Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

Feb. 21, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

03:38:34

2623 Shielding Yourself From Tomorrow - Wednesday Call In Show February 19th, 2014

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Good evening, Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
	Hope you're doing well.
	It's the 19th of February, 2014.
	Mike, who do we have?
	All right, up first today is Stephen.
	Go ahead, Stephen.
	Hey, Steph.
	Hi.
	So I read Nathaniel Brandon's book, the one that you always recommend, The Psychology of Self-Esteem.
	And the parts that he wrote about self-trust and acting according to one's principles really interested me, but I noticed that it's really hard to act according to one's principles.
	So I was wondering if you had any advice on how to develop the willpower and the courage of mind to act consistently with the principles that we intellectually accept?
	And how do you delay the gratification that might come from rejecting those principles in any given moment?
	Great question.
	I must confess, a difficult question.
	So, Mike, could we pretend to introduce some static into the call and move on to someone who would like to know...
	There we go.
	And that's your answer.
	I know, it's a great question.
	It's a great question.
	Tell me the principles that are the toughest for you.
	Well, the one that comes to mind is I buy a bunch of useless junk when I could be using that money in a different fashion.
	You mean like basically donating to online?
	Yeah, that would be one better use of my money.
	That's not the most important one.
	That's just the one that comes to mind first.
	Other ones, I guess, would be getting rid of people in one's life that don't live up to standards, like friends, maybe family members.
	But in my case, I have a few friends who I don't think are too satisfactory.
	Yeah, you know, those kind of things.
	Yeah, you know that meme of that gray-haired, gray-bearded guy?
	You know, I don't always do this, but when I do, I hum and I hum, and it's like, I don't always talk politics with my friends.
	But when I do, I really need to get better friends.
	So, yeah, I mean, I can give you abstracts, but it's probably better to get something more concrete.
	I don't mind if we want to talk about the buying useless crap thing.
	That would be a good place to start.
	Well, much though you may end up monopolizing the three-hour show, I don't know if we're going to get to start and then move on to a wide variety of other topics, so I'd really like you to pick the most important one.
	We can go with that one, because my original call was going to be about donation and using one's money more practically, but then...
	Well, what happened was...
	I was going to call in about donation and financial advice, but then I realized that we're running low on money.
	But then I went and bought a bunch of useless stuff.
	So I'm like, well, that can't be the excuse because I have enough money to blow on useless stuff.
	So, yes.
	What do you mean by useless?
	What is useless stuff?
	Well, I guess it would be...
	I like to collect little toys or action figures.
	I just like to put them around my room and just display them just for my own personal...
	Aesthetic pleasure, I guess.
	That would be the main culprit.
	I don't spend an obscene amount of money, but still, I bought like $100 worth, and I think that's pretty crazy for something that has no practical...
	$100 worth of what kind of action figures?
	I bought this Pokemon one, this Sonic the Hedgehog one, so video game characters, right?
	They look cool and everything, but obviously I can't do anything with them.
	I'm probably going to forget I have them in a few days.
	And obviously the money could have gone to any number of places.
	I could have donated to your show.
	I could have donated to another show.
	I could have given it to charity.
	I could have saved it.
	Or you could have invested it in yourself, right?
	Like you could have learned how to program a mobile app or whatever.
	I mean, whatever would be adding to your human capital.
	You could have invested it even buying a tenth of a Bitcoin or whatever it is these days, 20% of a Bitcoin.
	So you could have done any other number of things with it, right?
	Yeah.
	Right.
	What happened in your life around the age of five, if you don't mind me asking?
	At the age of five, I don't know about fives particularly, but my parents were always in conflict around that time and up until like 13 when I moved away from my dad.
	Five in particular, I don't know, but yeah, in general, a lot of family conflict.
	Was there a time when your parents weren't fighting, when you were even younger than five?
	Oh man, I doubt it, yeah.
	Right.
	No, and the reason I'm asking is, I'm just curious if it ties in.
	So, you know, my daughter's going through this phase.
	Which has been going on for a while.
	And, you know, it's common to kids.
	It's not a big problem or anything, but she's acquisitive, right?
	She wants to buy everything or get everything, and then she wants to keep everything.
	Right?
	So, like, the rapper for toys, right?
	The rapper for toys, she's like, don't throw it out!
	It's beautiful!
	It's like, that may be true, but we can't keep every piece of known crap in the universe.
	So, grit your teeth, honey.
	It's going out.
	And, like, even, right, she started chewing, like, sugar-free gum.
	Don't throw out that rapper, it's beautiful!
	You know, like, it's, you know, mildly deranged, you know, in a good way.
	It's a phase, I guess.
	You know, part of it's probably her temperament, right?
	I mean, we're not, you know, a temperament appears to be somewhat genetic, which is not to say, like, virtue is genetic or our capacity for violence, but temperament.
	And she's kind of acquisitive, to say the least.
	You know, she's basically, they're going to be doing a documentary about her in about 30 years when they try and dig her out of magazines from 1952, you know, that kind of thing.
	So it's just sort of wondering if you've got this and how old are you?
	I'm 21.
	Right, 21.
	Do women come to your room?
	I actually just had one over for the first time on Monday.
	Oh, congratulations.
	I'm not sure exactly what you're saying, but congratulations.
	Since my room has turned into the nerd lair that it is now, that's what I mean.
	Well, it's good that you're not hiding anything.
	There's no pretend cool that she's going to burrow through and get to the real view on the other side.
	Ahead of time.
	I'm like, just so you know, my room is very, very nerdy, so I'm not going to hide the stuff because I don't have time for that.
	It's funny, you know, I mean, this hiding things about yourself.
	Just by the by, you know, I'm going to hijack it for like a two-minute rant, right?
	So I had a woman on, and women come on occasionally, not occasionally, but occasionally to talk about the topic comes up of attractiveness.
	And, you know, women are always very coy about attractiveness.
	Like, oh, I don't know.
	I guess I've never really thought about it.
	Or, I don't know.
	Is it really a big deal?
	Or, I don't know.
	Is it really that important?
	Or, I don't know.
	People tell me this and so on, right?
	Like, why on earth would I be asking women about attractiveness, you know?
	It's so insane.
	Because I was at the mall with some friends the other day.
	And, I mean, just walk through the mall.
	It's like 95% dedicated to female attractiveness.
	Purses to make you look sophisticated.
	White dresses to show you don't do manual labor.
	Long nails to show everyone you don't have to type.
	I mean, it's makeup aisles that go on for acres and acres and clothes and girdles and toenail polish and lipstick and sprays and dyes and powders and God knows what alchemic bullshit is going on that is depressed.
	That is causing massive depredations across the environment, right?
	Like, it seems like about 90 to 95% of the consumer economy is dedicated to women's attractiveness, and it drives massive amounts of spending, and malls are just cathedrals to female vanity.
	And then you ask a woman about attractiveness, and she's like, oh, I don't know.
	I guess I've never really thought about it.
	It's like, what?!
	You're not even hiding this!
	I just wanted to point this out.
	It's like, if this is a secret, it is not a very well-kept secret.
	You know we can go to malls, right?
	And we can see all of this stuff going down.
	So this idea, oh, attractiveness, I don't know.
	There's like two stores for the men in any mall.
	Yeah, and it's electronics to make you more productive so that your women can buy more stuff.
	And it's video games that you can relax once in a while.
	But yeah, no, it is quite mad.
	I mean, you just go from powder to strange smell to more simulated dead animals to hold God knows what in the black hole of a woman's purse.
	And it's like, why can't we talk about this?
	It's everywhere!
	It's everywhere.
	And, you know, it's literally like going down to Harlem and saying, hey, let's talk about the black experience, you know, and like 99 out of 100 people around you are black.
	And they're like, well, I don't know.
	I mean, what black experience?
	I mean, I don't think we've ever really thought about that.
	Is there a black experience?
	I don't even know if there are black people around.
	It's like, you're surrounding me.
	What are you talking about?
	It's everywhere.
	You're obvious.
	Anyway, I just wanted to mention that.
	It is weird, because just like this weird thing you can't talk about, even though it's absolutely everywhere.
	They have turned on daytime TV, you know, not a lot of ads for philosophy books on daytime TV. You know, a majority of consumers of daytime TV are stay-at-home moms or whatever, and it's not...
	It's all, you know...
	This will make your hair look electrifying.
	We killed nine yaks, fourteen hummingbirds, put them in a blender for something that makes your eyebrows appear slightly larger.
	It's just completely insane.
	Oh, you didn't see those series of ads advertising like Thomas Nagel's Mind and Cosmos?
	They're all over the place, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	In between perusing your Stephen Hawking's books, we have this lovely cream made from Brad Pitt's testicle, which you can put on under your eyes to make your rings under your eyes appear slightly less noticeable.
	Anyway, no, it's just, it's completely mad.
	It's absolutely everywhere.
	Women are completely devoted and obsessed by it, and yet it's not a topic of...
	They all feign this like, I don't know, I guess we could talk about it if you think it's important.
	I'm just noticing that it's important.
	Anyway.
	Okay, so...
	So, childhood not a massive amount of fun, right?
	Right.
	Right.
	And how bad did it get?
	Um...
	The worsted guy was yelling, which is pretty bad, but...
	Could have been worse, obviously.
	A lot of separation between my parents, a lot of conflict.
	But yelling like what?
	Yelling like top of the lungs, screaming, clinging on your head, veins bulging.
	So, psycho shit, right?
	Yes.
	You know, don't let me tell you your experience, but not the kind of stuff you see.
	Like, if you see someone at the mall doing that, you call mall security and don't make any sudden moves, right?
	Pretty much.
	It was a lot of my mom hiding me in the room because my dad was just very angry and loud and insane.
	What was he so angry and loud and insane about?
	First of all, he's an alcoholic, so that explains 85% of it.
	The other part is he just has a bad temper.
	Oh, so like alcohol and asshole mixed together?
	It's double A, right?
	Yes, right.
	The battery that never quits, right?
	And the double A doesn't stand for Alcohol Anonymous.
	No, no, it's asshole plus alcohol, right?
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	You know, don't know where one A ends and the other one begins, but there's just a big double buckshot straight to the forehead of chaos and madness, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	Wow.
	I'm sorry.
	I'm so sorry about that.
	I really, really hate alcohol as a whole.
	So do I. So do I. I'll have an occasional glass of wine and an occasional beer, but the horror that it wreaks upon humanity is just astounding.
	I agree.
	And your mom?
	What the hell was she doing with this lunatic?
	She made a pretty bad choice.
	And kept making it?
	Oh, well, I mean...
	I don't know even when my parents got divorced because it was always this on and off thing where my mom would kick him out of the house and he would go with his parents for a while, then he would come back.
	And then I guess around 13, or like 12 or 13, he left for good.
	But it was always kind of...
	An on and off thing of kicking him out, kicking him out, and him coming back.
	Do you know anything about your mom's history as to why this would have seemed like a remotely sane choice?
	Well, that choice in particular, I think they were childhood friends.
	But if you want to go back further than that, I'm not too sure.
	It's something I've been meaning to find out.
	Right.
	Right.
	And did anyone play with you?
	Oh yeah, yeah.
	Well, both my parents played with me, but obviously the playtime with my dad, not the most one-sided thing.
	I mean, we would play video games on occasion, but that was the minority of the time.
	I played with my mom a lot.
	I played with my cousins quite a bit.
	My cousins who were about the same age as me, so I would play with them very often.
	And then I guess I eventually got friends when I went into elementary school, but I did play quite a bit when I was a kid.
	Sorry, when you say you did play quite a bit, what do you mean?
	Well, with my mom, I don't remember that far back.
	I know that would probably be like when I was a very small child, so it wasn't too imaginative.
	But as I grew older, I played a lot of role-playing games with my cousins.
	We would be characters.
	We would create stories together.
	We would, yeah, pretty much just that.
	We would have a lot of fantasy playing, you know.
	Right.
	Elsewhere is better, yeah.
	Uh-huh.
	Yeah, I mean, the role-playing games, which I played as well, it develops a huge amount of human capital for things that don't exist, you know?
	I speak Klingon!
	That's true.
	That's a lot of study that you could have put into something that...
	Anyway.
	That is true.
	But it does, to some extent, teach negotiation, because you do have to navigate the...
	The politics of doing something that pleases all the parties involved, like my cousin, sometimes she wouldn't want to play this, so we'd have to come to some agreement.
	So, I mean, I did learn some things from that, but yeah, you're right, a lot of capital for things that don't exist.
	Yeah, and there are some skills that you can get, for sure.
	Storytelling skills and negotiation skills.
	I completely agree with you.
	And learning how to gauge people's sense of enjoyment.
	Like, if I was a dungeon master, I'd have to make sure that it was challenging enough for people to enjoy, but not so challenging that they gave up.
	It's, you know, game design and all of that.
	It's interesting, because, you know, you're a supplier, and these are your customers, right?
	And so...
	Yeah.
	I just wanted to.
	Yeah.
	So, I mean, it's not like there aren't any, but, you know, there could be, you know, that could be applied to other things.
	All right.
	Yeah, for sure.
	For sure.
	And what happened after your dad left?
	It's interesting how you say for good, which is sort of a double meaning, right?
	But what happened after you were 13?
	Oh, we moved in.
	We sold the house that my mom and my dad owned together, and we kind of just went our separate ways.
	My mom and myself and my brother, we went to live with my grandparents, which are my mom's parents, and we're still here.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	How come your mom didn't take you?
	No, I mean, no, she did take us.
	Sorry if that wasn't clear.
	But you went to live with your grandparents.
	Oh, you and your mom went to live with your grandparents.
	Yeah, yeah.
	My mom, myself, and my brother all live with my grandparents right now.
	And my dad, he, I guess he went to live with his parents, but both of them are dead now.
	So I think he just lives by himself, maybe with a girlfriend.
	I don't know.
	I haven't really checked.
	Did he ever get off the booze?
	Last I checked, he was trying and he got really fat.
	I saw him last year and the first thing I said to him was, you look really fat.
	But I don't know if he succeeded.
	If I had to guess, I would say he didn't because I don't know if I have that much faith in my father to overcome that sort of vice.
	But he tried, I guess.
	Wow.
	Right, so he went from being addicted to booze to being addicted to food or sugar, calories, right?
	Yeah, I suppose.
	Now, you were laughing a little bit.
	I mean, I know it's a bit of a cynical laugh, but...
	Oh, I was laughing, just because...
	It's a pretty gross role model to have, right?
	Yeah, for sure.
	I don't know.
	He just looked really fat, and that was the first thing I said to him, and I think...
	Now that I think about it, it's not the funniest thing.
	But in some sense it is funny because it's like this is what you've become and I mean it's sad but it's not something I have to deal with anymore except in the recesses of my mind which manifest themselves in all sorts of ways.
	Yeah, I hate to break it to you but you will be dealing with this, right?
	Yeah, for sure.
	It doesn't go away.
	It doesn't go away.
	Okay.
	Yeah, I'll have to deal with it, but I won't have to deal with his imminent presence because I don't ever see him.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	Before you bought the Pokemon stuff, did you suffer any setback or disappointment?
	No, I've been kind of buying these collectibles, you know, on and off for a few years.
	I used to, when I was a kid, I used to enjoy these, like, little toys a lot as well, and I would kind of do the same thing I do with them now.
	I remember I would, like, set them up on the desk near my mother's bed or, like, in my room, and I kind of do that now, and it's interesting to me because it's, like, it's exactly the same thing that I used to do.
	Right.
	What happens if you don't buy these things for a while?
	Nothing, but sometimes the urge is, like if I see a cool one, I'm like, man, I gotta have that.
	And I'll feel kind of incomplete if I don't get it.
	I'm not going to go through some kind of withdrawal, but I'll feel...
	I feel like I need to get it because I'm like, well, if I don't get it now, the price will go up and then it'll be like a thousand dollars next month, which may actually be a valid concern, but it's not a reason to buy something, you know?
	What do you mean a thousand bucks?
	I don't understand how a thousand bucks can be paid for one of these things.
	You would be surprised.
	It won't go up that much.
	That's kind of a hyperbole, but it might go up to like $300 and that's just way too much for anything I would buy.
	So I'm like...
	So wait, these figurines, why would they go to 300 bucks?
	You know, I don't know.
	I guess because they're made in Japan and there's a limited supply.
	But it seems like a lot of them are pretty expensive.
	I don't buy the expensive ones.
	I buy the ones...
	Well, I should say I don't buy the very expensive ones.
	I do buy the ones that are like $50 and less, which are still pretty expensive for this kind of thing.
	But yeah.
	Well, I guess a lot of people have unhappy childhoods.
	That is a possibility.
	A lot of people have these unhappy childhoods and are hoping that shielding themselves from adulthood and circling the drain of young toys can somehow get them some kind of closure or completion and get them to move on, which I think is not possible.
	A correct supposition, but that would sort of be my guess.
	Yeah, that sounds like it could be very accurate in myself and in other people.
	I mean, I don't know about other people, but for myself, that does resonate with me a little bit.
	Go on.
	I mean, I could just see that connection.
	I don't feel it on an immediate level, but I could definitely see...
	I think if I were to dig deeper, I would find something that sounds a lot like the explanation you just gave.
	Do you feel ready for adulthood?
	Yes and no.
	In some senses, yes.
	In most senses, no.
	Okay, tell me how not...
	Well, I'll tell you the few senses in which I do, and then I'll tell you the most senses in which I do not.
	The senses in which I do is I think I can interact with most people pretty well.
	I think I'll do well for myself in getting a job and having relationships on a purely economic level.
	I think I can navigate that sort of social landscape, but I don't feel ready because I still live with my mom.
	In a lot of ways I feel stunted developmentally because my mom still does a lot of things for me.
	Obviously I haven't dealt with all the trauma of my past.
	I'm slowly dealing with it, but still have a long way to go.
	What does your mom do for you?
	Most things, like laundry, washing the dishes, she cooks a lot of my food.
	This goes back to my original question.
	In an instant gratification sense, it's cool.
	I don't want to be cooking all the time, but over the long run, it's not healthy because I'm not going to be able to cook when I move out.
	Well, your mom is stuck, right?
	I mean, your mom is stuck at an earlier phase of parenting?
	Yes.
	Right?
	Like, I can understand, you know, my daughter is five.
	She's not going to do her own laundry, right?
	Not going to do her own dishes.
	She's going to reach the sink, right?
	But, you know, if I'm still doing laundry and dishes for her when she's 21, then it's because I'm stuck as a parent.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Like I'm not able to move on.
	I'm stuck at some place where I can no longer define myself outside of that particular relationship, right?
	So being stuck, this is all just my opinion, right?
	So just toss it out.
	No, it sounds good.
	It sounds like right on the money, so keep talking.
	Okay, so parents can get stuck in particular phases.
	Parenting is a constant act of reinvention, because what was appropriate sometimes last month is no longer appropriate now, right?
	Yes.
	And you get used, as a parent, you keep getting...
	Stuck in phases because childhood development is not linear.
	It's like staggered, right?
	It's like a set of stairs, you know, up and then plateau and then up and plateau.
	On the plateau, you get used to things, you get better at them, you get certain skills, and then all that shit gets thrown out.
	And you have to reinvent yourself as a parent of a two-and-a-half-year-old, and then a three-and-a-half-year-old, and then a four-year-old, and then 4.1, and then 4.8, and then five, right?
	You constantly have to reinvent yourself, and the skills that you develop for earlier phases are no longer appropriate, right?
	Yeah, I would definitely say my mother is stuck a long way back.
	I think she still parents me like I'm maybe 10 or 12, maybe younger, who knows?
	But yeah, that does resonate with me.
	You see that's where the collectibles come from, right?
	The collectibles are not for you.
	No, the collectibles are not for you.
	The collectibles are for your mom.
	It's your way of saying, Mom, you don't have to change, you don't have to grow, you don't have to Get unstuck.
	I'm willing to stay your little boy for your comfort, for your paralysis, for your lack of emotional development.
	I'm going to stay in this phase, right?
	You said two things about your collectibles that you got when you were younger.
	You put them in your room and by your mom's bed.
	Yeah.
	You know why you put them by your mom's bed, right?
	Mom, I'm not growing up.
	Don't worry.
	I'm not growing up.
	You don't have to change.
	You don't have to go out and face the world.
	You're not being phased out as a mom.
	You're still as necessary.
