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March 11, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:37:08

2636 Revenge: Good or Evil? - Sunday Call In Show March 9th, 2014

The state of Freedomain Radio, yearning for revenge, avoiding legitimate suffering, are confrontations necessary before ending relationships, breaking the cycle of addiction and changing bad behavior in a marriage.

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	Good morning everybody.
	Hope you're doing well.
	It is the 9th of March 2014 and I hope you're doing well.
	I hope you're having a wonderful, wonderful weekend.
	I am down here in California.
	I just did a couple of hours on Alex Jones and then we did a show.
	And it's interesting.
	It's nice getting a little bit of exposure to sort of that live TV scenario.
	I realize I show slightly too much of the whites of my eyes.
	You have to get used to not adjusting your eyeballs to the bright light, otherwise you look a little cattle prodded and manic, which is true, but you know it's important to hide it.
	So I really thank them for having us on the show.
	It was a real pleasure.
	And did a whole bunch of interviews at the Bitcoin conference, saw my first Bitcoin ATM, and saw several young Bitcoin people humping it madly, while other people held up sheets to give them some semblance of fetishistic sexual privacy, which is always nice to see.
	And thanks, everyone, to the – thanks to all the organizers there for having me down.
	It's always a great pleasure to speak to a crowd.
	I basically should just grab everything I say and do Q&A, which I think is just even better than the speeches.
	So, yeah, thanks, everyone, so much.
	Thanks to Mike for stealing my camera and also for coming down to the show.
	Oh, no, he noticed that.
	I guess.
	We're going to go back on...
	No, you don't know what that means.
	I forgot to get it back.
	And I guess we're heading off to doing Joe Rogan next.
	So thanks, of course, to Joe.
	A lot of thanks this morning.
	And thanks, of course, to subscribers and donators of this show.
	You know, I understand the business model of advertisers.
	I can really do.
	It's fine, you know, because more people have...
	More time than money.
	And it was a lot easier to take people's time in the past than have them send you money when that was hard.
	It was hard to send money.
	But when I do shows that are commercial-based, you know, like the Peter Schiff show or the Alex Jones show or whatever, or even Joe Rogan to some degree who starts with like eight or nine minutes of ads and ends with, I don't know, eight or nine minutes of ads, which, you know, is not unreasonable for a three-hour program.
	But when I do commercial-based shows, I am doubly thankful, triply thankful.
	My daughter has made up a new number called a dillion.
	I am a dillion times thankful.
	It's actually even higher than a Googleplex.
	I'm a dillion times thankful for you, the supporters and donators to the show, for your kindness in allowing us to have this format Without commercial interruptions.
	You know, we get into some pretty deep, pretty intense stuff in this show, particularly in the call-in shows.
	And I can't imagine, you know, somebody talking about childhood difficulties or relationship difficulties or parenting difficulties.
	I can't imagine, you know, every 10 to 12 minutes saying, you know, hold that thought for three minutes of commercials.
	I think that would be a pretty schizoid way to interact.
	I mean, this is not therapy, of course, right?
	But if you can sort of imagine a therapist, you know, if you're crying about something in your past, saying, you know, hold those tears because now I have to show you some commercials on my iPad.
	It would just be a little bit jarring.
	So I really, really thank all of these subscribers and the donators for their generosity in allowing this show to Allowing this conversation to be what it is, for it to be a more natural and human conversation.
	You know, we don't interrupt our conversations with friends, with commercials.
	And I really, really appreciate everyone who's supporting this show and making that kind of interaction possible.
	If you haven't supported this show as yet, and you're still listening up here to this many shows, if you're just starting out, you know, enjoy, imbibe.
	But if you haven't supported this show yet, you know you should, right?
	You know this is one of a kind.
	There's nothing else like it in the world.
	I don't know that there's ever been anything like it quite in history.
	And you know three to four million downloads a month.
	You know...
	Just how much good is being done by the show, the people who have stopped hitting their kids, the people who've gotten out of abusive relationships, the number of people who sent us emails about deciding not to circumcise their children.
	I mean, this is tangible material reductions in the prevalence of human violence that occurs a couple of million times.
	The arguments for it occur in people's minds a couple of million times every month.
	And even if we say it's a tiny percentage of those, tens of thousands of reductions in the prevalence of human violence occur every month.
	I challenge you to find any other show that achieves that at that rate.
	And we will all go and work for them.
	Mike, we were talking about having nice comments before the show.
	I don't know if you have any handy or if you just wanted to move on to the call.
	Oh yeah, sorry.
	FDRURL.com forward slash donate.
	FDRURL.com forward slash donate.
	Please help us out.
	Help us out.
	We are doing great, great work here.
	Oh yeah, I definitely had a couple things I wanted to say.
	I mean, first off, I just want to say thanks to everyone down in Austin, Texas.
	Not only at the Texas Bitcoin Conference, at the Freedomain Radio meetup we had the day before, and everyone at the Alex Jones crew.
	Totally first-rate operation.
	Everyone was fantastic.
	We had like 45 people.
	At our Freedom Man Radio meetup before the Bitcoin conference and I don't know, I just, I found it to be absolutely fantastic.
	I spend so much time in front of a computer grinding away on little technical things or editing audio or just stuff that kind of gets a bit tedious after a while that just needs to be done.
	It's better I do it than Steph do it for obvious reasons.
	Both in terms of value added and quality, I think, fundamentally.
	I sort of reached this point with editing audio.
	It's like, fuck it.
	This is how it has released...
	You know, it's like they used to say in the software world, we don't release software.
	It escapes from the vault, leaving a bloody trail of quality assurance testers in its wake.
	Anyway, yeah, so go ahead.
	Yeah, and I mean, just getting to go down to Texas and see 45 people and just have them share their thoughts and experiences of the show.
	There's so many people there, I didn't even get a chance to introduce myself or talk to everybody.
	It was the same thing at the conference, too.
	I met so many people, it's like, I could talk to this person for two hours, easy, no problem.
	I bump into them for 15 minutes in between speeches and such and share a couple pleasantries, have a little conversation, and definitely is left wanting a whole lot more.
	And just getting to meet people that have been so positively impacted by the show, it definitely puts...
	Definitely puts more of a spring in my step when I think of those moments where I'm grinding away on things that aren't exactly the most interesting or fun when it comes to little technical minutiae or, you know, just the day-to-day stuff.
	And getting to see, I mean, the positive comments people had and, you know, the smiles and, I mean, stuff.
	I, you know, I was next to you for a good portion of our trip in Texas and the number of people that were coming up to you saying, you know, Freedom Aid Radio changed my life.
	I mean, like, I... If it was a drinking game, I'd probably be on the floor in Austin, Texas, having missed my flight back home.
	But you obviously pointed out that Freedom and Radio didn't change your life.
	You changed your life.
	You just wrote the diet book and the other people put down the cheesecake.
	They did the hard work.
	I'm trying to think of how appropriate it would be to turn philosophical self-knowledge into a drinking game.
	LAUGHTER I'm just making a note of that for us to discuss later in our performance with you.
	But no, it was incredibly invigorating just to be around people that have been so positively impacted by the show.
	And I mean, we get letters all the time from people saying like, oh man, you know, I showed this video to someone and now they don't spank their kids or, you know, my brother, you know, he's having a baby.
	I showed him the circumcision presentation.
	Now they're not circumcising their child.
	I mean...
	I mean, that kind of stuff makes it worth all the long, tedious hours that go into some of these Truth About presentations and some of the research that needs to be done, and just a lot of work goes into these shows.
	I mean, Steph's got his 30 plus thousand hours of philosophy and then we're always finding new interesting stuff out, you know, researching truth about slavery, truth about Abraham Lincoln, lots of interesting details that are brought to light and that stuff takes a lot of work and all the positivity and of course, you know, support of the show and that it goes a long way to really putting us, bringing the step, the vim and vigor back and what we got to do and getting through the tough and tedious moments.
	So I just thanks to everyone down in Texas.
	That was an absolutely fantastic experience.
	You know, touch base with a lot of people that I hope to keep in contact.
	And I'm looking forward.
	We got the Toronto Bitcoin Conference coming up next month as well.
	We're both going to be there.
	And I hope to meet some more people and, you know, connect with some new friends.
	So, great time.
	Fantastic time.
	And also, also, I just sent out an hour ago.
	It went out.
	The State of Free Domain Radio.
	If you've donated to Free Domain Radio since January of 2003.
	What?
	What?
	Do we really want to use the word the state?
	I thought it was clever.
	I liked it, so I put it in there.
	But if you've donated to Freedom Main Radio, if you've thrown a shekel our way since January of 2013, I sent you an update as to how the show's been doing with some cool charts, graphs, and a lot of information.
	And I figured I'd just share a couple little things for anyone that would like to hear.
	Freedom Radio went from averaging approximately half a million video views each month on YouTube at the start of 2013 to over 1.6 million in December 2013.
	So, within a year, it tripled the YouTube audience.
	That's pretty impressive.
	At the start of 2013, Freedom Main Radio YouTube channel had approximately 57,000 subscribers.
	Currently, the show is 140,000 subscribers.
	That's pretty amazing.
	That is pretty amazing in terms of growth.
	And, well, obviously not everyone who clicks on a video watches the entire thing.
	I know, I know.
	I shouldn't have told Steph that.
	Just protect the host vanity.
	Remember, we talked about the bubble.
	Oh, Steph, we just got a donation.
	It's better now.
	In 2013, YouTube viewers watched over 129 million minutes of Free Domain Radio videos.
	That's actually watched, not clicked on an hour video, then clicked off it or something.
	That's total minutes watched.
	YouTube tracks us because they're amazing somehow.
	And that means last year, 245.6 years...
	24.5 decades or 2.45 centuries of time was spent listening to Free Domain Radio videos.
	So it's pretty much safe to say that somewhere, at every point of every day, someone's listening to Steph's voice, which is fascinating and...
	a little creepy?
	No.
	So you're saying I never shut up, planet-wise.
	Well, I know you personally, so I know that, but, you know.
	Fair enough.
	I'm kidding.
	But no, I mean, like, I put this together, lots of cool charts and graphs.
	If anyone wants a copy that doesn't get one, even if you haven't donated or whatnot, operationsoffreedomainradio.com, I will send you the charts, graphs, and the whole thing.
	It's really impressive what's been done.
	That's just the videos, right?
	I mean, the podcast, though, is at least equal to, and I would argue probably slightly above, The video views.
	Because, I mean, the video views are much less portable, right?
	You don't really listen to those at the gym, but the people who subscribe to the feed, they are the ones who are, you know, listening in the car and on the road and in their headphones much more often.
	Yeah, definitely.
	And we have some stats in there as far as total podcast downloads.
	We were able to track it much easier now since we had to switch to a giant new CDN system after Joe Rogan broke our server.
	Thanks, Joe.
	No, thanks, Joe.
	So, you know, three or four centuries a year currently of philosophy is being imbibed by the world.
	And these are principles, not conclusions, right?
	I mean, it's how to think, not what to think.
	And this is what I mean when I say this is unprecedented in human history.
	You know, literally be part of this revolution, you know, through support.
	Through sharing, you can give money, or if you don't have money but you have some time, just go share the videos.
	Or the podcast or the books or whatever.
	Get people engaged in how to think.
	I don't care if they end up engaged with Free Domain Radio.
	Just get them engaged in some examples of how to think.
	That is an amazing thing to do.
	Sorry, go ahead, Mike.
	Oh yeah, it's a lot of interesting information in this presentation.
	I mean, I put it all together, and I knew last year was good in terms of growth of the show, but getting to see everything kind of spelled out, and I included some information about Google Trends and just how much the profile of the show and you, Steph, have grown in the last year.
	I mean, it's really amazing stuff, and the fact that I'm able to focus on making Free Domain Radio better 24-7, 365, that's...
	That's been absolutely amazing.
	And it's only because of, you know, the people that are supporting the show.
	You know, it really, I mean, it's completely changed my life.
	The show changed my life before I started working with stuff and helping on it.
	But, you know, getting to meet all those people in Texas and getting the emails that we get, it's amazing.
	You know, it really is amazing.
	And I'm even more motivated now seeing those numbers, meeting the people in Texas, getting to meet some people in Toronto next month.
	I mean, you know, we can, we're changing the world.
	We're changing the world.
	Well, and also I think as a result of my tireless work in front of the mirror, the fact that the Google Trends, the phrase that now tops it is Stefan Molyneux baby oil anaconda nude selfies, I think is part of my contribution to the show.
	And in all seriousness though, I mean for those who are listening and to you Mike as well, most of that growth is Mike's.
	Most of that growth is the result of like a truly staggering amount of work that Mike has done.
	Mike understands the perspectives of people who aren't old, and that has helped him to introduce me to people I didn't even know existed.
	Jay Rogan, who I thought was Seth Rogan's unknown brother.
	Mike has worked so hard, it is blistering.
	I think the combination of Mike working hard and...
	Me.
	I guess working fairly hard has really increased the reach.
	This doesn't happen just organically.
	A growth in a challenging field like philosophy, which really confronts and shakes to the core people's reality and sense of self and sense of relationships.
	It unhooks them from collective fantasies, nationalism and superstition and all these kinds of things.
	The growth of philosophy can't ever be organic.
	It always has to be pushed.
	It's a bowling ball on a slight incline back towards you.
	You've got to muscle that thing up.
	And it's hard work.
	It's really hard work.
	So I just wanted to point out that...
	The support that you're giving the show is support that you're giving to Mike as well.
	Mike has selfishly declined to live on toenail clippings and belly lint and therefore needs food.
	When you're supporting the show, you are supporting the work that Mike is doing.
	I've never seen I've had a lot of people I've worked with over the years, particularly as an entrepreneur.
	Mike is one of a kind.
	Mike is a very focused, very passionate, very dedicated workhorse and has this precision and tenacity to get the word out to the right people.
	When you're seeing the growth of Free Domain Radio, what you're seeing is the blood, sweat, tears, and spinal fluid of Mike splashed all over the internet.
	So it is your work that has done this, Mike.
	I mean, I've obviously, I think, produced some quality shows and all of that.
	And the division of labor, to some degree, has worked really well in terms of One person is the agent and one person is the talker and so on, but I hope that, Mike, you recognize and accept, and I hope that the community listening to this recognizes and accepts the degree to which Mike has blown this show up in the most positive way possible.
	Thanks, Steph.
	You've told me similar things privately, but I mean, thank you so much.
	Coming from you, who I respect more than just about anybody, that means an incredible amount.
