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March 20, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:50:41
2644 The Origins of Sexual Fetishism - Wednesday Call In Show March 19th, 2014
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Hi, everybody.
Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio.
Mike, go!
Best way to start the show ever.
All right.
First up today is Elizabeth.
And her question is, what is the best way to introduce anarchism to somebody who is not an anarchist?
Go ahead, Elizabeth.
With a balaclava.
With a balaclava and an ice pick.
And pictures of Stalin tattooed on your lower back.
All right.
I mean, what...
What kind of anarchism?
Because there's lots of different flavors.
You have political anarchism, marriage anarchism, like marriage without rulers.
There is metaphysical anarchism, which is no gods.
There is parental anarchism, which is...
Political anarchism primarily.
I found recently, as with many subjects, there are ways to go about introducing something, ways to go about introducing something, and one yields much better results than the other.
And I also kind of want to discuss some of the common arguments that are used against it, people who are very pro-government.
Okay, do you want to play somebody who's pro-government?
And I'll play somebody who's not.
Hang on, let me just get into character here.
Which outrageous accent should I use?
That's going to offend some constituency.
I'm going to go with Jamaican, you know, Jamaican Scottish.
Jamaican Scottish, I think I'm going to go with.
Idy with porridge.
All right.
So let's pretend that I'm a voluntarist and you are a statist, right?
Right.
And let's call you Elizabeth.
Let's call me...
Steph.
So I'd say, so Elizabeth, I have a question for you.
Curious, curious, curious.
How do you think your country is going?
How do you think it's going the right direction, getting better, going the wrong direction, getting worse, staying about the same?
How does it seem to you?
I think it's staying the same primarily.
I mean, the country has its ups and its downs, but with every period of history, it has its ups and its downs.
I don't find it particularly worse in this generation than 20 years ago.
Wait, and are we talking about America here?
Yes.
Okay.
So, about 20 years ago, of course, the government was about, what, a quarter the size it is now.
National debt was much lower.
The dollar was worth more.
We hadn't had five years of chronic unemployment.
And there weren't, you know, $200 trillion of unfunded liabilities kicking around.
I'm not saying everything's getting worse, but in some ways, and according to some metrics, I think you could argue that it's not exactly staying the course.
Like, to me, staying the course would be, you know, there's a national debt, but it's not getting bigger.
You know, just one indicator.
And I'm curious what you think.
Those are just my thoughts on it, but I'm certainly open to the other side.
Well, could it not be argued that we're taking measures to help prevent the debt from getting larger and decrease it?
No, statistically that's not true.
Yeah, no, I mean, statistically that's not true, or I guess not statistically exactly, but numerically.
So what they're trying to do is slow the rate of growth.
But nobody is saying that the national debt, like it's aimed, it's I think 17.5 trillion now, it's aiming to be like 25 trillion in 10 or 15 years.
So they're aiming to slow the rate of growth, but they're not aiming to stabilize the debt.
And certainly there's no proposals anywhere floating around the political system on reducing or eliminating it.
I was certainly under the impression that all the government cuts were to start going the other direction, not to necessarily slow it down.
You mean to start to reduce the debt?
Yes.
Right.
Yeah, it's a tricky thing to do in the middle of a recession, right?
I mean, if they fire a lot of government workers, then what happens?
Well, the government workers that get fired...
They generally go on unemployment insurance, right?
Because there's not a lot of jobs out there at the moment.
Right.
So if they fire, they can say, well, we've cut payroll, but all that happens is they increase spending on unemployment insurance and other related services, right?
Right.
Is the amount that's paid in unemployment annually more or less than the amount that would be paid if they were employed?
I don't know.
I mean, honestly, that's a pretty specific set of facts.
But it's hard to cut...
Government spending.
Particularly, there was this goal, which was to stimulate the economy with all this money, and then the economy was going to get jump-started, it was going to start to grow, and then with the growth of the economy, they would get increased tax revenues from more economic activity, more people employed, and so on.
That's not really happening, right?
I mean, the numbers are so small.
So the equivalent would be right now, if somebody had $17,500 in debt, and next year their proposal was to cut their overspending by about $60, but still be overspending and still increasing their debt, you wouldn't say that they were heading in the right direction, right?
Right.
Another odds.
Sorry, go ahead.
I was going to say that another common argument that I myself, when I was very much a statist, used was that the government controls the chaos that prevents, you know, neighbors from turning on neighbors and people just going ahead and saying, I want that new computer breaking into your house and stealing it, etc., etc.
Oh, yeah.
So then I would say, if you made that argument, I would say, and is that true for you?
In other words, if the government didn't threaten you with jail, would you really want to, like, rob me right now?
No.
But that doesn't stop the people who do it on a regular basis.
It doesn't stop people who, you know, they go out and they kill people, they steal from people, they rape people, etc., etc.
Okay, so your big concern is killing and stealing and raping.
Yeah.
Okay, and I agree.
Those are terrible, terrible things.
Now...
An argument that could be made, it's a volatile argument, but it's worth considering, is that if you're really interested in people not being killed, I'm not sure government is the first place to go to solve that.
So governments were responsible in the 20th century alone for like a quarter of a billion, billion people, 250 million people being killed.
American foreign policy has been estimated Two have caused the deaths of millions of people since the Second World War.
And things like the prohibition on drugs and so on.
I'm not a big fan of using drugs, but I'm...
And even less of a fan of throwing people in jail for using drugs, you know, gets lots of people killed and 35,000 people killed in Mexico as a result of drug wars and so on.
I mean, governments are 40 million people killed in the Second World War and 70 million people killed through...
Communism just in the Soviet Union.
So lots of people get killed by governments.
So it's not always obvious to me, at least, that, you know, hey, let's stop murder with government.
Now, theft is even easier, right?
Because theft is the taking of your property under the threat of force.
And that, of course, is taxation.
And even if we say, well, taxation is agreed to by people in general who are adults and so on, there's two other kinds of theft that are not agreed to.
One is inflation, which results from the government continually...
Creating more and more money, which dissolves everybody's purchasing power, creates inflation.
That's a theft.
And it's in the same way that someone who counterfeits dollars is stealing from people.
The government does it all the time.
And that steals from the poorest and the old and people on fixed incomes the worst and the most.
It's horrible, horrible kind of theft.
Like you can do something to protect your money from like a house robber.
You can bury it in your backyard.
You can put it in a safe.
You can put it in a bank.
You can't protect your money very easily from inflation.
Certainly, if you don't have access to a lot of really weird investment vehicles, you can't really protect your money from that.
And the third form of theft, of course, is the national debt, which is stealing from people who aren't even born yet.
I mean, you know, my daughter is born hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt by the time she draws her first breath.
I mean, that's her literal future that is being stolen from her, has been stolen from her.
And she had no say in the process whatsoever.
She's just basically going to be this tax livestock that's there to pay off the debts of greedy earlier generations.
Now, as far as rape goes, well, of course, there's lots of rape tragically in the military.
There's, um...
And, of course, the most common form of rape in America is the rape of male prisoners in government prisons, right?
So I don't know really that as far as murder and theft and rape goes that you'd necessarily say that the agency that's arguably responsible for the most of those is really going to save us from that.
Yeah, yeah, you're right.
I had completely forgotten about what actually happens in the jail.
As far as government controlling things like murder, well, yes, it doesn't actually physically stop you.
It provides an incentive not to do it.
And sexual assault, too.
Sexual assault is the highest crime rate in a state.
No, sorry, but no, the government doesn't provide an incentive...
Not to murder.
I mean, quite the contrary.
No, no, quite the contrary.
No, no, no, seriously.
I mean, like, okay, so for instance, a million Iraqis have died from that invasion, right?
Right.
Now, does the government, and I'm not saying a million Iraqis were directly killed by American forces, like, you know, some Marine there with the, but as a result of the invasion, about a million Iraqis have died.
And it may be more, probably is, but that's a conservative estimate, right?
Right.
Now, a million murders is really quite a lot.
A million deaths is really quite a lot.
Like, that would be the equivalent of...
I'm trying to think now, though.
That would be equivalent of about 10 or 11 million Americans murdered.
You know, proportional to population.
I think Iraq is about 30 million, right?
And so...
I mean, the government is providing incentives for these people to murder.
So if you are interested in the military, then they will give you a signing bonus.
Well, that's a signing bonus so that you'll go and kill people.
Let's not delude ourselves about what the purpose of the military is not to build schools.
The purpose of the military is to blow people up and break things and smash things and all that kind of stuff.
And so the government provides an enormous incentive to murder.
I mean, it pays people to do that, and it gives you free college tuition, and it gives you free pensions, you get medals, you get adulation, ticket tape parades if you've murdered a lot of people.
And I'm not saying that all people in the military are murderers.
But that's the point of it.
And unless it's being used in a very specific self-defense scenario, right?
I mean, you want to think of something crazy, right?
Just to point out just how insane this is.
Think about how high the bar was for George Zimmerman to prove self-defense, right?
I mean, he was being threatened with decades in jail, right?
When there were witnesses to him getting his head beaten against the sidewalk.
Yeah.
Right?
So that's the amazingly high standard for proving non-criminality for self-defense in America.
I mean, were the Iraqis about to invade America?
No.
So there's massive incentives to kill, to murder.
In all government systems.
They pay you.
They give you pensions.
They reward you.
They give you honors.
So I don't know that there's this massive disincentive.
I mean, I know for private citizens, of course, right?
Yeah, I was thinking along the lines of private citizens.
But this distinction is not real, right?
It's not like this robot army of interstellar virtue bots that comprise the military.
They are people, right?
They're just private citizens who go to work in different costumes, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, you're absolutely right.
Now, I'm not expecting this to like, you know, now I've changed my whole mind completely.
No, no.
Most Americans think that the government is terrible.
So the approval rating of Congress is like 5 or 6%.
And only 16% of Americans believe that the government governs according to the preference of the people.
Yeah, approval rating has gotten as low as the Great Depression.
I mean, it's terrible.
Yeah, it is.
Sorry, it is pretty terrible.
And the fact that only 16% of people believe that the government is legitimate in America is truly astounding, right?
So like 96% of people in Crimea have voted to rejoin the Russians.
And the government says, well, that's illegitimate because there's a couple of Russian troops on Crimean soil.
Of course, the same government believes that it has perfect legitimacy with only 16% Of people thinking it's legitimate in the home soil and of course when it invaded Iraq, when America invaded Iraq and there were elections held with a complete 100% occupation of Iraqi territory by American troops, they considered that a triumph of democracy.
So I think that the arguments that I'm sort of trying to make It's not to give you an answer.
I mean, I think giving people answers is usually not super helpful.
But to say, I think there's really good evidence that the society is heading in a very disastrous direction.
So, even the national debt that the government admits is over $120,000 for every employed American.
$120,000 for every employed American.
That's not possible to pay off.
Not even close.
By 2024, national debt rises from $17.5 trillion to nearly $25 trillion, or almost $175,000 for every employed American.
Unfunded liabilities, that's what the government has promised but can't pay.
Unfunded liabilities are $205 trillion.
$653,000 for every American.
Over 1.4 million dollars for every employed American.
That cannot be a country heading in the right direction.
And these numbers are getting worse, not better.
And so, I think that the argument from voluntarism or anarchism or whatever...
First of all, there's no point looking for a solution if you don't even think there's a problem.
Now, I think if you don't think that there's a problem, you don't have enough facts, right?
Yeah.
You know, like if I'm blindfolded, it almost never looks like we're going in the wrong direction, right?
Because I can't see, right?
So if you get, I think, enough objective facts together, then you can see, well, look, there is a big problem with the society.
Now, the solution to the problem...
Cannot conceivably be more government because there's already so much government, right?
Right.
You know, if I put 10,000 oranges into my living room and then people have trouble moving around and I say, well, let's put another 1,000 oranges in there, At some point, someone's going to say, will you stop with the citrus?
I think we have enough citrus in here.
I don't think more is really going to help, right?
And the American government has spent the most money and is by far the biggest government in the history of the known universe.
It has the most firepower.
It has the most cash.
It has the most debt.
It has the most power.
I mean, it can spy on anyone.
It can turn people's webcams and microphones on even if their phones are in sleep mode, even if their phones are turned off.
I mean, it's recorded the entirety of an entire nation's telephone conversations.
So let's take the war on poverty.
Since the 1960s, since LBJ declared a war on poverty, America has spent more money trying to solve the problem of poverty, three times more money than it's spent on all of the wars in its history.
So it's not like, well, a little bit more spending will help.
You know, if they've run up into debt $1.4 million for every employed American, $1.5 million ain't going to solve the problem, right?
A little bit more money when there's already been such a fantastic amount of money and such a prodigious amount of government, military, and economic power leveled at various problems.
Nobody, I think, can seriously say, a little more government.
No.
Well, then it becomes like some shifty brother-in-law.
You know, we all know someone like this who's like, hey man, I just need $3,500 to get my landscape business started.
Yeah, and I swear I'm going to pay you back.
Yeah, I'm going to pay you right back, man.
And then it turns out, oh man, I had a couple of snacks.
Some guy ran off with one of my hoes.
Let's just pretend he's talking about a garden implement.
And, you know, I get to fix my car, man.
So just $1,500 at the end of the month, I promise, right?
And basically, eventually, you've lent him a quarter million dollars.
And he's coming back after four years and saying, I just need $750 more.
Right?
I mean, it can't possibly be that more money and power is necessary.