	I still need you to do my cooking.
	I still need you to do my laundry and I'm going to stay emotionally at 10 for you mom so that you don't have to grow up and face the world without me.
	Right.
	Hmm.
	I definitely see those connections.
	It doesn't feel like you see them.
	It sounds like you hear them, but I'm not getting any.
	This is not a criticism.
	I'm just sort of pointing out that there's no emotional.
	I see them on a sort of a distant level, but I'm thinking because the whole buying the toys thing, I started doing that again maybe when I was 18 and I hadn't really had a lot of toys since I was like 10, so there was a huge gap where I didn't do that, but I definitely see the connection.
	I'm just not sure how much the toys are for her, because I remember when I started buying them again, it was kind of like...
	A joint thing with my friend, like my friend and I both kind of like the toys, so we were kind of like, let's just get this for fun.
	I kind of spiraled out of control and I was kind of embarrassed to tell my mom that I was buying the toys again.
	But the connection you did make, I think there's something there.
	I don't think it matches perfectly, but I think it's a valuable piece of insight.
	How is your friend's mom?
	In some ways, I think she's stuck as well, but I think she parents a lot more appropriately than my mom does for the age level.
	But I think...
	Well, okay, but that's testable, right?
	So if my daughter is 21 and is buying Bratz dolls, or I don't know what a 10-year-old girl's play with, I have no idea, right?
	But if she's bringing this stuff home and collecting them, Then I'm going to sit down with her and try and understand why.
	Not in a critical way or a negative way or that's bad or you're too old for this or, you know, not in a shaming way.
	But I would try and figure out, look, as a parent, you get nostalgic for the old days.
	You know, when I was teaching my daughter how to walk by holding her hands and, you know, those punchy little feet, I mean, you ache for those early things.
	Probably why people have more kids, I guess, right?
	Yeah.
	But you ache for these early days when things were easier.
	And then you get excited about the new stuff.
	You know, I remember when my daughter, we got some good friends, and my daughter met them when she was, I think, about 18 months or whatever.
	And they're Kids are older and their kids gave us stories that they'd written down and made.
	And literally when you're a parent of an 18-year-old, it's incomprehensible that she'll be writing down stories.
	And now she is.
	Well, not stories exactly, but she's now writing and all that kind of stuff.
	And if she gets older and has kids or whatever, then I'll sort of go through that.
	But I'll never go through that again as a dad.
	And we're not having more kids, right?
	So I'm never going to go through that again as a dad.
	And, you know, I mean, you're happy that the phase has passed because at the time it gets a little crazy at the end of a phase.
	But you kind of, you kind of, you miss it.
	I miss it.
	I miss it.
	You know, when I am at the mall and I see the babies, or I took her swimming today and see babies in the pool, and it's like, oh, you know, you miss that stuff.
	And I was a particular person for my daughter at that age.
	And as she grows up, I'm needed less.
	You know, she gets impatient with me sometimes because like, Dad, I can jump from the fourth step.
	You know, I'm not three anymore.
	Yes, you're right.
	And she does it and she's fine.
	And she does it and she's fine.
	And so there is a way of shielding yourself from tomorrow by living that Groundhog Day of yesterday, right?
	There's a way of not moving on.
	You know, if you're grown up, then your mom Her job as a mom is done.
	You know, and it's interesting, it's around 18.
	18 is, right?
	When you legally become an adult.
	Yeah.
	And then you, in a sense, regressed.
	Well, it could be that that's for your mom, right?
	18, and your mom may have been freaking out, like, he's 18.
	I'm done.
	Now, you understand, I know she'll always be your mom, but as far as the real hands-on parenting stuff, around 18, you go out into the world, you go to college, you get a job, you do your thing, and your parents are still there.
	They love you, they're there to give you advice and feedback and this, but their hands-on parenting stuff, the major job is done, right?
	Yes.
	Can I sort of tell you what I think and maybe you could give me your thoughts?
	No, tell me.
	What you think is much more important than what I'm talking about, so go ahead.
	Okay.
	Well, I've heard you talk a lot about self-medication, and I kind of feel like maybe the toys are a bit of that because...
	I mean, I don't indulge in them quite as much as a drug user but I think the same principle might still be in play because I feel like I'm creating some sort of isolationist room for myself where all my favorite things are all around me and I feel comfortable or it's an attempt to feel comfortable and I feel like if I buy these things and display them Then
	I will feel more at peace with myself because I think it's an attempt at expression that's not being manifested in a more healthy way.
	Do you know what I mean?
	Do you have any thoughts on that?
	Yeah, I don't believe that to be true, which is honestly just my belief.
	It could be completely true.
	But I'll tell you what I think the toys are for.
	I think that the toys are a way...
	Of testing people who come into your room.
	I go into the room of a 21-year-old man and I see Pokemon toys and I say, sad childhood.
	And I ask you, and this is what we're talking about, right?
	And I mean that with compassion and with sensitivity and with empathy and sympathy.
	But I look into that, and you know, it's not, you know, this is this cliche, you know, it's a cry for help.
	I don't think, I think it's a cry for understanding.
	I think you are putting a traumatized and neglected childhood on full display all around you.
	And I see this all the time.
	And when you, you know, like that sixth sense, I see dead people.
	You know, I see harmed people.
	Seriously.
	Yeah, my sense for that is starting to bloom as well.
	Of course, I'm still in that myself, but listening to your show has certainly developed my sense for that, too.
	So I kind of know what you're saying, and I think you're right.
	I think I would probably think the same thing about myself.
	Yeah.
	No, I mean, I took my daughter to...
	I was in a museum the other day, and there was a woman there who was caked with makeup.
	Like, she probably spent 60 to 90 minutes putting it on.
	I mean, it wasn't clown makeup or anything like that.
	It wasn't like, you know, when girls are in grade 7 or grade 8, they just look all kinds of, like, glorious tropical sunsets all over their face, right?
	And she was poised and she had the false eyelashes and the perfectly manicured lips and little patterns on her nails and all that.
	And that to me is, well, sad childhood.
	Why do you need to present yourself in that manner?
	And then I went around the corner and there was a guy with tattoos up his arms and stuff like that.
	It's, oh, sad childhood.
	And you see it everywhere.
	It doesn't mean everyone, but you see it everywhere.
	You pick up the news and you know some guy did some crime.
	Oh, sad childhood.
	Some banker was too greedy.
	Oh, sad childhood.
	Attempting to fill the hole of yesteryear with the bloodstuff and souls of others.
	And so I think that what you're saying is to people, notice this.
	I'm telling you very clearly and very explicitly about my childhood and where I am as a human being.
	And I think you put these things on display for two main reasons.
	The first, of course, is to reassure your mother.
	But in reassuring your mother, you're actually asking her a question.
	So when you live with your mother and you're buying these things, when you were younger, you put them by her bed.
	Yeah.
	And now they're in your room.
	Does your mom go into your room?
	She cleans it, I assume, right?
	Makes your bed, that kind of stuff?
	No, I clean my room, but she comes in occasionally, but not too often.
	Okay, so she sees this stuff, right?
	Yeah.
	So when you put this stuff in your room, everything is a conversation in this world.
	There's almost nothing we do that is not a conversation or an attempt to initiate a conversation.
	And responding to the unconscious motive is a volatile thing to do, but it's what helps people the most, in my opinion.
	So when your mom walks into your room, you are saying to your mother, is it okay for me to grow up?
	Is it okay for me to not need you as much?
	Is it okay for me to be independent?
	Is it okay for me to individuate?
	Is it okay for me to separate?
	Will you survive my maturation?
	Who will you be when I'm no longer your dependent son?
	Who will you be when you are no longer my caregiver?
	Is it okay for me to grow up?
	Now, these toys on display are asking for you.
	I don't know what voice Pokemon has, but can he grow up?
	They just need to say their own names.
	Oh, okay.
	Well, let's call one, can I grow up?
	Let's call one, can he grow up?
	My name is, can he grow up?
	But no, they're asking you that, and I can tell you what your mother will say if the answer is yes, it's okay for you to grow up.
	Your mother will say, okay, explain these things to me, because they seem kind of young for you.
	And I'm also a bit concerned about the impression that they're going to make on women, you might ask up here.
	Right?
	Because a woman of maturity, a woman of sophistication, is going to walk into this clubhouse, right?
	And is going to say, well, I don't think this young man is quite ready for an adult relationship, right?
	Because he's got...
	Cutesy toys everywhere, right?
	Yeah.
	And so if you're...
	So the Pokemon's asking your mom, can he grow up?
	The answer will be when your mom comes in and says, explain this to me, if you don't mind, right?
	You know, like if my daughter says, I'd really like to get back into diapers, which is kind of what you did at 18...
	And again, I mean this, and no criticism, I mean this genuinely with sympathy.
	If my daughter wakes up tomorrow and says, Daddy, I'd really like to go back into diapers and I need a pacifier, what would I say?
	Tell me more.
	That seems a bit odd.
	Is anything upsetting you?
	Is anything bothering you?
	Right?
	I mean, we generally tend to regress in times of stress, right?
	Yeah.
	So, you've got these things on display with your mom in the house, right?
	And it seems to me that what she's saying is, please, God, whatever you do, don't grow up.
	Yeah, yeah, she definitely...
	And don't have any women around who aren't equally traumatized and who can't help you over the hump of maturation that I'm currently standing in the way of.
	Or perhaps kneeling in the way of.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I do definitely feel like my mom does not want me to grow up.
	That's very clear to me.
	No doubt in my mind.
	Right.
	So what do you think?
	About...
	What do you want?
	I mean...
	On the outset, I like buying the toys, but...
	On a deeper level, I do want to grow up, and I don't want to be living here, obviously.
	I don't want to be limited to this room.
	I don't want to be really in this part of my state anymore.
	I kind of want to leave, but I don't feel like I have the means to or the skills to.
	Well, okay, but don't have the means to and don't have the skills to is not something that you have in isolation of your environment, right?
	It is your parents' job to shepherd you to a competent adulthood.
	Yeah.
	Absolutely.
	Like, if you were suddenly dropped into China...
	You don't speak Mandarin, right?
	So if you were suddenly dropped into China, your parents said, we're going to China and we're going to put you in Chinese and Mandarin school, right?
	Tomorrow.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	Let's say they took you over there and you're thrown in Mandarin school, you'd say, well, shit.
	You wouldn't say, I failed to learn Mandarin.
	Right?
	Right.
	Yeah.
	My parents have done some random shit and I haven't learned Mandarin.
	Well...
	We're not born learning Mandarin, but let's call adult and mature life Mandarin.
	Well, you're not very fluent there yet, and it was your parents' job to teach you.
	And, you know, with all due sympathy, it sounds like they did a pretty wretched job.
	In fact, not only did they not prepare you, but they kind of counter-prepared you.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Yeah, I've been thinking about this a lot lately.
	I've had dreams recently where I got upset with my mom for not teaching me the right skills.
	And obviously, I guess I should get upset at my dad too, but I don't know.
	I completely agree with what you're saying.
	I don't think I've been prepared.
	I think I've been failed on that level, and I think that's a pretty significant failure.
	That's something to be angry about.
	Yeah, yeah, it is.
	And she's also continuing to not prepare you.
	Right?
	Because she's continuing to do your laundry.
	She's continuing to do your cooking.
	And she's not asking you about the Pokemon figures.
	Right.
	Does she know you had a girl over?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	See, now, again, if I were your dad and you had a girl over with these Pokemon figures, what do you think I would say?
	You would probably give me some advice on how to make my room look a bit more, a bit less embarrassing.
	Or maybe you would ask me...
	Yeah, a bit like you might even have sex rather than have a sleepover, right?
	Yeah.
	Right.
	So, I mean, I would, you know, and this would have been preemptive years before and all that, right?
	It would have been like when you wanted to regress at the age of 18, we would have talked about it then and worked through it, right?
	Yeah.
	But it would be like, you know, hey, any woman who's okay with this is not going to be a good woman to date.
	Any woman who doesn't say, whoa, am I stepping into the Joker's room here?
	Like, what's going on, right?
	Yeah.
	Incidentally, I don't think the girl that I had over was...
	In a much better place herself.
	Oh, I absolutely know that she wasn't in a better place herself.
	Because she didn't have the resources to bring compassion and curiosity to your situation to the point where you can get some illumination.
	Most people, particularly people who come from a traumatic background, they're hanging on to a half-sunken barrel in a giant tsunami storm out at sea.
	Right?
	And they're just like hanging on inch by inch and if one barrel sinks they're desperately clawing around looking for another one.
	They're just trying to survive literally the next 30 seconds.
	And the people put on this brave face like they're not treading water or hanging on unraveling rope over a volcano of history.
	But the reality is that most people are just desperately treading water for the next, trying to survive the next 30 seconds.
	Yeah.
	So they don't have the centeredness, the clarity, the curiosity, the compassion, the emotional resources and energy to look at that and say, huh, okay, so what are these Pokemon figures trying to tell me?
	What would they whisper into my ear, right?
	Help, we're trapped!
	Right.
	Right.
	So yeah, you have some stuff to be upset about, for sure.
	And I think it's worth talking to that stuff with your mom.
	And, you know, I mean, does she even notice that this is not age-appropriate?
	And again, I know that sounds kind of shaming.
	I really don't mean that at all.
	When I was...
	Yeah, I understand.
	And just to share, right?
	So when I was 11 or 12...
	My mom would send me to this summer camp.
	It's called Bolton Camp, I think.
	And I'd be there like all summer, a couple of sessions or whatever.
	And at one point I wanted to, like I grabbed a broomstick and I wanted to play like lightsabers or whatever it was, right?
	And, you know, some haughty kid came by and was like, aren't you a little bit old for that?
	It was some, you know, world-weary...
	Charles Emerson Winchester voice or whatever, like probably a kid who was born at about the age of 47 or whatever, right?
	And I said, well, you're never too old to have fun, but it sounded kind of lame even to me.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Yeah, I definitely see that because, I mean, on sub-level, I'm not too old to buy toys, but I kind of am.
	You know?
	Yeah, you are.
	You are, but that's, I mean, and again, if you listen to what your unconscious desires are telling you, then you can get enormous wisdom and enormous strength and maturity out of that, right?
	Yeah.
	Okay, so, what's your mom's life like if you, and look, please understand, I'm not saying move out, I'm not saying any of these things, but let's just do a thought exercise, right?
	What is your mom's life like if you move out And get on with your life.
	Oh man, you know, I feel anxiety just thinking about that because it goes back to what you said before.
	I don't know what her identity is in the absence of being a mother to a young child.
	I don't know what her life would be like and I feel some guilt towards that.
	Okay, so what would her life be like?
	I would guess that she would spend time with her cousin who lives down the block, which she's started to do recently, but I think she would spend more time.
	I think she would probably...
	I mean, we have a lot of pets already, but I think she would probably want more, you know, to fill some void.
	I think she would, I guess, take up dating again.
	I don't know, honestly.
	Maybe just watch TV, maybe work more.
	Right.
	Of course she still has my brother, but my brother is not as stunted as I am, which is understandable because I'm the firstborn.
	Why do you think he's not as stunted as you are?
	Well, I think...
	I think it has to do with me being my mom's first child.
	I think she had a lot of attachment to me and she was very protective of me because because my dad was, you know, an alcoholic asshole and by the time my brother was born he was kind of distant.
	You know, like I said, he would move out and in so it wasn't as imminent of threats.
	I think she's very protective of me.
	She's very attached to To raising me as a little child.
	And, you know, I'm just the first one, so...
	That's the answer that I would give.
	There might be something more to it, but...
	That's just what I would come up with.
	Yeah, I mean, do you think you might have some mechanics like a substitute boyfriend or anything?
	I don't mean anything, obviously, Freudian or anything like that.
	I just mean someone who's in...
	Her life at the moment that doesn't require newness, so to speak?
	No.
	I don't feel that.
	But I do feel that I fill the maternal void.
	Because she did have a boyfriend for a while.
	She recently broke up with him.
	Because, obviously, she's not the best at choosing partners.
	So...
	Ended badly, just as one would expect.
	But...
	She dates and she has other people in her life, but none that filled the role that I'm in, which is the little baby, you know.
	Right.
	Yeah, okay.
	That makes sense.
	Well...
	I would say that...
	Oh, sorry.
	Go ahead, Mike.
	Well, Steven, I was just going to say, this stuff is hitting a bit close to home for me.
	I mean, I played with wrestling action figures throughout high school.
	Oh, yeah?
	Oh, yeah.
	Yeah, I had them all up over my, all on my walls.
	I put nails in the wall lines of wrestling action figures that I played with throughout high school.
	And, I mean, I certainly felt terribly underprepared for adulthood.
	Yeah, that sounds very similar to myself.
	I mean, I don't I don't play with them, but I do put them up on my walls.
	Oh, they were still in the boxes.
	Some of them were in boxes.
	Some were out.
	They were collectibles.
	They weren't toys.
	They were collectibles.
	That's what I told myself to make it feel a little better.
	Right, right.
	But, I mean, you talked about feeling underprepared and having a lot of stuff still done for you, like cooking, cleaning, all of that.
	I mean, same thing with me.
	I didn't feel like, oh, I could, now I'm an adult, and I can go out in the world and do the stuff that I need to do as an adult on my own.
	That was just, I had no experience doing any of the just basic things.
	Yeah.
	I know just in the moment it was a lot easier for me to like, hey, I'll go to Toys R Us or I'll go online and I'll just buy that action figure.
	I'll buy that video game or I'll buy whatever distraction that is going to kind of get me through another day, another minute, you know, to the point where I don't have to think about that sort of Damocles that's looming overhead where it's like, hey, I'm 21 years old, I'm 23 years old, I'm 24 years old, I'm still living at home and I don't know what I'm going to do and I'm terrified of it.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I definitely relate to that.
	Right.
	Right.
	I'm really sorry to hear that because I remember the amount of fear that I feel in my chest when I would even just veer into thinking of the idea of moving out and like, hey, I'm just going to be an adult.
	I mean, I'd have panic attacks.
	It's like that level of fear.
	I'm sorry to hear that.
	I appreciate that, Steven.
	Thanks for relating to me.
	How strong is the fear with you?
	Is there that fear of moving out and doing that next thing?
	It's not that strong, because it's never been a possibility, so when I think about it I don't get scared, but I'm sure that if I was moving out next week I would be pretty terrified.
	Right.
	But given, like, the track you're on now, like, you know, 21 can turn into 22, 23, 24, all that happens pretty quick.
	Right.
	But, you know, that whole thing is not too unusual to live with one's parents because I think, I mean, these days I think everyone is not in such a good place economically, you know?
	Oh, right, right.
	So I'm not too worried about still living here, but the, um...
	The spending money on useless things kind of bothers me a little bit.
	Sorry to interrupt, but also, it's not the living.
	I never sort of said anything about living with your mom, but the fact that she's still doing so much for you.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Yeah, for sure.
	That's the problem.
	Yeah, sorry, Mike.
	Go ahead.
	Yeah, it's all about feeling prepared.
	And if you're on the track to getting to a place where you feel prepared to eventually make that move, you know, because, I mean, you're not going to still live with your parents when you're 40.
	Yeah, hopefully I won't be living with them for the next several years.
	Hopefully I can move out by 23 or 4, but, you know, who knows, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, in the moment, it is easier to buy the action figure and delay that.
	As opposed to, initially you said, what to do with this money, financial planning.
	I mean, you could be putting that money away.
	You could have bought Bitcoin two years ago.
	Yeah.
	Well, I had no idea what Bitcoin was back then, but I could certainly still buy Bitcoin now.
	Imagine how many action figures you could buy now if you bought Bitcoin.
	Then I could have bought the $300 ones, right?
	Yeah, totally.
	You'd be driving the price up.
	Making a killing, baby!
	I know with me, and this might just totally be me, so I don't want to say it's exactly your situation, Stephen, but there kind of was a point where I was still holding on to the childhood stuff, and I was more focused on that as opposed to what I was missing by focusing on the childhood stuff.
	Focusing on, hey, I have action figures, or now I can afford to buy a video game that I couldn't afford when I was younger, and hey, I get to do this.
	But There's a lot of adult stuff that I was completely missing out on that I didn't want to pay any attention to because it scared me.
	That's very true, yeah.
	And, I mean, there's relationships that could have been had, you know, just general stuff that you're not going to be doing when you're 14 that is an option on the table when you're 21 that's, you know, part of life.
