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March 15, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

03:09:57

2639 Feminism made me an alcoholic... - Wednesday Call In Show March 12th, 2014

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	Good evening, everybody.
	It's the family from Radio, 12th of March, 2014.
	Hope you're doing well.
	So, listen, you people out there, your videos are too long.
	Your call-in shows are too long.
	A couple of tips.
	First of all, Mike has generously devoted his time to giving you timestamps.
	So you know the questions begin.
	You can skip to those.
	Another thing, did you know that YouTube will remember where you left off in your playlist?
	And I guess third of all, you can always download the podcast and listen to it while you're doing X, Y, and Z. Fourthly, it's actually not particularly about you.
	I always have a suspicion that those who complain most about the show are those who donate least to the show.
	So it is really, I try to Answer the questions that the people have to the best of my ability, and it's really about them.
	And really, the shows are published sort of as a courtesy for those who are interested, but for the most part, it's about the conversations I'm having with the listeners.
	So if you don't want shows to be as long, then you have to ask the listeners to ask less important questions, which I don't think they're about to do.
	That the shows may not be entirely dedicated to your exact in-the-moment convenience, but you get to listen in to some great philosophical conversations.
	Now, we did, what was it, 730 gigs, Mike, the other day?
	Yep, 730 gigs of podcast downloads yesterday.
	730 gigs of podcast downloads yesterday.
	I assume that's coming off the...
	My appearance on the Alex Jones Show, which I got to tell you was really enjoyable, very professionally done, and they made my first go at live news most enjoyable.
	So my thanks to them.
	And yeah, so we are paying for some bandwidth, ladies and gentlemen, and there's just no way around it.
	You know, we can torrent all we want, which means that Most people won't know how to get at the shows.
	YouTube, of course, we don't pay for bandwidth, but we drive advertisers to their site, I suppose, or to other people who advertise on their site.
	So we've got to pay for some bandwidth.
	And these are problems we want to have.
	So if you would like to be part of the solution, don't be the people who just complain about things.
	Be the people who help out.
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	Your support is most enthusiastically welcomed.
	And I think we'll put a spring in your step.
	Christians and Jews and, I don't know if it's Muslims, 10% of their money to their churches.
	The war of ideas, much like contests in the political realm, are to some degree dictated or determined by the amount of resources people throw at them.
	So if you find that this is the best place to spread reason to the world, and you won't support the show, then please don't complain about the world not being as rational as you like.
	You know when you have religious people outspending People interested in philosophy by approximately 10,000 to 1.
	I mean, just in terms of the ratio for this show.
	I mean, most people who are part of a church donate significantly to that church every week, or part of a synagogue, or part of a Muslim community.
	Don't complain about Mormons who donate 10% of their gross, not even net income, to their church when only 1% or 2% of listeners to this philosophy show donate.
	Just don't complain about the irrationality of the world if you're not throwing resources into wherever you think is the best place for the world to become more rational.
	I mean, come on, people.
	If we're being outspent by the irrational superstition-laced people by 10,000 to 1, then don't complain when they win.
	That's all.
	It doesn't have to be this show.
	Whatever you're going to do, you know, Christians go to church for hours every week.
	They donate massive amounts of money and time and energy.
	And, you know, if we're not willing to approach that to even, let's just say, one one-thousandth of the amount of effort and investment, then we really can't complain when irrationality seems to win.
	You know, teachers say, Government teachers have kids for 15,000 hours to propagandize them.
	What are you putting in to the countervailing forces?
	I'm doing everything I can.
	And it's all up to you guys now to support and grow.
	And thank you, of course, to everyone who's helping to support the show and who is helping the show to grow.
	Massively appreciate it.
	We're going to be next month, in a couple of weeks, I guess, unveiling.
	The new, as Phil Collins would say, Stew Stew Studio.
	And it's going to be a pretty cool thing.
	I think it's going to be a little bit more helpful than just being the sort of floating whitehead.
	Or floating whitehead on a white background.
	Pinkhead on a white background.
	So I think that's going to help a lot.
	It's going to be nice to move around a bit and do a bit of sort of waste upwards kind of stuff.
	So thanks to everyone who's making all that possible.
	Thanks to everyone who's making all the travel.
	Possible for doing these shows for doing I did like six interviews at the Bitcoin conference did I think a pretty good speech and Did a whole interview.
	I think it's 45 minutes or so on peaceful parenting, which was great to a couple who I believe is imminently big with child, which is always fantastic to do.
	And yeah, I just did about two and a half hours of live news in studio, which was sort of my first experience.
	And that's all because of the support that people like you are giving to the show.
	So, you know, 10 bucks a month, 20 bucks a month.
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	I mean, I think there's nothing better out there.
	I think there has never been anything better out there because of the technology that we have and the commitment that we all have to this conversation.
	So yeah, step up.
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	End of pitch.
	Mike, who do we have on first?
	Alright, up first today is Connor.
	And Connor's question is, as a child, I had a really strong fear of death.
	Is that normal or healthy?
	When I would get sick, I would often catastrophize and believe that I was going to die.
	Death is my greatest fear, and I was wondering if you think my fear of death is unusual or healthy.
	Go ahead, Connor.
	Well, you know, you are going to die, right?
	I mean, it's like, I believed I was going to die.
	Talk me out of it.
	I'm afraid I can't.
	I'm afraid I really can't talk you out of the belief that you're going to die, because it's pretty, you know, that's the price we pay for being here, right?
	The only reason we're here is because people die, and therefore the species needs renewal, and so on, right?
	So that's the deal.
	Everybody wants to be an exception to the rule, right?
	The government wants to create thou shalt not steal while condoning...
	Having everyone condone their taxation, everyone wants to create a rule and have an exception for themselves.
	Everyone wants a free market for everyone except their own protectionist, profit-seeking, rent-seeking bastards.
	So we all want to be alive, which means that people have to have died before us, but we want to be an exception to the rule of death.
	So obviously you know that, and I don't need to tell you that, but I just sort of wanted to point that out.
	So do you remember the first time that you thought hard about death?
	I don't know if it was the first.
	The first memory that I have was maybe I was five, and I had this sudden rush of, oh, I don't feel well, kind of sick.
	And my first thought was, oh, I'm going to die.
	This is something that's going to kill me, and this is it.
	Sorry, how old were you then?
	I think I was about five.
	So you knew about death then, right?
	Sure, yeah.
	Right.
	What was your exposure to death when you were little?
	Not much.
	He didn't, like, flash you at a bus stop or something.
	Open the cloak.
	Anyway.
	But no, did you have relatives die or pets?
	I really didn't.
	I remember my sister's cat was probably the first...
	First, you know, living creature died in my life, followed by our family dog, followed by my grandmother, who I really wasn't very close with, honestly.
	So I don't remember any of those, you know, instances being terribly remarkable in my life at that time.
	Do you remember your parents talking to you at all about death?
	No, no, I don't.
	Now, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask the witness a leading question, Your Honor.
	Permission to proceed?
	Good.
	Let's check with the inner court before you continue.
	Would you say that your parents are seizing the day and living life in a sort of rich and deep and maximal kind of way?
	No, I wouldn't.
	I wouldn't say that.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I've always kind of felt like they're a bit stifled in that regard.
	Right.
	A bit stifled?
	Come on, we're all a bit stifled!
	I'm a bit stifled when I cross the border!
	Right, so, I mean, are you sort of playing it down?
	Yeah, I guess I'm playing it down.
	I would say they're more stifled in that area than I would say most people are, and I would say most people seem to be pretty stifled.
	So what do you mean?
	How do you know that?
	I'm not saying you don't know that.
	I'm just saying what's the evidence?
	Both of my parents have a lot of fears around anything that might not go correctly.
	They really try and get all their ducks in a row.
	They really try and make sure everything is perfect and every detail is perfect and make sure that catastrophe is just the percentage for catastrophe is at the most minimal it could be.
	So hypercautious, paranoid about negative outcomes?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	And they do the same thing emotionally or it's expressed through, you know, kind of a lack of maybe excitement or showing too much emotion.
	And how much is too much?
	Well, I guess for them, I think What I would consider a healthy level of expression is too much for them.
	And how much too much is that?
	So if a healthy level of expression is the Aristotelian mean, right?
	Emotions are like, you don't necessarily want to spend every day like a hysterical Greek woman at the grave of a husband or something like that, but you also don't want to be...
	You're really muted.
	Right.
	And live this sort of gray, colorless, ghost emotional life.
	So this is the Aristotelian mean, I think, in expressions.
	Not drama queen, but not spiritually dead.
	So if sort of 50% is good, 100% hysterical, 0% is like they check your breath with a mirror.
	I mean, where are your parents' lives?
	Yeah, I would say probably around 20 or 25%.
	About half.
	So not too muted, right?
	I mean, sort of halfway to self-expression.
	Okay, maybe a little bit more than that then.
	Maybe more like...
	You mean a little bit less than that.
	Oh, excuse me, a little bit less than that, yeah.
	Yeah, and I'm not trying to corner you, but it's like, you know, halfway to health is a long way from death, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	So what percentage would you give him?
	10%.
	10%, all right.
	15 being the tops.
	Yeah, you know, there's an old song...
	Love is in the air everywhere I look around.
	And from when I was a kid, and maybe this is the case for you as well, for me it was not love, but death.
	And death is in the air everywhere I look around.
	And I don't know if I'm being foolish, don't know if I'm being wise, but it's something that I can believe in, and it's there when I look in your eyes.
	That's what I was sort of experiencing as a kid, everyone around me.
	They seemed either to be Functionally dead, you know, dead eyes, dead souls, as Gogol would say, or they had this kind of hysterical, broken robot, automated emotions, which always struck me as hysterical.
	To me, hysteria is the flip side of emotional mutedness.
	Neither of them are genuine emotions.
	Hysteria is emotional manipulation of self and others, and deadness is just a terror of Of connection.
	And I mentioned this story before, and I don't want to intrude on what you're saying, but hopefully this sort of makes some sense to you.
	So my mom and my dad had not seen each other at one point for, gosh, how long it had been?
	Maybe 20 years or so?
	And what happened was...
	They came to my brother's wedding?
	No, no, it was later than that.
	So they came one more time after that.
	And they were staying at my place.
	Or they'd come over to my place for sort of a dinner that I was putting on.
	This was sort of way back in the day.
	And my father had a cold.
	Now, I didn't know my dad growing up.
	Then my parents divorced when I was, I don't know, four, five, six months old, something like that.
	Because my first memory is 10 months of age and my dad certainly wasn't around then and I was in the apartment with my mom where we sort of stayed with my mom and my brother.
	But apparently my dad used to never wash his hands or wipe his nose or, you know, do all the kinds of things that you need to do to not continually get cold.
	And this used to apparently drive my mom completely nuts.
	Because, you know, he'd get a cold and he'd complain.
	And she'd say, well, you've got to wash your hands.
	You've got to, you know, whatever, right?
	And so this had been 20 years since they'd seen each other.
	20 years.
	And my dad had a cold.
	And my mom heard him sort of sniffling outside.
	And she turned to me and she hissed, It's probably the same cold he had when we were married.
	It was this weird kind of vehemence, like no time had passed.
	This frustration that she had at him having a cold 20 years ago was immediate, like no time had passed.
	That to me is emotionally dead.
	It's just stimulus and response.
	It's like playing tennis with a wall and think you're having a great match.
	It just bounces back whatever you fire at it, and there's no change.
	It's dead.
	And those two sort of extremes are where I experience significant emotional deadness.
	And hysterics have always struck me as really empty.
	You know, the people who get bothered by the same things all the time, and they don't ever find any resolution.
	It's just stimulus response.
	But it sounds like your parents were more on the muted scale than the hysteria scale.
	Is that fair to say?
	Yes, yeah.
	I don't have any memories of them being hysterical, nearly ever.
	What about emotional or passionate or spontaneous?
	Yeah, the only time that there was anything out of the ordinary...
	My mother was a functioning alcoholic until I was 15.
	I do remember some hysterical behavior when she would drink from time to time.
	I do recall that.
	Is it like the sentimental drunk stuff?
	Yeah, sometimes more affectionate and then something would happen and she'd get very upset or very angry, scowly or crying.
	It wasn't something that I remember happening all the time, but I do have some memories of that for sure.
	And as a result, I know my dad sort of pulled away a little bit more, removed himself from the situation.
	So he became more muted when her emotions did kind of kick in during drinking.
	And how did you experience those emotions, for want of a better word?
	I guess I would say that I probably...
	I feel like I... My emotions rose when her emotions rose.
	And my heartbeat sped up when she got excited or...
	And of course, when she was crying, you know, I kind of felt like I did something wrong or there was something wrong that happened.
	So I guess I kind of mimicked her emotions is what I feel like is the truth.
	Right.
	To some extent, you know, and then I became...
	But mirroring is not intimacy, right?
	Right, yeah.
	Intimacy is two people bringing spontaneous thoughts and emotions...
	Into an interaction, right?
	Yeah, for sure.
	I mean, if a lion jumps at me and I piss myself, that's not...
	Like, I'm reacting to the other person, or to the other animal, I guess.
	But that's not the same as intimacy.
	So if somebody is threatening, or if somebody is sentimental...
	And the sentimentality of drunks always seems to have an implicit threat behind it.
	Right?
	Because if you just say, look, you're just saying this because you're drunk, they always get angry, right?
	If it's like the angry, sloppy, boozy, wheezy...
	I love you.
	I hope you know how much I love you, man.
	It's just like, oh God, stop.
	Get off me.
	But if you call them out on this is just sentimental, addictive bullshit, they always get angry, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I agree with you.
	I don't think it was real intimacy was being shared there.
	I think you're right.
	It was just kind of a response.
	Yeah, and you can't be intimate with anyone who's drunk.
	Sure, I agree.
	Yeah.
	And...
	So, there is a challenge, right?
	So, with drunken pseudo-intimacy always comes a threat.
	With threat comes the conformity to other people's aggressions, whether implicit or explicit.
	And with all of that comes resentment, right?
	I mean, why should you have to participate in your mom's boozy ramblings, right?
	Right.
	You know, tell me this shit when you're sober.
	Maybe I'll listen, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, totally.
	Yeah, and of course that did kind of kick in when I became a teenager.
	It was just like, get out of my face.
	Now, why did your mom drink?
	I would say that she had a really hard childhood, and I know that she was hit as a child.
	I know that...
	She had a lot of siblings, like seven siblings.
	She was raised Catholic, not a lot of money.
	I met both her parents before, and I wouldn't say they were the most loving people I've ever met.
	So I haven't asked her that question directly, but that would be what I would say with the knowledge that I have about it.
	Okay, so unprocessed child abuse?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Or neglect or whatever, right?
	Right, yeah.
	That would be my best guess.
	Right, right.
	And your father?
	Why did he marry?
	Was she a drinker when your dad married her?
	No, I think that happened after the birth.
	You just gave me two contradictory responses.
	In three words, you gave me one ambivalent, giantly ambivalent response.
	No, followed by I think, right?
	No is very clear, right?
	It's a definite, right?
	And then I think is like I'm hypothesizing based upon, you know, what scraps of family tapestry I've been able to knit together from the shattered booze fest of my mom's functional alcoholism, right?
	So which is it?
	Is it no, like for sure?
	You know?
	Or what you think?
	It's what I think.
	Yeah, it's a hypothesis.
	I believe that she started drinking after her first child was born, and that's my eldest sibling who's eight years older than I am.
	And I kind of have a memory of someone telling me that, but...
	So what, she didn't drink at all before?
	No, yeah, she drank before.
	I think more on a regular basis, it kind of happened after her first child.
	Why would she drink after her first child?
	I don't know.
	I'm not sure.
	It sounds like I didn't start drinking until my first child was born.
	It sounds pretty harsh on the kids, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	You know, you kids are driving me to drink.
	Or, you know, what I used to get from my mom was she used to, you know, giddily recount this, you know, insanity is hereditary.
	We get it from our kids, right?
	You know, it's like, hey, nobody forced me on you, you bitch, right?
	Right.
	You chose to have kids and then you're like dissing them?
	Give me a break.
	I'd rather be anywhere else than here, so feel free to drop me off at a Satan League or, you know, some sort of horrible cult or something.
	I take my chances there.
	Thank you very much, right?
	But that is something that...
	Yeah, yeah.
	There does seem to be a lot of victim playing among parents.
	And I'm trying to sort of bounce off sort of my own history with it, but it seems kind of suspicious to me.
	You know, well, I didn't really start drinking until after my first kid was born.
	It's like, what?
	I mean, of all the times.
	To not drink, that would be the time, right?
	Yes.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	I didn't really start drinking until I started driving.
	It's like, well, no, you...
	Shouldn't be doing it.
	Get all your drinking out of the way before...
	Yeah, I agree.
	Yeah, I mean, I know my parents have talked about this sort of pressure upon women at that time that there was like, if you're just a mother, if you're just a stay-at-home mother, that's not good enough.
	And you should be working.
	And so there was some sort of external...
	Oh, God.
	Are you kidding me?
	Yeah, it's terrible.
	Feminists made her drink?
	Is that the story really?
	No.
	Are you kidding me?
	I don't think that's...
	I mean, that's like saying, well, you know, there's a lot of, you know, men get a lot of propaganda about fist fighting and nunchucks because, you know, there's a lot of action movies and Bruce Lee is pretty cool.
	And so I had to go beat up people because there's just a lot of pressure on men to be physically violent.
	And it's like, really?
	Are you kidding me?
	There's a lot of pressure on, you know, when I grew up, there was a lot of comic books or war, you know, and superheroes.
	So that's why I ended up, you know, jumping from rooftops in some parkour maneuver with a cape on and some ridiculously gay Richard Simmons-style tights.
	I mean, that's such an abdication of responsibility.
	I mean, I don't hear that from men, you know.
