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Jan. 22, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

03:15:23

2596 The World Is Built on Crushed Souls - Sunday Call In Show January 19th, 2014

You do not fear social interactions, you fear the consequences, underachievement self-replicates, the antidote of anger, self-erasure, the gift of existence, refusing to fake death, philosophy as lie detector, therapist deal breakers, having standards for friendship and the world is built on crushed souls.

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	Good morning everybody.
	Hope you're doing well.
	It's the 19th of January 2014 and we got some callers and I'm dragging a little.
	Isabella heard a loud bang in the middle of the night at 2.30 in the morning and she called out for me and my wife went and I went and she was up for four hours at night.
	The loud bang You know, as it turns out, was most likely ice cracking on the house, icicles falling.
	Ah, Canada, our goddamn frozen land.
	Ah, the horror, the horror.
	Well, on the other side, you know, California has a massive drought, but I don't believe that a drought causes massive apocalyptic-sounding bangs.
	So, yeah, a sudden bang on the roof.
	Woke her up at night and probably not a great name for a porn movie.
	So, hope you're doing well and sorry if I'm a little draggy today.
	I have tried to prop myself up with coffee because I am obviously against drugs.
	So, let's get started with the first caller.
	Alright, Ivan.
	You're up first today, Ivan.
	Go ahead.
	Good morning, Steph.
	Good morning.
	How are you doing?
	I'm doing well.
	I wanted to talk about my problem with isolation and shyness.
	Oh, good for you for calling in.
	That's, you know, of all the things that are tough to talk about in a show like this, you know, shyness, isolation, loneliness is tough.
	So good for you.
	How can I help you?
	Well, I agree with your definition of shyness, which is fear.
	And in my case, fear of social interactions, I guess.
	No.
	No?
	No.
	Sorry.
	No, because, I mean, unless you're insane, then you can't fear something that few other people fear or a lot of other people don't fear.
	Like, almost everyone, if you fall off a cruise ship and then there's shark fins going around you and you're naked in the water, like, almost everyone is going to freak out, right?
	Okay.
	Right?
	But, you know, social interactions, yeah, some people are shy, but a lot of people are not, right?
	I thought I heard that in the...
	Yeah, and I hate to be...
	It's really, really important to be very precise about this kind of stuff, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	So, yeah, I would definitely be very precise about that and say that it's not social interactions you fear.
	I don't fear social interactions.
	I quite look forward to them, right?
	So wherever I go to give a speech, I will try and set up a meet-up and have dinner or whatever it is with the listeners, and I look forward to that.
	It's always a really enjoyable conversation.
	In fact, it's invigorating, you know, to see how philosophy is really working for people and all that, you know, changing their lives and all kind of good stuff like that.
	So it's not social interactions that you fear.
	Because they can't harm you, right?
	A shark can bite your ass off, right?
	But social interactions can't...
	Exactly harm you.
	So it's not rational to say that you're afraid of something that can't really do you any physical harm.
	But that's not to say your fear is not real and not genuine.
	I'm not trying to say, well, it's all in your head.
	No.
	But it's not just the social interactions.
	Does that make sense?
	Yes.
	But how would you define it?
	Well, that's what I'm going to ask you.
	Okay, could I give you an example of what I feel?
	Please do.
	Okay, so when I'm in a social interaction, it feels like my body lets me down.
	I know what to say and how to speak with people, but my heart starts beating and I forget what I want to say and things like that.
	Yeah, and that's definitely a physical manifestation of fear, and that is not accidental at all.
	And that's not, again, that's not sort of in your head or anything like that.
	Okay.
	So then we have to figure out where the fear comes from, but it's not the specific stimuli that is occurring, right?
	Yeah.
	So what do you think it could be?
	Well, I've been listening to the show for like four years or three years, so I know it's my childhood.
	It's actually very clear to me.
	Okay.
	So do you want me to give you...
	So what is it, do you think?
	I'm gonna give you like my environment when I was a young kid, so you could have a feel for what I've been through, I guess.
	Yeah.
	Okay, so my parents are from Mexico, and they immigrated to the United States, say, like 25 years ago.
	I'm 21.
	So I was born here, and I remember my first eight years, we lived with my aunt and uncle in a three-bedroom house, and my parents had six kids at the time.
	Wow.
	So it was two of us, I mean it was six of us in two rooms and then my aunt and uncle in their house.
	Right.
	So I think the first memory that I have of being like isolated was...
	Sorry, I feel nervous.
	Sorry.
	I remember playing, well my parents were like, they had visitors over or something and they were playing like poker or something on the table.
	I think I was around four.
	And I remember crawling or something under the table and Are you still there?
	Yes.
	Sorry, but I hate to pester you, but you do need to push through a little bit because the pauses are kind of tough for a live show.
	Just because I don't know if you're still there or not.
	Okay.
	So you were under the table, your parents were playing poker, and what happened then?
	And I don't remember why, but my dad started shoving me with his foot to the room and, I guess, isolating me.
	Did you say he was shoving you out of the room?
	Yeah, out of the living room, like kicking me or something.
	I remember feeling scared, so I think that's where it started.
	And my mother, she always used to put others' needs ahead of mine.
	So say I had a toy or something and a kid took it away, she wouldn't care if they stole it or took it home or something.
	I would tell her and she would say, oh, I don't want to cause trouble.
	So I think she put that idea in my mind that...
	That other people are more important.
	Right.
	Right.
	Okay, and so how do you think this relates to a social anxiety or fear of social stuff?
	Well, those were just some examples, like the earliest ones, but I think that whenever I would interact socially with someone, they would make me feel like I'm not important enough or I should be afraid to talk to them.
	Right.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	And how were your parents' social skills when you were growing up?
	How did they model social skills to you?
	Did they seem fairly comfortable in social situations?
	Well...
	Around the people that they knew, they were socially, I guess, average?
	Well, not average, below average, but I remember my parents being afraid to go to the store and things like that because their excuse was they don't know English.
	They don't know how to speak well, but I know my mom knows enough English to get by, so to me that's not an excuse.
	Were they in sort of the poverty bubble?
	The poverty bubble is that you feel very comfortable around people like yourself.
	But then when you get around people that you consider or your parents would consider more accomplished, more educated, more successful and so on, that they kind of freeze up and get shy and revert to very subservient ways of being?
	Yes, that makes a lot of sense actually.
	Yeah, and let me just talk about that for a sec because this is really important.
	When I did the truth about poverty video recently, one guy...
	He wrote how he sort of grew up around rich people and they went to private schools and they had this mindset.
	You can do anything you want and the world is your oyster and so on.
	That was really a mindset.
	And he said when he's around people who come from poor backgrounds or poor people, it's really – he said it's really frustrating because they just – Have this belief that they're also limited, that they can't get ahead, systems rigged, or whatever it is.
	And they also have this subservience, which is really tough, and broadcasts very much low expectations for the South.
	And the poverty bubble is really interesting.
	The poverty bubble, and it doesn't just have to do with money.
	It can also do to do with social skills and all that.
	But the poverty bubble is...
	That you're very comfortable around underachievers.
	And I think most poor people, you know, assuming no brain injuries or seriously low IQs, most poor people are underachievers insofar as they could probably do better.
	You know, with some caveats and some blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
	But if...
	And that's sort of a self-defining term.
	Like, if somebody is poor...
	Then they're poor and they could do better, right?
	Yes.
	So they have the capacity to do better.
	So I'm short relative to the Empire State Building, but nobody would say...
	I'm actually above average height, but nobody would say that I'm short.
	Right?
	I'm short relative to some standard.
	Right?
	So if I'm five foot, then I'm short relative to the average height being, I don't know, 5'8 or 5'9 or whatever it is for guys.
	I'm 5'12", because I'm 5'11 and a half, but everybody adds, all men add half an inch to everything they talk about.
	Fishing, penises, height, anyway.
	So the poverty bubbles, if somebody's poor, it's because they could do better, right?
	So somebody who has a brain injury, you can't earn their own income.
	We wouldn't really think of that person as poor because they couldn't, they can't really do better.
	Somebody who's in a coma is not earning any money.
	I mean, we wouldn't really classify them as poor because they're kind of in a coma, right?
	So poor people, by definition, are people with the capacity to do better.
	And the poverty bubble is an extreme comfort around similar underachievers.
	And then when you get around rich people or you get around powerful people or you get around Accomplished people or educated people and so on, people really freak out and there's a lot of anxiety, right?
	And it's very...
	They're very uncomfortable.
	I guess it's sort of the way people are around celebrities, too, who are just people doing their thing, right?
	And that is...
	That transmits itself very...
	Powerfully down to the kids.
	And I think it's one of the major reasons why underachievement replicates itself.
	Look, if you want to achieve, you have to be around people who achieve.
	If you want money, being around people who have money is a pretty good idea.
	Because they know something about money, right?
	I mean, being mentored or mentoring someone in what you want to achieve is great.
	If you want something that requires knowledge, then be around the people who have that knowledge.
	That's right.
	But the poor kind of seal themselves off.
	And there is a great holding down among the poor.
	There is a great holding down among the poor.
	Like I grew up dirt poor.
	Worse than dirt poor.
	And I say this to somebody whose family came from Mexico.
	Worse than that.
	Because there was a poverty of money and there was an excess of violence and mental health issues, craziness, aggression, instability and all that kind of stuff.
	So I grew up dirt poor around other people who were dirt poor.
	And I have done alright for myself because I've worked really, really, really, really hard to do that.
	And how many of my friends who grew up poor Are happy about my success?
	How many of my friends who grew up poor have asked me or asked me over the years how I achieved what I was able to achieve, how I am able to achieve what I am able to achieve, and have asked for any advice?
	I have spent a lot of time in my life trying to help poor people.
	I mean, I've even done it through this show.
	I sent a lot of money to a listener, helped him get a job, He stayed up all night playing computer games, slept in a couple of times, lost his job.
	Couldn't help him.
	I got jobs at my company for people I grew up with.
	And not only did they not take my offers of mentorship, But showed up to work, kind of resentful, kind of negative, showed up to work late, kind of resentful, kind of negative, and so on.
	And this is why, you know, when I say that the poor, to some degree and under some circumstances, are choosing poverty.
	They say, well, but if they'd grown up rich, they'd have that whole mindset to achieve.
	Yeah, I get that.
	Absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	And so what?
	If I were born with Pavarotti's voice, I'd probably be a singer, right?
	But I mean, that doesn't mean that much.
	If I were born totally gorgeous, I might be an actor or a model.
	So what?
	Still the reality is, That we ask the rich to break out of their mindset and care about the poor and empathize with the poor.
	Yeah.
	And we ask people from different cultures, like we ask white people to get comfortable with other people's cultures.
	We generally don't quite ask as much for other cultures to get as comfortable with European culture, like Western white European culture.
	But I was constantly said, oh yeah, multiculturalism, get used to the other cultures, embrace, enjoy, respect the other cultures.
	Okay, well, for poor people, embrace, enjoy, and respect the culture of money, culture of wealth.
	And so the poor, in many significant ways, hold each other down, because not one person who I grew up with, and we all grew up with, I was the poorest.
	Yay!
	But we all grew up poor.
	I made some good successes.
	And not one of them said, great job, how did you do it?
	Over the last, what now, I've been an entrepreneur for 20 years.
	Not one of them said, how did you do it?
	What can I do?
	Tell me your secret, right?
	And so when you have, and there's something really terrible about it for children in particular.
	Like if your parents are authoritarian with you and then submissive and fearful in the outside world, then you really feel.
	Not like you're even at the bottom of the pyramid or the food chain.
	But you're down a well in the deep ocean because you are far below in the hierarchy people who themselves are far below the hierarchy of the world.
	So you feel really low.
	And their authority over you, if your parents are submissive out in the world, their authority over you, their aggression towards you, is revealed as really cowardly.
	Right?
	And I just really wanted to sort of mention that, that it's really tough.
	And it is going to give you some of that anxiety, right?
	So there's two ways that social anxiety, at least in my mind, gets transmitted.
	The first is that you're attacked and humiliated in social circumstances.
	So if you go and try and talk to people, then what happens is you get attacked, mocked, humiliated, all that kind of stuff, right?
	And the other is that your parents model social anxiety, which is that they have a very specific set of circumstances under which they will be socially comfortable.
	And if those social circumstances change, in other words, if they're around more competent, more acclimatized, more wealthy in whatever context you want to put it, people...
	Then they get very anxious and they don't want accomplished people, ambitious, intelligent, hardworking people around them.
	And the reason for that is if I had like a secret desire to be a musician and I had the ability to be a musician, you know, I practiced guitar constantly, I was a great singer or whatever it was, right?
	If I had all of that, Then being around musicians who had achieved something, had really gone for it, would be uncomfortable for me.
	The poor know they can do better, for the most part.
	And they're uncomfortable around more accomplished people.
	Especially if those more accomplished people come from a poor background themselves.
	Because then it reminds them that they could have had more.
	And they may even still could have more.
	But they have to break out of their comfort zone, right?
	They have to break out of the familiar in order to do that.
	And so the poor can either get over their prejudice against the wealthy.
	And yes, yes, I said it.
	The poor can be incredibly prejudicial.
	And I've experienced this directly myself in many different circumstances.
	As a person who comes from a poor background, who's made...
	A decent go of things.
	They'll just ignore anything.
	They'll feel uncomfortable.
	They'll still attempt to lord it over you.
	They'll make subtle little digs about everything that you're doing and they'll never acknowledge your achievements.
	They'll never support you.
	They'll never be people you can bounce ideas off because they just get squirmy and uncomfortable when you start talking about the challenges of all that.
	And, again, I don't hate the poor at all, and I certainly don't hate them enough to strip from them moral responsibility and personal responsibility for their choices.
	So, I think that's...
	It sounds like a little bit that some of your social anxiety may have come from your parents feeling very comfortable in a particular...
	Kind of low-rent environment, but then when they're around different kinds of people getting very anxious.
	Does that make any sense?
	Yes, and I think I actually got it from both ways because I remember being mocked when I would talk to other people.
	Not mocked, but discouraged to talk to other people.
	Does that make sense?
	Well, it makes sense, but I'm not sure I understand the details.
	If you could explain it a bit more.
	Okay.
	Well, you said there's two ways to transfer shyness.
	No, no, no.
	I know what I said.
	What I'm saying is tell me about your...
	How were you mocked and what circumstances and what happened?
	Well, I remember talking to, let's say, my aunt or something, and my mom would always hover over me trying to control the interaction, I guess.
	So she would always say, like, no, give that back.
	Say if she gives me, like, money or something, give that back.
	And say I was talking to another kid or something, she would, like, try to control that interaction and discourage me from talking to them, I would say.
	I can't remember exactly because this was, like, around four to eight, I guess, around that age.
	Right.
	So when you would speak sort of outside the Klan, outside the – I don't know.
	I don't exactly know what to call it.
	I don't know if there's a good – I say culture is too broad.
	But if you would – and let's just say the Klan, the Klan of the poor, the Klan of maybe the – Mexican, the Spanish-speaking, whatever it is, right?
	So whatever it was, it's more narrow than culture, and it also includes elements of class and stuff, but let's just call it the Klan for now.
	So when you would speak outside the Klan, there would be concern, like there would be, like, don't do that or be very careful about what you say or whatever, right?
	Is that what I'm understanding?
	Yes, there would be resistance, basically.
	Right, right.
	And why do you think that was?
	Well, at the time, I felt like I wasn't important enough.
	Like, she didn't want to rock the boat or anything.
	She didn't want to cause trouble.
	That's how I felt, but it doesn't make sense.
	No, I gotta disagree with you on that.
	And I could be wrong.
	This is your experience, right?
	I'm saying that's what I felt at the time.
	No, she was causing trouble.
	Because you were having just a chat with someone, right?
	Yeah.
	And you were causing trouble.
	Mm-hmm.
	Sorry, you weren't causing trouble.
	She was causing trouble by intervening in your chat with someone, right?
	Yes.
	Look, I'm sorry to give you another speech here, but I think this is really important to understand.
	Parents who underachieve, right?
	You might want to write this down.
	Parents who underachieve are highly motivated to keep their children away from achievers.
	Let me just sort of mention that again.
	So parents who fail are highly motivated to keep their children away from successful people.
	Would you like to tell me why?
	I'm sure you can.
	To paralyze their kids, I guess?