	And you don't want to—this is something that I—a huge regret that I have is I feel like my early 20s, there's a huge chunk there where it's just kind of gone.
	You know, it's gone with days that I spent in my room, you know, playing games or, you know, watching DVDs or something.
	Where, like, I don't have, hey, when I was 21, I did that amazing thing.
	I went, took this trip.
	I met these cool people, had these great conversations.
	Stuff that I can look back on 40 years from now and go, man, that was a great time.
	And I'm happy with how I spent that precious coinage that is my life.
	And...
	You know, the longer that stuff is delayed, the more years are going to kind of get thrown in the dumpster, whereas it's going to be harder and harder looking back to be happy with how that time was spent.
	Because, God, I mean, you know, as Steph found out last year, stuff can happen at any moment.
	Yeah.
	It can completely and totally alter how much time you expect to have on this earth.
	And, you know, you want to make the most use of it, because that's one thing you're never going to get more of is time.
	Yeah, Live Like You're Dying, right?
	That's the famous Steph video.
	It's not like you're dying.
	It's not like you're dying.
	You are dying.
	Right, right.
	I mean, you know, it's not a theory, oh, whoa, I could die one day.
	No, no, you know, it's already happening.
	You know, your cells are already starting to reproduce imperfectly.
	Yeah, you're right.
	You're absolutely right.
	So what Steph is trying to say is that you're over the hill at 21 now.
	Well, historically, you would be, right?
	Yeah.
	Well, thanks for saying that.
	I appreciate it.
	Okay, do you mind if I just do one last thing, Mike, if there's something you want to add?
	I certainly don't want to interrupt.
	No, go for it, Steph.
	Well, everything is an advertisement, and you need to develop the skills and abilities.
	I'm just going to be annoying a lecture now, so I apologize if this sounds finger-wacking.
	No, go for it.
	Everything is an advertisement, and everything is like a sonar that is put out into the world.
	Who is my tribe?
	Who is my tribe?
	Who's going to be in my tribe?
	Will you be in my tribe?
	Oh, I don't want to be in your tribe.
	Oh, your tribe threatens me.
	I like your tribe.
	Oh, now that tribe is a bit scary for me.
	Oh, that tribe is a little too low rent for me.
	Bing, bing, bing, bing.
	We're putting out this sonar all the time.
	All the time.
	You know, we used to grow up in these tribes with no choice.
	You know, here are the 50 people you're born with.
	You're going to die with half of them at the age of 20.
	That's it.
	Hope you breathe before you're dead.
	But now we don't have these tribes that we grow up with and just stick with.
	But now we put out these signals all the time.
	All the time.
	And, you know, when you're swimming in the ocean, you don't want to put out the I'm tasty shark sonar.
	Come, come eat me.
	My legs are dangling and they're well marbled, right?
	You want to put out the thing which says, I like the friendly dolphins.
	I don't like the bitey sharks, right?
	And it's really important to understand that how you are in the world will determine who's around you.
	You know, you don't see elegant women walking down the street with tattooed, spiky-haired punks.
	You just don't.
	Because those two tribes are antithetical.
	Now, you're in a tribe Which is whatever we want to call it, the Pokemon tribe, right?
	Yes.
	And whether they're at home or sticking out of your shirt pocket, they're there.
	The fact that they're in your room means that they're in your mind, they're in your attitude, they're informing how you present yourself to other people.
	And you have to be very aware of Of who you're drawing to you and who you're repelling from you.
	Who are you inviting into your life and who are you repelling out of your life?
	Right now, what kind of woman do you want to marry?
	Is that a rhetorical question or are you asking me?
	No.
	Sorry, that's a lecture interruptus, but go ahead.
	Oh, um...
	I want to marry a woman that I could raise a child properly with and I could be in an adult, healthy relationship with.
	That sounds very abstract.
	That's because I don't know what that looks like right now.
	Because obviously my role model is not the best.
	But you'd want her to be perceptive and sensitive and mature and courageous and have all the virtues that would be necessary for love, right?
	I mean, you can't have love Without virtues, right?
	Any more than you can have strength without exercise.
	Right.
	So you want a woman of depth and perception and virtue, of kindness and courage and strength and all these kinds of good things in your life, because that's who you want to raise kids with if you want to get married and raise kids.
	Is your current environment inviting that woman in or repelling her?
	Definitely repelling her.
	Yeah.
	Oh, that Steven guy.
	Let's go through the list.
	Hmm.
	Lives with his mom.
	Well, you know, 21.
	That's fine.
	I guess I live with that.
	Hmm.
	Mom does his laundry.
	Oh, that's not great.
	Mom cooks his meals.
	Ooh, that's not good.
	He's got toys more appropriate to a 10-year-old in his room, which he spends quite a bit of money on.
	That's really not good.
	And he's got a mom who is not asking him about these things or helping him move past this phase.
	Not good at all.
	He doesn't know why his mom married his dad.
	He doesn't know much about his mom's childhood.
	Ooh, that's really not good.
	That means she doesn't talk about it, which means she is going to not be able to solve the problems in her personality that first drew her towards his nightmare of a father.
	And so if I get involved with this guy, this completely unselfaware woman is going to be bringing all of her disastrous drama into my life for approximately what will feel like the next 6,000 goddamn years.
	Ooh, family gatherings, how are those going to be?
	So this is a family that doesn't talk about issues, that doesn't communicate, that doesn't connect, and either doesn't understand the degree to which the past dictates the future if it is not understood, or understands it but avoids it because they prefer going round in this slow Groundhog Day circle of prior trauma.
	And do you know what the next thing will be in her head?
	No.
	Wrong!
	Yeah.
	She's not going to want to get involved.
	She may like you very much as a person.
	You may be a fantabulous six-pack stud muffin for all I know.
	I'm not.
	She's going to recognize that there's an incompatibility that is pretty foundational, right?
	Anyone with any brains, and by that I don't mean smart people, I just mean people who've achieved some level of awareness.
	You don't date an individual.
	You don't get interested in an individual.
	You don't get attracted to an individual.
	You don't date an individual.
	You date a family structure.
	You date a history.
	You date a tribe.
	Everybody comes with a tribe.
	There are no Howard Rocks in this universe.
	Everybody comes with a tribe.
	And we all like to carve off people from their tribe to make them more fuckable in our own minds.
	Oh, this person might be crazy, but she's got nice tits, so I'm going to focus on the tits and I'm not going to think about the tribe and the history and the dysfunction and the future and all that sort of stuff.
	This is why affairs are so delicious to people, right?
	With affairs, nobody's uncle suddenly gets sick and needs taking care of and Nobody's kid breaks a leg.
	There's no bills that need to be paid.
	There's no, oh my goodness, who's going to do taxes?
	None of that mundane stuff.
	There's no visiting the mother-in-law.
	It's just these sex collisions followed by this escape from any reality in fantasy land.
	So anyone with any perception is going to walk into you and say, I am not just dating this guy, I'm getting involved with this guy and his mother and his father and his brother and his friends and his Pokemon figurines.
	You are not an individual.
	You are a cell in a social body, in a familial body.
	And any smart person It's going to look at you and look at me and look at Mike and look at anyone and say, if I get involved with this person as a lover or a friend, I am getting involved in their whole tribe.
	There's no picky choosy here.
	I'm going to get neck deep into the whole quicksand of their existing tribe.
	All these people are coming into my life with this person.
	There's no laser here.
	There's no precision.
	There's no surgical strike.
	There's no smart bombs unless you're just having a one-night stand.
	And so any woman of any perceptivity is going to come into your life, is going to look at you and look at everyone around you and say, that's what I'm getting into.
	We all want to present ourselves as individuals.
	Well, I'm a great guy, this, that, and the other, right?
	When I was younger, Good-looking kid, smart, funny, ambitious, talented.
	And sometimes women would just be like, whoa.
	I could feel like they wanted to date me, they found me attractive, but they'd be like, I dropped a gold bar into a giant furnace.
	I'd really like the gold bar back, but I don't want to burn my arm off.
	There's treasure, but it hurts.
	Right?
	And now I get it.
	Now I understand it.
	Because they were sensibly looking at the tribe, not at me.
	I wasn't just, you know, a stroll-along penis with good genes.
	I was like part of a whole community, part of a whole tribe.
	And they sensibly looked and said, well, that guy's sexy.
	I like him.
	Great guy.
	Smart guy.
	Oh, my God.
	You know, it's like you look at somebody, oh, that woman's really hot, and she's like, oh, you know she has herpes, right?
	Ooh, like the hotness, not such a big fan of the herpes.
	And so for me, my family was my herpes, and my friends were my herpes, and it's like, oh, nice guy, kind of a lot of tribal herpes there.
	So, no thank you.
	And these were the smart women, the women of depth and intelligence and all that, right?
	And for me, it was no accident.
	No accident!
	And I'm not saying this for you.
	I'm just giving you this as my example, right?
	Your choices are obviously your own.
	But for me, it's like, hey, go to therapy.
	Ooh, you know what?
	My family is really toxic.
	I'm going to take a break from my family, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	I did all that.
	Cleaned up my friendships.
	Got the crazy people out of my life.
	You know, after confrontations, after attempting to work with them, after attempting to make them a little less crazy, which I was not expecting to happen and was confirmed that it wasn't going to happen, I get out of that.
	Ah, who do I meet?
	I meet my wife-to-be.
	So quickly.
	So quickly.
	Now she practices psychology.
	She is blindingly smart.
	Blindingly perceptive.
	First date.
	He's just grilling me.
	Grilling me.
	Which is good.
	That's a good sign.
	And, you know, hey, hi, I'm sexy and unemployed.
	It's like this Costanza thing.
	I do the opposite, right?
	Because I was taking time off from work to write novels and all that kind of good stuff, right?
	I'm unemployed.
	I live in a small apartment that's a rental.
	I have a nice car.
	You know, it's kind of confusing, right?
	And so, yeah, she's grilling me.
	Oh, about my family.
	What's your mom like?
	What's your dad like?
	Oh, what's your brother like?
	Oh, what's your friends?
	Just like a laser.
	I mean, boy, you think TSA is invasive.
	Try talking to somebody who practices psychology when they're really attracted to you and want to make sure they're not making a colossal mistake.
	Hey, bone marrow is tickling.
	No, I will not stare into your giant void of soul-sucking eyeball machinations to find out what past lives might have influenced my future decisions.
	Oh, yes, I will, because I think you're great, too.
	And, boy, you know, if I hadn't had my act together, if I wasn't free?
	Of the base tribe of low-rent crazy?
	Holy crap.
	Well, Isabella wouldn't be here, I'll tell you that much.
	So, I just really wanted to point this out.
	Anybody with any brains looks at your entire environment.
	But we always want to present ourselves as an individual as if we have no history, as if people who get involved with us aren't going to get tangled up in our family and our friendships and our extended family and our church.
	Everybody is a quicksand of history.
	Everybody is a quicksand of history.
	You take a step closer, you take a step closer, in you go.
	We are not individuals.
	And it took me a long time.
	I present myself, you know, as a smart accent.
	I present myself this way.
	And I didn't get that the smarter women were scanning me for crazy quicksand.
	And they were thinking, hey, this guy's great.
	I really like him.
	He's attractive.
	He's smart.
	He's funny.
	He's ambitious.
	And then what they do is they'd sit there and ask me and start stuff.
	And then what they do is they sit there and say, ah, let's see.
	Okay, so we're 25.
	Let's say I get married to this guy, you know, in a year or two.
	Let's just say, oh, maybe 23.
	So 25.
	Okay, so let's say 25.
	So that means I get 30 more people.
	Years of hanging with his mom too.
	Right?
	I get 30 more years of hanging with his brother and his friends and his dad when he comes by and his extended family and his brother's wife and their family.
	30 more years.
	There's no dick big enough in the world.
	To hide that.
	I don't care how sexy people thought I was.
	There's no amount of sexual prowess that can eclipse that sunbeam of crazy blasting through the cranium of any perceptive woman who met me when I was in my 20s.
	Hey, I'm really attractive.
	I'm a bait in a huge crazy trap.
	Come on in!
	The water is random!
	I open my mouth and eloquent rainbows come out.
	I use that to lasso you by the boobs and drag you in to this gladiator pit of insanity I call the social circle.
	Come on in!
	It's lovely!
	Oh, and by the way, you'll be so attracted to me and once we get married and have kids, you can't even get out!
	How's that?
	There's nobody pretty enough or sexy enough to overcome that reality in the eyes of a perceptive woman.
	And I didn't get that in my 20s.
	That's what I'm trying to provide to you.
	Oh, boy, it was hard-won knowledge.
	Oh, painful.
	I mean, I thought in my 20s, I was like, the bee's niece?
	I was like, oh, what woman wouldn't want to date me?
	Because I was looking at myself in isolation.
	And in isolation, yes, I think I was attractive.
	And lots of women agreed with me.
	But I was like, gosh, you know, I just can't get them to commit.
	Well, of course not.
	I had a friend of mine who went to go and study...
	He went to go and study in BC, and I used to make fun of him.
	And I didn't get how this was me, right?
	I didn't get that, right?
	Because, again, I thought I could look at people in my life in isolation from me, which was...
	False.
	Anyway, so he went to, he went to go to, he was taking his PhD in, out in University of British Columbia, I think it was.
	No, Simon Fraser.
	Sorry, Simon Fraser.
	And anyway, so he was, he was like a guy who liked, he liked to live on the down low.
	Like he liked to live like, it makes the pre-wealth duck dynasty look like the post-wealth Beverly Hillbillies guys.
	Like he would like, he lived in an abandoned school bus and he would like take his showers at the gym.
	And he was like, I was dating this great girl.
	He phoned me up.
	He's like, Steph, I can't get her to commit.
	And I'm like, are you crazy?
	You're living in a school bus.
	Of course she'd commit to what?
	To a life on the road where the road doesn't even move because the bus is up on cinder blocks?
	Of course she's not going to commit.
	Because I could see how he looked from the view of a uterus.
	Uterus looking for a secure place to deposit eggs, not in Crazy Town.
	Oh, is the train stopping in Crazy Town?
	I guess I'll have a look.
	I don't really want to leave the train, thank you very much.
	Because when you leave the train, it turns into a big giant licorice pipe, goes flying off into the stars to fight the Death Star, and you're stuck in Crazy Town with no way to get back out!
	And I didn't get that, though.
	The people were looking at me the same way.
	Smart guy, sexy guy, ambitious guy.
	He lives in crazy town.
	And he doesn't even seem to know it.
	Yeah, he's got some issues with his family.
	But, oh my God.
	He wants me to move there.
	He's not going to move out of crazy town.
	He wants me to go move and live in crazy town.
	Where...
	The bed and breakfast are all made of licorice.
	And you don't put on gloves.
	You put on tiny tiger sharks that chew up your elbows.
	At least they keep your hands warm in the belly of a shark.
	And the train tracks are giant Indiana Jones whips that just dissolve into nothing.
	And you open up the fridge and the giant ball comes out like the beginning of Indiana Jones and there's your exciting morning.
	It's crazy town.
	You take baths in jasmine tea.
	And for a facial scrub, you use a puffer fish.
	I mean, I don't know.
	I could just go on and on all night about Crazy Town, but this is like, hey, hey, hey, Apple!
	It's like, hey, the train has stopped.
	I'm here doing my dance.
	Look, it's my sexy dance.
	Come, come, step off the train.
	Come join me in Crazy Town.
	It'll be great fun, and it'll be really crazy, and you'll never get to leave because the train only comes once, and then once you get here with me and we get married and we have kids, you're stuck in Crazy Town forever.
	How does that sound?
	Does that sound like a good deal?
	Hey, where are you going?
	Because they looked at me and they saw my whole world, not just me as an individual.
	And all the crazy people in the world will try and get them to look at you, sorry, will try and get you to look at them as individuals.
	Like they're just individuals.
	And they may keep their family away, and they may keep their friends away, and they might just be sexy, individual, star in the middle of the night with no other stars around.
	There are no constellations up here.
	I'm just one single star of sexiness.
	That's it!
	That's it!
	Boobs, clit, vagina, sexy, solitary, sandy.
	And then you like, you dip your penis in that and suddenly it's like, whoa, how did that close over?
	Oh, I believe we've got inward facing teeth in the vagina.
	Vagina dentata has me.
	Buy the short and curlies, buy the twigs and berries.
	Oh no!
	Gripped!
	Oh, no!
	And then she starts shuffling backwards, doing the crab walk, and you're following her with your penis, which has got crapped on with the teeth, and it's going backwards.
	It's like, oh, shit, what's that over the horizon?
	It's that Close Encounters to the Third Kind.
	You go over the hill, and there's this bright light, and it's like, oh, hey, stop walking, crab walking backwards with my penis in your teeth vagina.
	Oh, no, we're going to crazy town!
	Ah!
	Oh no, I can't get back out now.
	I can't leave my twigs and berries behind.
	And here she is, crab walking right over into the blinding white light of crazy town.
	And I'm stuck.
	And I can't get out.
	Right, so people saw that when I was in my 20s.
	Women saw that.
	And wisely went the other way.
	Or maybe stop by for a quick bang and, you know, here.
	You have sex with me on the train.
	I'll kick you off the train.
	You stay in crazy town.
	I'm not stepping off this train.
	Because it looks like a sidewalk, but it's just water, quicksand, and glue.
	Thank you, but no.
	I don't like it when the sky is full of spaceships that look like clown heads.
	So, be aware That you are your entire social environment to any perspective mate.
	Look, I could have said that much more quickly.
	What do you think?
	Yeah, everything you said completely resonates with me, and I think I get it on an intellectual level.
	Obviously, I need to get it on a more practical level, but at least the intellectual part is there, and I guess that's the first step.
	I don't know.
	But yeah, everything you said, good stuff.
	I'm very glad it was helpful, and thank you again for a great question.
	Yeah, thank you for everything you've said, and thanks again to Mike for his relation and his insight.
	You're very welcome, Mike.
	Very welcome.
	Who's on first?
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Mark.
	You're up next, Mark.
	Go ahead.
	Hi, Steph.
	How are you doing tonight?
	I'm well-heating.
	Not too bad.
	Say, I appreciate you taking my call.
	But before I get into my question, I'm curious what you think about personality tests like Myers-Briggs, for example.
	Oh, I think they're crap, aren't they?
	Yeah, I think they're complete nonsense.
	Why do you say that?
	Well, so I was watching a film called Divorce Corp, or C-O-R-P. And, as far as I understand it, when you take these tests, they will change.
	You know, if you take them this week, then you take them next week, and you come up with something different.
	You're a different person next week, kind of thing.
	So my understanding is that it does seem to be an enormous amount of nonsense, but I haven't done the research myself just to be aware.
	So I just did a quick look, and let me just see here.
	See if I can...
	I haven't exactly done an exhaust...
	Go ahead.
	Yeah, let me just read a couple of things.
	So academics, this is from skepticinc.com.
	Academics would contend that it is precisely Myers-Briggs' biggest flaw.
	It is about belief much more than scientific evidence, and it's administered by leadership coaches who, by and large, have no formal education in the science of psychology.
	Okay.
	People like it because it reveals something they didn't know about themselves or others, says Wharton's Grant, or however this could be true of a horoscope too.
	Even Catherine Downey Myers concedes that psychologists had no use for the indicator.
	They felt that Jung was a crazy mystic.
	I think as far as I understand it, it's based on some of...
	Jung's work, but I don't know that it's been subjected to any rigorous scientific tests at all.
	And I think it is just made up nonsense.
	It's about as accurate as a horoscope as far as I understand it.
	Okay, fair enough.
	The question I was hoping you could help me with though is how do I assess my value to the world?
	I know it's very subjective and the deeper aspect of it is have I really wasted my life or not?
	And I'm hoping maybe can I give you like seven quick one-line sentences and have you ask me questions about that?
	Seven quick...
	Well, hang on a sec.
	So, wait.
	We've gone from personality tests to how do I assess my value to have I wasted my life to...
	This is quite a lot of information, and it's a bit of a wall of data, so to speak.
	So, if your question is how do you determine your value to the world, Well, the good news is you don't actually really have to just make that decision because there's lots of ways of testing that, right?
	So, for instance, when I was in the business world, I would get a particular salary and that would be the value that I felt and that other people agreed, the value that I contributed to the business, right?