	And again, thanks to the listeners for making it possible for me to work on the show to this degree.
	And I hope...
	Hope not to disappoint you moving forward this year and years to come.
	We're going to do some cool stuff.
	And in this State of Freedom and Radio thing that I sent out, I said, you know, if you have any ideas, any suggestions, one idea can lead to a viral video that touches 5 million people that grows the show exponentially.
	That can happen.
	One idea.
	You got a good idea, send it my way.
	If you want to do a video, you want to create something, you want to take something Steph has said, you know, throw some beautiful visuals behind it, send it my way, we'll upload it to the channel, we'll put it out there.
	You can turn, you know, a couple days' work.
	Or a couple of afternoons work into something that can, you know, possibly affect, you know, thousands of people easily.
	And, you know, everyone that's, you know, subscribes to the show, those monthly subscriptions help incredibly.
	Knowing what we have to work with, you know, how many funds we have in the war chest to grow the show, what we can do, stuff we can buy, trips we can plan, you know, all that stuff is so, so helpful.
	So thank you all the monthly subscribers and, you know, the people that, you know, upgraded recently in that.
	I mean, thank God, thank you guys so, so much.
	I can't even put into words how much that's appreciated and how much, you know, extra motivation that gives when it's like, all right, people are getting the value of this show and they want to help us spread it as much as possible.
	So, I mean, thanks to all those people.
	And again, yeah, just share this stuff, you know.
	It's posted on your Facebook wall, you know, send it to your friends, hand out the books, you know, do all that kind of stuff.
	We can't do this alone.
	We need your help and, you know, I met so many people down in Austin, Texas this last week that, you know, found the show just through, you know, oh, my friend told me about it.
	Oh, we went on Joe Rogan.
	Oh, this.
	Oh, that.
	You never know who you're going to show that, you know, oh, here's a Freedom Aid radio video.
	Check this out.
	Story of your enslavement.
	Handbook of human ownership.
	Whatever it is.
	You know, someone finds it, they show it to a friend, show it to a friend, show it to a friend.
	That friend has a connection or an outlet that allows us an opportunity to go do something amazing and, you know, bring the show and bring philosophy to an even larger group of people.
	So it's, I mean, it really, where we go from here, I'm going to work as hard as I can.
	I know Steph is going to work as hard as he can.
	And we need the help of the community to grow this thing faster.
	And we had an incredible 2013.
	And I can't even fathom having a better 2013.
	And that's while You know, Steph was diagnosing, undergoing treatment for cancer.
	We had that amazing 2013.
	So, you know, 2014, when we're not encumbered by anything and we got a fresh year in front of us, I'm really excited to see what we're going to do.
	And I got some cool ideas, but we need the help of the community.
	Send me your ideas.
	Sign up for those subscriptions, please.
	That's always incredibly, incredibly helpful.
	And yeah, tell your friends.
	Tell your friends.
	And together, we're going to change this planet.
	Yeah, this is open source philosophy.
	You know, I mean, this is the Linux of philosophy.
	This is the Bitcoin of philosophy.
	Open source means that it's supported by a voluntary community.
	You know, the one thing I dislike about advertisers or the advertising model is it's involuntary, right?
	Like, you have to listen to the commercials even if you would rather support the show.
	And if you do support the show, you still have to listen to the commercials.
	What I like about subscriptions and donations Is that it really does conform to the voluntary model.
	And it's very charitable, right?
	Since the vast majority of people don't donate to the show, the people who do, you know, that's your, I think, pretty generous charitable giving.
	But this is an open source in that there's no price.
	And to the open source community, like in the Bitcoin community, you know, people worked on it for a long time and they did profit from it.
	If they bought bitcoins or had bitcoins, but a lot of people who aren't going to profit from it or who don't really care about it or who have already profited from it are continuing to work in it because they care passionately about what Bitcoin represents.
	And the open source concept of distributed labor and voluntary participation based on passion is really the model that is being worked here.
	And so, yeah, donate your money, donate your time.
	And you will profit.
	I mean, you will profit.
	I get emails all the time of people saying, I was skeptical, I resisted, and then I donated, and I feel like, oh, so much better, you know, I really am much more engaged.
	Your unconscious recognizes when you really care about something, when you apply resources to it.
	And then it really kicks into gear and says, oh, we're really doing this?
	We're not just talking about it?
	Okay, well, let's do it.
	And just one last thing to mention before we go into the call is thanks for your patience here.
	Mike, the thing that was, I mean, I knew to some degree about the growth, but the books was kind of interesting.
	Yeah, we started a new way to actually track the books, and in February, which was a short month, we did over 300,000 downloads of the books.
	That's audiobook and PDF. So that's pretty huge.
	I mean, Real Time Relationships was by far and away the winner this month with over 100,000 downloads.
	So that's a lot of people downloading real-time relationships and going to be introducing some extremely useful and positive attributes into their relationships through reading it.
	And that's incredible.
	I mean, I was gobsmacked when I saw those numbers.
	I figured they were good, but that's fantastic.
	Right, and just to mention, so here in Canada, if your book sells 5,000 copies in a year, it's considered a bestseller.
	You see, Steph, what you need to do is you need to go the mainstream publishing route.
	Yeah, 300,000 challenging books on philosophy downloaded in a month.
	One month!
	How long does it take for people to go through a course in philosophy, which, you know, I took those courses in philosophy, and they generally, as the Romans would say, von Sachaleth, So, yeah, I just wanted to point out that this is what your support is buying.
	Still working on the parenting book.
	Sort of the challenge is more theory or facts, theory or facts.
	A theory unsupported by facts looks like a lot of windbaggery, but facts are challenging because they're going to change over time, you know, the research and so on.
	So still working on that balance and enjoying the book.
	So, sorry, thanks again so much for everyone.
	FDRerail.com forward slash donate.
	Please, please, help us out in this quest.
	And yeah, yeah, people will give you negative feedback.
	But so what?
	I mean, the people in the Bitcoin community are constantly called shills and scam artists and, you know, what do they call it?
	Theft coin and, you know, shit coin.
	Ooh, there's an argument, right?
	But you just, of course, you know, when you try and make the world a better place, all the people enmeshed in the world being a worse place are going to react.
	Naturally, you know, when the mammals expanded, the reptiles didn't like them.
	It doesn't mean we should have stayed mice at the feet of dinosaurs.
	All right, Mike, let's move on to the first caller.
	Thank you so much for your patience.
	Yeah, thanks everyone for your patience.
	I really wanted to talk about that today, so.
	All right, up first today is Adam, and his question is, how does somebody subdue the natural urge for revenge or wrath after being hurt by another person emotionally and or physically?
	Go ahead, Adam.
	All right.
	Hi there, Stefan.
	Hello.
	Hey, it's an honor to be on the show.
	And Real Time Relationships, I've gone through it twice on audiobook.
	I loved it.
	Great.
	Alright, so Vengeance, thy name is Adam.
	What's the story?
	No, I am, well, I am a pretty productive guy.
	And the only thing that really slows me down is just dwelling on being hurt.
	And it's It's slowing me down.
	Basically, I would love to have some virtue or words of wisdom that I can look back to when I dwell on things that will help me quiet those feelings of anger.
	I don't understand how people easily get over stuff sometimes.
	Well, Mr.
	Abstractions, I wonder if we could put some empiricism in our theories here.
	What kind of hurt are you talking about specifically?
	Well, just in life, you know, people do stuff, whether it's a boss or a ex or, you know, when you're little, it could be family or whatever.
	But how do you go forward?
	And I've been hurt a lot of times in life.
	I had a traumatic year in 2013, and But women, a lot of the time.
	Women kind of bring the anger out of me because they've hurt me before.
	And hurt you how?
	Well, most recently, I dated a girl for about half a year.
	And right when she was saying, you know, I want you to meet my mom.
	We had a nice Christmas together.
	And then on my birthday, about two weeks later, she...
	I started dating her ex-boyfriend.
	And I found out because they went to a restaurant where someone I knew was working.
	But that kind of hurt.
	So when I found out, I ended it.
	But then I just lost.
	I went lizard brain.
	You know, I got emotions start going.
	Even when I found out, I just sent her the most horrible things through text message.
	And I look back and I'm like, God, I didn't mean to say that.
	That was awful.
	Can you give me an example?
	Oh, I don't know.
	All sorts of just, you know, when you find out some girl's starting to cheat on you with her ex, it's like, you know...
	You mean like, poor slut bitch?
	I don't even think it was that bad.
	It was all pretty much...
	Things that were honest about, like, how could you do this?
	You're so cold, you're so bitter, you know, but...
	Oh, okay.
	So, not, I mean, you were...
	Not, no, no, not...
	Abusive, but, you know, you were pretty, pretty firm in your disapproval, let's say, right?
	Absolutely.
	Right.
	All right.
	So, let me just, before we get into the revenge kind of thing, were there any signs looking back towards the beginning of the relationship that this could have been a possibility?
	Yeah.
	She had a few things that were kind of weird, but not major red flags.
	And especially, she worked so much, it didn't seem like she'd be...
	I always give people all the benefits of the doubts.
	That's my problem.
	I kind of...
	I keep a...
	I'm not good at detecting people who are going to hurt me, and that it happens.
	No signs.
	No, no, I understand that, but...
	I really want you to get this perspective.
	You don't have to agree with it, but I think it's important to at least see it from this side.
	When you say, women hurt me, what I hear, Adam, is I hear the following sentence.
	My community lets women hurt me.
	My friends, my family allow women to hurt me.
	No one is watching my back.
	Nobody is sitting me down and helping me to understand the world and women and my own heart and lust and love and attraction and attachment and hypogamy or the desire for women to trade up wherever they can to get enough resources to feed their children.
	Nobody is helping me to understand that.
	I am flying without a co-pilot kind of blindfolded into an electrical storm, a typhoon, And some giant ass meteor strike.
	Right, so I really want to help you to understand that everything that happens to you, happens to you because people around you encourage it or let it happen.
	Let me make that really clear.
	All you've talked about is your own perceptions You've not once mentioned to me, it's not a criticism and just an observation.
	You've not once mentioned to me, my friends tried to talk me out of it, you know, my parents sat me down when I started dating this woman, got really interested and said, you know, ask her about this or what about that or are there any red flags or what was her childhood like or, you know, right?
	It means that your heart is out there in the blender and nobody is, you know, throwing themselves on top of it and sometimes...
	A woman's heart can be a grenade, right?
	Sometimes a man's heart can be a grenade, right?
	Is there anyone throwing themselves on top and shielding you?
	I had a couple buddies, like guy buddies, you know, my bros to say, um, that were kind of, and actually, you know, I did have about, I had one guy friend or two guy friends that told me, you know, you know, be careful.
	And then female friends, the females were more vocal.
	I had, uh, Two particular female friends that I'm close with that said, hey, this chick sounds like she doesn't have a moral compass at all.
	This girl is not good for you.
	So when you say you had no warning, that's not entirely true?
	No.
	No.
	Right.
	So why didn't you listen?
	I kind of wish you had, right, now in hindsight?
	Because your heart is wounded.
	You're less prone to trust.
	Like every time you get involved in a relationship that doesn't work out, particularly one that doesn't work out in this spectacularly uglier fashion, you hurt your heart, right?
	You're wounded.
	Yeah.
	You know, as the U2 song says, you can sew it up, but you still see the tear, right?
	Right.
	So you had, because, you know, there's opportunity costs, right?
	Now you're in less of a positive position to meet A great woman, right?
	And you've spent six months investing in a relationship that didn't pan out, that left you wounded and broken.
	So why didn't you listen?
	I'm just genuinely...
	There's reasons, obviously, right?
	But why didn't you listen?
	It's happened before where I've dated people that are definitely not good.
	And even after they've hurt me, the person will kind of reel me back in with their...
	You know, they just know how.
	And even still when people tell me no, I still...
	Okay, so you're not listening to me now, right?
	I don't...
	No, I just...
	Okay, I'm trying to...
	Because I said, why don't you listen?
	And you're saying, let me tell you all the times I haven't listened.
	That's not what I asked.
	I didn't say how many times have you not listened, right?
	I don't know why I don't listen to them.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	All right.
	Was the woman physically very attractive?
	They all are.
	I'm...
	Very fortunate to meet.
	Absolutely beautiful.
	All the girls I've dated have been stunning.
	Sorry, did you say you're very fortunate?
	Well, that I've...
	Yeah, I've dated...
	Are you kidding me?
	Are you kidding me?
	I know, right?
	You're very fortunate.
	I guess I love...
	You see these women are treating your heart like an Italian chef treats a piece of Parmesan up against a cheese grater.
	They've taken a slow dump all over your heart in bowls and you're saying, well, I'm really fortunate to have met them.
	Right.
	I overvalue beauty, I guess.
	How's that work out?
	Physical beauty.
	Well, they're always beautiful, right?
	They're a Venus flytrap, I think you said, a couple shows ago.
	Oh, yeah.
	No, beauty is a very dangerous drug.
	Beauty is a very, very dangerous drug.
	And beauty is...
	I had a line from a novel that I wrote about a woman who was beautiful, and I wrote how she...
	She spent her teenage years plotting how to make her beauty work for her like a glistening slave.
	Physical beauty, particularly for women, is like a great inheritance, like a great resource black hole that can draw men in.
	And there's something inevitably plotting about beauty.
	How can I Put this gift to its greatest reward, to its greatest utility.
	How can I extract the maximum value out of my tits, ass, and cheekbones?
	I mean, I'm talking about a woman without self-knowledge and all that, right?
	Right.
	But it's an exceedingly dangerous situation because let's say I had some gorgeous singing voice, right?
	Then I'd be like, okay, well...
	Assuming I like to sing, I'm like, wow, I should really do something with this.
	Wow, what a great gift to have.
	I've got to figure out how to make it work, right?
	How to get stuff with this.
	But that would mean I would have to work, right?
	I'd have to go take singing lessons.
	I would have to write songs.
	I would have to learn how to perform with a band or in a concert hall.
	I would have to go and do all of that work.
	So my gifts...
	Would be mine to mine, so to speak, right?
	They'd drill down and utilize.
	But beauty is fundamentally manipulative because beauty is how can I use my beauty to get other people to give me stuff?
	It's fundamentally manipulative in a way that personal talents are not.
	Does that make any sense?
	Absolutely.
	Especially I love to sing and go to karaoke and I play music, so I completely can understand.
	Okay, great.
	So you've got a singing voice, you like music and so on.
	So you know...
	It's a talent you have to harness.
