and then the future wins because it's better.
	So maybe it can help someone.
	So I think what I got out of that is if you donate, you get a three-way.
	That's, I think, what I got out of that.
	So it's great to know.
	I think I appreciate it.
	No, I appreciate that.
	Thanks.
	And, I mean, yeah, this is for all time.
	Like, I am aiming at a show that is going to be useful to people a hundred years from now.
	Maybe even a thousand years from now.
	I mean, we still read Plato and Aristotle about it.
	We still read Wittgenstein.
	I'm aiming to have a show that will last through the ages.
	No secret of that.
	It's a goal that I have.
	Who knows whether I'll achieve it.
	That's not really up to me.
	But that certainly is the goal.
	I don't aim for the middle.
	So people will have the benefit.
	You donate $100 or $50 or whatever.
	Yeah, people will be listening and hopefully the wisdom of the callers, the wisdom of what I can bring to the table will be there, making the world better a hundred years from now, a thousand years from now.
	That would be fantastic.
	And yeah, so it echoes through time as well as across the world at the moment.
	At least that's certainly the plan.
	Okay.
	So the next topic, I want to ask some of the success.
	I'll give you a bit of a background.
	As almost everyone here, I grew up in the medium of being taught to be small.
	And I'm proud to say that they didn't win.
	Good for you.
	So, I had an interest in philosophy since first grade.
	I had an interest in mathematics, so in rationality.
	I used to argue with teachers about religion since a young age.
	So, that's interesting.
	Maybe you can see that there's a bit suicidal in that society, but I think that helped me a lot.
	Well, I wouldn't necessarily say suicidal, I mean, unless you were arguing with the death squad, but definitely challenging, for sure.
	Yeah, Daniels.
	Now I'm studying electrical engineering, I'm in the second year, still got two and a half years left.
	And the reason I came here is because I like solving problems, I like creating something that works, that seemed like a good field.
	At the moment, thanks to FDR, I'm working on the way I interpret and see the world, so I'm discovering the attitude of exploring, Having pleasure from everyday life.
	Until now I focused on shortcomings.
	So part of that I started learning logic, science, psychology.
	But now I see that the way to succeed in the world is if you're very good at a certain field.
	So you need to focus on what you already have and build on top of that.
	This is part of my question.
	How do you all reach that field?
	So, just a few more things.
	I'm looking at the surroundings and feel that I'm not in the right place.
	Something's blocking me to become better.
	I know you're going to probably say that the people around you, you need to surround yourself with people who are going to see you Of a higher level, see your progress.
	But my question is, is that all that's missing?
	I'm not sure.
	But where do you feel blocked?
	I have to get up in the morning and go to school.
	So...
	Why do you have to get up in the morning and go to school?
	And then go to university.
	Why do you have to get up in the morning and go to university?
	I know that was my decision to go there, but at the same time, this is how society works.
	You need to pick a field, get good at it, earn some money.
	Right, so you don't have to, right?
	I mean, you have to stay stuck to the planet, right?
	You have to take into account gravity.
	But to conform to social requirements is a choice, right?
	I think that if you want to survive or even have a pleasure while living, I think you need to do that.
	No?
	No, well, yeah, but the moment you use the word if, you're talking about choice, right?
	You know, I don't say, well, if I want to have a good day...
	I actually didn't say that.
	I wouldn't say, if I choose, I can accept or reject gravity, right?
	That's not a choice.
	Yeah, that's true.
	So as soon as you say if, right, if you want this, then that, right, then you're talking about something which is choice-based, right?
	If you want to stay out of jail, then you pay your taxes.
	It's a choice.
	Yeah, there is a difference.
	Okay, but I know that that's not the essence, but it is really important to remember that we make our choices.
	And now, don't get me wrong, I mean, a lot of the choices we have to make Are crappy and artificial.
	Do you need to go to school for four and a half years to be an engineer?
	I have no idea, but I doubt it.
	Because that's just something that's imposed through the rent-seeking monopoly cartel of the engineers union, right?
	You get your ass thrown in jail if you don't wear the ring, right?
	So I'm trying to sort of remind you of choices in that area or in that context because they're important.
	If we forget choice, immediately we begin to resent our lives, right?
	Yeah.
	So everybody's saying that you have to work.
	You have to start at the lower level.
	So you have to be an employee.
	You have to have a low-paying job.
	Of course, that's not 100% true.
	It's not always necessary.
	Right, but it is useful to people, right?
	I mean, so much of what we're taught is just useful to people who already have power.
	Right, so the idea that you should start at the bottom and work your way up is scarcely threatening.
	To existing entrenched power, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Right?
	So, I mean, if Bill Gates had listened to that with regards to IBM, we wouldn't have Microsoft, right?
	If he'd said, well, I want to be a big mover and shaker in the software industry, so I need to start as a data entry clerk at IBM and work my way up, right?
	That would not have...
	He wouldn't have the billions of dollars he has now, right?
	That's interesting because I recently read the book Outliers.
	They have a part about Bill Gates.
	I think he had the courage to dream big.
	Not many people are sure enough that they can change the world.
	Well, yeah.
	And look, I mean, look, I agree with that for sure.
	He had the courage to dream big, blah-de-blah.
	Lots of people have the courage to dream big.
	You know, he happened to have access to one of the first pretty much unlimited computers available at the time.
	His father was a patent lawyer who helped him negotiate in the business world and so on, right?
	And he happened to be born at the right time to be in his early 20s, which is a time when entrepreneurial activity is significantly enhanced, at least the opportunity.
	So, you know, not to knock the guy, you know, brave, intelligent, smart guy, but there's a lot of circumstances that came together to provide him the scope that he was able to achieve.
	Just wanted to mention that.
	Yeah, he was born in the right years.
	He had a lot of practice already until he got to university.
	That's true.
	Yeah, he dropped out as far as I understand it, so...
	And, you know, he had a patent system where IBM had to pay him, right?
	I mean, Microsoft's fundamental value is government force, right?
	It's the patent system.
	And all of that.
	And so anyway, I mean, that's why there's no, you know, and Linux bazillionaire, right?
	Because they don't have the patent system for rent seeking.
	And again, just not to blame Bill Gates, smart guy, nice guy, I'm sure.
	Or as the old Dennis Miller joke, Bill Gates has $100 billion.
	Apparently a good haircut costs $101 billion.
	But anyway, so, but go ahead.
	So we're talking about a low-paying job, and I never had a low-paying job.
	I'm 21 now.
	Until now, my parents have insured my existence.
	So I'm not sure how fit I am.
	Okay, but I'm still not sure where you feel blocked.
	I feel blocked.
	You said you felt blocked or stuck, right?
	Yeah, that's true.
	Is it your social surroundings?
	Is it the people around you, like students, teachers, that kind of stuff?
	That's part of the problem.
	But I still don't have a clear answer to that question.
	That's part of why I'm calling.
	Right.
	Well, I can't, you know, it's a very undefined problem, which as you know, as an engineer, you know, build a bridge.
	Well, what kind of bridge?
	What's it going to be carrying?
	What weather is it going to be exposed to?
	What are the connecting bits on either side, right?
	What tensile strength is required, blah, blah, blah, right?
	So with an ill-defined problem, you can't do much except shoot wildly into the air and hope that you hit a bird.
	So I think, certainly feel free to call back in, but I think it's more important to try to figure out where and in what way you feel stuck.
	My guess would be that it's an ill-defined problem because it's a very wide problem and you feel stuck in your culture, that you feel stuck in your school, you may feel stuck in your family, but it's probably a pretty wide problem that you have, which is You're trying to bring truth and reason to the beautiful savages of your fellow tribesmen.
	And a lot of the resistance that we feel is unconscious.
	People are fundamentally, in many ways, ashamed of their cultures.
	They're ashamed of their irrationalities.