Mathematically, it has to be less money and power that's necessary.
Money and government power.
So what if this has just been in entirely wrong direction?
You know, and there's good moral arguments, right?
Taxation is theft and government power is unjust.
And we all know power corrupts, right?
It's funny, you know, everyone reads this statement from Lord Acton, right?
Power corrupts.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Or another way of putting it, I saw in a cartoon, is They say, those who do not learn from their history are condemned to repeat it.
Those who learn from their history are condemned to watch those who don't learn from their history repeating it, because it's not like historians have a lot of political power, right?
So, when things have gone this disastrously wrong, Even the most basic assumptions need to be examined and questioned.
It can't be more government power.
It has to be less government power.
But less government power historically has always turned into more government power.
So there is an argument to saying, well, what if we just completely open our brains to the sunlight of hopefully not sunburn of reason in the very skies above and say, well, what if the state...
A truly ancient institution which we all understand arose out of tribal politics in the Stone Age.
What if the state, like slavery, is just an unjust institution fundamentally and that's why it always turns to shit.
That's why it always makes things worse in the long run.
What if, like, the historical subjugation of various races and cultures in slavery That was just wrong.
It turned out to be that was just wrong.
We couldn't reform the institution.
We'd have to get rid of it.
Yeah, and at the time, it was unfathomable to even begin talking about getting rid of it.
Yeah, in the mid-19th century, only 2% of the population had anything to do with the abolitionistic movement.
Yeah.
And so we look back and we say, well, how on earth could people have possibly imagined that there was anything okay with slavery?
And yet we look around and we have this absolute catastrophe of a world system where governments are 100 trillion dollars in debt, up from 60 or 70 trillion just 6 or 7 years ago.
The government's debt has gone up 40% in just a few years.
We've still got endless frictions with border conflicts and wars and the bankers running the show with the help of the government.
They'll look back on us the way we look back on people who were pro-slavery and saying...
How far up their ass did they have their heads that this even looked remotely sustainable or tenable?
Could these people not do math of any kind?
Is that why they preferred credit cards?
So that nobody had to make change, because that kind of math was just too hard.
So, that's all, you know.
The people who got how immoral slavery was, I mean, they worked for like 100, 150 years to end it.
And maybe...
Just maybe what we need is not reformed slavery or more slavery or less slavery, but just no slavery.
And this is the argument around, look, maybe we're just looking at this thing all wrong.
Maybe it's not that we need to fix government any more than we needed to fix slavery or the subjugation of women.
Like, it just has to stop.
Yeah.
I kind of, about a year ago, I was very hardcore statist, and I just kind of fell back to the arguments that I used against a friend of mine who is an anarchist.
And there was a very specific process that he used to introduce the concept to me.
And at the time when I tried, you know, I don't want to say an experiment, but I wanted to...
Kind of, there's someone I know that's also, you know, very hardcore.
He was kind of molded out of the international relations teacher at my school who's, like, unbelievably pro-status.
And I realized that I probably went about the process very wrong.
And so I kind of wanted to discuss, like, I'm sure there's not, you know, you do this, this, this, and this in that order, and it'll be great.
But I'm sure there's certainly a better idea to go about it than what I probably did.
Look, it's tough.
You know, if I walk into a car dealership, what do they know about me?
Well...
Nothing.
No, they know I'm interested in a car, right?
Well, yeah.
Right?
I'm coming now.
I may not buy their car.
I may not even buy any car.
But I'm interested in the car, right?
Nobody walks into the anarchist shop, right?
Like, we've got to go out and, you know, annoy people.
And so that's sort of a fundamental challenge.
And that's why I sort of started with, do you even think there's a problem?
Because if someone's like, well, there's no problem, society is great, then...
I mean, you can try some stuff, but if they're all like, oh, you know, we're going to deal with it, don't be a doom monger, whatever you're going to say, right?
Yeah.
Then keep moving.
Like, you cannot cure people who don't even think they're ill, right?
And I just have a question.
There's someone else that I know who's kind of in the same mindset, but the term that he used, like it took me a while to get around to understanding what exactly he's trying to say with this, but he said that he was a communist anarchist.
And I didn't think that that was possible, because communism is a form of government, right?
And what he wanted to do was get rid of the government but fall back into a everyone has an equal job in society kind of role.
Is that possible to do?
I mean, anything's possible to do if people want to do it, you know, and it's within the laws of physics.
So the anarcho-communist argument is something like this.
Look, All property requires violence to defend.
So I can go out and I can just say, oh, this hundred acres is mine.
And anyone who comes onto it is trespassing and I'm going to shoot them.
And that's an initiation of the use of force.
How the hell does that hundred acres get to be yours?
Right?
So their argument is, well, let's not do that hundred.
Everything is everyone's.
It is a violation of the non-aggression principle to establish control over the means of production, in particular land and factories and whatever it is, right?
So their argument is valid.
The problem is that their argument validates rape, right?
And that's, you know, an argument that validates rape to me, you know, you should really worry about it.
Because the ultimate means of production is the womb.
Vagina, egg, womb, fallopian tubes, you name it.
The whole kitten caboodle that you know a lot more about than I do.
That's the ultimate means of production because that produces human beings.
Everything else just produces crops and crap and stuff like that.
And so if nobody can privately own the means of production, then no woman can own her own vagina.
Neither can a man own his own sperm or his penis or anything like that.
And therefore, any man who wants to have sex with a woman, if she can't use any violence to defend herself, because she can't own the means of production, they're collective, they're shared, right?
Everyone has a right to them.
And that doesn't work, obviously.
I mean, anybody who needs to have it explained why that doesn't work is someone you don't want to have a moral conversation with, but you probably just want to give them some pepper spray and head for the nearest exit, right?
Yeah.
So, I mean, there's no such thing as the means of production out there.
There's property or there's no property.
And if there is property, then you can't have my toothbrush, my left eyeball, or my right eyeball for that matter, my kidneys, my arm, or anything like that.
Right?
And so if there's property, it begins with the body.
And if there is property in the body, then there's property everywhere.
Because you can't just have the body has property and the rest of shit doesn't.
It's like, no, the body is just another piece of matter and material.
It's a machine.
It's a biological entity.
It's a thing.
And if we're going to have property in the body, which we need to, to oppose things like rape and murder, then we have to have property everywhere.
You can't just say, well, people are property, but nothing else is.
I mean, that's just ridiculous.
This lizard here is an amphibian.
All the other lizards are the opposite of amphibians.
It's like, oh yeah, start again, right?
You're not saying anything that makes any sense.
So, if an anarcho-communist is willing to say that of course rape is wrong, and of course you cannot have a woman's reproductive organs collectively owned, then he said, okay, well then there's private property, private ownership of the means of production.
Okay.
But then we're all tickety-boo, right?
And then again, you can have your 100 acres too, right?
All right.
Well, it was really great talking to your staff.
I learned a lot.
Thank you.
You're very welcome.
Thanks for this, Beth.
All right.
Up next is Alan.
And Alan wrote in and said, I'm going to be a new father, and I grew up in a very toxic environment and struggle with ethical behavior, self-sabotage, and fear of failure.
How do I keep from passing this on to my child?
Go ahead, Alan.
Hey, Steph.
Hey, congratulations.
Well, thank you so much.
I've been listening to you.
How much longer do you have with the vestiges of human sleep before that all goes out the window?
September 20th, allegedly.
Oh, you know, if you get her to clench on for four more days, we can share a birthday.
Hey, that would be excellent.
Tell her, in homage to Steph Molyneux, clench, honey.
Clench!
Come on!
I'm trying to ease her into you.
Only 96 hours?
Here's something to chew on.
Sweat it out, honey.
It's for the good of the cause.
Yes.
Yeah, I'm trying to ease her into listening to you.
We're starting small with the not trying to circumcise and...
And also the discipline or the non-discipline, if you will, type of thing.
So I've gotten some books.
She's a medical doctor, so research is a big thing for her.
So at least we have that.
Yeah, and I certainly will.
I mean, I hope that she'll obviously do the research.
But fundamentally...
It's not to do with whether or not there's this or that, plus or minus for circumcision.
Yes, yes.
You know, I mean, fundamentally, there's the do no harm thing, right?
Correct.
All physical organs can give you problems if they remain, but we don't give appendectomies to children, even though people die of appendicitis every year.
We also don't remove the breasts of little girls because breast cancer occurs later on in life.
It is...
It's fundamental.
You simply do not remove healthy tissue from babies, obviously, without their consent.
But anyway, so good.
Good for that.
And what was your background like, my friend?
I am a survivor of basically a fundamentalist Christian cult by the name of Institute and Basic Life Principles.
Their homeschooling program was ATI. I don't know what that means.
ATI? Advanced Training Institute.
And so basically it was a charismatic guy and was able to I think the selling point was coming out of a nihilist 60s and my parents were just looking for somebody that had answers to how to raise a How to raise a perfect family and I basically claimed he had seven principles
and I mean anybody that's it's it's just it's a complete cluster of beliefs and and that type of thing so it was just pretty you know they are what they call trying to think of it a quiverpool movement it's kind of spawned from that very patriarchal He never recommended college or go into that.
He just did apprenticeship and could basically get free work out of people.
It was basically a multi-million dollar All right, so if you don't mind, you're giving me a lot of abstractions here?
Yes, sir.
No, no, I'm sorry.
And I don't mean to interrupt you with that, but it's all very woolly.
And what was it that was difficult or hugely problematic for you as an individual in this organization as a kid?
I'm sorry for the background.
No, no, fine.
No.
Well, basically, I think one of the things I remember was there's the principle that is talked about in the Bible where if you hate somebody, then you've committed murder.
If you've lusted after a woman, you have basically committed adultery or whatever.
And I remember sometimes I would, you know, and the other thing, my parents never talked about sex.
There was one conversation my dad had with me about sex, and he basically said, this is really weird.
He said, don't ever marry a woman with large breasts because I'll have stretch marks, and don't masturbate because it hurts your performance.
And that was basically my sex talk when I was like 15.
Wait, don't masturbate because it affects your performance?
Yes.
You know, I love this performance thing, you know, like...
Like it's an opera of flying jizzbots, you know?
I mean, in a park?
What do you mean?
Are you busking with this?
I mean, performance.
Anyway.
All right.
So this was his wisdom to pass on through the ages.
Yes, that was about all the sex talk I ever had.
And you were told hell and all this kind of stuff?
Yeah, that definitely was.
I grew up in the South, so it was pretty hardcore.
As I have grown out of that to more of a postmodern Christianity to now more of a leaning agnostic atheist, I'm still in that.
I mean, I think I'm there because the switch has been turned.
It's still just, I don't know.
Anyway, but back to the point, I would be 13, or 12, 13, and I didn't have the concept that if a thought came into my head, that that's just a thought that came into my head.
And I would even turn it to the extreme that I would have raped somebody because I looked at them and lusted after them.
But, you know, I didn't have any background to know anything different.
And so, those are the type of...
Everything went to just an extreme...
In my head growing up, as far as what, you know, my mental state.
Well, I mean, I would come out a rapist.
You know, I've never even, you know, done anything violent to a woman.
It's just the way that you follow that progression down.
You know, I was indoctrinated in this from the age of four till I was 20.
And did you go to, what's the school in the group?
They basically had what they call training centers.
And I went to those to do work or to learn different things.
My parents ended up going to their headquarters in Chicago, but that's neither here nor there.
And that's when my dad saw that the guy was not living or was not living like he was preaching and decided to get out of it.
We've talked about this.
I've talked about it with my dad, and it's now like, He never even believed in it in the first place.
It's his go-to.
Yeah, exactly.
What?
Yeah, exactly.
We were in it for 16 years.
We were in it for 16 years.
My dad owned a grocery store and he worked in it 12 hours a day.
My mom was the one that Taught it, but she never wanted to homeschool us.
Anyway, I think maybe I picked up on that too sometimes and could take advantage of that.
No, no, hang on, hang on.
I know.
Why did he say he never believed it?
He...
You know, 16 years is a whole lot of time to not do something that you're doing.
Well, yeah, and then to go and work for the other...
The work for the organization at its headquarters also kind of lends itself to saying you kind of believe or you're investing in this organization.
But logically, to me, that makes sense.
But he's...
And really how all this has come up and kind of discovering you and this guy has ended up being like a...
He's sexually harassed over 40 women and molested some of them.
I know.
It's...
Oh, the leader of this.
Yeah, the leader of the cult.
And so that's really kind of setting me off and just kind of throwing everything away, which is why it's kind of hard.
I don't know if I can even, even if I wanted to now, go back to some sort of religion.
I don't think I could.
Because it just...
I mean, at first I thought it was just misguided, but since I found out this information...
About this leader, I mean, it's just really blown open my faith in any religion.
But anyway.
Well, I'm very sorry to hear about all of that.
I mean, this level of indoctrination that you describe is extremely difficult and dangerous for children.
It's very toxic.
For children.
You know, there's very little that children enjoy more than exercising their own abilities.
I mean, my daughter has just succeeded in learning how to whistle.
She's been working on it for months.
You know, next up, the finger snap, although that's going to take a little while.
But it's...
I mean, children love to exercise their own abilities.
And thinking...
Is one of the most important things that they learn how to exercise.
And if they don't get that opportunity, it's hugely tragic for them, right?
And if it's actively opposed, I mean, that's astoundingly tragic, right?
Right.