	Yeah, you've got to work.
	But your 10,000 hours is about refining your skills and appealing to other people.
	But a woman's beauty is about passively provoking other people to give you stuff.
	I agree.
	I've seen it happen many a time.
	Yeah, like Angelina Jolie has to get the ultimate alpha male.
	So she gets Brad Pitt, widely recognized as the most attractive man on the planet, who's not as old as George Clooney.
	And they will never break up because there's no one for her to trade up to.
	Right?
	Right.
	She snagged the alpha male away from Jennifer Aniston, I guess some years ago now.
	And so she can't trade up.
	And once you can't trade up, then you'll stay.
	So I just really want to point that out.
	And this doesn't mean that all pretty people are bad.
	But the reality is that a woman who is beautiful Tries to figure out what that beauty can get her, and that means that she has to, to some degree, be passively manipulative.
	To be beautiful and to be attractive enough to get the most powerful alpha male that she can, while at the same time fending off all of the betas who swarm around her with delusions of grandeur, right?
	So the idea that dating beautiful women is great fortune...
	Is not something that I think is particularly credible, if that makes any sense.
	You're absolutely right.
	You're absolutely right.
	I probably thought they were beautiful.
	They were beautiful.
	I'm sure they were.
	I have no reason to doubt.
	Hey, you're a musician.
	And you are in the entire good fortune of...
	Not having been married to or got these women big with childs, right?
	Because divorce courts are full of beautiful women trading up and milking the ones alpha, now beta, and so on.
	And the beautiful women, of course, they demand, in a sense, chivalry, but in the long run, don't respect it.
	So anyway, it's a huge challenge, but I think it's easier to date people who are virtuous.
	Now, don't get me wrong, I think my wife is gorgeous and I love her to death, but it is not her physicality that drew me to her, but her wit, her intelligence, her virtue, her depth, her curiosity.
	Anyway, I just sort of wanted to mention that it takes a lot of self-knowledge to overcome inheriting a billion dollars.
	And it takes a lot of self-knowledge to overcome inheriting Physical beauty.
	And physical beauty works against self-knowledge in the same way that a billion dollars works against self-knowledge.
	If you have gifts, rational humility, to some degree demands that you apply those gifts to the good of the species, right?
	So, I mean, if you inherit a billion dollars, then to some degree, obviously you're incredibly lucky.
	And you should not apply those resources to your own satisfaction and gratification alone, but you have some resources that can do great good for humanity as a whole.
	And I know the objectivists are like, oh, you have a responsibility to help others and so on.
	Yeah, screw you.
	You do.
	You do.
	And beauty, though, is one of these things that how do you use it to help others?
	But you can't really in the same way that you can use money to help others, right?
	I guess you could throw a pity bone to a five once in a while, but that's not really the most elevated way to help humanity.
	But anyway, I sort of want to point that out, that it's dangerous.
	Most of these girls have been rich and beautiful, like really wealthy where they've never worked, or they have free school, free apartments, or they don't work until they're like 25.
	Well, and of course, beauty tends to be matrilineal, right?
	Because we can assume that a beautiful daughter has a beautiful mother.
	It's more likely, right?
	And the beautiful mother, if she's got any brains and hypergamy at all, which they do, they use that beauty to get a rich man, right?
	And so, of course, I mean, beautiful and rich tends to go hand in hand for women.
	Not so much for men, but...
	And so what happens, of course, beautiful women also tend to get raised by emotionally distant fathers because the mothers choose men who are rich.
	The men who are rich are generally workaholics, which is how they become rich.
	And so the women who grow up beautiful usually grow up in households with workaholic, emotionally unavailable men and therefore are even more dangerous for men.
	because they don't have the close contact and humanization of masculinity that occurs with a close relationship to an emotionally available father.
	I can agree completely.
	Beauty is sugar, right?
	We're programmed to want a lot of sugar, right?
	Because it's easy calories and we're also programmed to get fat, right?
	Because we need that for the lean times, the winter times, right?
	The times when the animals are scarce, right?
	So we're programmed to overeat and we're programmed to go for sugar and fat and salt, which were in scarce supply and we needed the additional motivation to take the bee stings to get the honey, blah blah blah, right?
	And we're also programmed to go for beauty.
	And we understand that there's nothing wrong with beauty, there's nothing wrong with sugar or salt or fat.
	But you don't aim to construct your diet around their consumption, right?
	And you resist the impulse to simply eat those things too, right?
	And it's the same thing with beauty.
	I mean, you just have to have the self-knowledge and recognize the consequences and say, well, look, if I eat sugar, salt, and fat, I'm going to get fat and sick and blah, blah, blah, right?
	It's the same thing with beauty.
	If I pursue women based on beauty, you know, I'm going to get my heart shredded.
	And I'm going to have some, you know, pretty pictures of me with pretty people and a shattered, exploded antelope heart hanging from the treetops, right?
	Oh, those pictures are...
	I have to just not look at them either.
	I have to just...
	Those are in the past.
	Don't look them up.
	Don't scroll through your phone's memory bank.
	Right.
	But I've really...
	It's the feelings that come, you know, after getting hurt.
	It's like...
	That I'm more concerned about.
	Like I said, it's this wanting to get even, wanting to feel...
	You want them to feel the pain that you feel.
	Yeah, especially sometimes when they feel nothing at all.
	I mean, it's not always...
	A lot of the time, I feel like they feel nothing, even though they're obviously hurting, too.
	Because that was important, but...
	Yeah, you want to feel...
	Yeah.
	Feel hurt like you are.
	And why?
	Why?
	I've always had this thing of wanting to get even.
	Even as a kid, my dad and I would have fights and I would just think, when I'm big, my dad is not going to be able to mess around with me at all.
	Fights?
	What kind of fights?
	Physical?
	Yeah, there were a few physical.
	Most of them were verbal, but there were a few memorable physical moments that I just felt like, how could you do that?
	He struck me in public once when I was like 14.
	We were in a restaurant and I was like, how did you...
	It was so embarrassing.
	And it was like a hard kidney punch to the back.
	Why did he hit you to the back?
	I don't know.
	I think he was trying to say, shut up or don't say something.
	I don't remember what I said.
	And I'm sorry to hear that, but this leads me to the next question, which is, how pretty was your mother?
	Oh, she's beautiful.
	She's an athlete.
	Of course, because you've got an emotionally unavailable...
	Cruel, unempathetic father, which draws...
	I guess he made a lot of money, right?
	He does now, yes, he did.
	Yeah, he does.
	Okay, makes a lot of money.
	Cold and emotionally unavailable, which brings out the alpha in ape-like pretty women.
	This is ape-like men too, don't get me wrong, not dissing on the women, just pointing out some basic biological facts.
	And...
	The emotional availability of your mother, obviously, obviously, was, if not zero, negative, right?
	Sometimes it still is, man.
	But yes.
	No, no, not sometimes.
	Yeah, it is.
	Not sometimes.
	Right, any woman who marries and stays married to a man who's going to kidney punch his son is a cold-hearted bitch.
	Yeah.
	I have vowed this year to be more blunt and not to dance around issues, right?
	It's okay.
	I have come to terms with my mom now, but when I was younger, I had to move away from her after my parents divorced.
	How old were you when they divorced?
	Twelve.
	This is when it really happened, like 13, that's when they were splitting up.
	But they were, my dad was having an affair for like, I think five years before that, and my mom was going apeshit crazy trying to decipher whether or not it was going on.
	So, right, you see the circle here, right?
	Yeah.
	Your dad has an affair, and now you date women who have affairs, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, it's an ugly cycle.
	Yeah.
	And puberty is a hell of a time for parents to get divorced.
	It's not like you already have enough on your plate, right?
	I mean, physical changes, the lust, the masturbation.
	Plus, now you've got all the crazy family shit going on.
	I mean, it's a hell of a time for that.
	There's no good time, obviously, but that's one of the worst, right?
	Oh, yeah.
	And as a kid, I thought people would say, how did you handle the divorce?
	And I was like, oh, it was fine.
	And now, when I look back a few years later...
	I think, holy shit, no it wasn't.
	I had to move away from my parents and be, you know, pretty much saved by my grandparents to provide me a stable home at the end.
	Wait, so hang on, you basically, your parents separated from you, like sent you to live with your grandparents?
	My dad worked a lot.
	So he was always, he would come in town for a month and I'd see him on the weekends or for a week.
	And then I'd be with my mom full time.
	And after my mom had gone through the whole...
	Divorced with being cheated on.
	At the beginning of the divorce, she was not stable.
	She would do scary things, lock herself in the bathroom with scissors.
	She would take away my instruments, which were really my only sanctuary at the time.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	How old was your mom at this time?
	Mid-40s.
	You get why she went mad, right?
	She's probably in a middle-aged crisis, maybe, or losing her sexual market value.
	Yeah, she's losing her sexual market value, right?
	The same thing happened to my mom.
	I mean, it's tragically, you know, boy, you want vengeance.
	You know, you're dating some 25-year-old hottie, you know, just fast forward 10 or 15 years.
	Go visit them then, right?
	I mean, my mom, physically gorgeous.
	You know, slender, great cheekbones, great facial structure and all that kind of stuff.
	And yeah, she went completely mental when she could no longer, as Balanche Dubois says, could no longer work the trick, right?
	Could no longer get resources based on looks.
	My mom was still dating guys.
	That kind of was shitty too bad too.
	Yes, but what kind of guys was she dating?
	They wouldn't be the guys in the same economic class as your dad, at least not those who would stick around, right?
	And she certainly wasn't going to get married by one of those guys, right?
	Because she's in her 40s, she's past her fertility, and she's got a sullen teenage musician son, right?
	Right.
	This is what happens when you put all your eggs, literally, in one Botox to basket, right?
	A woman sells sexual gratification and status for the man.
	And I guess your mom was, what, late 30s, early 40s when your dad began his affair, right?
	Yeah.
	Again, right on schedule, right?
	With a younger woman, too.
	Of course, with a younger woman.
	Of course, with a younger woman.
	This is as predictable as sunrise.
	And I don't mean to say that your family is a cliche.
	Like, your heart is a unique experience.
	But biologically, it's a complete cliche, right?
	Right.
	She gets him because she's young and beautiful, and that's all she has to offer.
	Right?
	And then...
	When he goes for another young and beautiful woman, she gets really angry.
	Well, fuck!
	You know, live by the pussy, die by the pussy.
	It's just the way it works.
	If that's all you have to offer is sex and beauty, well, there's always someone younger and more beautiful coming along.
	Women are born with this great, huge inheritance which bleeds away very rapidly.
	It's like being born with a million dollars and then by the time you're 30 or 35, it's down to $8 and some returnable bottles, right?
	And they take all this wealth which nature grants them and they squander it on assholes.
	And then they try to buy better men when they've got no money left.
	No, sorry.
	Because all the time that they spent focusing on being pretty and all that kind of stuff, well they haven't spent on other things that are actually the foundation of quality into the middle life.
	I mean, I was a very pretty young man.
	And I was scouted for modeling and stuff like that.
	But, man, you don't found your identity on that.
	that, that's just luck.
	She, he liked that she, uh, she seemed like a partner in anything he would do when they met Any business he started, that was something he liked about her as well.
	But that drifted apart towards the end.
	She started wanting to do her own things, and he didn't like them.
	But at first he liked that she was like a sidekick, like a girlfriend, but a partner in crime, a partner in business.
	Um, she always helped with his businesses.
	She didn't pursue her own stuff till towards the end.
	Right.
	Right.
	So I'm going to just finish up.
	I want to get to the next caller.
	First of all, have I given you any perspective that's a value so far?
	I'm not sort of trying to demand that, but I hope that this stuff is somewhat helpful because it helps you hopefully bypass some of the Stupid ass biological imperatives that we all have and there's nothing wrong with them.
	It's just being aware of them.
	Absolutely.
	I think your sentence about if you want revenge on a beautiful 25 year old woman, just visit her in 10 or 15 years.
	Oh yeah, I mean virtually guaranteed her life is going to be complete crap.
	I mentioned this before that I was trying to pick up a yoga teacher.
	Many years ago.
	And, you know, she'd stay in chat with me, but, you know, it was never quite, you know, one of the best things that ever happened to me was losing my hair.
	Oh, thank God those follicles went the way of the dodo.
	And because then, of course, you know, women who don't like bald guys and bald is considered to be unattractive to all but geeky Patrick Stewart fans.
	So I guess she wanted a guy who was hairy or whatever.
	So I guess she never ended up going out with me.
	But then I'm sitting in the changing room, and this guy who's got full head of hair, good looking guy, he's like, yeah, I'm banging that yoga teacher, man.
	I totally did it with her this weekend, like six ways from Sunday, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	And I saw them together later.
	I believe it, right?
	And it's like, are you kidding me?
	Oh my god.
	How sad is that?
	How sad is that?
	You know, I'm a good, honorable, decent guy and all of that, and she's dating this shitheel who brags about banging her six ways from Sunday in the change room with strangers.
	But then, of course, and I was like, oh, why is she choosing this guy just because he's prettier?
	And then I had to shake my own head and say, You idiot.
	You hypocritical son of a bitch.
	Oh, Steph, look in the mirror.
	You're blaming this woman.
	You're mad at this woman for choosing a guy who's pretty.
	But why are you choosing her?
	Because she's pretty.
	And for no other reason whatsoever.
	So that was just a kind of a wake-up call.
	The beauty is a siren song, right?
	And very dangerous.
	But let me tell you something about revenge.
	I fully understand and appreciate the desire for vengeance.
	You call it the reptile brain, I just call it being alive.
	Reptile like negative or something like that?
	No, we need a reptile brain.
	Without our reptile brain we have trouble doing things like regulating heat and breathing.
	So, reptile brain is not something to be dismissed, it is the foundation of our very existence.
	I love the reptile brain.
	However, If I said to you, Adam, my father has no arms and I will not rest complete until I beat him in an arm wrestling competition, what would you say?
	Your father has no arms.
	It's impossible.
	Right.
	Right.
	How does this fit with your desire for vengeance against cold-hearted people?
	I still kind of don't get it.
	You want them to feel remorse and regret.
	Unless you're willing to go punch people in the face, the only way you can get them to feel something is to get them to agree with your perspective.
	Right?
	So if you want a bad person to feel bad, they have to have internalized your moral standards, right?
	I mean, if you want a Nazi to feel bad about his treatment of Jews, you have to get him to internalize the immorality of inhumanity, right?
	Right.