	Well, that is the effect, but what's the motivation?
	If I'm a failure, Would it be so I don't realize that they didn't give me the tools necessary to be an achiever, I guess?
	That's certainly part of it.
	But parents who underachieve, it's not just that they don't give their children the tools, they actively avoid their children getting the tools.
	Like they will actually keep people, keep the kids away, right?
	Like, I'm not teaching my daughter Mandarin, but if she wants to take Mandarin classes, fine.
	I'm not giving her the tools to speak Mandarin, but I'm not opposed to her speaking Mandarin, right?
	But most parents who underachieve are opposed to their children achieving.
	Why?
	Bye.
	Thank you.
	And you know this because you've lived it.
	Although you may not know it consciously, right?
	Well, I know they benefit from it, but I can't think of a reason right now at the moment.
	Well, there's a couple that I can think of, and maybe they fit and maybe they don't.
	But the first is...
	If your parents are failures and then you start hanging around really successful people, your parents are going to feel like more failures, right?
	Yes.
	Does that make sense?
	Yes.
	So they become aware of the choices that they've made that have resulted in being failures.
	Mm-hmm.
	And so it's uncomfortable for them, right?
	As long as they stick in their own low-rent little clan, they don't have to compare themselves to anyone else.
	Because everyone around there is not talking about anything important.
	You said playing poker.
	It's not like playing poker is bad or anything like that.
	But I bet you that playing poker wasn't an interruption of intelligent conversation, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	Yes, it wasn't.
	Yeah, I mean, how often did your parents talk about things that were important?
	About politics or religion or philosophy or ethics or success or a work ethic or any of those kinds of things?
	None that I remember.
	Yeah, I mean, it's one of the things I just sort of dislike about the Mexican culture is this gaudy, brightly lit, kind of party bullshit mentality.
	You know, this just relentless shallowness of that culture is kind of grating.
	You know, let's get some fucking Mexican philosophers out there, for God's sake, right?
	I mean, why does it all have to be this stereotypical, you know, empty-headed, brightly painted, gaudy crap, party nonsense?
	Anyway, it's not particularly irrelevant, other than to say that There is this relentless shallowness, particularly among the poor.
	So the first thing is they don't want to be reminded that they're failures by being around people who are successful.
	So number one.
	Number two is usually the more of a failure someone is, the more authoritarian they tend to be with their kids and the more humiliating it is for the kids to be on the receiving end of that authoritarianism because They're like way below the low, right?
	Because the parents are all anxious out there among successful people.
	So if the children of unsuccessful parents start hanging around successful people, what happens to the children's view of the parents?
	Well, they turn against their parents, I guess, because they realize that.
	They may turn against them, they may not, but they certainly don't really have as much respect for their parents anymore, right?
	Yeah.
	Does that make sense?
	Yes, it does.
	I guess that's what happened to me.
	Yeah, you start hanging around more successful people, and the authority of your parents begins to evaporate, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	And this is why unsuccessful parents will try and keep their children away from successful people.
	Because then the children realize that the parents are unsuccessful to some degree by choice.
	Which nobody can respect that, right?
	And also, if the parents try to keep kids away from successful people, like unsuccessful parents try to keep kids away from successful people, And the kids figure that out?
	That's terrible, right?
	Yes.
	I mean, that's really horrible.
	I mean, it's almost literally like keeping a sick kid away from a doctor.
	Yes.
	And again, you know, there is that aspect to the Mexican culture.
	And look, I'm no expert on the Mexican culture.
	So, you know, these are just my idiot, shallow, whitey impressions.
	So there's a story that I read about when a bunch of Iraqis were soldiers, were involved in the liberation of Kuwait, for want of a better phrase, in the first Gulf War in the early 90s.
	And...
	They liberated Kuwait City and then the soldiers got drunk and were shooting bullets up in the air.
	And the British soldier who was there, the commander, was so frustrated.
	He's like, put down the drinks, stop shooting stuff in the air and help us rebuild this goddamn city.
	And there is a lot of trauma in the Mexican culture.
	I mean, child raising is still pretty brutal.
	I mean, the drug war is wretched.
	The economy is, you know, it's one of the first socialist countries concerned about it going full communist after the Second World War.
	And there's a reason why Trotsky took his refuge in Mexico before Stalin's thugs killed him with an ice pick.
	And there's a lot of agony in the Mexican culture, but nobody really talks about it that much, because they're just relentlessly portraying this idiot party persona, right?
	Yes.
	And it shows up as well.
	Trauma is repetition, and it shows up in the repetitive nature of Mexican music.
	I mean, to quote the great philosopher...
	Blue from the movie Rio.
	I hate samba.
	What?
	It all sounds the same.
	Tickle, tickle.
	Ay-yi-yi.
	Tickle, tickle.
	Yay-yi-yi.
	Anyway.
	Yeah, wherever there's trauma, you find repetition.
	You find that in rap music.
	You find it in some aspects of Mexican music and all that.
	Anyway, I think I've offended enough people in general, but those are just my thoughts on it.
	So if you're trying to break out of that, if you're feeling social anxiety, And you come from a history like that, that's really good.
	That's a good sign.
	Because it means that you're stretching your way beyond the low-rent clan that you were raised with.
	Does that make sense?
	Yes, it does.
	Okay, so I'm done with my speechifying.
	If you wanted to share your thoughts.
	I just wanted to add something else that I noticed.
	Whenever I would...
	Get a job or something like that, my mother would...
	I remember the first job that I got right after high school.
	I wasn't as anxious because I really wanted it, but once I got it, she would try to...
	I remember I had to go do a drug test and she was telling me, like, oh, don't go.
	It's really far.
	You might crash or something.
	You might crash your car?
	Yeah, because I know it doesn't make sense logically, so I had to tell someone else to take me.
	No, I didn't drive, but she was going to give me a ride and she said, oh, no, we might crash or something like that.
	Because it was in an area that she doesn't know well or something like that.
	Right.
	And there's a lot of instances like that.
	I remember I wanted to transfer to a university.
	And she said, you should stay because...
	Because you could save money and you don't want to get in debt by going over there or something.
	But if I would have gone to that university, I would have probably already been finished with my studies or something.
	What was that?
	Okay.
	Yeah, and did your parents go into debt at all?
	Into debt?
	No.
	Yeah.
	No, they said they didn't go into debt for houses or cars or anything?
	No, they didn't.
	Yeah, I mean, another thing that is characteristic of the poor, or can be, is a fear of legitimate investments.
	Like, to the poor, everything is expensive.
	Nothing is an investment.
	So, you might go into debt for your education.
	Well, yeah, of course.
	Of course.
	But you will often recoup your debt and more by being educated, right?
	So everything is a cost, nothing is an investment, because often it's paycheck to paycheck and all that kind of stuff.
	So, you know, I have to sort of talk about that with myself sometimes.
	You know, when I'm buying stuff for the show, working on a studio, this is a new microphone and all that, I say, well, this is expensive stuff, right?
	You know, thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars for the studio, and even this mic was like $175 and all that.
	I might need a new camera, $2,000.
	That's a lot of money, right?
	But it's an investment.
	And recognizing the difference between consumption and investment is not a strong skill set of the poor.
	And it's not because they're...
	Innately that way.
	I mean, maybe they grew up patriot to patriot and already think about it.
	But you read about stuff, right?
	I mean, you read about stuff or you say, I'm choosing to avoid that knowledge and this is where I want to be.
	Right?
	Yes.
	But the poor usually just avoid.
	They just avoid, avoid, avoid.
	And that is a big problem, right?
	So, yeah, so the idea that school is a big debt...
	It doesn't make any sense when you really think about it.
	And I assume you guys had a computer with internet access.
	All you do is look it up, right?
	You say, oh, okay, well, so I might be going into debt $20,000 for my education.
	I think I came out of my education in debt $10,000.
	But having a master's degree has been very helpful for me in my life.
	And it paid for itself relatively quickly.
	So...
	You just look it up and say, okay, well, what's the average return on investment for a university degree?
	You don't just make decisions based on emotional fear.
	You actually try and get some facts, right?
	But trying to get some facts, again, not always the best habit of poor people.
	Yes.
	Could I tell you what I have done lately to try to fix this problem?
	But it seems to not be working.
	All right.
	So, I guess for the past four years, since I started listening to your show, I would try to push myself.
	I remember the last caller in the Wednesday show, when Michael was giving advice, saying that you need to push your boundaries every day or whatever.
	Yeah.
	I would constantly do that, but it seems like My body lets me down, and as much as I try doing it, the same thing would still happen.
	So it seems like I'm ignoring...
	I don't know what I'm ignoring, but it feels like I'm missing something.
	Yeah, I mean, it sounds to me like you're missing emotional connections.
	What do you mean by that?
	Well, so when you're emotionally connected with yourself, your body doesn't surprise you that much.
	Like I can't even remember the last time that I was surprised by a physical reaction.
	You know, where I think I'm trundling along and then I go, oh my God, I feel anxious suddenly.
	Like I don't experience that.
	I think I did when I was younger, but I don't experience that anymore.
	And that's because I really, really try to listen to myself, to the various parts of me, right?
	The internal ecosystem, like the ecosystem of me.
	I really try to let my body inform me.
	And if I feel any sort of anxiety, and then I'll stop what I'm doing, I'll sit there, I'll try and figure out what my body is trying to tell me.
	I sort of try and really stay in contact with this.
	Now, we've been talking about Like the furnace that forged your anxieties.
	And you've not had, as far as I can tell, one emotional reaction, one breath of insight.
	I don't mean this as a criticism at all.
	I'm just telling you my experience of it.
	And so if you're not curious about and connected with your emotions as a practice and policy every day, then what will happen is your emotions will surprise you.
	They'll still come out.
	They'll just come out in ways that aren't informative and helpful, but trippy and hijacky, if that makes any sense.
	So you mean that my voice doesn't show emotions?
	Yeah.
	Sorry, it's not just in the voice, but you haven't told me of any emotions that you're experiencing.
	Oh, in the beginning, I was feeling like when you said...
	Oh, yes, you did.
	Yeah, sorry.
	Yeah, no, sorry to interrupt.
	You're absolutely right.
	To be fair, you did at the beginning, but since then.
	Okay.
	And what happens is when I get a non-responsive caller, I end up having a speechify, right?
	Or a minimally responsive caller.
	Right?
	So I have to talk more because you're not really responding much.
	Again, it's not a criticism.
	I'm just telling you, if you want to know why you feel that your body is betraying you, I would argue that if you want to use a strong term like betrayal, it may be in you not soliciting your feelings or being connected with your feelings in the moment.
	So when I feel anxious, like say my body paralyzes, I should sit down and try to figure out why this happened?
	Well, no.
	I mean, okay, let me ask you this.
	You know you have this issue of a fight-or-flight response in social situations?
	Yes.
	And do you then ahead of time try and figure out, you know this is going to happen in this particular environment, do you try and figure out ahead of time How to deal with this?
	How to listen to yourself or what the cause is?
	Before?
	Beforehand?
	No, I never thought that was possible to try to stop it.
	Well, again, you have an antagonistic relationship to your instincts.
	I never said stop it.
	I said work with it, listen to it, ameliorate it and so on.
	So you look upon this as some sort of enemy, right?
	You could say that.
	Well, I think you're saying that, right?
	Because you have, you know, I need to stop it, you know, and it's all bad, you know, it's just like not, you know, all that kind of stuff.
	Yeah, well, it's something I want to not have because it paralyzes my life and everything that I do.
	Right.
	Right.
	Now, let me...
	Sort of switch gears and give you some...
	Because I've talked about, you know, the downside of parents who do this.
	But in a way, you could argue that historically this was a protective measure on the part of parents.
	Because historically society was so hierarchical and so violent that anybody who spoke above his station, like the peasant who wandered in to chat with the king, could sometimes just get killed, right?
	Yes.
	And higher stratifications in...
	A brutal warlord society, higher-level castes or higher-level classes were extremely dangerous.
	And so, you know, we're going to stay down here in the low-rent area was a sensible survival strategy.
	If, you know, in England, it's brutal, right, in terms of class, right?
	Peasant speaking above his station, what?
	You know, that kind of stuff is really rough.
	You know, if the Cockney kid sits down with the rich kids, the toffs, he is roundly castigated.
	They don't kill them anymore.
	But it's, you know, a lot of what is called humor in England is class warfare.
	And so from a parent's standpoint, if mingling with a higher class is dangerous, then making children anxious about A higher class can actually be valuable.
	Now, where the problem comes in is that if your parents change their environment, like they move to the United States because they want more opportunity, then they've already said, well, we're going to try and get out of our class, in which case they need to really help you with that too, right?
	Yes.
	Well, I think my mom actually recognizes that.
	She says that, oh, you shouldn't be shy or whatever.
	And I used to get really mad at that because I used to tell her that she's the one that put this on me.
	Because she expects us to be without fear, I guess.
	She expects you to be without fear and then she tells you you might crash driving to a drug test?
	Yes.
	Right.
	Right.
	Well, certainly that makes her more culpable, because if she has values in opposition to what she's doing, then that makes her more responsible, right, for whatever happens from that, right?
	Like, you know, if I say spanking kids is good, and I spank my kids, I'm still doing wrong, but I'm not being hypocritical, right?
	But if I say spanking kids is bad, and I spank my kids, I'm wrong and hypocritical.
	And the moral...
	The moral violation is far worse when it's in opposition to stated values, right?
	So if she says, well, a life without fear is the good thing, and my job as a parent is to not make you scared, oh, look out for the driving car crash, right?
	I mean, then that's worse, to say the least.
	Okay.
	So as far as the solution goes, the antidote to fear is...
	It's complex, but to me, in my experience, this is not scientific or even philosophical, but in my experience, the first antidote to fear is anger.
	Right?
	So being raised with this sort of shit in your head is really tough.
	It's really tough, right?
	Yes.
	And for your parents to not focus, you know, did they read any books on parenting?
	Six kids, what the hell, you know?
	It's about seven now.
	Seven?
	Okay, so...
	Right, so they're like Baby Squirt Factory 101, right?
	That's not great.
	And to raise your kids in the land of opportunity while making them afraid of success and successful people and the world as a whole and social circles outside the one they inhabit and so on is not great.
	At all.
	In fact, it's pretty bad.
	Ignoring children...
	Is extremely abusive.
	It's not what we all think, abuse is this active thing.
	Neglect is in many ways the worst form of abuse.
	And I think that it's really nasty, just really fucking nasty, to have children and then not openly take pleasure in their company.
	You know, I mean, it literally, it's infinitely more dickish than, you know...
	Pestering a woman to go out.
	Pestering a woman to go out.
	And then taking her to a nice restaurant.
	And talking on your cell phone.
	The whole date.
	About nothing in particular.
	I mean, wouldn't that be really dickish?
	When you pursued someone.
	And then you're ignoring them.
	And she would feel what?
	Forgotten.
	Or not worth it.
	No.
	No.
	Oh, there's your problem, right?
	People in the chat room, what would such a woman feel?
	A man pursues her and pursues her and pursues her to go out.
	She finally agrees, and he spends the whole evening talking on his cell phone and ignoring her.
	What would she feel?
	Unwanted?
	No.
	No. Neglected.
	No, she'd feel angry.
	Okay.
	Right?
	I mean, if she was dysfunctional, she might feel all this other stuff.
	But she'd feel angry.
	She'd be like, what the hell's the matter with you?
	For months and months, you've been pestering me to go out with you.
	I finally agreed to go out with you.
	And then you spend the whole evening talking on your cell phone and ignoring me.
	The fuck is wrong with you?
	I mean, literally that's like saying, I cannot wait for The Hobbit to come out.
	I cannot wait for The Hobbit to come out.
	That's my favorite book.
	It's my favorite movie.
	I can't wait for The Hobbit to come out.
	And then you go and you buy your $20 IMAX Vibersonic bass shitting on your heart kind of sound system.
	And then you put on blindfolds when the movie starts and you stick your fingers in your ear and you go la la la la la la as loud as you can.
	And people would say, the fuck is the matter with you?
	Yeah.
	Right?
	And by anger, do you mean like...
	Because I feel like I showed anger towards them, but in a more passive-aggressive...
	I used to...
	No, no, it doesn't complicate things so much.
	So what I mean is, if your parents...
	Work very hard to have children, right?
	And it's hard to have kids, right?