	They're afraid And ashamed of the degree to which they take their astounding capacities for reason and evidence and turn them to the service of charlatans and power seekers.
	And the degree to which they justify their own enslavement is the degree of their own social shame.
	And boy, you know, you could tap into that shame, you could power the world for virtually an eternity, as opposed to what's happening, which is we power the powers that be for, it seems like, almost an eternity.
	But people are pretty ashamed about...
	The degree to which they take their gifts and use them in the service of an immoral hierarchy.
	And so when you bring reason to people around you, when you bring real virtue to people around you, they recoil.
	I mean they recoil and they attack, usually.
	Depending on the level of corruption.
	I mean, the most corrupt will simply roll their eyes and attempt to crush you with the black fog of soul-choking cynicism.
	But there's a lot of untapped into but very dark emotional energy in the world.
	When you bring light to a house of horrors, everybody recoils.
	They think they're at Disney World because they're in propaganda, right?
	You turn the lights on, And they realize that they're in a house of horrors.
	Everybody kind of knows that deep down.
	Everybody knows that the world is fundamentally really screwed up.
	And that there are significant problems where some people are getting morbidly obese while a lot of the world is dying of starvation.
	This is all statism.
	And people know that this is fundamentally problematic, and people are ashamed fundamentally of how they raise their kids.
	Nobody really has kids saying, I can't wait to hit them.
	And they're ashamed of how they've behaved.
	They're ashamed of how they've taken the treasures of their own existence and turned them to the service of evil, out of conformity, out of cowardice.
	And to some degree also, depending on the political aggression you're surrounded by, out of a rational calculation, which they haven't accepted.
	I said, well, okay, I had to do bad things out of a rational calculation.
	I know.
	I know that some of the money that I pay in taxes goes to support Canada's tiny little efforts in Afghanistan.
	I know that.
	I know that some of the money that I pay in taxes is used to propagandize Children about the virtue of the state through public schools.
	And I'm aware of all of that.
	I've made my choices.
	I am as comfortable with my choices as I can be in the circumstances, in the situation.
	But most people have not gone through that process of looking at how they are compromising in an immoral situation and finding peace with that.
	You know, somebody earlier was saying about...
	Civil disobedience.
	Yeah, it's fine.
	You know, but not if you have kids, right?
	Because then you've chosen to have kids and then you've chosen to put yourself in jail, which is going to be highly traumatic for your children, right?
	So it's complicated and challenging stuff.
	But you may have a challenge in examining how much you have to conform to the society that you're in and make your peace with that.
	Does that help?
	Yeah, I think so.
	I still have to think about the topic.
	The second topic I want to talk about, tell me if we have time or not, it's about therapy.
	I sent you some resources about REBT and schema therapy.
	Now, if you don't mind, I would rather talk to you more about your personal stuff.
	stuff if you can mull it over and you're certainly welcome to come back and talk about it but we still have a pretty big queue and i have managed my call in time as wisely as usual so yeah if you could hold off on that topic i would i would appreciate it and maybe you can call back in when you figure it out in more detail or with more specific specificity how we could help you with some of the stuck in this okay thanks thank you very much for your time i hugely appreciate it mr mike all right michelle you're up next to Go ahead.
	Hi, Stefan.
	Hi, Michelle.
	How are you doing?
	Good!
	I can't believe I'm talking to you, but I prepared a bunch of what I was going to say.
	Basically, it's about my childhood.
	But before I start, I wanted to tell you that I really appreciate what you're doing with your show.
	I like how during your radio call-in show that you ask a lot of questions, especially if you're talking...
	To somebody about their childhood.
	And I just like how you're just simply trying to understand.
	And I point that out because I've been trying to get on the path of self-growth.
	And yeah, that's why my question is about my childhood.
	Because I'm trying to get over a lot of things.
	Whatever you want to talk about, I'm happy to hear.
	Okay.
	So...
	I wanted to discuss why I no longer want to have a relationship with my mom.
	I recognize my voice is shaking because it always does when I talk about my mom.
	Yeah, that's evidence that it's very important to you.
	Yeah.
	Usually important to you.
	Yeah.
	You know what it is.
	You can hear people's nervousness in the show, which I hugely appreciate.
	And people who haven't done it, you know how hard it is to call up in a public venue and talk about stuff like this.
	So, you know, all kudos to you, Michelle.
	That's really hard to do.
	For people who haven't tried it, I suggest you give it a shot.
	And it is, to me, kind of sad that there's an intensity around important topics because it tells me that the world is still pretty averse to important topics, right?
	So you should have people to talk to about this.
	I'm very glad that we get to talk about it.
	But the intensity tells me that this is very important to you and that it's new territory, which, of course, I appreciate.
	So go ahead.
	Thank you.
	I want to hopefully strengthen my reasoning for not wanting to have a relationship with my mom and stop trying to change the person that she is.
	Because within the last two years since I've been moved out of my mom's house, I've gone back and forth with not wanting to see them, not wanting to talk to them because of what My mom and my older brother, I'll mostly talk about them, did to me as a child.
	But I always get guilt-tripped and pressured from my mom to always come back and help her again and try to give her advice.
	But I'm thinking that my reasoning for leaving is that I didn't choose to have the mom that I have.
	Nobody asked me before I was in her stomach if I wanted a mom that would be really annoyed with me asking questions.
	A mom that guilt trips her child into loving her unconditionally.
	Sorry, I could give a lot more background on my childhood, but I've noticed that a lot of the things I've gone through in my childhood have given me a lot of negative aspects to my personality.
	For example, when I'm put in a stressful situation, I tend to want to react right away with My fight or flight response.
	Because I think that trauma during childhood kind of makes somebody want to run away or fight a situation instead of thinking about it rationally and then coming up with a good decision for the situation.
	Can you talk a little bit more specifically, if you don't mind, about...
	You know, usually what people praise me for is what they want me to do with them, which is fine.
	It's very natural, right?
	So you said, I like the way that you ask people lots of questions.
	So what is it specifically in your childhood that you found particularly problematic?
	Well, a few things.
	The main thing is she never gave me confirmation.
	Like, whenever I had an idea about something or whenever I had...
	I guess the main thing where I began really seeing her craziness and her irrationalness was when my brother started doing drugs and was really addicted to heroin and oxycodone.
	He still is, and he's currently in jail for that.
	Gosh, I'm incredibly sorry to hear that.
	That's okay.
	But I would...
	Not hugely, but...
	I mean, it's not okay.
	Right.
	No, I mean, what an incredibly disruptive thing to occur in a household.
	I mean, the chaos, the moral relativism that kind of sprays out of addicts is really, really challenging.
	The manipulation, the emptying out of the personality, the lack of capacity to empathize and to connect...
	The chaos and the focus that it reorients the family towards.
	I mean, addicts are, you know, it's like being caged with a bipolar tiger.
	I mean, it's a huge challenge, and I'm incredibly sorry to hear that.
	That's okay.
	Thank you.
	I won't say it's okay.
	But when I lived with him for...
	When he was addicted to drugs, it was for like 10 years of my life of just...
	Just exactly how you painted it out.
	Some bipolar tiger just waiting to freak out at me on any wrong thing I said.
	His traits, my brother's traits from his addiction, they're kind of similar to my mom.
	I would label her bipolar because she always said that She just yells at her kids because that's all she knows.
	Like, that she really loves us, but her voice is just loud.
	Like, she always came up with arbitrary excuses for not giving us love.
	So, yeah.
	And, sorry to interrupt.
	I dislike that intensely.
	Just wanted to mention that.
	Yeah.
	One of the 9911s has an Italian family screaming at their kids.
	We're Italians!
	We're loud!
	No.
	No.
	That's not really an excuse.
	That's not really an excuse at all.
	Yeah.
	And so, yeah, I'm just this way is, to me, a very destructive statement.