	Yes, if we're talking business, I can understand economic valuation, but when you're talking about an entire life, it goes beyond that, I believe.
	Well, no, of course.
	I was just giving you one example, right?
	So financially, you can do that, right?
	Now, can you assess the value?
	Even in that scope, it can be daunting to know exactly how to go about it.
	I mean, there's many different ways you can get feedback or information about your economic value.
	You know, what jobs have I had?
	Who's interested to hire me?
	But those are just partial, and they may not even be accurate to what your real value is.
	It just depends on the circumstances that you're in.
	Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, hang on.
	What do you mean real value?
	Well, for example, let's say you're a person that has lots of skills.
	Let's say you're a technical person, you have a lot of skills, and you happen to be located in a place because of circumstances.
	Maybe you had a relationship that went bad or a death in the family that put you in a location that wasn't where you would...
	Normally B, if it wasn't for those circumstances.
	But you are not marketable at that location.
	And so you can't get your value from that arena because you've been put into a whole other place that you might not have value in.
	So if you're looking at a specific location and the value you have there, then I can see it.
	But I mean, in terms of a broader...
	Hang on, hang on.
	No, I don't understand.
	I mean, let's say that I did my podcast...
	And I've been doing my podcast for seven years, but I just had never turned the microphone on.
	And I say, well, I've had these amazing thoughts and speeches and arguments and this and that and the other, but I just had never recorded them or never published them or whatever, right?
	The world never knew about them.
	Yeah, well, or maybe I just had a whole bunch of, like, no-noise podcasts up there, right?
	I mean, would I get any donations?
	Of course not, right?
	Of course not.
	You would also not get any donations.
	But what I say, there's a real value out there that's somehow different from what I'm doing.
	Look, if you're in, like, butt-sex Alabama, and nobody wants your PHP skills, and you want to stay in butt-sex Alabama...
	That is your value there.
	There's no other mystical value.
	It's whatever you agree to.
	That's your value.
	It's like saying there's life and then there's a soul.
	No, there's no soul.
	There's life.
	And it's like saying there's a universe, and then there's God, and that's the real thing.
	It's like, no, that's just the universe.
	And it's like saying, well, there's what I'm willing to settle for, and then there's my real value, which is somehow different.
	No.
	It's the same thing.
	Whatever you're willing to settle, whatever people agree your value is economically, that's your value.
	There's no mystical third other end-dimensional value that is somehow floating around you that's mocking you, right?
	Yeah, I see your point.
	I see your point there.
	You know, but in a global arena the way we are right now, I mean we kind of Move the conversation to, it kind of depends on your location.
	And I understand that.
	But we're in a global, we can connect with anybody.
	So, I mean, it's kind of like what you were saying about your podcast, if you never turned your microphone on, or if you never podcasted to a broader audience, so it's a matter of how big the scope of your audience is.
	I mean, I guess what I'm asking is, is there a way that I can assess my value in more of an objective way that doesn't really relate to a specific location?
	No, no, no.
	Well, hang on.
	We're getting there, right?
	But you've got this idea that your economic value is somehow independent of what you're selling for, right?
	If I sell you an iPad for $500, that is the price of the iPad.
	Can I say, well, the value of the iPad is $1,000, but I'm going to sell it.
	But whatever I sell it for, that's what the actual value is.
	If I want to sell a one-bedroom condo for $10 million...
	I say, well, nobody's paying me the real value.
	They only want to offer me $100,000 or $200,000 or whatever.
	It should be $10 million.
	I've made up this imaginary value, which is different from what people are willing to offer me.
	And I guess I get frustrated because the real value is $10 million.
	It's like, no, the real value is whatever you settle on.
	There is no other value that is attached to the thing other than both people saying yes and shaking hands.
	But that's a very – how should I phrase it?
	It's a very specific one-data point kind of perspective.
	Okay, well, let's move on from that.
	Let's move on from that.
	Okay, so you can also tell how much your friends value you.
	If you're in a good pool of friends, yes.
	If you're people that give you feedback about who you are that are not superficial, then yes, you're correct.
	But if you're in a situation where the people around you are more superficial, then that feedback is less valuable, of course.
	No, no, I completely disagree.
	I completely disagree.
	It doesn't mean I'm right.
	I'm just telling you I disagree with you.
	All the feedback you get from your friends is very valuable.
	Let's say you have shallow, superficial friends and you're a deep person.
	Then you engage, you attempt to engage with them at a deep level and they reject you.
	Well, then you've just found out how valuable you are to your friends.
	Which is that they only care about you if you're shallow and superficial and if you try to be anything deeper, they'll reject you.
	Then you've just found out your value to your friends.
	Or you ask them for help or you get sick and nobody comes by or whatever, right?
	You've just found out your value to your friends.
	Yeah, I see your point.
	That makes perfectly good sense.
	How attractive am I to the opposite sex?
	Well, go ask women out.
	You can find out.
	out you know they say yes or they say no and I've done plenty of that Right, so there are lots of ways of figuring out the value that you bring to the world, right?
	It's hard to take all that data and create a picture from it to really get my mind around it, I guess.
	That's the difficulty.
	Could I share some of these questions with you?
	Oh, yeah.
	I remember dating years ago.
	I dated a woman who said she was psychic.
	And I said, well, let's go down to Vegas and pick up James Randi's million dollars because he's had a million dollars standing offer to anyone who can prove psychic abilities.
	Let's go get rich.
	I'll split it with you, right?
	And she was like, oh, it doesn't work that way, right?
	It's not on command.
	It's just something that happens.
	You can't control it, all that sort of stuff, right?
	Because she didn't want to go down and be tested as to whether she was really psychic or not.
	Yeah.
	It's like, oh, you pray to God.
	Okay, well, what is 7,257 times 9,258?
	Just pray to God and get that answer back, right?
	Because you talk to God, and God obviously knows the answer to that.
	Well, it doesn't work that way, right?
	People don't want fantasies tested.
	So, I'm a great writer.
	I just never quite get around to writing stuff and trying to publish it or trying to have it published, right?
	Because I don't want that test.
	I don't want to know.
	I'd rather live in the fantasy of my value than put that value to a market test, which is why people like politics and why business people like the government because it allows them to steer vastly clear of your actual test of value.
	It's also why people focus so much on their appearance because they want to have value for their appearance and they want to pretend that it's for themselves, right?
	So I don't think it's hard to get the data on how valuable you are, right?
	The reality is it can be hard to process the data that you have or that you receive from the world.
	But it's really not that hard to get the data.
	You know, how successful is this show?
	Well, I think as far as philosophy shows go, it's number one.
	Relative to Rush Limbaugh who makes, what, $300 million for his last contract or something and has reaches in the millions and millions of people, well, it's quite a bit smaller.
	So I can get the data quite easily.
	How are my donations this month?
	I can get that data quite easily.
	How many people canceled their subscriptions either on YouTube or for money when I put out something that they don't like?
	And is that good or bad?
	I mean, I can get the data of what people like and don't like and what people find valuable or not valuable in this show very easily.
	easily.
	It may not be fun to process, but the data is very clear.
	Yeah, well, I guess I'm somewhat confused.
	I was hoping perhaps you could help.
	I mean, I'm really at kind of a confused point, and I need some help to kind of work my way out of it.
	And I was hoping we could have a conversation to go through that.
	And some of what you said is certainly valuable here.
	And I don't disagree with you fundamentally.
	Yeah.
	The data is probably sitting right there in my face.
	I just don't really quite know how to make use of it and move forward with it is the bottom line.
	So could I go through these simple...
	I mean, they're just quickly.
	It won't take me more than 30 seconds.
	Yeah, we can do the questions.
	Let me just give you one other thing, though, which is that failure to provide value to people can be as much a mark of success as...
	Indeed.
	I see that very well.
	If you're not liked by the Nazis, that is probably because you're a pretty good person.
	So I think there's data that goes two ways, which is that...
	It's negative feedback and positive feedback as far as what it's telling you about what's going on.
	They're both valuable.
	Yeah, I mean if the Rogaine manufacturers don't like you, it's because you've come up with a better cure for baldness.
	Although I shouldn't say cure.
	It's not like a disease or anything.
	So not being liked or having negative feedback is an essential guide, particularly if you're involved in any kind of moral endeavor.
	You always have to sail by two things.
	Ideally, you need three things, like a GPS signal to get a vector.
	The positive regard of good people and the negative regard of bad people is the two most important things to sail by in any moral venture.
	In other words, You know, you always see these cheesy commercials, you know, power companies hate this guy because he's figured out how to get you 10 kilojoules of power for, you know, a bottle cap and a handjob or whatever, right?
	Supermarkets hate this guy because he's found a way to cut your grocery bill by 90%.
	Hint, it doesn't involve coupons or whatever, right?
	I mean, they hate this guy because whatever, right?
	Plastic surgeons hate this woman who can find you a way to look 28 when you're 55 and it costs you 20 cents or whatever, right?
	So...
	I just really wanted to point that out, that negative feedback is essential.
	I mean, if your competition doesn't hate you, you're really not doing a good job.
	Or your opponents, fundamentally.
	So anyway, I just wanted to mention that.
	But you want to hit me with your seven questions?
	Let's do it.
	Well, they're not questions.
	They're just statements that I hope maybe you can ask me questions about after I've made these statements.
	Just do one at a time, Billy.
	Okay.
	All right.
	Well, let's start off with number one.
	I'm in my late 50s and I'm concerned that I've wasted my life away.
	And we've kind of started talking about that already.
	Number two, I've never been married or engaged.
	Number three, I'm not sure how to assess my value to a spouse or the world for that matter, which we went through also.
	I'm at a crossroads and really need some feedback.
	Wait, did you hear me ask you to just read these one at a time?
	Okay, go ahead.
	No, but did you hear me?
	Yeah, I heard you.
	I heard you.
	There was a little bit of a pause after the first one, so I thought I'd go on.
	Go ahead.
	I hear what you're saying.
	Okay, because, you know, listening skills in relationships are pretty important.
	But okay.
	So you're concerned that you've wasted your life?
	And is that because you haven't enjoyed it or because you haven't achieved great things?
	The latter.
	So you have enjoyed your life?
	Oh, well, you know, it was easier to say the latter, but to be real honest with you, I've enjoyed many aspects of my life, but to look at it as a full picture, I would say, no, I really haven't enjoyed my life.
	I mean, there's been some very remarkable experiences I've had, but not overall.
	Maybe I'm just focusing on the negative when I say that, but it was easier to answer to the latter than it was the first part of the question.
	And do you think that having achieved greater or better things or more meaningful things would have added to your pleasure?
	Well, the thing that's missing that I've missed for forever is, you know, relationship, is a strong relationship.
	I've never been surrounded by people that are my equal from the standpoint of being able to engage in the deeper subjects.
	Everybody seems to be relatively superficial and it's just hard to feel like I'm living and that I have a relationship when most of the people around me are at that level.
	Right.
	Now, do you think that there are people out there who can achieve your standards or not?
	Oh, yeah.
	I mean, certainly there are.
	I mean, there's people that will far exceed my standards.
	I'm no rocket scientist as far as my brain power is concerned.
	I'm not ultra-smart, but my circumstances just haven't put me in a place where I feel like there's many people on par.
	My circumstances have not put me in a place.
	I mean, you sound a little, a dandelion fluff could say that, right?
	Anyway, the wind blows, right?
	I mean, you've got this passivity, right?
	I mean, my circumstances haven't, I mean, you're not married, you don't have kids, so what circumstances are keeping you in a place where you don't have deep people around you?
	Well, for example, in my 30s, I dated a lot of people.
	I mean, at the time, I was a churchgoer, and I've grown way past that now, but at the time, I was a churchgoer and dated quite a few people, and I could just never get a relationship that lasted for very long, nothing that seemed to really stick.
	That doesn't even remotely answer my question.
	I mean, it's interesting information, but do you know what the question was?
	No.
	Would you repeat it, please?
	Sure.
	So you said, my circumstances have not put me in a place where I can meet deep people.
	And I said, that seems very passive, right?
	So you haven't had circumstances that have kept you in any particular place, right?
	You don't get married or have kids or whatever, right?
	And so why would you feel that you didn't have a choice in who you could interact with?
	I... I've always had a choice, I guess.
	I mean, I'm not saying that my choices haven't put me where I'm at.
	That's certainly not the case.
	Why?
	That's another question.
	That's more in why do I make the choices I make and why does that end me in a place where people are not as intellectually stimulating or less superficial, if you will, than what I'm finding myself in?
	Why am I drawn to people or why am I putting myself in circumstances that are in this, that are not as fulfilling as I want them to be?
	Well, again, you've got this standard of fulfillment that is separate from your choices in the same way that you may have had a standard of value that's separate from what you agreed to.
	The life you have is the life you want.
	I mean, unless you're trapped in a North Korean prison or family courts, right?
	The life that you have is the life that you want, right?
	Because if you wanted something else, you would be doing something else.
	Does that make any sense?
	Well, yes, if you're in touch with yourself to that degree, but perhaps that's the whole issue here.
	There's something I'm missing about myself that's causing this to occur.
	You make it sound so simple as far as we all have the life we want then, but people have many blockages and things that they're not willing to face that they may not even be aware of.
	It's something in their subconscious, something in their childhood.
	Yes, but you know how to become aware of them.
	I can be more blunt with you because you're in your 50s, right?
	So I hope you don't mind.
	We're not dissimilar in ages.
	I hope you don't mind the bluntness, right?
	How do you figure out your unconscious blockages?
	What do you do?
	Journaling, dream analysis, just trying to...
	You can go to therapy, right?
	You can go to therapy, you can journal, and have you done all of that?
	Well, you can go to therapy if you have the resources for it, but if you don't have the resources...
	I've done some of the therapy work in the past, but I'm not in the circumstances where I can do that now.
	And it's unfortunate that now is where it's more important, because I'm more aware now than I have been in the past.
	Oh, so you're broke, is that right?
	Yeah, I'm pretty much broke, that's right.
	And why are you broke?
	Well, because I put myself in a very rural area and there's not much business to make out here and doing it on the internet has not proven to work out so far for me very well.
	Okay, so why have you put yourself in a rural area where there's not much business for you?
	Well, at the time I did that when I was still in the religious, the clutches of the religious perspective and thought the world was going to end very soon.
	Oh, come on, seriously.
	I thought you said you were in your early 30s when you were religious.
	I was, but that lasted until just seven years ago.
	Oh, seven years ago you gave up on religion, and so you had moved out of a fear of the rapture, the end times, that kind of stuff?
	Let me clarify.
	Seven years ago I moved because of my religious beliefs, and it wasn't probably until about three to four years ago that I broke out of those religious beliefs and realized that they were just an anchor in my life that did not have value, that the fallacies that were involved in them just didn't make sense anymore.
	I rose above that and was exposed to reason and rationality.
	And that process is still ongoing.
	It's never a process that will end, but there was a major epiphany that occurred about four years ago, and I cast off all religious issues.
	But I started off being a Christian probably in my late 20s is when I became a Christian and lived that life.
	So you were agnostic or atheist before that?
	Agnostic, I guess.
	My mother was a fairly religious person, superficially religious.
	My dad was not religious at all and never went to church.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	Why did you become a Christian?
	I was just a child.
	I didn't know any better.
	Well, no, no, no.
	That's not fair.
	I became a Christian as an adult.
	And when I went to see a preacher to basically have him comfort me because of an ordeal I was going through at the time, he used it as a means to, quote-unquote, save me.
	And it had an emotional knife edge to it that felt right at the time.
	So it was a very irrational decision, but it felt right at the time.
	And so I went with it.
	The indoctrination began at that point and continued, you know, through many different church facilities and church activities and hooked me in even more.
	You know, I just wasn't thinking very clearly.
	And did your father have anything to say about your conversion?
	Was he still alive?
	No, my father was not alive at that time.
	Right, right.
	And did you have any friends—I guess you had friends who were not religious in your late 20s.
	Did they have anything to say about your conversion?
	Some, yeah.
	Most of the friends I had at the time were religious and they drew me in.
	So I only had one or two people because my job has moved me from place to place.
	And so it was during the time where I had just gone to a new city and relocated that I ended up talking to this preacher and moving in that direction.
	I didn't have...
	Well, again, you switched...
	Just to point out, sorry to interrupt.
	Just to point out, you switched to the passive voice again.
	You say my job moved me from place to place.
	That's not true, right?
	True.
	I chose a job that moved me to another city, yes.
	And you chose to stay.
	Like, if you were conscripted, right?
	And you were in the military, and I can understand that, right?
	But this was not...
	And the reason I'm pointing this stuff out is just because I get turned on by being annoying.
	No, the reason that I'm pointing this stuff out is because when you switch to the passive voice, you may hear this if you listen to this back, which I'd suggest you do, there's a kind of resentment and almost an emptiness, at least to me, in the phraseology.
	And, you know, you're still a relatively young man, right?
	I mean, I know it doesn't matter.
	People who are like in their 20s are like, you kidding me?
	The guy's 51, right?
	He could be a grandfather in the Stone Age.
	Actually, a great grandfather.
	But the reality is, you know, if you take care of your health and have some good luck, you've got like 30 plus, 40 years maybe to go, right?
	So, you know, if you're going to change, which sounds like you want to do...
	Then this gravity well of passivity that keeps showing up in this conversation at least is, I mean, it's going to kill your life, right?
	Any possibility of, right?
	Because you're going to feel helpless and with helplessness comes resentment and passivity and all that kind of stuff, right?
	Stuff happens to you, right?
	I mean, I'm not disagreeing at all, but I'm finding this feedback quite interesting that you're picking up on all these passive issues.
	I'm not denying it.
	I'm just simply observing that it's interesting because most people that would know me I don't think would call me passive by any stretch of the imagination.
	But there's something obviously that's surfacing here.
	No, no, no.
	Listen, I mean, look at everything you've told me.
	I mean, why did you become religious?
	A priest talked me into it and then the indoctrination took over.
	Right?
	Why are you where you are?
	Well, it was because of religion.
	Why did you move around?
	Well, it's because my job moved me.
	Do you hear that at all when I sort of repeat it back to you?
	Yeah, no, I definitely see it more clearly because of your feeding it back to me for sure.
	And I mean, look, I'm sympathetic.
	I am.
	You know, I don't mean to like, oh, you're passive, whatever, right?
	I mean, I'm sympathetic.
	I'm just trying to give you the sort of blunt clarity, you know, given that you are older, right?
	I mean, you know, it gives you the blunt clarity, at least as I see it, right?
	And this is nothing, I'm certainly no oracle, and nothing I say is true as far as these observations go.
	This is just my observations.
	But if you want to do something with your life, then you have to stop having life do things to you, right?
	Okay.
	In other words, you've got to stop being dragged behind the horse, and you've got to get on the horse, and then you've got to be the horse, right?
	Something just connected with me that maybe we can explore here real quick.
	I've had a lot of entrepreneurial jobs from the standpoint of work for a lot of startup companies.
	And when I think back on that, I can really see a passive nature to that because I'm thinking like, gee, maybe this company will be one where I can learn the ropes of how I can really be an entrepreneur or how I can learn the business side of it.
	And that's never happened.
	I've just been the person that's the coder, the technical guy that does the job.
	But as far as a mover and shaker or a leader...
	Very small roles as leadership in all of those different startup companies.
	And sorry to point out, just because a lot of people think that entrepreneurial stuff is also self-directed, it's not actually much.
	When you're an entrepreneur and you're in entrepreneurial life...
	Huge amount of reacting.
	You're just putting out fires all the time.
	Some client is upset.
	Some product is late.
	Something didn't get delivered.
	Somebody wants to quit.
	Somebody, right?
	And so you're just running around putting fires out all the time.
	It's highly reactive.
	You don't get to really plan your career or you don't get to get mentored like as you would in larger organizations.
	These aren't bad things at all.
	But it is not necessarily like – it's not like, well, if you work for a big company, you're not self-directed.
	And if you're an entrepreneur, you are self-directed.
	I don't really find that to be the case at all.
	Like listening to – I've read a bunch of books by Jack Walsh, who is the CEO, I think, of – GE and, I mean, the amount of thought and work that they put into mentoring and grooming people and planning and all, they have the resources to not just spend their whole lives putting out fires.
	And so they can really sort of consider and plan, and there's a huge amount of...