	I mean, the sex part is great, but the pregnancy part is really rough for a lot of women.
	I mean, the birth is really painful.
	Breastfeeding can be difficult and painful.
	They're expensive and so on, right?
	So it's hard to have children, which is like why I said, but you keep pestering the woman to have a date, right?
	And then you have the kid and you ignore the kid.
	All right.
	Now, any woman of any self-esteem, if a guy asks her out and spends a few minutes on the phone talking about nothing, so she can hear someone say, what are you doing?
	He's like, oh, nothing, just hanging out.
	What's new with you?
	Hey, did you catch the new house of cards?
	What did you think?
	Whatever it is, right?
	If a woman had any self-esteem, what would she do after about three minutes?
	I'm not sure.
	Well, what do you think?
	If they're just talking about...
	Nothing.
	Well, she would stop talking to him because it's boring, I guess.
	Oh, dude.
	I'm sorry.
	This is a long way to go.
	I'm sorry.
	It's a long way to go.
	Well, I'll tell you what I would do.
	If a woman really pestered me to go out, I was a single guy, and I was like, I don't know.
	And then she asked me out, and then she's just chatting away.
	I'd get up and walk out.
	Right?
	Yes.
	And I wouldn't even explain it.
	Because to explain something like that to someone...
	Right?
	Why are you leaving?
	It's like, if you don't know, that's even worse than if you do know.
	Right?
	Yes.
	Right?
	If I actually have to explain to you that when you ask me out on a date, you should not be talking...
	About nonsense with someone else and saying, I'm not doing anything important when you're out on a date with me after you've been pestering me to go out on a date for months.
	I would not explain myself.
	I might even just say, oh, I'll be right back.
	And then just leave.
	Because there's no point even trying to, why would you want to get into a conflict?
	because the person is insane.
	Right.
	Now, I mean, it's different with family.
	I'm not saying get up and leave your family because family is obviously more history.
	But this is just like the only thing worse than spending 11 minutes with a jerk is spending 12 minutes with a jerk.
	Right?
	So I'd be sitting there saying, okay, well, basically I'm angry.
	Like, don't waste my time.
	I could have been doing something else tonight.
	You've just treated me like crap.
	After pestering me to go out with you, I can't believe I fell for this.
	Right?
	Right.
	Like, why?
	And then I'd go home and I'd sit there and say, how the hell did I end up in that insane situation?
	What's the matter with me?
	Where I ended up...
	Now, this is all different for kids, right?
	Kids can't leave the restaurant.
	You didn't choose to be there.
	It's not your fault that you are there and so on.
	But to have kids and ignore kids...
	And it's worse than just ignoring.
	You know, my daughter, like I am one of her main, if not her only, I mean, when my wife is working or whatever, I am her source of human engagement.
	I am her source of adult interaction.
	And for all children in a household, the mom usually is the only source of adult interaction.
	Zero other adults usually in the house during the day.
	And I'm very aware of that.
	That I am how my daughter...
	We have an only child, so I'm her only source of human interaction, but most importantly, I am her only source of adult interaction.
	Right.
	I remember...
	Never being taken out, I guess, and never being interacted with.
	I would just isolate the last caller.
	That's me.
	That's exactly me.
	But I'm not overweight.
	It's the same story, I guess.
	Yeah, that is abusive, in my opinion.
	You have a child and you don't interact with that child.
	I've used the metaphor before, I don't have to feed everyone in the world.
	But if I lock a guy in my basement, I have to feed him.
	Because he's got no other options to get food, right?
	I don't have to interact with every child in the world.
	But if I have a child and keep a child in my house, I must interact with her.
	I must interact with her.
	That's not an option.
	Now, it doesn't mean 24 hours a day, blah, blah, blah.
	It's important for her to see me reading a book as well, right?
	The model behavior that you want, all that kind of stuff, right?
	But if I have a child, I must interact with her.
	I must find a way to take pleasure in that child.
	And if I can't, I can always give up the child to someone else.
	Who will?
	Right.
	So I'm very sorry that your parents withheld from you that which they owed you.
	You have a child and you keep a child.
	You incur a daily debt of at least a full-time job for 18 years.
	You sign a contract implicitly by having a child and keeping a child.
	You sign a contract.
	And people say, oh, you don't sign a real contract.
	There are tons of implicit contracts.
	I don't sign a contract when I go to a restaurant and I'm going to pay for my meal.
	I don't sign a contract when I get on a plane that I'm not going to get drunk.
	I don't sign a contract when I go into a convenience store that I'm not going to steal the candy bars.
	You owe your child eight hours of interaction a day.
	Now, if you have more than one kid, you can spread it around and interact with them.
	But you owe your child eight hours of conversation, play, and interaction a day, at a minimum.
	I do more, but as a minimum, that's what you need.
	And when I say I, I is a sort of unit with my wife, right?
	And the parents who do not provide...
	The eight hours a day, particularly in the first five years, are neglectful.
	They're not doing their job.
	And nobody makes people have to have children, right?
	We've got to work to live, usually.
	But you don't have to have children.
	So I'm incredibly sorry that you didn't get all those things that were owed to you.
	Thank you.
	And when people don't pay me what they owe me, I get kind of pissed.
	Right?
	Right.
	Oh, I did have one thing to correct.
	I did say, nobody helped me on my movie.
	That wasn't true.
	One guy did send me some animation.
	I really wanted to correct that.
	Sorry.
	I forgot.
	Anyway, so, you know, you send 500 bucks to Apple and they don't send you the iPad, you're pissed, right?
	Right.
	Call them up.
	What the hell?
	Hey, I got my receipt right here.
	Send me the goddamn iPad.
	I remember...
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Yeah, I remember actually being pissed and telling my parents about this, but they would play the card where they say that they're hardworking and they did this for us and they didn't have enough time to...
	Did what for you?
	Work, I guess, and to give us food and put a roof over your head?
	Well, they chose to have six children, right?
	Right.
	So saying we have to work hard is completely ridiculous.
	Right?
	It's like buying a gym membership, limbering up, going out, putting on your gym stuff, and then saying that people are just dropping weights on you and you're a victim.
	Right.
	I mean, that's silly.
	And what was your first memory?
	What was your dad doing?
	Isolating me, I guess.
	No, what was he doing when you were under the table and he was pushing you away with his feet?
	Playing with someone else, I guess.
	Playing poker?
	Right.
	Yeah.
	See, that's not really classified as work, right?
	Right.
	And there's a reason why you remember that in terms of playing poker, right?
	Your dad can't say, well, I was working all the time.
	It's like, no, actually the memory I have is you pushing me away while you were playing poker.
	That's not work, right?
	That's time where you could have been a goddamn father to me.
	Right.
	Yeah, parents don't get to say I didn't have time.
	I was working all the time.
	Well, why?
	Why were you working all the time?
	Why did you have children when you couldn't spend time with them?
	Like if I pursue the woman for the date, ask her out for the date, and then I say, well, I have to talk to this guy because I haven't talked to him for a while.
	It's still a choice.
	I don't want to be rude to the guy who was calling me.
	It's like, well, then I get to end up being rude to my date, right?
	Right.
	So this idea, well, I had to go to work, right?
	Well, the question is, why did you have to go to work?
	Is it because you hadn't developed your skills enough to make any money?
	Well, that's your responsibility as well.
	Is it because you had too many kids?
	That's your responsibility as well.
	Is it because you didn't save your money before you had children?
	Well, that's your responsibility as well.
	Did your mom work?
	Not the first years of...
	Not like the first 15 years of my life.
	First 15, you said?
	Okay.
	So your mom clearly had time to play with you guys, right?
	Yeah, right.
	I mean, that's her fucking job.
	Right.
	And play is more important than food.
	I mean, we know that, because children who get all their physical needs met, but who aren't interacted with, grow up to be insane.
	And sometimes they just die.
	It's called failure to thrive, right?
	So all these Romanian, 100,000 kids in Romanian orphanages, they got all the food and medicine and dental care and stuff to drink and all that, but they were just stuck in rooms watching old squeaky VHS tapes of the Lion King over and over or whatever it was, right?
	And they grew up.
	I'm not saying this is you.
	I mean, I know this wasn't your environment.
	But interaction...
	It's at least as necessary to children as medical attention.
	I think that...
	And parents who don't get their children medical attention when needed, or in a regular preventative way, who say, well, I was too busy to take you to the doctor.
	It's like, no, that's your job.
	It's your job to take me to the doctor, and it's your goddamn job to play with me.
	Because I don't have alternatives.
	I am stuck in this house with you, Mom!
	Mom!
	I can't phone people up and set up my own play dates when I'm four or three or two.
	I am entirely dependent upon you playing with me, and I have no other options, and that is your job as a parent, to interact with your children.
	And if they don't do that job, they're culpable.
	They are responsible.
	And then parents, well, I make excuses, right?
	How successful was it for you to try and make excuses for things you did wrong as a kid?
	Well, it was, and I would get disciplined or hit, scream that.
	Mm-hmm.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, so you don't have the option...
	To make excuses for things that are completely unimportant, right?
	But then really important things like actually interacting with your children, well, your parents can just have excuses and apparently that's supposed to boop, right?
	All right So yeah I think that the antidote to fear, first of all, is anger.
	You were not provided that which your parents owed you by having you.
	And they are responsible for that.
	There is no excuse for that.
	Your mom was home.
	She chose to have all these children.
	She is responsible.
	And she already told you as a kid...
	That making excuses was unacceptable, right?
	You don't get to make excuses.
	And then you say, well, mom, you didn't play with me.
	You didn't interact with me.
	Well, I was busy.
	Well, we had lots of children.
	Come on.
	You already told me excuses don't count.
	Oh, now they count about this important stuff.
	Now that the spotlight is turned on you, suddenly excuses, they count.
	Oh, I get it.
	How convenient.
	I actually...
	I talked to her like that.
	When I talked to her, I told her everything you're telling me right now.
	But she would end up saying, like, oh, everything's my fault.
	You just like blaming me.
	And she would say that, and that's the end of the conversation.
	Well, but then I would say...
	I don't know about the word fault.
	The word fault is like the word blame or the word bashing.
	You know, it just bashes Christians.
	It's like, well, that's just an emotional bullshit argument.
	Everything is my fault, right?
	Right.
	Well, no.
	You know, the death of the carrier pigeon was not your fault, Mom.
	You know, the early 20th century San Francisco earthquake was not your fault.
	We're not talking about that.
	War in Iraq?
	You know, probably not your fault.
	But how you parented?
	Yeah, that's your responsibility.
	I mean, fault is one of these, again, it's things like, well, don't play the blame game.
	Ooh, it rhymes!
	What a great argument!
	If only more philosophers had rhyming dictionaries, we'd win!
	Over the sophists.
	Don't play the blame game.
	Oh, you just want to blame me for everything.
	Well...
	I would say, Mom, do you have responsibility for the choices you made as a parent?
	Are you responsible for them?
	What would she say?
	She wouldn't answer, probably.
	No, that's not an option.
	Was it an option for you as a kid to not answer your parents when they had a problem with you?
	It was, but I would...
	Get in trouble, I guess.
	Yeah, so they would escalate until you answered, right?
	Right.
	Right.
	So she has to answer.
	Is she not responsible?
	You know, and because she held you responsible for the choices you made as a child, right?
	When you were six or seven or five or ten or twelve, if you made a decision she didn't like, would she get upset with you?
	Yes.
	Right.
	So you had responsibility for your decisions when you were 5 or 6 or 10.
	Does she not have responsibility for her decisions when she's 30?
	You had responsibility for your decisions when your brain was immature, when you were being imprinted by your mother, when you couldn't leave and didn't choose to be there.
	You still had responsibility.
	You still carried that spark of responsibility.
	Your mom, who chose to get married, who chose to have you, who chose to stay home, who chose to have that many kids, Does she not have responsibility?
	When you, in a very non-voluntary environment, have responsibility at the age of 5, does your mother not have responsibility at the age of 30?
	She does.
	Of course she does.
	And if she weasels out, or tries to weasel out of that responsibility, well...
	Well...
	Come on.
	That doesn't make you angry?
	It does.
	But I don't feel like I could express my anger with her because I have before and she just ignores it.
	I remember the last argument that we had.
	Sorry, why does she need to accept your anger for your anger to be valid?
	She doesn't, but...
	Okay, I see what you said.
	My mom...
	Claims to have no memory of any abuse.
	None.
	But she would really like to be there to help me with any issues I might be having.
	Right?
	Right.
	Now, when I was a kid and I said I didn't remember, I just got hit.
	But I am a mature enough person that I don't universalize that with my mom.
	Right.
	Right.
	But my mom won't admit a thing.
	That makes it worse.
	That makes it easier for me to express my anger, not harder.
	You know, my anger is not like a bird that has to have a place to land.
	Right?
	So I need to feel anger for myself?
	Yeah, I think that you were robbed of that which was pretty important to you as a kid.
	Through a lack of adult interaction.
	I think that's why your memory is exactly that.
	Your parents choosing to play poker rather than play with you.
	In fact, pushing you away is inconvenient.
	Sorry, Mom and Dad.
	I don't mean to inconvenience you by you fucking giving birth to me and keeping me.
	I'm sorry.
	I don't mean to be an imposition when you chose to have me and keep me.
	How is it possible to view...
	And I don't mean like every now and then you're like, oh man, I'd really like to read a book rather than play another kiddie game.
	I get that.
	I mean, it happens from time to time.
	But fundamentally...
	Yeah, it sucks.
	It sucks what you experienced as a kid.
	Parents' decisions were bad.
	We're wrong.
	And the fact that they're not willing to listen to your complaints and criticisms now, despite having imposed exactly those same values on you as a child, means they're bullies and cowards.
	Which, you say, well, my mom won't listen to any of my complaints.
	How many times did you have to listen to your mom's complaints when you were growing up?
	Quite a lot, I imagine, right?
	Right.
	And that means that you have more right to get angry.
	Thank you.
	Because it means that she knows better than what she inflicted on you.
	Applying parents' values back to them a lot of times is like trying to pay a guy who's a counterfeiter with his own counterfeit bills.
	How does he feel?
	Bad.
	Well, he's pissed.
	He's like, no, you're supposed to think this is real money.
	I know it's not.
	Right?
	I'm only pretending that this is real money to get away with something.
	I don't actually want to receive it because I know it's fake money.
	Anyway, listen, we've got to get on to other callers, but I just hope that gives you some context as to where I think it might be useful to go.
	Yes, it helped a lot.
	Thanks.
	You are very welcome, and please drop us a line, operations at freedomainradio.com, and let us know how it's going.
	People don't have to admit the wrongs they've done to you in order for you to have the feeling.
	In fact, if they don't, that for me at least only intensified the feeling.
	I could see in my mom's eyes when I was having the conversation with her just exactly how attentive, how focused, And how much she was just trying to get away with something.
	It was really weaselly.
	And all of the supposed craziness she had all vanished.
	And she was focused and whip smart, incredibly maneuvering.
	And that's when I fundamentally ran out of patience.
	And any last vestige of attachment vanished.
	Because I recognized she had no attachment to me.
	And I tried to be an empiricist.
	So, thank you very much.
	I hope that it works out for you, and I really appreciate you bringing up a very, very challenging topic.
	Thank you.
	Okay, bye.
	Alright.
	Alright, Toshiki, you're next.
	Hello, Stefan.
	Hello.
	Calling from Scotland, I hear.
	No, Germany.
	Ah.
	Okay, go ahead.
	Yeah, when I first found out about you, I wasn't really thinking that what you did was of any importance.
	I thought, well, he's fundamentally anarcho-capitalist about children and philosophy.
	And, well, that's still the way I think about you, but I came to realize that what you do is really important.
	And I want to thank you for all the work that you do.
	Well, thank you.
	I appreciate that.
	My main issue is, as I said, I have a three-month-old child and after my girlfriend became pregnant, I thought about my past and I found, also because of your work and listening to some of your shows, that I have some issues with my childhood.
	I used to think that compared to most people, my childhood was quite okay, but when I listened to the Bomb the Brain series and I did the ACE score test, I scored a five and now I don't think it was that great anymore.
	I have started to talk about my past with my father, Well, I live in a different town, so it's difficult to actually meet him.
	And we have agreed that we will try to find some points from the past that we can use to talk about how the timeline went.