	And the reason why, as I'm sure you're aware, Michelle, the reason why, it's just so fundamentally hypocritical.
	So fundamentally hypocritical.
	Because if your mom says, well, I'm just this way, how often were you allowed to be just the way you are?
	Exactly.
	Exactly.
	I'm screaming at you kids to change because I'm just this way.
	So I'm screaming at you kids to change, but I'm not open to any change.
	Yeah, I never really thought of it that way.
	Well, made that connection that she was being really hypocritical.
	Because she never let me be myself either.
	Right.
	She's just that way.
	And basically what they're saying is, you must now conform to my irrationality because my personality is physics.
	Your personality is choice, but my personality is physics.
	So I'm going to yell at you kids to change, and I am not open to change in any way, shape, or form.
	And therefore change is available to a 5-year-old, but not to a 30-year-old.
	Yeah, yeah, exactly.
	Come on.
	Because she knows everything or something.
	Or, I don't know.
	She...
	It's just odd.
	I just...
	Every time I talk to her, I can't...
	Like, feelings from the past...
	Oh, sorry.
	I was going to finish.
	Because you asked what in particular about my childhood...
	My mom's effect on my childhood or something.
	So I was going to talk about my brother and how that's been the main problem between us for the last 10 years.
	So he was that bipolar tiger for 10 years because of his heroin and oxycodone addiction.
	And it started when I was 12 and we had moved away from My old school, but anyways, I remember trying really hard to give her, have a heart-to-heart conversation with her about my brother and how unsafe I felt around him.
	He threatened to kill me one time for having a $500 phone bill, and that was between me and my mom, but He called me and said he would kill me.
	And just a lot of instances of verbal abuse, saying F you to my mom, and just he's really disrespectful, and he was really violent, and he dealt drugs right outside of our house.
	Oh yeah, he was a drug dealer too for that time.
	That's how he funded his addiction.
	But yeah, and her response to all of my heartfelt Like, hey mom, you know, I know it's really hard for you because you're a mom, but I don't think it's good for me and our family for him to stay in our house and for you to continue getting him out of jail and paying for everything whenever he gets into trouble.
	Her reaction was because she's really resistant to change and I understand that she just doesn't want to accept that she's wrong.
	I feel like deep, deep down she knows, but she continues to justify her reasoning, saying that she just loves him so much and she's a good mom and she only has one son and stuff like that.
	But she just responded and treated me like I was really disrespectful and she started calling me mom and saying, okay, I'm gonna call you mom because you just talked to me like you know everything, Michelle.
	Wait, so she has a problem with disrespectful language?
	No, she has a problem with, in general, with her kids or anyone younger than her giving her advice.
	No, but she said that you were being disrespectful, right?
	Yeah, she did.
	Okay, and when your brother tells her to fuck off, Right.
	Is he not being disrespectful when he threatens to kill you?
	Is that not, I guess, in the category of being disrespectful?
	Oh, it totally is.
	When she is sarcastic towards you and calls you mom, would that not also fall into the category of disrespectful?
	Yeah, it would.
	So it's not a principle, right?
	It's a weapon.
	It's a weapon.
	99.9999% of times that people apply a principle to you?
	They're using it as a weapon and it does not apply to themselves.
	Beware principles.
	Principles that people give you are one of the most toxic substances you will ever encounter in your life.
	I think I've encountered so many principles that since I've moved out, I've been trying to go through all of them and go, okay, that was just a principle.
	It's not rational at all.
	She gave me a lot of principles that I need to be an independent woman and not rely on any man and watch out.
	I'm currently married, by the way, and I'm 20 years old.
	To my best friend, he's awesome anyway.
	But she would always bring up how I need to be wary of my money and make sure that my husband doesn't touch any of it and all men are very selfish and she just gave me so many ideals.
	Well, at least that's respectful, right?
	I've been saying that all men are selfish.
	At least she's able to maintain her respect for half the human race in that sense.
	But no, it is, you know, like after a childhood of being beaten up by my mom, when I began to threaten her physically for hitting me, when I got big enough, do you know how shocked and appalled she was that I would even consider using physical aggression?
	Wow.
	You see, because when I was, you know, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 or so, that's what you did.
	But the moment I became big enough to use physical aggression to defend myself, My God, she was appalled.
	She burst into tears.
	She threw herself on the couch.
	She couldn't understand.
	She couldn't imagine how immoral I could be to raise a hand in defense against my mother.
	Appalling.
	At the time, you must have been like, why are you so angry?
	Like, you did this to me.
	So...
	Well, no, I mean, I just, I mean, the contempt that I had for this vicious little petty manipulation was, I mean, nearly bottomless, right?
	I mean, you have to be talked back into having relationships with really crappy people, you know, by the massive propaganda that occurs in families, in society about families.
	So, yeah.
	Now, your dad, you have not mentioned your father at all.
	Oh, my father left when I was seven.
	Because I don't know, like, I still don't know the truth because I stopped talking to him like a year after he left my mom.
	But my mom told me that he left because he's a bad person and that he was paranoid about her talking to my stepdad at work.
	Like, they worked together, my mom and my stepdad.
	And she told me that my dad left because he found out or something.
	Oh, so was your mom having an affair?
	Is that right?
	No.
	They were friends at the time.
	And she just told me the story that she's like, oh, your father...
	Oh, sorry.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	So your dad was worried that your mother was attracted to the man she ended up marrying?
	According to my mom.
	So this is...
	So he was right.
	I guess so, because they got married.
	That would be an indication that he was not, you know, because the moment she says, well, you know, he was paranoid that I might be attracted to the man who's your stepfather.
	It's like, well, then he wasn't paranoid, was he?
	Because he was right.
	I don't know why I never said, okay, why did you marry him, Dan?
	I don't get it.
	Oh, you get it.
	Yeah.
	You get it.
	Okay.
	I mean, if you try and get it rationally, you will, you know, it's like trying to figure out the anatomy of a Klingon.
	Well, it's made up.
	You can make up anything you want, right?
	What is the physics of Gandalf's magic spells?
	I don't know.
	It's just made up stuff.
	It doesn't mean anything.
	And so when you're dealing with manipulative people, trying to figure them out is pointless because they just change their stories to maneuver for a position.
	To win at any cost.
	I remember feeling when I was younger like this significant failure that I could not figure out my mom.
	Like why would she get upset about this?
	Or why would this happen?
	And I'd try and figure her out.
	And then I realized after a while that there was no one to figure out.
	There's no person.
	All there is is manipulation and you can't figure that out, except by looking for momentary advantage and so on.
	But there is no cohesive or coherent personality there.
	There is only manipulation.
	It's like trying to find the spine of a jellyfish.
	You just get stung.
	Oh, you're right.
	I've gone through that same...
	I mean, that's kind of partly why I want to strengthen my resolve because I still try to...
	I still love her, you know.
	Hmm?
	Oh, I said I still love my mom.
	No, I understand that.
	Oh, okay.
	Why would I say hmm?
	Oh, I don't know.
	I don't know.
	Yes, you know.
	Yes, you know.
	Let's go back to that.
	Sorry, I'm the guy who's going to listen to everything.
	Everything.
	Oh, that's good.
	I'm really glad.
	So what do you love about her?
	Uh...
	What virtues does she possess that evoke upon you the involuntary response of adoration, love, veneration, respect, all that?
	I guess nothing.
	I guess...
	Don't give up so easily.
	Maybe something.
	I've only heard one side of her.
	Maybe she does take care of animals she finds knocked by cars on the side of the road.
	Maybe...
	She does have massive charitable enterprises on the side and is kind of inconsistent with her family.
	Maybe there are virtues or kindnesses that she possesses that we haven't talked about.
	Well, I mean, she's always...
	Yeah, I mean, it's hard for me to come up with anything.