So, I mean, you were robbed.
You were tragically, catastrophically, repeatedly, perpetually almost, at least for the first 16 years, robbed, right?
Yeah, I mean, exactly.
I had no concept of money.
I say I didn't.
I worked for my dad for free at a store.
I say that, but then I would...
This gets into the ethics, because there would be times where I would steal from the store because I wanted to get something, and I would steal cash, and I thought I had a way to, you know, write it off or whatever, but I wasn't that smart.
And he caught me, but...
And so, I mean, there's...
Some of the things that, like, I look back on my childhood and just go, you know, man, I stole from my parents, and I would lie and manipulate, but I also would just lie and manipulate.
No, no, come on.
No, but you know that children steal because they're stolen from, right?
I mean, children don't steal because they're just acquisitive beings, you know?
Okay.
They steal because something very fundamental is being stolen from them.
Their rationality, their integrity, their capacity to have a voice in a conversation.
Their childhoods are being stolen, right?
And they steal because, right?
So, the first time you've really cast a negative judgment in this whole story is on yourself.
The only crime that you've talked about, so to speak, is yours, right?
Yeah, I guess you're right.
I've never thought about children stealing because they're being stolen from.
Children are natural traitors.
No, look at kids with a bunch of baseball cards, right?
Or read some of Jeff Tucker's...
There's a great essay by Jeffrey Tucker in...
It's a Jetson's World, which you can actually find on my channel.
And he talks about watching kids trade candy after Halloween, right?
Right.
They all get different.
They're all trading back and forth.
My daughter has had a store in our living room for about eight months where she sells things and collects her money and all that kind of stuff.
It's...
Perfectly natural.
You know, we are a trading species.
I mean, what is language really but the trading of ideas?
The foundation of human communication is all trading, right?
Right.
Language is invented to trade.
You don't need a lot of language to kill people and steal their stuff.
Language is like the foundation of our entire interactions is trade.
And it's so perfectly natural to us.
And so the idea that some children are bad and like to steal and all that.
As a guest in the chat was pointing out, children even invent currency to keep things fair.
Children are natural traders and barterers and so on.
And so if there's stealing going on, it's because stealing is the template, right?
Win-lose.
Stealing is win-lose.
Trade is win-win.
And so when children are stealing, what they're saying is, I am trapped in a win-lose planet.
I am trapped in the planet of predation.
I am trapped in a fucked up win-lose environment.
So when in Rome, do as the Romans do.
Like it always strikes me as absurd and horrific.
That some of the most abusive parents around get angry at their children for moral infractions.
I mean, it's just part of the abuse, right?
Yeah.
So I just wanted to point that out, this idea that you...
This is the only thing that you've talked about as bad, really, so far, is your actions of stealing.
So it did...
You know, basically, from...
When I hit 21, I got $25,000 from my aunt, and I blew through that all in one year.
Mostly because I didn't feel like I ever had a concept of...
It was just suddenly like this gift was given to me, and it was freedom.
So, I don't know.
It was a...
I've definitely learned from that.
But yeah, I... Well, wait a sec.
You said you blew through the money quickly, right?
Yeah.
How much money did your parents turn over to this group?
Well, my dad says that he didn't pay them.
He never wrote a check to them.
I know there were times when I would go to what they call a counseling seminar or whatever.
That would require money spent.
And, you know, he ended up going to Moscow, Russia with this group on a mission trip.
And so, I mean, I know that there was a lot of money.
There was money spent.
I can't put a figure on it.
Mostly because he says he never spent any money, gave any money to the group.
But, you know, I don't know.
It's just...
I hate that I'm laughing about this.
And why do you think you're laughing about it?
Defense.
It's just a defense mechanism.
No, I understand that.
That's why I'm laughing about it.
Why is it manifesting itself in this way, right?
Why do you think you're laughing about it?
What happens if you don't?
Cry.
Cry.
And what's wrong with that?
Nothing.
You want to ask about how to be a better dad?
Yeah.
Well, you don't want to be laughing about tragic stuff with your son or daughter, right?
Correct.
Because that will confuse the living shit out of them, right?
Yes.
Right, so having appropriately connected emotions is pretty key to being...
A dad, right?
So this is why I'm asking, right?
What happens if you don't laugh as you cry?
What's wrong with crying?
Listen, your kid is going to ask you about your childhood.
And it starts pretty early.
And my daughter was like two and a half or three when she started asking me about what it was like for me as a boy.
And you can't bullshit them.
Yeah.
I was born little old Fauntleroy on the Martian planet of Betelgeuse, right?
I was raised by some giant gas-bag jellyfish-style creatures which had sexual organs on the end of their trailing tentacles.
Never touched me with those.
That would be inappropriate.
They taught me the language of squid, right?
I mean, you can...
Right?
You can't bullshit them.
I mean, you can't traumatize them, right?
She hit me like this.
Boom, boom.
Right?
But...
You are going to get asked about this stuff.
And if you laugh, it's going to be very disconcerting.
And if you laugh, your son or your daughter will lose respect for you.
If your children lose respect for you, you are in for a long, long haul as a parent.
Your children lose respect for you.
It's like suddenly, go about your life with a 250 pound anvil tied to your scrotum.
Well, I guess you can get around, not too comfortable.
And you know, you're always concerned if the elevator stops suddenly and escalators are a problem, right?
Right.
Parenting is great fun when there's mutual respect, but you need to do whatever you can to maintain the respect of your child, and that means to be direct and honest with your child and to have emotions that are kind of in line with rational values, right?
Now what was done to you was an abomination, right?
Right.
And it's not ended, right?
Right.
Oh, it's...
Because your dad is like, well, I never believed any of that shit, right?
Right.
Oh, fuck you?
What do you mean you never believed?
You put me through all of that?
Right.
For something you didn't even believe in?
Yeah.
Right?
Right.
You never gave them any money?
Well, then it wasn't a...
Right?
Yeah.
Right, so you're still being bullshitted, right?
Right.
Yes, I think it's a process.
We're definitely in the conversation.
My dad is not somebody that is not going to converse with me and talk through this stuff.
So it's something I do.
You say that you're still in the conversation.
You're not in the conversation if you're being lied to.
That's true.
That's like saying, well, I'm still in the transaction when someone pulls a gun and demands your wallet.
Well, we're still negotiating.
No, you're not.
Because one of you has a gun, right?
Right.
So, no, you're not in the conversation.
If you're being lied to.
Has he apologized?
He's apologized.
I don't think he apologized for the homeschooling, but he did I apologize for, you know, especially since this guy's turned out to be a fraud.
Even by Christian standards, this guy's turned out to be a fraud.
Oh, but if he hadn't turned out to be a fraud, that would be okay then, right?
No.
So it's not your father's choice that it was bad or wrong to do this to you.
It's because the guy just happened to be a fraud.
Otherwise, it would have been great, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, it's...
No, it's not his.
He doesn't own the choices.
It's just that this very cunning guy fooled him, right?
Well, yeah, that's the...
I remember I had posted something on my Facebook in relation to this article, and then I mentioned that I'd grown up in a cult.
And my mom and my dad...
My dad and my mom, they called...
That night.
And we talked through it.
And they said, you know, when you said that we grew up in a cult, there were a lot of educated and great and wonderful people that were a part of this.
And at that point, I was mad at the guy that started it because I felt like that he did fool my parents.
And he did fool a whole generation of homeschooling parents.
And peddling this crap.
So wait, weren't your parents, they were defending him then, right?
Or defending the organization?
Defending their choices?
Defending the people that ended up joining this organization.
Which is them?
Yes.
Yeah, see, your phrase, we talked things through, or we talked through it?
Yes.
And I think what most other people mean by that phrase, not the same thing.
Talking through it isn't, I was raised in a cult.
No, there were lots of great, smart, wise, wonderful people in this group.
That's not talking through it.
That's you bringing up a huge complaint and your parents denying that complaint and defending their choices.
That's not called talking through it.
Talking through it is your parents saying, tell us more.
Why did you post that?
Help us understand.
Tell us everything you think, everything you feel, and then for about 19 fucking days straight, no matter how many pots of coffee it takes, listening to you until they fully and completely grok, understand, and get your perspective.
You know, any idiot in the world can defend themselves and deny the legitimate sufferings of their victims, right?
Right.
That's easy.
That's easy.
That's asshole automatic pilot.
Right?
If you've harmed someone, you sit them down and you say, tell me everything that this has done to you.
Tell me everything that is problematic that this has caused you.
I need to understand what this has done to you.
You don't defend, you don't minimize, you don't avoid, you don't deflect.
Alright.
So this is not talking through things.
I see that.
Right, and this is what...
This is all related to how do I become a better father.
Right?
I'm so looking forward to it, because I'm going to be a primary caregiver similar to you.
And I mean, I'm just excited about this prospect of doing this and just letting them be able to have the freedom to do whatever it is that they want, say, you know, within...
Okay, this is great.
I'm glad for your excitement, but you're telling me where it doesn't hurt, right?
Right.
And that's great, but let's focus on where the challenges are, right?
Right.
What are your parents' relationship going to be with your child?
They were always very big about rules at other people's house, whatever other people's rules were.
Mostly, if somebody's child had a rule, it would transfer from the parent.
Sorry to interrupt you.
Sorry to interrupt you.
What is your parents' relationship going to be with your son or your daughter?
I hadn't thought about that in...
I was, you know, just assuming that they would be grandparents.
We live about three hours, four hours away from them, so they're...
Okay, and I'm not telling you what you should or shouldn't do.
I don't know, right?
Right.
But if your parents did significant harm to you and are defending their actions...
And are minimizing or ignoring your suffering.
Right.
Then they are, I would argue, toxic to you, which is going to be destructive to your child.
Yes.
You can have whoever you want in your life if you're a single person, but when you get married, and particularly when you have children, You no longer have those choices, right?
Right.
As openly as if you're just harming yourself.
Like, you can drink every night you get home from work if you want, but not if you're a parent, right?
Right.
So when you're going to have a kid, then you have to look...
You know how you childproof your house?
You probably don't need a lot of gates on the stairs and things stuck into electrical sockets to make sure kids don't put their fingers in there.
You don't need any of that stuff, right?
But when you are going to have a kid, you've got to childproof your house, right?
Right.
Well, which means remove things from the house that are dangerous to children, right?
You understand what I'm saying, right?
Yes.
That is sinking in.
So, I think you've got, you know, you've got until September 20th.
I think you've really got to sit down, in my opinion, really sit down and try and work these things out with your parents, right?
So if you say, look, I was raised in a cult.
Well, that is a huge and very serious thing to say to your parents, right?
Right.
And the fact that you didn't say it to your parents, but instead in social media, is important.
And that your parents reacted in the way that they reacted is important as well.
Does your wife believe that you were raised in a cult?
Yes, she considers it very strange.
You're laughing again.
You've got to stop that.
No, seriously.
I can't talk to you if you're going to keep laughing about this stuff.
Sorry.
Like, I can't.
I'd love to.
I can't.
I understand.
Because it keeps throwing me off any kind of connection that I might have with you.
Because the hand of your parents keeps coming between The light growing between you and I, right?
Right.
So I don't mean to be harsh, but I can't talk to you if you keep doing that.
I understand.
So I asked if your wife believes that you were raised in a cult and you laughed and said, yes, she thinks it was very strange.
Very strange does not mean a cult, right?
Does she believe that you were raised in a cult?
Yes.
Okay.
Okay.
What does she think about having your parents around her child?
We need to talk about that.
Have you not talked about it?
Has she not raised any concerns?
No, because I believe when we've thought about it, we've thought about it in our...
If they were around, would they physically hurt or harm the child?
Dude, they're physically hurting and harming our conversation.
The laughter is for them, right?
It's to minimize your pain for the sake of placating your parents.
They're already interfering in you and I's communication.
Yes.
To the point where it's getting me upset.
And I'm just some stranger on the internet, right?
Yes.
So the idea that if they don't hit you, Then no harm, no foul is incorrect.
You must prepare your heart for being a parent by making sure that there is nothing in your life that interferes with the free and open flow of your emotions to your child.
Nothing.
Now, that means to me connecting with your parents and figuring out what the hell happened and making sure that they listen to your issues.
But anything that closes off your heart is wrong to have around you as a parent.
Anything that makes you feel the opposite of what you really feel, anything that makes you false to yourself, anything that makes you turn your legitimate history into a giggle-a-minute talking point, It's unfair to your child.
Your child deserves your complete unfettered and open heart.
And deserves no less than that.
And you don't even know the degree to which your parents are evading responsibility for your history.
And so your parents will be around with all this unresolved stuff.
And all of them All of their energy is focusing on...
Like, you let the cat out of the bag, they know you think you were raised in a cult.
Now they're on high alert, right?
Yes.
So now they're going to be on the watch for any authentic expression of discontent or a problem from you.
And what are they going to do?
Move to block it!
Right?
Right.
Which is a replication of your early childhood experience that you are fundamentally helpless to change.
You cannot change your emotional reaction to your parents.
It's hardwired.
You can't change that any more than someone can say to you a clear sentence in English and you can't understand it.
That's the language you speak.
I can't say to you, I went to the sea yesterday and you not understand that sentence, right?
Correct.
So with your parents, there is a language of repression and control and avoidance and erasure of you that you can't not speak when they're around.
And when that language infects you and infests you, you are then unavailable to your son or your daughter.
That's the last thing I want.
Right.