	Right, so if you're trying to get other people to feel stuff, all you can do is propose standards that will provoke a moral response if they're capable of either accepting those standards or having that moral response provoked, right?
	One video, two people watching.
	The video is a man gets hit in the nuts accidentally.
	One man goes, oh!
	Another man giggles and laughs, right?
	Never seen anything funny.
	Another video, man asleep on the couch.
	Other men go up with an air horn and And wake him so startlingly that he pees himself.
	One man says, man, that's really cruel.
	How's that man ever going to sleep again?
	Another man giggles and laughs, right?
	You say to these men who giggle and laugh at this sadism or this cruelty or this accidental pain, you're laughing at somebody's pain.
	It's not funny.
	Oh, lighten up.
	God, don't be so serious.
	Learn to laugh a little at yourself.
	Whatever, right?
	Don't just wave it away.
	Do you know how much work it would take to get somebody who laughs at cruelty or who laughs at human suffering to develop empathy?
	It must be...
	It's probably impossible to change...
	Someone.
	I mean, how do you...
	Nobody has ever figured it out.
	No.
	I mean, look, it's one of the most fundamental things that we would change about people if we could, would be the development of empathy, right?
	Right.
	But empathy, to my knowledge, and I've read a fair amount on this, and please tell me if I'm not correct about this.
	Empathy, to my knowledge, has never been successfully generated in an adult sadist.
	You can read a book called The Science of Evil, which talks about the development of empathy, which is like a dozen complex and interrelated physical systems in the brain that need to be developed in sequence with the right amount of mirroring and human contact and empathy modeling on the part of a caregiver and so on.
	And it requires the physical presence of these things called mirror neurons and so on, which are just not present in the brains of people who don't have empathy.
	They grow up without arms.
	Right?
	And you want to beat them in an arm wrestle, they got no arms.
	You want them to feel bad about how they treated you.
	They don't have the capacity to feel bad about how they treat people.
	They don't have arms.
	Absolutely.
	Especially a lot of times when...
	This girl used to blow me off and she would never say, I'm sorry.
	I just...
	No call.
	I gave you...
	We were going to hang out all week, and then I blew off.
	Just justify.
	Never apologize or try to make up, but anything she did wrong was always a justification.
	Even when she was cheating on me for about a week and a half, it was, well, you made me feel like we were just...
	You know, hook up buddies or something, you know, even though we had obviously...
	We never said we were exclusive formally in writing, notarized by a Latin priest, right?
	You didn't stamp it in blood.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Of course, yeah.
	I mean, so, I mean, it's a lot easier to make up excuses for your bad behavior than to accept that you've hurt people, right?
	Because she's looking to milk her looks for money.
	Yeah.
	So there were signs, right?
	And you said, well, it was hard to see and this and that, right?
	Come on.
	No, it was going to happen.
	Yeah.
	You know when you said, you know, this girl used to blow me, and I'm like, stop there.
	Let's talk about that for a while.
	Then she said, blow me off.
	Oh!
	Different conversation.
	Damn.
	I mean, we could talk about that, but it's pretty personal.
	No, no, I'm just kidding.
	But...
	Look, you are trying to get people who don't have empathy to feel bad about how they treat you, which is arm wrestling with a guy with no arms.
	You can't.
	And you're going to get frustrated and you're going to feel...
	Let me finish off this point.
	One of the most sophisticated forms of sadism is to lure people into frustrating themselves by attempting to hurt you when you don't feel pain.
	There's a great line from an old Hall& Out song called Rich Girl.
	It's so easy to hurt others when you can't feel pain.
	They're missing the wiring.
	They are pretty reproductive robots.
	They're missing the wiring.
	No one has ever been able to regrow a human arm.
	And no one has ever been able to grow adult empathy.
	And let's say that tomorrow, or yesterday, it was discovered how, but it requires a team of experts five years.
	Well, you ain't a team of experts, right?
	I mean, a group of people can do some fantastic open-heart surgery.
	That doesn't mean I'm going to take a butter knife out with somebody who looks a bit little pale and go to work, because I don't have the training, the knowledge, or the expertise, right?
	So even if there was a way, in some manner, To cure cold-heartedness or sociopathy or sadism or whatever, right?
	Biological, tit-based calculation of mutual utility of money for sex.
	If there was a way to cure that, you ain't that guy.
	I'm not that guy.
	And nobody's been able to...
	I mean, the search for a cure for cold-heartedness has been underway for approximately 60 trillion years in human society, right?
	And no one has found that cure.
	You ain't going to be the guy.
	I'm not going to be the guy because I don't think it can be cured.
	You know, if you don't get enough veggies and nutrients when you're growing up and you end up four inches shorter, is there any amount of food you can eat when you're an adult that's making you grow four inches?
	No.
	No.
	You didn't get it when you needed it and you ain't going to get it ever again.
	Right?
	You missed the window.
	Not you, but these people missed the window.
	It's tragic.
	Can't help him.
	Can't help him.
	And the idea to inflict pain on a sadist is part of his sadism.
	That's part of what lures her into torturing you, is to provoke such outrageously Negative emotions in others to provoke such hostility in others and then laugh as they smash their hearts against the blank, cold ass, crystal obsidian wall of your empty heart.
	Right?
	It's literally like they're inviting you to come into a ring and fight them and then they just stand there laughing and eating popcorn while you repeatedly punch yourself in the nuts.
	That's all you're doing.
	Time will take care of their vanity.
	You don't have to lift a finger.
	Time will take care of their vanity.
	You know, in the long run, Obama, he's on top of the world now, right?
	That was powerful.
	Time will take care of this asshole.
	It will.
	How's Obama going to look in a couple of hundred years?
	Like just another statist monster dictatorial asshole.
	Let time do its work.
	It always does.
	Okay.
	That's excellent advice.
	I bet you the guy she went back to is a truly intense shitbird.
	Yeah.
	Am I right?
	Yeah, he has more money than me and he's a little older.
	Yeah, I got it.
	I got it.
	Right, so she's upgrading her whore rank, right?
	Yeah.
	More money for less pussy.
	Yay!
	What a wonderful advancement in human knowledge.
	Sorry?
	They're not together anymore.
	That's the revenge part.
	No, because there's some other guy with more money.
	Well, no, she tried...
	She was booty-calling me again, and I sent out of this after she...
	She was trying to play us both again, and I sent him a screenshot.
	It's called a bidding war, dude.
	It is.
	It's like when you're selling a house, you want two people bidding on it.
	And I sensed it from the beginning, and I told her at first, if this is going to be some competition, I'm out.
	I don't want to do this.
	And I ended up doing it.
	That's the thing.
	I split them up by sending him just the screenshots of what she had sent me, these kind of erotic things, while she was dating him.
	No, I'm kidding.
	No, but look, if you are quitting smoking, you don't hang around smokers, and if you're quitting drinking, you don't hang around drinkers and heroin.
	If you're on a diet, you don't go to some restaurant with a fantastic dessert buffet, right?
	Right.
	So if you're trying to quit an addiction to physical beauty, you know, hang out with people who are not in that sphere.
	If you continue to expose yourself, you're going to continue to provoke the stimulus and the addiction.
	Fundamentally, it's all about your mom.
	And fundamentally, you're trying to connect with these women to make up for not connecting with your mom.
	But I'm sorry to tell you this, that you can never, ever fix what you didn't get as a child.
	All mental unhappiness is the avoidance of legitimate suffering.
	I did an interview with this woman who was talking about her cruel parents and she dates these cruel guys.
	I was like, well, yeah, because she says she loves her cruel parents and therefore she's normalized their behavior and therefore she can't avoid it.
	The true person that you want vengeance against is your mom, but that's only because you haven't recognized the time Has taken vengeance for you.
	And your mom's life is going to get shittier and shittier and shittier.
	Trust me, I'm older than you it sounds.
	I've seen this with my own mom who tried to milk beauty for money for years.
	Oh my god.
	Oh my god.
	I am not hugely vindictive, but I definitely have a cold-hearted streak for enemies, which I think is healthy.
	But even I would never have designed...
	I don't have enough cruelty in me to design the kind of hell my mom lives in now.
	Oh, I'm telling you, it's just going to get worse and worse.
	And I'm sorry in a way that this is the price of immorality.
	I'm sorry that it is.
	I think it's way too harsh.
	But not much I can do about that.
	So I wouldn't worry so much about what's going to happen with your mom.
	Alright, Mike, did you want to add something?
	Yeah, I want to say something, Adam, real quick.
	I've certainly been in those situations where I've been wronged by people.
	I mean, who hasn't?
	And I've been wronged, and I've had that feeling of revenge.
	You know, I want everyone to know.
	I want people to know.
	I want justice to be done.
	I don't know what that looks like, and as Steph described, that's not possible in a lot of ways.
	But what I found to be incredibly useful was realizing that You know, people that do shitty things, people that do evil to other people, they create their own personal hell.
	Everything they do, every bad thing they do that they don't remedy, that they don't apologize for, that they don't provide restitution for, that they don't make right, they strengthen the bars on their own prison cell.
	And eventually the bars get strong enough that they cannot escape.
	There's no coming back.
	And that prison cell, you're standing on the outside of that prison, looking up at 30-foot walls covered with razor wire and armed guards.
	And the people that do shitty things and continue to do shitty things, they're trapped inside.
	And you're on the outside.
	I know I've thought of that, and that's been very useful for me, because a lot of times I think of the people that have done me wrong and think of the hell that they're creating for themselves because of their conscience.
	It's not going to forget.
	And the choices that they're going to continue to make that take them down that path.
	And I actually start to feel, go from feelings of revenge and oh man, you know, I want justice to be done and then I look at the trajectory that their life is taking and where they're going to go.
	And I actually start to feel bad for them.
	I actually start to have some empathy for these people, which is kind of weird to think about.
	You know, oh my god, this person did something wrong to me, and I'm being like, oh my god, it's terrible where they're going to wind up.
	And as I sit outside that prison that they're trapped in, with those 30-foot walls, I realize, you know, hey, you know, the best revenge, the real best revenge is to live an incredibly happy and joyous life.
	I'm not going to sit and let bad things that happen to me from bad people stop me from living the kind of life that I want to live, from being the kind of person that I want to be, from being happy, from being free, from drinking deep of the fucking cup of life every single goddamn day and making the most of it.
	I'm going to learn from the mistakes that brought me to the situation.
	Why did this happen?
	Why did I put myself in a position to be wronged by this person?
	How come I didn't see it?
	Every single time you're wronged, it's an incredible learning opportunity to figure out how the hell that happened and how you wound up there.
	Did you have people around you that didn't back you up and say, hey, something's going on there.
	How come you're doing this?
	This isn't cool.
	This isn't good.
	You need that information.
	You want to know.
	You need people around you that are going to protect you.
	Because life is hard.
	You need people that are going to have your back and when you're heading down a wrong path or doing something questionable, they're going to go, hey buddy, what's happening?
	Let's talk about this.
	I'm concerned.
	Maybe nothing's wrong.
	Maybe everything's great.
	But, you know, it's important that we talk about this.
	You want people like that in your life.
	And if you don't have them and they let you go down the wrong path, you want to fucking get them.
	And you've got to figure out why you don't have them in your life.
	And make the changes that you need to make in order to get them.
	And then you move forward.
	You learn.
	You don't repeat the same mistakes.
	You learn from why you ended up in those situations.
	I've been wronged.
	I've had people steal money from me.
	I've had all types of things happen.
	And a lot of times I look back at those situations and I go, that's a cheap lesson.
	Because I try and learn from those mistakes and I try and figure out why I ended up in those situations, I don't repeat them.
	Knock on wood.
	I try not to repeat them.
	I try and stay conscious of what happens and work on it.
	So everything that happens, it makes me a better person.
	Every person that wrongs me, I learn from it and make sure it doesn't happen again.
	And now I'm better off because that stuff happened.
	That is so weird to say.
	I'm better off because bad stuff happened to me.
	In a lot of ways, that is completely and totally true because it doesn't repeat and it doesn't happen again.
	If you do the work And you sit down and you figure out why you're in a bad situation or why you have these people hurting you or why there's people in your orbit that are capable of this kind of maliciousness.
	You're going to strengthen yourself moving forward.
	And as they're trapped in that prison, you're going to walk away.
	And you're going to live the kind of life that you want to live.
	You're going to be happy.
	You're going to be excited.
	You're going to have great people around you.
	And you're going to be on your deathbed looking back and say, God damn, I did the best with the precious coinage that is my life.
	And you're not even going to be thinking about those people that are sitting in their prison cell on the cold concrete floor eating some TV dinner that's shoved underneath their cell door every single day.
	They're trapped.
	They're going to get what they deserve.
	They're going to get it.
	And you?
	The choice is yours.
	You can sit and stare at that prison, or you can live the kind of life that you dream of.
	We were talking in, um...
	At the Bitcoin conference, you know, there's nothing that pushes libertarians' buttons quite like TSA agents.
	We were talking about the...
	TSA agents!
	And I was saying, you know, but it's ten minutes of your life.
	They're there for eight hours a day.
	Five days a week, you know?
	You think they're oppressing you.
	Holy shit, the TSA system is way more oppressing the TSA agents than it is oppressing you.
	You just pass through once every week or two or month or two or year or two.
	They're there under those fluorescent lights next to those cancer juice machines day after day saying the same things over and over again and being disliked by everyone they meet.
	Eek.
	I think you really need to take – the TSA system is vengeance enough against the TSA agents.
	So we should probably move on to the next column.
	I know we've got a bunch, but thanks, Mike.
	I really appreciate that.
	And thanks, Adam, for a very, very honest and valuable conversation.
	I really, really appreciate you bringing this stuff up because this is what we're dealing with.
	You know, we have a lot more interaction with sexual politics than we do with the Federal Reserve in any actionable way.
	So I really appreciate you bringing this stuff up.
	Thank you.
	I am so glad to have this conversation.
	It's valuable to me as well.
	I'm going to listen to it many time over and try to absorb, put this information to use in my life.
	And just before you let me go, I know you've got other callers.
	I just want to say I really think everything you're doing, even this little conversation, all the work you're doing, Is really a positive force of change in the world.
	And while it's just really starting to take off in popularity now, I believe by the time I'm an old man, your work will have done enough good for the world that you'll be considered one of the great philosophers of our time.
	And I'm just honored to have spoken with you.
	Of our time?
	Just our time?
	Just kidding.
	Remember the bubble.
	Except you better not refer to this as a little conversation.
	This is a huge conversation.
	If it's a little conversation, then I did something terribly wrong for which I apologize.