	I guess women get to claim this kind of stuff, and maybe people believe it.
	I don't.
	But it's like, really?
	You know, men are supposed to be providers, and supposed to be emotionally available, and they're supposed to be tough.
	Well, you know, we muddle along, we figure it out, and this idea that, what, feminism made her drink?
	Is that, that's the story?
	That's, yeah, I guess that's the family tale, yeah.
	Well, I mean, for that to be true, then all women who were exposed to feminism would have had to become alcoholics, or at least the vast majority of them, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Is that true?
	I don't believe that's true.
	No, no.
	Right, so it doesn't sound like your family has processed a whole lot.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	You know, a lot of pressure on men to have sex with a lot of women, and that's why...
	My genitals rotted and fell off because, you know, there's just a lot of social messaging.
	I mean, God, really?
	I mean, anyway.
	Okay, so, I mean, I don't mind that.
	Women can claim that as long as they offer it to men as well, right?
	You know, I don't think that women who, you know, get bounced around by players say, well, you know, he's a good-looking guy and there's a lot of pressure on good-looking guys to have sex with a lot of women, so I completely understand where he's coming from.
	Like, I don't think I've ever heard that from a lot of women, so...
	Anyway, okay, so...
	And has your mom stopped drinking?
	Yeah, she stopped when I was 15.
	And why did she stop?
	She stopped because...
	Basically, my dad...
	He came to me and asked me if I thought my mom had a drinking problem and that he had found, you know, he had been doing a lot of research.
	Yeah, yeah.
	What?
	Are you kidding me?
	Yeah.
	No, he didn't.
	He did, yeah.
	How long had he been married to your mom?
	I'm not exactly sure.
	Roughly?
	Yeah, 30 years.
	Okay, so you've married your mom for 30 years.
	Yeah.
	She started drinking, you said, so you were 15, and you had a 23-year-old elder brother, right?
	So for 23 years, your mom had been drinking and was a functional alcoholic, and he decides to come to the 15-year-old for advice on his wife's drinking and her perspective and feedback?
	Yeah, it's terrible.
	Oh my God.
	What a man-child.
	All right.
	Yeah.
	And he had let me know.
	He had done all this research and things, and he really wanted to approach her about it, and this was the situation.
	Sorry, he wanted to what?
	Approach her about it.
	Talk to her about it.
	Oh, okay.
	Right.
	And so was he roping you in for an intervention?
	Was that the plan?
	Kind of.
	Yeah, that's kind of what it felt like.
	And as a matter of fact, how it turned out was I was the person to tell her that I was having an issue with her drinking.
	What?
	No.
	No, no, no.
	Oh, the ballless wonder.
	Are you kidding me?
	Wait, wait.
	No, seriously.
	Yeah.
	You're not trawling, right?
	Like you're not pulling my leg, right?
	No, no.
	Like your dad came to you and said, listen, you're 15.
	How about you tackle this highly complex dysfunction that has harmed you more than me, and which I, as a husband, am fully responsible for failing to act for the past, say, 23 years.
	He didn't push you in front of that beast and say, go to it, son.
	You're 15.
	She won't maul you too hard, right?
	Is that really what happened?
	He didn't advocate that I bring it up.
	He said, this is something I'm going to talk to her about.
	But I think that it's certainly, to me, I would be thinking, well, this is going to put that in his mind and Wait, I don't understand what you're saying right now.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	No, that's okay.
	He didn't ask me to confront her.
	That was something after we talked.
	Oh, good, okay.
	Sorry, there was confusion there.
	He didn't ask me to confront her.
	But it was very much on my mind after that talk, obviously, and it had been...
	Oh, good.
	Okay, well, I'm sorry.
	I withdraw all that stuff then.
	So your father asked you for advice on the drinking or your thoughts or feedback on the drinking, and then he confronted his wife.
	No, no, no.
	I confronted her.
	But he didn't ask me to.
	So we had the conversation.
	Wait, wait, wait.
	Did he tell you what his plan was?
	Yes.
	I mean, why would you confront her?
	I guess I must have.
	You know, if I say, hey, listen, man, I'm just going to go.
	You really want some almonds?
	And I say, well, listen, I'm just going to go to the store and get some almonds.
	Would you drive to the store and get some almonds?
	So the plan wasn't like, this is when I'm going to do it.
	It was sort of like, this is what I've researched.
	And I remember she picked me up from school and I knew that she had been drinking and I was just really upset about it because it was on my mind.
	And when we got home...
	Wait, she picked you up from school in a car?
	Yep.
	So she was drunk driving?
	Yes.
	And how long had that been going on for?
	Oh, as long as she had been drinking.
	Oh my god, you're gonna give me an aneurysm here, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, I wish I was in like some subterranean vault so I could scream my lungs out.
	Yeah.
	Like, oh my god.
	So your dad had been allowing your mom to drunk drive with children in the car for 23 years?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Do you get how...
	Astoundingly wrong, that is.
	Yeah.
	I mean, you get she's a criminal, right?
	Right.
	And that he is aiding and abetting criminal behavior.
	They're both actually criminals.
	Right.
	Who have put children, not to mention countless other drivers, pedestrians, motorcyclists, and bicyclists, in direct harm's way.
	It's not a parental unit, it's a crime ring.
	Like, I'm sorry, the drunk driving thing drives me completely insane.
	You know, my kid's going to be out there driving, or biking, and people who drive drunk get me so angry, I'm not even going to try to be rational in this area.
	That is so astoundingly Dangerous and evil.
	And so she was coming to pick you up at school, so she's blotto, or to some degree drunk, driving with a 6,000 pound vehicle in a fucking school zone.
	In a fucking school zone.
	Right?
	Right?
	Mm-hmm.
	And you worry about dying?
	Jesus, you are at risk of dying every time you got into the bitch's car.
	Yeah.
	Like, okay, sympathy, alcoholism, you know, bad childhood, but she knew it was illegal.
	You said she was functional, right?
	She knew she had to pick you up from school.
	Yeah.
	So she knew that what she was doing was both dangerous and illegal.
	Right.
	I am so sorry.
	What a terrifying experience.
	When did you first know that Jermaine was not herself behind the wheel?
	I can't recall.
	I guess most likely when I was 12 or 13, but I don't have a memory that comes to mind about it.
	So are you saying that you didn't know your mom drank until you were 12 or 13?
	No, no, I mean, of course I was aware of it.
	I guess I just didn't really consciously, I wasn't consciously aware of...
	I don't know, it sounds crazy.
	No, no, it doesn't sound crazy at all.
	I mean, it sounds like something that's too terrifying to contemplate.
	Yeah.
	You know, I try not to get into...
	Taxi cabs with people who have lead foot and are legally blind because it's too fucking terrifying, right?
	But if that is your world where drunk mom drives you around, picks you up from school, weaves her way through traffic to get you home, one bloodshot eye staring at a dancing road, well, fuck me with the timber wood.
	That is something that I can understand blocking out.
	Yeah.
	But for sure, you knew it.
	Before you were 12 or 13, right?
	Yeah, yeah, I must have.
	Yeah.
	My daughter knows if I've had a good night's sleep or not.
	Right.
	No, seriously, right?
	I mean, like within a minute or two of me getting up.
	Yeah.
	I mean, she knows it by the way I walk into the room.
	I don't have to say it.
	Like, we know our parents, right?
	I mean, we studied them.
	Yeah.
	And your dad knew that your mom was drunk driving children around, right?
	Yes.
	How is this making you feel?
	I feel like I'm doing all the emotionals.
	No, I feel really sad.
	I feel like I knew all this, you know?
	It's just hard to hear someone else say it.
	And it's a little bit...
	I mean, I feel personally embarrassed even though I'm not that...
	You know, that's not...
	I didn't do it.
	I know that, but...
	Embarrassment and sadness.
	Excuse me?
	Embarrassment and sadness, I think, are defensive emotions.
	Okay.
	Yeah, right.
	Right.
	So, what would be a more consistent emotion with, say, a basic desire for human survival?
	Yeah.
	When people who put you in harm's way regularly?
	Anger.
	Yes, exactly.
	So why is that not anywhere there?
	Hmm.
	Um, because it's easier for me to try and like, it feels easier to not feel that.
	Yeah, easier for you.
	I get it.
	Sadness is one of the emotionally, it's one of the accepted emotions.
	Sadness, like depression, doesn't threaten abusers.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I mean, I fear confronting my parents and losing that.
	It's inconvenient to abusers for you to get angry.
	Yeah.
	This is why so often anger is portrayed as murderous or homicidal or psychotic or dangerous or destabilizing or insane, right?
	Anger has to be coated with slander.
	Anger has to be constantly slandered because it is the least convenient emotion for abusers, be they political or educational or ecclesiastical or parental or sibling-related or marital-related.
	Anger is the giant dick rocket that blows a hole through abusers.
	And that is why you go to the frankly girly emotions of sadness and embarrassment rather than something which would make your balls hang a little heavier, which is like, are you fucking kidding me?
	Right.
	Yeah, I definitely had started to feel some anger in process.
	Dude, dude, you're killing me here.
	Sorry.
	It's like you're reading a teleprompter.
	And I'm not saying go wring your heart out like it's some dry sponge and you're looking for a tear or something like that or anger.
	But I'm trying to figure out where the lack of connection is.
	First duty of parents is keep your children safe, right?
	Yes.
	First duty of parents.
	You know, and there is no safety in the world.
	There's no safety in the world.
	I mean, this is just something that people have to accept.
	You know, I was just chatting about this with a mom at a playground the other day, at a play center.
	And she was like, her kid was three or four or something like that.
	And she was like, oh, I'm so scared with him and the monkey bars and stuff like that.
	And I said, yeah.
	It's true, you know, we want to keep our kids safe.
	My daughter is now really keen on climbing trees, and she's like some howler monkey with a jetpack on, right?
	And it's a bit heart-stopping, you know, she slips, she skids, and all that kind of stuff.
	But what are my choices?
	Keep her home, have her play on the couch, well, then she gets heart disease and diabetes, right?
	I mean, you've got to let him go out and exercise at risk physical injury, because the alternative to exercise is not exercise, which is dangerous too, right?
	There is no escape from risk.
	No escape from risk.
	But the management of risk, walking that Aristotelian mean between too much physical risk and then the risk of illness brought about by too little physical risk, It's one of the first jobs of parents.
	Keep your children safe, which means put them in situations where they can get hurt.
	I mean, it's just a weird paradox.
	It's just the way it is, right?
	I mean, I get that.
	I mean, I go to the gym three times a week, and occasionally I'll injure myself because I'm lifting too hard or whatever it is, right?
	I mean, yeah, it happens.
	And what are my choices?
	To not exercise?
	Well...
	And my tendons are fine and my heart explodes, right?
	So...
	And it took, what, 23 years for your dad to notice that there was a fucking problem?
	Yeah.
	I mean, she's driving his children to a school zone drunk!
	If I was picked up for that...
	If there was news that I had been picked up for showing up to pick up my daughter from school in a school zone, drunk, what would you think?
	I would think you were just terrible.
	I mean, yeah, I would think that's awful.
	What an interstellar douchebag, right?
	Yeah.
	What a catastrophic shitheel.
	What a child-endangering motherfucker, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	So why the hell would you have really high standards for some voice on the internet who you've never met and have really low standards for the people who are actually in charge of your development?
	Right.
	Yeah.
	What would your dad say?
	You be your dad for a sec, do you mind?
	No, I think I can do that.
	Okay.
	Dad.
	What the fuck?
	Mom was driving us around drunk when we were children.
	What was going through your head?
	Help me understand how this doesn't make you giant patriarch asshole of the century.
	I'm open to hearing, what am I not getting here?
	How is this possible for you to let For 23 years, your wife drive your kids around other kids when she wasn't sober.
	Help me understand that.
	Well, she would never drive drunk to the point where I thought you would be at risk.
	So you thought I was not at risk?
	Yes, and if I thought...
	Do you think I was as not at risk as if she hadn't been drinking?
	No.
	Let me ask you another question.
	Let's say that her capacity was not diminished, but let's say she just got into an accident.
	And then they ask her for a breathalyzer.
	What then?
	Then she would have been arrested and maybe that would have caused her to quit drinking.
	So basically you hoped that she would have an accident and the police would make her quit drinking?
	Yes.
	Yes.
	Do you think that that is something I can respect?
	Maybe she'll hit another child.
	Maybe she'll hit a pedestrian.
	Maybe she'll hit a bicyclist.
	Maybe that bicyclist will live.
	Maybe he'll die.
	But maybe the cops will help.
	My wife stopped drinking.
	No, you shouldn't respect that.
	What were you so scared of?
	Why were you willing to put me In greater harm's way.
	Look, we can all understand that she was a functional, I'm not saying she was driven and then blacking out of the wheel, but she was a functional alcoholic, but she was not sober when she was driving.
	We know that, right?
	Yes, yeah.
	So I was definitely statistically at a heightened risk, right?
	Yes.
	Even if it's just a matter of reaction times, even if the other driver is at fault, all these kinds of things.
	I was at greater risk, as were the other children in the school zone where she was picking me up five days a week, right?
	Was she dropping you off too?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	Ten days a week, Madam Vodka Eyes is sailing in, squinting out of one bloodshed eye into a school zone ten times a week.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	So...
	What gives you the right to put me at that kind of risk?
	I don't have that right.
	No, no, no.
	You obviously thought for almost a quarter century that you had that right.
	So don't tell me you don't have that right like this is some new information for you.
	For almost 25 years, for almost a quarter century, You felt that you had the right to put me at risk, to not intervene when mom was driving, and other children, and my brother, at risk.
	How did that work?
	How do you justify that to yourself? - Yeah, I'm just breaking character now.
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	And that's...
	That's totally crazy.
	That's definitely crazy.
	No, it's not crazy.
	It's not crazy.
	It's perfectly sane if you're out of love.
	Right?
	It's perfectly sane if you're willing to put up with an alcoholic wife and if you are not bonded with your children To the point where you'll move heaven and earth to protect them.
	When you're only thinking about your own needs and preferences and wants and desires and, ooh, he's scared of his wife or, ooh, she might get upset or, ooh, she might get angry, right?
	And all he's thinking about is not whether you end up with your shredded head through a goddamn smashed up windshield landing on the body of five other children she plowed down when she hit the goddamn gas instead of the brake because she was drunk.
	He's not thinking about that and you...
	He's thinking about his own emotional comfort for the next five minutes for 23 years.
	Yeah.
	Not you, and we're just talking, look, we're just talking about the drunk driving.
	Right, yeah.
	Which is only one Satan anus part.
	The other part is a mom who's emotionally unavailable, a mom who's unpredictable, a dad you can't respect, parents who don't communicate, a mom whose only intimacy is creepy, foul-smelling, bourbon-fueled fondling of your frightened and compliant heart, right?
	I mean, it's six million different ways from Sunday that allowing fucking alcohol to come between a mother and your children and you and your wife and not doing the right thing and saying the moment you see a problem, no, no, no, no, no.
	No, no, no, no, no.
	Let's say, which I think is complete bullshit, but let's say the family mythology – Ooh, someone told me.
	Well, that's going to be objective, right?
	Let's say the family mythology is she didn't start drinking until after the birth of your brother.
	Well, do you know what I would say?
	Hey, honey...
	That's breast milk going into the fucking baby.
	So stop putting alcohol into the breast milk that's going into the baby.
	Would you mind doing that for me, sweetie, huh?
	Is that okay because you wanted to have a child?
	Maybe don't put alcohol into the fucking baby.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	You know, maybe don't put alcohol into the fucking baby.
	Should be part of everyone's wedding vows.
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	But the baby needs you.
	Don't be drunk.
	Yeah.
	And I think, of course, she displayed no addictive behaviors, no problems with alcohol, and then, right after the birth of the baby, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	Right.
	That's nonsense, right?
	Of course she had dysfunction beforehand, right?
	And your dad probably chose her for that dysfunction.
	Yeah, quite.
	Yeah.
	So, the reason that you don't have any emotions, in my opinion...
	Is that you don't have the connection, you don't have the bond with a caregiver which allows you to have emotions that are contrary to the needs of the caregiver.
	I'm going to say that again because it's kind of weird and complex.
	Emotional availability is simply about trust.
	Trust, trust, trust.
	That's all it is.
	If you trust people, then you can be inconvenient to them.
	Right?
	I ask my daughter regularly if there's things that I can do differently or better or if there's things that I'm doing that she doesn't like and she is perfectly willing and I invite her on a regular basis to be incredibly inconvenient to me because that shows her that we are bonded.
	And the bond that we have, like the bond that my wife and I have, like the bond that Mike and I and his wife have, like the bond that I have with other friends and with listeners, this bond is, you can be as inconvenient to me as you want.
	We don't break that bond.
	We can fight, we can disagree, we can have problems with each other, we can criticize each other.
	Our bond is like gravity.
	I spit on the ground, the planet doesn't throw me into space.
	It's physics.
	The bond that I have with people invites inconvenience, because without inconvenience, there is no intimacy.
	If we can never be inconvenient to other people, we can never be intimate with them.
	Because all we then are is, particularly with parents, fearful little compliance spots.
	There's no intimacy there.
	We know, deep down, that what is called a bond is mere convenience.
	Do not be inconvenient to your parents, saith the asshole Lord.
	And so, you can't have inconvenient emotions because that bond...
	Which is not founded on convenience, but an acceptance of the necessity of inconvenience.
	That bond is not there with you and your caregivers.
	Which is why you can only think of or only experience emotions that will provoke sympathy from your caregivers.
	Oh, you're sad!
	Right?
	Right.
	I can be there if you're sad, honey.
	Oh, you feeling sad?
	It was a difficult time for all of us.
	I regret a lot of the things that I did, but we've pulled together as a family.
	We've come through.
	We're even stronger than before.
	I understand that you're sad.
	I'm sad, too.