	Deliberate self-direction in larger organizations that when you're in an entrepreneurial world where you're just workaholism putting out fires all the time, it's a highly reactive environment and doesn't necessarily foster a great sense of self-efficacy and control of your life.
	Indeed.
	And I've been tuning in a lot to some of the shows where you're talking about how to assess your value to a company, for example.
	And I sure wished I knew that when I was in the thick of my startup companies because that would have been so valuable to really be able to have a perspective of how I'm actually helping the company's bottom line or how I'm really contributing in a way that's beyond just my specific value.
	And I never got that feedback, and I never had the idea to ask a question.
	So I've heard that from your podcast recently, and that's very good.
	I just wish I could have heard it earlier.
	Well, look, see, but look, if you're the kind of guy who doesn't come up with these questions, then I don't see how you're going to change.
	Because this is, again, this is the passive voice.
	It never occurred to me.
	It never, right?
	What if I have unconscious blocks?
	Or I have unconscious blocks, and if I don't know them, right?
	So when you say, it never occurred to me, this is a way of excusing yourself.
	And look, I don't know if you have anything to be excused.
	I mean, this is the first time we're talking.
	But what I'm saying is that you're just constantly providing excuses.
	Well, it never occurred to me.
	Well, why didn't it ever occur to you?
	Were you reading books about it?
	Were you asking other people?
	Were you journaling?
	Were you...
	I mean...
	I certainly was always asking.
	If you ask anybody around me, they'd say, I'm always asking for feedback about everything I do.
	So it's not like I'm not trying to get the answers.
	It's not like I don't ask a lot of questions.
	I mean, in many respects...
	Oh, I'm sorry.
	It's so subtle.
	Hang on.
	It's so subtle you don't see it.
	When you say, I'm always asking for feedback about everything that I do, that is another way of avoiding responsibility.
	What do you think of what I'm doing?
	Do you like what I'm doing?
	Do you not like what I'm doing?
	Do you think I'm doing the right thing?
	Do you think I'm doing the wrong thing?
	Do you think it's productive?
	Do you think it's unproductive?
	Do you think it's valuable?
	Do you think it's not valuable?
	Right?
	I mean, if you're always asking for feedback, then in a sense, you're handing over the responsibility for determining the value of what you're doing to other people.
	No.
	It's just data for a decision.
	I make the decision.
	The data may come from the other people, but I'm making the decision.
	Well, obviously you consider the data, right?
	Yes, I wouldn't ask for it if I didn't consider it.
	Right.
	Doesn't mean I act on it.
	I mean, my life, if you was to look at my life, it would be so contrary to what everybody...
	I mean, I'm a very unusual person.
	I have made some major changes in my life that nobody would ever do.
	And I've lived by my values much more so than most of the people that have been around me have.
	Nonsense.
	Ethics are extremely important.
	No, no.
	Don't you spin me this story, brother.
	Don't you spin me this story.
	I'm not spending anything, let's be honest.
	You said you were an agnostic, right?
	In my earlier years, yes.
	And your friends were all religious.
	Yes, and when I was in that age, yes, that's correct.
	I mean, we're not the static person.
	We grow, we change.
	All right, listen.
	You're either going to keep making excuses or you're going to listen to some feedback.
	You keep saying you ask everyone for feedback, and I'm giving you feedback.
	And you're just telling me that I'm wrong, or finding some way to dodge it.
	Well, there's aspects of what you're telling me that range true, and other aspects that don't.
	I'm just trying to offer my feedback about what I'm hearing, and there's no reason to get upset or to take it personally.
	I'm just trying to work out what I'm hearing here.
	Who on earth said I was taking it personally?
	I can get upset without taking it personally.
	I'm...
	You told me that you lived your values.
	If you were an agnostic and your friends were all religious people who then talked you into becoming religious, that's not living by your values.
	It doesn't mean you're a bad guy or anything, but if you're going to tell me a story about living by your values, that would be an example of that not occurring.
	And I say this not in a way of attacking or gotcha or anything like that.
	It's just the data is countered to the claim.
	That's definitely true in that case.
	At that point, I was a very immature person.
	So I agree with you 100% at that point in time.
	And there's probably much of that that goes on now that I just don't know.
	I just am not aware of it.
	Dude, you're making my head spin.
	So you tell me you live by your values.
	I tell you that you don't.
	You tell me, well, not everyone is static and then blah, blah, blah.
	And then you say you 100% agree with me and so on.
	I think I can see why you're kind of stuck.
	I don't know how you're going to get unstuck.
	Tell me, okay, just indulge me for a sec, right?
	So, how were you punished as a child?
	Typical, spanked.
	You know, father was the authoritarian, and I don't remember my earliest occurrence of spanking, but it occurred, you know, many times.
	It wasn't anything that was ultra-rare or anything like that.
	But I can't remember my early, early childhood a whole lot.
	What do you mean by early childhood?
	Well, there's one situation that I can remember pretty clearly when I was around four years old, three or four years old, and I was playing with a plastic toy train in my bedroom.
	And I had this idea that I wanted to make an electric train.
	So I taped an electric motor from some toy to the bottom of this plastic train and tried plugging it into the wall.
	Poof, bang, boom, I was thrown against the wall.
	I was by myself at the time.
	And everybody in the other room came running in to see what was going on.
	I didn't get spanked for that.
	But there were times when I was spanked for very innocuous, for things that were not all that threatening or Or otherwise, you know, typical things like trying to reach to a hot stove, you know, getting spanked for that, or I upset my father when he came home from work and you were trying to, you know, talk to him when he was reading his newspaper.
	And you've done that five times now, so I think that deserves a spanking.
	Things like that.
	And did your parents play with you?
	Very little.
	I was a pretty neglected kid.
	I was a middle child.
	My brother's not very much younger than me.
	My sister's four years older than me.
	And I was pretty neglected as a middle child.
	Parents were into their own thing.
	So they paid more attention to your older and younger siblings?
	Yes.
	And how do you know that?
	Did they play with them but not with you?
	Well, my brother got a lot of negative.
	He got a lot of attention from the negative side from my dad.
	I'm not sure why.
	It's almost like he felt my brother was not his own kid.
	That's what it felt like.
	I have no idea if that was true or not.
	But he was always the target of my dad's rage or abuse.
	He was the one that was, if nothing, if it was me and him that were doing something, was making a lot of noise that my dad didn't like, he would single my brother out before he would single me out.
	And what do you mean when you say your father's rage and abuse?
	Well, he could fly off the handle.
	It's not like he had an ultra-bad temper, but he stayed to himself most of the time, and if we riled his routine, that's what got him to...
	To yell at us or, you know, spank us or chastise us in some fashion or punish us in some fashion.
	Right.
	So, for instance, if you were trying to talk to him when he wanted to read his newspaper, you might end up being spanked, right?
	Yes.
	Yes.
	Right.
	And do you remember him playing with you at all?
	No, the biggest interaction I had with my dad was when I was interested in what he was doing and he would allow it from time to time.
	As a young child, he rarely allowed it, but as I grew older, he was kind of a craftsman.
	He did all his own work on the car.
	He was a body repairman and worked on the engine and various things in the car.
	I had a very interesting uncle that kind of mentored me as I grew up for years.
	But as far as my dad was concerned, he tolerated my involvement when it suited him.
	It was not something he sought.
	He never sought me out to do anything that I can recall.
	Do you see how this may be related to passivity?
	Could you help me fill in those gaps?
	Thank you.
	Sure, I'd be happy to.
	What about your mom, just before we get to that?
	I mean, what about your mom?
	Did she play with you?
	Did she...
	Quite a bit of a different story there, because as a child, I was asthmatic, and there were quite a few times when I couldn't go to school because of the severity of my asthma.
	And she was there.
	She would fix meals for me and be attentive and...
	So she was much more attentive in my younger life.
	As I grew into my 10-year-old and beyond phase of life, she became less interested, less involved.
	Right.
	So she was, when you were under the weather, and she Could respond in a way that was, you know, obviously clear and well understood, take care of you and all of that kind of stuff.
	Then she was more affectionate, and then when you were well, she was less affectionate, or when you got older, is that right?
	I guess as you got older, the asthma diminished?
	Yeah, yeah, the asthma pretty much went away.
	When I got to my early adolescence, the asthma for the most part went away.
	And did she initiate play with you when you were well?
	Not that I remember.
	And did you initiate play with her that she responded to?
	I don't remember that either.
	She was very heavily involved in her soap operas and neighbors that would drop by to get her advice on this.
	For whatever reason, people thought she was the person to come to in terms of talking about their life's issues.
	Right.
	Do you...
	Do you need more help connecting the dots for the passivity?
	Is it because I was cast into a passive role?
	I mean, I had no choice but to be in a passive role?
	As a child?
	No, I think that's kind of a tautology, like why are you passive?
	Because I was put in a passive role.
	all.
	It doesn't add a huge amount to the knowledge, but it's certainly, to me at least, it's a step in the right direction.
	Well, another way to look at it perhaps is that I wasn't rewarded for being non-passive.
	So, So...
	Well, no, you were punished for being non-passive with your father, right?
	Like, I want to talk to you, Dad, bam, right?
	Yes, exactly.
	So that right there is the key, it seems.
	So the reason I asked about all this stuff is to what degree could you initiate positive action as a child?
	Now, when you're around moody, volatile people, right, you're walking on eggshells.
	You don't want to set them off, right?
	So you become guarded.
	And you also, you become very good at avoiding responsibility because people who are, as you termed him, full of rage and abusive, people who are like that, they always need an excuse to abuse others.
	Yes.
	If I've told you once, and you can see them working the bellows of their own petulant rage, using the phrases...
	It's really easy to see that with my brother.
	Oh yeah.
	I'm sure, right?
	So they use these phrases to whip themselves into a frenzy, but they need to assign a moral responsibility.
	If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times, right?
	I'm done.
	That's it.
	Enough is enough.
	And you can see these phrases actually, interestingly enough, being used in escalations to war as well.
	It's absolutist phrases designed to inflame the fight-or-flight mechanism, but they need a moral excuse to hang on children and wives and husbands and whoever they're abusing so that they don't see the clear reflection of arsehole.
	They have to be morally indignant.
	This is the fifth time.
	Now it's time for a spanking.
	You had your warning.
	Now it's time for a timeout.
	Now it's time for a spanking.
	Now I'm doing the right thing.
	And you did the wrong thing and you must be punished.
	And they say all of that bullshit.
	I'm sorry?
	You asked me how I could display positive things in my childhood.
	What I could do that would be a positive thing.
	I was into the mechanics and technologies and electronics and hobbies.
	I guess that's the way to wrap it all together.
	The things that I did as a hobby, when I came up with a gadget or a thing, I could show that.
	I actually went to my father building model airplanes and rockets and stuff like that to get his approval.
	Did I do this right?
	He'd critique it.
	And I got this approval or not approval.
	Well, you could have done this this way.
	It was never really a pat on the back.
	This is great, son.
	I really love how you did this.
	Nothing like that ever.
	It was all very much kind of like, well, this was good, but most of this stuff is you could improve the paint here.
	You know, that kind of language.
	And I appreciate you sharing that because you remember what you said.
	You said you asked everyone for their feedback.
	Correct.
	And you're just talking about how One of the ways in which you felt you could show some initiative was to build something and ask your father for feedback, right?
	Yes.
	So that tells me that you probably work in a pretty isolated profession, building stuff for other people, right?
	Actually, I've worked as a software developer in IT type of things.
	So that's mostly what I've done through my career is electronics work and IT work.
	When I say IT, I mean user interface stuff, so not really a hidden type of thing.
	I've had awards for some of my software, etc.
	Good for you.
	That's great.
	That's great.
	Seems kind of hollow now.
	Oh, no, I know.
	The thrill of victory lasts about 15 minutes, and the thrill of awards lasts about 20.
	Exactly.
	Yep, yep.
	Okay, so the reason that I point out the passivity is that It's important for children to be able to fly their parents like kites, to be able to drive them around like bicycles.
	In other words, for the children's willpower to have a strong effect on their environment.
	Children need to be able to will things and have things happen.
	The child reaches for the parent and the parent picks up the child.
	And I talked about this before on the show, like my daughter, when she was a baby, a couple of months old, she'd want to see something, she'd reach for me, I'd pick her up.
	She'd reach for the thing, and I would take her over to it.
	It could be on a high shelf, she'd reach up, I'd get it for her.
	She basically was flying me like a helicopter around the room to get to the things that interested her.
	I get what you're saying here.
	Right, so children need to be able to exert willpower on their environment and see that willpower Bite deep and change things.
	And of course, for infants and toddlers, this is most fundamentally their parents.
	Right?
	I build up a tower.
	Isabella knocks it over.
	She is having an effect on her environment.
	She wants something.
	I will try to provide it for her.
	And this is why I was asking, do your parents play with you?
	Because children want their parents to play with them.
	I mean, children, particularly when they're young, they don't really give a shit about other kids.
	Like toddlers don't, and this is pretty well established as far as I understand it psychologically, toddlers don't really care about other toddlers.
	They can do a little parallel play when they're like three or four, but they don't really get into playing until they're like five or six.
	That's five years where you don't care about playing with other kids that much.
	What you care about is interaction with your parents.
	And that's what children want.
	Now, if you had said to me, well, my mom and my dad did sit down and play with me every day or every other day, then I would know that they would be responding to what you wanted.
	In other words, your desire and your willpower was having an effect on your environment and getting you what you want.
	The connection between willpower and achievement is to some degree, I believe, hardwired in infancy and toddlerhood.
	To what degree do your desires and your willpower Have an effect on your environment?
	Well, this is fundamentally, did your parents respond in an appropriate manner to your desires?
	It doesn't mean giving you everything you want, but did you get a sense of the connection between willpower, desire, and achieving your goals as an infant, as a toddler?
	And that fundamentally comes out of, did your parents respond To your preferences in a way that satisfied you.
	And when I was letting Isabella fly me around the room to get what she wanted, I was giving her the gift of your desires are achievable.
	Your willpower means something.
	It means everything.
	And she is a very strong-willed individual to some degree as a result of that.
	Maybe partly that's innate.
	I don't know.
	But I'm sure it helped.
	And that's why I was asking all of that.
	I see.
	I didn't get the kind of feedback that I think was healthy as a child from my father, but my uncle, on the other hand, was more of a surrogate father.
	He was tuned into my interests and my desires, and he would build me things.
	He would interact with me when he was around, and so I always had a strong affinity to my uncle, my brother's brother, my father's brother, because he was...
	He was into so many things.
	He was very interesting and curious about so much.
	And so I take a lot after my uncle because of the interest he played in my life at an early age.
	That my father was either too busy or otherwise decided not to do himself.
	Yes, and I certainly accept that you had positive interactions with your father.
	The question is, did you have to conform to his preferences to have those positive interactions?
	That doesn't mean they weren't positive, but it doesn't support the development of will to have positive interactions with other people on their terms.
	Does that make sense?
	So you're saying, unless it's my parents, then the interactions really aren't that formative?
	Well, certainly, yeah.
	I mean, it would be your mom and dad, but assuming they were your primary caregivers, it would be that.
	What is constant in the development?
	So the way that I would sort of try and describe this is learning language...
	It's not something that can occur with someone you see for an hour or two every other week.
	It needs to be continual around you as a child, right?
	So kids of college grads hear like, I don't know, 2,000 words a day and kids of welfare recipients or poor people in particular hear like 800 words a day and so on.
	So you can't learn language as a kid or learning how to read or learning how to write.
	It's a continual process of all around you.
	And I would say with the development of Will, it's great if you have a counter example somewhere in your life.
	That's probably why you've been able to achieve some of the things you've been able to achieve.
	But in terms of the development of will and a sense of efficacy and control over your environments, that is, I believe, early stuff.
	And it has to do with primary caregivers.
	I see.
	Well, I can certainly, and based on that, I can certainly see how that has affected, you know, the circumstances, many of the circumstances of my life.
	You know, how, as you've fed back to me here, how passive I am in so many ways that I haven't noticed myself being, and how that relates to my early childhood.
	I can clearly see that connection.
	So how do I change from here, given the circumstances that I find myself in, given I don't have much money?
	And made some bad choices along the way that have gotten me here.
	Yeah, it's hard to end up broke coming out of the IT field, right?
	Yeah.
	Well, you know, there's so many things about that.
	I mean, even when I was making nearly six figures when I was in the field, and I chose to give that up because I just did not like the world.
	I mean, yes, it was religious undertones, religious basis for it.
	I know that's crazy now, but there's still many of the things that I saw going on then, even though I had a religious perspective about it, are still fundamentally true now as far as You know, the failing economy or what have you, the reasons for it failing are totally different.
	But I've been woken up to the things that are going on in the world for a long time.
	And I've been a counter-culturalist for a long time.
	And I've made decisions that put me on the outside of society because of those perspectives.
	And a big one was, you know, casting away my career and saying, you know, the career doesn't matter if I'm going to be in a city when the big one hits or whatever.
	But that's a decision I kind of regret now.
	But since then, I've woken up and I've learned what, at least on the beginning stages, of waking up to my inner self.
	And, you know, life wouldn't be worth living if I couldn't really overcome and tackle the truth of who I really am.
	And that's that's that didn't happen.
	And it probably wouldn't have happened being in the city, at least being nose to the grindstone and consumed with everything like that.
	It doesn't give you the time to really explore yourself, whereas I have plenty of that now.
	Right So it was good and bad Right Right Now I don't want to take up all of your time here I know you've got other callers to get to.
	There's a friend of mine that lives in another state, lives in a very populated area, and he's put together quite a few businesses.
	I don't know how great he is at it.
	I've done it for about four years.
	And he wants to put together a business with me for computer support on the low end of the marketplace scale.
	So he's in a location where there's a lot of elderly people that don't We're good to go.
	Do it remotely.
	That's the business that he's thinking about putting together with me.
	And if you could give me any pointers or just general feedback about that statement, about that idea, I'd love to hear it.
	I don't, I mean, you're asking me to sort of evaluate career and business plans in 20 seconds, which I don't think I can do.
	I understand.
	No, I don't think I can provide you any particular value with that.
	I think that it's not so much the form of your future decisions that matters, but the content.
	I think that you can achieve satisfaction in any voluntary environment with enough self-knowledge.
	And where there is dissatisfaction, we always want to move around and shuffle around the bricks of our house rather than the air that we breathe, right?
	What is within us.
	And I think that if you focus on self-knowledge and you focus on figuring out how to overcome the passivity, and the way to overcome the passivity is anger.
	Passivity is a defense against legitimate anger.
	You are angry That you had to parent your parents, I would imagine.
	You know, when we have to conform to other people's expectations or be punished, that is a despicable position to put children in because they're not there by choice.
	And you had to manage your parents from a very early age or face extreme negative, brutal consequences.
	Particularly your father.
	Well, that robbed you of security, of love, of a trusting, consistent bond.
	That robbed you of a sense of self-efficacy and put you in a situation where you are working to manage other people's perceptions all the time.
	And the fact that you end up as a GUI designer is not too shocking as far as that goes, right?
	And so I think that there's probably, I would imagine...
	I don't have to imagine, but I'm hopefully not projecting.
	There's a lot of anger in having to manage your parents.
	Children who have to manage their parents end up with such a bottomless well of contempt for them because you are a child, but you're being raised by dangerous children.
	That is a frightening, frustrating, and particularly when you hit your teenage years, utterly contemptible situation to be in.
	It is utterly unworthy of parenting.
	It is utterly unjust of parents to put children in that position.
	And you maintain passivity, I would imagine, as a way of excusing your parents.
	But, of course, if you excuse your parents, you end up making excuses for yourself.
	If your passivity was not the result of fear of punishment and abuse, But rather consulting others and the result of circumstances and so on, then your parents are off the hook and you're off the hook.
	Your parents have no choice and you have no choice.
	We cannot fundamentally achieve any virtue which we deny to our parents.
	We cannot fundamentally achieve any virtue which we deny to our parents.
	If your parents were not responsible, you will never achieve the virtue of responsibility.
	If your parents were neither good nor evil, but simply victims of circumstance, then you will forever remain a victim of circumstance.
	This is the painful tearing off the scab of history that is essential for the moral progress not just of individuals, but of our entire goddamn species.
	We can only achieve the virtues we ascribe to our parents.
	If your parents have no free will, you have no free will.