	But no, it's not a little conversation.
	This is your life.
	This is your future marriage.
	This is who's going to be the mother of your children, right?
	This is how your children are going to be raised.
	This is whether you get divorced like your parents do or stay together with the love of your life.
	I don't think there's a bigger topic.
	Otherwise, I'd say, sorry, not a big enough topic.
	You know, if somebody said, I have a hangnail...
	You know, that would be a small conversation.
	This is a very big conversation, and that's why I really wanted to thank you for bringing the topics up.
	Thank you, Stefan.
	Seriously, I will gladly continue to listen to all your work and spread it and share it.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	All right.
	Ooh, be next.
	Thanks a lot, Adam.
	Jake, Jake, Jake, Jake, Jake!
	Yep, up next is Jake, and his question is, is one morally or otherwise obligated to confront and discuss the situation with somebody before ending a relationship?
	Go ahead, Jake.
	Hi, Stefan.
	Hi, Jake.
	Hi, very nice to chat with you.
	Can you flesh out the question a wee bit more?
	Yeah, so, well, I kind of wanted to start it off in more of the abstract principle and kind of veer it towards My personal situation, but if I can clarify a little bit, that would be like, well, I'm talking with my parents.
	Well, actually not talking, but considering breaking off relationship with my parents.
	But part of me is kind of that just doesn't want to talk to them, you know what I mean?
	And yeah, so I feel like, do I really need to talk to them?
	I already know what they're like.
	Part of the revenge is even just not giving them that.
	However, on the other side, there is my own principles.
	There are certain principles and certain things I need to follow.
	Oh, is it like you sort of feel like they have to have their day in court, like they have to be able to make their case against your complaints or something like a sense of justice and fairness and so on?
	There's a part of that.
	Much more of that is just my own self-benefit and just contempt for them, in a sense.
	But I've found myself kind of admiring and speaking that I admire openness in other people.
	And I've had another experience recently that kind of dealt with that and felt the own hypocrisy, in a sense.
	So there's that.
	And there's also, I've been listening to just, you know, all your other podcasts regarding this issue.
	One of them I listened to yesterday was like, just talking to your parents is a goldmine of self-knowledge.
	And that argument, of course, isn't very moral in nature or even hypocritical, but more of just a loss of benefit to myself, right?
	Yeah, now, just to be clear, so when we talk about something in terms of morality, we're talking about sort of good and evil, right?
	I just want to cover everything.
	Morality, UPV, not stepping on the hypocritical mind trap.
	Right, right.
	But it's not good versus evil.
	You're not initiating force or fraud against your parents.
	If you choose to speak with them or not to speak to them, it's not a moral issue.
	Okay.
	I just really want to be clear about that.
	Okay.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah.
	Like if you said, I am going to strangle my aunt, right?
	That would be a moral issue, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	It's a voluntary non-violent action or non-action.
	Right, right.
	So that much let's be clear about.
	The decision to stay or not stay with your parents is not a moral issue.
	Because it does not involve the initiation of force or fraud, right?
	Alright, clear.
	Okay, so...
	Somebody says to me, I want to get divorced from my husband.
	I would say, that is not a moral issue.
	If you have no children, right?
	It's just the least complication possible.
	You say, I want to get divorced from my husband.
	What do you think of that morally?
	I would say, well, it's not in a moral category.
	It's like saying, I want to leave my job.
	I want to quit my job.
	Or I want to leave America.
	Is that a moral decision?
	No, it's not a moral decision, right?
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	The decision itself is not what I'm hung up on, but...
	No, no.
	I just want to be clear on that because you're bringing morals into it, right?
	Okay.
	Yes.
	As far as what may be the wisest decision to make.
	First of all, of course, if somebody said I want to divorce my husband, I'd say, well, I'm sorry.
	About that situation.
	And I'm all the more sorry about your situation because you didn't choose your parents.
	At least somebody who wants to divorce their husband chose their husband, right?
	Yes.
	But you sure as hell didn't choose your parents.
	And I'm really sorry that you had the kind of parents where this is even an issue.
	So I just sort of wanted to mention that up front.
	Now, I think, for me at least...
	Closure is an important aspect of ending a relationship.
	And closure, simply to me, is another word for certainty.
	Right.
	So, I once ended a romantic relationship and then a year or two later, I thought I had done the worst possible thing and I pined after the woman and this and that and the other when I was in my early 20s.
	And I had not, obviously, reached closure.
	Other relationships, I had reached closure when those relationships ended.
	I did not feel any particular urge to attempt to reawaken those relationships or bring them back.
	And so knowing the difference between closure and non-closure is important.
	And to me, closure is just certainty.
	I now know that there's nothing that I can do to make this relationship better.
	And the relationship is too costly for me and I cannot improve it, right?
	If you're thinking of not talking to your parents, I think my recommendation, I can't tell you what to do, obviously, not that that would have any value at all, right?
	I understand.
	But my recommendation would be, if you are certain about that, and certainty is just like a deep emotional state, and it involves really around a lack of temptation to re-engage, right?
	As far as that regard, I'm pretty much 99.9% there.
	Arguably 100%.
	Alright, well then, you are not obligated to talk to your parents.
	You are not obligated to not talk to your parents.
	So, as far as the ethics go, it doesn't have any relevance.
	But, if you leave a dysfunctional or abusive relationship without closure, the great danger is not about the past, but about the future.
	Right, so a woman I was talking to at the Bitcoin conference who said, you know, her parents were just terribly verbally abusive, just horrendous.
	I mean, I felt weird even saying the words back to her, but she kind of needed to hear them.
	And she loved them, right?
	And then, right, so the problem, as I said to her, is that, well, if you love verbally abusive people, how can you escape verbally abusive people?
	You love them, right?
	And so if you get out of a dysfunctional relationship or an abusive relationship, Without the closure that comes from a clear moral stand on that relationship, right?
	So if your parents are verbally abusive and you say, look, this verbal abuse is way too costly for me.
	It's way too destructive for me.
	It's terrible for me, which it is.
	Then I need to put that clear moral line right down the middle of this relationship and say, verbal abuse is not acceptable for me.
	By me, to me, around me, in the vicinity of me, verbal abuse is not acceptable in any way, shape, or form.
	Now, that with your parents is a tough thing because we grew up bonding with our parents.
	We have to, right?
	Because if we don't bond with our parents, they may abandon us, right?
	They may leave us.
	They may, you know, in that Incan style, give us up unto child sacrifice.
	We have to bond with our parents.
	We have to please our parents.
	And so...
	The great challenge to moral growth is then saying, when we get older, this is no longer acceptable to me.
	In fact, it's completely unacceptable to me.
	Now, if you can draw that line with your parents, with yourself, with your future, then you gain security.
	You gain safety.
	And you gain an infinitely better life.
	It goes from negative to positive.
	It's amazing.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Now if you have doubts about the degree to which your parents can change then yeah I would suggest sit down and talk with them until you don't have doubts.
	Until they either begin to change or you've tried everything you can think of and they're still escalating the abuse.
	And if I don't want to have that relationship like I have no desire to even like see if they're able to change and even if they are That might be a necessary but not a sufficient thing for me to continue the relationship.
	Sure.
	Let's say you're 25 or 20 or whatever, right?
	Well, you've had two decades or two and a half decades of bad behavior.
	And so how much parental improvement is necessary to overcome 20 or 25 years of abuse?
	Well, I would argue it's pretty impossible.
	Yeah, and just the trajectory I see, you know, it's just not worth my time in my life to spend it with them anymore.
	Right.
	Yeah, I mean, if...
	Like, I've never seen an advice column where a woman says, my husband has been yelling at me and hitting me for 20 years, where...
	Yeah, where the advice columnist or the psychologist or psychiatrist or whoever, life coach, says, well, you know, but maybe he can get better, right?
	No, they all just say, get out, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	And I've heard, I guess, everything that you've said multiple times over many podcasts that...
	No, I know, just other people haven't.
	I know you've said about other people who are listening to this maybe for the first time.
	It's a startling position, right?
	Like, this woman that I was chatting with...
	At the Bitcoin conference who was interviewing me, she was talking about her parents and how verbally abusive they are.
	And I'm not even going to repeat the words here because they were just so horrendous.
	And I said, well, if I was dating a woman and I said to you, this is what she kept telling me, what would you say?
	And you could just see the short circuit there because obviously she'd say, don't have anything to do with this creep, this lunatic, right?
	This abuser.
	But it's like, parents, honor thy mother and thy father.
	That is my programming, right?
	And...
	So, yeah, you are not obligated to talk with your parents if you don't want to see them.
	In fact, again, I'm simply quoting from the literature around getting out of abusive marital relationships.
	If you are in any concern for any kind of danger, right, they always tell the woman, and it's typically a woman in the literature, so I know that there's lots of men who are victims of marital abuse, but just to go with what the literature mostly says, The literature that I've read mostly says that if you are living with an abusive man, do not confront him at all.
	Do not talk to him about your desire to leave at all.
	Spirit money away, get the kids ready, or if you don't have kids, just pack up your bag and get out and get to a place where he cannot find you.
	Because the risks of escalation in an abusive relationship go up enormously.
	When you leave that abusive relationship.
	So if you are of course in any concern for stalking or fear or harassment or anything like that, I only will repeat to you the professional literature that I've read, which is a confrontation is a very dangerous thing to do.
	So that's sort of my advice if that makes any sense.
	Yeah, I just feel like I was largely blind to the injustice that was done to me growing up and I think I unduly burdened a lot of that mentally.
	I remember getting like just my dad would have bouts of rage when I was like three and largely what I remember from that age is him just taking a plastic coat hanger Breaking it and taking the vertical stick part of it and just hitting my calves and It was like I don't I distinctly remember one time thinking I don't know why I'm being hit And in this another another strange thing that like occurred to me recently is
	Why didn't I run?
	Why didn't I fight back?
	It's like oh gosh from before that I don't have any much memories, but there must have been just you know, you can infer from the The behavior and just what I know from the rage, I guess, is he must have gotten to me somehow emotionally, mentally beforehand for me not to resist.
	No, no, no, God, no, seriously.
	There's no trick.
	There's no voodoo.
	You know, as children, we are dependent on our parents.
	You know, historically, the kids who were like, screw you, mom and dad, I'm fighting back, those kids didn't make it.
	They died.
	We're abandoned or killed.
	You were surviving.
	Why did I comply with my mom?
	Because when I didn't, she would beat my head against a wall to the point where I might suffer brain damage.
	I will take compliance and life, thank you very much.
	That's why people didn't rise up against the Stalinist regime, because it would get them killed or gulagged.
	We conform in order to survive.
	Our genes want more genes.
	They don't care about abstract topics, right?
	And all the genes that care about abstract virtue over tangible survival, well, guess what?
	They didn't get to survive.
	They're just not part of our DNA. So no, it's not like he must have got to me somehow.
	It's like children don't alienate their parents until they get old enough, right?
	Teenagers, right?
	It's different.
	You can survive as a teenager, right?
	But when you're a little kid, no, no, no, no.
	You can fly.
	You can fly.
	Of course you do.
	I mean, you know, it's like in school.
	You can fly because you see what happens.
	To kids who don't, they get drugged and slack-jawed and all kinds of one flew over the cuckoos nested, right?
	So no, look, what you did was a perfectly sensible, utterly tragic survival strategy.
	And, you know, any sane human being in the same situation would do exactly the same thing.
	There's a reason why everyone obeys the prison guards, right?
	Sure.
	For the most part, they do until things get completely desperate.
	And I've been talking about this with one of my friends and he kind of went through, I guess it's not a similar experience, but he reacted very, very differently.
	I suppose he was around a little older than three, but he would just not back down.
	He would fight, resist, he would carry forks in his pockets, you know, and I suppose I'm getting to a nurture versus nature kind of a thing, and I'm sure it's more complicated than that as well.
	Well, no, no, hang on, hang on.
	With his physical abuse, was he in danger of severe physical harm?
	I see.
	I'll have to ask him about that.
	Yeah, because if he was, right?
	I mean, if he was in danger of severe physical harm, then it made sense, right?
	I mean, you'd fight or flight, right?
	If you can fight flight or freeze, right?
	So if parents attack you, if they assault you, your first impulse is to flee.
	Now, if fleeing is going to escalate the abuse, you know, come back here or you're going to get a double, then you come back and you comply, right?
	Right, right, right.
	And then if you're about to die...
	Or if you fear significant physical injury, then you will fight back, right?
	Now, I knew with my mom that if I complied, I would avoid severe physical damage or death, right?
	Because it happened when I was four, and I mean, how extreme a situation is this, right?
	In the middle of the night, when I was four, I got a bag of cookies and And I was going to go and walk out into the street in the middle of the night alone in my pajamas.
	That's how unbearable it was for me in my house.
	I was willing to take my chances with strangers at night than stay in my heated, lit little apartment with her.
	Sorry.
	And that is when she attacked me to the point where I was like, holy shit, I've just got to go limp.
	Like, I have to go limp.
	Mm-hmm.
	I'm only four, right?
	I can't possibly fight back against a raging adult woman, right?
	I have to go limp because if she continues to bat my head against this door, I am going to get brain damage, like I'm going to die or be permanently disabled.
	I had to go limp.
	Now, when I went limp, she ceased the attack.
	So, for me, freeze worked.
	Flight didn't work because it provoked attack, so I never tried to run away again.
	So flight didn't work.
	But when I froze, it worked to stop the assault.
	The truly murderous assault.
	You cannot beat children's heads against doors when they're four.
	That's murderousness.
	You can kill children very easily that way.
	Or disable their brains.
	Now, if going limp hadn't worked...
	In other words, if she had continued to threaten my life when I went limp, then I would have had to try and fight back.
	I see.
	So I tried flight.
	That didn't work.
	I tried freezing.
	That did work.
	So I didn't have to go to fight.
	But for some children, they have to go to that extremity of fight because it's just like roll the dice, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, it's all other options, right?
	Even cornered rats will fight you, right?
	Right.
	I feel like this fear has pervaded my entire childhood.
	I'm trying to be more entrepreneurial and more social nowadays.
	Before, I viewed it as my inherent traits, but now I see it as a product of the environment.
	I'm not certain What exactly makes...
	I feel like I've internalized it much more than other people and my friend being an example.
	So, I mean, and I guess that some part that plays into it is while I was getting hit, I felt, well, why didn't I run to my mom?
	Of course, she was, you know, she was just kind of silent and gone and absent with when this stuff would happen.
	So...
	Yeah, I was wondering if you had any thoughts on that.