I get that, and that's why I really appreciate you calling in about this.
Now, I'll just tell you, this is just related to my own experience.
It's not anything that you should or shouldn't do.
For me, my mom is not good at power.
She's not good at handling power over people.
Power turns her into a tyrant.
Knowing how people handle power tells you fundamentally who they are.
How do they handle power over people?
Now, there's no greater power over human beings than there is parent over children, right?
No greater power.
And knowing how people handle power tells you everything you need to know about who they are.
In my particular case, my mom cannot handle power.
It is the vestige of any affection that I have for my mother that I don't see her.
Because My presence turns my mom into a worse person because she will always have power over me because she's my mom.
So I actually provoke her into worse behavior by being around her.
I am the drug she cannot be exposed to that makes her act very poorly, right?
Right.
Very poorly indeed.
And knowing how your parents handled power over you is essential to understand You also need to figure out why your wife doesn't seem to see any of this.
Right?
And if your wife wants to call it another time, that's fine too.
But there's something in your wife's history that has not helped you to overcome the laughter about the tragedies of your history.
And there's something in your wife's history that does not Lend her to be able to watch your back in these areas?
To keep you safe, to keep you protected?
Because you're telling me all sorts of nonsense, which, you know, you believe and seems legitimate to you, and that's because it seems legitimate to your wife, right?
Yeah.
And so there's something, obviously, in her family or her history that has short-circuited her capacity to protect you.
And, therefore, to protect herself, because anything which damages you is going to damage her, right?
Yeah.
So, the conversation is also to have with your wife, which is, well, my parents were terrible abusers.
I told you I was raised in a cult.
Why have we not talked about whether they're going to be part of my son's life or not?
That's definitely a place to start.
I think so.
I think so.
And if your parents remain unrepentant, like truly repentant, not like, well, we're sorry if you were upset, but we were doing the best week, like truly, truly repentant.
And true repentance is an act of receiving, not giving, right?
So people think that they push out an apology and then it's done, right?
Yes.
It's not true.
True repentance...
Is when you openly examine and are curious about and receptive to the harm that you've caused others.
And it will be months of conversations initiated on the part of your parents to ask you about your experience of your childhood and their parenting where they continue to ask questions and continue to ask questions and do not defend.
Against what they've done and do not minimize.
It will be months of questions on the part of your parents seeking to examine the effects of their choices and their parenting on you.
That would give me comfort at least about your capacity to remain emotionally available to your child in the presence of your parents.
And this doesn't mean if they're physically over, right?
People always say, well, but they're hours away, right?
No.
They're in your head, dude.
Right.
They're pulling the laugh lever, right?
Right.
And it can be a phone call.
It can be reading a book with a character who reminds you of your dad.
It can be watching a show about victims of religious cults.
It can be hearing something on the news.
Anything, anything can trigger this stuff if it's not processed, if it's not resolved, right?
Right.
So it doesn't matter how far away they are.
I have not seen my mother in 13 years.
I can still get triggered.
It's not like everybody's mommy and daddy issues die with their mommies and daddies, right?
Right.
Well, we live three hours away.
You can even live an entire state of life away.
Not a different state, but a different state of life.
Alive versus dead.
They'll still visit.
They'll still call.
They'll still pop up in your dreams.
They'll still pop up in your emotional reactions.
They'll still always be there.
We are haunted houses of history.
Nobody that we meet ever dies while we are alive.
They're all in us.
This is why it's so important to limit your exposure to toxins.
Everybody we interact with inhabits us.
They get hit by a bus tomorrow and they remain within us until we get hit by our bus, in which case we live on in the minds of other people.
We are memes, not even people fundamentally.
There are many more copies of us in the world than there are us.
It's kind of scary, but...
It's true, though.
And you're about to make the most significant copy of all.
Yes.
And those first impressions are going to be very, very important.
Yes.
So that's...
Yeah, so, I mean, yeah, talk about things with your wife, talk about things with your parents, and I would certainly suggest talking with a therapist.
I was...
Yeah, to process some of this stuff.
Sorry, go ahead.
I was going to a therapist and I stopped going for no good reason, but I feel like I'm going to pick that up.
I'll probably make an appointment for next week.
There was no good reason for me to stop.
We had just gotten pregnant and moving and all sorts of other things, but that's no excuse not to go.
Well, it's probably because you got pregnant, right?
Yes, that's been a big thing in trying to adapt.
No, no, what I mean is you get pregnant and that's going to...
Children bring parents back into your life, right?
Right.
You can kind of be a free-range child when you're in your early 20s, right?
I don't know how old you are, but when you start to have kids, you know...
They're back, right?
Right.
Now they want to be around their grandkids and all that, right?
So therapy and having kids with problematic parents, well, something's got to give, right?
Right.
So, yeah, I hope, yeah, I'm sure you will do all of that stuff, but those would be my thoughts.
Just whatever keeps you as open as possible and try to figure out with your wife why this stuff wasn't a topic.
I would sort of like to, I would feel more comfortable if you understood that because it's, you know, could happen again in the future where this stuff, and, you know, if your parents are around you and around your son, then that's certainly going to happen again.
You need someone to watch your back, so that would be my suggestion.
She has asked if she could help.
I think there have been times that I have not opened...
She has asked about it and has shown empathy, and I believe there have been times that I have not chosen to interact with her and tell her fully about it, other than make the laughs and the jokes.
And...
Which is weird because there's a lot of areas we're really close and we seem to talk about, but this area...
Even this area just is a...
It's tough to...
I don't know why I feel like I have to protect her.
So I will...
Well, no, it's quite simple.
You keep thinking of yourself as a unity...
You're not.
You're a multiplicity.
You're an ecosystem.
Right?
So, your parents are afraid of you truly connecting with another person because that will come at their expense if they remain avoidant, right?
Right.
Does that make sense?
Yes.
True connection with other people is the ultimate counterfeit detection machine, right?
Right.
And for people passing bad bills, they don't want you to have that counterfeit detection machine.
So anytime you try to really connect with your wife, your inner parents are going to move in to block that, right?
Because you still think that you're like one person with one set of motivations.
No.
The people who profit from you not knowing true love will move to block you achieving and maintaining true love.
My brother said about my wife, to be, when she was still my fiancé, my brother said, I said, well, you're not really spending that much time with her.
And he said, well, why would I bother?
You're just going to get divorced anyway.
Wow.
Wow.
Here I criticize other people for laughing, but this is so long ago now that I have a little bit of time, I've had a little bit of time to process.
I mean, but that is completely understandable.
Because if I had someone in my life who really loved me and who I really connected with and who was really perceptive, what would they say or what would she say about him?
So it's a preemptive strike, right?
Right.
I do know that my wife, I think when we ventured into this, I do know she feels a little bit of animosity towards them.
Good.
Good.
I do know that that is...
Well, water that fence.
It's important.
It's important.
And, you know, of course you do as well, right?
Right.
Well, Steph, this has been good, and I hope that maybe I can schedule another call before September 20th.
And I found out about you when you got on the Joe Rogan show and actually when I started, it was around January when I heard the podcast from Joe Rogan and that's when I really just started devouring your stuff and then I've subscribed and so I just want you to know I really appreciate the hate to use but I mean the work that you're doing and It's
been a, and I hate to use another cliche term, but almost a blessing.
It's been really helpful.
No, I really, really appreciate that, and thank you.
So much for the trust and the vulnerability of calling in.
I mean, it speaks volumes to your character, and I think it's magnificent what you're doing in preparing.
I'm glad you've got some time, and I really appreciate you taking the feedback, and I hope it's helpful.
Thank you so much.
Just keep doing what you're doing, and I'm looking forward to hearing you and Joe, whatever y'all talk about.
Well, thanks very much.
It'll be great.
Mike, can I just ask you to give me a minute or two?
Izzy's a little upset about something.
I just want to check on what it's in.
If you'd just like to give some announcements.
And Phil, go!
I'd appreciate that.
Just give me like a minute or two.
Not a problem.
Not a problem.
Will this be the time for me to break out my tap dancing routine?
Steph's going to actually be appearing at the Toronto Bitcoin Expo 2014.
It's April 11th through 13th at the Metro Toronto Convention Center in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Should be a good time.
I know Andreas Antonopoulos is going to be there.
I know Jeffrey Tucker is going to be there.
I'm going to be there.
Steph's obviously going to be there.
Steph's going to give a speech.
We're trying to do some roundtable stuff as well, so it should be fun.
And then Steph is also going to be appearing at the Next Web Europe conference.
That is April 24th and 25th.
In Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
That's going to be a really, really fun time.
I'm talking with the organizers right now, doing some media stuff for it, and it's a pretty big conference.
And we're actually going to be announcing sometime soon, Steph is going to be appearing at a Las Vegas Bitcoin conference.
We just agreed to that today, so we should be announcing that in the very, very near future.
Yo.
Oh, there you are.
All right.
Finish talking about me.
Who is next?
All right.
Up next is David.
And David wrote in and asked, How can a secular system of morality be objective?
If it can be objective, how can a specific set of moral guidelines be proven more virtuous than others?
Hmm.
All right.
We have only about 90 seconds to deal with this because it's really a tricky, tricky question.
No, it's not.
It's not too bad.
All right.
Was it David?
Yes, David.
Well, thank you.
Did you want to add anything to the question?
I want to make sure we sort of really get it.
No, I think that's pretty much my question.
It sort of relies in some ways on how...
I don't know if I fully understand your views on morality.
I've watched a bunch of your videos, but I haven't seen a video where you sum it up entirely, so perhaps...
Yeah.
Well, my views on morality are that if you're going to make A proposition for universally preferable behavior.
Morality is universally preferable behavior.
In other words, it is not culturally dependent, right?
So we generally don't say, but in this culture, murder and child molestation are okay, so we have zero moral problem with it.
That usually is not the case.
Even within a country, other cultures, Sharia law is not valid in Canada and so on, right?
So it's universally preferable behavior is the way that I propose that morality be understood.
And the reason that we needed a new phrase rather than morality It's because morality is religious or statist in nature, right?
So morality is a word that's owned by governments, i.e.
force, and religion, i.e.
superstition.
Force and superstition are the polar opposites of philosophy, so I didn't want to use the same word that had been co-opted.
by the opposite of philosophy to work in philosophy.
So universally preferable behavior tends to be a little bit more clear for people.
Now, when it comes to defining universally preferable behavior, Well, I guess the first question that people say is, is there any such thing as universally preferable behavior?
And I would say no.
There's no such thing as a principle, right?
I mean, there's no such thing as the scientific method.
There's no such thing as mathematics.
But that doesn't mean they're subjective or anything like that.
They don't exist like a rock or an atom or anything like that.
So...
So no, it doesn't exist.
And then people say, well, why should I even accept universally preferable behavior as a standard?
At which point, people don't understand that they are proposing universally preferable behavior.
What they're saying is, I shouldn't believe it until it's proven.
Yes, that makes sense.
But that is a standard of universally preferable behavior.
In other words, the acceptance of an argument, if it is rational and empirical or whatever, right?
Or they're proposing skepticism.
As universally preferable behavior.
Sorry, go ahead.
I say my main issue with it is that I feel like in some cases, what is a universally preferable behavior is based on what a preferable universe looks like to each individual.
No, no, no.
That's like saying that science is that which is preferable to each individual.
But science is not trying to attempt to say anything about...
Like, a rock is a rock.
You can't argue that a rock is not a rock.
But if something like, how good does an apple taste, you can't say that...
No, how good does an apple taste has something to do with science, right?
In that apples are generally not poisonous to human beings, right?
As opposed to arsenic, right?
And I feel like that's similar to morality.
Well, no, you see, but this is the universally part of it, right?
I understand.
Universally preferable behavior.
If it is subject to each person's preference, it cannot be in the realm of morality.
Because morality is enforceable on others.
We arrest people, we put them in jail.
It is enforceable on others.
I'm sorry?
I'm sort of rejecting the idea that morality is something that we can, that is objective and that we can use to make objective actions.
No, you're not rejecting it.
No, sorry.
To be precise, I don't mean this in any negative way, you're not rejecting it.
You're simply defining morality as something that is subjective.
And then saying, look, morality is subjective.
But that's just your definition.
That's not a proof, right?
But the issue I have is that...
Sorry, I'm trying to think here.
No, it's fine.
But you understand what I'm saying, right?
Like, if I say, this lizard is a mammal...
Yeah.
But look, it's cold-blooded like the others, therefore biology makes no sense.
Well, I'm just defining this lizard as a mammal, even though it's a reptile, right?
I mean, if you define morality as subjective, then of course universal morality cannot exist.
I completely agree with you.
The question is, is universally preferable behavior subjective?
Now, universally preferable doesn't mean everyone prefers it.
Like a bank robber prefers to steal and not get caught.
The bank owner prefers not to steal and to catch the bank robber.
They both have opposite preferences.
And they're probably pretty universal, right?
But that is not universally preferable behavior.
Right?
So a lion wants to eat the gazelle.
The gazelle doesn't want to get eaten by the lion.
Right, but they're both trying to survive.
Survival would be the universal, but the win-lose is specific to each species, right?
Yes, that makes sense.
Okay, so when it comes to universally preferable behavior, the question is, can we define behavior that can be universally preferred by everyone?
Now, that doesn't mean, is it universally preferred?
But can it be?
So, mathematics is a way of understanding the relationships between numbers and functions and relations and all that kind of stuff.