	Yeah, fuck that.
	Right, so you don't have the bond that allows for inconvenient emotions, which are the very essence of intimacy.
	Right?
	I don't want people to agree with me in my life.
	I mean, I don't want them to violently disagree with me, like, you know, let's go shoot hobos, right?
	But I certainly don't want, I mean, I don't even agree with myself.
	You know, funny people say, people who always try to wring a little bit of pseudo-individualism say, well, I agree with a lot of what Steph says.
	I don't agree with everything he says.
	It's like, ah, fuck off.
	You don't know a goddamn thing about philosophy.
	It's not up to you to agree or disagree with things that I say, like we're just, I like pink.
	I like flamingos.
	Well, I agree with a lot of Steph's preferences for pink and flamingos, sometimes the two together.
	But a lot of times he likes mockingjays, which I don't really care for.
	And he's a big fan of climbing coconut trees with those two little ropes tied between his legs, and I prefer to use a jetpack.
	It's like, it's not about aesthetics.
	It's not about agreeing with me, dickwad.
	Not you.
	But people just don't get it, right?
	Right.
	Disagreement is the essence of intimacy, and you don't have security in your bond with your parents that you can say things that are difficult.
	Your bond is not a bond.
	It is a noose.
	It is a noose around your self-expression, and you can express things only that are convenient to your parents.
	And if you express things that are inconvenient to them, and the number of people I have talked to, lo these many years, who have exactly the same problem, which is why I'm going into it in such depth, I appreciate you being the guinea pig, and I'm sorry of shining the light up your eyes so other people can see out of their throats, but you don't have a strong enough bond.
	It's incredibly fragile, right?
	Yeah, definitely.
	And so this is the grand and great terror that is the engine of the world's hellishness.
	This lack of bond is core to everything that goes on that is fucked up and dangerous in this world.
	This is where stalkers come from.
	This is where rapists and—not you, right?
	I understand not you, but I'm just—at an extreme end, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	This is where addiction and war and sadism and narcissism and sociopathy...
	To me, all of this stuff comes from knowing that your existence is like a sunlight, is like high desert noon sun.
	To the shitty little snowmen of everyone around you.
	They're just gonna melt and vanish and fade away.
	If you are who you are, they cease to exist.
	This is the fragility of the bond that drives the madness and evil of the world.
	The number of people I've talked to over the years, Connor, who say I am terrified to speak two words of truth to my parents.
	Yeah.
	Is legion.
	You know.
	I mean, you know.
	If you've listened to the show for any period of time, right?
	You know that this is what is happening in this conversation, right?
	And that is because there is no bond.
	I'm teaching my daughter how to swim.
	She doesn't like it when I hold her under the ribs.
	And she tells me very clearly, Daddy, I do not like it when you hold me under the ribs.
	I've told you that.
	I would really like you to remember that.
	And I'm like, you know what?
	You have told me that.
	I'm so sorry.
	This is just what I'm used to doing.
	So she is very clear, and it does not harm our intimacy.
	It does not harm our love.
	In fact, it would totally harm her love if she was not comfortable telling me that.
	And I'm sorry to be lecturing, and I'm almost done, and I really appreciate your patience here, but I think this is really important.
	Not just for you, but for others as well.
	I would absolutely loathe and hate the idea that my daughter would be afraid of telling me anything at all.
	Anything that she was honest about, anything that she was truthful about, anything she wanted to lie about, anything she wanted to manipulate me on, anything she wanted to plot about.
	I would be horrified, and I would find it horrible if my daughter was terrified of saying something truthful to me about anything.
	But most parents, almost all dysfunctional parents at least, that's how they like it.
	They like it that you're terrified of being honest with them.
	They like it that you climb the stairs to tell them a basic truth about who you are like you are climbing to your own goddamn execution.
	They like it that you are ringed by snipers.
	Well, I guess that's not optimal military placement.
	That you face a sniper line.
	When bringing any honesty or criticism or truth to who they are.
	That's how they like it.
	That to me is repulsive.
	Because parents know.
	They know.
	They know if you're being honest or not.
	They know if you're complying or not.
	But they like it that way.
	That is incomprehensible to me.
	That is literally, I mean, imagine this in a marital scenario.
	That is literally kind of like me saying, I love it that my wife is terrified to disagree with me.
	What kind of cosmic asshole would I be if I woke up and strutted around with my thumbs in my belt loops and said, Yep, I like it that my woman is so terrified of me she don't know which way the sun is pointing until I tell her.
	I like it that she'd rather rip her own fingernails off rather than tell me the truth about anything she's experiencing.
	That's what I like.
	I got her where I want her.
	I mean, wouldn't that be horrendous?
	That's like Bull Connor's nastier brother.
	But when you think about talking to your parents about anything that we're talking about here, or whatever it is that's the most honest and truthful thing, how do you feel?
	I feel like I can't talk about that area.
	That's not a feeling.
	I feel like I cannot optimally apply those syllables to my parents' ears without negative consequences.
	Right, right, right.
	Now, you try playing that on a stage, right?
	Make the audience feel that, right?
	Sorry.
	I feel nervous.
	I feel nervous and scared to talk to them honestly about things.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	Go on.
	Well, I guess I'm not really sure exactly where to go from here.
	I would like to have a conversation with him about this.
	I've thought about it a long time.
	So, I mean, I guess that's where I go from here.
	But, of course, I do feel nervous about it.
	I don't know.
	Do you have any suggestions?
	Well, I mean, do you want to have a conversation about this?
	That's a good question.
	I do.
	I mean, there's definitely a big part of myself that wants to have a conversation.
	There's a part of me that doesn't want to.
	I think it would be good.
	I think it would be healthier to have the conversation than to not have the conversation.
	So I guess to answer that, yes, I want to have the conversation.
	Yeah, I do.
	Well, I would certainly recommend that.
	Mm-hmm.
	Mm-hmm.
	Do you think it's better to talk to them as a unit or separate?
	Are they still together?
	Yes, yeah.
	Yeah, I think probably together.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	Yeah, it's something, I mean, I've been listening to your show for quite a while, and it's definitely inspired a lot of personal growth.
	And I do see this area that I've been avoiding, you know, tactfully.
	And so I appreciate, I really appreciate your time.
	And it definitely encourages me to do what I think I know I've been kind of needing to do for a while here.
	Good.
	Yeah.
	Well, I hope so, and I hope it's a youthful conversation.
	Very much so.
	I really appreciate it.
	Yeah, definitely avoidance is, I don't think, a way to have, you know, hopefully, you know, you can find a way for your parents to be in your life forever and have productive and open conversations and, you know, heal some family wounds and all that kind of stuff, right?
	Yeah, for sure.
	Yeah, that would be ideal.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	All right.
	Thank you.
	Thank you very much.
	Yeah.
	Have a great evening.
	You're very welcome.
	And just drop us a line if you can.
	Let us know how it goes.
	All right.
	We'll do, Steph.
	Thanks again.
	All right, man.
	Okay.
	Thanks, Emil.
	All right.
	Up next is Ed.
	Ed says, Well, my wife and I would enjoy being able to stay home full-time with our kids.
	When we eventually have children, that is.
	Our biggest fear is not having enough money to retire or being financially stable.
	Furthermore, if only one of us was employed and that individual unexpectedly lost their job, it would have a greater impact on us than it would be if two people were working.
	If you have any advice as to how best circumvent this fear, that would be greatly appreciated.
	Go ahead, Ed.
	Thank you for having me on.
	So, I mean, you'd want one person to stay home.
	Ideally both, but one, right?
	Yeah, I mean, ideally you'd like to have one person home.
	Yeah.
	And why can't you?
	What's that?
	Why can't you?
	I'm not saying we can or we can't.
	I think, you know, because of the economic situations, I think it's just a fear of ours that if one person wasn't home and the other person lost their job, that we would be putting our family in a worse-off situation than we would if both of us worked part-time or both of us worked full-time.
	Oh, so your concern is that you want to lower risk?
	Yeah, I mean, I think that's obviously a concern.
	All right.
	And what risk are you willing to increase to lower that risk?
	I mean, there's no such thing as just lowering risk, right?
	Right.
	I mean, if I don't get out of bed, I'm not going to get into a car crash, right?
	Absolutely.
	And so I'm lowering my risk of a car crash, but increasing my risk of cardiovascular disease by not getting out of bed, right?
	Right.
	If I decide never to drive, I'm not going to be in a car crash, but I may have particular hits to my income or mobility or whatever, right?
	So what risk are you willing to increase?
	To decrease the risk of financial problems?
	I guess, you know, the risk that somebody else is raising your children.
	Yeah, that is the risk.
	Yeah, and the argument there would be, you know, As we've had conversations with other people who have done that is, you know, I turned out fine or X, Y, and Z turned out fine or so-and-so turned out fine.
	So by not...
	Yeah, I don't know that the world is that fine.
	You know, because everyone keeps saying that.
	Not you, right?
	But everyone keeps saying, well, I was spanked and I turned out fine or my parents both worked and I turned out fine and this and that and the other.
	Well, like, the world is the way the world is.
	Right?
	You know, there's intergenerational predation, there's massive amounts of child abuse, so many people still spanking their children.
	You know, one in five boys and one in three girls experiences some form of sexual molestation.
	There's rank superstition, statism, nihilism, cynicism.
	ADHD meds for adults have doubled in the last couple of years.
	One in four American women over the age of 30 is on antidepressants, and the entire Culture, civilization, socioeconomic matrix of the West is rapidly circling the drain about to go in the shitter.
	So I'm not sure when everyone says, well, I turned out fine.
	What they mean is I conform to an insane world and I'm going to call that sanity.
	That is not turning out fine.
	So we have to radically change what it means to be parents.
	I mean, going with what went before is going to give us what we have now.
	Just with bigger weaponry, more surveillance, greater technology in the hands of the government, and perhaps the end of fascism without a compensatory dawn.
	So, this I turned out fine stuff, Is people saying, yeah, I think the world is good the way it is.
	I think having kids born a couple of hundred thousand dollars in debt, shoving them in shitty government schools, manned by indifferent, soulless people, and built by the same people who build prisons with metal detectors and stabbings and shootings.
	I think that's, yeah, I think I'm good with that.
	Nothing in particular needs to be improved.
	You know, we still have a central violent monopoly with the ability to tax and enslave through debt an entire population at will to circumvent any legal restraints upon the growth of government power through presidential decrees and congressional whatevers.
	So this, you know, I was and I turned out fine.
	Are all just people who are selfishly saying, well, my world is pretty good.
	You know, I got a nice car.
	I got a nice place.
	I had a pretty good job.
	My world is pretty good.
	Well, you know, it's not just your world, I would have to say to those people.
	You know, what about the kids who hate the schools, who have no choice but to go there?
	What about the national debt?
	What about the fact that America is, what, 15 million people short because of abortion?
	What about all of these basic facts?
	What about the prevalence of circumcision still?
	What about what American foreign policy is doing to the 15 or 20 million people that's killed around the world since the Second World War?
	It's not about just your house and your comfort and your car.
	It is about a slightly larger picture.
	So since I believe, and I think there's very good reasons to believe, That the world is the way the world is because parents are the way that parents are and for no other fundamental reason whatsoever.
	Then I don't think that good enough parenting is going to get us anything but a crappy enough world.
	I mean, I just don't.
	I think we need a radical revision of what it means to be a parent.
	Look, you will buy some financial security By not having a stay-at-home parent at the cost of your bond with your child at the near-certain risk of exposing your child to somebody whose beliefs you cannot fundamentally vet and whose behavior when you're not around you cannot fundamentally be sure of.
	And if you want to take that risk, I think that you should reevaluate what it means to be a parent.
	Take some financial risk.
	Take some financial risk.
	Maintain the bond.
	Maintain the bond.
	I guess another...
	I think in my wife's situation, her father was unemployed for seven years.
	I've had family members who've been fired.
	And I think, obviously, the fear is that you take the risk and now you're destitute or in a situation where...
	No, save some money, lower your expenses.
	Look up John Bush.
	He and his wife are growing their own food and doing some reality show, and they're living on bottle returns and a pint of blood a month.
	Just crush your expenses.
	Look, we don't need a whole lot of money to get by in this world.
	When I was a student, I was living on about $480 a month.
	Now, I know you can't necessarily raise a kid the same way that you live as a student, but you can live, you know, move out of the city.
	Find some small house in an out-of-the-way town, which is going to cost you, with utilities, maybe $800, maybe $900 a month.
	Maybe in a different state.
	I live in greater Boston, so...
	Yeah, okay, maybe in a different state.
	I mean, your kid doesn't care.
	Your kid cares that you're there.
	That's what the kid cares, that you're there.
	No, you're absolutely right.
	And I'm telling you, I would not trade the last five years with my daughter, you know, for 19 blowjobs at the Taj Mahal.
	20?
	Well...
	You know what?
	Obviously, we're getting haggling.
	But about duration, angle, number of llamas involved.
	But just don't do it.
	I mean, it's absolutely, you know, what is the biggest regret that people have when they get older, from what I've read?
	So they didn't spend enough time with their kids when their kids were younger.
	And they have that regret for two reasons.
	One is because they didn't spend time, they miss it, and they recognize that it's a time that's gone by and it's never coming back.
	You know, the cat's in the cradle, right?
	Kids get older and they get interested in other things.
	Same thing's going to happen to my daughter and they move on.
	They should.
	You're the bow, you draw back, whoosh, you shoot the thing.
	Shoot the child into the world.
	So that's number one.
	And number two, the number two reason why people regret not spending more time with their children when their children are young is because they're dealing with the fallout.
	Of having not spent time with their children when their children are young.
	You know, there's a cartoon.
	It's never been hugely funny, but I glanced at it once years ago.
	It's called Drabble.
	And it's about a dad and...
	It's about a family, basically, and their kids and all that.
	And one of them was...
	Who sings it?
	Someone can tell me in the chat.
	Cat Stevens?
	The cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon, little boy blue and the man in the moon.
	When you're coming home, Dad, I don't know when, but we'll get together then.
	You know we'll have a good time then.
	And it's about a dad who has no time for his kid, and then when he gets older, his kids have no time for him.
	And that's the fallout that people get.
	You reap what you sow.
	With your children, which is why there's so much massive propaganda.
	Call your mom.
	Spend time with your parents.
	Your parents are everything.
	They're only here once.
	You'll regret it if they die and you're not close.
	All of this propaganda is because people don't want to see their parents.
	I mean, of course it is, right?
	I mean, you don't need a lot of propaganda that says, you know, chocolate tastes really good.
	You got to eat chocolate.
	Chocolate's good.
	You know, it tastes good, right?
	Because it does.
	I mean, people will say, eat my chocolate, but they won't say chocolate is good because we, you know, the more propaganda, the more people don't want it, right?
	Right.
	That's why you have so much sentimentality about public schools, single moms, the military, prison, you know, the cops and all this.
	So much sentimentality because people know that these are pretty crappy things all around, right?
	No, absolutely.
	And I know the song you're talking about.
	My father listens to your show and he kind of got me interested in your show.
	He's a big fan.
	And I think that's obviously his biggest regret.
	When he listens to your podcast, I think he thinks that he didn't have to work.
	And my mother was a breadwinner.
	My wife's the breadwinner.
	So the fact that they're willing and able to work, then...
	He wishes he made a different decision back then.
	So that's really made me think about this and not go along with the herd mentality that, you know, I've been okay.
	You're okay.
	We're all okay.
	Yeah, my wife works.
	Yeah, my wife works.
	I mean, and my daughter is in some ways a little bit more bonded with me.
	I mean, I work nights and I work, you know, when it doesn't take up too much time.
	And I still try and do a great job with this show, but...
	I'm a parent with a hobby.
	That's my, you know, and of course being a parent helps with the show and blah, blah, blah, and all those sorts of things that I think stack up and make sense.
	And nobody's saying forever, you know, until the day they turn 18, I never slept a wink when they were awake, you know?
	Nobody's saying all of that.
	You know, you've got to give them some space and give them the chance to start stimulating themselves rather than being played with forever.
	But for the first couple of years, the first four or five years, people do it all the time for college.
	I go to college.
	I lived like a dog when I went to college.
	Well, what's more important?
	A degree or the shaping of a human life in the very future of the planet?
	And it's that kind of perspective that I think if you want to be a parent, that's the perspective that I suggest.
	Which is get the priorities of parenting down.
	So for the first couple of years, just be there.
	That's how we're designed.
	That's how we're designed as a species.
	We're not designed to have strangers raises.
	We're just not.
	It screws us up.
	It's like the fructose gluctose to our emotional regulation system.
	We are designed for consistency, for predictability.
	I wrote in the God of Atheists novel about this kid who's Mom was a career-obsessed woman.
	And she had such a succession of nannies.
	She called them nummies, you know, nanny and mommy together.
	They just all kept changing.
	And she was on this kaleidoscope of attachment and separation and attachment and separation.
	And she felt like she unraveled.
	Like cords, like she was made of those lines of plasticine, those sort of tubes of plasticine, or those strings of plasticine you get before you mush them all together, like she was just being keeled off by all of these attachments and separations, until she felt she almost dissolved, and the consequences of that in the novel are pretty horrendous.
	We are designed for an attachment.
	To a clan, ideally, you know, if you can gather one together.
	But certainly, you know, historically, as Dr.
	Philip Zimbardo has pointed out, in The Demise of Guys, we had a 4 to 1 ratio of adults to children.
	Children learned by being exposed to large numbers of adults.
	And now, children bond horizontally by being exposed to radical horizontal hegemonies Let's have the world run by the lowest common denominator of children.
	In any peer group of children, it's the least mature who rule.
	There was a guy named Greg in my high school.
	Complete monster.
	And he ran everything.
	He would write on girls' faces in marker.
	And he went up to some Armenian girl with a little household screw.
	He said very loudly in front of everyone.