	Why you didn't run to your mom for protection?
	Well, I know why.
	Because she didn't, and there was no precedent of that, so I wouldn't expect that.
	Well, I would assume that you would expect harm, right?
	Yeah.
	My mom also grew up in...
	My grandfather on my dad's side was pretty...
	He was very strict and stern.
	So she's kind of a beaten down soul.
	And I see that with my dad as well.
	No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
	Okay.
	No, don't slide into that.
	No, don't slide into that.
	A beaten down soul in my ass.
	Did they ever criticize you for failure to live up to objective standards of virtue or good behavior?
	Oh yeah, I understand.
	I'm not excusing her.
	Yes, yes, yes.
	That's exactly what you're doing.
	Of course you are.
	In other words, she stepped into the conversation to excuse herself, right?
	I just want to talk to you, not to the abusers, right?
	You are trying to.
	Well, let's say I were to try to point this out.
	Is there any...
	What manner of pointing this out would not be a way of excusing her?
	Like, how can I point this out without coming across as trying to excuse her?
	You mean like that she had a bad childhood?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, she failed to deal with her bad childhood and instead cowardly took it out on me.
	Bitch.
	I understand.
	Yeah, I agree.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, my mom had a terrible childhood.
	Terrible childhood.
	Absolutely.
	Terrible childhood.
	And so did I. But I dealt with my shit, and she took it out on four-year-olds.
	Right, right.
	Right?
	Yeah, and I confronted her about it recently.
	I have more anxiety about talking about it with my dad than my mom.
	Mm-hmm.
	And I pointed out stuff like, why didn't you step in?
	And just stuff like that.
	And it was kind of on the spur of the moment.
	But her reaction was very, like, blank, dull.
	Her response was like, I thought you were just mainly stressed about school.
	The topic was my general anxiety and just unhappiness during childhood.
	And through that, I mean, I already knew it before, but through that, that it really became clear.
	Like, you're just a cowardly dead soul.
	I don't want to live with you.
	I don't respect you.
	You know, it's just...
	I suppose that clarity might come with my dad, too.
	I'm wondering if part of my reluctance to talk about with my dad is, because he's more reasonable, I kind of engage with him sometimes a little more, but I still have a lot of issues in contempt for him too.
	But how do you know it's your reluctance?
	Okay.
	How do you know it's your feeling?
	I mean, who benefits from you not confronting your dad?
	When you say my reluctance, and if it's not my reluctance, what does that mean?
	Because I know I am feeling this way.
	I understand that.
	No, no, no.
	I understand that.
	I understand that.
	Hang on.
	No, I understand that.
	So you're feeling them, right?
	Yeah.
	But our feelings are not always generated by our own self-interest, right?
	Our feelings are often generated by the self-interest of others.
	Right.
	Does that make sense?
	Yes.
	Right?
	I mean, if I'm careless with a knife and stab myself, then I'm the cause of my own pain.
	But if somebody stabs me, I'm still feeling the pain, but it's their goddamn fault.
	Which is why I don't put myself in jail for accidentally stabbing myself, but it's someone else in jail for stabbing me, right?
	Right.
	So if you go into the mechanisms, it's my interaction with my dad that has emotionally made me reluctant to confront him.
	No.
	Okay.
	No.
	It's your dad...
	Of course he doesn't.
	Okay, but how does that get transferred to me?
	I mean, does the bank robber want the detectives to track him down?
	Of course he doesn't.
	No, no.
	But how does that get transferred to me?
	Because just because someone has a desire, it doesn't mean someone else acts as a desire.
	Because pleasing parents is a biological imperative.
	Right?
	Right.
	So when I say it was through my interaction with him and internalizing the benefits and risks and whatnot, that is the mechanism by which how I feel through what you're saying, right?
	Well, you need to please your father.
	Especially if he's the, quote, more reasonable one because he's a buffer against your mom.
	I mean, it's all just the 3D chess of managing abusive situations means that you have to give up your own authentic emotions and please the abusers.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	I mean, a guy in a concentration camp doesn't want to be there, but he ends up having to please the guards because they can kill him or beat him or withhold food and water or put him in solitary or whatever, right?
	Okay.
	So you have to give up your emotions and you have to become like water conforming to the twisted glassware of emotional abuse.
	You have to cease to exist in a fundamental way, in the most fundamental way.
	You have to cease to exist, especially if you're surrounded not just by random abusers, but by sadists.
	Because if you're surrounded by sadists, then your genuine desires will be used against you.
	Right?
	Oh, you really like that toy?
	Oh, then that's the toy I'm going to take away from you.
	Yeah.
	Oh, you really don't like it when I use this verse on you, then I'm going to use this verse on you all the time.
	Right?
	Like, if you're around a real sadist, you expressing any genuine preferences is like arming a mugger.
	I've experienced that more with other people, and I may be wrong on this, but...
	I don't think my dad treats me sadistically.
	He has a sense of self-righteousness.
	I mean, I grew up religious as well, and he's still Christian.
	And so I wonder if his treatment of me is not necessarily sadistic, but opened me up to the sadism of others through not being able to stand up for myself.
	Well, there's some tests for that, right?
	Okay.
	So, did he tell you about hell?
	Um...
	Yeah, it was primarily the church, but sure, he condoned it and mentioned it too.
	Well, yeah, he exposed you to it, and he supported the teaching of hell, right?
	Now, is there anything about hell that is not psychotically sadistic?
	No, I know where you're going, but if someone genuinely believes you...
	Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, don't insult me, man.
	I'm trying to help you.
	No, I'm not trying to take you, I'm trying to drag you behind some cart.
	If I am, then you should hang up on me right now.
	What I'm trying to do is point out some facts.
	I asked you, is there anything about hell that is not sadistic?
	And you said, no.
	That is a fact that we have agreed on.
	Yes.
	I'm not trying to take you someplace.
	Oh, no, no.
	Like if I said, listen, did two and two make four?
	And you're like, look, I know where you're trying to take me, man.
	It's like, I'm not trying to take you anywhere.
	We're just trying to find some facts here, right?
	Okay, okay.
	I was a little hasty because I grew up on that point, but what I wanted to kind of Get your opinion on, I guess, is he does not believe he's already subject to it.
	And he's not doing it out of direct sadism, right?
	He's kind of wrapped up in the whole thing, too.
	And so is it fair to say that teaching that is sadistic if you believe that it is good just on his from his perspective?
	Why would it matter?
	What do we care about the motives of people?
	We care about the facts.
	But isn't statism generally generated from...
	Look, look, no, no, no.
	Look, if I rob a bank and I say, well, I think theft is morally good, do I get to walk free?
	But that's a matter of law enforcement.
	Right.
	But it's immoral.
	Law is supposed to reflect morality, right?
	It's not just...
	I'm not supposed to be just random punishment, right, based on power.
	I mean, I know it's kind of become that, but...
	I don't think that motives...
	I mean, it may ameliorate your punishment, right?
	Like, is it premeditated murder or is it second degree or whatever, right?
	Or is it a crime of passion?
	It doesn't mean you don't...
	Is it manslaughter?
	It doesn't mean you don't go to jail.
	You may go to jail for different lengths of time, right?
	Yeah.
	No, I agree.
	It's still fully bad.
	I was only questioning whether it was sadistic.
	No, but how do you...
	Like, I don't know whether...
	How do you know?
	How could you possibly know?
	What his state of mind was when he was teaching you about hell.
	I don't.
	Or subjecting you to those teachings.
	I don't.
	But I'm saying if he...
	No, but you won't know.
	No, no, sorry.
	You'll never know.
	I understand.
	Because if you say, Dad, this was kind of sadistic, what would he say?
	Yes, it was sadistic, and I enjoyed watching you live in terror of going to the everlasting lake of fire, right?
	He's not going to say that.
	Because if he was capable of that kind of honesty and self-knowledge, he never would have exposed you to that toxicity of belief to begin with.
	You will never, like, we're theorizing, it's like an agnostic theorizing about the motives of God.
	You'll never know what his motives are, and it doesn't matter what his motives are fundamentally.
	What matters is what you do, not what your intention is.
	It's like saying the welfare departments of Western governments in their mission statements clearly say that they want to alleviate poverty.
	Well, I don't care what they say.
	It only matters what the tangible effects I mean, Hitler wanted to protect Europe from Jewish scum thuggery or whatever he would call it, right?
	But who cares?
	I mean, he ended up killing Anne Frank, for God's sakes, right?
	I mean, it doesn't...
	What the motives are...
	Anyone can claim motive.
	Anyone can say, well, I beat you to drive the devil out of you, which...
	You know, if I didn't beat you, it would be even worse, because then the devil would have taken over your soul.
	You can invent anything you want to justify the evil that you do, right?
	Yeah.
	Anyone can come up with anything.
	And people do, all the time.
	All the time.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Like, I can say, if I stab someone in the throat, I thought you were coughing, and I thought you needed an emergency tracheotomy, right?
	Okay, gotcha.
	I heard what you're saying now.
	Because we can't read other people's minds or know their true intentions, particularly from 20 years ago, and because people can lie about what their intentions are or their state of mind is or whatever, that's why it's completely irrelevant to philosophy.
	It may have some value in the field of psychology.
	I don't know.
	I'm not a psychologist.
	But in the realm of philosophy, intentions do not matter.
	They cannot be proven.
	They're completely subjective.
	They require self-interested self-reporting, which is the worst source of truth.
	Right.
	I mean, asking for the truth of people's intentions is like asking for honest advertising from Coca-Cola about how bad it is for your teeth and all that, right?
	It's just not, you're just not going to get it.
	Yeah.
	Self-interested self-reporting.
	It's irrelevant to philosophy.
	What matters is, what did people do?
	I'm with you, yeah.
	Okay, sorry to over-talk that one, but I want to be clear.
	Not so much for you, but for other people who are listening.
	Okay, got it, got it.
	They did the best they could with the knowledge that they had.
	How the fuck do people know that?
	They have no way of knowing that.
	I fully agree with you on that.
	And even if they did the best they could with the knowledge they had, why the hell didn't they have better knowledge?
	I mean, then nobody should ever fail an exam because everybody who writes an exam is doing the best they can with the knowledge they have.
	And if I don't study for my geography exam and then I flunk out, can I then say, wait, wait, wait, just like the people who got an A, I was doing the best I could with the knowledge I had.
	There's no excuse.
	That's not an excuse for a six-year-old with a goddamn spelling bee.
	How the hell is it an excuse for parents in full control of a developing human mind?
	If you don't study for the exam, you fucking fail.
	And if you don't study for parenting, you fucking fail.
	You don't get to say that you did the best you could with the knowledge you had.
	Fuck that.
	That's a bullshit cop-out.
	You goddamn well study.
	It's a little bit more important raising a child than passing a spelling bee when you're six goddamn years old.
	You goddamn well study, and if you don't study, you're even more culpable.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Part of my practice of trying to break out from my habits and what accrued over my childhood is I noticed one of the most enraging and emotionally provocative things besides the background anxiety and social fear and whatnot is when someone puts an illogical argument or overrides my What I think is a logical, sensible, reasonable thing.
	And I've recently noticed that my dad used to kind of override my preferences and reasoning and I felt like I couldn't even talk and he would just kind of end the conversation right there.
	And I had like just deep-seated, seething rage.
	And this happens, you know, on multiple occasions.
	And my response internally is, I'm gonna hate you forever.
	And that was my revenge, you know.
	I was kind of powerless back then, but it would always kind of subside.
	And of course, the emotional, I mean, the religious bullshit of forgiveness would always, you know, because I was very ethically principally driven.
	And so that would kind of, you know, kill that.
	Just, yeah.
	So.
	Right.
	So as far as practice.
	Well, it sounds to me like you could profit from a conversation with your dad.
	Because there does seem to be some lack of clarity.
	And maybe he's got great answers to all of the questions that I'm raising.
	So it may be worthwhile.
	Because it still sounds like there's some fog around your dad's participation and his motives and his actions and so on.
	I just want to close this off with just a tiny little speech.
	So the women who left abusive husbands in the 60s and 70s improved the institution of marriage because men now know that women can leave their husbands.
	And the women who stay in abusive relationships, or the men who stay in abusive relationships, are a massive advertisement for the non-consequentiality of abuse.
	So if you stay in an abusive relationship, you are signaling to everyone who ever comes in contact with you or hears about you that abusers face no consequences to their abuse.
	Therefore, by staying in abusive relationships, you are encouraging and subsidizing abuse.
	By getting out of abusive relationships, You are saying the whole world over that abusers can't get away with it.
	That there are negative consequences to child abuse or to adult abuse, spousal abuse, you name it.
	Right?
	And so those people, like, everybody was deeply shocked in the interview which I was having when I said I have not seen my parents in, I don't know, 13 years?
	And I have no intention whatsoever of ever seeing them again.
	And if there is a God, I hope he'll put me in a different section of hell from them.
	Right?
	So everybody was deeply shocked.
	And I said, no, no, no.
	You see, every time I tell this story, then I promote consequentialism for abuse.
	And abuses sure as hell aren't going to change based on virtue.
	But maybe they'll change based on consequentialism.
	I don't do it for that purpose.
	But when you stay in abusive relationships, you are signaling to all abusers that they'll get away with it.
	And you're just encouraging it.
	You're just encouraging it.
	You're suffering the consequences, but other people suffer from those consequences.
	So if this woman was saying, well, my parents are verbally, horribly abusive, but I love them.
	It's like, well, Christ, now all you're doing is saying to parents who are verbally abusive, yeah, you'll get away with it.
	It doesn't just have consequences for you, it has consequences for other people.
	When you break out of and reject abusive and irredeemable relationships, you are sending a clear signal across the world which all abusers are listening for at all times.
	Can I get away with it?
	Can I get away with it?
	That's all they're thinking.
	And a lot of the social morals and structures that are put in place are designed so that abusers can get away with abuse, whether it's taxation or the military-industrial complex or welfare.
	But you can't leave your parents.
	They're your parents.
	That's all just set up by abusers.
	All you're doing is mouthing the words of abusers who want to get away with it.
	But if you reject and dissociate from abusive relationships and don't keep it like some guilty secret, I'm incredibly proud of what I have done with my abusive family of origin.
	I'm proud of that.
	Do you think it's hard now?
	Jesus, try 13 years ago.
	Imagine saying that to people.
	I mean, I was certainly the first that I've ever known of.
	I'm incredibly proud of that.
	And I'm incredibly proud of spreading the idea of voluntary adult relationships through this show.