	She's only ever really shown that she loves me in really...
	Hard times, like when my grandma died or when her mom passed away.
	Yeah, so...
	Alright, well, how did she show you that she loved you at those times?
	And understand, I'm not trying to chip away at anything.
	I'm genuinely...
	Oh, yeah.
	You know, but if you say there's a mountain over there and I look there and can't see a mountain, I have to ask some questions, right?
	Maybe there's something wrong with my eyes.
	Maybe there's a massive...
	Klingon force field between me and the mountain, but I can't see the mountain.
	So if you tell me there's a mountain and I can't see the mountain, I have to ask for some more details.
	I'm not trying to tell you there is no mountain.
	I'm just saying I can't see it.
	If you say you've got this mountain called I Love My Mom, which I can't see based upon what you said, I'm just asking for some clarification so you can remove the obstruction from my vision.
	Oh, I'm trying to answer that question to my best ability.
	So thanks for all the questions.
	I really appreciate it.
	But I guess I... What I love, I guess, is it's not really what anything she's done for me.
	She did all the basic stuff like give me food and shelter and stuff that I needed.
	And she also never told me that I couldn't do anything.
	She told me that I could make anything of myself.
	But it wasn't like a...
	It wasn't a motivational kind of, like, you can do anything.
	It was like, oh, you know, it's easy for you guys.
	Sorry, she has an Asian accent.
	But she's like, oh, it's easy for you guys to do anything because you were born in America.
	So that A you got on your test, it's easy.
	And I could have done it too.
	Basically, she never...
	It's never full compliments.
	It always comes back to compliments.
	You know we're trying to figure out why you love her, right?
	Oh, yeah.
	I'm sorry.
	I think you defected there.
	You've now joined the prosecution and not the defense.
	I'm so sorry.
	I always defect.
	No, no.
	Don't apologize.
	I mean, this is a real interaction.
	There's nothing to apologize for at all.
	I just wanted to point out that I noticed it.
	Thank you.
	I guess I just like...
	I mean...
	I just see that she's a consciousness, that she's another human being as well, and she went through tough times in her childhood too.
	So I guess I just loved the comfort that I thought she gave me sometimes.
	And when I think about it, it's kind of sickening.
	So I guess I don't really love her in this, like, Because there's nothing to really love her for.
	There's an attachment, which we have, right?
	Yeah, there is an attachment, though.
	There's an imprintment.
	There's an attachment.
	Ducks have it with whoever they see when they come out of the egg.
	Like, they've done these experiments where they expose ducks to orange balloons.
	And the ducks bond with the orange balloons.
	And they follow the orange balloon around.
	And they attempt to get comfort and all that from the orange balloon.
	And monkeys do this with simulacrums as well.
	So, there's an attachment, which is natural.
	Which is mammalian, which is fine.
	Nothing wrong with it at all.
	But love, you know, you've got to just listen back to what you said in this last little bit, right?
	It really was fascinating.
	She's a consciousness.
	Yeah.
	So basically, you're saying she's breathing.
	Yeah.
	She's alive.
	Yeah.
	I mean, I have not heard a whole lot of love songs, you know, baby, you're still breathing, right?
	I mean, I'm so glad the air is going in and out of your lungs.
	I mean, that's not really much that's going, not a lot of, you know, Mother's Day cards that, you know, thank you for the inhalation and exhalation, right?
	That's not going to work very well, right?
	Yeah, I'm glad you pointed out that there is attachment there, that it's mammalian.
	Because I guess that is what I feel when I do think about her.
	The only comfort that I feel is when I think about when I was really, really young, when she used to take care of me as a baby.
	Basically, there's nothing I can really...
	Come up with that I really love about her, that she's really helped me with in my life.
	Right.
	Now, the reality that she had, you know, growing up, I've read Black Swan, I know, but I mean, growing up, you know, is it Chinese?
	Chinese?
	Chinese and Vietnamese.
	Chinese and Vietnamese, all right.
	Yeah.
	So, I mean, growing up in these cultures is tough.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	You know, I mean, the totalitarianism of communism didn't come out of nowhere.
	It came out of the family, and it is very tough.
	You know, there's a lot.
	I'm going to generalize here in a completely, hopefully semi-useful, but significantly wrong way.
	But oriental cultures are pretty shallow.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Pretty damn shallow.
	Pretty shallow.
	A lot of status seeking, a lot of money glorification.
	You see these little YouTube channels where it's like, I'm going to put makeup on my boyfriend while I'm blindfolded.
	And it's like, oh man, come on.
	Confucius, man, come on.
	Just a little bit.
	We're not asking for the world here.
	But blindfolded makeup application to your giggling boyfriend.
	Come on!
	Yeah, yeah.
	You could do a little...
	Come on.
	Asian IQ is off the charts.
	Come on.
	Just show us a little magic here.
	Yeah.
	Show us a little magic.
	Come on.
	These are brilliant.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	And along with that comes a lot of...
	Biostatus, right?
	So biostatus is my kids are the best and therefore I'm good, right?
	This is the tiger mom thing, right?
	Which is I'm going to be judged by my children's accomplishments, therefore I need to polish them so that I can bask in the disco ball reflection of their intellectual or artistic achievements, right?
	I've always thought that was kind of disgusting.
	Okay.
	It is.
	It is.
	And all parents feel that.
	Yeah, I mean, you're basically like a racehorse.
	I want to win.
	And so, I need to whip my racehorse, right?
	Whip it.
	So, there is a lot of that shallowness.
	And look, it's not the only culture that has it.
	But at least in the West, we're doing something to fight it.
	Yeah.
	And...
	Some of us.
	Yeah, look, it's still a minority, right?
	And I get all of that, right?
	But there is in the West a tradition of opposing the herd, right?
	Think for yourself.
	You cannot judge your worth through the eyes of others.
	Now, how often do people in the West live up to it?
	You know, well, Donna Karan and Calvin Klein have made a pretty penny out of the exact opposite.
	Like boots and Hermes bags and all this kind of stuff really speak to the opposite.
	So we in the West, you know, have this shallow state of seeking bullshit as well.
	But there is like if you confront people on it, there is a sense in which they kind of get that it's not the best thing, that there is a tradition of to thine own self be true.
	There is a tradition of think for yourself.
	There is a tradition of if everybody was jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you do it too?
	That you have your own conscience and your own integrity that must necessarily, if necessary, go against the hurt.
	Jesus certainly opposed a lot of the traditions in the Old Testament.
	Socrates obviously opposed a lot of what was going on in the world of his day.
	All of the great thinkers and advancers from Nietzsche to Copernicus to Galileo to Tycho Brahe to Newton, they all stood against the orthodoxies of their time.
	So we do have a heroic individualistic worshipping culture.
	Now, like most cultures, we worship this stuff in the abstract.
	When we meet it in the flesh, we want to strangle it and back a truck over it, right?
	So think for yourself, say our parents.
	If everybody was jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you do it too?
	Think for yourself.
	Don't go with the herd.
	Hey, look, I'm an atheist anarchist.
	What?
	Strangle.
	Beep, beep.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	But at least we have the ideals.
	However poorly we actually live up to them and however, in whatever hostile manner we receive them.
	Like we all, we love these movies about the nerds and the jocks and the nerds find some way to beat the jocks and so on.
	And then we go back to high school and we praise the jocks.
	Like there was this woman on the radio the other day, I can't remember even who she was, but she was saying how You know, the trait that women value most in men is intelligence.
	And I was like, are you kidding me?
	Interesting.
	Are you kidding me?
	Oh, how can you say that with a straight face?
	You see, it's all of the philosophy papers that George Clooney and David Beckham have published that is just why women think that they're so fantastic.
	I haven't read any of those papers.
	It's just hilarious.
	How somebody can say that?
	You know, that's like the guy ogling the woman with big tits and saying it's all about the personality.