	This was a tubby, very shy Armenian girl, probably Muslim.
	And he went up to her and said, Hey, Imani, want a screw?
	Really loud.
	And he handed her this household screw, right?
	And he was considered to be like the coolest guy.
	And I went over to his house once.
	I had a sleepover at his house once.
	I was taking over his paper room.
	And in the morning, we had some cookies.
	And he's like, oh man, you dropped some cookie crumbs on the floor.
	You've got to pick all of those up.
	And I'm like, okay, well, I guess I'll do that.
	It's not my house, right?
	Or whatever, right?
	And he's just laughing at me, like picking up these cookie crumbs from a carpet.
	Just a monster.
	And he ran the whole deal.
	He was the center.
	He was the guy.
	And what can I say?
	I mean, is that where you want your kids to be getting their social cues from and their bonding?
	What price are you going to pay for that?
	Because you know now, right?
	You can't claim ignorance.
	This is the big problem, right?
	You know.
	Your dad knows.
	He's introduced you to this show.
	You know.
	You've got no illusions about public school or Babysitters or nannies or whatever you want to call them, most of them are going to be statists, and if you're in America, most of them are going to be religious.
	Yeah, I mean, I work in Boston.
	I'm a libertarian, but I work with mainly liberals.
	And kind of the joke of the city is if you live in Boston, your kids go to private school.
	They don't go to public school.
	And that's an openly known thing that...
	Yeah, but in private school, they're still going to be taught by status and they're still going to be taught by religious people in general.
	Yeah, yeah, potentially.
	No, almost certainly.
	Because the number of anarchist atheists around, it's not very great, right?
	We're working a breed, but there's just not that many yet, right?
	Is that enough funding?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Get some government funding and some religious dough, and we're all set.
	Right.
	So, I mean, knowledge is, you know, knowledge is responsibility, which is why people resist knowledge.
	That's why when you start to talk to people about things, they literally will stick their fingers in their ears and yell, la, la, la, la, at the top of it.
	Because as soon as they know, they're responsible.
	And you can't credibly deny that responsibility once you know.
	So now that you know, you know, you're screwed.
	You just know.
	I'm sorry.
	Now you've got nothing.
	Nothing of any choice, right?
	Right.
	Well, I appreciate the time.
	Thank you very much.
	Yeah, I hope it helps.
	And again, I'm sorry for damning you with all this knowledge, but it will pay off.
	It will.
	It's all my parents' fault.
	For introducing me to the show, right?
	Oh, yeah.
	Well, that's good.
	I'm glad to hear that.
	I'm certainly glad to hear about parents who are helping introduce their kids to this show.
	I think that's wonderful.
	Please do thank...
	Your father.
	And, you know, what your father is doing is, to my mind, one of the most noble things that a human being can do.
	And I don't think I could be fulsome enough in praise for your father.
	Because what your father is doing is having the strength of character and the courage of conviction and the grim facing down of history to say, don't do what I did.
	Right?
	What I didn't do.
	You know, for those who haven't had to do that, it's pretty fucking hard, right?
	Yeah, and you can see it on his face when he tells you to.
	Yeah.
	I mean, that is a strength of character to face down regret and to instruct the future.
	I mean, that's a force of nature.
	I mean, that powers the moral sunlight of the universe.
	The facing down of regret and the instruction...
	Of the young in the errors of the old.
	That's hard.
	You know, for people who've not had to face significant regret in their lives, unfixable regret, right?
	I mean, he's never going to be there for you when you were younger, and he's going to take that regret to his grave.
	That is a massive strength of character, so I hope you will.
	I mean, maybe he'll listen to this, in which case I'll say it to him directly.
	Good for you, man.
	That's astoundingly courageous, astoundingly honest, astoundingly strong.
	And people who've not faced that, I... I don't think people get just how foundational that is to change in the world.
	To say, this is what I regret.
	Please do better than I did.
	There's a humility, there's a compassion, and there's a strength of character in that that I get teary-eyed just thinking about.
	So please do thank him for me if he doesn't hear this himself.
	Well, he's one of your one or two percenters who donates, so I'm sure he'll hear it.
	Oh, good.
	Well...
	I'm glad he's taken that integrity and applying it to even more important stuff than donating.
	But donate anyway!
	FDRURL.com forward slash donate.
	And let me know how it goes.
	Just, you know, crush your expenses for a couple of years.
	You know, you can figure out the schooling thing when you get older, but...
	Do whatever you can to keep your expenses down.
	The car is 15 years old.
	I guess it was 11 years old when my daughter was born.
	Just keep your expenses as low as possible or whatever you can afford during that time.
	A kid doesn't care.
	A kid wants you, not stuff.
	If you keep that going, I think it's the best investment that you can make.
	Great.
	Well, I appreciate your advice.
	And, you know, if the government didn't take away 50% of our money, we'd have even more money to be able to stay at home.
	So, but I appreciate the time.
	Well, but you can plan for stuff like that too, right?
	I mean, you can start to work towards being self-employed and writing stuff off and all kinds of cool stuff that will take you down.
	Trust me, I've been self-employed and an employee.
	And yeah, it's, I mean, it's just savage what they take.
	And, you know, that's not even the end of the story, right?
	The sales tax and gas taxes and electrical taxes and it just goes on and on, right?
	Absolutely.
	All right.
	Well, thanks very much for your call.
	And is your wife currently expecting?
	Did I get that right?
	No, she's not.
	But we've been discussing what's going to happen when we decide to have children probably sometime next year.
	Yeah.
	And that's the hardest conversation.
	I feel like we go through our lives and we don't talk about these things in depth with our partners because that's not in the near future.
	And then four years later, it's the conversation.
	Yeah.
	Oh, yeah.
	Most people, they're just, you know, like at the end of the science fiction movies or the end of the fantasy movie when the wizard's citadel is exploding and everyone is running and there's all this crap showering down on them and there's giant boulders and lava and crap.
	That's most people's lives.
	They're not planning.
	They're not having conversations ahead of time.
	They're just dodging the shit that happens to them which they don't even realize is of their own making or of the making of their own avoidances of important issues.
	You know, you either are up front and talk about important issues with people or shit just happens to you.
	And you imagine it's coming from outside, but for the most part, it's coming from your own avoidance.
	And so, yeah, I hope that you can have these conversations.
	I know you are.
	And congratulations again.
	To you on having these conversations, to your dad on giving you the bitter wisdom of his regrets.
	And keep me posted if you can.
	Let me know how it goes.
	I appreciate it, Steph.
	Thanks so much.
	You're very welcome.
	All right, up next is Chris.
	And Chris writes in and says, Why do so many people purport to know that their beliefs are reality when in essence such things are strictly based on faith?
	More specifically regarding the theory of evolution and theories in the Bible.
	Go ahead, Chris.
	Alright, can you hear me?
	Sure can.
	Alright, hi Steph.
	Hello, nice to chat with you.
	Nice to chat with you, too.
	Yeah, I've been following your work for a while now, and I find your ideas very, very interesting.
	Of course, you know, there's some things I disagree with, but, you know, that's a different affair.
	But what I really wanted to talk with you about is the validity of two seeming opposing concepts.
	And then those concepts, which I'm speaking of, are creation and evolution.
	From previous shows, I know you're an advocate of evolution and somewhat skeptical of Christianity.
	Me, personally, I'm a Christian, but I'm what would you call a New Testament Christian.
	I believe that the principles and the teachings of Jesus are one of the greatest out there.
	And I also realize That a lot of the Christians running around today have a skewed version of the Bible, and a lot of them engage in completely...
	I'm trying to find a good word to explain it.
	Well, I'll just say bad behavior.
	Now, why do you think that Christians would have a skewed view of I mean, isn't it God's job to make it pretty clear?
	Like, people don't have a skewed version of the theory of relativity or Newtonian physics.
	I mean, you either get it right or you get it wrong.
	Isn't it kind of God's job to make sure that in the most important instructions he gives to mankind, that he's pretty clear, that he's not contradictory, that it's well understood correctly?
	By everyone?
	I mean, would we accept a GPS with the kind of vagueness and self-contradictory elements found in your average page of the Bible?
	Not really, right?
	We'd want those sort of clear directions.
	We buy GPSs for clear directions, and on the few times when they're incorrect, you know, we get kind of frustrated and upset.
	And that's just a GPS company.
	It's not how to get to heaven, right?
	So why do you think God's instructions are not clear enough for Given how important they are, and given how omniscient he is, or she is, or it is, why do you think there's room for interpretation at all?
	I think it comes down to the choice of free will, and if you read the Bible itself, you believe in the...
	No, no, no, sorry, sorry, sorry to interrupt.
	So if I were to say, I apologize for interrupting, because it's not a free will issue, right?
	You're supposed to follow instructions to get to heaven, and that's the most important thing you're supposed to do, and everything hangs in the balance, right?
	Whether you go to heaven or hell for eternity, or limbo for some portion, depending on your theological perspective.
	But it should be clear what you're supposed to do.
	I had, as you know, cancer last year, and I had a regimen of treatments, but those treatments were very clearly spelled out to me.
	Here's the medicine that we think you should take to have the best chance of survival and the lowest chance of remission, and here's the treatments that you need to take.
	And it was all very clear.
	I could either follow the instructions or not follow the instructions, but the instructions themselves were very clear.
	So I was free to follow them or not.
	So I'm not talking about a free will issue.
	What I am talking about is Why in this most important area is there any room for interpretation?
	I would say that And the concept, you know, the premise of being able to interpret different things from different, let's say, literature or instructions, like you just said, some people, when they're dealing with the health problems, they believe that doctors, some doctors are quacks, and they decide to go on a completely different regimen, such as...
	No, no, sorry, again, I hate to interrupt you, but we're talking about from a Christian perspective, so these are people who don't think that God is a quack.
	Who sincerely want to follow the instructions in the Bible in order to achieve grace and virtue and a ticket to heaven, right?
	So these are not people who think that God is a quack or the Bible is false, but who sincerely believe in what the Bible says, but all have different interpretations, right?
	And all of those interpretations can find support within the Bible, right?
	They can find support within the Bible if the Bible is translated, the Hebrew and Greek words are translated in a certain way to fit that person's doctrine.
	Well, no, but you see, God is in charge of the translations, right?
	Because human beings are fallible, right?
	So if God dictates to human beings originally, then God can't then allow for fallible human beings to translate his most important work.
	Without supervising, right?
	So God would be in charge of the translation.
	So you can't sort of say, well, God gave all the perfect words to Moses and Deuteronomy, Ezekiel, and whoever he talked to, right?
	Methuselah and Adam and Eve.
	He gave all those perfect words to those people.
	And then everyone who came afterwards was kind of screwed because human beings are imperfect, right?
	I mean, God would have a responsibility to give clear instructions to everyone and not just to people early on.
	So God must be in charge of the translations, right?
	Well, as far as the Christian belief goes, if you read the Bible, it talks about the fundamental idea of the Holy Spirit.
	And it says specifically in the Bible that the Holy Spirit makes things clear to people.
	And, you know, I wouldn't say that...
	Wait, hang on, hang on, hang on.
	Sorry, sorry.
	If the Holy Spirit...
	And again, I'm sorry to interrupt.
	I'm really trying to understand.
	if the Holy Spirit makes things clear to people, then why would you need to write them down?
	Because that would just confuse people, right?
	Either the Holy Spirit says what's in the Bible, in which case the Holy Spirit is redundant, or the Holy Spirit says things which are different than what's in the Bible, in which case the Holy Spirit is confusing.
	Yeah, I can understand your line of reasoning there.
	And I don't really know why God in the first place would decide to use a book.
	But there's the concept within the Bible of a free will choice.
	And what if people could be able to completely understand what God required of them simply by Him sapping it into their minds?
	Of course there would be no room for faith, and that's one of the core concepts of Christianity, is that a person is able to walk by faith, not by sight, which sounds like blind believing, and lack of evidence is not enough to change someone's mind.
	But then that comes into one of the concepts, one of the things which I wanted to talk about tonight was Well, hang on, no, because I think we just talked about an important point there, right?
	So then God can't be clear because you're supposed to have faith, right?
	So if God was really clear about what you were supposed to do to get into heaven and there was no contradictions and the Bible was like, you know, 10 pages long of the things you needed to do that were all clear and unambiguous, then you're saying that wouldn't be helpful because it wouldn't allow for faith?
	No, not at all.
	I believe that And what I see in the Bible is that there are instances and there are historical proofs.
	You know, I wouldn't believe the Bible at all if there wasn't some foundation, some basis.
	For me, that would be...
	But what is the basis?
	For me, the basis is the prophecies and Daniel, found in chapter 7 and then in chapter 8.
	And if...
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	It sounds like I would be calling in and trying to preach to you, but I could show you what?
	No, but the prophecies were written down long after the prophecies were fulfilled, right?
	I mean, there's not prognostication in the Bible, right?
	I mean, there's nothing that's ever been independently verified that was proven to be true at the time.
	Sorry, that was proven to be unknown at the time, which was then accurately predicted correctly.
	I mean, there's been an assemblage over many years, and people got to write stuff later based upon prophecy that, quote, showed that the prophecy came true and all that kind of stuff.
	But I don't think that there's anything in the Bible.
	Like, I mean, if they talked about atoms in the Bible or the germ theory of disease, or if people in the Bible, which was written, of course, in the Middle East, had talked about koala bears, I mean, that'd be pretty cool, right?
	Because koala bears only live in Australia, right?
	And they had no exposure to koala bears.
	And of course, all the animals that are talked about in the Bible are animals that are native to the Middle East.
	So they didn't talk about anything that they did not have knowledge of at the time, which would indicate that it's not a divine document.
	I mean, he could have said, wash your hands.
	Before you operate on people and you know there are tiny invisible bugs called germs which is how diseases spread and so on.
	You would have saved you know a million couple hundred million lives over the course of history with that kind of instruction and But it's not there.
	Or if there was a mathematical equation that later was proven to be valid that was not known at the time and people just wrote it down because...
	Those would be indications of an intelligence superior to the circumstances of the time, but there's nothing like that in the Bible, right?
	I actually have to disagree with you there.
	Please do.
	A good example would be the Egyptians.
	The Egyptians, as their society...
	Went forward through the years, they began to use feces and apply it to wounds and use it for all sorts of things within their lives.
	Sorry, did you say feces?
	Yes, poop.
	Like manure, human excrement and so on?
	Okay, yeah, right.
	And the Israelites were actually specifically instructed to bury and to get rid of all sorts of feces, all sorts of unclean things.
	For instance, you know, in Numbers, when they were giving...
	When God was giving commandments to Israel, they forbid the touching of a dead body and that any open vessels nearby that were by that dead body were to be washed and they were to be unclean for seven days.
	And that included the people in the tent.
	You know, lepers had to be quarantined.
	Let's see what else.
	As for scientific verses...
	And Job 26.7 talked about the earth being a circle that hung upon nothing.
	And in Isaiah 40.22...
	Ancient Greeks knew that the world was...
	Oh yeah, but this was way before the Greeks.
	But the Earth also was being called round and spherical in Isaiah 40.22.
	But, you know, the Greeks...
	But that's not science.
	The Earth is also talked about as being flat and immovable.
	Right?
	Which is one of the great contentions with Copernicus and Tycho Brahe and so on during the Middle Ages, right?
	That they said that the earth moves.
	And the Pope said, no, it says in the Bible that the earth is immobile and fixed, right?
	So this is what I mean by contradictory, right?
	Now, as far as the washing of the dead goes, I mean, obviously that's good advice, but there's no scientific knowledge in that.
	I mean, so you could look at 50 tribes, all of which had different customs with the dead.
	Now, the one that happened to have the custom of not touching the dead would be the one most likely to survive and flourish because there would be fewer chances for the transmission of germs and so on, right?
	So it may not be that they had superior knowledge, but rather that because they accidentally happened to have useful knowledge, they were more successful than other tribes and thus got to flourish and spread.
	You know what I mean?
	That's not clear evidence of...
	Divine intervention, right?
	You know, they also knew that, you know, life of the flesh is in the blood.
	Christopher Columbus said that the Earth is shaped like a pear.
	And we didn't know that until we were able to put satellites out into space.
	I mean, how did Christopher Columbus come by that knowledge?
	That's actually absolutely amazing.
	What is amazing?
	That Christopher Columbus was able to understand that the Earth was shaped, as he put it, like a pear.
	But the Earth is not shaped like a pear.
	Actually, if you do some research on it, the Earth actually bulges out at the top.
	But a pear bulges out at the bottom.
	At the bottom?
	Yeah, like, I mean, a pear's hanging, it's narrow on the top.
	Right, right, right.
	Because I know there's this old joke about lesbians being pear-shaped women in comfortable shoes, which, you know, is whether you believe it or not.
	Right, so a pear is narrow at the top and wider at the bottom.
	Yes, yes.
	That's what I'm saying, is that the bulk of the earth would be the bulk of the pear, you know, would be that wide, protruding part, and then the top of the pear, where the stem is...
	Well, wait, wait, wait.
	No, hang on.
	I don't care.
	But Christopher Columbus, are you saying that God told him that the earth was pear-shaped?
	No, but what I am saying is that you said...
	That these people had certain customs, you know, that it meant that they didn't have any kind of holy inspiration, that sort of thing.
	But what I'm trying to get across is that ancient people knew some quite incredible things.
	I mean, you can't just disclude, you know, say that it was some kind of custom.
	How did he know it was pear-shaped?
	Exactly.
	That's my point as well.
	No, I'm asking you.
	How did he know?
	I don't know.
	That's exactly the same.
	You do.
	Well, of course you do.
	You're bringing it up in the context of religion, right?
	So you're saying that...
	No, the context of that, we can't just throw away anything.
	No, we can.
	No, no, listen.
	If he said that the earth is shaped like a pear, right?
	Right.
	I mean, first of all, I'm not sure whether he wrote it in his own hand, whether it's rarefied.