	I realize that it's quite upsetting and so I'm not sure whether it's the right thing to go through that right now or if I should wait until my son is older.
	What would you say?
	What was the five?
	The what?
	The five, your ACE score, what were they?
	I don't know exactly right now.
	Or just off the top of your head?
	Well, my parents divorced.
	That was quite late when I was something like 12.
	But my mother went back to Japan, the country she came from, when I was three.
	Oh, wow.
	So she really was gone, baby gone, right?
	Uh-huh.
	Yeah, and what is interesting about it, or maybe it isn't, when I was talking about this in school, everyone would say, well, that's horrible.
	And I said, no, I don't think so.
	I've grown up living that way.
	I don't think it's horrible.
	I'm used to it.
	How was your relationship with your mom before she left?
	I don't know because I don't have any memories from that time.
	What I am told is that our relationship was quite good.
	Wait, wait, wait, wait, hang on, hang on.
	I'm sorry to interrupt you.
	Your mom left when you were 12.
	You don't know how your relationship was before beforehand?
	No, no, when I was three.
	When I was three, she left and they got divorced in the lawful meaning.
	Oh, sorry, sorry.
	Okay, so your mom left when you were three.
	Gosh, that's horrible.
	That is so horrible.
	I'm incredibly sorry to hear that.
	That's just wretched.
	So, but go on.
	Well, I haven't talked about all this with her because she's Japanese.
	She speaks a little German, a little English, but she can be somewhat unresponsive and in understanding when she doesn't want to understand something.
	Wait a sec, does your dad speak Japanese?
	No, he doesn't.
	What?
	What are you talking about?
	When they met, I think they were both on vacation in another country.
	No, but they don't speak the same language.
	I'm sorry.
	What does that mean?
	They don't speak the same language, but they got married?
	Well, they spoke English at first, and my mother learned German, and she used to speak it quite well, but she hasn't lived here for, well, almost 20 years, so she isn't that good.
	I mean, she has a son.
	I assume you speak German, right?
	Yeah, I do.
	Okay, so she has a son.
	So that would be a good reason to keep your German going, right?
	Is to talk.
	I feel like I'm speaking the complete obvious here.
	But to speak with your son, it would be important to keep speaking German.
	Is that not correct?
	Yeah, I think so.
	But the other problem is that I am here in Germany and I'm somewhat interested in speaking Japanese, but I'm really not good at it.
	No, no, no.
	We just blew right past your mom there, right?
	It's her job to speak your language, right?
	That's her job.
	She knowingly got married to a German-speaking guy.
	She did not stick around to teach you Japanese.
	Therefore, it is her job to speak your language, right?
	Not your job to learn her language.
	It's her job to speak your language.
	Yeah, I guess you're right.
	I mean, so if you say, well, she doesn't really speak German, I don't see how that just makes it worse.
	She does, but the problem is when you want to address some serious topics, she pretends not to understand it.
	I'm not really sure about...
	Well, no, no, but that's easy to solve, right?
	That's easy to solve.
	Your dad still speaks Japanese, right?
	I speak Japanese far better than he does because he didn't learn a lot of Japanese.
	Oh okay, so you already speak Japanese as well.
	They were both living in Germany and my father tried to get Get some business going.
	He did a lot of stuff that didn't actually work out, but he always tried to do that.
	Sorry, I don't want to get into your dad's business stuff.
	So you speak Japanese well, is that right?
	Good enough to get some groceries, maybe.
	Oh, so you, mom, and you don't speak the same language, basically, to have any kind of important conversation.
	And your father doesn't speak the same language, and your mother doesn't speak the same language as you.
	Is that right?
	Okay, um to sort this out I speak in English and German and a little Japanese.
	Bad Japanese.
	Yeah.
	Your mom speaks Japanese and bad German, and your father speaks German and bad Japanese.
	Yeah, and they both speak English quite okay.
	Okay, but your...
	Does your mom...
	What does she not understand?
	So when you say to her, how could you leave the entire country when you had a son?
	What...
	Like, what do you, what does she say?
	Like, I say to my dad who went to Africa, and he's like, well, I, you know, your mom was really difficult.
	And it's like, so you left me at the age of six months to deal with a woman you couldn't handle.
	You know, well, I had to go and make money because I'm a geologist in Africa.
	Okay, well, then why didn't we come with you?
	Well, your mom wouldn't let you go.
	And like, it's all this sort of stuff, right?
	So then you married the wrong woman.
	She's still responsible, right?
	There is no victimhood.
	There is no victimhood in parenting because parenting is a voluntary choice.
	Parents never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever get to say that they're victims.
	Ever.
	Because if you're a parent, you can drop your children off At a hospital or a fire station or anything like that, and you can say, I'm not going to be their parent anymore, and you can walk away at any time.
	You choose to become a parent, and every day you choose to stay a parent.
	There's no victimhood in that situation, right?
	No victimhood in any way, shape, or form whatsoever.
	So I guess the question would be, what is the story with your mom leaving the country?
	I have never talked about this with her.
	When other people asked her why she did that, especially the mother of my father, my grandmother, when she asked her, my mother...
	I was told that my mother said that she thought that a boy is supposed to stay with his father.
	And she never said anything more about that.
	So...
	Well, hang on.
	A boy is supposed to stay with his father.
	Okay, fine.
	But why would she leave?
	Does that mean like, okay, so maybe your father is the primary caregiver and she only gets you every weekend, right?
	But how is leaving the country?
	I don't, I mean, again, help me understand that.
	I don't know.
	I think she was dissatisfied with the marriage and she didn't want to live here anymore.
	There was, I think, a lot of debt that they had both incurred or maybe only my father.
	And my mother didn't have any money anymore.
	And I don't know if she tried to work here, but I think she didn't have a job.
	So there was Well, sorry to interrupt.
	First of all, a lot of what you're saying is a tautology, because I'm saying, why did she leave the marriage and leave the country?
	And you say, because she didn't like the marriage and wanted to leave the country.
	That doesn't add anything new.
	You know, why did you go north?
	Because I wanted to go north.
	Well, I know you wanted to go north because you were heading north, but I'm asking for something slightly deeper, right?
	And again, I'm not criticizing you.
	I'm just sort of pointing out that this is not...
	Could you give me an example of what you want to hear?
	Well, just more than my mother left the country because she wanted to leave the country.
	Well, we know she wanted to leave the country because she left the country.
	But the idea that a son is supposed to stay with his father is not enough.
	That may be why you Don't have primary custody, but that doesn't explain why you leave the country.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah, it does.
	Okay.
	Now, as far as getting a job, she was legal.
	Yes.
	Right?
	I mean, she married your father, so she had German citizenship and all that, right?
	And she spoke at least two languages somewhat well, so there's translation work, there's tons of stuff that you can do, right?
	Right.
	Yeah, I think it was about inconvenience.
	That it would have been inconvenient for her to stay here.
	She would have had to learn the language better, to find a job, to find something that she can do here.
	Yeah, no, I understand it's inconvenient for sure.
	I mean, of course, right?
	Except the only way you can describe it as inconvenient is if you don't exist.
	As a human being, as a child, who needs his mother, right?
	I mean, to say it was more convenient for my mother to go to Japan when I was three is only even remotely a plausible statement if you don't exist in the equation at all, right?
	I mean, I go to play in these play centers And I'm up there squirming around these tight little tubes and playing various games and so on, right?
	I am not doing that if I don't have a daughter.
	I'm not.
	I'm really not.
	It's not convenient for me to go and do these things.
	But the only reason that I do it is because of my daughter.
	If I say, well, I didn't play with my daughter because...
	It was inconvenient.
	Well, yeah, of course.
	Of course, right?
	Naturally.
	But it's like saying, why did I get my neck cut open?
	Well, to remove a tumor.
	If you take the tumor out of the equation, I'd just like a masochist to ask people to stab me in the neck and paid them to do it, right?
	Yeah.
	So, the convenience of moving to Japan...
	Only sounds even remotely plausible if you don't exist in the equation.
	Does that make sense?
	Yes, it does.
	And I think I didn't really play that much of a role in her life.
	It's not really surprising for me that she did that.
	So she's selfish?
	Yeah, I remember when I was a child, she used to come to Germany every year for three or four days and she dragged me along visiting various cities, some in other countries, and take pictures of that, take pictures of sites with me and then bring me back home, give me some money and disappear again.
	So she never asked you what you wanted in these visits, right?
	No, she never did.
	Yeah.
	Now, it sounds like my mom loved to go shopping, and I just, like, half my childhood is sitting like a sack of moldy potatoes in the corner of some store while my mom tried on all these dresses and yammered with the salespeople.
	Mine didn't want to do it, but I know that if I express any preferences contrary to my mom's selfish whims, I'm going to get beaten up, right?
	So, just dragged along like a fucking hostage to bullshit vanity, right?
	So I'm sorry for that, too.
	Yeah, I wasn't afraid of getting any negative things from her, but I think when I'm honest, I wanted to have the money.
	Well, sure, because you couldn't get the person.
	Right?
	Like, money is the...
	Really tragic consolation prize for the absence of love.
	Right?
	Like, okay, so this woman who's like this un-mommy absent robot is not going to give me love, is not going to give me curiosity, is not going to ask me about myself, is not going to learn about me.
	So at least I can get some ka-ching, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	And also you knew that if you expressed preferences that were in opposition to your mother's, and I use the word mother extremely loosely here, right?
	To the egg factory, right?
	If you expressed preferences in opposition to the egg factory, she wasn't going to cough up the money.
	At least that was your concern, right?
	Yeah.
	So I would have nothing left at all.
	Yeah, you don't even get the money.
	Yeah, I think that was it.
	Right.
	And that's wretched.
	I mean, basically to be bribed into non-existence is a pretty tragic thing for a child to have as the best thing he can hope for from his mother.
	Right.
	If you don't express preferences, in opposition to mine, I will give you money.
	If you turn yourself into a convenient photogenic ghost from my pictures, I will pay you for that.
	This is a prostitution of non-existence.
	I can't fathom that as a parent.
	I can't fathom that.
	It's like me saying to my daughter, I will pay you 20 bucks today to have no opinions and to not speak anything that I disagree with or that inconveniences me in any way.
	I will pay you to self-erase.
	I will pay you to vanish.
	I don't like your existence so much that I will pay you to remove it from my sight and my mind.
	It is worth 20 bucks or 50 bucks or 100 bucks to me for you to stop existing.
	That's a kind of hit, you understand?
	Like a mob hit.
	Yeah, what doesn't make sense about this for me is then why would she come in the first place?
	Do you feel anything here?
	No.
	Why?
	Is what I'm describing not kind of outrageous?
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	It is, but I just found that one point of it doesn't make sense, so I wanted to ask about that.
	Alright, I will give you the answer to what doesn't make sense, and if you're still not having an emotional connection, it's not a threat, it's just a reality, like I have to move on to another caller, because it's not healthy for me to only feel outrage about your life.
	Because then you get to stand back and observe my outrage and avoid feeling it yourself.
	So I can't be that container for you.
	It's vampiric.
	Not on your part, but it would be unhealthy for me to do.
	So what's the issue that doesn't make sense for you?
	Why would she even come?
	I don't know.
	Tell me why that's important.
	What does it matter?
	She didn't come for you.
	We know that, right?
	Yeah, when you say that, I know why she came.
	Why did she come?
	She just wanted to see some buildings, churches, and then maybe she wanted to show people what she'd seen in Europe.
	Here's my son!
	Why do religious people want their kids to go to church?
	Kids don't want to go to church.
	Because they'll face social criticism if they don't.
	Right?
	If your mom...
	If people know your mom has a son in Germany, right?
	Yeah, her family does.
	Oh, where are some pictures?
	Oh, I haven't seen him since he was three.
	Oh, really?
	How terrible.
	How scandalous, right?
	Not because they give a shit.
	It's just, you know, scandal, right?
	Whereas if she says, yes, I went to visit him.
	Here's a picture of me in Hamburg.
	Here's a picture of me in Berlin.
	Here's a picture of me in Kitchener.
	Here's whatever, right?
	So she gets to have a plausible excuse.
	She is no longer scandalous.
	It's just a prop.
	You're a prop to keep criticism at bay.
	Right?
	I mean...
	If a religious person goes to church without their children, people say, where are your children?
	They say, well, I asked them, they didn't really feel like coming.
	Terrible.
	Terrible to take a child's preferences and act upon those.
	Terrible.
	People say, why is your daughter not in school?
	Well, we asked her.
	She doesn't really want to go.
	You're not parenting, right?
	Your job as a parent is to override and act in permanent opposition to your children's legitimate preferences.
	As a parent, you must eclipse them, you must crush them, you must act in avoidance to them.
	You must do the opposite of what they want.
	Yeah, right.
	Yeah, that's why a lot of pizza parlors pee on the pie, right?
	Because, you know, the customers don't want that.
	So that's what they do.
	Because that's called being a good pizza parlor owner is to do the opposite of what your customers want.
	The fuck is it?
	I mean, my daughter is my customer.
	I am a service provider called a parent.
	Why the hell would I do the opposite of what she wants?
	You don't?
	No.
	You don't.
	I mean, now, that doesn't mean that I then am zero.
	I never say no.
	Because that's actually not healthy either, right?
	I mean, if I run a bar, I'm not going to piss in my...
	Customers drinks.
	But that doesn't mean I won't cut off an abusive drunk.
	Not that my daughter is abusive, but you know what I mean, right?
	But people perceive parenting to be, do the opposite of what your children want.
	Madness.
	And the funny thing is, is that if your children do the opposite of what you as a parent wants, you punish the children.
	But then it's your job to do the opposite of what they want, and then you wonder why they do the opposite.
	Anyway, it's all nonsense.
	But let's go back to you.
	Alright, so that was one of the five.
	So what was the other five?
	So I guess you've had maternal abandonment and divorce.
	What else?
	It doesn't have to be exact, just off the top of your head.
	Well, my father didn't really have good relationships with First with my mother, then with other women.
	I didn't really have good experiences with him.
	Not that I had bad experiences with him.
	I didn't really have many experiences with him at all.
	A lot of time I spend with my grandmother and she is...
	Well, when I was little, everything was kind of okay.
	She said that I was making trouble wetting my bed and things, but she didn't say any more about that.
	But later, when I became older, she complained about me not helping her with the chores.
	While at the same time, she forbade me to do the chores because I wouldn't do it right.
	And that was one point.
	Right.
	Well, I think, look, I really sympathize.
	I mean, the lack of connection with your mom, which I... Like, you can't abandon a baby you're close to.
	I mean, you can't.
	And so I can only assume that your mom decided to have a child and then did not bond with that child or did not do the work that was necessary to bond with the child.
	And that has resulted in, I would assume, a disrupted bond, right?
	And that means that it's challenging for you to have strong emotions, right?
	Or, in this conversation, at least, any emotions at all.
	No, I'm feeling sad.
	Right.
	But it's not communicated and not particularly differentiated.
	And until I point it out, you don't know that it's important to say, right?
	And it's not a criticism, honestly.
	It's like, you know, if you say to me, Steph, you're an idiot because you don't know Japanese, well, I never studied it, right?
	And you were not in an environment where your emotions...
	Were valued.
	In fact, you were in an environment where you were paid to be emotionless, right?
	In other words, do not express preferences with your city-hopping camera-happy mom, right?
	I didn't think about it this way because my mother wasn't there a lot, but I guess I kept thinking about it, so you're probably right.
	Thinking about what?
	Well, why she wasn't here and...
	Why she would pay me for going to visit some city or to go into church and take a picture.
	Right, right.
	Yeah, I mean, my mom tried on a bunch of dresses.
	I mean, she probably bought a couple of dresses.
	And I was just sitting there like this aforementioned sack of moldy potatoes.
	And I couldn't say anything about anything.
	And my perspective now is, well, you've got those dresses, right?
	That's what you chose.
	I mean, you really wanted to go and try on dresses because it made you feel cute and pretty.
	So now you have those dresses.
	You don't have me, but you have those dresses.
	And that's simply an empirical affirmation of her choice.
	She preferred the dresses to me.
	She preferred the dresses at the expense of me.
	So I accept that decision on the part of my mom.
	I accept that my mom likes dresses and doesn't like me.
	And this is just one of many, many examples.
	For me, as I said in a show, it's now I think in the premium section.
	Say to people, thank you for the information.
	I am an empiricist.