	Personality usually doesn't need whalebone support.
	But anyway, it's just...
	And also, you know, everybody who was intelligent in high school but not an athlete says that women are really into a man's brains.
	I mean, that's just...
	But at least we have that ideal.
	Mm-hmm.
	Yeah.
	You know, even if it's mostly just used as a cover for something just more shallow.
	Yeah, you're right.
	Huh.
	That's interesting.
	Yeah, I guess we do have a lot of those ideals, but in practice and in reality, they're not really applied.
	Yeah, but in the Oriental culture, you don't even have the ideal to apply to, right?
	You're right, yeah.
	You don't say, well, Mom, you shouldn't be taking pride in my achievements.
	But that would be an incomprehensible statement to a lot of oriental moms, right?
	Yeah, you're right.
	She'd be like, what?
	You should, you know, I want to think for myself, not go with the crowd.
	Be like, what?
	You wanted what?
	You're right.
	It would go against her own principles and ideals that you're not smart or you don't have enough wisdom until you're 40.
	Like, to say anything.
	Right.
	Right, and there is, of course, the people who want age to be the deciding factor are just people who've made really bad decisions.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Right, you have to respect me because I'm older.
	All that does is tell me that your mom cannot point to her decisions and say, you should respect me because of my wonderfully wise decisions in life.
	Right, right.
	I'm older means I've got nothing.
	Yeah, like I'm your mom.
	I got nothing.
	I can't point to any damn thing that I've done that would engender your respect.
	And so I've got to go on chronology.
	That's all I got is the fact that I dropped out of a vagina sometime before you did.
	That's all I've got.
	That's the...
	That's it.
	I mean, that's pretty tragic, right?
	She should be able to say, well, look, I mean, I'm happy.
	I'm wise.
	My relationships are fulfilling.
	I know a little bit of something about how to achieve some good things in this world.
	Yeah.
	So you should listen to me because – and I never need to say that to my daughter.
	I never need to say, well, look at the things I've done that are wise and, you know, the fact that I never raised my voice, the fact that I – I almost never get angry.
	The fact that I have great relationships in my life.
	The fact that I don't have any abusive or manipulative or nasty people in my life.
	I don't need to say because that's all...
	There, I don't like explaining myself when the evidence is overwhelming.
	That seems insecure, right?
	Yeah.
	So when I talk to my daughter about what I think she should do or shouldn't do, or basically when we have a conversation about it, because I have a lot to learn from her as well.
	Oh, yeah.
	Her relentlessly friendly, outgoing nature is something that is really fascinating to me.
	And, you know, the fact that she'll just go up to people she likes and say, Hey, let's be friends.
	Oh, cool.
	And then just starts chatting with them and all that.
	I mean, I think it's just delightful and it's beautiful to see.
	Yeah, I like when you bring up your daughter.
	Yeah, I mean, but I don't...
	Like, I'll never need to pull the age card.
	Because I've got so many others.
	You know what I mean?
	It's like playing poker and then say, well, I'm going to now play my napkin.
	It's like...
	I got a great hand.
	I got a winning hand.
	I don't need to play a napkin.
	So I'm very sorry.
	Your rules are philosophy.
	You don't need to use your age because you can just use rationality and reason to talk in a conversation and make your point.
	Yeah, so in the Asian culture, there is the respect your elders thing, right?
	Big time.
	But I mean, why would you need that to be a rule?
	I mean, if I have to make my wife sign a pledge to love me every morning, what am I saying?
	She don't love me.
	Oh, you're saying ignore all the things I do to you and just love me because it's a rule.
	Right.
	Well, I'm saying she doesn't love me and there's no reason for her to.
	So I have to make a rule called love me.
	Oh, okay, I see.
	Because she has no reason to.
	Yeah, I mean, rules are a substitute for reason, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	When you have no reason, you come up with a rule.
	Yeah, I mean, when you want something without having to earn it, you make a rule.
	Because it's a lot easier than earning stuff, right?
	Right, right.
	You have a rule called welfare for people who other people don't want to help, right?
	I was going to say...
	Oh, you're going to say that?
	Yeah.
	I mean, if you want stuff without earning it, you just make a rule, make a moral rule, and that's how you harvest people, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	And what the tragic thing is that as long as you have the rule, the improvements cannot occur.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	So, if Asian parents, or any parents for that matter, are going to get all the fruits of having been good parents without actually having to be good parents, then who the hell would do the hard work of becoming a good parent?
	Right.
	Exactly.
	Exactly.
	Yeah.
	Because it's some hard work.
	It really, it takes a lot of humility.
	You need to, you know, know, like, be aware of how your actions are affecting that child in front of you.
	Yeah, it's, I don't know, it just, when I hear about your, I like hearing about your daughter because, to me, it's like a good example of how Children, like a human, when you're born, you have this innate curiosity about the world and this want to reason and understand everything.
	In so many movies, I feel like, when the children ask, like, why?
	Why can't I stay later than ten at my friend's house?
	Why?
	Why?
	Why do you have that rule?
	The parents always shut down and don't want to answer that question because it would reveal how they don't really have a reason.
	Right.
	And you have to challenge your own things, right?
	My daughter wants to take off her shoes, you know, in some public place.
	And my instinct is, no, keep your shoes on.
	And then I have to sit there and say, well, wait a second, why?
	Why?
	Can I make a rational case for her keeping her shoes on?
	Well, yes.
	If we're walking through the woods, I can make a rational case for her keeping her shoes on.
	Look, spikes.
	Look, stones.
	Look, prickly weeds, right?
	Right, right.
	Keep your shoes on.
	If she wants to walk in a lake where it's not sandy, right?
	I can say, look, wear your little shoes.
	These little wet shoes or whatever, right?
	Because, you know, spiky rocks and whatnot, right?
	Yeah.
	But if we're in a mall...
	Can I really make the case that she has to keep her shoes on, rationally?
	I can't.
	I mean, they're not landmines here, you know?
	There's not little ferrets that are going to attack her toes.
	Yeah, how can you tell a child, oh, people will judge us, dot, dot, dot.
	Like, that's not a rational reason.
	Like, I mean, well, that is the reason, isn't it, for...
	To keep your shoes on in public?
	Yeah, because other people are going to look at you and say, what crazy parent is letting their kids run around without shoes on?
	Terrible parent.
	But you know what?
	I'm fine with that fundamentally.
	It's like, hey, I'm not hitting her.
	I'm not yelling at her.
	I'm actually spending time with her.
	I'm not sticking her in some crappy ass daycare where her social skills and autonomy and independence begin to decay like An old rotted tree.
	So, yeah, I mean, judge me all you want for letting her run around without shoes, but I think I'm okay when it comes to how I'm parenting.
	I think I'm okay.
	Yeah.
	I'm okay relative to my own ideals, which are very high, let alone relative to just general social practices.
	Yeah.
	Sorry, somebody just pointed out, and I just wanted to mention this.
	I'm sorry for just doing a slight sidebar, but Christian culture has that as well.
	Love your mother and Actually, it's honor, thy mother and thy father.
	And look, that's not Christian.
	That is not Christian.
	Old Testament is not Christian.
	Let me repeat this again.
	Old Testament is as much Christian as it is Judaic as it is Islamic.
	Old Testament is not Christian.
	And Jesus was, you know, to put it crudely, fuck mom and dad.
	No, he said this very clearly.
	He said, I have come to set children against their parents, brother against brother.
	Wow.
	And if your parents don't believe, throw them aside.
	Wow.
	That's really profound.
	That's interesting.
	And this is sort of confusing for people, just what Jesus had to say about the family.
	And...
	It is not what people think.
	And people think the Old Testament, that's Moses, right?
	Moses got the Ten Commandments, and one of which was honor thy mother and thy father.