	I mean, who knows, right?
	But let's say that he said the earth is shaped like a pear, right?
	Well, there were other people who said that the Earth was on the back of a giant turtle.
	There were other people who said the Earth was banana-shaped.
	There were other people who said the Earth was flat.
	There are still people who say that the Earth is flat, right?
	But unless he had some way of proving it, he did not possess that knowledge.
	He didn't know that.
	He said something, which coincidentally later turned out to be true, but that's like saying, well look, the wind blew these sand dunes into something that looks like E equals mc squared, and so let's give the wind a degree in physics.
	Right?
	Somebody might have doodled in the 10th century E equals mc squared, right?
	Just randomly.
	But we don't think that that person is the equivalent of Einstein.
	It's just a doodle.
	So he may have said something like the Earth is pear-shaped.
	Maybe he said that exactly.
	That doesn't mean he knew it because he didn't have any way of proving it or establishing it in a way that was scientific.
	Does that make sense?
	Yes, I understand how it makes sense because if he didn't know, if he didn't actually have empirical evidence, then it would seem impossible for him to have any idea of what he was purporting.
	I understand that.
	But I think you're coming from the position of there can't be any such thing as that's contemporary or early believed or that is held today in the modern view.
	Like, for instance...
	No, no, no.
	What I'm saying is take one book of science, even a child's book of science now, and send it back 2,000 years, right?
	Right.
	Right.
	That would be astounding, right?
	Yeah, it certainly would.
	Right?
	Now, God knows infinitely more than we know at the moment, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	So, if we said, look, we want to really blow people's minds, then we would send a book of science back 2,000 years or 3,000 years, right?
	Right.
	And that would be absolutely clearly an indication of knowledge that was not present in the ancient world, right?
	No doubt.
	Now, we are infinitely inferior to a deity who got to dictate that book with all of his infinite knowledge and wisdom, right?
	Oh, right, right.
	Right, so if we, as mere mortal species, with 400 years worth of the scientific method under our belt, can send back absolutely astounding information a couple of thousand years, That is unequivocally not part of that time.
	Why can't God?
	With all of his infinite power and knowledge and wisdom and so on, right?
	Right.
	And that's exactly where the principles and the fundamentals of Christianity...
	No, no.
	Why can't God?
	See, now you're going off into some other thing, right?
	Why can't God do that?
	Why didn't God do that?
	But if you're coming from God, you have to look at, from what basis I'm coming from, which would be the Bible, which would be the way in which the Bible describes God.
	And God isn't someone who wants to dazzle people with His brilliance, but He simply wants to plant certain ideas, certain proofs.
	No, no, no, no.
	No, no, no.
	God wants to send people to heaven or to hell.
	According to skewed Christian beliefs, you can actually prove that the concept of hell is not taught in the Bible at all.
	The Bible teaches that the soul that sins dies, the dead are conscious of nothing.
	They don't think...
	But Jesus talked about hell.
	Oh yeah, he did in a metaphorical sense.
	Everlasting damnation?
	No, he used the word Gehenna, which was the same place where the Jews would throw all their trash.
	It meant everlasting cutting off.
	It meant you simply die and you weren't resurrected.
	Oh, so it's the Jewish tradition that the afterlife, you just die, right?
	There's no eternal life.
	Yeah, there's no eternal punishment.
	Or reward.
	Or reward, you know?
	So Jesus made no promises of heaven or of hell?
	No, he said that the meek would inherit the earth.
	In Revelations, it talks about a new world where there's going to be no suffering, no crying, no pain.
	Basically, a paradise on earth.
	He said that he...
	Well, but for the people who are alive, right?
	For the people that were alive when?
	Well...
	For the people who were alive at the time.
	I mean, I don't believe we're doing this zombie fest of people coming back from the dead, right?
	No, no.
	Well, that's where the whole entire Judgment Day and etc.
	etc.
	goes on, last days.
	After death, the final enemy is dealt with.
	Okay, so why do so many Christians believe in hell if Christ did not preach heaven and hell?
	Simply because...
	I mean, they could read the Bible, right?
	Yeah, but I think it's simply because people, as you know, as you believe, pastors, people of authority, used hell as a scare technique to get people to die.
	No, but people can read the Bible.
	Exactly.
	But they don't, that's what you're saying.
	In the King James Version, hell, you know, Gehenna, Hades, has been changed to hell.
	If you look at the actual Greek...
	But why would God let that happen?
	That's exactly my point, is the Christian fundamentality of people...
	He doesn't want...
	No, no, listen.
	If I write a story with a happy ending, and then that book gets translated into Japanese, and then the Japanese ending is a massive bloodbath, right?
	Then I'm going to say to the Japanese translators, no, that's not correct, fix it.
	That's not my story.
	You made the mistake, so you need to fix it, right?
	Yes, but that's where the concept of free will comes into play.
	No, no, no.
	That's not where the concept of free will comes in.
	Because if people read that story in Japan, are they free?
	If they can't read English, are they free to know that that's not my story?
	Of course not.
	It's got my name on it.
	It's my story.
	So they are not free to believe that it's a different story if I don't fix the translation.
	Yes, but the Bible and its...
	Perfect form, you know, and it's as close as we can get to it, is available to everyone.
	What is the perfect form?
	There's so many translations out there.
	What is the perfect form of the Bible?
	The Dead Seed Scrolls.
	I mean, as far as we can get to it.
	And how is that available to everyone?
	Through translations, through concordances, commentaries.
	Oh, so you're saying that with the Dead Sea Scrolls, there's no ambiguity.
	There's no contradiction.
	Well, you see, I'm not a hard Bible-thumping Christian.
	I take the Pentateuch as to being as the beginning.
	No, no, you're not answering my questions, which you are asking me to ask, right?
	So I say there's these contradictions, and people are not free.
	To know, right?
	To know these problems and these changes in translations or whatever, right?
	And you said, but no, the perfect Bible is available through the Dead Sea Scrobes.
	So by perfect, I assume you mean without ambiguity or contradiction.
	When I said perfect— Sorry, I'm going to have to just ask you to be clear on this, right?
	Right.
	Is it true that the Dead Sea Scrolls—I don't know.
	I'm not a biblical scholar.
	I don't study a lot of fictional literature.
	I don't know.
	That was a slip of my mind.
	I didn't mean— No, but you said that the perfect Bible is available to people.
	And I'm not trying to corner you or be mean or anything.
	I'm genuinely curious about the answer to this.
	Yeah.
	You said the perfect Bible is available to people, right?
	Because you started saying, like I said, if I write a happy story and they mistranslate it into an unhappy story, then I'm going to fix that translation.
	And you said that's a free will issue.
	And I said, no, it's not.
	If people only speak Japanese and all they get is the bloodbath ending of my happy story, they have no choice.
	Since my name's on it and that's the story, they're not free to think that it's the opposite of what it is if I don't fix the translation, right?
	And so then you said, but the perfect Bible is available to everyone, and that's the Dead Sea Scrolls, so in which case I would ask you then, do the Dead Sea Scrolls then have no ambiguity or contradiction in them, and provide clear answers to all of these questions?
	And you're not answering that question.
	Yes, what I'm trying to say is that when I said perfect, I was a slip of a tongue, but I meant as close as we can get to the original form.
	Okay, does that still have no contradictions or ambiguities in it?
	Of course it does.
	Let's be clear.
	Of course it does.
	I haven't even studied them, but of course they do.
	Because they're human creations, which have to follow specific political and religious and socioeconomic goals.
	So of course they have ambiguities and contradictions in them.
	All religions do.
	The successful religions do because successful religions have to appeal to as wide a variety of human personalities as possible.
	And so they're gonna put little different facets in and so if you're an angry guy you get an eye for an eye and if you're a gentle guy you get a turn the other cheek and both of those can be biblically valid whereas if it only had an eye for an eye then the gentle people would not be interested in that religion.
	So the most successful religions have endless amounts of ambiguities and contradictions in them so that people can cherry-pick to fit Their personality structures.
	Yeah, and I understand that.
	So people who want to hit their children say, well, the Bible says spare the rod and spoil the child.
	And then the people who don't want to hit their children say, well, the rod means gentle instruction not hitting them with a stick and so on, right?
	And, you know, both can walk away feeling that they're perfectly justified.
	Yeah, that's true.
	Most people don't understand that the Old Testament is a collection of stories written by what was called at those times the priests of the mysteries.
	They were all written in a metaphorical sense, especially the Pentateuch.
	You know, you hear all over the world of flood stories.
	You also hear and add the creation story of Adam, of God taking clay and breathing the breath of life into it and creating a man.
	Of course, I don't believe that those things actually happen.
	I think they're metaphors for a much deeper meaning, which I don't know the answers to.
	No, but the point is, you can think that if you want, and you cannot think that if you want, and there's no way to know.
	Nobody sits there and says E equals MC squared is a metaphor.
	It's an analogy.
	I'm going to interpret it to mean that pigs can fly.
	Because E equals MC squared means E equals MC squared.
	And that's exactly what I don't know.
	So this is the challenge, right?
	This is the challenge with religion is you can say, well, I don't believe this happened.
	I believe it's a metaphor.
	And how can you possibly be proven right or proven wrong?
	It's just what you think.
	Well, yes, I understand if it's religion, but I believe in being smart about what you believe, about thinking about it.
	I don't think you do.
	To be perfectly blunt, I don't think you do.
	Because to be smart about what you believe is to be humble.
	And when you say that you know that the stories of your deity are only an analogy, then you're claiming to know the secret purposes of an omniscient being.
	That is so astoundingly arrogant that I can't even place it in my own head.
	I said, I believe.
	I don't know.
	You believe it's true, that they're just analogies.
	Yes, I believe that they are.
	So you know what God...
	Hang on, you are claiming to know what God meant literally and what God meant metaphorically.
	Yes, hundreds of people, thousands of people.
	But that's astounding arrogance.
	How do you know?
	I don't say that.
	There's no humility in that.
	But I don't know.
	It's called religion for a reason.
	It's based on...
	No, no, no.
	You said you believe.
	Yes, I believe.
	But I don't know.
	Right, so you believe that to be true.
	There's a difference.
	I believe it's true, but I don't know it's true.
	There's a complete difference.
	Right, because if you were to claim knowledge, you would have to have some responsibility for determining truth and falsehood, and there's no way to determine truth and falsehood in anything that you're saying.
	Does God mean the story of Adam and Eve metaphorically or literally?
	There's absolutely no way to answer that question.
	Right.
	If you say, do gas expand when heated, there's a way to test that, and we can figure that out.
	If you say two and two make five, there's a way to test that and figure that out.
	If you say that the Earth is pear-shaped or shaped like one of Kim Kardashian's butt cheeks, there's ways to figure that one out.
	It's actually the second.
	But when you say these stories are analogies rather than factual events, there's no way to know any of that stuff.
	So you're not submitting yourself to any external discipline of knowledge.
	But I am.
	Okay.
	Tell me how you know then.
	I can tell you why I believe it.
	No.
	No.
	How you know.
	You said you're submitting yourself to an external standard of knowledge, right?
	Faith is not an external standard of knowledge.
	Faith is whatever I want to believe, I'm going to pretend that God said it.
	But I'm basing my faith upon something.
	So that you know.
	I can tell you.
	No, I don't know.
	Then you don't have an external standard of belief, my friend.
	If you don't know something, then you don't have an external standard of belief.
	External standard of belief.
	What do you mean by that?
	It means something that you submit to that is an external objective standard outside of yourself.
	The scientific method, logic, empiricism, you name it, right?
	Yeah.
	But it's something that is not just generated by yourself where you can cherry pick from stuff that you like and validate your initial prejudices.
	But I'm not being prejudiced.
	Let me give you an example.
	All over the world, there are stories of gods using red clay, mixing blood with clay.
	There are flood stories all over the world.
	There are stories of Moses, and Moses is simply a title in some countries.
	A good example would be Hamrami, Gilgamesh.
	Gilgamesh was told to...
	Have you not read your Joseph Campbell, Hero of a Thousand Faces?
	All over the world, there are stories of children whose parents die, who discover they have secret powers, led by a wise stranger who battles some evil and get the girl in the end.
	These are archetypes.
	Exactly.
	Metaphors...
	Nothing to do with religion.
	It has nothing to do with religion.
	I mean, unless you think that they're real Jedi, right?
	No, no.
	I believe that they're metaphors for a much deeper meaning, which I have no idea.
	But I don't believe that they actually happened.
	Okay, and you can make up anything you want about what you believe and don't believe, and you never have to submit your belief to anything external to yourself.
	You can idle your time away making stuff up that you believe, rejecting stuff that you don't particularly like, and it's all masturbation.
	It's not even masturbation.
	At least that's got something that comes out of it, right?
	And what I mean by that is that there's nothing that you ever have to discipline yourself to to say this is true and this is false.
	And here's how I know objectively.
	And it's not just up to me.
	It's not just up to my whim or my preference.
	It's not whether I like it metaphorically or whether it's real.
	It's just whatever you make up for yourself.
	There's no external standard of proof.
	I'd like for the world to be banana-shaped.
	I think that would be the coolest thing around, but it's not.
	And I have to reject the Earth being banana-shaped because it's not.
	It's shaped like a pear, apparently.
	It's not up to me, but you can say this is true and this is false and it's all just up to whatever you want.
	You're saying that I can believe whatever I want if I can find any bit of evidence that I believe suits my previous beliefs.
	Of course.
	That's why some people think that the Bible is literal, and some people think that it's metaphorical.
	I mean, there's no way to prove either of those things.
	Because to claim that you know one or the other is to claim that you know the hidden purpose of an omniscient being, and that is ridiculously arrogant, right?
	I don't claim to know anything.
	Right, that's what I'm saying.
	That's exactly my point.
	You don't know anything.
	I don't.
	Okay, well then we're ready to do it.
	So why am I having this conversation with someone who doesn't know anything?
	It's like having a book club with someone who's never read the book.
	If you don't know anything, what are we talking about?
	This is a philosophy show, not a stuff I like to chat about because of my own particular preferences show.
	If you don't know anything, then you're talking on the wrong show.
	You're going to a scientific conference and talking about a dream you had last night.
	Who cares?
	It's not about that.
	Isn't there something significant about hundreds of different cultures all over the world having the same story about the same thing that is put in every single holy book?
	Isn't there something significant about the fact that until about 300 years ago, every single culture had slaves?
	No, it's just that's the way society evolved and we're moving beyond it.
	But wait a minute.
	If every single culture...
	All of those societies were religious, by the way, but go ahead.
	Right, but if every single culture has the same exact story, just in different...
	The people who had different names, there's different versions of it, but they're essentially the same thing.
	That is significant because it means they all had to experience...
	Wait, wait.
	Are you saying that monotheistic cultures are identical to polytheistic belief systems?
	Polytheistic and monotheistic have the same root stories.
	And what is the root story?
	They all have a Christ.
	They all have...
	The Aborigines had a Christ.
	The Native Americans had a Christ.
	They called him Ketokotal.
	Right.
	So all religions have somebody who manifests in physical form.
	Of course they do.
	They have to.
	But in a controlled environment.
	Right.
	No, no, no.
	All successful religions have that story.
	Of course they do.
	Because if the god never manifests in any physical form, how do you know he's a god?
	Wait a second.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Yes, of course.
	People want something tangible.
	But when have any people throughout this, you know, thousands of years, have had anything tangible?
	I mean, they have a story of something tangible.
	Well, they have priests.
	Priests are pretty goddamn tangible.
	I remember them when I was growing up.
	They were pretty tangible.
	And they were cursing you with all kinds of hellfire, right?
	If you didn't obey.
	Yeah, but we're talking about the manifestation of a god somehow being empirical because the people at that time would need some kind of god to materialize.
	But I'm saying that that has significance.
	I don't think that it is something that just happens.
	It has significance because it works in controlling people.
	It's useful to the rulers.
	I mean, it's like saying a sword has significance.
	Well, yeah, because it cuts people up who disagree with you, right?
	So it is useful for the rulers to have a belief system that the rulers don't have to submit to.
	Yeah, but I can understand that.
	Look, Stalin himself could not reverse gravity.
	Science did not bow to dictators, but the belief systems of religion are made up, they're illusory, they're imaginary, and they can be changed like the plot of an unfinished movie.
	And so they're malleable.
	They're absolutes, but they're malleable.
	And so they're fantastic as control mechanisms for the general population.
	So, of course, all tyrannical societies throughout history have found it very useful to have prophets and gods that people can follow, the narrative of which is in the hands of the ruling classes.
	Of course, that's incredibly valuable.
	I mean, saying that it's some weird coincidence shows a profound misunderstanding or lack of appreciation for the utility of religion in the hands of the ruling classes.
	Right, and that brings us back to what we were first talking about.
	I mean, sorry to interrupt.
	It's like saying, isn't it weird that all cultures have priests who tell you to obey the king?
	I mean, doesn't that have some deeper significance?
	No!
	It has no deeper significance other than that it's much more profitable to rule people when the priests tell you that the king is put there by God and you have to obey him as if he were God.
	Yeah, I agree.
	That's not a weird coincidence, right?
	That's just how power works.
	Yeah, I completely agree, and that's what brings us back to the question at the beginning, is how come God doesn't make the Bible available to everyone in its purest form?
	It's because it's used.
	It's changed throughout the centuries.
	Little words are used to fit doctrines which are going to be used against the people.
	But God would just come down and give the real version, right?
	I mean, he dictated the first version, so he'd just dictate new versions and there'd be no more confusion.
	It depends.
	He'd come down in a big UFO right on the White House lawn or wherever he'd want to go, and he'd say, listen, people, a lot of confusion about my work here.
	I really want to fix up this ending.
	And a lot of the words have been really confused, so everybody get your pens, put your recorders on.
	I'm going to make this perfectly clear.