Now, it is universal.
In that two and two make four is the same in Philadelphia as in Kathmandu or Constantinople or whatever, right?
Yeah.
It's universal.
It's preferred.
In other words, if you want to know the correct relationship between numbers, you have to use mathematics.
You can't use prayer.
You can't read chicken entrails or randomly guess or anything or paint random symbols while blindfolded.
It's universal.
It's preferable.
And it's behavior in that mathematics needs to be written out in some form.
It needs to be communicated in some objective form.
You can't say, like there's no math test where you say, I'm thinking of the correct answer and they give you an A, right?
It has to be acted on even if it's just written down.
It has to be communicated in some objective matter, right?
Now, the fact that mathematics can be universally preferable behavior doesn't mean that everyone likes math, right?
Yes, that makes sense.
So, can it be universally preferable?
Well, yeah, I think mathematics, scientific method, the same sort of thing, right?
So, when it comes to morality, the question is, can we come up with behavior that can be universally preferable for everyone?
Now, doesn't mean does everyone, of course, right?
That doesn't matter, but can it be?
That's the first hurdle that moral Questions need to overcome.
Now, when it comes to something like murder, well, can everyone murder everyone at the same time?
Can murder, the act of murder, be universally preferable behavior?
No.
No, why not?
If everyone was murdering everyone, then everyone would be dead, but...
No, no, that's not why.
That's not why.
I mean, the world would just be chaos if everyone was murdering everyone.
No, that's an argument from effect.
That doesn't have anything to do with it.
That's saying, well, there would be negative consequences, right?
But that's like saying this mathematical equation is bad because it might produce a nuclear bomb.
That doesn't mean it's bad, right?
It's valid or it's invalid, right?
So it can't be consequentialism, right?
Why can't everyone...
It's tricky, but when you see it, it's like, oh, of course, right?
Why can't everyone murder everyone at the same time?
I don't know if I can figure out the answer.
Well, murder has to be unwanted, right?
Yes, obviously.
Right.
So, otherwise it's euthanasia, or it's not exactly the same category, right?
But let's take something that's even easier, and we'll come back to murder in a sec.
So theft.
People can't all steal from each other at the same time.
Because stealing is unwanted, right?
So if you say, listen, can I borrow your car?
And I say, yes, the keys are under a rock by my porch, right?
And you go and find the keys and drive off with the car, that's not stealing, right?
Yeah.
Whereas if you just find the rock, find the key, run off with the car, that is stealing because I don't want you to do it.
I haven't given permission, right?
Yeah.
So people can't all steal from each other at the same time because that means that everybody would be taking everyone else's property with stealing as a universally preferable behavior.
In other words, I want you to steal from me.
I want you to have my property.
I want you to take my property because stealing is universally preferable behavior, right?
Yes.
But if I want you to take my property, it's not theft.
I agree.
So stealing cannot be universally preferable behavior because the moment it becomes universally preferable, it ceases to exist as a category.
It self-detonates.
Because if everybody wants everyone to steal from them, There's no such thing as stealing.
Yeah, that makes sense.
It seems like that system might be harder to apply to more complex moral questions, though.
Wait, wait, wait.
Come on.
We've just had a huge breakthrough here.
Let's not immediately leap through to abortion and whatever, right?
Euthanasia and all that sort of stuff, right?
Okay.
So murder, in the same way, murder cannot be universally preferable because then everybody would want to both kill and be killed, which means it wouldn't be murder.
Yes.
Right?
It's the same thing with rape.
Yeah.
Right?
If I, quote, want you to rape me, right?
It's not rape.
It may be rough play.
It may be kinky as all hell.
There may be various fantasies involving a Samuel L. Jackson mask.
I don't know.
But it's not rape, right?
Yep.
If you sign a consent form ahead of time, right, it can't be rape.
Yep.
Just making a note here.
Can't wait to hear from Samuel L. Jackson's lawyers.
Anyway.
Okay, so...
So rape and murder and theft, same thing with assault, right?
If I voluntarily get into a boxing ring, can I charge the other guy with assault?
No.
No.
Of course not.
I'm there voluntarily, right?
And so assault is only if you're not there voluntarily, you don't accept it as part of the risk of doing whatever you're doing, right?
Yeah.
So rape, theft, murder and assault cannot be universally preferable behavior because the moment they become universally preferable they cease to exist as undesired actions and therefore they cease to exist as moral categories.
So theft cannot be universally, stealing cannot be universally preferable behavior, but respecting other people's property can be, right?
Everyone can simultaneously respect everyone else's property, right?
Yes.
But they can't steal.
Stealing cannot be universally preferable behavior, but respect for property rights can be, right?
Yes.
And in the same way, rape...
Everybody cannot rape.
Everybody cannot murder.
Everyone cannot assault.
Everyone cannot steal.
It is possible to achieve it as universally preferable behavior, and the opposite of those moral rules is not achievable.
Makes sense.
So, now, we've murder, rape, theft, assault.
These are the major moral categories that all moral systems uphold, for the most part, and And so, you know, we've done a huge thing here.
We've said that only the respect for property rights and personhood and life and self-ownership, these are universally preferable behaviors.
And this doesn't mean that people won't violate these rules all the time.
There's lots of people who come to conclusions, pretend to come to conclusions about the world who don't use the scientific method.
They're just incorrect, right?
And I would argue that the number of people who violate moral rules is very small and almost completely harmless relative to the number of people who mistakenly apply incorrect moral rules, right?
Yes.
Right, so the fact that people think that taxation is justified and war is heroic and so on and drug users must be put in prison.
I mean, these people are really dangerous.
I've never been mugged, but I get mugged every day by the government.
I don't care that much about muggers.
I do care about people who think their false moral theories are correct.
Okay, so did you want a more challenging moral question?
Sure.
Perhaps euthanasia?
Euthanasia is, I think fairly clearly, the destruction of one's property is a moral prerogative, right?
I mean, I can drop a brick on my own iPad, right?
Yeah.
I can destroy my own property.
And the first property that I own...
And the only property I can't unown, I can give away my iPad, I can't give away my body, right?
While I'm alive.
So the only property I cannot disown is my own body.
Therefore, it is my most foundational and fundamental self-ownership.
If we have the right to destroy our own property, then we have the right to destroy ourselves, of course.
It's our own property.
I would agree with that, yes.
Um...
I'm sorry, I'm really tired and nervous right now, so I'm having trouble kind of voicing my concern, but I just have trouble, like I understand, I guess the universal, perhaps the universally preferable behavior, the way you state it like that makes it make more sense, rather than like,
morally implying that it is necessarily the correct action, instead it's just the most preferable action That could be taken for others and perhaps yourself as well.
I don't think I said anything about that.
If you want to bring something else into the topic, that's fine.
But I haven't said anything about actions preferable to others.
I thought that was what you meant by universally preferable behavior.
When you take an action that is universally preferable behavior, it is generally better for others, no?
Is that not why it's universally preferable?
Oh, no.
No, I don't believe that's true at all.
I mean, I assume that almost all moral revolutions or evolutions are considered to be evil, unpleasant, and horrible to others.
Right?
So, you know, the idea that, you know, a moral progress, right?
So, when the world fought very hard to end slavery, you know, there were lots of people who justified slaves and who owned slaves and so on, right?
Yes.
And those people found that moral advancement to be heinous, right?
Because they were basically being told that they were evil, whereas before they assumed they were being virtuous, right?
Yes.
Although slavery also is just bad.
As you've said before, slavery is bad for society as well.
Like, it just doesn't work very well.
No, no.
I don't know what I've...
I mean, I can't remember, of course, everything I've said about slavery.
I don't imagine...
That's like saying that wheat cakes are bad for elves because they don't have gluten processors or whatever, right?
There's no such thing as society, right?
Slavery was good for a few people and it was bad for others, right?
Let me give you another example, right?
So if the libertarian argument against the welfare state holds sway and people begin to understand that the welfare state is violent in its nature and so on, right?
It's wrong.
Well, there's going to be a diminishment and eventual curtailing the ending of the welfare state, right?
Yes.
How comfortable is that going to be for a lot of people who are currently receiving benefits through the welfare state?
Not very comfortable.
Not very comfortable at all, right?
Yes.
So, and it's going to be a lot more uncomfortable for those people than it's going to be comfortable for other people, which is kind of why it holds sway at a democracy, right?
Yeah, but that to me is why something should be done.
If more people agree with it, or it is better for the majority of people in society, that seems to me why something should be done.
For example, right now a lot of people are benefiting from the welfare state, but less people than there are people that are not benefiting from the welfare state.
Which is why the welfare state is bad.
Wait.
So, if more people are benefiting from something, then it should stay.
But if more people are not benefiting from it, then it should not stay?
I don't necessarily think you can maybe have an ultimatum there.
But, like, quality also plays a role in it.
What do you mean by benefiting?
What?
Do you mean they just want it?
Well, it could benefit them in a variety of ways.
I'm sort of thinking like utilitarianism in a sense.
Oh no, I get that.
I'm just trying to understand what you mean by it.
So, I would argue that people may benefit materially from stolen goods, but it's not really good for them in any fundamental moral sense, right?
Well, what is the thing that is bad for them about that?
Oh, about receiving stolen goods?
Yeah.
Well, I mean, it's destructive to their self-esteem to be on the receiving end of stolen goods.
So then I would argue personally that that's what is bad about stealing stolen goods.
That's why sometimes I'm confused about why you need to have this moral gap.
Or just these conversations about morality when the consequences of...
Oh, because...
They'll never...
I mean...
Because people can't be persuaded in terms of their self-interest, right?
Don't self-interest usually persuade people?
You've heard of smoking, right?
But that's why you need to try and convince people of what is the long-term interest, because people don't realize that people sometimes are only interested in the short-term gains and don't necessarily...
No, but you seem very confident that you can tell people what is their interest.
What is in their long-term interest?
What is to their benefit?
What is...
I don't know any of those things.
Like, I don't know.
I honestly don't know whether somebody should smoke or not.
So then, can you make a judgment on whether someone can smoke or not if you don't know whether someone can smoke or not?
Well, no.
I mean, there's certainly negative consequences to smoking.
There are negative consequences to smoking, but there are also very positive consequences to smoking.
And whether or not to smoke, I think should be up to the individual weighing those consequences.
As long as they accrue the consequences to themselves, then yes.
But there's no, at least in my opinion, I haven't been convinced that there would be some moral argument to say that smoking is objectively right or wrong.
Correct.
And for a lot of things, I think that is also the case.
No, no, no.
But smoking is not initiating force or fraud against others, right?
That's true.
Right?
So, oh, the other thing, too, is that if you're a heavy smoker and you're a parent, then you could make arguments, right?
Yeah.
If your expected lifespan is less than the maturation date of your children, then you're not doing...
The right thing.
You've taken on a responsibility that you can't fulfill if you're going to act in such an unhealthy and dangerous manner and so on.
So there's some oblique argument about that, whether a heavy smoker, an old heavy smoker with very young children is really a very fit parent.
But no, I mean, because that's self-harm, right?
Yeah.
But I can say no man should just go up and stab another guy.
Why did someone not stab another guy?
Well, we already went through this, right?
Because the initiation...
Because assault can't be universally preferable behavior.
But I feel like the consequences of that is what is...
Is what is the issue?
Not because the action is necessarily objectively wrong.
And I think that's what I was trying to say when I sort of, I didn't think that.
Oh, sorry.
But no, the language needs to be very clear, right?
I think I... There's no objective right or wrongness that attaches itself to an action.
I think a lot of...
You know, like how you have those sharks that they have, those remoras or whatever they are, those little clampy things, lampreys that stick under their jaws and so on, right?
They attach themselves to those sharks, but there's no...
Moral judgment or rightness or wrongness that attaches itself to an action.
What I can say is that assault cannot be universally preferable behavior.
And therefore, any theory that justifies assault as universally preferable behavior is incorrect.
When you put it as universally preferable rather than moral, and especially with the way some people view morality as an objective...
Property of the universe, that's what I sort of...
I think you definitely make sense there.
Okay, good.
Well, then that's sort of the way that I approach it.
Yeah, universally preferable makes sense to me.
I was sort of rejecting the idea that some people have, which you clearly don't have, that there is an objective property of morality that exists in the universe.
Oh no, no, I don't.
That's a deistic kind of thing.
That's like saying you pray to God for scientific answers and therefore the knowledge of everything scientific exists in the mind of God as an objective property of the universe.
No, no, I mean it's a human methodology for determining truth from falsehood.
It doesn't exist independent of the process.
Like math.
Yeah, like math.
That makes a lot more sense then.
Okay, good.
Good.
So, now, I use UPB, ethics, morality, and so on.
But I think that...
So, back to your sort of question, how can a secular system of morality be objective?
Well, I think we've talked about that.
If it can be objective, how can a specific set of moral guidelines be proven more virtuous than others?
Well, I don't think you can prove them more virtuous.
I think you can prove, like, because to me, morality is a subset of philosophy.
And what that means is that there's two standards of proof within philosophy.
The first and major one is logical consistency, right?
I mean, a proposition has to be logically consistent.
If it is not logically consistent, you stop right there, right?
Stop right there!
I gotta know right now!
You gotta stop right there and say, you know, go back and start again.
I don't care what happens from here.
If your theory is logically inconsistent, then no worky, right?
And it's the same thing in physics and biology, right?