	If I want to know how someone feels about me, I simply need to look to their actions.
	If I have doubt about how they feel to me, I can talk to them and observe their response to me saying something that is inconvenient to them.
	Now, if they say, well, I feel uncomfortable with this conversation, but I really value the relationship, so we'll work through it, then I know that they really care about me.
	But if when I bring up something uncomfortable, it gets pushed away, then I know empirically in the very core of my being that they will fuck me over for the sake of their own immediate emotional self-gratification every time.
	If I doubt that, I try it again.
	And if I'm batting a thousand after five tries or ten tries, then I refuse to pretend I don't have pattern recognition that even a baby duck can figure out.
	And I say, oh, okay, so these are people who will fuck me emotionally and spiritually and mentally to protect themselves.
	In other words, they really only care about themselves, and I don't exist to them.
	Accept as something that can make them feel better in the moment as a prop.
	But the moment I'm inconvenient, the moment I am myself.
	To be yourself is, in many ways, to be inconvenient to others.
	Only placators and appeasers get along with other people all the time.
	And that's not really getting along with anyone.
	That's just self-erasure.
	To be alive, to be in a relationship, is to be constantly caught...
	Inconvenience to others.
	And out of that inconvenience can come enormous growth.
	There are times when Mike has challenged me, my wife has challenged me, my daughter has challenged me.
	Fantastic.
	Highly inconvenient.
	Wonderful.
	I always say in this show, I'm sorry to be annoying.
	I'm going to be inconvenient.
	I'm going to be annoying.
	Because it's true.
	So, I simply work as an empiricist.
	I've always said, empiricism comes first.
	So I speak things that are inconvenient to others but true for me.
	I observe their response.
	I tried this with people I had problems with in my life.
	I speak things that are true for me.
	I don't say that they're true like true, but they're true for me.
	My experience was I felt that not you did this and you did that, but this was my experience.
	It's an honest, true statement.
	If it's inconvenient to other people, it can be very painful to But we should not shy away from gathering evidence, although it be inconvenient to us.
	I mean, we don't say to a religious person, well, studying the truth about the formation of religion, studying the truth about philosophical objections to religion, studying the truth about what's written in the Bible, well, it's emotionally inconvenient, so you shouldn't do it.
	It's upsetting.
	No.
	We say all the time, pursue the truth, though the skies fall.
	And it's very easy to find out the truth in your relationships.
	It's incredibly easy to find out the truth about your relationships.
	All you do is speak the truth.
	You speak the truth about what's on your mind to the people who are around you.
	And their true natures will be revealed in about five seconds.
	Right?
	Now, we don't like that information.
	Sometimes.
	But...
	We can't say to other people, you should listen to me though it's difficult for you, but then not listen to their response because it's difficult for us.
	You have honesty in your relationships, you speak the truth about your experience and thoughts and feelings in your relationships, and then you do not control how other people respond.
	You are as honest as you can be, and you simply observe how they respond.
	And their personalities, you know, it's like that little spray that you spray to see the lasers in the room.
	Honesty reveals everything.
	Everything.
	Now, honesty reveals the truth of my relationship with people around me.
	I could choose to stay in those relationships if I want.
	I mean, I'm just doing that with knowledge, right?
	Okay, so these people will constantly sacrifice my happiness, my security, my mental health.
	For the sake of their own petty, emotional, selfish needs?
	Yeah, okay.
	I mean, if I know that, right?
	I can choose to continue to hire an employee who steals from me every day.
	I just have to be aware that he's stealing from me every day.
	So, yeah, I would say be honest with the people around you.
	And observe their responses.
	And I think through the observation of their responses, you will gain the truth of the relationship.
	And I'm incredibly sorry that you had such a selfish, selfish mother who would have a child, abandon a child, Come back and pay that child to not exist.
	That's brutal.
	That is cold-hearted brutality of the first order.
	And I'm incredibly sorry that that was your experience.
	Unfair, wrong, immoral, vile.
	I'm sorry that this was the mom that your dad chose for you.
	And I'm sorry that your lack of connection with others Has resulted in a lack of connection with yourself?
	It's really hard to be closer to ourselves than our moms, than we are to our moms.
	It's certainly possible, but first of all, we have to recognize that initial distance and work to repair it.
	Does that help at all?
	Yeah, it does in a way, but I'm still not sure whether I should go in more depth or whether I should leave this for another time when Oh, no.
	I mean, it's your choice, right?
	I mean, I can't tell anyone what to do.
	But if you have doubt, right?
	Well, what do you do?
	If it's important for you to know what the capital of Poland is and you don't know, what do you do?
	I look it up, but this is certainly a little more difficult than just looking something up.
	Nope.
	It's the same principle.
	If you have doubt about your relationships, then you continue to talk about stuff that's important to you.
	Stuff that you truly think and feel.
	I refuse to waste my short existence on this planet not existing.
	I've got the rest of eternity to not exist after I'm dead and buried, just as I had 15 billion years of non-existence before I was born.
	Non-existence is not a shortage in this universe.
	It's the default.
	Now, I have been granted this incredibly rare gift of existence.
	And I refuse To fake death during the short and incredibly rare time that I'm alive.
	We don't know of any other beings, living creatures in the entire universe.
	Maybe a couple of microbes on Mars.
	They scarcely developed philosophy.
	But I will not Regularly hang out in a grave because I've got forever to molder in a grave after I'm dead.
	If I'm going to sleep forever in the future and I don't need to sleep now, I am not going to sleep now.
	I will not slaughter myself for the convenience of narcissists.
	I will not hack my own throat out to join the zombie horde of the dead.
	I will not die to get along with the dead.
	I will not kill myself to join the army of suicides.
	And I would suggest that if you have doubt about whether you can be yourself in a relationship with someone, what is the simple remedy?
	Not the easy, but the simple remedy for that.
	I find out about the relationship I have with the people that form my life or my personality.
	A simpler way to put it is if I have doubt whether I can be real in a relationship, all I have to do is be real in a relationship, right?
	If I don't know whether this balloon is going to go up or down, when I let go of it, I can just let go of it and find out.
	Right?
	There's an abstract principle which says that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.
	If you've spent 30 years with your mom not caring about how you feel and paying you to not exist, I can guarantee you what 31 years is going to look like.
	And 32 and 35 and 40 and 50 and should we become immortal, billions of years will look exactly the same.
	Personality is incredibly inert.
	Now, if your mom wakes up one day and says, oh my god, I'm a cold-hearted bitch, or whatever she might say, I have been using my son, I abandoned him, I used him for my own selfish purposes of conscious solving, crowd-approving propaganda, I was a monster.
	I'm going to therapy, I'm going to do what I can, I'm going to apologize.
	Then she has a tiny chance, a tiny chance of making it.
	You know, like 95% of people fail in their long-term diets, and those are people highly motivated with a huge amount of social approval.
	Oh, you lost weight.
	How great, right?
	And if your mom or whoever strenuously decides to start working on herself, there is a tiny chance that she might change in a way that's permanent enough.
	That she can find a way to keep you in her mind and in her heart in some permanent way.
	A tiny chance!
	But you, of course, all have all that terrible history behind you, right?
	But if your mom admits no fault and avoids the topic, I will tell you, avoidance is the physics of the future.
	That which we defend, we replicate, right?
	If your mother is avoiding the topics, if your mother won't listen to you, if your mother won't admit fault, if your mother won't be curious about your emotional experience, and she's been doing that for as long as you've been alive, and she does not find fault in it, in fact, she finds fault in you for bringing it up, I guarantee you, I guarantee you, I guarantee you, this will continue.
	That which we praise, we replicate.
	That which we defend, we repeat.
	And if someone does not have a problem with her behavior, that behavior will not change.
	If someone has no doubt about the rightness of their position, that position will not change.
	And it's not your job to fix that.
	It's not your job to change your mom.
	It's not your job to do any of that.
	All you can do is wipe a tear from your eye and say, Thanks for the information.
	It's heartbreaking, but I will not avoid facts.
	So, yeah, if you have doubts, keep asking.
	Or don't.
	You know, but if you don't, it's because you already have the answer, right?
	To avoid getting more information about your relationships is...
	I mean, you're just coming to another conclusion about them, right?
	Anyway, I'm sorry.
	I do have to move on to the next caller, but I really do appreciate the topic.
	And again, I'm incredibly sorry.
	For this terrible, terrible, these terrible experiences you had as a child.
	It's just wrong, wrong, wrong.
	I'm so sorry.
	Yeah, I think I knew that I couldn't expect anything from her.
	I mean, I spent a year in Japan when I was maybe 16, and I lived with her, and she didn't really pay much attention to me, so I don't think I have any questions left.
	Yeah, and it's too late now anyway, right?
	I mean, you're already grown.
	You can't suddenly become a parent when your kid is 15 or 20.
	I mean, anyway.
	So again, if we can move on to the next caller, but I'm incredibly sorry.
	And yeah, if you have doubts, keep asking.
	And if you don't have doubts, you can make your decisions accordingly.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	All right, Sam, you're up next.
	Go ahead, Sam.
	Howdy.
	How are you doing, Stephen?
	Oh, good.
	I thought your first name might be Microsoft, in which case you would sound quite different, but go ahead.
	All right, so my basic question is, I think you've read the emails, but I've got very bad anxiety issues whenever it comes to people.
	Basically, I grew up isolated for the better part of whenever I was the age of six or seven to almost right before it is I turned 20 years old, which was just last year.
	My family is fairly broken in many ways.
	Drunk of a father, my mom essentially smoked me out of her life, just like my dad drank me out of his.
	And I grew up basically in my room for all my life.
	Throughout school, I've had issues for third to fifth grade, three years constantly of what I see now is just a group of I had sadomasochist bullies who followed me throughout those three years because whenever you're going through elementary school, it's usually the same classmates.
	So I had this group of people follow me throughout those years telling me essentially horrible things on how I'm lower than the dirt I walk on and just stuff like if I die at the boil, we'll throw a party and just terrible things.
	But hearing that almost daily for three years of my life, going to my parents never and always complaining, never seeing any changes, counselors, the one psychiatrist I actually went to, and my parents telling me things like not everybody else in the world can be wrong, it gave me a very bad self-esteem issue where I'm surprised I actually made it to today.
	But I've just gotten over the depression issue, my self-esteem issue, or at least I think they're the same thing for the most part.
	I'm fairly happy with who I am nowadays, but...
	I've been finding out through just self-reflection and such like that, that I am very paranoid when it comes to being close to anybody.
	I'm not really close to anyone in my family, not close to any of my quote-unquote close friends.
	I don't really make friends very well.
	Right.
	Sorry, just to correct you, no one in your family is close to you.
	Not a single person.
	Because that's their job, right?
	No, no, but I mean, you say, I'm not close to anyone in my family?
	No.
	But the truth is no one in your family is close to you, like your parents or whatever, right?
	Because that's their job.
	Yeah.
	You know, like as a kid, if your mom only puts junk food in the house, you would say not, I only ate junk food, but I was only given junk food.
	Yeah.
	And this is important because it's very, very important to not take ownership for that which was inflicted, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, if you voluntarily choose something, it's lovemaking.
	If you don't, it's rape.
	And knowing the difference between those two things is really important.
	So it was your parents' job to become close to you and to show you what closeness was and all that.
	So no one in your family is close to you.
	You're not close to people in your family.
	Just be annoyingly precise, but go ahead.
	I appreciate that.
	Anyway, so...
	What I get now, though, is...
	Like, I'm very quick to draw people out of my life without even blinking an eye, or at least I used to be able to.
	Now I have an anxiety of the fact that it is I can do that, and it bothers me to no end, and I don't want to do that anymore.
	I'm tired of essentially living my life alone and in fear that everybody's out to essentially get me.
	Right.
	And I mean, I recognize it's an issue.
	I realized this year, actually almost at the turn of the year, I went through my phone just reading through some of the old texts I forgot to delete.
	Before it is, I got my new one.
	And I did it to, I think I counted six people just in the last year.
	Who did what?
	Essentially trying to be either friends with someone or maybe even a relationship with someone.
	And things just might not look exactly perfect or right.
	And it would fester my mind constantly in how many ways they're trying to fuck me.
	In how many ways they're just trying to use me for whatever it is I have to use me to fix a computer, use me to just essentially using me and not actually carrying out of me as a human being.
	And I never once actually really confronted anyone about it.
	I just assumed and let it fester my mind and then the next thing is that something bad happened and I cut off all communication and dropped them like a rock.
	Right.
	And it kind of worries me that I do that so readily with so many people.
	I did it to one person I knew for five years.
	And that was just because her boyfriend was a dick to me one day.
	And it came a point of, in my mind, if he's a dick to me, she's not really doing anything about it.
	Just drop everything with the both of them and keep them all my life.
	And I didn't hear from her for an entire year.
	Never once even thought a second thing about it.
	We're now back to talking again.
	Fairly good.
	Why is that bad?
	Because, I don't know, my mind is not supposed to be like that.
	I should be able to be close to someone.
	Why is it not supposed to be like that?
	Hang on, hang on.
	Let's go slowly here.
	So why is it not supposed to be like that?
	So someone's boyfriend treats you like a dick.
	He's being a dick to you, and she doesn't do anything about it, which means she's fine with that.
	In fact, she's his boyfriend.
	She likes that.
	She likes who he is.
	She's great with who he is, right?
	So my question isn't why did you not see someone who let and encouraged your boyfriend to be a dick to you, but why is she back in your life?
	Did she change?
	Is she dating someone else?
	Did she do therapy?
	They broke up apparently not too long after it is that I dropped her out of my life just within a few months.
	But it was, like everybody already knew, it wasn't a very good relationship for her in the first place, but Just for the fact that it shouldn't be like that in my mind because I was friends with her for nearly five years.
	And I didn't care.
	Hang on, hang on.
	So she broke up.
	Wait, wait.
	How long after you stopped seeing her did she break up with the guy?
	About three months, three or four months afterwards.
	And they were together for two years.
	And did she break up with him?
	Okay, so she thought he was a dick, right?
	Now, did she then call you up and say, you know what?
	You're kind of right.
	He was a dick.
	I'm so sorry.
	Six months later, yeah.
	She called up and said, he was a dick.
	You were right.
	I'm so sorry.
	Basically, just that.
	Oh, okay.
	And we're now back to being pretty good friends again, but like I said, or was trying to say, I don't think I should be able to drop anybody and everybody out of my life.
	Like, I should be able to drop people out of my life, but not so readily without having a second thought about any of it.
	And how does she end up choosing a guy who was a dick?
	How do you know this isn't going to happen again?
	Because of the fact that she's a pretty good person overall.
	And I know that should be true.
	No, no, no.
	That's not an answer, right?
	Because if she did this stuff before, how do you know she's not going to do it again?
	I'm not saying she won't or she will.
	You need to feel secure, right?
	Because if you keep having relationships where you get hurt or betrayed...
	This is dangerous for you, right?
	Because it can lead to, like, just bitterness, right?
	And a lack of trust, even in people who might choose your trust.
	So that's why I'm asking.
	How do you know she won't do it again?
	Honestly, you can never really know.
	In my personal opinion, you can't really know for sure that someone's not going to choose someone bad again.
	But I've always hung around people that she's hung around.
	And I no longer love that state anymore, by the way.
	But...
	She's in a relationship with another guy, really cool, etc., etc.
	So it hasn't proven me wrong so far, but there's really no way I can know for sure the future or how things are going to be.
	Well, I mean, again, you don't have to be omniscient, but there are some ways of predicting, right?
	Yeah, but the guy, in all honesty, was not really a dick at first, whenever they first started dating, and just, things seemed to just escalate.
	Oh dear.
	Like, he was pretty cool to me at first.
	Come on.
	Are you saying his personality changed?
	Or he just stopped faking it, which is my personal opinion of it.
	Alright, so he was a dick.
	In fact, he was even more of a dick because he knew how important it was to fake not being a dick.
	Okay, so he was a dick at the beginning, right?
	And there were ways of knowing that.
	I... Right, you don't just have to go to a gay club to see dicks for what they are, right?
	In some ways, yeah, but I didn't hang around the guy enough to know that much.
	Alright, well look, if you want to make excuses, right, and say, well, you didn't know what you couldn't know and all that, that's fine, right?
	But that's not what this show is about.
	Right?
	So if you're like, well, I didn't know, and you said he wasn't a dick at the beginning, and then you said he was, right?