	But that was not Jesus.
	And that's because there was already a thousand or two thousand year tradition in the religion, right?
	And so that's because he was not attempting to change anything, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	And so this is really important to understand.
	Jesus was a revolutionary, and as a revolutionary, he had to overturn the old order, and to overturn the old order, he had to get children to disobey their parents, right?
	To convert to Christianity was to break with your Jewish parents, or with your whatever parents, right?
	Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
	I see.
	And so Jesus was very clear that you should follow me and get rid of your parents if they don't follow you, right?
	That following me requires disowning your parents if they're not with us.
	I have come to set brother against brother, child against parent, family against family.
	And then, so that to me, when people, like if I say you don't have to spend time with abusive people, which is, you know, a simple statement of fact.
	I don't tell people to stay or to leave their families.
	I just remind them of the fact that there's a choice involved.
	Yeah.
	I mean, I am being a good Christian.
	In fact, I'm being a lot nicer than Jesus.
	I mean, if I were to say, you need to follow me and do everything that I say...
	And you need to curse your parents and get rid of them.
	If they don't agree with everything I say, then I'm sure people would say, well, that's, you know, that's what Christ did.
	So what would Jesus do?
	Well, okay, so Steph's doing that, right?
	But anyway, I just sort of wanted to point that out.
	There is, in the Christian tradition, there is a follow the truth and screw history.
	I mean, that's the whole point of Christianity.
	Jesus came along with some different stuff to say and knew that the family had to be abandoned.
	I don't believe that.
	I think that hopefully most families can be saved.
	But if you follow the truth and damn your forefathers, that's the whole point of Christianity.
	So again, it's just a natural hypocrisy that people claim to follow this guy.
	And when I propose something infinitely milder, people think that that's just monstrous.
	Because now, Christianity is the Old Testament, right?
	So now conservatism and not changing anything is the rule.
	But that's just a natural cycle of what is truly called revolution, right?
	That's interesting.
	But there's not been any revolution like that in really in much of the oriental cultures, right?
	No.
	At least not in my opinion.
	Well, no, I think it's not really.
	It's not really...
	I mean, there's been massive stagnation for thousands of years in most of the Oriental cultures.
	Just so I don't forget.
	He says...
	This is Matthew 10, 35.
	Jesus says, Do not think that I come to bring peace on the earth.
	I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.
	For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and a man's enemies will be the members of his household.
	It's your immediate household who will be your enemy.
	Right?
	I wonder why that wasn't really emphasized...
	Well, it was in Jesus' day.
	But now it's not.
	Because now what was revolutionary has become conservative.
	And so now a maintenance of the status quo is there, right?
	Yeah.
	And there's tons of this stuff.
	But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my Father in Heaven.
	So if you pretend that you do not worship Jesus...
	You will not get into heaven, right?
	And he writes in Luke 12, 53, they will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter, and daughter against mother, blah, blah, blah.
	He goes through the whole thing.
	Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child.
	Children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death.
	And so, yeah, it is...
	Natural.
	When you want to change something that exists, you have to face the challenge of the family transition of whatever it is you want to change.
	And so back in the day, he was like all about, you know, screw your parents, follow me to heaven.
	Yeah.
	And that's his express purpose is to break up families.
	But now, of course, it's all, you know, it's shifted to honor thy mother and thy father and bloody, bloody, right?
	Because people just make up whatever they want when they go to the Bible.
	Right.
	Well...
	What he's saying, maybe to translate it to my situation, I've already tried really hard for these last 10 years, even longer than that, to try and change my mom, to tell her what I think of the world, and she's never been enlightened.
	And she's still manipulative and in denial of everything I say to this day.
	So I don't know if...
	So she's not going to change?
	Yeah, basically, yeah.
	No, this is the most important thing, right?
	People are very honest with you.
	Most people are very honest with you, Michelle, right?
	If she's not even acknowledging something as a problem, she is not going to change.
	Yeah, right?
	Even if she were to acknowledge something as a problem, it doesn't mean that she's going to change.
	It means that it's necessary but not sufficient.
	So if you have a mom who's 300 pounds and you say, Mom, you need to lose weight, and she says, I'm the perfect weight, you're way too skinny, she's not going to lose weight.
	Now, if she says, I need to lose weight, there is a 90 to 95% chance that she will never lose that weight.
	Or if she loses it, that she'll gain it back and probably more.
	So even dieting, which everybody recognizes as a big health issue and this and that and the other, like 90 to 95% of diets just fail.
	Even with all the resources and the doctors and the positive reinforcement of, oh, you look skinny in those jeans or have you lost weight or whatever it is, right?
	Even with this massive ideal and huge social reinforcement and great medical reasons and people fucking die because they're too fat, 90 to 95% of people fail at the simple act of not putting bad food in their mouth.
	Why is that?
	Do you think that 90 to 95% just fail?
	Is that...
	Well, because, in my opinion, it's because they're trying to deal with a symptom, not a cause, right?
	Oh, I see.
	Like, their obesity is a symptom of something.
	Yeah, childhood dysfunction, dysmorphia is a sign of low self-esteem, obviously of sexual protection for a lot of children, particularly women who are sexually abused as children.
	Fat becomes a way of avoiding sexual attraction so that they don't re-experience the trauma of what happened to them as kids.
	There's lots of stuff going on way deep down when it comes to weight and body image and so on.
	I see.
	So you're not really addressing it when your diet does not address fat, all that stuff.
	Yeah, fat is not a manifestation of food.
	Food is a manifestation of dysfunction, of childhood, of trauma.
	And so people want to deal with the symptoms without dealing with the cause, and our lives will always reorient ourselves back to our deepest beliefs, no matter what we do in the periphery.
	It always comes back to the deepest core beliefs.
	Unless you challenge those, you're just, as they say, rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, right?
	So, even if people admit that there's a huge problem, like obesity, they are almost certain to fail in trying to solve it with all the social reinforcements possible.
	Now, your mother has none of those social reinforcements.
	Right?
	So, the odds of your mother changing when she's neither admitting there is a problem or committing to any solution that is going to work is zero.
	It's not kind of zero, it's zero.
	Yeah.
	I feel like the same thing could be said about my brother who's still addicted to drugs or to heroin.
	And also, sorry, with your brother, which again is truly awful and tragic, but with your brother, the reality as well is that as far as I understand it, and again I speak as an amateur here, but as far as I understand it, emotional development stops with addiction.
	How old is he when he became addicted in his teens, right?
	Yeah, like 17 and he's 30 now, I believe.
	Okay, so it's obviously not a very wise decision to take these kinds of drugs at any time, but if you're a teenager, so he would have been emotionally younger than his years.
	At the age of 17, you know, maybe 12 or 13 years old, emotionally, right?
	Given the mom that you had, all that kind of stuff.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	So he's missed out on like almost 20 years of emotional development.
	Oh, I see that.
	I totally agree.
	I think that's valid to say that his emotional development definitely stopped when his addiction started.
	Right.
	So you are working on self-knowledge and you are, you say, happily married to a great guy, for which I'm enormously thrilled and great.
	Good for him and for you.
	But even if he were to turn around tomorrow and, you know, stop the drugs and get therapy and really work on the deep-seated emotional issues, it would take him years to even begin his emotional development journey in any fundamental way because he'd be undoing a lot of damage firsthand, right?
	Yeah.
	Economically, yeah.
	Yeah, so in a couple of years, he might begin.
	So basically 20 years or so, he'd be behind you.
	Now, it's not like you can't have a relationship with somebody who's 20 years younger than you, emotionally, but kind of why?
	Right.
	Part of my self-growth is I'm trying to look for friends and And who are either at the same level as me or higher than me, like emotionally in their growth.
	Yeah, if you want to get good at tennis, you don't play people who are just starting out, right?