	If your parents' actions are excused by their own childhoods, then your shitty actions are excused by your childhood.
	If your parents are not morally responsible, you will never achieve moral responsibility.
	If your parents were incapable of integrity, you will remain forever incapable of integrity.
	Not you individually.
	It's collective, right?
	And this is just the great agony.
	Of growth in the species.
	We are universal machines.
	We are universal machines.
	Whatever we deny to our parents, responsibility, efficacy, morality, choice, freedom, whatever we deny to them, we deny to ourselves, individually and collectively, as a culture.
	Whatever we ascribe to themselves, we ascribe to ourselves.
	Whatever we ascribe to our parents, we can achieve.
	If our parents had no chance of success, we have no chance of success.
	If our parents' immoralities and rages are all excusable, then all of our failures are all excusable, which means they will be perpetual.
	We cannot, cannot climb higher than what we ascribe to our parents.
	Wherever we let our parents climb to is where we climb to on the mountain and stop.
	If we don't drag our parents up to the very summit of moral responsibility with all of the terrifying emotional vertigo and moral dizziness that that engenders, We stay down with them in the swamps of excuses and prehistory and amorality.
	Unless you recognize it and break from them like you did with your parents, if I'm understanding you correctly.
	In other words, you couldn't drag your mother up to the levels that you're aspiring to now.
	So instead of continuing that pull, you just broke the relationship so that you were free to go up the mountain yourself.
	Is that a fair assessment of understanding?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, except, you know, and yeah, I mean, I think with the slight, for me, and I'm switching the metaphors here for which I apologize, but for me, it was like my mother was in a building that she had set fire to and chained herself to.
	And my choice was to leave or burn with her.
	Yes.
	I mean, she would not come out.
	She set fire to it herself.
	I give her responsibility.
	I give her choice.
	Because I needed those things for myself.
	It's like, if you're in a boat with someone and you only eat if they eat and you're starving, you feed them, right?
	You feed them so you can eat.
	And with my family, excuse me my volume here, it's not directed at you, but I'm very passionate about this because I really need people to understand this.
	Not about me.
	But about their lives.
	I had to stuff moral responsibility down the throats of my parents.
	With them kicking and biting and screaming.
	Why?
	Because I needed it for myself.
	And I know that I am a human being and they are human beings.
	I know that they are not insane.
	I know that they are not Incapable of moral responsibility, even now.
	I've gone into the evidence of that in many chats.
	Don't need to talk about it here.
	I cannot separate my parents and myself into opposite biological and moral entities.
	I can't say, I have free will and moral responsibility and I must accept better behavior from myself.
	And then deny them any of that.
	Why?
	Because that's like me saying, I'm a mammal and they are the opposite of a mammal.
	Imagine going to a biology conference.
	I am a mammal.
	Everyone's like, yeah, yeah, we know.
	We learned this in kindergarten.
	We got it.
	I put up a picture of my parents and say, they are the opposite of mammals.
	And people will say, the fuck is that?
	What is the opposite of a mammal?
	That doesn't make any sense.
	That would be the actions of a crazy person.
	And so I can't say, I have moral responsibility and my parents have no moral responsibility.
	I have moral responsibility and my parents have the opposite of moral responsibility.
	Or my culture, or my teachers, or my priests, or whoever, anyone who's not Currently dribbling on themselves and staring a thousand-yard tunnel, inverted periscope of Thoracene.
	And so, I needed to eat the meal called moral responsibility, integrity, maturity, self-ownership.
	I needed...
	To eat that meal because without it, my spirit would have died.
	And I would have joined the ranks of the walking dead.
	I really get that.
	Yeah, but in order to eat that meal, I had to force-fucking-feed everyone around me the same meal.
	Because I could not accept that they were the opposite of me.
	Yeah.
	That's what it feels like.
	Everybody wants to eat that meal.
	Yeah, everyone wants to eat that meal called moral responsibility, and they want to keep it away from everyone else.
	My parents did the best they could with the knowledge that they had.
	Oh, I guess my priest was just, you know, trying to do the best he could with the knowledge that he had.
	Oh, yeah, the teacher who beat me, I guess, you know, he probably had a tough childhood and this and that.
	They're all just machines of history.
	They have no choice, no moral responsibility.
	Bullshit.
	First of all, they used moral responsibility to assault you and me.
	So fuck them if they say there's no such thing as moral responsibility.
	Hey, you use it, you can't avoid it.
	Yeah, push that hypocrisy right back in their face.
	Yeah, no one can take the gun out, spin it around 16 times, put it on their forearm, and shoot the eye of a deer out one kilometer away, and then say, I know nothing about guns.
	No.
	If you're a sharpshooter, you're a sharpshooter.
	You're proven.
	You then can't say, I don't know anything about guns.
	Right?
	And sorry, the evidence is just irresistible, overwhelming, and I'm an empiricist first and foremost.
	Those who harmed me as a child harmed me on the basis of morality, of moral superiority, of moral knowledge, of self-righteous, vicious, attacking, hypocritical anger, abuse, fundamentally predicated, tipping on the fulcrum.
	Of moral authority.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	We're playing with ethics now, are we?
	Is that the game?
	We're doing ethics?
	Great!
	Then let's universalize this stuff.
	Right?
	Let's universalize it.
	That's what we're doing?
	We're doing the ethics thing?
	Okay.
	That's what we're doing here in this show.
	But, you know, as far as most people, they don't think about these types of things, not in that way.
	They don't even think that their choices are moral in their everyday actions.
	Oh, no.
	No, you don't see that yet because you're still early.
	It's not conscious.
	I hate to know.
	Well, whether it's conscious or not, no.
	No.
	No.
	Because it's in everything that is avoided.
	You know, you're old enough to remember how we used to make photos.
	Remember you developed those negatives?
	Oh, yeah.
	And somebody with a practiced eye can hold up that negative to the light and can see what the picture looks like in his mind's eye.
	Yeah.
	Yep.
	Yeah.
	Why do people care about sports?
	To avoid...
	Ethics.
	Why do people cheer the military?
	To avoid ethics.
	Why do people want to vote?
	To avoid ethics.
	Why do people talk about the weather?
	To avoid ethics.
	But do you really think they're looking at it as though it's avoiding ethics or rather they're just being part of a group?
	They just want to be a part of the group.
	They are specifically telling you, you're only asking me this question.
	Which is right back to where we started.
	You're only asking this question, my friend, and I mean that genuinely.
	It's not sarcastic.
	You're only asking me this question because you are not bringing ethics to those around you.
	I tell you, you bring ethics to those around you, you know exactly what's going to happen.
	Tension, frustration, fear.
	Oh, yeah.
	I've experienced it.
	I've experienced that tension.
	And you're right.
	They avoid it.
	They'll find all kinds of excuses not to engage you on that level, to deal with those topics.
	That happens all the time.
	I mean, it's kind of painful on occasion when you really try and show how passionate you are about a topic and they don't want to hear it and you persist.
	They make it known that they're not going to have that.
	They're not going to talk about this anymore.
	Yeah, this is what people look like to anyone with the eyes to see.
	You know the skiers that go down those slalom hills, right?
	And they're like 80 degrees, or I guess, what is it?
	They're right down by the ground, right?
	Like leaning over so far, like their ears are getting frostbite, right?
	From the snow.
	So they're going back and forth, incredibly detailed, incredibly skillful.
	And then they get to the bottom of the hill and then they pretend to be blind.
	This is what people look like all the time.
	They're doing these expert things which require very clear vision.
	They're avoiding all the poles on the way down that are right in their way.
	They're designed to be in their way.
	All the way around them.
	They get to the bottom and they say, poles?
	What poles?
	I didn't see any poles.
	I can't see.
	I'm blind.
	And they're like, well, no, no, no.
	If you were blind, then how the hell did you avoid all that shit?
	How did you avoid the polls if you claim you can't see the polls?
	This is what it is with people with ethics.
	How the fuck do people get from birth to death never talking about ethics when it's the one thing that everyone talks about all the time abstractly, just never in the personal, right?
	Political process, Obamacare, whatever, taxes, debts, foreign policy.
	Go ahead.
	In terms of the passivity, it's kind of a grayscale thing.
	Maybe, at least I'm looking at it that way.
	For example, I guess I would personify or I would reflect a passive person would be somebody that doesn't stand up for what he believes in, somebody that does not push back when he's given a task or a statement that is counterintuitive.
	Counter to his own personal way of looking at it.
	For example, my friend wanted to work out this project with me in the local community here.
	And he and I got into a disagreement, a different perspective about the way one aspect was to be done.
	And he just wanted to do it his way, and he didn't involve my feedback at all, and he did not utilize anything that I had given him as tools to do the job.
	He just did it his way.
	And I took it personally, which I shouldn't have, but nevertheless, when we talked about it, because I was not passive, I actually wanted to talk about it.
	I thought our friendship was worth bringing the issue up to see how maybe I would get some feedback of what I did wrong here.
	But when I brought it up to him, saying, well, you know, I know I'm taking this personally, and you probably don't mean it that way, but this is how it felt to me.
	It really felt like you did not regard what I had to say at all, and you just did your own thing without any No justification or any explanation whatsoever of why you did it that way.
	Now, can you explain yourself?
	And he said, no, you and I are going to get along just fine if you don't bring up conversations like this.
	So was that being passive or not?
	How does passivity play into that type of a scenario?
	No, but you're still responding.
	I mean, you're still responding to something someone else is doing.
	And that's not bad.
	Don't get me wrong.
	It's better than not saying something.
	So you were active in response to what someone else did.
	Yes.
	That's not the same as you initiating.
	Yeah, I see that.
	And again, I'm not trying to put it down at all.
	I mean, most people don't even get to that level.
	So what you're doing is great.
	It's great that you talk to this guy about this.
	And that's active.
	And those are skills you learned as a child managing your parents.
	But true proactivity, you're saying wasted life.
	Well, if all you do is respond to difficult people in a proactive manner, I don't think you're going to get to your grave feeling great satisfaction.
	I think you're right.
	And so what I'm hearing, let me summarize quickly here.
	You're saying that in order to do what I want to achieve and to have satisfaction, it's about the self-discovery and the self-knowledge.
	That's the path that will get me there?
	Is that what you're saying?
	Yeah.
	I mean, listen back because you put a lot of bandwidth got heavily compressed.
	Yeah.
	You know, an entire summer's worth of sunshine went through one keyhole later, so go back and listen to it again.
	But really, to me, it's about assigning moral responsibility to your caregivers.
	And, you know, people don't understand why I emphasize this so much, but I emphasize it because you'll never feel like a human being if your parents are inhuman.
	And if you act the opposite from your parents, and they're human, you're inhuman.
	And if you act the opposite of your parents...
	And you're inhuman, they're human.
	Or if you're human, they're inhuman.
	Right?
	If you act the opposite of someone, that has to be processed.
	You can't have opposing standards.
	It kills your energy.
	It kills your motivation.
	It literally is trying to, like, flex your tricep and your bicep at the same time.
	What does it make your arm do?
	Nothing.
	It just sits there, immobile.
	So that would be my suggestion.
	You go back, figure out your childhood, and recognize that wrongs were done to you.
	That to excuse is unhealthy.
	As I listen to most of your podcasts and hear people reflect on their childhoods and just, I mean, there's not a podcast that goes by I haven't heard that you've given.
	Don't watch YouTube, but I listen to all your podcasts.
	It's a valuable, huge amount of information, and I have discovered a lot about myself from listening to it, but of course that's probably not enough.
	That's a very limited amount of feedback and a limited amount of information.
	Exposure to what I probably really need to understand.
	Yeah, listen, I don't get to be a great guitarist by listening to David Gilmour, right?
	That's right, yeah.
	I can appreciate it, but it's not the same as doing and learning.
	I'm so sorry.
	I want to make sure I get to another caller, and I appreciate your patience with this, and I appreciate your openness to my bluntness, and I really, really do thank you for the time and openness that you've taken in the call.
	Well, I thank you for your time, Stephan, very much.
	And what you're doing to the world is fantastic, and just keep doing it.
	Thank you very much.
	I appreciate that.
	Take care.
	You too.
	All right, Brian, you're up.
	Go ahead, Brian.
	Oh, hey.
	Sorry you guys caught me when I was downstairs having my meal.
	I want to take you up to my dungeon.
	Sounds like you're in a dungeon already.
	Are you holding a hold of a Titanic?
	Hello, Echo.
	Echo?
	I'm calling for Moria.
	Send reinforcements.
	In true anarchist fashion, I will now tear the tag off my mattress.
	And now you must use random words with no structure, and no syntax, and no grammar.
	I have my mohawk ready.
	I'm getting prepared.
	No, Steph, I actually...
	I'm calling because it's good to talk to you finally, but I also really want to get a talk with Peter Schiff.
	So how about I barter with you some of my own personal philosophical developments, and you decide whether they're valuable enough.
	Wait, what?
	You want to talk to Peter Schiff?
	Well, no, no, no.
	I want to talk with you, but I also want to share this with you.
	I also want to talk with Peter Schiff.
	All right.
	But you'll do, like I'll do for now.
	You'll put up with me for now.
	I really want to go out with Angelina Jolie, but until she's single again, would you like to get a coffee?
	Anyway, just kidding.
	Go on.
	You know.
	What I have to offer is I have two distinctions, linguistic distinctions that I find really useful.
	I have a bit of life advice that I got from my uncle, which I would like to pass on to your viewers regarding addiction.
	The critique, there's this thing that you have that you usually say, like, you never take diet advice from a fat guy.
	I want to critique that a little bit and a few businessy suggestions, but those can wait until after the call because I'm an entrepreneur.
	Sorry, can I just be a little bit more precise about the diet thing because people misunderstand that, which could be my fault as well.
	If I want to diet, I will choose the thin guy's book.
	It's not that the fat guy, he might be right.
	It's just that in the interest of efficiency and the reality of mortality, I'm going to look into the thin guy's diet book, which everyone knows and everyone understands because that's why you don't see fat guys on diet books, right?
	So I agree with you logically that it could be possible that the guy has a good theory even though he's fat.
	But it's like showing up for a job interview in a scuba suit when it's not a job for a scuba guy, right?
	I mean, maybe he's a great guy, but you're not going to hire him.
	In fact, you're probably just going to call security, right?
	You're getting rid of my barter chips here, aren't you?
	No, actually, I think I might want to reinforce and develop that a little bit.
	I think that if you really want to talk to somebody, a good source of advice, not just might be good, but a good source of advice, is talk to somebody who has failed.
	A lot of times.
	Most of the people who are very successful in life failed their way there.
	A mistake is probably one of the best teachers, natural teachers, that we can have.
	If it is followed by a success, yes.
	Well, I mean, I guess people have a preference to listen to people who are already successful, because there might be a zillion hacks out there.
	No, sorry, and the reason being, if somebody wants to get a novel published and has spent 20 years trying to get a novel published, And has never got his novel published.
	Is this someone whose advice you want in getting a novel published?
	No, not usually.
	So this actually, but in some situations, let me move this into that life advice.
	I got probably some of the best advice of my life about addiction from somebody who was an addict.
	My uncle one time told me, my dad had, I had a fucked up childhood just like everybody else, my dad had went inside to get another beer, my uncle was out on the porch, and he looked at me, I really like my uncle by the way, looked at me and said, Brian, don't do it.
	I was confused.
	He said, don't do it again.
	And I asked him, well, what the hell are you talking about?
	He said, whatever it is.
	Don't try sex with women promiscuously.
	Don't pick up a beer or alcohol or cigarettes because if you like it, then you're screwed.
	And this is a guy who has experienced that.
	He's telling me, because he has a bit of self-knowledge, he's telling me a good warning sign from that.
	So I think that...
	That's not a diet.
	No, no, no.
	Sorry.
	That's not a diet, though.
	So, like a guy who's 400 pounds who says, don't eat a dozen donuts a day, is not giving me a diet.
	He's telling me, I got fat by doing this, so don't do that, right?
	Right.
	There's no diet book which says, here's 20 bucks for a diet book.
	You open it up and it says, don't eat two dozen donuts a day with a picture of a fat guy.
	Right?
	Seriously, that would be like, people would be like, what the fuck, right?
	I mean, give me my 20 bucks back.
	This isn't even a good joke, right?
	I don't know.
	I think Michael Moore can sell millions and millions of dollars, and I guess it must work on some people, but it's not logic.
	It's not logic.
	But he's not authoring a diet book, right?
	No, not a diet book, but he's the guy that makes tons of money and also critiques capitalism, but I guess that works somehow.
	But not everything in the world is logical.
	Oh, the other distinction I wanted to give you.
	I'm going to have a short call, probably, unless you have questions to ask me afterwards.
	Philosophically speaking, I have a distinction between truth and fact, which is enormously useful for me.
	I define truth as sort of a subjective, honest affirmation.
	An example of a truth would be something like, I love my spouse.
	Okay, I'm being honest when I say that.
	But a truth can always be debated.
	You know, some feminist can come to me and say, well, you're really just part of a patriarchy and blah, blah, blah.
	And there should be a debate over the truth.
	A fact, on the other hand, is something that's not debatable.
	It's like...
	In a vacuum, a feather and a bowling ball are going to fall at the same time.
	I can test that.
	I can verify the fact.
	I can logically prove that two and two equals four.
	That's a fact.
	So the distinction between truth and fact, most everything is truth, but the distinction between truth and fact is a big deal for me.
	I thought you might find that useful.
	Do you find it useful?
	Yes.
	Okay, so moving on.
	Another distinction like that is the distinction between charity and generosity.
	I think you, obviously you probably already know this stuff, but it's just a choice of words distinction that I think is useful.
	Charity is, in short, giving a guy a fish when he's starving, and generosity is teaching him to fish.
	Charity is a vice.
	It's a vanity thing.
	My mother engages in charity all the time, and she hurts people with it.
	She really gets people dependent.
	Well, not really dependent, but teaches them to go back to this one religious institution to constantly get quote-unquote help, and it kind of destroys them.
	Generosity is, of course, well, being generous to someone is like teaching them to fish, you know, how to give them an opportunity and see how far they go up.
	Yeah, I mean, this teaching someone to fish versus giving them fish, it's, you know, I mean, it's kind of a cliche, which doesn't mean that it's bad.
	It's just not particularly helpful in many ways.
	I mean, if somebody's starving, don't teach them how to fish, because they're not going to have the energy.
	Just give them a fish, right?
	If somebody has no arms, then you can't teach them how to fish, right?
	I mean, it's not hugely helpful.
	I mean, it's sort of like saying, if somebody's poor, like if somebody's broke, give them a job.
	It's sort of implying that the only reason someone doesn't have The only reason that they're broke is they don't have a job.
	And that's not the case, right?
	I mean, what if somebody has a water phobia and doesn't want to go near the water?
	I mean, I know this sounds like nitpicking, but it's really not, right?
	So why are people poor is a very fundamental question.
	And it's not because they just lack some particular skill that you can teach someone in a day.
	I mean, again, I know it's an analogy and so on.
	I've never found it to be particularly illuminating in any way.
	Well, let's move into the real world and see how it works.
	You know, the welfare state is a state of charity, right?
	That's a vice.
	And generosity is something sort of more like the free market.
	If you take the opportunities that are given to you, that are available to you, that you take for yourself rather, then you'll be able to provide for yourself much better than waiting around for a fish to be given to you, going back to the old metaphor.
	Well, again, it depends.
	You know, charity is very complex.
	There are times when you need to give people fish, and there are other times when you need to teach people how to fish.
	But the difference is that the degree of resistance that people...
	Like, it's just not controversial.
	Yeah, teach someone how to fish is not controversial, right?
	But what is controversial with regards to charity and poverty is...
	Saying to women, you are responsible for having children.
	Right?
	I mean, because, you know, there's this weird dichotomy, right?
	So if a guy fathers a kid, you know, there's this...
	I think it's called LPS, legal paternal surrender, right?
	Where a guy...
	The men want to be able...
	Some men want to be able to say, look, I don't want a child.
	I don't want a child.
	And...
	I want to surrender...
	Right.
	But people say, well, hey, man up.
	You took the risk and now you have to be responsible for the kids and bloody, bloody, blah, right?
	But people don't say that to women about abortion.
	People don't say to women, no, no, no, you had sex.
	I don't care if the condom broke.
	You now have a child.
	You have to raise that child.
	You have to give birth to that child.