	So if you're going to make up these excuses for people and yourself, that's fine, just not on my time, right?
	And I'm not mad, I'm just sort of pointing it out, right?
	I mean, if you want to defend and justify people's actions rather than try and figure out ways to really protect yourself, then you can do that, but just not on this show, right?
	Yeah.
	Okay, so then how can you go about telling them if someone's a dick?
	Because in my mind, everybody is until I'm proven otherwise.
	And why is that a bad principle?
	Because it keeps me from really trusting or keeping anyone in my life, really.
	And to me, that seems like it's a bad thing at this point in time.
	But how many non-dicks have you met?
	Quite a few, honestly.
	And just...
	Nondix.
	Okay, so people who are virtuous and trustworthy and, you know, know themselves and all that, right?
	Okay, and how many of those have you met?
	Probably close to 10 or 11 people.
	Well, fantastic.
	And are you saying that you don't keep those people in your life?
	Basically.
	A lot more than me, and I've met a lot more people than you, but maybe you are surrounded by a strange cluster of really virtuous people.
	Sorry, you do or don't keep those people in your life?
	I don't.
	So they are virtuous, they are good, they are trustworthy, but you don't keep them in your life.
	And how do you know?
	I mean, sorry, on what grounds do you kick them out of your life?
	Um...
	I kind of halfway come up with reasons in my own head.
	If something doesn't go right at any point in time, I will essentially start losing sleep over it.
	Give me an example of what doesn't go right.
	Simple stuff, really.
	I start trying to initiate any form of a conversation, don't get any really quick reply back in a day or so, and then it just turns out to be that their cell phone got cut off or something simple like that.
	But in my mind, it goes into an entire wild spree of...
	They just drop me out of their life or they don't really care enough to actually get back in contact with me.
	They essentially are done with me being a part of their life.
	And...
	So kind of get them before they get you, right?
	And it's...
	Like a few times I've done it to people where they actually wanted to continue talking to me and want to be friends with me, but...
	I drop them too quickly to give them maybe a chance.
	Right.
	Right.
	And so you're managing a feeling like you're afraid or concerned that you are going to be rejected and so you reject them first, right?
	Yeah, basically.
	Without really giving anyone a fair chance to explain or do anything.
	Right.
	Right.
	Okay, I got it.
	Got it.
	And where do you think that comes from, that habit?
	Honestly, I'm pretty damn sure it came from my childhood with how isolated I was and how many times it is I ended up being ridiculed in public and not having anyone ever there and barely even saying I had myself there for myself because, honestly, I was one of the worst people to myself whenever I got past fifth grade year.
	I mean, I had to loathe myself when I was growing up.
	I despised everything as I did, and nowadays, since it is, I've found out that I am, or realized the fact that I'm way too readily available to draw people completely out of my life, regardless of who they are or how long I've known them,
	that I might have an issue, and it's caused some kind of Relapse into some of the thoughts that I had back when I was going through my depression stuff.
	Right.
	Yeah, I mean, I think this sounds like something that a therapist would, I think, be really good at.
	Because I can't tell you whether the people in your life are good for you or bad for you.
	And I can't exactly give you any kind of standard by which you can trust people.
	So I think that I think that this would be something to work on with a therapist.
	I mean, you have been exposed to some really terrible elements of the world, right?
	And you can't undo that, right?
	I mean, you can't undo that, so you know how treacherous human beings can be.
	And how dangerous they are, because everybody talks about virtue, but the moment you call them on it, they...
	They call you bad, right?
	The moment you ask people to actually stand up for the values that they praise and inflict on you, they get all bitchy, right?
	A lot of times, most people.
	Right?
	Yeah, but I usually don't hang around people like that.
	I'm proud to say the few people it is.
	I do know if anything ever happened, I can't go to them.
	But see, the thing is, but I don't know.
	Because you're telling me something kind of improbable.
	Which is that you know 10 or 12 people who are really virtuous.
	And also you just came off defending your friend's ex-boyfriend and also your friend and all that, right?
	So I don't know where the truth is in where you are.
	And I'm not criticizing.
	I'm certainly not saying you're lying to me or anything like that.
	But I don't know enough about the truth of where you are.
	The easy answer, which I would give based upon the information you've given me, is tell the people who are really good, like the dozen people that you know who are really great friends, tell them about your concerns about your own behavior, and ask them as a favor to you to try and get back more quickly with messages.
	And just be open and vulnerable about your desire to pull the pin on friendships, right?
	That's what I started doing, actually, earlier in December.
	I actually did start talking to a few people about it.
	Right.
	Yeah, so I think as long as they know that...
	You know, it's just a request, like a favor, right?
	And so if there are really great people in your life, they'll be happy to do that for you.
	And, you know, that I think is the best way.
	And, you know, just make a commitment to yourself, you know, write down the standards by which you will break a friendship.
	You know, it's just, you know, repeated lying, obviously, is a good reason to break a friendship, in my opinion.
	Betrayal, theft, bringing abusive people into your life and defending them, abuse towards you, borrowing money and never repaying it or being honest about not repaying it, breaking of trust, failure to follow through without admitting a failure to follow through, and so on.
	I mean, there's some reasonable standards for friendship that are worth having, but knowing that you have this predilection to dump relationships without cause, you know, say that to people and just...
	You make your list of what things you won't accept in a friend, and then if you feel like dumping a friend, you say, okay, well, where are they guilty?
	Of what crime can I convict them, right?
	And then give them a chance to say their side and all that.
	I think those are some fairly decent standards to take in these situations.
	I just want to add that the main thing about all this is just I never really did give anybody a chance to defend their side.
	I preemptively always dropped everybody.
	Well, and some things you should and some things you shouldn't, in my opinion.
	You know, like if someone steals from you, I'm not sure that I would give them much of a chance to explain their side, right?
	Now, maybe if they come to me and say, oh my God, I can't believe I stole this from you.
	I feel terrible.
	I'm going to therapy.
	Here's what happened with my childhood.
	Right?
	Then maybe.
	But if somebody steals something from you and never admits it, it's like, oh, you know, life's too short.
	You know, the six billion people on the planet, keep moving, keep moving, keep moving.
	Find the right people, find the right people.
	You know, if you are looking for a needle in a haystack, you don't pick up every fucking piece of straw and see if it's a needle.
	You get a metal detector, which is called philosophy.
	Find the people that you want, and, you know, it's triage.
	Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving.
	So those would be my suggestions.
	Appreciate it, Stephen.
	All right.
	Love your show.
	You're very welcome.
	And I guess we get time for one more call.
	All right, Christy, you're up.
	Hi.
	Oh, it's a woman.
	I was going to make a joke about cookies, which I'm sure you've never, ever heard in your life.
	Or about Chris Christie and his closing of the fridge, which I think would be a good idea.
	But go ahead.
	What's on your mind?
	On that note, you mentioned that about women a couple calls ago and I was like, oh, that's weird.
	I don't have many women around me either.
	I'm like in engineering and I used to play WoW and stuff.
	It's very weird.
	Wow, that's cool.
	That's World of Warcraft for people listening a thousand years from now.
	Do not look at the footnotes.
	That's called World of Warcraft.
	And did you choose a female avatar for World of Warcraft?
	Now, did you find yourself getting hit on a lot in World of Warcraft as a result or not so much?
	Sometimes they would just assume I was a dude even though I had a female avatar and I would not correct them because it was easier that way.
	Sure.
	And I mean, if the guy is hitting on you while he thinks you're a dude with a female avatar, that may not be exactly what you're looking for.
	You know, I don't mean to say no necessarily, but it may not be number one on your list.
	Oh, you think I'm a curvaceous female, but I'm actually a 40-year-old trucker and you want to date me.
	All right.
	Let's get it on.
	Anyway, what's on your mind?
	Yes.
	Well, I'm really nervous.
	I just had a question about therapists.
	I've, like, listened to the...
	previous podcasts, I know you've done a lot, but in July, August, I went and saw this free counselor through work.
	And I'm just wondering if my first judgment about her was right, or if I was just being...
	It's judgmental, you know, because I first saw her and she was like old and overweight and my thought was, in my mind was, well, how can she help me?
	And then I was like, ah, you know, give her a chance, you know.
	Maybe she's decided...
	Being overweight is worth it or whatever.
	But then, like, after the second, like, session, I felt, like, kind of worse than before I started.
	And so I just didn't go back.
	And yeah, I just wanted to know, like, what you, like, is being overweight, like, a deal breaker for a therapist?
	Yeah, I mean, it's a tough call.
	It's a tough call in some ways.
	Like, okay, so being overweight is not bad for a dentist, right?
	Because you're there for teeth knots, right?
	Being overweight is pretty bad for a dietician, right?
	So, and again, you know, I get that logically, but you know, fine.
	A guy who beat up his last five girlfriends can't be logically proven to beat up his next one, but you still don't want to date him, right?
	Right.
	Well, you can't logically prove that...
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Okay.
	I mean, if I'm a financial advisor and I stole all the money from my last 10 clients, I mean, well, you can't logically prove that...
	You might get a brain tumor and become a really great guy.
	Yes, but, you know, we make decisions based on probabilities.
	You might actually get where you want driving very fast blindfolded, but don't do it, right?
	So, but when it comes to...
	To being overweight for a therapist.
	I mean, I guess she may be the minority that is glandular issues, thyroid, I don't know, whatever that is, right?
	But my standard for that would be, does she address being overweight at the beginning?
	Right, true.
	Which she didn't.
	So if the nutrition, like if you want to be a nutritionist, sorry, if you want to go to a nutritionist and the nutritionist shows up and she's 300 pounds, The first thing that I would expect is a nutritionist would say, listen, I know I'm here to give you advice about diet, and I'm aware that I'm overweight, and here's why, and here's what it is, and blah-de-blah-de-blah, right?
	That's having empathy for how you land for other people, right?
	And if someone doesn't do that, then I know they don't have empathy, and they don't know how they appear to others, right?
	Knowing how you appear to other people is really important in life.
	Knowing if you're yelling at people.
	Knowing if your jokes are funny or not, or at least enjoyable to others.
	Knowing whether what you're doing is attractive or repulsive.
	Knowing whether what you're doing is working financially or not.
	Knowing whether you're getting jobs or not.
	Knowing how you appear to other people.
	Now, I mean, I have the...
	Joyful experience of seeing myself in videos and giving speeches and hearing myself back and so on, right?
	It should not be a weird experience.
	Oh, I don't believe I sound like that.
	It's like, well, video yourself.
	Play it back.
	You get a sense of how you look to other people.
	That's pretty good.
	You know, when you're looking at yourself, you're automatically in the point of view from someone else, right?
	So that would be my standard.
	And not necessarily that the weight issue is a deal-breaker.
	But it's a huge red flag.
	And if that huge red flag is not dealt with up front, then no.
	Absolutely not.
	Right?
	And I don't really need any more on that, right?
	I think I explained that pretty well.
	Yeah.
	Things can be explained away, but not even knowing they need to be explained away, that's not good.
	So that's good then.
	My judgment is good.
	It was good.
	I guess my first...
	No, but my question is, hang on, hang on.
	Let me save you even more time and money, my friend.
	Let me save you even more.
	Okay.
	You talked to her on the phone to make an appointment or was it a secretary?
	Yeah, because it was like a free service through work.
	So they were just like, here is a counselor who's available today or something like that.
	And...
	Well, you can, of course, say, I would like to talk to the counselor before I go and pour my heart out and spend your money.
	Like, give me a few minutes on the phone.
	You know, what's your approach to therapy and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
	Because you understand that, well, you probably don't know this, but as far as I know, Christy, there's no therapy that works better than any other therapy.
	Right?
	And so what that means is that it's not like, well, you have this and therefore you need to do this.
	You have depression, you need to go to the Marvel superhero anti-depression therapist style dude or dude-ess, right?
	And so there's no style of therapy that has ever been shown to be more or less efficacious.
	Okay.
	And what that means...
	But they're still useful.
	And they have been shown to be very important.
	So because there's no particular style of therapy that seems to work better...
	I mean, I'd sure love for therapists to get into philosophy...
	Because I think that the majority of suffering is a lack of acknowledgement of evil.
	I think that's the major abscess in the mind, is a lack of acknowledgement of evil, which is why it bothers me so much when everyone says you've got to forgive evil people.
	That's just making people sicker.
	I think that the acknowledgement of having suffered evil is the greatest step forward in mental health.
	I say this from my own experience in therapy, that it took about 18 months, and my therapist finally Got the moral issues that I faced, the evil I was subjected to as a child.
	And I was like, ah, okay.
	Wow.
	I wish I didn't have to spend $15,000 for that speech, which is why I tried to sell it a little cheaper.
	But give it away, give it away, give it away now.
	But I would say that it is not any style of therapy.
	And what that means, it is then the nature of the therapist and the approach of the therapist.
	Right.
	That counts.
	And so I personally would not go to a therapist without talking to that therapist for a few minutes first.
	Because, you know, again, according to this blink phenomenon, right, this Malcolm Gladwell book, we can tell a huge amount about people just in 10 or 20 seconds of conversation.
	So if they're like, yeah, I do a lot of interpersonal, fussy cat, hand puppet, hug therapy, and I'm sorry, what was the question again?
	It's like, thank you for playing the take my money for mental health, but you do not get my business, right?
	And if, you know, if the person is like really talkathonic and doesn't ask any questions or anything like that, then that's another.
	So I, you know, Save you even.
	That's free.
	And it's a few minutes as opposed to costing, you know, because this costs you even though it was paid for by someone else because that's one less therapy session you can get.
	Yeah, that's true.
	Right?
	From someone else.
	Okay.
	That helps.
	Thank you.
	Yeah, just talk to people and see how you feel.
	I think that's the really important thing.
	Anyway, did you have another topic?
	It sounds like you want to get to the next.
	Me?
	Well, I did...
	No, no, the other things you use.
	Your hand puppets.
	I think I kind of know the answer now because of what you said, but like this counselor on the second meeting, I said to her, I'm like tearing up now so you can probably hear my voice, like I was talking to her about my...
	Two roommates who are like, they're no longer roommates, they're married, and I was really close to one of them at the time, and kind of friends with the other, but I said to her...
	Like, I don't know why friendships can't be as close as relationships.
	Like, why you can't share your feelings and stuff.
	And then she said, maybe because it's not appropriate.
	You what now?
	She said, sharing feelings in a romantic relationship is not appropriate?
	No, in a friendship.
	Oh, sharing feelings in a friendship is not appropriate.
	Well, apparently, given her girth, maybe she just felt that sharing cheesecake was appropriate in a friendship, but sharing emotions.
	So, really, she said that sharing emotions in a friendship is not appropriate.
	Yeah, because my two friends, they were in a relationship with each other, and I guess, yeah, I don't know.
	Like, my reaction to that when she said it, it was like, I felt creepy.
	Like, I was like, oh, am I being inappropriate?
	Like, I felt creepy.
	Like, I was creepy.
	Right.
	Now, you know that philosophically the words creepy and inappropriate have no meaning whatsoever.
	And I get that you're using this language and I'm not criticizing you for it, but inappropriate is one of these, you know, I hate to say it, female-inspired words.
	That has to do with, you must change your behavior because I am uncomfortable.
	My comfort is an absolute, and if you cause me discomfort, I'm going to label what you're doing as inappropriate.
	And of course, you know, creepy, it's kind of one of these things as well.
	And this...
	Desire to shield women from negative emotions.
	One of the great gatekeepers of that is this word called inappropriate.
	Like I've never heard that from a man.
	Yeah.
	That's true.
	You know, you beat me in air hockey.
	That's inappropriate.
	You know, I mean, and again, you know, as you know, I hate women as a whole.
	So I really appreciate you standing in front of the scalding furnace of my hatred for women.
	I really, you know, that's fantastic.
	My poor wife and daughter just having to deal with all this bile and hatred towards women as a whole.
	But inappropriate is one of these words that is so dangerous because nobody knows what it means other than you're making someone uncomfortable.
	That's actually, sorry, a professor in a class I just took, he said, he was talking about like prejudice, and he said the word bossy, he said the word bossy is never used for men, only for women.
	So he's like, so keep that in mind next time you think someone is bossy.
	Hmm.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I mean, it's like the word nag.
	It's rarely used for men, but it's often used for women.
	Yeah.