	I'm omniscient.
	I'm all-powerful.
	It's going to be the clearest and most well-explained and easy-to-understand text that has ever existed because it is about the most important thing, which is virtue and salvation and so on.
	And so everybody come down and get this straight.
	And he could do that because he's done it before, right?
	It's just that since we've had video cameras like UFOs, he's strangely absent.
	Are you talking about Buddha?
	Are you talking about Allah?
	No, God.
	Whoever.
	Some deity.
	Come down and make it clear.
	I mean, he's done it before.
	Why wouldn't he do it again?
	But you're not being a—the books, the holy books, which talk about each of their gods, each god is different.
	Each god has their own personalities.
	Each god follows their own principles.
	You mean of the 10,000 different gods that human beings worship?
	Right, but if you're going to—it's too objective.
	It's not subjective to the own holy books, which they— No, I get it.
	I get it's too objective.
	It is too objective, and that's why it wouldn't work in religion, and that's why it will never, ever happen.
	Because once you place the demand of objectivity and proof and reason and evidence on religion, it's revealed as a fairy tale.
	Now, you can stare at these ancient texts until your eyeballs turn to dust, and you can make up what you like and what you don't like and say, well, I've got insight into what the omniscient and omnipotent mind really means and what he was all about, and you can play that game if you want, and you can make up your own language, and you can play bocce and solitaire with yourself and think that you're winning the Olympics.
	You can do all of these things.
	But until you submit yourself to an external standard of proof, that is, this is true or false whether I like it or not, whether it makes me comfortable or uncomfortable, until you're willing to submit yourself to an external standard of proof, you have nothing of value to say to anyone who isn't already indoctrinated.
	I'm not indoctrinated, and so you have nothing of value to say to me.
	And I don't mean like as a human being.
	I mean, you know, you can tell me what you like in the music.
	I don't mean as a human being.
	But as far as true statements about the world, you have only your opinions, which you won't put forward as your opinions, but you want to mask in some mantle of the deity.
	But that's crazy.
	If you have opinions, have opinions.
	I think the meek should inherit the earth.
	But don't say, and that's what God says, and therefore it has more weight and import.
	Just say, these are my opinions.
	I think the meek should have more.
	And make that case philosophically.
	But you don't need to hide behind all these ghostly letters to make your writing have impact.
	Right, but when you're talking about empirical evidence, about external evidence, There are passages in the Bible, and I don't mean to exasperate you at all, but there are passages in the Bible, there are books in the Bible that have been proven to be prophetic.
	And of course, by people who are either agnostic, would like to say that they aren't prophetic, that Daniel must have been written in the second century.
	And all the proof...
	It does not point to that time period.
	No, but you see, this is what I'm sorry to interrupt you again, but this is what I mean when I say you have nothing of value to offer to people who aren't already indoctrinated.
	Prophecy is impossible because time is unidirectional.
	In order to establish the possibility of prophecy, you have to first show that time is bidirectional.
	You have to first show that you can predict something that happens in the future.
	Now, once you've established that time is bi-directional and you can predict something that happens in the future, then you open up the possibility of people in the past making predictions that are true.
	But you have to prove it in the here and now.
	Okay, can I do that?
	I absolutely would love it if you could tell me what I'm looking at right now.
	No, no, but I mean using the Bible.
	No, no, no, no.
	I'm talking about, like, if you know things that, if you're saying people in the Bible know things that they couldn't have known or that prophecy is true, then you have a hypothesis, right, that people can know the future.
	Now, you can't prove that with reference to the Bible, because the Bible is not scientific and the Bible is a narrative.
	Right?
	That's like saying elves exist because they're in Lord of the Rings.
	And Lord of the Rings describes that which exists.
	You get that that's a circular argument, right?
	The Lord of the Rings describes that which exists.
	Elves are in Lord of the Rings, and therefore elves exist.
	Yes, but in my case, that's not a good example.
	But if you don't believe Lord of the Rings describes that which exists, then anybody who says that elves exist because they're written about in Lord of the Rings...
	It's not saying anything meaningful to you.
	So if you say prophecy is proven in the Bible, then it doesn't have any meaning to people who don't already believe in the Bible.
	Because what you're saying is that human beings have the capacity to know the future, in which case you have made the most astounding Leap forward in our knowledge of physics and science that has ever occurred.
	If you could show that people can know what is happening in the future, that would be the most profound, mind-blowing, deterministic, proving, bi-directional, time-enhancing mind.
	That would be the most important idea any human being had ever been able to establish and prove.
	Much more important.
	Much more important than the theory of relativity, much more important than evolution, much more important than the discovery of extraterrestrials with green faces being banged by William Shatner on Betelgeuse.
	It would be the most astounding.
	If you could show that we could break time and know what was happening in the future, the implications for science, for consciousness, for psychology, for morality, for free will,
	Would be so mind-bendingly astounding that the standard of proof for that proposition would be so astoundingly high that digging up some dusty old scrolls from 4,000 years ago ain't gonna cut it.
	So you're saying that if I showed you any kind of prophecy from the Bible, that In that prophecy, it entails certain areas and certain things that would happen in the future that are occurring during our day.
	It wouldn't be allowed to count at all.
	It would have to be so astonishingly specific and it would have to be carbon dated.
	It would have to be never forged.
	It would have to be like not this Nostradamus bullshit, right?
	It would have to be like with birth dates, with moles.
	It would have to be with incredible detail.
	It would have to be down to the minute.
	I mean it would have to be so astonishingly precise and validated independently by scientists.
	I don't know if.
	And even that would be like – there would still be some odds that someone could have written that down by coincidence.
	Though, of course, it would become less and less possible as more and more coincidences piled up.
	But that's never going to happen because we can't know the future.
	I could give you some things which are likely candidates, so you could look up by yourself, you know, if you wanted to.
	You know, in Jeremiah 49, 17, 18, he prophesied about Edom becoming an object of astonishment, and no man will ever dwell there.
	Today, Petra is the capital of Edom, and it was discovered in 1812.
	No one dwells there today.
	In the second century, Judas Maccabees.
	Wait, wait, wait.
	Hang on, hang on.
	Is this the same Bible where Jesus says, there are those among you who shall not taste death before I return in all my glory?
	No, this isn't.
	Is this the prophecy Bible that you're talking about?
	Yes, this is actually the Old Testament, not the New Testament.
	It doesn't matter.
	It's still the Bible, right?
	And if you're a Christian, then you don't say that the Old Testament is more true than the New Testament.
	In fact, you have to say that the New Testament is more true than the Old Testament, because you're a Christian, right?
	I'm sorry?
	Just specifying.
	Right.
	So, if you are going to talk about If you're going to talk about the most astounding revolution in human thought that has ever occurred throughout history, and you're going to say, well, the Bible had, of about a thousand prophecies, one that could be considered true, well, shit, if I make a thousand prophecies, I bet you one of those is going to come true, too.
	That is not a scientific standard of belief, because there's so many prophecies in the Bible that quite clearly and pointedly did not come true.
	Right?
	So it's just scattershot, right?
	I mean, if I hit a ball blindfolded, occasionally I'll get a hold of one, that'll make me a good golfer, right?
	Oh yeah, of course.
	But which prophecies are referring to?
	Which prophecies am I referring to?
	Yeah, specifically that you think that are bullshit.
	I just gave you one.
	About Jesus saying that this generation shall not taste death?
	There are those among you who shall not taste death before I return in all my glory.
	What is your interpretation of that?
	There's no interpretation.
	That's very clear.
	That I'm going to return in all my glory before some of you die.
	Well, they're all dead and he's not back.
	But who?
	Are you talking to the Jews he was speaking to?
	The crowd before him?
	I don't believe he was speaking to ants or leaves.
	So, yeah.
	Right.
	You know, I agree with that, too.
	I believe that he was talking to the Jews in front of him.
	I believe a lot of Christians today are waiting for his second coming.
	Wait, so he was wrong?
	No, I believe that...
	No, no, no.
	He was wrong.
	Not what you believe.
	This is what I mean.
	I don't care what you believe.
	And you shouldn't care what I believe.
	We should care what the facts are.
	The facts are, Jesus made a prophecy, and he was wrong.
	But, you know, how do we know?
	How do we know what?
	Because he wrote the prophecy down, and he was wrong.
	It was something that had happened 2,000 years ago.
	Oh, wait, wait, wait.
	You can't switch me around on me now.
	You can't say, well, these prophecies are all true, and then something that was Jesus, well, now we don't know, right?
	No, specific prophecies.
	Not all prophecies, of course.
	Okay, but you realize you're just cherry-picking now, right?
	You're saying that when it comes to the prophecies that the texts are true, but when it comes to Jesus, well, we can't know, right?
	So whenever something is true for you, hang on, hang on.
	This is what I'm saying by prejudice.
	Whenever something in the Bible confirms what you already want it to confirm, i.e.
	prophecies, then it's valid.
	Whenever it denies something that you want it, then you can throw doubt upon its authenticity.
	This is what I mean.
	You can make up whatever you want.
	You can cherry-pick whatever.
	Wait a second.
	When Paul was writing his letters to the Christian congregations in Asia, Around the Roman area, and he told them that they were being eaten by lions and that they were being persecuted, but it was all right because Jesus was going to come down and they were going to greet him in the heavens and they were going to receive glory, that he was talking about people 2,000 years in the future?
	See, I'm not making this fit what I believe.
	It's simply what the...
	No, I don't know what that other prophecy is.
	What I'm saying is that Jesus said, I'm going to come back before you're dying.
	Some of you are dead.
	And he didn't.
	Right.
	But I think we misunderstood.
	I mean, who do you think he was talking to?
	People 2,000 years in the future or the people that are standing right in front of him?
	Well, if he's saying there are those among you who shall not taste death, he can't be talking about people 2,000 years in the future.
	Otherwise, he will be saying there will be some people 2,000 years in the future who shall not taste death.
	I mean, that's easy, right?
	He's God, or the Son of God, right?
	So he can be clear.
	So, obviously, if he promised to do it 2,000 years ago, can we prove that he didn't do that?
	Didn't do what?
	Can we prove that he did?
	You can't prove anything.
	This is my point.
	So everything that you believe is according to your preference and prejudice.
	There's nothing true in any of it and you can't prove any of it.
	It has to be within the confines of the Bible, and then it has to also be in the confines.
	No, it doesn't, because you already said there are people who misinterpret the Bible, and you can go to the Dead Sea Scrolls, and then when I asked for no contradictions in the Dead Sea Scrolls, you said, well, when I said perfect Bible, it was kind of a mistake, right?
	So you can, and I think we've sort of reached the end of our conversation here, but I think, just not for you, because I think you're very enmeshed in this, right?
	And I think, you know, maybe...
	I've given you some pause for thought.
	I doubt it, but maybe.
	But for other people, I just really want to point out that this young man, intelligent, articulate, passionate, obviously interested in truth and morality and so on, is not in a situation where he has to submit to anything but his own preferences.
	There's nothing external that is going to cause him to have to change his beliefs.
	Like so, I was for many years a minarchist.
	And was also for many years, when I was a child, religious.
	I had to regretfully give up monarchism because the non-aggression principle is a universal and it was painful and it was difficult.
	And when I had to give up the idea of innate virtue in parents, it was difficult and it was painful and all that kind of stuff.
	And this is the requirements of philosophy.
	You have to do stuff that's difficult and painful because consistency and logic and evidence is the key.
	But the gymnastics that you can make when you're in an imaginary landscape Of personal preference tied into universals that are also imaginary and therefore not universals.
	It's prodigious.
	It's a prodigious amount of work that you can do to maintain your own preferences and nothing external can ever cause you to change your beliefs.
	It's solipsistic in the extreme.
	It's self-referential.
	It's circular, I guess, right?
	So, and I'm sorry that that is sort of the last thing that I had to say on that, but let me tell you this.
	I really do appreciate you calling in.
	Yeah.
	And not just like, you know, religious guinea pig to play with philosophy.
	I mean, it's a very widespread perspective in the world.
	I mean, it is by far the majority perspective in the world.
	I think you did a fantastic job of presenting the case, and I really do thank you for calling in on that.
	Oh, no, it's great to be here.
	Yeah, I hope to talk to you again sometime in the future.
	All right.
	Well, all the best.
	Mike, who do we have next?
	Alright, last caller today is Michelle.
	And Michelle writes in and says, I cry about small issues and it's impacting the relationship with my boyfriend.
	How do I control my crying and be happy before it ruins my relationship for good?
	Go ahead, Michelle.
	Hi.
	Good.
	So we go from the guy at the beginning who didn't feel much to you who may be like a tsunami of passion.
	This is the bell curve we're going on on the show.
	What is it that you cry about?
	Um, it's like basically like anything.
	I think like most of the time it's, um, like if my dad does something to me, like if he doesn't answer my phone call or my text or something, and then if my boyfriend annoys me, I'll just start going to the bathroom and just start crying and I'll just shut down and like not even want to talk or anything.
	Hmm.
	Hmm.
	And when did you first start doing this?
	I mean...
	Like, as a human being.
	I don't mean with your boyfriend.
	No, yeah.
	Honestly, I've been crying probably my whole life.
	Like, I know my grandma even tells me I should be an actress because I can cry a lot.
	Oh, that does not...
	That doesn't care.
	I mean, if crying made you an actress, my mom would have got an Academy Award every day.
	But go on.
	But yeah, when I was younger and stuff, I remember I would cry a lot, but I think it was more to get what I wanted, and at the end of it, I kind of would get what I want.
	Mm-hmm.
	But also, I think it's also because my family, like, my parents didn't really teach me, like, how to act, how to behave in the correct way, like, with a small issue or with a big issue.
	And I mean, my parents, like, being divorced and then my mom basically, like, working a lot when I was younger, like, didn't really help because I would, like, fight with my brother, kind of, and my grandma wouldn't really know how to, like, handle it.
	So I think that, like, kind of impacted how I am now.
	Right.
	And how old were you when your parents got divorced?
	I was like two or three years old.
	And do you know why your parents got divorced?
	Well, I think they were like kind of fighting a lot.
	And then also my mom said that the main reason why she left my father was because he would like kind of hit my brother like pretty badly.
	And I don't remember me getting hit at such a young age.
	But then when I got to the age of like eight or 10 years old, I remember getting hit sometimes.
	But my brother definitely got a lot worse than I did.
	Well, but watching it is...
	It's pretty scary and horrifying, too, right?
	Oh, yeah.
	Knowing it's going on, right?
	Yeah, and definitely a lot of the times, too, it would be because of something I did when my dad was supposed to be watching me, but then he'd put my brother in charge while he would be with his friend or something in the living room, and then I would do something, so then he would get hit for it.
	Right, right.
	And when your parents split up, how did the custody go?
	Who did you spend more or less time with or was it about the same?
	Oh no, with my mom definitely.
	In the beginning, I don't remember this, but my mom told me that I would cry because I wouldn't want to go with my dad when I was younger.
	And I just always wanted to be with my mom.
	I remember when I would be in kindergarten and first grade, if I ever saw my mom in my school, I would cry and then she would have to take me home with her.
	And how old were you then?
	Kindergarten, so five or six kind of thing?
	Yeah.
	Right.
	And then I think at the age of seven or eight, I started going with my dad more and being okay with it.
	And I would just see him on Sundays and Mondays.
	Right, right.
	So your bond was with your mom?
	Yeah, definitely.
	Right.
	And how old are you now?
	I'm 21 years old.
	And how long have you been going out with your boyfriend?
	Just for like five months.
	And what are his issues with your crying?
	What if he would say?
	I mean, I don't know if he's there or not, if he wants to talk, but what would he say?
	Basically, that I've been crying for these last five months a bunch, and it's pretty much desensitized him.
	And this is for issues that shouldn't even be issues.
	I would just start crying if he didn't hug me or something.
	I would get really upset.
	But if I was crying because I was talking about my mom and stuff or my dad and stuff they do to me, then that's completely fine.
	But it's just small issues that he isn't okay with because I've done it so much.
	Let me ask you, I assume or I'm going to hope that you're going to be super honest with me because that's the only way this works, right?
	Yeah.
	So let's pretend he's never going to listen and none of your secrets are going to come out.
	Okay.
	So when you are about to cry, if I were to come up to you and say, listen, honey, I'm going to give you a million dollars to not cry, would you be able to stop yourself?
	I mean like...
	I mean, it's not like if someone were to give me something.
	I think it's more like if he were to be like, hey, you don't need to cry.
	It's going to be okay and stuff.
	But since I've done it so much now, he's not comforting me.
	Wait, no, that's not...
	You did a great job of not answering my question, which is honest in its own way.
	So I really wanted to thank you for that level of honesty, right?
	Yeah.
	So what I mean is, right, so...
	Like, if you stub your toe, right, hard, you know, some god-awful piece of concrete around a pool or something, right?
	And someone comes up and says, I would give you a million dollars to not hurt, then...
	You couldn't, right?
	A million dollars, your nervous system doesn't care, right?
	Yeah.
	But, and the reason I'm asking you this, I'm not comparing you to my mom.
	I want to be sort of clear about that.
	But the reason I'm asking you this is because my mom would be like angry or crying or really upset or something like that.
	And then the phone would ring.
	And if she, you know, she'd think it was her boyfriend calling or something like that.
	And it would be like, boom.
	Change, right?
	She's all sweetness and smiles and stuff like that.
	And that's what I mean by...
	But I can't do that.
	If I'm really upset about something...
	I mean, I remember, I don't have to go into the details, I've talked about it before, but one that's really vivid for me is I remember being in theater school and having an acting teacher break down my physical defenses while I was doing a scene, and it hit me like a ton of bricks.
	I just burst into tears.
	I was just weeping and weeping and weeping.
	And it was a pretty nice guy.
	Thanks, Chuck.
	One of the guys in my class actually got me a candy bar and gave me a candy.
	It was nice, you know.