	You actually will get worse.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Because then you have to cater to their weaknesses and can't focus on your own.
	So, you need...
	Yeah, and you're reacting to bad players, which means you're not training yourself to react to good players, right?
	So, you're actually getting worse.
	And this is assuming that your brother would wake up tomorrow and say, I'm done with that last life, I'm turning over a new leaf, and it wouldn't be replaced with some other irrationality like Jesus saved me from heroin or whatever, right?
	Yeah, that would be really unlikely, though, because...
	Well, yeah, but even if it were to happen, the best case scenario is not...
	Very good.
	Then you've got someone who was abusive in the past, who has significant dysfunctional problems, who may relapse into drug addiction at any time.
	And one of the reasons why this kind of long-term drug addiction is so hard to recover from is 13 years of his life is down the drain.
	The longer you spend waiting for the bus, the less likely you are to walk.
	The longer that you waste your life, the harder it is to recover from it because the tragedy Of what he did, how he treated you, how he treated your mom, even how he treated his friends, what he did, how he also enabled other people to become addicted to the drug through dealing.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I mean, how on earth is he supposed to recover from all of that?
	I mean, emotional fragility, and I'm sure you have read Gabor Mate's In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, if not, I highly recommend it, but how are you supposed to come back from that?
	Yeah, yeah.
	It was a question my mom...
	Well, I tried to answer for my mom.
	Like, I thought I had some answer.
	Like, oh, when you just...
	Like, it's still possible to change.
	But he has to come up with the change himself.
	Like, my mom and I can't change him.
	You know, we can't tell him we love him so much and expect he'll change.
	Well, his brain has changed because of what he's done.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	There's, you know, there's this old religious idea that there's this soul inside you, right?
	And the soul inside you is immune from what you do to your body.
	I think you brought that up on one of your previous shows.
	Yeah, I've talked about it before.
	I just mentioned it here.
	You know, I have to do that annoying radio thing where I don't know how long people...
	Oh, it's good.
	...or so.
	It's good.
	And so very, very briefly, we are our brain.
	Hmm.
	Right?
	There's no nice brother within you.
	Hmm.
	There is only your brother's brain and 13 years of drug addiction and the choices and corruptions that that occurs.
	And I mean, this was sympathy, right?
	I mean, your brother obviously had a pretty wretched childhood to end up with this kind of addiction.
	So I say this with some sympathy.
	But there's no good brother deep down inside that you could reach out and fish for.
	Right, right.
	There is only the brain.
	There is only the brain.
	There is no magic essence of the personality that floats around inside us like a ghost in the machine.
	This is something my mom would never understand.
	She thinks there's a good son.
	The soul of her good son is still in there.
	Sure.
	And this is part of the mysticism that occurs in superstitious cultures.
	And I classify Christianity as a superstitious culture, so I'm not being culturally biased.
	But in superstitious cultures, wish fulfillment is the physics of inaction.
	It is tragic.
	If you get lung cancer, you don't just say to the surgeon, reach in and pull out my healthy backup lung.
	There's no healthy lung in there floating around in your body that you just have to connect with.
	You just have a diseased lung.
	Your lung is your lung.
	You are your brain.
	And so the problem is, of course, the only part of your brother...
	That would make better decisions is the part that he's smashed up, right?
	Yeah.
	It's like driving to some remote location, taking a massive sledgehammer to your car's engine, breaking it into tiny pieces and then saying, well, I guess it's up to me to drive home.
	Ah, I see.
	The part of your brother that would make better decisions has been corroded and perhaps even permanently destroyed by the drug use, right?
	Yeah, yeah, definitely.
	So waiting for this to turn around, again, I'm not an expert.
	This is all just my opinion, right?
	But as far as I understand it, waiting for this to turn around is, we have to live in reality.
	We have to take things as they are.
	If people aren't willing to admit fault, they will never change.
	Right, right.
	There is no wake-up call that happens, and I've lived long enough to have some credibility with this.
	I think you do.
	Right?
	I mean, I'm halfway between 45 and 50, and I've lived a philosophical life for over 30 years.
	And I'm telling you, there is no wake up.
	That happens where people just suddenly wake up and they have a new insight or a different idea or their personalities are reshaped or they receive the grace of Baal or anything like that.
	There is nothing that happens like that.
	The personality is one of the most inert substances in the known universe.
	Personality almost never, ever, ever changes.
	Wow.
	And the capacity for the personality to change must be sustained throughout life.
	In other words, the people who are going to change are the people who have already changed and are already in motion.
	Oh, I see what you're saying.
	Right.
	And so if somebody has spent 50 years not changing, they are not going to change on the 51st or the 52nd or the 152nd if Ray Kurzweil gets his way.
	There is no change.
	Yeah.
	In the human personality, unless the evidence is there already, and unless people have a reasonably decent conscience, I've never seen somebody with a bad conscience change for the better.
	In other words, once you have harmed children for many years, in my experience, I'm not saying this is a universal, it's not syllogistic proof, but in my experience, if you have harmed children for 10 years, That's like being 10 years from the age of 20 to 30, being a three-pack-a-day smoker.
	You ain't going to become a running champion.
	Right.
	So change is something...
	You know, there's an old saying that says, if you want something done, give it to the busy person.
	And if you want people in your life who are going to grow, who are going to change, look for people who are already growing and changing.
	Kneeling...
	By the bedside of inert personalities and praying for change is truly magical thinking.
	It is like trying to win a chess game with the dead.
	Yeah.
	It's definitely felt like a lost cause trying to change her.
	You can't change her.
	No, you can't.
	You can't change her.
	There's no gloves small enough to reach inside people's ears and tinker, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	I had a secondary question.
	You've definitely helped me to strengthen my resolve and not wanting to talk to her anymore.
	Because I cannot change her.
	And even if there was a chance that she could just change tomorrow or something, it's a really slim chance and it would still be a bad situation for me.
	Because...
	Like, she could not just turn into this perfect philosophical, you know, Asian version of Stefan Molyneux.
	You mean a version of me that's good at math?
	Oh!
	Milking the cultural stereotypes for all they're worth.
	You're not good at math?
	No.
	No, I'm not bad, but it's certainly not great.
	But, yeah, I mean, I think that is the old, right, the wisdom to accept the things I can't change and the courage to change the things I can and know the difference, the wisdom to know the difference, sorry.
	Yeah, and also when I do, like, when I have tried to, like, you know, okay, I'll try to talk to her again about this topic, it always brings up, like, the old emotions from my childhood of fear and...
	Just so unconfident about what I have to say and completely not passionate anymore.
	My passion as a child was, I feel like, stolen from me just because of all the interactions.
	That's partly my motivation for when I do have children, to never stifle that curiosity and passion that I feel like all humans are born with, and it's really sad.
	But yeah, so I can't, I can't, like, how can I, as you know, I was just born to her.
	It was never my job to change her, basically.
	Like, she should have, as my parent, because it was her choice to have me, She should have been on this path of self-growth already by herself.
	And I think it's a silly idea to expect the child to change their parent when that child is a child and trying to figure out their own life.
	Yeah, you can't.
	Yeah, so that's my reasoning, ultimately, that I have no choice but to...
	If I want to survive in this life with...
	The type of government that we have, this statist society, I need to focus on important things, basically.
	I can't be held back by irrational, unconscious decisions and logic, not even logic, just silly reasons for doing things.
	I can't be held back by that anymore.
	No, and that's very wise, I think.
	And having babies does not make you virtuous.
	Otherwise, the Octomom would be hosting Free Domain Radio and I'd be doing gross porn.
	Right?
	I mean, it just doesn't do it.
	It doesn't do it.
	Otherwise, you know, the most virtuous creatures would be like spiders and toads who have like crazy amounts of babies or frogs.
	Having babies does not accrue to virtue.
	It is not a virtuous action to be a parent.