Like if I go to a physics conference and say, okay, for my 200-page biological thesis to work, What are they going to say?
Ah, you're crazy.
going to say, look, I don't care what's on page two, three, four, you know, 143 or 199.
What's on page one is completely contradictory and therefore nothing good can come out of it, right?
Yep.
Yeah.
First, if we assume that two is a unicorn and go from there, it's like, whoa, wait, wait, wait.
The two and unicorn thing is really troubling me, right?
So I wouldn't say that we could say a specific set of moral guidelines could be proven more virtuous than others.
But if somebody proposes universally preferable behavior that is logically inconsistent, Illogical, irrational, or whatever.
So if I say, okay, well look, we have one group of human beings not in blue costumes who are not allowed to initiate force to transfer property.
And that would be absolutely immoral.
On the other hand, there's all these guys.
They're not allowed to do it between the ages of 5 p.m.
and 9 a.m.
But at 9 or 9.01, when they put on this blue costume, then for those people and those people alone, it becomes universally preferable behavior to initiate the use of force to transfer property.
And then at 5 o'clock, when they take that uniform off, or maybe even when they're on their break, it is now immoral.
It's evil for them, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So this would be, it would make no sense at all, right?
It literally is like saying, okay, it's a mammal until 2 a.m.
in the morning, and then without changing any of its physical properties, it turns into a reptile, and then it turns into an amoeba, and then it turns into a unicorn, and then it goes back to being a mammal with no changes in its physical properties.
Then people would say, well, you're just talking crazy.
I don't even want to be near whatever shit you're smoking because that just makes no sense at all, right?
So when you have ridiculously complex and opposing moral rules for various categories of human beings, even though you fully admit that they're all human beings, then your theory, it makes no sense.
Right?
And so this is statism and this kind of stuff, right?
So just theories that make no sense, you can just throw them out, right?
So statism is just a moral theory that makes no sense because it creates opposing moral categories.
For the exact same entity, which is a human being, and sometimes even for exactly the same human being, depending on the time of day and the proximity of a particular costume.
I mean, that's just insane, right?
So that stuff just doesn't make any sense.
So that's the first test.
Now the second test is, you know, empirical evidence, right?
In other words, if somebody, like even if I don't understand mathematics, If somebody says, I have accounted for all variables in building this bridge and I have built it strong enough to withstand an earthquake, right?
Let's say I don't understand anything about mathematics or engineering and somebody says, man, I have just built the strongest bridge known to mankind.
It can withstand a direct meteor strike, right?
Yeah.
And then a light breeze comes along and blows that thing down.
Do I have to be good at math to know something's not right?
No.
No.
Because the guy's made a claim, and the exact opposite has occurred, right?
Yeah.
So I don't know where he went wrong, but the empirical evidence is he went wrong.
Yeah.
And so when you have a system like communism or the mixed economy, sort of late-stage capitalism or crony capitalism that's going on right now, or you have something like the war on drugs or the war on poverty or whatever, right?
And they say, well, we're going to get rid of poverty in a generation, and then a generation later, poverty is worse.
Or we're going to get rid of drugs, and a generation later, drugs are more prevalent and more concentrated than ever before.
Yep.
Or, you know, this is the war to end all wars, says the First World War.
Woodrow Wilson, I think, said that about the First World War.
And then, you know, 20 years later, it's followed by the Second World War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, just to name the wars of American imperialism, Iraq War, Afghanistan War, Gulf War Part One, Libya, Syria, Chechnya, you name it, right?
So, you don't have to know anything about philosophy to know that the claims made By the founders of these programs have been utterly rejected by empirical evidence.
And then you can sort of work your way backwards.
You know, if you have a mind, when the guy's strongest bridge in the world falls over, when a wind comes by, if you want, you can go back and you'll find the error.
There has to be an error, right?
But you don't have to know anything about mathematics to say, as an engineer, You sucketh, right?
I mean, you're just terrible at it, right?
And so even if people don't know anything about philosophy or the non-aggression principle or property rights, even just looking at things empirically, they can look at all this shit and say, oh my god, the public schools are terrible, the mail delivery sucks, the wars never end, the debt increases, poverty is even worse, drugs are more prevalent, children are more frightened, less educated, and the country's going to hell in a handbasket...
I don't have to be a philosopher to know someone's making a big goddamn mistake somewhere.
And, you know, I think it's the job of the philosophers to sort of point out what's going on.
So it's just the reason and evidence stuff.
Are they logically more consistent, and does the evidence bear out the logical consistency?
Something could be logically consistent and still wrong, right, if the premises are incorrect and all that.
But that's, I think, where I would sort of bring it.
And that's where I think that there's a combination of Rationalism and empiricism, right?
So logic and evidence, which is what works so well in science.
You can have a great hypothesis, you know, it can be consistent, but if it's not consistent with reality, then you've made a mistake, right?
Yeah.
And so it's the same, like, I like the focus that you bring on utilitarianism.
Like, what is the actual effect of what it is that we're doing, right?
Yeah.
But the effect is only used to illuminate the theory.
To validate or invalidate the theory.
So that would be sort of my...
In the same way that science, you do your testing to validate or invalidate the theory, right?
Yeah.
That makes sense.
So does that help at all?
Yeah, that helped a lot.
Thank you.
You're very welcome, and thank you so much for great questions.
And again, free book, University Preferable Behavior.
You might want to have a grind through it.
It certainly explains these things in a bit more detail.
Okay, I'll take a look.
Thank you.
Thanks, man.
Bye.
Bye, David.
Alright, up next is Greg.
And Greg wrote in and said, what do you believe to be the origin of sexual fetishes?
Hello there.
Alright, go ahead.
You're not out of wind from blowing anything up, do you?
No, not blowing things up.
It's a well-greased camel-unicorn hybrid.
It's the only thing that turns me on anymore.
Alright.
I haven't thought of that one yet.
Okay, well, first of all, you have to define for me what a fetish is.
Okay.
Would you like specifically for me...
Pictures.
Pictures?
Pictures, the occasional gif, and 30 to 45 seconds.
No, tell me what you mean by a fetish, because that's a shifty term, to say the least, right?
Yeah, I could agree.
I guess...
The...
For me specifically...
My definition of it would be arousal from images, things, or even types of people.
It could be a whole broad spectrum of things that, I guess, wouldn't be considered normal sexual attraction and arousal.
Well, I think you just kind of circled yourself there, right?
Because a fetish is sort of considered to be outside the norm, and then you said, well, it's being aroused by anything outside the norm, but the word fetish already has sort of in it outside the norm.
Yes.
And now you could say, well, okay, it's sexual arousal for non-procreative sex.
But that includes blowjobs, right?
And you really can argue that blowjob is a fetish.
Otherwise, aren't we all fetishists?
So I think that it's tough.
I don't know if anyone has in the chat window anything more objective.
I mean, it's one of these things like pornography.
It's tough to define it, but you know it when you see it.
I don't know what is a...
What is a fetish?
Let me just...
Sorry, I've got another computer in the chat room.
Well, true, because I've never really come up, I guess, or really even thought.
I've obviously looked up the word plenty of times, but...
Well, and I would imagine that of all the people on the internet, the people who are currently in the chat room at Free Domain Radio would pretty much be the experts.
So...
I suppose I could do the same thing here.
Yeah, just go to the good old wiki.
Yeah, is there a wiki?
I mean, definition of it that we can work with?
Let's see.
Sexual fetishism.
Wikipedia.
If you want, do you want me to...
Unless he's got really good voice dictation, he's not going to be able to help us with our definition at the moment.
Enjoy yourself, my friend.
Do you want me to read it out here?
No.
Sure.
Okay, sexual fetishism or erotic fetishism is the sexual arousal a person receives from a physical object or form a specific situation.
Sorry, did they say a physical object?
The object or situation, hmm?
He said sexual arousal from a physical object or from a specific situation.
The object or situation of interest is called the fetish.
The person who has a fetish for that object slash situation is a fetishist.
That doesn't help me too much.
You know, objects...
Mouth, situation, blowjob.
Does that make me a fetishist?
I've kind of thought about the same things before.
I guess what I've read before, how could we consider then, say, breasts?
Since breasts is...
But there's good reasons for men...
Well, first of all, most women have an extreme fetish for middle-aged man boobs.
That's what I tell myself pretty much every morning while doing a slow shake in front of the mirror.
But for men to have a preference for large breasts, well, I mean, obviously it indicates sexual maturity.
And secondly, it indicates having a fairly ample food supply, right?
Yes.
So, I mean, just off the top of my head, so to speak.
Plus, you know, it's hard to do, you know, motorboat in any other particular way.
So, that's not a fetish, I think.
I mean, that's like saying that women have a fetish for healthy males.
It's like, no, that's right.
No, I wouldn't consider it either.
Let's just see here.
Mike, you've done a lot of extensive research in this topic.
I thought we said we weren't going to discuss this on the show.
No, what do you think, fetish?
Let's get everyone involved.
It's tough to define.
It's very tough to define.
Do you...
I mean, I would be fairly comfortable discussing it, because I have talked about it with plenty of people before, or at least people that I'm close to, but specifically my own fetish.
Oh yeah, okay, let's go for that.
As long as you're not the adult diaper guy that was a bit tricky before.
No.
Go for it.
I don't know if this would be...
I guess to me I wouldn't consider it worse, but maybe some people would.
But my specific fetish, the name for it is vorrophilia, or short, vor.
Basically, that means that I can be aroused by either the thought of or even seeing a person being eaten alive.
But there's many different facets of it, whether it involves blood, so on and so forth.
And for me specifically, it's what's considered soft war, which doesn't involve any blood.
It just involves being swallowed whole.
Wait, you being swallowed whole by a human being?
And that's where it diverges as well.
It doesn't necessarily have to be a human being.
For me, it's usually not.
It's more like some fat monster.
Like a shark or something.
Or even that sometimes, or a snake, you know, things like that.
Right, right.
No, that's fine.
Look, I appreciate you bringing this up.
Because I read something.
Let me just see if I can find it.
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
Armin Muse.
Have you heard of him at all?
Armin Muse.
I am not familiar with that name.
Okay.
Well, this may be fab worthy for you then.
Let me just see if I can get this up for you, so to speak.
Okay, so Armin Mews.
Wait, how do you spell it?
I read the story and I'm afraid I'm just going to share the horror with you, but anyway.
Actually, it may not be a horror for you, but anyway.
Okay, Mike, if you could just cue the 70s disco music.
Armin Mews is a German man who achieved international notoriety for killing and eating a voluntary victim whom he had found via the internet.
After Mews and the victim jointly attempted to eat the victim's severed penis, Mews killed his victim and proceeded to eat a large amount of his flesh.
Because of his acts, Muse is also known as the Rottenberg Cannibal, or the Master Butcher.
His main occupation was working as a computer repair technician.
Looking for a willing volunteer, Muse posted an advertisement on the website The Cannibal Cafe.
The site did have a disclaimer mentioning the distinction between reality and fantasy, so that's important.
Muse posted that he was looking for a well-built 18 to 30-year-old to be slaughtered and then consumed.
Bernd Jürgen Armando Brandes, an engineer from Berlin, then answered the advertisement.
Many other people responded to the advertisement but backed out.
Mewes did not attempt to force them to do anything against their will.
As is known from a videotape the two made when they met in Mewes' home in the small town of Rottenburg, Mewes amputated Brandes' penis and the two men attempted to eat the penis together before Brandes was killed.
Brandis had insisted that Mews attempt to bite his penis off.
This did not work and ultimately Mews used a knife to remove Brandi's penis.
Brandis apparently then tried to eat some of his own penis raw but could not because it was too tough and as he put it, chewy.
Mews then fried the penis in a pan with salt, pepper, wine and garlic.
I hear the garlic's important.
He then fried it with some of Brandi's fat but by then it was too burned to be consumed.
he then chops it up into chunks and fed it to his dog.
According to court officials who saw the video, which has not been made public, thank heavens, Brandis may already have been too weakened from the bloodlust to eat any of his penis.
Muse read a Star Trek book for three hours of Brandis lay bleeding in the bath.
Muse gave him large quantities of alcohol and painkillers, 20 sleeping pills, and a bottle of schnapps, kissed him, and finally killed him in the room that he had built in his house for this purpose called the slaughter room.
after stabbing Brandy's to death...
In the throat he hung the body on a meat hook and tore chunks of flesh from it.
He tried to grind the bones to use as flour.
The whole scene was recorded on the two-hour videotape.
Mews ate the body over the next 10 months, storing body parts in his freezer under pizza boxes and consuming up to 44 pounds of the flesh.
According to prosecutors, Mews committed the act for sexual enjoyment.
Anyway, we won't necessarily go any further in that.
Thank you.
But this would be obviously a completely insane extrapolation of what it is that you're talking about.
But this is in the general vicinity, right?
Yeah.
Well, that would be hard, human, for...
Right.
It really does sound like some outer space.
When did you first experience this fetish?
I think it's safe to call it a fetish.
Do you, because I have the thought that My first experience was actually when I was about four or five years old, as a dream, that I still remember quite vividly to this day.
What was the dream?
Basically involved, in this instance, it was a human.
It was a giant fat human that was basically going around.
I mean, he was doing other things, but the main premise was it of, you know, eating people.
I mean, just, you know, they were tiny to him.
He could swallow them whole.
Right.
Right.
Okay.
Sorry, go ahead.
Well, I just, and recently I was just really wondering about that dream specifically.