	And a lot of us had sort of emotional stuff going on in theater school because it's pretty deep work in a lot of ways.
	Now, when that...
	I mean, I didn't want to cry.
	This was not a crying scene.
	I really didn't want to cry.
	I mean, I would have given a lot to not cry in that moment.
	But...
	But I could not stop myself.
	And that's what I'm asking about with your crying.
	I'm not asking is it fake or are you manipulative or anything like that.
	What I'm asking is, do you have any control over it?
	Because look, if you don't have any control over it at all...
	Then your boyfriend is asking the impossible.
	Like if you have epilepsy and your boyfriend says, listen, honey, this epilepsy is really getting on my nerves.
	I mean, okay, it's great during sex, but, you know, when we're dancing, I sometimes get flailed out in the head.
	Right?
	So if you really can't control it, then for your boyfriend saying less crying is unreasonable, right?
	Right?
	Yeah.
	So either your boyfriend is asking you to do something that's impossible, in other words, control the crying, or he's asking you to do something that's possible.
	So that's my question.
	If somebody offers, like, you're about to cry, your boyfriend doesn't hug you, your father doesn't return your text, and you get weepy, and somebody says, Michelle, you just won a million dollars, would you still burst into tears?
	Well, you might happy tears, but...
	It would change, right?
	Yeah, I definitely think that I could stop crying.
	And I definitely think that when I get upset, I think more about negative things.
	So I think if I would think about positive things, I would probably stop crying.
	Okay, so let me tell you something very important here.
	Very important.
	Are you ready?
	Are you listening?
	Are you sitting there?
	Are your eyes closed?
	Are you floating in a happy space?
	All right.
	So, Michelle.
	Yes.
	If you can stop it, but you keep doing it, it's a strategy.
	I don't mean that that's totally fake, or it doesn't mean anything, or you're being just manipulative, but if you can stop it, but you don't, then it's a strategy.
	Now, strategy means that it gets you something that you want, And that could be avoidance of something, right?
	I could stop doing philosophy shows.
	I could.
	I'd miss them.
	But I could stop doing them.
	But I keep doing them.
	So it's a strategy for me to get me something that I want.
	And when you can't stop something, then it can't be a strategy, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Because a strategy is something that's kind of calculated.
	Like, you know, if you ever play chess or checkers, you're like, well, I'll sacrifice that piece in order to get these two pieces or whatever, right?
	Yeah.
	You could choose differently.
	It's a strategy.
	So if you can stop something but you don't, then it's strategy.
	Yeah.
	Now, sorry, go ahead.
	Um, but then there's like also the issue of kind of having like abandonment issues or like getting nervous that like he's going to leave.
	Well, no, that's what I'm getting to, right?
	That's what I'm getting to, right?
	So the strategy is, right?
	We all have a fundamental need to be heard, right?
	To be listened to, to be heard.
	So much of what goes on in our minds, for most of us, results from not being heard.
	Right?
	So, I don't know if you've got Netflix or if other people do.
	9911, Season 3, The Giannetto Family.
	Watch The Giannetto.
	It's pretty shocking.
	It's good.
	It's good stuff.
	Mm-hmm.
	Giannetto.
	G-I-A-N-N-E-T-T-O. It's season three, episode three.
	Okay.
	In it, there's a kid.
	I mean, has tantrums.
	Astounding tantrums.
	And you can see him trying to explain something to his parents and his parents just keep saying, no, no, no.
	And they don't listen to him.
	And he escalates and he escalates and he escalates.
	To the point where he's pounding on his daddy's chest saying, daddy, I want to kill you.
	In true Jim Morrison fashion.
	Or screaming, really.
	And there's such a relaxation in being heard and there's such tension in being overridden, in being rejected, in not being heard.
	Because being heard is security.
	When other people are willing to listen to us, it means that we have a strong bond.
	If they're willing to listen to us and eager to listen to us when what we're saying is difficult or disagreeable to them, that is extra special bond with deep Chipotle sauce on top.
	I talked about that with the beginning caller, the first caller, about the bond, right?
	So the question is, what were you not being heard about That you could only communicate through crying.
	It, like, basically everything that happens to me prior to crying, I guess.
	Like, whether it is that text from my dad.
	But the thing is that he, like...
	He tells me that I can say anything to him, and he's actually only the first person that I actually spoke to about my past before.
	He listens to your show all the time, so obviously he talks to me about all that stuff.
	This is your dad?
	Oh, no, no, no, my boyfriend.
	Your boyfriend?
	Okay, okay.
	Oh, my dad is...
	No, I'm talking about your dad.
	Because, look, these problems didn't start in the last five months, right?
	They started a long time back.
	No, yeah.
	And you talked about your dad and his returning of texts and emails first, right?
	Yeah.
	Well, I'm saying, like, he, like, with that, like, he would choose, like, his girlfriends or wife, like, over, like, me or something.
	Like, he would always be a disappointment to me.
	So that's what I would be crying about.
	And I mean, to my mom, like, I never really told her about any issues that I had or anything, because I didn't want it to be, like, hard on her.
	So you were managing your parents rather than being authentic in your emotions, which is very often the case with children of divorce or children of addicts, right?
	You manage your parents, or children of mental illness, or children of dysfunctional parents, or as Jung said, most parents are just overgrown children themselves, right?
	Yeah.
	So you had to manage your parents, which means that you perceived them as super fragile, right?
	Yeah.
	Well, yeah.
	Also, when I do, I have tried to talk to both of my parents recently, and my mom is just totally closed off about it.
	She tells me to get over the fact that my dad does those things to me because he's not going to change.
	He's been like that for 57 years now, and there's nothing I can do about it.
	For how long?
	My mom says it.
	No, how long has he been like that for?
	57 years.
	Oh, 57.
	I thought you said 70.
	No.
	Okay.
	I'm like, how old is this Anthony Quinn?
	Anyway.
	All right.
	And then she also like said, like one day she was like, like my, your brother hasn't had a father.
	Like he hasn't been good to him, but it's okay because like, I'm like a father and a mother.
	And I mean, at the time I didn't tell her like, that's not.
	Wait, wait, wait.
	How does your mom know what's okay or not?
	Yeah, I know.
	That's why.
	Isn't she sort of deciding for you what's okay or not?
	I mean, she has been for like 21 years now.
	She's been telling me what to do, like constantly.
	Like not just normal, like telling me what to do, just everything telling me what to do.
	So your mother considers herself an expert on good decisions, right?
	Yeah, which is not...
	Really true.
	I mean, what's the evidence for that?
	You know, people can make that claim.
	I think I make pretty good decisions sometimes.
	But I think there's some fairly good empirical evidence for that.
	So if somebody wants to say, look, I can micromanage you because I know really what good decisions are and...
	Oh, yeah.
	Sorry.
	Let me just give another layer.
	Right.
	Then they, of course, have to have a great history of making great decisions themselves.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	But secondly, of course, a parent who micromanages an adult child is not a good parent by definition.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	I mean, if I'm going to teach you how to play piano and then I say, well, for the concert, I'm going to tape my fingers to yours and make your fingers go the right way.
	Then clearly I'm not a good teacher, right?
	Yeah.
	I'm going to teach you how to play golf, and then I'm going to go hit the balls for you in the tournament.
	It's like, well, then I clearly am not a good teacher, right?
	So if your mom is micromanaging your decisions when you're 21, then she does not have...
	competence to micromanage your decisions.
	I mean, other people might have a slightly better claim, but she has no claim at all.
	Cause if she was a good mom, she wouldn't need to, right.
	She'd have taught you all the principles and modeled all the examples and been a great resource in provoking wisdom and, and all of that.
	And you to the point where she would not need to do all of that.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	I think that she feels that she has the power to do that because she is my like support system and like with money and everything.
	Cause I am like going to college.
	So she thinks...
	No, no, no, no, no.
	So what you're saying is that she has bought the right to run your life.
	Oh, no, that's what I mean.
	Like, she thinks that, like, that way.
	I don't think that way.
	Oh, so she's saying because I give you money, you have to do...
	What I say.
	Well, yeah, because she always points...
	One time I was like, you don't really...
	Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.
	The one time, I believe you, I believe you, right?
	But, okay, so when she was married to your dad, was she a stay-at-home mom?
	No.
	They owned restaurants.
	Oh, they owned a restaurant?
	Yeah.
	Okay, okay, okay.
	And she's never been supported by a man, is that right?
	No.
	No.
	Okay.
	All right.
	Well, forget that example then.
	It don't work, and I certainly don't want to shoehorn it in.
	So, sorry, you were going to say, for example, in terms of micromanaging your life?
	Oh, I was going to say, like, I told her recently that she, like, hasn't really been there for me emotionally, and then she just, like, lists all the things that she's, like, gotten me with money.
	So it's like, with my boyfriend...
	Are you kidding me?
	No, yeah.
	That is such a cliche.
	Yeah, like, with my boyfriend...
	You've never been there for me emotionally, but look at this car.
	Yeah, she goes...
	Is the car not there for you emotionally?
	Yeah, exactly.
	Wow.
	And the same thing with my dad, except, like, he doesn't really have, like, money or anything.
	But he'll, like, say that he loves me, but he doesn't show me.
	And he'll tell everyone that he loves me just for his satisfaction of, like, saying it and stuff.
	But, like, he doesn't show me in any way.
	What would he have to do to show you that he loved you?
	What would be your standard for knowing?
	I mean, well, first would probably be apologizing to me for all of the stuff that he's done to me in the past.
	Like what?
	Sorry?
	Like what?
	Oh, I mean, well, first of all, like hitting me as a child, just like leaving me for his girlfriends at times, and choosing his girlfriends over me, not answering my phone calls, like yelling at me for, I don't even know, one time I just changed plans and he was like screaming at me like an animal.
	Wow, I'm sorry to hear that.
	Yeah, and just other things.
	I mean, there was also one time when he actually came to my house, and I was a sophomore in high school, and he was hitting me pretty badly until my mom had to actually pull him off of me.
	He was punching you?
	Like hitting me, and that was the first time that I ever had any scratches or something.
	He wasn't punching me, more like...
	Like pushing me on the bed and stuff and like kind of like hitting me with his hands, but not like punching, not fists.
	Right.
	And why, what, what possible reason did he give to himself for doing that?
	Oh, well my, I, I was like...
	Acting up or something like I was arguing with my mom.
	I don't remember about what and then But she like I wanted to leave the house and she kept locking the doors and everything But I just wanted to get out of the house because to get away from her for a little bit and then she actually like ended up calling my dad and then he came here and like started doing that.
	Oh My god, Michelle, this is This terrifying.
	Yeah, I mean your parents sound like out of control Yeah I mean, if I'm wrong, I'm wrong.
	I'm just telling you how they sound to me.
	Oh, no, definitely.
	I mean, that was the last time that anything ever, like, happened to me, but...
	And did he ever apologize for this assault?
	No, actually, like, when I had, like, kind of a heart-to-heart with him, which wasn't even heart-to-heart, it was me putting my heart out, he kind of, like, joked about it in a way.
	What do you mean?
	Because my mom found a little bit of weed in my purse, and he started joking about that.
	He was like, oh, well, you stopped smoking weed because of it, right?
	And then he started laughing.
	Wow.
	Yeah, and even my mom, she's always like, oh, you weren't even hit that badly.
	Your brother was hit more.
	But I'm like, that's not right anyway.
	Right.
	So they feel that hitting is okay?
	It's right?
	Yeah.
	Or that it's bad, but it wasn't too bad?
	Oh, no.
	They think it's fine.
	My mom says that children need to get hit or they won't be disciplined or something.
	Well, that's kind of circular, right?
	Okay.
	Children need to be hit.
	And if hitting is defined as disciplined, then she's saying children need to be hit.
	Otherwise, they won't be hit.
	Well, that's not really the best argument in the known universe.
	I'm right.
	Why?
	Well, because I'm right.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Well, thank you for the contribution, right?
	Man, I'm so sorry.
	And was there, it sounds like there was a lot of verbal bleh, you know, going on as well.
	I mean like yeah for my mom kind of more just in the sense of she like I mean she kind of does it in a joking way sometimes but when we're kind of like arguing a little she does it seriously like she'll say like to her friends or something like if I could do it over like I wouldn't have kids or anything and she always tells people how she wanted 12 girls but since having me like she would totally regret it.
	Wait, wait, so your mom will say in front of you that she wished she didn't have children?
	Oh yeah, like on the phone, she said to me, I think it was like two weeks ago, she was like, oh, how's like your world, Michelle?
	How's it going in your world?
	Because in my world, it's not that great because of you kids, like something like that.
	No, no, but I mean, I just want to make sure I understand what you were saying earlier.
	I mean, that's terrible enough.
	So she will say, I wish I'd never had children.
	Like, not totally I wish I never had children, but implying it, saying, like, if I could do it over, like, oh, I probably wouldn't have kids because I could be like...
	No, that's wishing you didn't have children.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Like, I don't think there's any way I'd have a great anniversary if I said, well, okay, we can go out for dinner, but I'm telling you, if I had to live my life over again, I never would have married you.
	Yeah.
	I mean, that's the end of the marriage right there.
	Yeah, I think that she also sees how her sister and her brother, they don't have children, and my aunt can do whatever she wants, basically, with her money and stuff.
	So she kind of says it like that.
	But then when I confronted her about it, she always says she's joking and stuff.
	Yeah, that's not funny, though.
	No, I know.
	I mean, for something to be joking, there has to be some element.
	You know, I don't get to punch someone in the face and say, well, that was just physical comedy.
	I mean, lighten up, man.
	I go to jail either way, right?
	Yeah, no.
	I told her, like, I have a really hard time talking to my mom and my dad about these things because I can never, like, get through to them.
	Like, I'm never going to change their minds, it seems like.
	I mean, I don't think I am at all because my mom is me, basically, in, like, 30, 40 years.
	Well, not 40.
	Well, let's do it.
	Your mom is you.
	I hope the hell not.
	Probably in, like, 30, 40 years if I didn't recognize these things about myself and my family.
	Right, right.
	Right.
	What does your boyfriend think of your parents?
	Well, he definitely thinks that my dad is a complete, like, asshole.
	And from, like, recent things that have happened with my mom, he, like, kind of says that that's not, like, a good, like, kind of mother and stuff.
	And, like, he can see how she has a lot of stuff that she, like, bottled up and just forgot about.
	Because she tells me to, like, get over things like she did.
	Well, no, she wants you to get over things because it's inconvenient for her if you don't, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	And if she could just wave away being upset, then why would she ever have lost her temper with you?
	Yeah.
	Because she should just get over whatever you're doing and not be upset, right?
	But I bet she lost her temper with you a lot, right?
	So who the hell is she to lecture you on how to get over things?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Well, she just tells me to, like, forget about them.
	Because she says how her father wasn't in her life and she came out fine.
	But, like, clearly she's not really okay.
	Does she really think she's fine?
	Yeah, she thinks that she's, like, perfect.
	Wow.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	So if she thinks she's perfect, then all the problems in your relationship with her must be you.
	Must be, by definition, right?
	I mean, like, pretty much how it, like, comes off.
	Yeah.
	No, no, no.
	Logically.
	Oh, yeah.
	Yeah.
	If I am a perfect driver, all accidents must be other people's fault because I'm a perfect driver.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	So if she is perfect or if she is really great and if she knows how to run life and how to run relationships and exactly what everyone should do and what she should do and if she is really that wise...
	Then all problems must be coming from you.
	The fact that she's your mother and raised you must somehow mysteriously escape the equation, right?
	Yeah.
	Like you are just someone who just makes her life difficult because you are who you are.
	Yeah.
	That's exactly how it is.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, it's insane is what it is.
	Yeah.
	Right, because she's your mom.
	So she has a huge part to play in who you are, particularly in your relationship with her.
	So for her to raise you and then step back and say, well, I don't know who you've turned into, is insane.
	It literally is like me painting a picture and then saying, that picture is mysteriously ugly.
	I had nothing to do with it.
	I mean, that's the actions of a crazy person, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, she, like, sees it as me blaming her or, like, not taking the blame for anything, which, like, I do take the blame for it, but, like, when I haven't...
	I mean, like, now I should know, obviously, like, not to cry, and I should kind of know, like...
	Wait, wait, wait.
	Hang on.
	Okay.
	First thing you've got to understand, blame is the troll word for responsibility.
	Yeah.
	So when you...
	Do something wrong as a child, you are responsible for it.
	When you get older and you hold your parents responsible, then you're just blaming them.
	You're playing the blame game.
	Blame is the word assholes use when the sword of responsibility is turned against them.
	Right?
	I just really wanted, because people will use the word blame like it's just some irrational projection.
	But what blame is, is the assignation.
	Of rational moral responsibility to parents or to people in authority over children.
	Oh, mothers always get blamed.
	I had a bunch of women around the other day that were talking about some movie.
	Oh, mothers always get blamed for everything.
	Sigh, roll their eyes, right?
	Well, does that mean mothers are not responsible for the choices they make when they're mothers?
	Mothers?
	Does that mean mothers get to spank children while holding them morally responsible?
	But the mothers who are spanking are not to be held morally responsible?
	So we have moral responsibility for the three-year-old that results in punishment, but when that three-year-old grows up, and has problems with being hit by his mother, he's now suddenly just blaming, and the mother is entirely fault-free.
	I mean, that's just a bullshit game.
	I mean, the only way to win that is not to play.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	I tried to make it come off as it's not like that.
	Which is not going to change.
	Yeah, of course not.
	Let's be blunt.
	Change requires humility.
	And perfection, not really exactly on the same wavelength as humility, right?
	Yeah.
	Change requires the ability to admit faults and to pursue better values, right?
	Yes.
	I mean, if the 400-pound guy...
	Thinks that he's really healthy, he's not going to change his diet, right?
	If he thinks he's got a washboard app and should be modeling for Calvin Klein underwear, then he's not going to, right?