	But, you know, on the plus side, the word abusive is almost only ever used for men and almost never used for women.
	And I think that's a bit more of an important word.
	You know, like, just, do you mind if I have a minor sidebar rants?
	I love rants.
	Get comfortable, I'll be right back.
	Right, so, and I'll probably do a video.
	Right, so I did this video criticizing or talking about the dangers of dating single moms.
	And, um...
	I've got so many emails and comments like, oh yeah, when are you going to start talking about the dangers of dating single men?
	Well, first of all, it's single man because it's almost all women, right?
	So I try to go statistically with that, which is important, which is why I talk a lot about spanking in America and not so much spanking in Norway, where it's very rare.
	So that's sort of one, dealing with that.
	But the second is, too, is that I get very suspicious, and it's not just women, but I get very suspicious around women's issues.
	When women say, well, you're talking about bad things women do.
	Well, what about men, right?
	Okay.
	Well, when was the last time when someone talked about domestic abuses, you know, men domestically abused, that women all charged the forum saying, well, what about women?
	You know, half the time it's initiated by women.
	Yeah.
	Never happens, right?
	So whenever men get criticized, women are like, yeah!
	And then whenever women get criticized, women are like, well, what about the men?
	And it's like, yeah...
	Or when people say, well, you know, you have to remember that, you know, of course, men do die seven years younger, and there's more money for breast cancer research than prostate cancer research, although the latter is far more common.
	And, of course, men, 97% of workplace deaths and so on.
	Like, you never see women bringing the male perspective to the conversation, and never is a strong term.
	Of course, there are some women I admire enormously who do that.
	But...
	At the moment that women start talking about how women initiate half of domestic abuse situations, then I will start talking more about the male addictions of men.
	Or like, you know, what about the deadbeat dads?
	It's like, well, you know, we already have a word for them.
	It's called deadbeat dads and men have been hammered with that for about 5,000 years by now.
	But what about the deadbeat moms?
	Anyway, so I just wanted to sort of mention that.
	Let's get back to To your issue.
	It's okay.
	I'm so sorry.
	How rude I felt.
	It's not appropriate to share feelings between...
	Yeah, appropriate.
	So what did your therapist mean by not appropriate?
	She didn't say...
	I don't think...
	I think I said...
	I think I might have said, well, now I'm worried that I've been inappropriate and...
	But what does inappropriate mean?
	She definitely never said what it means.
	It's inappropriate.
	Yeah, I don't know.
	So women say that bringing sexuality to the workplace is inappropriate, right?
	And look, I appreciate that.
	I'm sensitive to that.
	I mean, I was a boss, and I fully recognize that.
	I mean, if you're a boss, you're in a situation of power, you can't really ask a subordinate out on a date.
	I mean, I think that's all true and valid and important.
	But makeup and lipstick and perfume are sexual in nature, right?
	And so if we're not supposed to bring sexuality to the workplace...
	Then don't wear tight skirts.
	Because they're not comfortable, right?
	I know.
	Oh, I've tried.
	Don't wear high heels.
	High heels are not functional.
	They're not comfortable.
	They're there to make your...
	to put your butt on a shelf for people to admire, right?
	That's what high heels are for.
	And tight skirts are not comfortable.
	So don't wear uncomfortable stuff for sexual display.
	And don't make your lips red, which is a sign of sexual arousal.
	And don't put pharonyms and musk on that are a sign of sexual arousal, which women do all the time in the workplace, and then complain about men bringing sexuality to the workplace.
	But they'll say it's inappropriate.
	But inappropriate is one of these words that's supposed to make you feel bad while relieving the person of any responsibility for defining what the issue is.
	Thank you.
	Yeah.
	Does that make sense?
	So they say, it's inappropriate, well, tell me what you mean.
	And I guarantee you, I don't know, I was just hoping this trick would work.
	Right?
	I don't have an answer.
	I was just kind of hoping that you'd feel bad, change your behavior, and relieve for me the responsibility of having to define it, right?
	Because, I don't know, I've...
	So what do you think she meant?
	No, actually I don't know.
	I was just saying well as though I knew.
	It's not...
	Well, I think she...
	Because they were in a relationship, I feel like she meant I was like trying to...
	Become part of the relationship or something.
	Because she...
	I don't remember if it was before or after if she asked if I was attracted to the guy and the male roommate who I was closer friends with.
	And, like, I... When she asked that, I just kind of...
	Like, it shocked me.
	And I was like, no.
	Why would it shock you?
	I'm not saying it's wrong, I just want to make sure I understand your reaction.
	I mean, come on, that's totally inappropriate.
	Yeah, well, I think it might have shocked me because, like, um...
	Probably it shocked me because I was, like, afraid of having feelings for him.
	I don't know.
	I have a new therapist who I've gone to two things with, and I talked about this, and she said, like, you know, feelings are sometimes they come and sometimes they go.
	But I basically never had feelings for him, but sometimes it would kind of cross my mind, like, oh, wouldn't it be easy if he wanted to date me, you know?
	But also, at the time that I went to see this previous counselor in August, I was...
	I thought their relationship was horrible.
	I thought he was horrible to the other roommate.
	So I think it kind of shocked me because it's like, no, I have no feelings for him because right now I'm just having huge issues with them and I don't even want to live in this house anymore.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, like you've seen him as he is as a partner, which is kind of tough to find romantically exciting if he's sitting there in his boxers with his hand half down his groin with a pile of dirty plates around him smelling like a fish factory.
	It's like, I don't care how he looks.
	I've seen behind the curtain and it is not pretty.
	Or whatever it is, right?
	You see someone who's nasty or mean or unavailable or whatever it is, right?
	Somebody has said, hey, Steph, you should try nylon stockings, especially without shaving.
	Now, for me, that means robbing a bank because I shave my head.
	So I think she's talking about.
	But I can imagine that is wildly, wildly uncomfortable.
	Right.
	And of course, the women women put up with the discomfort in order to enhance their sexual attractiveness, which is fine.
	It's fine.
	I mean, there's nothing to mean—sex is great.
	That's, you know, I'm glad my parents had sex.
	I find life to be quite enjoyable.
	And however dysfunctional they are, I'm glad they merged and gave me a chance to breathe.
	That's fantastic.
	But it is, you know—it's tough for women.
	I mean, it's tough because women want to attract a great guy, but—so they have to make themselves super attractive, but then they attract all these guys who they don't want to date, and they have to get a little coldy, rejecty.
	Anyway, that's neither here nor there.
	Now, it is a bit odd to be a married couple and to have a single roommate, right?
	Yeah, they also had a single male roommate.
	Yeah, so there were four of us.
	Right.
	Was the plan that it's not a commune?
	Well, when I moved in with them, they were only dating.
	I lived with them for two years.
	I think they've been living in that same house for five years and then they got married like a year ago while me and the other roommate were also living there.
	But it's kind of like they've been dating for nine years or whatever.
	Right.
	Yeah, I mean, generally, if people get married, it's not a bad time to find your own place, in my humble opinion.
	Yes, I've since moved out and it was a whole, it was a disaster.
	It was a disaster to move out?
	Yeah, because, um...
	You're breaking up the commune!
	How heartless!
	What's the matter with you?
	How are they going to have their Jell-O deep dish parties?
	Anyway, never mind.
	So what happened?
	Well, almost a year ago, we had a house meeting of should we stay together for another year as a house?
	Should they sign the lease?
	The two of them were on the lease.
	Me and the other single roommate weren't on the lease.
	And then I just kept crying at work and...
	And everyone at work was like, you should move out.
	And I was like, no, it's not so bad.
	Wait, you were crying at work about the living situation?
	And then eventually, one work friend, he offered me to stay with him for two weeks.
	Why can't you get your own place?
	Are you currently in an Apple factory in China?
	I mean, are you making fingernails and...
	Belly lint for your salary?
	Why can't you get your own place?
	I am currently in my own place as of October 1st.
	Yeah, I just stayed with the one friend for two weeks, but it kind of required that for me to do it.
	Like, I was kind of looking at places, but I was like, ah, maybe it's not so bad.
	Maybe I'll stay another seven months.
	Now, tell me, if you don't mind, sorry to interrupt, but tell me a little bit about, like, when people...
	Tell me about what seemed to me fairly obvious or predictable difficulties.
	You mean predictable difficulties of living in a house with a couple who has gotten married?
	With a dysfunctional married couple and another single guy.
	Now, look, look, please understand.
	I mean, I don't say this because I consistently identify relationships.
	Problems in my own life.
	I don't.
	I don't, right?
	So I'm not trying to say, well, how could you fall for something so obvious?
	I mean, I fall for far more egregious and far more obvious problems, so I'm not...
	But, you know, the outside perspective is always really important, right?
	So what this tells me is, or what indicates to me, is that you didn't have people in your life who were willing to get, you know, a medium-sized fish, smack you upside the head and say, what are you doing?
	Okay, so you don't have that circle of feedback, so to speak, of people who can help, you know, catch you when, as the inevitable blind people, we always wander in front of buses and we need people to tackle us out of the way, right?
	Sorry to interrupt, but the roommates were, like, before them, like two years before I moved in with them, I was living with my parents for a year, and...
	I had to get out of that and the easiest thing was to just move in with those roommates and they were the closest friends I had, you know.
	The easiest, really?
	The easiest thing.
	Of all possible options, the easiest thing was to move in with a highly dysfunctional couple.
	Couldn't be easier.
	I mean, even in hindsight, that was totally the easiest thing that I could adapt.
	I don't know.
	At the time, I was like, this is great.
	It's fun.
	We have, like, a house where we, I don't know...
	Party or whatever.
	We didn't really party, but we had interesting conversations.
	So at the...
	Are you kidding me?
	The cult of interesting conversations.
	Ooh, that actually should be our tagline too.
	I'm waiting for the t-shirt, right?
	I'm in the cult of interesting conversations.
	Alright.
	Okay, so I mean, obviously in hindsight it was not...
	The easiest thing, and I would imagine that if you felt it was very important to move out from your parents' place, that your parents weren't exactly saying, well, you know, this could be a complicated living situation.
	They're a couple.
	Tell me how they resolve conflicts.
	Tell me how they resolve disputes.
	How is that going to, right?
	You weren't getting that kind of feedback, right?
	I didn't feel comfortable talking.
	In fact, I moved out of my parents' house kind of in secret while they were on vacation, which was an accident, but...
	That's when I booked the plane.
	And I was like, well, that's convenient.
	I'll just not tell them.
	Yeah, I'm sorry about that.
	So, I mean, my suggestion would be to try and get people in your life who are really good at giving you that feedback.
	I hear stockings and lipstick is the way to go.
	It doesn't work for me, but it may work for us.
	No, but to get people in your life who can give you that kind of...
	you know, the have you thought this through set of questions, which I need to get asked.
	Mike asks me all the time and all of that, you know, have you thought through the appropriateness of showing up at the airport in spandex and just a spandex hat.
	So he asked me those questions and, you know, other people asked me, friends, family asked me that, have you thought this through?
	What are the consequences of this?
	And even then I still make a lot of mistakes.
	So but I think having that feedback of like, you know, without an agenda, I hate it when people sort of, they ask me a question when they're just waiting for an answer.
	And I try to sort of be open-ended in what I ask for people.
	But I think it's really important to have those people in your life who can ask you, you know, how does this play out?
	Have you thought this through?
	How does this fit with your values?
	And all that kind of stuff, right?
	The thing...
	Security is social, I think, sort of fundamentally.
	The thing is, how do I get that when I'm...
	Like, clearly in a pattern of friendships that aren't like that.
	Like, it's like...
	Well, stop doing that.
	It's so obvious, right?
	How do I change my friendships to better friends?
	Well, you write down what you want in friendships, right?
	Right?
	I mean, we all have a resume which we give to employers, right?
	And we should have a demand resume that...
	People have to filter through for potential relationships with us, right?
	Right?
	Don't be insane.
	Don't be dysfunctional.
	For God's sake, don't be inappropriate.
	But, you know, it's...
	So tell me, what are the standards that you want in a friend or any relationship?
	What is sort of the minimum and then the ideal?
	So what are the minimum standards?
	I guess I haven't really thought about it.
	I know that I want...
	I want friends who I can be honest with because I have a thing where I can't, or I feel that I can't, like I kind of have to only tell parts of the truth or like everything is a secret.
	So I want friends who are like accepting of me, you know?
	There's a strong feeling, right?
	Yeah, tell me more about that.
	I don't know.
	You're tired of hiding?
	Is that right?
	Yeah.
	Hiding is exhausting.
	It's like a game of hide-and-go-seek that never ends.
	It's like, I'm tired of sitting in the bathtub.
	Yeah.
	And I don't know.
	It's related to my parents because I also don't really talk to them.
	And I think that's how I...
	Well, you even had to hide leaving, right?
	Like, my dad, when he does talk to me, he says, like, I'm so worried.
	And, like, when I left, he was like, I don't want you to end up homeless.
	And I'm 27.
	Nice.
	Yeah.
	That is some trust, right.
	Right.
	And I mean, what a condemnation of parenting, of his own parenting, right?
	I mean, I hope I haven't been such a terrible parent that homelessness is an option for you or a possible inevitability.
	So that's rough for sure.
	Thank you.
	And what else?
	What do you feel like you have to hide with friends?
	Well, all this, like, anarchy stuff.
	Oh, like all that non-violence stuff?
	Yeah, that's horrible, right?
	And, yeah, with the previous roommates, like, any, I don't know, just, like, circumcision would come up, and I would be like, but...
	It's like they didn't choose it, and they'd be like, so it prevents diseases, and so I would just feel like, okay, can't...
	Yeah, like mastectomies for female children, right?
	Yeah, yeah, got it.
	So, like, stuff like that, or...
	And actually, if you amputate the entire penis, you will not get any STDs at all.
	Exactly.
	Exactly.
	And just like I'm gluten free and that's like a thing that people make or my previous roommates made fun of me for.
	And I saw my parents like eight months ago and told them about that and they didn't make fun of me for that.
	And I was kind of like, what have I chosen friends worse than I thought my parents were?
	Like that really kind of made me think about it.
	Right.
	Yeah, that is very tough.
	Look, in On Truth, Mike, do you mind giving me the link to that?
	I'll read this bit at the end.
	You know, I can sort of be somewhat poetic in the moment, but usually when I get a chance to really edit it, it tends to be better.
	But I'll talk about something that I mentioned in On Truth about the desert.
	Yeah.
	Right, which is when you let go of the familiar in pursuit of the virtuous, there is an inevitable desert that occurs.
	You can't avoid it, you can't bypass it at all.
	When you let go of the familiar and strike out towards the new, you will end up in a desert.
	And the fear that the desert doesn't end is why we stay there, right?
	And that fear that the desert doesn't end, that this is the only habitation that is around, that is incredibly dangerous for us.
	That's what keeps us in dysfunctional or abusive relationships, is the idea that, well, I'm in this shitty little village, right?
	There's no running water.
	There's cholera everywhere.
	You know, attack dogs that...
	Bite me randomly, so I should really leave this.
	But you say, well, if I leave this, I go out in the desert, right?
	Because around me is desert, and there's no other habitation, right?
	There's no other habitation.
	And that is the fear, that this is the best there is.
	And if we head out, we will end up without even the pretense of a community around us, right?
	Yeah.
	And that is really, I mean, tragic, right?
	The idea that we can't do better than where we're born.
	Now, throughout most of human history, that was kind of true, right?
	You're born in a tribe, and you either deal with that tribe or you go to some other tribe.
	And you go to some other tribe, they'll think you're a spy and they'll kill you, right?
	Or they'll say, well, you must have got kicked out of your tribe for some damn reason, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	And so that is, you know, sort of understandable that we better the devil you know, right?
	And there was no better place to go in the past usually, right?
	If that makes sense.
	And unfortunately, you know, for those who rely on that bonding we have with our initial tribe...
	There is a better tribe now, right?
	There is a tribe of the chosen, whereas before there was only a tribe of circumstance, of accident, of accidental biological proximity, right?
	And because we have a choice now where we didn't before, we can cross that desert knowing that there's stuff on the other side, right?
	That there are communities and people on the other side that we can greet and find our way to, right?
	You know, when women couldn't leave marriages, then they, you know, kind of put up with what they put up with, right?
	And if they really didn't want to, they became a nun, right?
	But...