	It is my hope that abusers hear this and say, oh shit, the game's up.
	Oh shit, somebody's openly talking about having nothing to do with unrepented, irredeemable, abusive parents.
	Oh well, I guess this gig is up.
	We're going to have to do better.
	Because, you know, some people will not rob a bank because They are virtuous people and other people will not rob a bank because they don't want to go to jail.
	Right?
	Which is why we encourage respect for property and also promote jail as a society.
	I'm not saying these are ideal solutions, but just the way society currently works.
	And some people will not abuse their kids or work to Process their own shit and stop abusing their kids.
	Some people will do that because they're virtuous people and don't want to harm their children.
	Other people will do that because if you fuck up your kids, they may have nothing to do with you when they grow up.
	Right?
	And so if you end up separating from your parents because they're irredeemable and abusive and you get the proper help from a therapy that I always recommend in those situations, don't be shy about it.
	Help the world.
	Help the world.
	Remind people That abusers are not going to continue to get away with it forever.
	So, I'm sorry, we have to move on to the next caller, but I really appreciate you bringing up these topics.
	And again, I'm very sorry about the situation that you're experiencing.
	Mike, who do we have next?
	Alright, up next is Chris, and his question is, how do you break addiction cycles and form healthy habits for the long term?
	Another quick question.
	Hi, Steph.
	Hi.
	What are you addicted to?
	Oh, to a lot of things.
	Yeah, to a lot of things.
	Let me start with my question or with a story of mine, with a story of mine.
	I'm addicted to weed, junk food, porn, masturbation, and the internet a little bit.
	Yeah, I'm glad you said porn and masturbation.
	Because porn without the masturbation would be like, I'm addicted to going to buffets and looking at the food.
	Anyway, go ahead.
	Yeah, okay.
	But yeah, and I'm trying to fight those addictions for about two years now.
	And I always find myself...
	How do I say it?
	Like winning the fight for a couple of weeks or months but then I come back and I do all the things all over again and well this is going on for too much time and now I feel like very stagnant in my life because this is basically what I'm doing and I'm not moving forward in any kind of directions that I want to move forward in in my life.
	So tell me about your childhood trauma, if any.
	Yes, I had a pretty fucked up upbringing.
	I was born in Poland, so my parents are from Poland, where they grew up under the Soviet regime.
	So you maybe have an idea a little bit.
	My father's an alcoholic.
	And, well, from what I'm most...
	The most thing that I remember is...
	Basically, my parents fighting all the time.
	From my memory, let's say, they didn't really pay too much attention to raise us, because I have a brother, so their children.
	It was a very abusive, very aggressive kind of household.
	I'm sorry about that.
	Right.
	Yeah, so you grew up with a lot of stress and anxiety.
	And I'm not going to attempt to replicate, I think, the wisdom of a book that I'll recommend called In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts by Gabor Mate.
	G-A-B-O-R-M-A-T-E. You should read that.
	I mean, that to me is hands down the best work on addiction.
	And he's, you know, a doctor.
	He's got an impressive...
	Array of research to back up his thoughts and conclusions.
	His basic argument is that addiction is an attempt to self-medicate the effects of trauma, and there are better ways of overcoming the trauma than attempting to self-medicate from here to eternity.
	So I wouldn't trust myself to get into the Medical details of that and certainly not even remotely close to my area of expertise, but I hugely sympathize with that.
	The addiction is not a personal failure.
	It is not you are bad and other people didn't mysteriously escape or have strong like addictions or have stronger willpower to overcome them.
	You are in a state of a lack of knowledge, I would argue, about addiction.
	And if you can find the better knowledge about the physiological basis of addiction and ways to overcome it, you'll be infinitely better off.
	And I certainly hugely respect I'm calling in to talk about these difficult topics, but I don't know if he's the only expert.
	He's certainly the one that I've read the most of, but I would read Gabor Maté's and work towards that.
	Talk therapy is very good at helping overcome early...
	Trauma and the resulting desire to self-medicate, but there's physiological changes in the brain that occur as a result of trauma and a lot of addiction is the desire or goal of attempting to replicate brain function or brain chemistry that is disturbed through a traumatic upbringing, attempting to fix or heal that.
	So I'm sorry to give you a short answer, but I think you couldn't do much better than to go towards that Gabor Mate stuff.
	I don't know if you've ever heard of him.
	No, I have not heard of him, no.
	I recently listened to the podcast that you did with Daniel Mackler, I think, or something.
	That sounded pretty good as well.
	Yeah, I think Daniel Mackler is good as well, but I have not read a lot of his stuff.
	I know he's got a new book that's come out that I haven't had a chance to read yet, but...
	I would definitely work at trying to understand the physiological basis.
	Because otherwise, in the absence of physiological understanding, we end up making up devils that don't exist.
	Like if you don't understand epilepsy, you might talk about demonic possession and so on.
	So without an understanding of the physiological basis, we often will invent self-accusatory demons.
	I see that.
	So let's do this.
	Why don't you have a read of that book?
	And then you're certainly welcome to call back in.
	And we can talk further about it.
	But I would say in the absence of that...
	Understanding it would be very tough to, I think, put some of your addictive habits in perspective.
	Okay, let's do this.
	Alright?
	Yeah, have a read and then get back to me.
	And also I've talked with him on this channel as well, so hopefully that will help.
	Alright, thank you.
	Thank you so much for calling in.
	And next...
	Alright, Melissa is up next.
	She writes, Since marrying my husband, I find myself often being resentful, distrusting, frustrated, and angry.
	I've also slipped into old habits and patterns of yelling, mean behavior, boundary issues, trouble saying no when I need slash want to, that I've had long thought had been replaced with healthy communication habits and boundaries.
	What insight would you contribute towards my efforts at becoming a fantastic partner and hopefully mother?
	Well, I think accepting that men are really annoying will be hugely, hugely helpful.
	I mean, we're distracted.
	We sometimes feel that we're in a harem with one wife and five tablets.
	Wait.
	Sorry, I shouldn't project.
	Can you clarify a little bit more about what happens with your husband?
	Um...
	Well, it's been getting a lot better.
	We've done some counseling together for a while, and I think that that's helped.
	And also what's helped a lot for both of us has been your show, listening.
	For him, he's said that, you know, before finding your show and mostly that, He didn't really have much of a level of self-awareness or the inclination to philosophize and to look at his own values and things, so that's been really awesome.
	And for both of us to open dialogue and talk about some of the things in our past and influences, So, I mean, to clarify, I'm sorry, I'm not even answering your question.
	To clarify, we've had a lot of trouble communicating in that, for him, he's in much He tends toward, and this is like indicative of his background, he tends toward like imploding, shutting down, very quiet, and I'm the opposite, and it's indicative of my background.
	I'm an explosive person.
	I'm gonna tell you how I feel, and then the two obviously incite each other.
	When I become more explosive, he retreats further and further.
	When he retreats further and further, I run after him and louder.
	Right.
	And I hear my mother's voice come out of my mouth sometimes, and that's the thing that blows my mind when I'm like, oh my god, I'm being like her, I'm sounding like her, being mean and You know, trying to pull him out of that shell almost by being mean.
	Like, okay, you're just gonna run away and be so quiet.
	Well, how about if I poke you like this?
	Right.
	If I scream at the bunny, it will come out from under the bed, right?
	Yeah, right?
	That seems effective.
	It hasn't been.
	And you know, of course, right?
	You know that that's completely the opposite, right?
	And it's selfish because you're frustrated at his behavior and you're venting your frustration, which only exacerbates the behavior you don't want, right?
	Exactly.
	But again, that has really, really improved.
	And even just talking about it, just saying, oh, this is what I do, and then this is what you do, definitely makes a big difference.
	I think what I worry about more is that I would like to be a mom.
	I don't want to have the same thing happen.
	I don't want to be like okay now I have a child and to see those patterns emerge to have to start fixing them because that's a child that's not an adult either.
	I mean like with him and I to work on you know these kind of patterns at least he's an adult person and he can defend himself and say cut it out you're being a bitch you know but I couldn't imagine.
	But he doesn't say you're being a bitch right?
	No, he's much more polite.
	Okay, right.
	You're being a witch with a capital B. Anyway, okay.
	I don't know why he sounds British.
	It's really gotten escalated once or twice, would he ever, but I'm the one with the potty mouth.
	Right, okay.
	Well, I'll give you a secret.
	The secret.
	Who currently has access to your house or comes under your roof who behaves the worst?
	Me.
	So you are the worst behaved person who ever comes under your roof, including friends, relatives, guests, and so on?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	So your mom doesn't come over, is that right?
	No.
	No.
	Wait, what?
	I don't think no gap no is exactly the same as no.
	No, I'm not really.
	I've kind of been separating distancing more from her.
	But she's far from here.
	Not that far anyway, but far enough that she can't come for a visit even if she wanted to and I were so inclined to let her.
	And how often do you talk to her?
	I haven't been for a couple of weeks, but before that, you know, sometimes every couple of weeks and then sometimes much larger gaps of time because mostly then would be she just drops off and out of communication a lot of times, which is one of the weird manipulative things that she does and one of the reasons that I'm just not really speaking to her right now.
	Why does she do that and what does she hope to achieve?
	I don't know.
	She's a really very, very messed up person.
	What does she hope to achieve?
	I guess there's something about, like, you know, you worrying about her.
	She's always in bad situations, so if I can't get a hold of her, she knows I'm worrying about her.
	And there's that, like, pity that, you know, just all that energy going in her direction that somehow, I guess, she likes.
	Hmm.
	And what other dysfunction has she exhibited in your past?
	Sorry, she can't exhibit it in your future, but yeah.
	She was a very abusive person emotionally, verbally, and physically as well.
	My father was abusive also with us and with her, but she was worse with my sister and I. Then they divorced when I was about 18 and she went very quickly.
	Well first she went into a mental hospital for a little while because she was so depressed and then came out of the mental hospital and found herself a boyfriend who smoked crack and she got with it and he was incredibly abusive.
	I mean you know I threw her down a concrete flight of steps at one time.
	She was in the hospital and a social worker totally breached HIPAA because she said, I have to tell you this on the phone to my sister and I, if you don't come and get your mother out of this situation, she's going to be dead soon.
	I know that I could lose my job right now, blah, blah, blah, whatever.
	But she stayed and stayed and then we did get her away from there and then she went back.
	And then recently, maybe about a year ago, A little less than a year ago.
	I was always encouraging her to get out of that situation, but I told her that I'd like her to come live nearby where I am and that when I have the means and things are better and I have a house, an actual home and stuff, I'm not just renting, that perhaps she comes and lives with me one day, but at least to come be nearby and we can work on our relationship.
	And she did leave.
	And she came up.
	To where I was living for maybe a week, about a week.
	She was so disgustingly abusive and just vile with me.
	And my husband, whose family is not mean and cruel, he was just like, he was blown away, I felt.
	He was like, we've got to get her out of here, and obviously I agreed.
	The rest of her brother and sister who are downstate from us, where I kind of sent her back, you know, go back to your family there, they were kind of pissy and gossipy about me afterwards for sending her back.
	Back by them, I mean.
	She's not back with my bad husbands.
	She left him.
	I guess that's about the stone's guinea of it.
	And what does your husband think of her?
	I think you mentioned a little bit, but...
	He thinks she's pretty wretched.
	He definitely doesn't want her around.
	Right.
	And how long was it...
	Just remind me, sorry, I lost the time frame.
	How long was it ago that you wanted her to come and live with you and all that kind of stuff?
	Or live near you and work on your relationship?
	A little less than a year ago because I think it was this spring.
	Last spring.
	Right.
	And what did your husband think of that?
	He wasn't thrilled with the idea, but he was very supportive, and he basically was like, well, this is family, and if we can help her and she needs help, then we should help her.
	He only met her one time briefly before that, and she has a very cute, sweet sort of coating that she puts over herself until...
	Wait, she only met her one time before you got married?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, well, there's a clue, right?
	Were you kind of keeping her away from him?
	Or she just wasn't around at all?
	She wasn't around.
	She lived, you know, across the country.
	Right.
	Right.
	And what makes you think you can help her?
	I mean, she was institutionalized, right?
	I don't take more.
	No, okay, good, because, you know, you can't, right?
	I mean, she was institutionalized.
	They had full power over her, and they couldn't help her, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, so you can't?
	No, I know that.
	You know, but just all my life, I was definitely more of the mother, as much as...
	I know that doesn't make sense at all, but it was me taking care of her.
	She was a mess, you know, emotionally.
	Do you know if she's ever been diagnosed?
	She has.
	Borderline?
	She's...
	I think she was diagnosed bipolar, I'm pretty sure.
	Right, okay.
	Right.
	Yeah, so I mean, you can't help her, right?
	No.
	You can't fix her.
	You can't help her.
	And she's in your life by complete accident, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, you didn't choose that, right?
	You wouldn't in a million years have chosen that person to be your mother, right?
	No.
	Well, good for you for choosing a guy from a more stable background.
	Good for you for having some issues of mild aggression in your relationship.
	That's great.
	Fantastic.
	So what's your question again?
	I guess...
	And the reason I'm asking that is I remember the original question, but when we started talking about it, you said that wasn't the real issue, or it wasn't a big issue.
	Well, I did say in being a wife and a mother.
	So I think that because I felt so many things that I felt were really laid to rest have sort of resurfaced to be dealt with again.
	Since I'm married, my fear is that if I have aggression and anger issues that I have to deal with again as a mother, how do I Really work on these things all the more and and is there a way that I can like sort of look from that perspective of being mom before I'm even a mom so that there is no There's no chance of me you know ever Being
	aggressive or yeah inappropriate with a child I mean, I well of course the first thing you know if I were to say to you that I spent 20 years in a war zone.
	How do I avoid getting reactivated by that war zone?
	What's the first thing you would say to me?
	Don't be in a war zone.
	Yeah, don't be around anything that reactivates your trauma.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	You know, every time it rains, my bones ache.
	How can I ensure that my bones ache the least?
	Well, go where it rains the least, right?
	Yeah.
	Right.
	So, having no one around you who reactivates that trauma is a fairly important way, I would argue, of not having that trauma reactivated.
	It's the first step, right?
	It may not be the only one, probably isn't, but it certainly would be the most sensible first step, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, I imagine that it's pretty tough for you after you've been spending this time around your mom.
	I mean, it's pretty tough, right?
	It's draining, it's exhausting, it's dissociating, it's debilitating and all that kind of stuff, right?
	Oh, absolutely.