	He's not going to change.
	Yeah.
	Mom's not going to change.
	The dad who makes jokes about assaulting you as a teenager, well, what do you think?
	Change?
	No change.
	No.
	Right.
	Now, if you look at that reality, Michelle, that these people...
	Are how they are going to be for the next 30 years.
	No change.
	Except that the demands upon you are going to increase as they age.
	What are your thoughts and feelings about that?
	I mean, I would like to stop it, but I don't know how to stop that without not having them...
	Like to stop what?
	I mean, kind of being pushed around and kind of abused emotionally.
	But I don't know how to do it without not having them in my life.
	Well, you can tell them that the behavior is unacceptable.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	Mm-hmm.
	I mean, I'm not saying what you should or shouldn't do, but if you're saying what's the best odds, well, the best way of getting people to change who aren't committed to change is to say, right, if people won't change based on virtue, then you hope they will change based on consequences, and that at least will start the ball rolling, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	Right, so I don't know if you've ever watched the show Intervention.
	I must sound like I watch a lot of TV. I don't actually, but I watched a couple of, right, these shows called Intervention.
	I don't know, have you ever seen them?
	Oh, no.
	No.
	Okay, well, you know the basic idea, right?
	So somebody's addicted to some self-destructive behavior, usually drugs or drinking or whatever.
	And, you know, people sit down, sometimes with an expert, sometimes with that, and they basically say, I'm not going to see you until this behavior changes.
	I'm no longer going to support or enable this destructive behavior.
	And I think...
	Generally, if you're in an abusive relationship with a man, you're a woman, you're in an abusive relationship with a man, then the experts, as far as I understand it, and you can do your own research, but the experts basically say, just get out.
	Do not pass go.
	Do not collect $200.
	Just get out.
	Do not confront.
	Do not explain.
	Do not try and get your needs met.
	You are in a relationship with an abuser.
	You should just get out.
	You should plot your way out, and you should not leave a forwarding address, and you should, you know, get to wherever is safe and get a restraining order and go to a woman's shelter, like all that kind of stuff.
	Now, I know that that's not, right, the extreme situation that you're in.
	You haven't been assaulted for, what, five years?
	Yeah.
	All right.
	Verbally, yes, and told that your mom wishes that you didn't exist, or if she had a life to live over again, you wouldn't exist.
	That's unbelievably...
	Like, it's...
	It's a shockingly shitty thing to say to a child.
	Like, I can't even tell you how ugly a thing that is to say to a child.
	It is to wish for a child's non-existence.
	It is a murderous thought.
	Yeah.
	And it is to say, there's no bond here.
	Like, if I had a choice, you wouldn't be here.
	There's no bond there.
	And because there's no bond, you live in this state of terminal anxiety about your relationship, right?
	This is why you said attachment issues and you cry if your dad doesn't Call you back or text you back or whatever, right?
	Yeah.
	Now, I believe that relationships with parents are very important.
	I believe in doing everything that you can to save relationships with parents when you're not in direct physical danger, right?
	It doesn't sound like you are.
	So, while the experts say to get out of an abusive relationship with a spouse, you just get out, I don't generally...
	Think that's a great idea.
	Now, remember, you're just talking to an amateur idiot on the internet, right?
	So, you know, talk this over with a therapist.
	What do I know?
	I'm just telling you my experience and my opinions, and I think there's good philosophical reasons behind what I'm saying, but, you know, take it all with a grain of salt, but...
	Because, you know, you've had enough of people telling you what to do, and there's no point in me telling you to do anything.
	I don't know.
	Yeah.
	But...
	So I think that parents should be given every opportunity where it's physically safe to do so.
	Parents should be given every opportunity to turn things around.
	But I don't believe that you owe your parents anything.
	You did not choose them as parents.
	You did not choose to be born to them.
	And you cannot control who they are.
	I mean, there's a few people you can have a lot of influence over.
	Your parents generally, unless they want you to, not those people.
	So you don't owe your parents anything, philosophically speaking.
	You've made no vows.
	You've signed no contracts.
	But if you can turn things around with your parents, then you gain some significant benefits.
	I mean, if you get older and have kids, then you've got grandparents.
	I mean, you've got extended family contact, and it's, you know, places to go at Christmas, blah, blah, blah.
	I mean, there's things that are nice about having good family relations.
	Really great.
	And if parents can, if things can be turned around with parents, you know, I think it's worth giving it a really good set of shots.
	Does that make any sense?
	Yes.
	That having been said, I personally, I personally, this is not telling you what to do, right?
	I'm telling you, I personally find life too short to be verbally abused on a regular basis, on an irregular basis, on any basis whatsoever.
	Yeah.
	And, you know, if your parents wish that you weren't around, wish that you'd never been born, wish that they weren't parents, well, there's ways of granting them that wish.
	Yeah.
	You know, my wife keeps saying to me, I wish I'd never married you.
	Well, there's ways of giving her that wish.
	Yeah, of course.
	You know, the door opens both ways.
	Feel free to leave if you find this relationship that unpleasant, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I think it's also scary to me to do that or something because I think my dad is getting older and stuff and he is still working pretty hard.
	No, no, no.
	Look, your dad is your mom's responsibility, not yours.
	Yeah.
	That's her job.
	I think that if he passes away or something, then if I stop talking to him, I'll feel horrible about it.
	No.
	I mean, you may.
	I don't know.
	I can't predict.
	But I tell you, it's not been the case for me.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, and it's not been the case for anyone that I know.
	And, you know, Mike, feel free to chime in with your experiences.
	This is not a scientific study.
	You understand, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	But this is just a curse put out by parents to give some kind of weird value to you.
	Like, well, we're not nice to you now, but if we die and you haven't talked to us for a while, we'll put a curse on you and you'll feel bad.
	It's like, I have not talked to my mother in 13 years, and I am so happy that I have not talked to her in 13 years.
	Part of me wants her to live for another 10 years, so I had almost a quarter century of not talking to her.
	And if she would die tomorrow, I'm not saying I wouldn't be, I would feel nothing, but...
	The idea that there was some great relationship for me there that I could have had is, to me, I just know it's false because I gave that relationship everything I could possibly give to try and make it work.
	I had many conversations with her.
	I expressed my needs.
	I expressed my preferences.
	I talked to a therapist.
	I did all the things that I recommend to other people to do.
	Mm-hmm.
	And when none of it worked and she simply escalated and got uglier and uglier and more and more vicious, I was like, okay, I get it.
	I accept.
	I accept the reality of this situation.
	I relinquish the urge to control another human being.
	And I accept the empirical evidence of her choices.
	You know, I'm an empiricist, but to be an empiricist means you've got to gather the evidence.
	Which means you speak your mind, you attempt to fix a relationship, you talk to a therapist, you get the support you need.
	But I accepted who my mother was.
	And my mother, if she wants to go into therapy, if she wants to change, if she wants to grow, I am not that hard to find.
	I'm all over the internet, right?
	Yeah.
	And so if she wishes to approach me, I guess she could try that.
	But she would have to have done something extremely different than what happened in the first 36 years or 37 years or 38 years or whatever, 35 years of our relationship.
	Yeah.
	So that's my experience.
	And because I know, as certainly as I can know anything about any human being, as certainly as I know that my wife loves me and my daughter loves me, as certainly as I know That what I'm doing here is a very good thing for the world.
	I know that I could not have had a non-destructive relationship with my mother.
	I know that.
	And so the idea that if she dies tomorrow that I will have missed out on some great and glorious and wonderful thing is to me as absurd as saying For the past 10 years, I've missed out on great conversations with Socrates, who's been dead for 2500 years.
	I know that I've not missed out on great conversations with Socrates or a great relationship with my mother because I gathered the evidence and the evidence was complete enough that to continue to pursue it and to continue to say,
	well, I need to gather more evidence Would be like being that cheesy scene in all of those hospital movies where the doctor refuses to give up on the dead patient and the nurses have to grab his arms and say, he's gone, he's gone, let it go, let it go.
	Except I'm doing chest compressions on a skeleton.
	Yeah.
	So I'm just telling you my experiences.
	There may be good reasons to see your parents.
	There may be good reasons to not see your parents.
	But the curse of, well, they're getting older and if they die and blah, blah, blah, that is not a good reason.
	Because if that was true, then every woman who was in an abusive relationship with a man would be told, well, but you will get the chance to grow old together.
	And if you don't grow old together with your abuser, you're really going to regret it.
	Yeah.
	I mean, nobody says that, right?
	Yeah.
	But those are just my thoughts.
	But I would say, as I've always said, if this is something you're contemplating, you may want to wait until you graduate.
	You may want to talk about it now.
	That's completely up to you.
	But please, please, please, get a therapist.
	Get the support.
	And really, really talk to your parents.
	Give them as much opportunity as you can to turn things around.
	But in the long run, it's going to be very costly for you.
	Yeah.
	If you stay in abusive relationships because good people are not likely to stick around.
	Nobody wants to stick around and see the woman they love get harmed by anyone.
	Yeah.
	I think like I will talk to them again.
	This is all pretty like new for me.
	I just actually started therapy.
	I've only been there like three times so far.
	So, I'm seeing how that's going to go.
	But I will, like, attempt to talk to them again.
	But as of right now, my talking to them doesn't, like, nothing.
	Like, I'm not getting anything out of it.
	Then just really, really work with your therapist to stay in touch with your feelings when you're talking to your parents and your feelings afterwards.
	Yeah.
	But in the long run, if your parents continue to be abusive, then you're going to have to make that choice.
	Like, I'm sorry, I mean, this is not a choice that I relish or that I put on anyone or anything like that.
	And the choice is, am I going to have abusive people in my life or loving people in my life?
	I don't think you could really have both.
	Mike, did you want to add something in here?
	Yeah, I mean, I just want to say that I do have a regret.
	And with me, the regret is that I subjected myself to that level of hostility and abuse for so long.
	I think of all the years where I could have been having positive, productive, great relationships, the type of relationships that I have now.
	That just wasn't the case when I was in that environment.
	I didn't have the capacity to have those kind of people in my life because I was so used to excusing crappy behavior that anyone of quality, they didn't want to be around someone that was going to excuse that type of crappy behavior.
	So...
	And with me, my only regret is that I kept crappy people in my life as long as I did, and that I didn't go to therapy sooner, and I didn't work through this stuff sooner, because I lost a lot of good years that I can't get back.
	No way I can get them back.
	And, you know, obviously, you're not going to live forever.
	So every day, month, year that goes by, you're not going to get that stuff back.
	And, you know, if I would have went to therapy at 20 instead of 25, I would have had five more years of my life.
	Five more years.
	Man, I know what's happened in the last five years and how positive it's been for me.
	If I could tack another five onto that, where I'd be now, I can't even fathom the guess, but I know it would be awesome.
	And yeah, I think it's important to just keep in mind that, you know, time is not infinite.
	Yeah.
	That's also another thing too because I'm afraid of now losing my boyfriend who's a really good person to me because of my actions, because of how I behave, because of what I wasn't taught or anything like that.
	Right.
	Well, look, I mean, when you have really difficult people in your life, and I think it's fair to say that your parents sound really difficult.
	When you have really difficult people in your life, Michelle, it puts good people who love you in a very difficult position, right?
	Yeah.
	Because nobody who's an art lover wants to see someone take a pee on the Mona Lisa, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	And nobody who loves you and really cares about you is going to want to see you subjected to bad, crappy, dysfunctional behavior.
	And so it puts people who love you in a really difficult position when you have abusive people in your life.
	I mean, what are they supposed to do?
	It really hurts you.
	And when you care about someone, when you see them hurt, it hurts you.
	Yeah.
	And so you're asking people...
	To watch you get hurt.
	Who really care about you.
	And for what?
	You know, I mean, we can understand that if there's a greater good, you know?
	You get sick and the treatments are painful.
	Well, you go through that and the people who love you help you through that because it makes you better.
	At least that's the hope, right?
	Yeah.
	But what's this for?
	What's this curing?
	Nothing.
	No, it's just inflicting, right?
	Yeah.
	So that's what I mean when I say there's an either or choice, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, I, you know, when I first met my wife, second date, she was really interested and she's like, well, tell me about your family.
	I knew she practiced psychology, right?
	What did I say?
	Oh, my mother was very violent.
	She was institutionalized.
	She's, you know, oh, and I said, but you know what?
	I haven't seen her in years.
	I went through therapy and For years, three hours a week, eight hours a week journaling, talking about it with people.
	I've really worked through a lot of stuff.
	I am happy to answer you any questions that you like.
	Do you have any siblings?
	I have a brother.
	What was he like?
	Told her about that.
	Talked about it in therapy.
	She could ask me any questions.
	And she told me later, she said, you know, like I knew this was like, oh my God, this is like a, my crazy alarm was like, On high alert, but I couldn't get any crazy from you.
	You know, because you hear about a background like that, and you're like, oh my god.
	You know, I mean, no.
	Like, don't get involved with someone with a history like that.
	Especially, I mean, she's a professional in the field, right?
	She knows what history does to most people.
	But, I mean, the only chance that I had to get married to a woman as great as my wife was to not have my family of origin in my life, because if they'd been in my life, she would have had to see my heart get shredded by these people, which would have been agonizing for her, and she would have had to look forward to a lifetime with the Molyneux, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Hey, it's my mom's birthday.
	Let's go over.
	Hey, it's Mother's Day.
	Hey, it's my brother's birthday.
	Hey, it's my aunt's birthday.
	Hey, it's my niece's birthday.
	Oh, look, Christmas, Thanksgiving, you name it, right?
	Yeah.
	Let's have these people in your life for the next 50 or 60 years.
	What do you say?
	Well, I know what she would have said.
	I'm sorry, I'm busy.
	I'll be washing my hair for the next 50 or 60 years.
	I will be unavailable, right?
	Yeah.
	And I just, you know, I can't choose that kind of past stuff over the future, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	I mean, my parents had their life.
	They made their choice.
	And now it's my future.
	It's my choice.
	It's my values.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Thank you for talking to me.
	How are you feeling?
	I feel a lot better.
	Everything's kind of more clear now to me because I was kind of all over the place.
	I wasn't really sure what I should be doing or anything.
	But now I feel a lot better.
	And with the crying and stuff, it's a lot better.
	Yeah, the crying is...
	I think that the crying is...
	Hoping that that's going to get you listened to.
	But every time you try to get listened to, all you're confirming is that you're not getting listened to, right?
	Yeah.
	Like, if I have to scream to be listened to, guess what?
	Nobody's listening.
	They might be listening to me screaming, but the fact that I have to scream means that nobody's listening.
	Right?
	And this is coming up because I assume your boyfriend is a good guy and you sense a very different kind of relationship with him than with your family of origin, right?
	Yes.
	And what happens is, you know, when you...
	When you get better relationships, you ever have the thing, my daughter calls it crisscross applesauce, you know, you sit cross-legged and you're watching something that's really absorbing and you get up and your foot is numb, right?
	Yeah.
	And you're like, whoa, it felt fine, now it feels numb and you know what comes next, right?
	Yeah, the pins and needles.
	The pins and needles.
	And sometimes they're pretty uncomfortable, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, I've done that before.
	I fall asleep with my daughter in some uncomfortable position and then I'm going down the stairs and it feels like I'm on a stump or a hoof of like fire or something like that.
	They're pretty uncomfortable, right?
	Yeah.
	Because blood is circulating.
	Blood is flowing, right?
	The first sign of progress is significant discomfort, existential discomfort.
	The first sign of growth is It's pain.
	And so if you have a boyfriend who's kind of cool and who's sort of maybe got your parents' number and stuff, and what happens is you're happy with your boyfriend and get less happy with other people.
	It's difficult, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, if he was just another person like your mom and dad, you'd probably feel this terrible familiarity, but you wouldn't feel this disorientation, right?
	Yeah.
	So, if you have to cry to get people to listen to you, they're not listening to you.
	So, you know, give your boyfriend a break.
	Assume he's going to listen to you.
	And, you know, obviously I don't think you do that stuff with him.
	But with your family, just try not crying.
	Just seeing how you feel without crying about how they're treating you.
	And I bet you the feeling that come out will be quite different and probably a whole lot more authentic.
	Yeah, definitely.
	All right.
	Yeah.
	Well, do drop me a line.
	Let me know how it goes if you can.
	I'm always curious to hear how it goes.
	And I think we shall, yeah, wind up the evening.
	Thanks again, everyone, of course, for your calls, for your support.
	FDRURL.com forward slash donate.
	I appreciate everyone's call tonight.
	I mean, you guys are just literally magnificent.
	I mean, it is, as I've said before, and I will say over and over again.
	Until they throw me in that dirt hole with crap on my face.
	It is an astounding honor and a privilege to be part of these conversations, to have people open up their hearts and minds to me in this format and to the community in this format.
	It is truly magnificent.
	And every now and then, people are like, oh, that caller stuttered.
	Hey, you try talking...
	Openheartedly to someone you've never met in a public forum.
	It's not easy.
	And the people who do it, thank you, thank you, thank you so much for doing it, for sharing the essential human journey that we're all facing out of dysfunction to function, out of dysfunction to fun.
	And it is a challenge.
	We are really trying to move the bar a hell of a high space.
	People used to just step over this thing.
	Now we need like nine pole vaults of trampoline and one of those medieval trebuchets to get over this high wall.
	And we really are raising the standard as suddenly and savagely and amazingly and powerfully as human communication has been expanded, so also the standards of virtue need to be raised.
	And we're doing that in lockstep with the technology.
	Because we're getting a hell of a lot more powerful than we are wise.
	And if we can have a conversation like this that hooks into the power of communication and drives the power of wisdom, we might finally, for the first time in human history, have a virtue that matches our technology, have a capacity for good that matches our capacity for destruction, and save the world thereby.
	This is Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio saying thank you so much everyone.

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