	We are judged by the contents of our characters, not the contents and excrements of our naughty bits.
	Yeah, exactly.
	And, well, I guess the last thing, like, even though I have this, these reasons, like, emotionally, I want to just, I don't know why I just feel bad.
	I feel like I'm abandoning her for some reason.
	Oh, it's tragic.
	I mean, it's, look, I mean, I don't want to be glib.
	I mean, if this is your decision, this is your decision.
	But it is incredibly tragic.
	To have to go against the natural bonding we have with parents is wretched.
	To have to go against such a social prejudice is wretched.
	Deciding not to see abusive or dysfunctional parents is like interracial marriage in the 1950s.
	The amount of prejudice against it is wretched.
	It's wretched.
	And nobody judges the parents.
	They only judge the victims, right?
	They only judge the children.
	Oh, you're bad.
	You don't want to see your mom.
	It's like, well, that literally is saying all rape victims ask for it.
	It's blaming the victim.
	And I was told not to blame the victim.
	Again, I'm the person who listened to society.
	If society doesn't like what it said, then it should revise what it said.
	But I was told don't be in abusive relationships.
	I was told that even if you're just kind of dissatisfied, it doesn't even have to be abusive.
	The majority of divorce is initiated by women.
	Number one reason that women give, I just kind of fell out of love.
	Just, you know, dissatisfied.
	That's why I'm blowing up the family, right?
	You know, I mean...
	And nobody criticizes them.
	But again, you know, I mean, anything which serves women tends to get the fast track in society and anything which harms the interests of women tends to end up with being emotionally abused, which tells you a lot about the mechanics of gender.
	But I am...
	It is...
	Look, it's not like, oh, well, that's...
	It is tragic.
	It is incredibly tragic.
	You should have had...
	And I want everyone to have...
	The kind of quality parenting that makes for childhood and adulthood a joyous thing.
	If your mom were wise, imagine how easy she could make your life.
	How she could see over your horizon and help you avoid problems.
	Imagine if your mom had all of that.
	Imagine how she could help you with parenting.
	Imagine how she could help you with conflicts you might have with your husband or your friends.
	Imagine how she could help you with your career.
	I mean, I hope to be the icebreaker through the...
	You know, meter-thick dumbness of society for my daughter.
	Break some ice.
	Help her along with things.
	You know, if she wants to get married to someone, we can talk about it.
	We can sort of figure out if it's the right person based upon some pretty rational standards.
	I'll have the authority of having been happily married by then, hopefully for 30 or 40 years.
	Yeah.
	And so I'm incredibly sorry that you don't have that resource in your life.
	That's okay.
	Yeah.
	It's not okay.
	Oh, I'm sorry.
	It's not okay.
	I always say that.
	What's that?
	I don't know.
	Well, you want to minimize, right?
	I'm sorry.
	Or rather, your mother wants you to minimize and not feel the pain of...
	I mean, look, a lot of originality can come out of not having templates, not having a mentor.
	But in some ways, it feels like a pretty shitty consolation prize.
	You know, somebody broke my leg so I have better upper body strength because I've got to wheel around a...
	Wheelchair, right?
	So yeah, you get a lot of creativity.
	Creativity and originality and rational thought sometimes feels like the white blood that comes out of the cracked stone of a smashed soul, but it is definitely a consolation, but it is.
	It's unutterably tragic to face these kinds of decisions, and I'm very sorry that this is even a question that you have, right?
	Thanks.
	I really appreciate it.
	Just to speak on what you said about how if she was really wise, all the things she could do for me, an effect I feel like from how she wasn't like that is living on my own or with my husband.
	Sometimes when I'm by myself, I get a feeling of just loneliness.
	I have no foundation.
	No support and that I'm just really weak and fragile and not able to, don't have anything to hold on to basically and I think that effect is just another sad side effect to physical and psychological abuse in childhood that Your parent is supposed to be your foundation in this world, right?
	You said for your daughter you want to be the icebreaker for society's...
	I can't remember what you said, but someone she can turn to and be like, hey, my friend said this, I don't think it's very rational, what do you think?
	You're supposed to be the The bits that she can turn to for answers.
	So yeah, I'm just trying to get over that feeling of not having a foundation and really trying to just be rational and see that I do have a foundation.
	I'm standing here and I'm a physical manifestation.
	I don't need an illusionary Foundation for my mom, I guess.
	So, anyway.
	When you were just saying that your voice broke just a little bit, were you feeling quite strongly there?
	No.
	Okay, good.
	Maybe just a crack then.
	Well, listen, Michelle, I certainly appreciate your call.
	I'm very sorry for this situation.
	Oh, that's okay.
	It's not okay, but...
	I'm trying to work...
	It is.
	It is tragic.
	It's not something that people should have to face.
	It's really not, and I'm very sorry for it.
	You obviously have choices as an adult that you didn't have when you were a child, but I'm sorry that the decision is even in your life as a whole, but it sounds like you're handling things fantastically, and congratulations on...
	On what sounds like a great marriage, and you should be very proud of that.
	Thanks.
	Maybe I'll call in in the future.
	Oh, welcome anytime.
	You're welcome anytime.
	All the very best.
	All right.
	Thank you.
	All right.
	Well, I'm sorry that we didn't get to everyone today, but we had a series of I think very important calls.
	And so I really wanted to spend the time that was necessary for those.
	And I think, what do you think, Mike?
	A good show to end the year on?
	Yeah, a great show to end the year on.
	And here's to a fantastic 2014.
	2014?
	I can't believe it.
	I still feel like I should be battling Robot Down.
	It feels that futuristic.
	Steph, where's my hoverboard?
	Where is it?
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	There's still a government in the way.
	Yeah, thanks everyone.
	Look, seriously, thank you everyone so much for a great year, right?
	I mean, it...
	You know, when I got diagnosed finally after a year of misdiagnosis, when I got diagnosed with cancer and went to have the lump in my throat removed and when I went through chemo, radiation treatment, people were very helpful, supported, covered the cost.
	Of the surgery, and I really, really appreciate that.
	Your dollars helped keep me going.
	And your support helped keep me going.
	It wasn't just the money.
	I know the money represents value.
	The value represents affection.
	The affection may even represent love for this conversation.
	I hugely appreciate that.
	That has been very helpful.
	Friends, well, let's just say cancer clarifies quite a lot when it comes to friendships.
	And I'm actually quite grateful for that as well.
	Because I wouldn't have wanted to waste my time on things that weren't going to be productive.
	So for the friends who came through, fantastic.
	For the friends who didn't call, well, noted, entered into the archives and moved on from.
	But thank you so much.
	It is an enormous and immense privilege.
	To be able to do what I'm doing.
	I hope, as always, that I do you proud, that I do the right things with the support that you give me.
	And if you want me to do different things, twerking accepted, despite the regular pleas from certain people, Mike, I will do what you want.
	I am focused on What provides value?
	You know, I'm trying to bring principles to the world.
	And if there's better ways that I can do it, the operations at freedomainradio.com.
	Just make sure that you sign yourself as a Nigerian prince to make sure it goes into the correct folder.
	But no, if there's things that I can do better, things that I can do differently, I really want to hear from you.
	I want this show to be the very best that it can possibly be.
	And if there's a better way that I can bring values to people, philosophy to people, I am all ears.
	So thank you very much.
	For a fantastic year.
	And next year, it is going to be interesting one year from now to see where we are as a show.
	Who knows?
	Good Lord.
	Anything is possible.
	And certainly it's gone a lot further than I ever imagined.
	And I don't imagine there's any ceiling anytime soon.
	Thank you to the callers.
	Thank you to Mike.
	Thank you to the supporters.
	Those who donate and those who share the shows and talk up the show and introduce philosophy to other people.
	Hugely appreciate it.
	Have yourself a wonderful week, everyone.

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