	I feel like I'm not myself, like something warps in me.
	Sure.
	Yeah, of course, because you can't...
	World War II combat veterans shouldn't go and see Saving Private Ryan if it came out two years after the war ended, right?
	Right.
	I would know.
	Right.
	So that makes me think, though.
	Yeah, so go ahead.
	I mean, I've gone back and forth, and I just need...
	I know that I need to be firm with it, and this time to just mean it, and to stick to it, and just...
	Not associate with my mom, but then I think of like for some reason being around my little sister when we get in person sometimes because we talk on the phone quite a bit and we have a very nice relationship, but when we get in person a lot of times we seem to really reactivate each other and end up fighting and yelling at each other and having just nasty...
	Do you agree on your mom?
	No, my little sister and myself.
	No, no.
	Do you and your sister agree on who your mom is or how your mom is?
	Yes, but my sister still goes and visits her and...
	So no, you don't, right?
	No, I guess not.
	Yes, but we behave in opposite ways, right?
	Yeah.
	Do you and your sister both go north?
	Yes, but she goes south.
	No, right?
	Then you don't, right?
	Yeah.
	I guess she has a lot more sympathy.
	Not that I don't have sympathy for her, but more excuses.
	No, you're speculating as to motives.
	Yeah.
	Which is, you know, I know men do it.
	It seems to be a little bit more common among women.
	To speculate as to motives is a great way of getting people off the hook and not processing emotional trauma, right?
	If I can speculate about the positive motives of people who are harming me, then I don't have to deal with their harm, right?
	Right.
	Right.
	So I would recommend not doing that.
	I think that you need to sit down with your sister and go of the facts, right?
	Either your sister is going to recognize and respond to facts or she's not, right?
	You cannot be in relationships for the hopes of people getting better.
	That's not a relationship.
	That's a form of self-medication.
	It's friend-zoning people, so to speak.
	I take people for who they are right now.
	I don't have a fantasy for how they're going to be in some miraculous future.
	Because if they have a relationship with me, then what incentive would they have to change, right?
	It's like saying, well, I'm going to go and eat at this restaurant and spend $100 every week.
	And I'm going to encourage all my friends to go to this restaurant and spend $100 every week.
	And we all think the restaurant is really terrible and we all want the restaurant to change.
	Would that make any sense?
	No.
	Of course not.
	What incentive would the restaurant owner have to change if he's getting all the benefits anyway of being a better restaurant?
	Right?
	Yeah.
	You cannot be in relationships.
	This is to your sister, right?
	You cannot...
	It's not a relationship if you're expecting someone to change.
	It's a project.
	It's a manipulation.
	It's a fantasy.
	And it's a form of...
	It's harming the other person by not giving them honest feedback on what they're doing.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	And it's subsidizing their bad behavior, which is not going to, right?
	It's enabling, right?
	Being with somebody who's abusive is exactly the same as bringing drinks to a drunk.
	You're just enabling the system, right?
	We've had that conversation.
	All right.
	And I have found it highly profitable in my life to ask people to choose between good and evil.
	Right?
	I'm a good person.
	You can hang with me.
	Or you can hang with the nasty, evil, vicious abusers.
	But you can't do both.
	Right?
	That's just a basic respect for virtue and self-respect.
	And recognition of reality, right?
	You can hang with me, good, caring, loving, virtuous individual.
	Or you can hang with the people who beat you up as a child.
	Yeah.
	You know, but you can't do both.
	Choose.
	Goddammit.
	I won't give people this artificial choice of having their evil cake with the icing of virtue, right?
	No.
	You choose between good and evil.
	It's not my choice.
	I didn't inflict the choice.
	It's kind of the evil people who inflict the choice.
	I'm just recognizing that as the choice.
	You get me, or you get vicious, petty abusers.
	But you don't get both.
	Because I'm not hanging in the room with them.
	And I'm not hanging with people who are going to deny my suffering by pretending there's virtue and value in my abusers.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah.
	Anybody who's friends with my abusers is spitting on my suffering and joining ranks with the abusers at my expense.
	Come on.
	You can't do that, right?
	Yeah.
	Your inner child will scream and rail, right?
	And you need your inner child to be a good mom, right?
	Your inner child can't be around people who further traumatize the inner child by treating the abuser as a non-abuser, as a positive force, as a necessary person.
	I mean, this is so obvious when you point it out, right?
	I mean, if you were in a concentration camp, you can't be friends with people who like Nazis.
	She still lives down and close by to where all of that family is.
	And I also know that the first thing that she'll say to me, or I'm guessing the first thing she'll say to me is, you know, she'll point out how for so many years I encouraged and pleaded with her to try and reconcile with our dad.
	For which you can apologize.
	And I have.
	What a terrible thing to do.
	I was totally inhabited by my dad's alter ego.
	And I am incredibly sorry for the amount of propaganda I was force fed and for my inability and unwillingness to resist that propaganda.
	But surely, if you recognize what I did as a past mistake, Then continuing that behavior must change.
	Like if I told you the best way to lose weight is to eat cheesecake, and then you point out that I was completely wrong, you don't continue to eat the goddamn cheesecake, do you?
	No.
	Right?
	So if I was wrong to suggest reconciliation, which I was, and I've woken up and learned better now, then surely you don't get to keep doing the reconciliation thing if you're calling me wrong for advocating it.
	Yeah, I even had...
	You know, therapists or healers that I was working with who would, you know, don't cut your mother off.
	That's not going to be helpful.
	That's not going to help you heal the relationship.
	It took...
	I'm sorry.
	Yeah, I'm sorry that this, you know, there's a couple of people who are talking about this kind of stuff.
	Daniel Mackler is one.
	Dr.
	Phil and his board of advisors is another who've openly said, you've got to break with abusive parents, however regretful it may be.
	I'm trying to remember the name.
	I've got a woman's book that was published some time back ago where she basically said, she whispered about I'm sorry.
	Beverly Engel.
	Beverly Engel.
	Beverly Engel, Divorcing a Parent.
	I don't think it's an e-book because it's a while ago that that was written.
	And the fact that nobody's ever heard about it is pretty telling.
	But I'm sorry that there are so many quote therapists out there.
	First of all, they shouldn't be telling you what to do.
	Like, any quote healer who says, do this, do that, is full of shit and is not good at what they do.
	Right?
	I mean, a teacher shouldn't be giving you the answers.
	And you always hear me on this show, what do I say?
	I can't tell you what to do.
	I can share my experiences.
	I can share some principles.
	I cannot tell you what to do, right?
	So anyone who's saying, well, you can't do this because homina, homina, homina, right?
	And people who put the onus on children to fix the relationship with their parents are just traumatized jerks.
	It's not the onus upon the victim to fix the abuser, particularly when the victim is a child who never chose the abuser and would have gotten away if humanly possible.
	And it's just perpetuating, you know, it's encouraging me to stay in the same pattern that I'm there talking about wanting to break, right?
	Like me being, having to be the adult even as, you know, a two-year-old, having to be the one to take care of this grown person.
	Yeah, no, there's a simple mechanism which we all have for trying to figure out whether we like people or not.
	It's called, do we like people or not?
	Yeah.
	You know, it's really quite an uncomplicated mechanism, right?
	Which is, the phone rings, it's this person's name.
	How do I feel about this person?
	Am I like, oh, yay, they're calling!
	Or, oh, no, what now?
	Right?
	It's not wildly complicated to figure out.
	And like all things that are not wildly complicated, it needs a huge amount of propaganda, right?
	To sort out, right?
	But do you like people or not?
	And I go with that.
	I don't try and tell myself who I should or shouldn't like.
	I don't lecture my penis to find Margaret Thatcher sexy.
	She's smart, right?
	Or the one-lunged 80-year-old Ayn Rand in a thong.
	I just say, hey, I wonder what I find sexy, right?
	I'm curious about myself.
	I do not I didn't dictate to myself.
	I didn't order myself around.
	People get upset with me.
	It's like, I wonder how I feel.
	Do I respect this person?
	Do I respect their viewpoint?
	Is it important for me to please them?
	No.
	Fuck them.
	I don't care.
	Right?
	Get mad.
	Punch at my picture.
	I don't care.
	It's not me.
	Right?
	It's just a little thing called, how do I feel about it?
	Now, victims of abuse, particularly child abuse, don't really know much about that, right?
	But it's really fundamentally important.
	There's no shoulds.
	In the entire goddamn world.
	There's no shoulds in the entire goddamn world.
	They do not exist.
	Should you spend time with your mom?
	Should you not spend time with your mom?
	I mean, there's arguments, right, to be made either way.
	I know where I would come down, but, you know, that doesn't matter in particular as far as your decision-making goes.
	But anyone who says you should do this with your mom I mean, they're just full of crap.
	They're not educators.
	They're indoctrinators.
	Anybody who teaches you conclusions rather than process is an indoctrinator.
	And they're teaching you...
	I'm confident that if I teach people how to think, they're going to arrive at conclusions that are valid.
	I don't need to teach them the conclusions.
	I can teach them the process.
	I don't need to give them fish.
	Teach them how to fish, right?
	Because I'm confident that reason leads to virtue.
	So I teach people reason, then You get virtue, right?
	And if I teach them, quote, virtuous actions, without the reasoning and methodology behind those actions, all I get is conformity, which can never be virtuous, right?
	Right.
	And so, it's what you want to do.
	You know, respect what your preference is.
	And do not order yourself around.
	You know, we can't escape the dictatorship of the state, but we sure as hell can overthrow the dictatorship of the self, right?
	That's a revolution which we can achieve, right?
	We can't end the counterfeiting of the Fed, but we can end the counterfeiting of should-based pseudo-virtue from those around us, right?
	Yeah.
	And thanks, Steph.
	You're welcome.
	I know that this is a bit obtuse in terms of the direction we're taking to focus on those issues, but I think the strike the root thing is fine.
	You're not obligated to see your mom.
	You're not obligated to be friends with people who pretend to value your mom.
	You've made a vow to your husband.
	Which means that you cannot engage in behavior that is going to be destructive to your love for your husband.
	And having love and its opposite can't be logically sustained.
	Again, mentioned to this interview I did with Tatiana at Bitcoin.
	You know, she said, well, I love my parents who are verbally abusive.
	And I said, that is an insult to the word love.
	Because somebody who's verbally supportive and enthusiastic and loving and caring, you're using the same word As these jerks who crush you with verbal abuse.
	You can't use the same word for something and it's opposite.
	It won't work.
	It short circuits the brain and particularly when that word is love, right?
	So I think you have an obligation to your husband to not do things that are going to harm your love for him.
	And you will have a much greater obligation, an infinitely higher obligation to Not do things that are going to harm your children's capacity for love.
	Because your husband at least is there by choice, right?
	Absolutely.
	But you want to have your cake and eat it too, right?
	To some degree.
	Well...
	No, I mean, with my mom, I think that it's easier enough to stick with this, and especially, you know, I have not just my husband's support, but the more I talk with, like, my mother-in-law, she's incredibly...
	I'm a very logical and rational woman.
	She's this wonderfully positive female and mother type force and she gives me the kind of support and would just say, no, you shouldn't be around that also.
	Is that what she has said?
	I haven't disclosed a lot of it to her, but...
	Well, see, if she's so great, why hasn't she asked you?
	Why hasn't she dug in?
	Just to be careful of idealizing.
	Just because they're not our parents doesn't mean that they're deities, right?
	Yes, I know.
	Be careful of the idealization because idealization is test-avoidant, right?
	Idealization is test-avoidant, right?
	Oh, I can talk to my mom about anything.
	Okay, we'll talk to her about this.
	Maybe next weekend, right?
	Yeah.
	So be careful of the idealization.
	I'll tell you this, if you were a man and my daughter was dating you and this was your family history and your mom was still in the picture, I'd be all over that.
	So the fact that you got married to your husband and his parents knew about your mom, And weren't all over it is indication of dysfunction there, too.
	Doesn't mean dysfunction on the same level as your family, of course, but it is indication of dysfunction, right?
	Yeah, no, they definitely have the more like, okay, that's really a touchy subject.
	Let's just not talk about it.
	I think I gave her some, you know, sort of vague answers about like, hey, my mom's got drug problems and she's just, you know.
	Yeah, see, I don't like vague answers about foundational gene pools into the family, right?
	I mean, that's not going to be, it's not going to cut it, right?
	Right.
	They're very, very polite, you know, so like she wouldn't want to, she was just, okay, I'm not even going to ask for anything more than that because I don't want to push buttons.
	Yeah, not polite.
	It's not polite.
	Avoidance.
	Yeah, avoidance.
	Right?
	You know, it's like me saying, well, you know, there was a kid drowning in the lake, but, you know, I didn't want to intrude, so I walked past because I'm polite.
	Right.
	That's not polite, right?
	Polite is saying please and thank you to the waiter.
	Yeah.
	It's not letting your son marry into a highly dysfunctional family structure without confronting it head on, right?
	Yeah.
	And if the family was truly functional, he probably wouldn't have married you.
	Not to say that it's going to be a bad marriage or anything like that, but it's just important to know where you're starting from, right?
	I know.
	I've thought of that also, and sometimes in the issues that we've come up against, I can take responsibility for myself, but I also know that, you know, there's his part, and there's...
	You're talking about his family avoids important issues, and the first thing we talked about on this call was your husband being avoidant of important issues, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	So, look, it doesn't mean bad marriage or anything are doomed, but it just means you both have room to grow.
	That's all.
	Definitely.
	All right.
	All right.
	Well, with that, and I certainly do appreciate the call, and I really do appreciate the courage it takes to bring these issues up.
	I mean, I know it's somewhat anonymous, of course, pretty much completely anonymous and all that, but I really appreciate everybody's courage in bringing all these issues up, and I hope that philosophy has some value in providing this.
	I can't provide solutions.
	I can't tell you what to do.
	Hopefully I can provide some context and perspective that helps people think about things in their lives in a more consistent and productive manner.
	I think moral clarity, philosophical clarity, rational clarity is really important.
	You can't navigate with your eyes closed.
	You can't drive with a blindfold on, although we're all at pretty fast speeds these days.
	So I hope that this show is helpful.
	Thanks again to Mike.
	As always, thanks again to all the people who invited me out to come and talk.
	And to you, dear, sweet, gorgeous, financially endowed listeners who now feel an almost irresistible impulse to type fdrurl.com forward slash donate into the browser and help us reach 10, 20, 30, 50, 100 million people a month.
	There's no reason why we can't if you help out.
	Thank you so much.
	Everyone have a great week.

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