	You have to be responsible to that child for the next 20 years.
	People say, no, my body, my choice.
	Right.
	So, hang on.
	So, if I'm going to say, listen, I'm going to teach these starving people who live by the sea to fish, which is ridiculous, of course.
	People will go and fish, right?
	I mean, who has to be taught how to fish?
	I mean, come on, it's so obvious, right?
	I mean, people have figured that one out about 20,000 years ago, or probably longer, probably 100,000 years ago.
	So it's not controversial to teach people how to fish.
	But, you know, when you say to women, you are responsible for having these children, that's controversial.
	When you say to poor people, you are Many of you responsible, to some degree at least, for your own poverty.
	That's highly controversial.
	What bars people from effectively helping other people is the manipulative sentimentality that always goes along with the welfare state.
	Right?
	I mean, the primary barrier is not a lack of skill on the part of the poor, But all of the chattering, bureaucratic, intellectual government worker classes who all need the poor and harvest the poor like a crop and therefore will move to block anyone who attempts to assign any kind of responsibility to the poor or to women.
	Like, if we don't treat the poor and women like they're children, then we don't get this big paternalistic nanny state, right?
	And so anyone who attempts to assign responsibility to the poor or to women Or minorities to that degree sometimes.
	Ends up being labeled as hateful, horrible, misogynistic, racist, anti-poor vampire.
	It's nothing to do with anything real.
	It's just that if you get between a farmer and his cows, he's going to get upset.
	That's my crop.
	That's my livestock.
	Don't come and burn my crop.
	Don't come liberate my cows.
	I'm going to shoot your ass.
	And if you actually try to help poor people, I mean, lots of people whose livelihood depends on the existence of poor people and irresponsible women, they kind of, you know, get you in their sights.
	So it's, to me, just not, you know, it's not like, well, they just don't know how to fish, right?
	Well, I mean, they are kind of kept down because, like you said, with the ruling class, suffering is a huge commodity.
	But would you agree that the only way to get out of suffering is some degree of responsibility or an added degree of responsibility?
	I mean, you know, the only way to get out of suffering?
	I mean, I don't know.
	What's your definition of suffering?
	What are we talking about?
	I mean, I don't know.
	Okay, so...
	I mean, a kid who's being beaten is suffering.
	I wouldn't say, you know, you've got to accept more responsibility.
	I don't see how that, you know, a woman who, you know, was assaulted or whatever.
	I mean, suffering and responsibility.
	I mean, I don't know.
	It's, you know, people who are enlisted as child soldiers are suffering.
	I think that you're trying to, you know, capture too many things with too narrow a noose, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, no, this makes sense.
	Well, the difficulty with defending that is that suffering is a very subjective, has a very subjective definition.
	So you can't really define it saying, because for me, suffering might be something like Justin Bieber music.
	And I understand that you're a fan of the Biebs.
	So, you know, different strokes for different folks.
	But even in those situations...
	Would you really, I mean, would you really characterize that as suffering?
	Oh yeah.
	No, I'm just kidding.
	Because a guy, I mentioned this before, a guy who was writing on that video, I tried to listen to one minute and I couldn't take it.
	And it's like, what?
	I mean, it's not like somebody's ripping your scrotum off with a ferret.
	I mean, it's just some poppy music, you know?
	I mean, I get if you hear it 6,000 times in a row, like that Mbob song that was around One Summer from Hanson.
	Yeah, I can get it.
	But it's, you know, it's just a little poppy music.
	I mean, it just seems kind of like a musically hysterical.
	You know, like, I can't take it.
	It's so, you know, it's like, oh, it's like the women who, I saw a turned ankle.
	I just had to faint.
	Oh, Lord, get my smelling salt.
	I couldn't.
	I got a whiff of something that came in from outside through my perfume.
	I fainted.
	It just seems kind of hysterical.
	I mean, it's just a bit of poppy music.
	I'm 24, and I'm a male, and I am straight, so I'm societally obligated to view the Biebs as the definition of suffering.
	Well, as long as you have good individualistic reasons for it.
	You know, like, so, I mean, my daughter likes that...
	Baby song with Ludacris.
	Yeah, it's a catchy song.
	I caught him doing Let It Be Live with Carlos Santana at New York in the square in New York.
	It's fine.
	You know, it's fine.
	You know, nice.
	You know, is he Gershwin on the piano?
	No, I mean, but he's fine.
	And I saw some, just out of curiosity, I watched a song he did with Jaden Smith.
	I thought it was pretty boring.
	I didn't think it was particularly an inspired song or anything.
	But it's not like I couldn't make it through more than a minute.
	I mean, it's like, oh my god.
	Yes, you know, if it's getting a tooth pulled without anesthetic, I can understand.
	But it's just some music.
	I mean...
	Anyway, yeah, we're probably not on there.
	Okay, listen, I've got to do one more call, and it's been a three-hour show, so if you don't mind, I'm going to move on, but I certainly do appreciate you calling in.
	To be annoying, just try and start with these sort of, be skeptical of your own definitions as soon as you utter them.
	I think that's really important.
	Hey, but can you give me a recommendation to Peter Schiff?
	I actually watched his Occupy Wall Street when he went down to the Spoons, and my heart went out to him because I did the same thing, only over the internet.
	Sorry, I recommend for what?
	Can you hook me up to talk to that guy?
	Because I wanted to talk to him.
	I don't imagine.
	I can't imagine how I would do that.
	I mean, what would I say?
	There's a guy who wants to talk to you?
	I mean, I have no idea what you want to talk about.
	I've just met you for the first time.
	I can't possibly put my reputation with the man on the line by saying, I'm going to vouch for this guy.
	I mean, I have no idea, right?
	So, no, I don't think I could do that.
	Peter does open lines on his show every Friday.
	You can feel free to call in.
	I mean, that's totally different than, you know...
	Well, I mean, I guess I can't ride on the piggyback of...
	Or piggyback on Stefan's reputation.
	No, I mean, I couldn't honestly say, Peter, you should talk to this guy.
	And it may, just because I don't know, right?
	And so I wouldn't want to lie to Peter.
	Now, maybe he should talk to you.
	I don't know.
	But I, you know, from our conversation, I can't legitimately go to Peter and say, oh, Peter, this guy, you got to talk to, right?
	So, right.
	So, and like, and it's not negative to you in any way, shape or form.
	Maybe it would be a great idea.
	I just can't say to him, honestly, Peter, you should talk to this guy.
	I just, because I'm I don't have evidence for that.
	And that would be unfair to some guy who did give me evidence and who might want to talk to Peter next time.
	So I'm sorry, because you'll have to.
	But yes, give him a shout-out on his show.
	I still do want to talk to you about, gosh, I produced a lot of philosophy.
	But I'm afraid, but I've got to move on.
	I've got to pee at some point.
	So I'm going to move on to the next caller.
	And thanks very much for your call.
	Okay, I'll talk to you soon.
	Yeah, and sorry, look, if you want to reach people, just keep emailing them.
	You know, I hate, you know, just bother them.
	You know, it is really important.
	You know, I measure persistence.
	You know, I don't know how important it is for someone to be in touch with me, but if they've sent me five emails in a row, then I guess it's pretty important, right?
	It's just, you know, it's just a way of gauging and that kind of stuff.
	All right, Mike, who do we have to the next?
	All right, Michael, you're up next.
	Go ahead.
	All right, there we go.
	After about two months of having conceived this and then mingling around thoughts in my head of what I wanted to be on, yay, so I'm finally on the big leagues of intellectual discussions online.
	Well, good, and I'm sorry for the wait.
	I really am.
	I'm trying to get...
	I don't want to rush the calls, and I... I'm very sorry for the people who have to wait for a chat.
	I mean, you know, you have an issue, and it's like by the time we talk, it might have been completely resolved or whatever, but I'm sorry.
	I just want to make sure I give everyone, I think, the attention that these great listeners deserve.
	So I'm sorry about the wait, but what's on your mind?
	Well, no, I wasn't actually waiting for two months.
	It was just about two months ago when I thought to myself that I wanted to be on the show.
	It wasn't until about a month ago when I actually, you know, Did the inquiry.
	What do you want to say about that?
	So, then, uh...
	Wait, what is this?
	Oh yeah, I was going to say, as of something else I just thought up while I was on the show, or waiting for the show here, that I view the show as an open forum for discussing socially relative and intellectual topics, yet I keep witnessing all these deep personal stories that people keep coming up for therapy from you for.
	Well, I mean, to be fair, it's not therapy.
	I mean, therapy is a very long-term, involved, skillful process by professionals that is private and this and that.
	It's a call-in show.
	And we talk about what is important to people.
	And, you know, the tagline from the show from the very beginning has been the philosophy of personal and political freedom.
	And as I've argued, the only freedom fundamentally is freedom from illusion.
	And...
	So, yeah, I think helping people come to important moral truths as best I can, as I see it at least, with their own personal lives is an essential task.
	You know, there's times when I get to dictate the show, right?
	Which is when I do a solo show or whatever, right?
	Then I talk about what I want to talk about.
	But then, you know, twice a week I get this immense privilege and it is a real privilege to be able to talk to people about what matters to them.
	And this is why the show I think is so successful is I really get to listen to people about what they want to talk about.
	I mean, Mike, you know, remind me if this is the case.
	Do we have lots of people who want to talk about epistemology and we say no?
	Unless you've had an unhappy childhood, you are not allowed to talk on the call-in shows.
	Now people want to call in and talk about personal topics.
	It's almost 10 to 1 as far as emails with inquiries, people wanting to call in.
	So, yeah, the call-in show is completely listener-driven, whatever people want to talk about.
	Right, that's cool.
	Yeah, and in fact, we've even had some, hang on, we've even had some bait-and-switchers, right?
	Oh, plenty of bait-and-switchers.
	People say, I want to talk about this, and then it's something completely different by the time the show comes along.
	It's something much more personal and usually, you know, somewhat traumatic, right?
	Is that intentional or does that just happen to evolve in certain cases?
	What do you mean?
	Is it intentional on the parts of the listeners?
	Yeah, when they said that they actually had a mind that they were doing a bait-and-switch or is that they said that and then something else happened where they changed their mind but they didn't really care to inform.
	Oh gosh, I don't know.
	I mean, you're asking me for knowledge I don't have.
	It may change.
	For them during the course and maybe they have some theoretical question they listen to a couple of shows and like wow This is a place where I can actually talk about something that's really important to me and I I'm very very proud of the way in which this show Meets people where they live What is more important to people finding a way to get?
	mental and emotional clarity to be able to pursue moral values Or personal ambitions in real time in the world?
	Or, you know, another lecture about the Fed and FEMA camps.
	You know, what is actually most important to people?
	Well, as an empiricist, I go by what people want to talk about.
	And they may not always know that they want to talk about their childhood.
	But if it seems obvious to me, I'll bring it up.
	And if they're comfortable talking about it, we'll talk about it.
	And if it turns out to be relevant, it turns out to be relevant, as it, I think, almost always is, if they're honest.
	I mean, how can childhood not be relevant to where people are facing challenges in their life?
	So, yeah, I think it's a wonderful part of the show, and it's part of the show that I'm really the most proud of.
	I see.
	So first off, let me say, Stephan, that I appreciate the work that you and others are doing online in an attempt to spread socially relevant information and encourage critical thinking skills.
	I have many of the same praises for your work that Peter Joseph gave when you guys had that latest talk, we'll say, happening there.
	Did he have a lot of praise for my work?
	I don't recall that.
	He was like, for a couple minutes there, saying how much he admires your work.
	Oh, that's nice.
	I didn't.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Well, that's nice.
	And sometimes it helps give my mind something to chew on while I'm busy doing other stuff, like trying to get grandmasters and whatnot.
	Right.
	My favorite piece is by you.
	You made on the human breastfeeding, circumcision, and spanking, of course, which I think are three of the most important things society as a whole needs to get right to promote healthy human development outside of basic life needs, of course, which for the time of infancy, breastfeeding does count towards that.
	Well, good.
	I'm glad that you like that.
	Yeah.
	I don't know if those pauses are too long for me.
	I was just seeing, because you usually try to jump in about almost on everything, so I was just seeing if you were going to jump in on that or not, if I would continue then.
	No, go for it.
	But a bit of information that I obtained that I wanted to share with you on that matter of circumcision, which was I asked some AB slash DL forms that I knew of who among them was circumcised and if it affected their perspective on those fetishes at all.
	And out of the few responses I got, it seemed that the amounts of circumcised and non-circumcised was split even, and none of them had any testimonies of circumcision having a negative effect on them for that.
	And sorry, who were you asking?
	I just missed that.
	AB slash DL forms that I know.
	AB slash DL. Sorry, I'm in my square box so square it's a cube.
	Is that some sort of bondage or some sort of fetish site?
	I thought since you're a pretty...
	DM is domination?
	BM. I didn't say BM, but...
	Oh, okay, so...
	It is usually, I believe.
	I just figured that you might have, having covered topics somewhat related to that, that you would have been aware of those acronyms, but it was adult baby slash diaper lovers.
	Oh my god, why the hell would you think I'd know that?
	I mean, oh my god, okay.
	Have I done diaper lover shows before?
	Well, anyone on the internet is spending enough time on the internet who's going to know stuff on the internet.
	No, I'm sorry.
	I think you might be normalizing something that is not quite as average as you think, and not a bad thing or anything, but I don't think it's like, well, I have been on the internet, and therefore...
	I know about adult babies and diaper lovers.
	I don't think it's quite as common as you think it is.
	Oh, maybe.
	And so, where was I? And while subjects, also be wondering about this.
	Oh, yeah.
	Wait, wait.
	Hang on, hang on, hang on.
	Hang on.
	I mean, are you really...
	Did you call in to talk about your childhood?
	No.
	I think you did.
	I really think you did.
	Because the way that you're presenting yourself is something that is begging for a question or two about your childhood.
	You don't have to.
	We can absolutely talk about anything that you want.
	It's your call-in.
	But I'm just telling you that's what I'm noticing.
	But if you want to continue with your topic, that's perfectly fine.
	Well, two on that.
	One, how do you see that I'm presenting myself?
	And then two, I don't have a problem talking about that, but I would prefer if I would be able to go over the other stuff that I actually wanted to talk about first.
	And then if you still wanted to afterwards, that would be fine.
	Hang on, hang on.
	So you give me these acronyms about a very unusual fetish.
	You don't explain the acronyms, and then you assume that I'm going to know them.
	And then you tell me that it's because people who spend time on the internet must just know what these acronyms are.
	Right?
	So that is not having a very balanced or rational perspective about other people's view of you at all.
	That wasn't the initial explanation I gave.
	And I have another small segment that I had in my mind that we could talk about that again, which I had planned at the end.
	Yeah, because I don't know if you heard the earlier show, I was talking about the woman who comes in and should ask about the Pokemon guys, so I would ask about this.
	Look, circumcision can't be related fundamentally to the adult babies and diaper lovers fetish.
	Because circumcision is extremely common, and this is extremely uncommon, so it simply can't be, right?
	I didn't say it was.
	No, but you implied it was in terms of, well, I must know about it because I've spent time on the internet, right?
	No, I figured maybe because of these other topics that you covered.
	So, shall I continue then?
	It's absolutely up to you.
	I think we should talk about your childhood, but if you want to talk about something else, that's your call.
	Well, like I said, if you still want to, after I talk about the stuff that I actually wanted to talk about, I'm okay for doing that.
	I don't have a problem with it.
	All right.
	But I'm just more interested in talking about this other stuff.
	So another thing relative to that, not that specific subject, but on the subject of the videos of yours that I particularly were my most favorite from you about what I just mentioned, that we need to get right to promote healthy human development.
	And I was wondering about a story, what you think about a story that the Young Turks, you know about their news network?
	Yes.
	Yeah.
	They covered a story about a mother who didn't stop letting her two kids breastfeed whenever they wanted to, and they were still doing it on their leisure at, like, it seemed like age 10, or what they looked like.
	I don't remember exactly.
	So I just wondered if you had any interesting information to share on that, something relative?
	I don't know.
	I mean, it seems like quite a long time.
	I think they maybe should have transitioned to solid food by then.
	But, I mean, that's so rare that I don't really...
	I'm sorry?
	No, it's not that there's only being fed that.
	It's just that it's something that they're still able to do.
	Yeah, I mean, I don't...
	I mean, it's so rare.
	I mean, I would certainly think it would not be particularly healthy from...
	You know, as a parent...
	You don't really want to be giving your kids a whole lot of secrets to have to keep, right?
	And so that's why with my daughter, I don't want her to keep a secret that she has some doubts about the existence of the big invisible guy in the sky.
	So I don't want to have to keep those secrets.
	And so I don't think...
	Like, if you were to say, as a 10-year-old boy, I have to go home to get some breast milk from my mother, I mean, what would the other kids say?
	Okay, so that's where you're implying what the secret is here, but as I just said, it was covered in a news story.
	Yeah, I don't know what that means.
	That means that it's not a secret.
	Well, that's even worse, right?
	Because now the kids all know.
	Possibly, but that was just...
	Pointing out that it wasn't the terminology that I used, them needing to keep a secret when it's not a secret.
	No, but come on.
	I mean, you wouldn't go and tell that to your friends, right?
	If you're 10, you wouldn't say, I still get milk from my mother's boobs, right?
	That's not really something I wouldn't be able to answer now.
	I'm not 10.
	Okay.
	All right.
	Is there anything else that you wanted to chat about?
	Yeah.
	Oh, yeah.
	No, that was just the introduction topic of me saying how much I appreciated your work and all, and the stuff that I particularly like from it.
	You know, this is the second theme of adult babies, right?
	I mean, this is the second adult baby theme that you've talked about.
	I just wanted to sort of mention that, right?
	I mean, 10-year-old is not an adult, but...
	I just wanted to sort of mention this, that there is something you want to talk about, whether you're consciously aware of it or not.
	I'm just telling you that there is something else that you keep wanting to talk about, but if you don't want to talk about it consciously, that's fine.
	We can keep moving.
	Well, it was just an interesting thing that I had saw, and you're the only knowledge base for breastfeeding that I knew of for humans, so I just wanted to see if you had an input for that.
	Alright, and is there anything else that you wanted to talk about?
	Yeah, so now we get to the actual main conversation, what I wanted to talk about, the anarchic capitalism, resource-based economy, and other general societal stuff, which I hope we'll be able to have time to delve into everything.
	Well, not everything, because it's kind of late in the show, so if you can pick the most important topic, I think that would be best.
	Alright.
	I guess...
	And I'll continue explaining off of that and just go on.
	So, as a huge proprietor of the idea of non-aggression principle, I wonder if you've ever heard of non-violent communication?
	Yeah, Marshall Rosenberg stuff, for sure.
	Oh, you do know of it?
	Yeah, I've done two shows on it and a roundtable.
	Oh, you have?
	Oh, I haven't caught a glimpse of that yet, Ben.
	It was just something that came to mind when you had the discussion with Peter Because at the point where Peter kept using those evaluations on you that you were saying were insulting.
	But I was just thinking that if you'd just been using the nonviolent communication way of communicating that instead of thinking it was insulting for him to say those things and asking him to stop, he would have wondered what needs were not being met in the conversation that would prompt him to say those things.
	Well, I don't assume that it was needs of his that weren't being met, or at least needs of his that weren't being met that couldn't be met except at my expense.
	I mean, he's...
	He's a big boy.
	He's an adult.
	He's over 30 or whatever.
	And if he's going to be communicating, he needs to learn something about how to communicate, right?
	I think, right?
	I mean, it's not my job to be empathetic with people who aren't empathetic with me.
	As I've always said, my strategy is I treat people the best I can the first time I meet them.
	And after that, I treat them as they treat me.
	And that, I think, has served things very well.
	So, I don't assume that it would be unmet needs that would be driving that.
	And if he has unmet needs that cause him to be insulting to other people, then he should go and try and get those unmet needs dealt with.
	But I certainly shouldn't enable that behavior by pretending that it's not happening what's happening, right?
	Right, but responding in the way that you did, you only facilitated it more.
	Facilitated what?
	Well, the idea that what he was saying was insulting and that there was something that needed to be dealt with or needed to stop.
	Because Double East, though, if you're aware that during that point in the debate, you were actually aggressing back against him by insisting that what he was saying was insulting, which is how the teaching of nonviolent communication sees that.
	So I'm not sure I quite understand that.