	When women had the chance to either get married or not, and the chance to...
	to get divorced if they didn't want it then they could do that and that I think improved marriage enormously I sort of accept that for women in particular marriage got better or life got better but first there was that the desert, right?
	and that desert is really terrifying because everyone tells us there's nothing on the other side because they believe that that's why they've stayed in those crappy things, right?
	And from that standpoint, I think we really need to have the courage to step out of the broken tribe and find a better one, a virtuous one.
	Let me just read this a little bit from the book.
	Without a doubt, there is no conceivable way to make the case that you should examine or explore anarchy in order to achieve an Anarchistic goals at a political level.
	That would be like asking Francis Bacon, the founder of the Modern Scientific Method, to pursue his ideas in order to secure funding for a particle accelerator.
	When I was younger, I studied acting and playwriting for two years at the National Theatre School in Montreal, Canada.
	On the very first day, we eager thespians were told that if we could be happy doing anything other than acting, we should do that other thing.
	Acting is such an irrational career to pursue that no sane calculation of the costs and benefits would ever lead anyone in that direction.
	In the same way, if you can be happy and content without examining the core assumptions held by those around you, I'd strongly suggest that you never bring the contents of this book up with anyone.
	And look at what is written about here as a mere unorthodox intellectual exercise, like examining the gameplay that might result from alternate chess rules.
	If it is the case, however, that you have a passion for the truth or as it more often feels that the truth has an unwavering passion for you, then the discontentedness and alienation that you have always felt can be profitably alleviated through an exploration of philosophical truth.
	Once we begin to cross-examine our own core beliefs, the prejudices that we have inherited from history, we will inevitably face the feigned indifference, open hostility, And condescending scorn from those around us, particularly those who claim to have an expertise in the matters we explore.
	This can all be painful and bewildering, it's true.
	On the other hand, however, once we develop a truly deep and intimate relationship with the truth, and thus really with our own selves, we will find ourselves almost involuntarily looking back upon our own prior relationships and truly seeing for the first time the shallowness and evasion that characterized our interactions.
	We can never be closer to others than we are to ourselves, and we can never be closer to ourselves than we are to the truth.
	The truth leads us to personal authenticity.
	Authenticity leads us to intimacy, which is the greatest joy in human relations.
	Thus, while it is true that while many shallow people will pass from our lives when we pursue the truth at all costs, it is equally true that across the desert of isolation lies a small village.
	It is not yet a city nor even a town full of honest and passionate souls where love and friendship can flower free of hypocrisy, selfishness, and avoidance, where curious and joyful self-expression flow easily, where the joy of honesty and the fundamental where the joy of honesty and the fundamental relaxation of easy self-criticism unifies our happy tribe in our pursuit and achievement of the truth.
	The road to this village is dry and long and stony and hard.
	Thank you.
	But I truly hope that you will join us.
	I think it's worth it.
	I know it's worth it.
	But I can't make that decision for others, right?
	Yeah.
	Tell me what you think.
	It made me kind of sad but hopeful, I guess, because that is what I want.
	I want the truth and a better world.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, sad but hopeful is sort of the definition of philosophy, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, there's no way to recognize the truth without being sad at its absence from your life and from society as a whole.
	But knowing the truth does give us some hope.
	Right?
	It's like Pandora's box, you know, the story where she opens up the chest, she's told not to open, and she gets all these demons, and then there's one little gay fairy at the bottom called hope.
	I am the gay fairy called hope.
	philosophy is the game theory called hope but I don't know any way to get to the new without letting go of the old Like, I just...
	I don't.
	Because the problem is, if you're still surrounded by the old, the new won't want you.
	Right?
	Do you think, like, therapy will help me figure out whether my parents are, like, whether I can be around them or not?
	I think that...
	I think that can certainly help.
	I mean, certainly if you have questions of separation from parents, as I've said for years, therapy is essential in that process.
	That is such...
	I mean, I think it's true if you're getting divorced from a marriage of six months, you should go to therapy.
	You know, for major life decisions, I think therapy is really important.
	For major relationship breakups...
	I think that therapy is essential.
	I can't prove that, right?
	I think it's essential.
	For potential separation from parents who are a historical relationship for which the separation from is attacked by society almost universally, right?
	What happens if a woman leaves an abusive husband?
	What do people say?
	Good.
	Good for you.
	You go, girl.
	Girl power, right?
	Don't look back.
	What happens if a man leaves an abusive mother?
	She's your mother.
	But she's your mother if she sacrificed everything for you.
	Imagine a woman leaves an abusive husband of 20 years who paid the bills.
	Imagine if women said to her, no, you have to go back.
	He paid your bills.
	So you owe him now allegiance because you're bought and paid for.
	Yeah, right.
	And, you know, what happens if a woman wishes to leave an abusive mother?
	What do people say?
	The same thing.
	Yeah.
	And imagine if a woman wants to leave an abusive husband, and they say, well, you have to go back because he's paid your bills, because he sacrificed things.
	He didn't sleep with too many other women throughout the entire course of your marriage.
	He sacrificed a lot of sex, so you have to go back and get beaten up by him.
	Oh, and also, if you don't go back to your abusive husband, you will regret it later for the rest of your life.
	You will regret it.
	Or, if a woman had an abusive husband and decided to leave him and then he gets sick, how many people say, well, now you have to go back and take care of him?
	And if you don't, you're a really, really bad person.
	Women of all the groups in society should know this the best.
	But you see, when women want to leave abusive husbands, that's considered to be positive for women.
	But when men or women want to leave abusive parents, that's considered to be often negative for women.
	Nobody really cares about the dad too much.
	He's always the mom.
	It's inappropriate.
	It's a negative that do not trouble me to define because if I define it, it loses its emotionally manipulative power, right?
	So the first thing to recognize is that society is vilely hypocritical on this issue.
	Vilely, and see the interests of kids don't matter.
	Yeah.
	I mean, you couldn't have religion if the interests of kids matter.
	You couldn't have government schools if the interests of kids matter.
	You couldn't have national debt if the interests of kids matter.
	You couldn't have spanking if the issues of kids mattered.
	Society is built on the ghosts of childhood needs.
	The culture, society, the hierarchy, all of it, all of it is built on the crushed independence and willpower of children.
	As the head of the American Teachers Union said, I'll start caring about the issues of children when children start paying union dues.
	It's all for the teachers.
	It's all for society.
	We could live in paradise if we spent about half a decade focusing on the needs of children, both as expressed by themselves and as validated by science.
	So, the needs of children They're not only utterly absent from the calculations of society.
	They're present only to the degree with which children can be exploited.
	Public school is an exploitation of children.
	It is teachers holding children hostage for the sake of profit.
	And so with regards to abusive parents, the idea that children could have needs, adult children could have needs in opposition to abusive parents is so incomprehensible to people because our entire society is built on the exact opposite principle.
	That children must never have needs in opposition to the powers that be, whether religious or secular or parental or political.
	I mean, nobody asks children what they want.
	Do you want to go to school?
	Do you want to go to church?
	Do you want to be spanked?
	Well, the answer is no, which is why they're spanked, right?
	We only solicit children's preferences in order to violate them in general.
	And the idea that we would ask children what they want and build society accordingly is incomprehensible.
	It's the opposite of what exists, which means it's peaceful and it's voluntary and it's moral.
	So, unfortunately, when you talk about not seeing abusive parents, you run into the most disgusting and vile and evil hypocrisies in society, and this is particularly true among women.
	Women should be championing voluntarism within relationships because it is hard won and deservedly earned by women in terms of marriage, right?
	And women, 70% of divorces are initiated by women because they're dissatisfied.
	They fell out of love.
	It's not abuse or anything like that.
	And so women thoroughly understand it as a gender.
	Voluntarism in relationships.
	I've said this before, I'll probably say it again.
	One of the most influential films I ever saw as a kid was Kramer vs.
	Kramer.
	It came out when I was, I don't know, 10 or 11 or something like that.
	And I took my own hard-earned money And saw it three times in the theater, trying to puzzle it out.
	This woman abandons her child, abandons her husband.
	He's not abusive.
	He's not mean.
	He's not a drunk.
	She chose him.
	And if you read all the reviews, there's not one criticism of the woman.
	She had to go find herself.
	Just abandoned her son.
	Abandoned her husband.
	That she chose.
	The son that she was responsible for caring and protecting.
	She was a stay-at-home mom.
	That was her job.
	And she just left for no, in particular reason.
	And everyone thinks that's great.
	It's empowered.
	It's, you know...
	Well, it was the 70s, right?
	But...
	And the reason why therapy is so essential with parental separation is because...
	It fundamentally goes against the power structures that rule the world.
	And therefore, everybody condemns it.
	For no moral reason whatsoever.
	If women can leave abusive husbands who they chose, then surely adult children can leave abusive parents that they never chose and could not leave.
	And who they had no power to relative To a married woman.
	A married woman can leave at any time.
	Shelter is this and that.
	She's got economic independence.
	An abused child has nowhere to go.
	No help.
	No survival.
	Unless you're willing to roll the dice and go with foster parents or orphanage homes.
	Not very palatable for most children.
	If you're considering it, therapy is essential because you will go face to face with the ugliest, most vicious and predatory prejudice in human society.
	And that would be my...
	And again, it's a very serious thing.
	And obviously I would never...
	I don't even need to say don't take it lightly because of course it is a very serious thing.
	But therapy is essential for that process.
	Again, I can't prove that.
	That's my perspective and opinion.
	Great.
	Great.
	All the atheists in the world even will discard every part of the Bible except for honor thy mother and thy father.
	Yeah.
	Nothing in there about honoring your children.
	Of course not.
	Children don't pay tithes, right?
	Is there anything else you wanted to ask or talk about?
	How are you feeling?
	I don't know.
	I'm still like...
	I'm scared of like, I don't know, like what if I choose a therapist?
	Well, I'm seeing one and she seems good, but I don't know, what if she's like not open to leaving parents if that's what's needed?
	And like, I don't...
	Well, then what you can do is you can ask her why she's deviating from best practices.
	Because best practices in the field of psychology...
	Best practices is to not be in abusive relationships.
	DrPhil.com, DrPhil represents the greatest minds and principles in the psychological and psychiatric community.
	He has a whole advisory board composed of current and former heads of the American Psychological and Psychiatric Association.
	He has the best possible experts, right?
	DrPhil.com forward slash article slash article slash 35.
	If you were abused by your parents, do what is best for you.
	Consider the possibility that it may not be healthy to have any sort of relationship with your parent.
	It is a difficult pill to swallow and it should be used as the last option.
	However, it may be the option that helps you the most.
	Right?
	Everything on the DrPhil site goes through a whole advisory board of the best minds in psychology.
	They don't put stuff up there randomly.
	This parental, like separating from abusive parents, represents best practices in psychology when the abuse cannot be solved.
	Okay.
	So if your therapist says that's not good, then say, well, help me understand this, because the APA sanctioned and promoted Dr.
	Phil show talks about this as best practices.
	So, is it not best practices?
	In which case, you all need to deal with Dr.
	Phil, who's putting this stuff out publicly every day.
	He's got the largest daytime TV show of any kind.
	You all need to solve with that because he's basically telling diabetics to eat sugar.
	Or, you need to adjust your own emotional prejudices to recognize that this is best practices.
	Right.
	Okay.
	That's helpful.
	And I think, because I asked her, are some relationships not healthy to stay in?
	And she said, yeah, not all relationships are healthy.
	But I didn't ask specifically about parents.
	And it's understandable, right?
	Because it's pretty terrifying, right?
	But it is...
	It is best practices.
	You know, again, that's just one comment on a website, but I think that it is important to understand that this is well talked about and well discussed.
	Again, it's not something that makes it to the mainstream as yet, but that's true of spanking as well, right?
	I mean, most experts say that spanking is really bad for you and the media doesn't really talk about it because it's inconvenient to a lot of people who spank, right?
	The only thing that gets to the media about circumcision is some flawed studies saying it might prevent some STD. Yeah, and those studies are flawed, and in fact, if people believe that circumcision saves them from some STDs, they're less likely to use condoms, which means it actually raises their...
	Okay.
	But yeah, I think it's worth talking about sooner rather than later because it's very painful to be unsupported in these kinds of areas.
	And, you know, we've all seen the prejudice.
	I've seen it more directly than most, but we've all seen the prejudice that comes out of these kinds of situations.
	But I think it is important to establish.
	Just say, you know, is there an abusive relationship which should ever be retained?
	Right?
	Are there consistently abusive relationships that should ever be retained for purposes of mental health?
	And I think the therapist would kind of have to say no to that, right?
	And then say, well, then of course this includes parental relationships, right?
	But they can't then say, well, no, except for parental relationships, right?
	Because they just said no to that, right?
	But...
	And the other thing too, you don't need the therapist's approval for that, but what you do need is for the therapist to help you process your emotions, right?
	I don't think, again, I'm no expert on therapy, but I don't think therapists are supposed to tell you what to do.
	Like they're not supposed to say, leave your husband, he's abusive, right?
	I think they're supposed to say that your husband's behavior is abusive.
	But I don't think they're supposed to tell you to leave.
	You just go to them and say, like, I've done this, this is how I feel about it, and they help you work with your feelings?
	Yeah, I mean, the purpose is for you to be competent, not to be told what to do.
	And being told what to do is what happens when you're not competent, right?
	Right, I mean, if you're telling someone to do it, it's because they're not doing it right.
	And the purpose, of course, of therapy is to raise your efficacy in emotional and rational processing, right?
	And so therapists aren't supposed to tell you what to do, which is why I don't tell people what to do.
	Not because I'm a therapist, but because there's just this basic principle that if I tell people what to do, all they've learned is to listen to someone tell them what to do, which is of no value.
	In fact, it's of negative value.
	You know, I can tell my daughter, you know, six times six, I can tell her to write a three and a six.
	What the hell have I taught her?
	Nothing.
	But what I have taught her is I don't think she can figure out the math, right?
	But if you talk about your feelings with a therapist, then the therapist can mirror and help you to understand and appreciate the value of your emotions and all that kind of good stuff.
	And from there, who knows what's going to happen, right?
	Yes, that is very helpful.
	Thank you.
	You are more than welcome.
	And I'm afraid I must have some lunch.
	Oh!
	Philosophy interrupted once more by an addiction to shallow carbs.
	Thank you, Christy, so much for calling in.
	A hugely great conversation.
	And I'm sorry for all the FDR mail listeners who will not contact you asking for dates.
	Not much I can do about that.
	You have a delightful personality and a gorgeous voice, I might add, as well.
	Very rich.
	Oh, my pleasure.
	So...
	Thank you everyone so much for, you know, for the shows, for the support, for allowing me to do what I do, that voodoo, that I do, hopefully, somewhat well.
	Donations?
	Yeah.
	A tragic night to wake up to, what, four or five cancellations of subscriptions.
	So if you can help out, I'd really appreciate that.
	Remember, subscriptions came in, like, what, six years ago?
	And they haven't gone up.
	So if you're subscribing for $10 a month and you started five years ago, it's now worth like $5.
	So if you could up it to keep apace with the rampant inflation caused by the evils of central banking, I, of course, would enormously Enormously appreciate it.
	Mike, did we want to talk about any speaky, speaky things?
	Well, we should say that you're going to be guest hosting the Peter Schiff show tomorrow and Tuesday.
	That's January 20th and 21st.
	Not going to be having any guests on those shows, so it's going to be stuff for the full two hours.
	You can call and talk to them about whatever you'd like to talk about.
	And I'll run through the list real quick.
	February 4th, World Affairs Conference in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
	March 6th, the Texas Bitcoin Conference in Austin, Texas.
	April 11th through 13th, the Toronto Bitcoin Expo, also in Toronto.
	April 24th and 25th, the next web conference in Europe, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
	And July 26th, Capitalism and Morality.
	That's in Vancouver, British Columbia.
	Excellent.
	Excellent.
	All right.
	Well, everyone, have yourself a wonderful week.
	We will talk to you, Peter Schiff-wise, tomorrow.
	Is it Schiff Radio?
	Schiffradio.com.
	Listen into that?
	Yeah, Schiff Radio, S-C-H-I-F-F, radio.com.
	And we'll be there Monday, Tuesday, 10 a.m.
	to noon Eastern, where you get to hear the joy of me interrupting consistently by ads.
	And I guess we'll talk to everyone on Wednesday.

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