The thought crossed my mind that even the giant perhaps was a representation of an adult and that really kind of struck some kind of chord in me.
I guess subconscious.
I can't recall any conscious memory of anything like that.
Right, right.
Right, okay, and I'm sure you know my next question, right?
Relationship to my parents?
Or what happened exactly, or could have happened in my childhood?
Right.
Well, which specifically would you want answered?
I guess what specifically would you like me to answer?
Or where would you like me to start?
Well, what was your relationship with your brother like?
I don't remember much before the age of four.
I... And I don't...
I don't really remember or have...
recall much interaction at that time.
When I think about it, she was just kind of there.
I remember at least being glad to have her around.
She was the one that I would go to.
If she was on the couch, I would go up to her and cuddle with her.
I really enjoyed being close to her, that touch.
I definitely think I received that somatosensory pleasure or necessity.
Right.
Then, as I got older too, I don't remember much of, or at least I always felt that my interests We're taken into consideration, but there wasn't much curiosity.
You know, there wasn't much tell me more, you know, or why, why is this really interest you?
Which is why I always felt uncomfortable even just saying my thoughts.
You know, why I never really came out to my mother about this stuff until I was...
Which stuff?
19.
About Vore.
I have told her.
I've actually opened up everything.
Pandora's box, I guess.
Which has been received actually quite well by her.
And so we've done a lot of talking within the past two years, ever since I did open up to her.
Or actually even more than that, now four years.
Right.
Was there more you wanted to say or do you want me to ask?
No, you can go ahead and ask.
Okay.
How were you disciplined as a child?
We were spanked.
It...
I asked her how often it happened between the ages of one to four.
She said that it was...
She said she couldn't pin it down, but I would guess at least three times a month.
More or less.
Right.
That's my guess.
After that, it wasn't very often.
I would say relatively.
It shouldn't happen, but...
Maybe three times a year.
Why haven't you mentioned your father?
I know, I've just been asking about your mom.
Yeah, yeah.
My father, he passed away when I was 17.
Right.
We're talking about your childhood, right?
Yeah.
Majority of the spanking that I do remember was done by him.
And in fact, there was an instance, and this is a big thing for me, because I actually believe it happened to me, when it had, in fact, happened to my brother.
My father, supposedly, this is after my brother bit him, for reasons I don't know, my brother can't recall.
I asked him about it.
My father lifted him up by his neck and slammed him up against the wall.
And tell me a little bit more, how old were you and how old was your brother?
At the time, he was, I believe he was seven, so that would make me five at that time.
And your brother bit your father?
Yes.
Actually, he was probably younger than that.
He was probably five or six.
So you'd be three or four?
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah, because I actually...
It's not really a memory.
It's just like some kind of horrible manifestation in my mind, or it had always been.
And then your father did what?
My mother actually stopped him.
I mean, just...
Made him release my brother, put him down, and threatened my father at that point.
Wait, but your father lifted up your brother?
Oh yeah, slammed him against the wall.
Right.
And I'm assuming gave some kind of angry, I mean just fierce shouting at my brother.
I wouldn't remember any words, but...
Okay, and then your mother threatened him?
Well, she told him after that occurrence that if he ever did that again, she would leave.
Right.
She would take us and leave.
Was your father violent in other ways?
More so with language.
There were often times that I think, well, I know I wanted to help them, so I wanted to do things with them.
Thank you.
But if anything ever went wrong with what we were doing, if I made a mistake, maybe we were out.
He did a lot of roof jobs, especially during the summer.
And maybe if I was trying to grab him the right tool, if I grab the wrong tool, bring it up to him, I usually get the, yeah, well, this is the, that's the fucking wrong tool.
It's like, why do I even have you here?
It's like, if you can't help me, just get the fuck away.
That kind of stuff would happen.
All right.
Did your brother have, did he bite a lot?
It's not a question I've asked him.
I haven't asked my mother that either.
Yeah, I mean, five to six is pretty old to be biting, right?
Yeah, to bite.
Not that I recall.
At least not biting me, and that's the only story I remember.
Right.
Right, okay.
Because, I mean, your fetish involves biting, right?
Actually.
Not usually.
At least...
Oh, just swallowing whole?
Yes, yeah.
Okay, okay.
There is one particular thing, too, that we just recently found out about this.
My mother, or both my parents, my mother and my father left.
My brother and I... With a couple to babysit us when my brother was four and I was about two.
And later on, that couple had been found with child pornography.
And their two sons had also been found with child pornography.
And in fact, one of them had been arrested for molesting a two-year-old.
So, okay, so your parents left you with a couple who were Were they making child pornography with their own children or years later they were found with child pornography as were their then adult children?
Yes.
The latter.
Right.
And what are your memories of the couple?
I don't have any.
How old were you at the time?
Two.
Somewhere between two and three.
Right.
And do you know how long you were there for?
It was, if I recall correctly, what my mother had told me.
About two days each month or so, I mean between two or four days each month during the course of the summer.
Right.
Right.
And I guess your mama obviously felt there was nothing untoward about these people, right?
Yes.
And I had asked her if I had returned with any signs of abuse.
And she said that none that she saw.
I... I know this is the excuse that she wasn't really privy to that information at the time, but...
Well, I mean, it would seem almost...
Yeah, it would seem almost certain that...
Yeah, I mean, so none that she saw is one of these non-answers, right?
Yeah.
And it seems almost certain that this couple would have sexually molested their own children, right?
I mean, they have child pornography and their adult children...
Well, the children when they're older are found with child pornography, so...
And in fact, one of them did, was arrested or at least convicted of molesting a two-year-old.
Right.
So I wonder, too, if there was even that getting stuck at that age of abuse.
It's kind of that sexual imprinting at that age.
Obviously, just kind of me.
Well, there should be no sexual imprinting at that age of all.
No.
Of any kind, right?
Right.
God, I mean, that's just what an unbelievably hellish situation and a hellish family, right?
Thank you.
I mean, just there's no layer of hell deep enough for these kinds of people, though I do understand the tragedy, of course, of being exposed to sexual material and sexual abuse at such an early age, you know, warps sexuality in general, right and do you do you think
it's odd that that I would want a memory at least just to know I No, I mean it would be, you know, the beast that's under the bed is the problem.
The one that you can see is less, right?
So if you were, so you said twice, two days a month, but for how long?
For probably four months, I think.
After that, we moved away and we moved to a different city, so we never saw them again.
Right.
So, eight days in total, is that right?
Yeah.
So, for eight days, you were basically in a house of rampant pedophiles.
Yes.
Unprotected.
Yeah.
At an age when you could not communicate anything they might have done to you?
Yes.
When the child later gets arrested for sexually molesting a two-year-old?
Well...
The bad thing is I just...
Of course I can't prove anything.
And I mean, neither can my mother.
My brother doesn't really have any memory of it either.
When you say...
It's all this vagueness.
It doesn't really have any memory.
I don't know what that means.
Well, it's just...
Oh, sorry.
I tend to do that.
I wonder why.
Well, it's because there's not a lot of clarity in your family about this stuff, right?
Not a lot of what?
Clarity.
Yes.
but so when you say that your brother doesn't have any real memories or what does that mean when we recently talked about this he mentioned that
All he mentioned as a memory was just playing with Legos over at their place, and it may not have even been their place.
It was possibly a different time, different babysitter.
Right.
So maybe my saying really kind of comes from, or a real memory kind of comes from, I guess, my desire for wanting.
Some kind of memory.
Some answer.
Well, and, I mean, this is the challenge, is that if there is trauma, then memory is usually impaired, right?
Yes.
Right.
Thank you.
Right.
Yeah, so there's this great mystery in the origins, right?
Yes.
Well, I mean, I'll tell you my thoughts...
About it.
And, you know, without any, you know, if, as seems most likely, the traumatic events occurred in these situations and in this environment, then, you know, we're hypothesizing without clear evidence, right?
But what we do know is that your mom couldn't tell pedophiles from healthy people.
And your mom married a violent man.
Now, to her credit, she stood up for you guys and all that.
But she's not very good at identifying and keeping you particularly safe from violent people, at least when you were young, right?
Yes.
So, I mean, logically, there's a couple of possibilities.
So, You went to these houses and you were molested.
To me, that's the most likely.
You know, if I were a betting man, that's where I would put my money.
That's what I've thought.
Yeah, I mean, and I'm incredibly sorry about that possibility or probability.
And so then, if that occurred, then you returned home traumatized.
And if you returned home traumatized and your mother didn't notice anything, then you had no particular bond with your mother.
Right?
Yes, as stated with how I was describing my relationship at that age, too.
Yeah, I mean, you were talking about like you could crawl up on her lap or whatever and she would cuddle, but that's very passive, right?
Yes.
on her part.
Now, if your molestation as an infant included suckling on your penis, then the fact that you may if your molestation as an infant included suckling on your penis, then the fact that you may have a fetish for being swallowed right?
Mm-hmm.
And whether it was a man or a woman or one of the other children who would be suckling on your penis as a toddler, then that would be, because you have no comprehension of sexual function at that age, cannibalism would be something that you would experience.
There would be cannibalism co-joined with very primitive sexual arousal, right?
And so whatever our first sexual arousal experience is, is one of the most deeply imprinting experiences that happen to us.
And it can literally last a lifetime and it can be all-consuming for a lifetime.
Whatever our first sexually arousing experience is, is highly, highly imprinting.
And if it is co-joined with a very primitive infant's experience, then it's not going to be primarily sexual in nature.
In other words, there'll be some very primitive sexual arousal, but it will be without any understanding of sexuality.
And that's why if your penis was suckled when you were a baby by these People who collected child pornography and pedophiles and whatever, right?
Then sexuality combined with being eaten by a giant would, to me, it would fit, right?
Yes.
That was kind of the conclusion that I was coming to.
As I had that thought that the giant was relational to an adult...
Yeah, I mean, the giant is the key, right?
I mean, we are all giants.
Yeah, we're all giants to children.
Like, I'm five times the weight of my daughter or four times the weight of my daughter or whatever, right?
It's, you know, she can still comfortably, I can carry her for like a mile on my hip, you know, or on my shoulders.
I mean, I'm a giant.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
So that certainly is one possibility.
Now, the reason why I believe sexual The first sexual experiences, and they don't have to be traumatic.
I'm just sort of pointing this out, right?
But so I remember watching a film many, many years ago, which was about sexual fetish.
And in it, there was a man who enjoyed being dressed up in a rubber suit and having a prostitute close off his airway, like his breathing tube or something like that.
And he would...
Achieve intense sexual arousal from having somebody breathe out.
And he said that his, you know, memories are his, I can't remember, some girls he were playing with who would, you know, jump on top of him and would close off his nose and his mouth, right?
I don't remember how old he was.
I assumed he was fairly young.
But you know, so he's basically got a young girl's groin pressed against his and it's a sort of simulated sexual position if he's on his back and she's squatting over him holding his nose and his mouth so that would be his imprinting and therefore not therefore like deterministically and inevitably but that's where he was sexually if that makes any sense.
Actually, as you were saying that, I was thinking of somewhat common, I guess if we want to consider it a fetish, but like wrestling or the fascination with wrestling.
Right.
Which I, you know, as I come across, obviously having something, or just this fetish as weird as I have, you come across other things too, so.
Oh yeah, no, for sure.
I mean, the sexual landscape is complex, to say the least, of the human species.
And so, in every...
In every society, there are different sexual practices.
What is acceptable?
What is not?
What's just sexy?
What is not?
You know, Hispanic culture is more butts.
I think wasp culture is more boobs and different rituals, different standards of what is considered sexually appropriate or attractive or whatever, right?
And it's very complex.
And it is the most important and elemental imprinting of all.
Because it's the imprinting which tells you whether you get to reproduce, right?
Right, so there are some tribes where having a really long neck is considered sexually attractive.
And so the women, I don't know from what particular age, but they put these golden hoops around their necks and stretch their necks out to the point where they can't even hold up their necks without these golden hoops anymore.
And all because a long neck is considered attractive, so they turn themselves into these freaky ass giraffes.
Just to be attractive, right?
Yeah, I actually watched one of the documentaries on that trend.
Right.
And of course we all know about the foot binding in sort of 18th and early to mid-19th century China where to be sexually attractive the women would have their feet agonizingly bound to the point where their toes were curling into their heels and they couldn't even walk anymore, right?
And so there are these fetishes and If by fetish we mean sort of specific non-biological sexual attraction, like which doesn't lead to reproduction.
Blowjobs kind of lead to reproduction and they're often foreplay and stuff like that or whatever, right?
But now if you're in a tribe, like your genes don't know which tribe you're born into and what is considered to be sexy, right?
And one of the amazing things that human beings can do is we can adapt Immediately.
Like, normally adaptation takes, you know, hundreds or thousands of generations, right?
Yeah.
And yet, strangely enough, We can adapt in the moment.
We can adapt to a peaceful environment.
We can adapt to a violent environment.
We can adapt to this particular sexual approach or that particular sexual approach.
Now, of course, in the evolution of the species, sexuality was not nearly as, quote, private as it is now, right?
So you would see sexual activity in the tribe around you or you'd hear it or whatever it was, right?
And given that our genes did not know which tribe we were born into, the most if To imprint upon this first sexual activity that is seen and then do that.
Because that must be what is considered to be sexual or sexy, I guess, in the tribe, right?
And to do that which is sexy gets you access to reproduction.