	So if he's being insulting towards me and I ask him to start being insulting towards me, I'm being aggressive?
	Yeah, that's the way that nonviolent communication sees it because there's no such thing as insults.
	Any communication that implies wrongdoing, such as insulting someone, is really just a suicidal tragic expression of an unmet need.
	So Peter's insults towards me, like when he called me an asshole and a douchebag and so on, in the follow-up, was his suicidal unmet needs?
	Basically, yeah.
	And have you talked to Peter about this?
	No, I have never talked to Peter personally.
	Have you published anything on the internet about this?
	Pointing out Peter's aggression?
	Uh, no, I don't do much publishing in that realm.
	Like I said, this is my first...
	Okay, no, but hang on, hang on.
	No, I'm asking for a pretty important reason, right?
	Which is that Peter was being insulting, and I did not respond with insults, but simply, please don't, you know, don't insult me.
	And you're focusing on my behavior when Peter was obviously...
	Aggressive or insulting.
	I wasn't.
	I simply didn't want to participate in that.
	Yes, he was.
	Hang on.
	Why are you focusing on me?
	Because I'm talking to you right now.
	Oh, come on.
	Don't be ridiculous.
	Of course you're talking to me because you wanted to talk to me about this.
	Why are you not talking to Peter?
	I don't know.
	I could ask V. I actually did.
	I did ask V if I could talk to Peter, but he said that he has a close circle of friends and wouldn't really be open to having...
	Okay, but if it's important to you, then if he won't talk to you, then you could write something public or you could record a video.
	You know, if you're concerned about aggression in language, I'm just not sure why you're talking to me.
	I mean, I did not initiate any aggression either in the I didn't write anything.
	I didn't insult.
	I actually reached out with quite a bit of compassion.
	I did talk about how the zeitgeisters might have unmet needs from childhood and I said that with great friendliness and great positivity and received a massive barrage of hate mail as a result, which, you know, only of course confirms the thesis.
	So when I did reach out with compassion to provide some possible explanations as to why the zeitgeist is hostility, and it may be coming from unmet needs in early infancy, it went into great detail about how that might be occurring without telling them that it was, but just as a theory.
	I'm not sure how that's not in conformity with what you're talking about or why you would be calling to correct my behavior when I think I acted with pretty great dignity and respect in the conversation and didn't respond to Peter's further douchebag, asshole, con man bullshit, right?
	So I'm just not sure why you're focusing on my behavior at this point.
	I wasn't talking about anything out of your behavior in general.
	I was just wanting to point out this one specific case in that conversation.
	You were trying to correct me, right?
	Yeah, on this one specific case that I just pointed out.
	I wasn't going to go into anything else that you had talked about that afterwards.
	Let's go back to the Rosenberg stuff.
	Is there proof that people's abuse always arises out of unmet needs?
	And the reason that I'm asking that is, as far as I understand it, There are brain scans that show, and I'm not putting Peter Joseph into this category.
	I mean, this is a separate conversation completely, right?
	But there are brain scans that show quite clearly when somebody has a sadistic personality that when they see intentional harm inflicted on someone else, it makes them happy.
	The giggle centers of their brain light up.
	In other words, It is their unmet need for cruelty that is occurring.
	And it's not like an unmet need that you can fix.
	They actually have a brain that takes pleasure, the sadistic personality.
	They take pleasure in cruelty.
	And that seems kind of insurmountable.
	So that's sort of the one thing.
	The other thing is that many, many psychologists, psychiatrists, therapists, and so on have attempted to cure or reverse What has been called antisocial personality disorder, psychopathy, sociopathy, and so on.
	And they've all completely failed.
	As far as I understand it.
	And they've tried so many different things.
	They've tried drugs.
	They've tried talk therapy.
	They've tried behavior modification therapy.
	They've tried aversion therapy.
	They've tried, as far as I've understood it, they've tried a massive amount of therapy attempting to Change.
	Empathy and so on.
	Attempting to change people whose brains are configured in the sociopathy-psychopathy continuum as well as in the sadistic continuum, and they're not able to change it.
	So I think the thesis that cruelty only arises out of unmet needs and that you can create or evoke empathy in someone by attempting to meet their unmet needs seems to go against the pretty hard science of brain scans and so on.
	And I'm just curious about the degree to which this has been subjected to sort of pretty rigorous scientific testing.
	Yeah, I wouldn't know because...
	I have never, I haven't heard of any of this nonviolent communication information, never dealing with that type of individual.
	Oh, so it's not a good advice if you're dealing with, it's not good advice as far as I understand it, that nonviolent communication is not good advice if you're dealing with a sociopath or a psychopath or a narcissist perhaps or a sadist and so on.
	Is that right?
	It would seem probably not to be.
	Okay.
	If the unmet need is pain on other people, and then you would try and meet that need by inflicting pain on other people, that doesn't seem like a very good thing to me at all.
	No?
	It doesn't, right?
	Yeah, so, I mean, I don't know what the statistics are.
	I think one in 20 people...
	Our sociopaths and, I don't know, psychopaths, narcissists are growing in the population.
	I don't know about the population of sadists.
	But certainly, I don't know, a couple of percentage points at least of people, you know, one out of ten maybe, is not a good idea to use nonviolent communication on.
	It's just going to get you exploited.
	Again, I'm no expert on NVC or anything like that, but that's sort of my...
	I wanted to sort of understand that.
	And my particular approach is if...
	If someone is insulting me and I say, listen, I don't want to be insulted.
	I don't like that.
	Please stop doing that.
	And they say, oh, you know what?
	I let my temper get the better of me.
	I'm really sorry.
	That was not what I want to do, particularly when I'm talking about my opposition to violence.
	And particularly as Peter Joseph has said, and it's on his website as far as somebody told me, that he's dedicated to the principles of nonviolent communication, that that's his goal, right?
	Right.
	And so if he's aggressive in communication, yeah, that's his standard, right?
	That's his goal.
	and so even if he you know if i'm dedicated to the principles of non-violent communication and then i say somebody is an asshole and a douchebag and a con man and this and that then i would say you know when when it was pointed out to me i'd say well i i guess i didn't quite meet my own i didn't quite meet my own goals at that particular moment did i i'm you know i owe a big apology and so on right but he's just as far as i understand it i don't know i don't follow it haven't thought about it in forever but you know he just kind of doubled down you know like uh and
	And so I don't know why...
	I would try to apply really positive, empathetic, curious communications to somebody who's, you know, pretty clear about who they are.
	Yeah.
	Okay, so continuing to look at that debate, I wonder if you've seen any of the third-party reviews of it, particularly one uploaded by the user SLMRCS.
	No, I haven't.
	Honestly, I have not watched any of the follow-ups.
	I haven't watched any of Peter Joseph's follow-ups.
	I have not.
	I've left that one squarely in the rear view, and I've just heard reports from other people.
	Oh, okay.
	Yeah, I was going to say then, well, how are you telling me all the stuff you know about if you haven't seen it, but if others have told you, okay.
	So now I happen to agree with pretty much everything that that person talks about in that video, which the main topic was about the systems theory and structural violence and how he pointed out...
	To where you failed to understand those concepts when Peter was trying to explain them to you and concluded that you had an inability to think in systems theory and could only think in a reductionistic matter.
	Or another way of putting it, which I have just been introduced to, is in a matter of abstract, an abstract matter, where one takes away...
	Wait, so hang on, so hang on, so I lack the ability to think in abstractions?
	No, you lack an ability to think in systems theory and can only think in abstractions in an abstract manner, was his conclusion.
	What is systems theory?
	Is it not an abstraction?
	Oh, that I haven't thought about, so I won't be able to give you an answer on that one.
	So these are just labels that you don't understand?
	Which are these labels exactly?
	Well, I mean, it's like saying I have an inability to Think in terms of Klingon jellyfish reductionist absurdum.
	It's like, okay, maybe I do, maybe I don't.
	What the hell is that?
	I don't know.
	Well, then what are we talking about?
	Nothing, right?
	Yeah, no, you're right.
	That was actually one of the things of researching that I guess I forgot to check up more on was actually...
	Oh, no, but you say that you agree with this critic, right?
	But you don't even know the term that he's criticizing me with.
	Not the term, but the substance that was being described is what I can understand and decide if I agree with or not.
	So if you want to say...
	I get this sometimes where people say...
	First of all, people say, like, I can't think outside the box, right?
	Whatever that means, right?
	If the box is reason and evidence, yes, I can't think outside that box because there is nothing outside of reason and evidence that's called thought, right?
	So I agree with that.
	The idea that I'm some sort of close-minded individual who thinks in purely traditional manners and so on when I've rejected the religion I grew up with, I've rejected the statism I was indoctrinated with, I'm an atheist and an anarchist, and I've rejected...
	The entire abuse history of my family that I was brought up with and I've actually separated from my family of origin, which is one of the most radical acts of individuation that is scorned upon by society and attacked by society as a whole.
	And then to say, well, yes, but he doesn't really think outside the box.
	That's not, you know, that's not really the best criticism to make of me.
	I mean, you know, there's criticisms to be made of me, I'm sure.
	That's just not really one of them that I can take at all seriously.
	And when people get frustrated because I don't understand something, that means that they don't really know what it is to communicate, right?
	So if I put out an argument and people don't understand it, and there are people who Are intelligent, right?
	I mean, and there are people who have some knowledge in the field.
	If I put out an argument that people simply don't understand, who are knowledgeable about reason and evidence and philosophy and so on, which is not to say that they agree, but then that's my fault.
	Right?
	Because I'm the one who's trying to communicate something, and so to get angry at As someone who doesn't understand what you're talking about is very immature, right?
	It means that you're not taking, not you, but it means that someone is not taking responsibility for the necessity of communicating something.
	It's like getting angry at people who don't like your comedy.
	It's like, well, it's your damn job to make people laugh.
	It's like getting angry at people who don't like your music.
	It's like, well, it's your job as a musician to hopefully create something that at least a few people want to listen to.
	But certainly as a comedian, yeah, you know, yelling at the audience because they're not laughing at your jokes is obviously a desperate act of scarred immaturity.
	And so when people get angry at me for not Understanding what they're putting forward to, and I make a genuine desire to understand things, and I can very ably argue viewpoints that I vehemently disagree with.
	I've argued pro-religious viewpoints.
	I've argued pro-social contract.
	I've argued pro-statist viewpoints.
	You can just look at my boot camp videos for some of those, or my conversation with Peter Boghossian where I took on the part of a theologian.
	I can very ably Understand and argue for perspectives that I do not share and in fact violently disagree with or at least vehemently disagree with.
	So, you know, my sort of pushback is like if I don't understand what you're saying, figure out how to say it better.
	Figure out how to say it in a clearer and more comprehensible way.
	But just getting angry at me for not understanding something is sad.
	I mean, it's really, really quite pitiful.
	And again, it just shows that it's coming from an emotional need rather than a place of intellectual clarity.
	Yeah.
	And I was going to follow up on that even to point out that earlier in that video, you mentioned the iPencil documentary thing to Peter, if I didn't misinterpret that.
	Did you?
	Yeah, I can't remember.
	This is like, what, five months ago or something like that, but yeah, that sounds plausible to me.
	Oh, but whether you remember mentoring or not, but you know of the iPencil documentary and you understand it, yes?
	Oh, wait, wait, do you mean the Lightbulb documentary or the one that's the...
	It's like five minutes.
	Oh, no, I don't.
	Sorry, I don't know the documentary.
	I know that there's an essay that I read many years ago.
	Is it by Lawrence Reed?
	It could be.
	Called iPencil, about how nobody knows how to make a pencil.
	I don't know.
	Is there, I think, is there a documentary about it?
	Oh, there was.
	I saw it.
	It's just like a five-minute video on YouTube that explains that, yeah.
	No, but so you mentioned that, which clearly you must understand with what it describes, the mechanisms of extraction, production, and distribution, et cetera, for capitalist society in a systems manner, which tells me that you do understand how to think in systems theory for society, yes?
	I have no idea what you just said.
	I'm sorry.
	I mean, the documentary, I don't know about the documentary, but the essay, I Pencil, is about the degree of, vast degree of cooperation that is necessary to produce something as simple as a pencil.
	That no individual knows how to mine the graphite or the lead, how to make the paint, how to cut down the wood, how to make the eraser and the metal that goes around.
	Like, no one knows how to make a pencil.
	And yet, through the magic, quote, magic, the invisible hand of the free market, a pencil is produced with everyone acting for their own self-interest.
	And the amazing gathering together of disparate human knowledge to produce something as simple as a pencil is something that happens without any central planning or any centralization whatsoever.
	It's simply on people acting on their own self-interest.
	And all of this amazing confluence of human knowledge can be yours for a dime.
	That's what I know from the essay.
	I assume the documentary follows the same thing.
	I don't know what that means when it says...
	Like, then when you say, then I know how to think in systems theory, I don't know what systems theory is.
	I mean, I do philosophy, which is reason and evidence, and I do self-knowledge, which is universal principles applied to personal history.
	So I don't know what systems theory means.
	Is it philosophy?
	Then just call it philosophy.
	Is it not philosophy?
	Then I don't know what it is, and it's certainly nothing to do with what I would follow.
	Right, well, then if...
	Getting a definition of that concrete would help then looking one up.
	An approach to industrial relations which links enterprise to an organism with interdependent parts, each of its own specific function and interrelated possibilities.
	Wait, did you say to an organism?
	I think you mean to an organization, right?
	No, it says to an organism, but yeah, organization.
	That works too.
	Wait, to an organism?
	That's probably...
	Like a living thing?
	Wait, is this from Wiki?
	Let me follow where you're getting.
	Is this from Wiki?
	Not wiki, just a random dictionary search.
	But it's probably referring to light systems.
	Systems theory.
	Systems theory, and I should look at organism, right?
	Complex adaptive systems?
	It's relations which links enterprise and interdependent parts, which each have its own specific functions and interrelated responsibilities.
	So what I just mentioned there of extraction, production, distribution, and etc.
	for how society functions.
	Alright.
	What's that?
	Yeah, go ahead.
	Oh yeah, so that's the What do you say?
	Not the concept, but the content of systems theory in this term for capitalist society.
	I still don't know what systems theory is.
	I'm looking it up on wiki.
	I don't know if it's a term for industrial organization, if it's an economics term.
	I don't quite understand, but I'm sure I will if I have a look at this wiki wiki thing.
	Come on, internet.
	You're running a Skype chat.
	Here we go.
	But systems theory can reasonably be considered a specialization of systems thinking, a generalization of systems science, a systems approach.
	I wonder if they like the word systems.
	It's hard to tell.
	The term originates from Berta Lafney's general systems theory and is later used in efforts in other fields such as the action theory of Talcott Parsons and the social systems theory of Nicholas Luhmann.
	In this context, the word systems is used to refer specifically to self-regulating systems, i.e.
	that are self-correcting through feedback.
	Okay, self-reculating systems are found in nature, including the physiological systems of our body.
	Yeah, so we get too hot and we sweat to cool down, or we get too cold, we shiver to warm up.
	Okay, in local and global ecosystems and in climate and in human learning processes, and I would assume this applies through the iPencil thing to price and to supply and demand and other forms of organization in the free market.
	Okay, got it.
	So how am I not able to think in terms of systems theory?
	So self-correcting mechanisms, I think that I've talked about those quite a bit, and I certainly understand this from—and I've even talked about in terms of global warming debate, right, that when you put more CO2 into the atmosphere, you stimulate the growth of— Plant life which consumes more CO2 and so on.
	So the planet is hard to destabilize.
	If it was easy to destabilize, life wouldn't have arisen 4 billion years ago and sustained itself to now.
	Doesn't mean it's false.
	It's just that there's corrective mechanisms within the system.
	And so I'm not positive how I don't think in terms of systems theory, but I'm certainly happy to hear arguments about that.
	Geoengineering is working pretty hard right now to...
	We'll mess that up as we speak.
	But no, that was, to reiterate again, that was the person whose third-party review of your discussion with Peter, that was his conclusion that he drew in the video.
	Now, I said that I happened to agree with mostly everything that he said in there, but as I was trying to point out here, that earlier on in the video, you had Just mentioned, pointed towards this other thing, which describes this, which you understand, which leads me to conclude that you do understand how to think in systems theory, which you just clearly demonstrated several times now, and are going over...
	Well, but how is it...
	Sorry, but if somebody can find logical or empirical errors in what I'm arguing...
	Then that's just a mistake, right?
	So recently I've been talking about how I don't think it's harmful to bribe children.
	And somebody sent me some of Alfie Cohn's work, which I'm perusing, and I may have been entirely incorrect about that.
	It may in fact be negative or harmful even to bribe children, right?
	So I made an error in making a statement that it is fine to bribe children.
	And I'm looking up the research which somebody forwarded to me, which I wasn't aware of, which says that it may in fact be damaging to bribe children.
	Right?
	So I made an error there of empiricism.
	And, or I may have.
	I mean, I think I have.
	So I need to look at the methodology of the research a little bit more closely as best I can and so on.
	But, you know, I'm tentatively withdrawing that statement, at least until further clarification, because I may have been entirely incorrect about that.
	And, I mean, in the empirical evidence of my family, it hasn't been negative, but that doesn't mean that it's not negative as a practice to recommend in general, right?
	So, anyway, that's an error, and nobody needs to accuse me of not being able to think in terms of systems theory.
	That's just, hey, you said this thing, it's unsupported by the science, so here, look it up, right?
	I don't need anything else.
	I don't need other big terms that nobody, even Wiki, seems to know what the definition is in order to prove me incorrect.
	Just say where I made the mistake in reason or evidence, right?
	It wasn't about an error in a statement you made.
	It was about lack of being able to understand the concept as it was trying to...
	That is not a criticism!
	That is not a criticism!
	This is what I'm trying to get across to you.
	Yeah.
	That is not a criticism.
	Saying I'm unable to think in some particular manner is not the same as actually rebutting an argument.
	It's literally like saying, well, that font is incorrect, therefore you're wrong.
	I mean, it's on the level of saying Nicolas Cage has a bird for hair, therefore you're incorrect.
	It is a complete non sequitur.
	I'm not saying this thinker.
	I'm just saying what you're putting forward here.
	Saying I fail because I'm not able to think in terms of systems thinking is not an argument.
	And anyone who thinks it is doesn't know how to argue.
	Did you just interpret that as saying that you fail because you weren't unable to that?
	No!
	You're failing!
	Not me!
	You're failing!
	Wait, now I'm failing?
	Yeah!
	Because you're saying, well, he didn't make an argument against anything, any reason or evidence you presented.
	He just claims that you're unable to think in terms of systems theory.
	That's not an argument.
	No, it wasn't an argument.
	It was a conclusion.
	Based on what?
	Based on your inability to...
	Okay, I gotta end this here, because you don't know how to...
	I mean, you're not very good at this, and I apologize for saying that.
	I just...
	I need to be blunt, right?
	That's a tautology, right?
	Saying that I fail at systems thinking because I'm not good at systems thinking is not an argument either.
	So I'm afraid we're going to have to pack it in for the evening.
	And I'm sorry, I don't mean to be dismissive and I certainly don't mean to be rude.
	And if anyone else can distill this argument and provide it to me, if I've made errors in reasoning or evidence, I will certainly...
	Correct to them, as I always work to do.
	But thank you very much to all the callers this evening.
	I really, really appreciate everyone's time, effort, and energy.
	If you find the shows stimulating, I do believe that they're one of a kind.
	Every single show is a real treat for me, and I hope that it's enjoyable for you as well.
	Please, please help out the show.
	We are still grinding away on creating the studio It is very, very tough to come up with the cathedral dais that slowly rotates with a choir of angels when I enter the show.
	Very, very challenging to get the aesthetics of that down correctly.
	And as I've put out many calls for the body measurements necessary for the scantily clad angels, it's tough to find people who fit through the Japanese kabuku silhouette.
	So if you'd like to help out, fdrurl.com forward slash donate to please help out the show.
	We get millions of views a month and yeah, we don't have 30 second commercials at the beginning of the YouTube ones.
	Just think of how many Thousands and thousands and thousands of hours we're saving for people.
	I think that's nice.
	So help out.
	You know, time is money.
	And fdrurl.com forward slash donate.
	Always, always enormously appreciated.
	And thanks again to Mike.
	And have yourselves a beautiful, beautiful week.

▲