Does this make any sense?
Oh, absolutely.
Now, it's the same reason why people imprint on the personality of their parents, particularly the same-sex parent, right?
Because parents, by definition, have achieved sexual success.
Right?
So in a tribe of 100 people, you know, maybe there's 50 women, and maybe there are eight women of childbearing age who are unattached, right?
Now, eight women all brought up in the same tribe, are they going to be very different?
No.
Are they going to be very different from your own mom?
No.
So learning what women are from your mom And being attractive to traits that your mom has makes perfect sense from a biological evolutionary standpoint.
Right?
So the women that you're going to date in a small tribe are pretty much going to be the same as your mom, at least in many ways, right?
Culturally or whatever, right?
And given that your mom has already achieved reproductive success, it is most advantageous for you genetically to find women attractive who are kind of like your mom because that is the mark of sexual success, right?
And I mean, if your mom was...
Yeah, if you're...
If your mom was a certain way and then you wanted to go a completely opposite direction, you were very unlikely to find any woman like that.
Like, if your mom's religious and you're like, well, I don't really believe in religion, and then you go to the other eight women who are available to you in the tribe and say, I don't believe in the tribal gods, I mean, what are your odds of success?
Very low, right?
Or certainly lowered, right?
Yes.
Which is why people who are in...
So it's why women who come from abusive dads end up with jerky men, right?
Because their dad was sexually successful because he had children.
And if she's going to be sexually successful, she's going to have to be attracted to aggressive men, right?
That's the way it works in a tribe, right?
Now, this...
If children don't have much exposure to sexuality...
I mean, in the direct exposure in the way that you did, or could have, or most likely did, but who knows for sure, right?
But let's just say did for the moment, with all the caveats of not knowing for sure.
But if you really don't have direct sexual experience until you are at least a teenager, then you don't have that direct imprinting.
You may see or you may hear or whatever, but you don't have that direct imprinting, right?
But if you have direct sexual experiences...
When you're a toddler or a baby, then that's what you imprint on without any of the adult comprehension or understanding, and that's why it becomes metaphorical.
It becomes being eaten rather than whatever, if there was a fellatio on a toddler or something like that, right?
So, to me, a fetish is sexual imprinting that occurred at the wrong time and in the wrong way, which is another way of saying, you know, evil, molesty kind of crap, right?
But it's the result of our incredibly powerful drive to imprint on whatever occurs for us sexually and to retain that imprinting.
Throughout most of human history, that served us very well from a reproductive standpoint.
It doesn't really now as much.
And if the imprinting goes awry, in other words, if the sexual experience is premature, to put it as nicely as humanly possible, if the imprinting is age-inappropriate, then it doesn't mature into human beings and sexual reproduction, because it remains at a metaphorical level of a giant is trying to eat me.
But it is a very powerful aspect of our survivability and that which allows us to reproduce out of a limited gene pool and even more importantly a limited personality pool within our tribe.
And it also explains why guys with abusive moms are drawn to abusive women.
Because if they reject abusive women and the mom is abusive, they're almost certain not to be able to reproduce.
With the women who are going to be like the mom in a limited tribal environment.
I don't know if this helps at all, or maybe you've thought of all this stuff yourself before, but those are my thoughts on it.
For the most part, I think these are things that I've at least explored with my own questions.
Asking myself, writing it down.
Of which I did today, and I kind of came to the question, Which maybe you have some insight for.
Is there something that could be missing, say, before the age that that happened to me?
Could there have been something missing that would have set me up?
Missing, what do you mean?
Maybe not having as much of a bond or the connection with my mother at the time, if that would have made me more susceptible for my brain to adapt.
Oh, no, without a doubt.
Listen, without a doubt.
I mean, you said you were two or so?
Yes.
Right.
So at two, you could speak, right?
And you could point.
Yes.
Right, so whoever...
If molestation occurred...
Then whoever molested you would have had to be sure that you wouldn't go straight home and tell your mom.
So, like, you can only pray fundamentally, assuming it's not a baby, you can only fundamentally pray on children who don't have a secure bond with the mom.
If this occurred, right?
Or the dad.
And I talked about this in a show previously, so I won't go into this in any particularly great detail.
I believe I've heard it.
Yeah, so, you know, the people who molest children are taking such astounding risks.
I mean, it's terrifying.
I mean, not only horribly evil people, but the risks they're taking, they have to be really, really sure.
They have to be very good at identifying the correct prey, right?
Yeah.
Prey.
Sorry.
That's true.
They are prey.
I mean, they are prey.
Why is that?
Well, just because that's terminology.
You know, predator, prey.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
You mean in terms of the eating thing?
Yes.
Right, right, right.
Right.
And to put it as mildly as possible, right?
So you may not have experienced molestation.
You may have seen a picture of child sexual abuse with somebody giving fellatio to a child.
And that may have seemed to be eating.
Or you may have seen a video or one of them in the background or whatever, right?
Or maybe one of the children Acted it out with each other or on you if they'd had exposure to this kind of child pornography or whatever, right?
Very true.
Right, so it may not have been directly on you.
But nonetheless, it's still a powerful enough imprinting, right, that it could have this this kind of result.
Help me help me understand something though.
Sure.
That's the last point that I'll...
How is this something you chat about with your mom?
I guess...
I guess it was a very difficult question.
Yeah, it should be.
I hope it is.
I mean, I really hope it is.
It'd be like, well, no, no, that's perfect.
What an easy question that is.
It'd be like, oh, no.
Right?
I'm trying to recall when I finally at least took the first steps.
What was going through my mind?
Why did I want to do that?
Maybe it was for myself not only to test I mean, not only to test, you know, what was the status of our relationship,
what capacity for love did she have for me at that time, if I was to be honest, if I was to actually open up, you know, to do something that I hadn't done for so many years, that I felt I couldn't do for so many years.
Well...
Does that make sense?
But there's probably, hang on a sec, but...
But talking about your sexual fetish with your mom, does this raise any alarm bells for you at all?
I guess it was something I was always afraid of, but not in the sense that, you know, I guess, you know, I you know, I guess, you know, I don't want to...
So I'll never talk about sex with my mother.
It's unimaginable.
Not those kind of alarms, I guess.
Maybe I'm just talking complete nonsense.
Well, you know, I don't mean to sound overly square.
Maybe I am being overly square, but I don't think so.
I just...
You know, Mom, this is what gives me an erection.
I just...
I don't know.
Maybe I'm just old-fashioned.
It just seems like...
Mom, I just don't feel we've been discussing my ejaculations enough.
I never...
That was never, I guess, my intention.
For me, I felt...
I mean, this was a part of...
Yes, my being.
I mean, it was something that was there, something fixed in my mind that at least I needed to reveal the basics of it and not get into the specifics but at least open up about this is something different for me and maybe there was hope for some kind of insight at least at that point.
Alright, so let's say you've been talking about this for Two years with your mom off and on, right?
And have you received insights?
Only to the point of her...
I guess...
Looking back, I never would have known about those...
The babysitters are the fact of that.
Okay, but other than that, which is what, 10 minutes conversation, other than that, what have you got?
there was one conversation where I was talking
about her leaving me with them and the damage it could have done you And?
And, uh, she called back.
I mean, she had a customer she had to go to really quick, but she called back and she ended up apologizing for leaving us there in the first place, which, yeah, that's what I would expect.
But, I mean, I was very thankful to hear it.
I mean, it was something that I wanted to hear.
Yeah, but I mean, it doesn't particularly change this effect, right?
No.
Yeah.
And do you have other friends you can talk to about this stuff?
Yes.
And specifically, I talk a lot about all this with my boyfriend.
Right.
Yeah, I don't know about...
I don't know about talking about your sexual fetish with your mom.
I think that's a friend-lover conversation.
And, you know, there may be therapists who can help you.
I mean, am I assuming that you'd like to have a little less focus on this fetish or you'd like to have a little more sort of, quote, normal sexual desire?
Well, I already do.
I ain't...
I guess the moderate sense, in the sense that it's not necessary for me.
I don't...
You know, touching, just being with a person, you know, lying in bed with them, that is actually enough for me, you know, to be...
Okay, but let me just put it this way.
I mean, so you didn't mention a boyfriend before, so you're gay, right?
Gay, bye?
Bye.
Bye, okay.
But you're in a gay relationship at the moment, right?
Yes.
Okay, so you understand, like, being a gay guy who may have boundary issues with his mother is a bit of a cliché, right?
I mean, this is not unheard of in the gay community to have boundary issues with mom, right?
Yes.
I don't, yeah, I gotta, I'll just tell you my opinion.
I think that sexual preference talk is not for parents.
I like it, this style with whipped cream and cherry on top and a dinosaur toy.
And it's just like, no, I don't think I want to hear about this from my kids, right?
And so I think that it's funny, you know, because what has also struck me is that If these are inappropriate boundary issues with your mom, the ultimate loss of boundary is to be eaten by someone.
Then you are in the person, right?
Then there's no boundaries at all, right?
Yeah, I can see that.
Of appropriate or inappropriate things to talk about.
So, I would, I mean, I'm just telling you what I would do if I were in your shoes, is that First of all, there are therapists who would specialize in this stuff, and I think it's worth it.
And I think you can ask your mom to help you fund it if she feels that's appropriate.
I mean, if some of her choices as a mom had something to do with this, why not?
It might be a reasonable thing to ask for.
But I think it's worth exploring.
But the second thing, I can't imagine in any universe that...
Parents and kids can have happy, chatty conversations about sexual fetishes.
Like, again, I don't think I'm just square about that.
I just think that's not...
You know, like, you couldn't imagine doing that at work, I assume, and...
There are places where this conversation just wouldn't be appropriate.
I think with your mom, it'd kind of be one of those places.
So maybe just talk about the weather for a bit.
I mean, I hate to say it, you know.
Or, you know, chat about something that's not to do with that which gives you orgasms with your mom.
What...
I guess, so what reasons kind of come to your mind when you're thinking of that, or is it just kind of an innate boundary feeling for you, or what's kind of going on in your mind?
Well, you wouldn't show your mom a videotape of you having sex, right?
No.
And ask her to critique your performance, right?
No.
Right.
Well, why not?
Well, because it's just not appropriate, right?
I mean, maybe you'd review that with your boyfriend if you both wanted to get an sort of outside opinion or at least a third-body view, right?
But I would, yeah, I would rethink about, I would just, you know, rethink that.
It's not a moral argument or anything like that.
But I think that that's just something that is...
Your sexual life is private with you and your partner of the time.
I don't think it's for parental consumption.
Yeah.
You know, it's just one of these private things between you and your partner at the time.
And I don't think it's something for...
I'm just repeating myself.
I just don't think it's something for parental consumption, if that makes any sense.
No, it does.
I guess just my thoughts were because I wasn't with anyone at the time and all of this was just very abstract.
It was just fantasy, right?
No, look, I don't...
I'm sorry to interrupt.
I think it's a good idea for you to ask your parents if there was anything that happened inappropriate when you were a kid.
Right?
But I don't think she can...
If she was the kind of person...
Who could really help you with this?
I don't think it would be an issue in the first place.
True.
And I think that would be my concern, that if you're going to someone who can't really help you, then you're actually postponing someone, like talking to someone who could.
So I guess that would be my suggestion.
But look, I mean, what a brave thing to bring up, right?
And I appreciate you bringing it up.
I mean, it's a challenging topic.
I mean, I don't know how much your heart is in your throat and talking about it, and I hope that...
You feel that I appreciate, I dealt with it with some, you know, reasonable level of sensitivity and a definite shortage of, you know, white wine Chianti jokes.
Well, I absolutely appreciate the fact that you can even, I mean, that you even allow discussion about such a thing.
It's, you know, the chat room lit up with...
I could see that.
I was seeing it moving the whole time we were talking.
Yeah, look, I mean, sex is the whole reason we're here, you know?
I mean, if people didn't get boners, there'd be a distinct excess of dead air in this podcast because there'd be no people to talk or listen, right?
So I'm very interested in...
Boners, uh, because they are life, right?
They are the whole reason we all, we all climb out of that, uh, staff of power, right?
So, um, I have no problem talking about sex at all.
I think it's a fine, fine topic.
And, uh, you know, that is a challenging topic to talk about, but yeah, I mean, I personally, I would just, I would go with the assumption that, that there was some, uh, oral sexual act that you saw that, uh, Or experienced that would give you some association with being eaten as sexual stimulus.
And recognize that it was incorrect imprinting.
Right?
Nothing wrong with oral sex, but it's not about eating people whole.
Although it may look like that from the perspective of a two or three year old.
But yeah, it's incorrect imprinting.
And when you have incorrect imprinting, you just have to work at correcting it.
Right?
And I don't know what that is, right?
Because I'm not a therapist, but there are people who do know.
And if you talk to them, then it might give you a way of finding a way to correct the incorrect imprinting that occurred as a potential result of what you experienced when you were very young, which I'm incredibly sorry about.
I mean, even if nothing was done to you, even if you only saw a picture, Because of the power of imprinting with anything sexual, that it's, you know, it's not the same as being raped, but it is definitely going to futz the wiring a tad, right?
Yes.
So that's my, yeah, that's my thought.
And again, I really appreciate you bringing this up.
And how was the conversation for you?
Oh, great.
Okay, good.
Good.
All right.
Well, look at that.
At the three-hour mark.
We're actually closing off the show.
Yeah, thanks.
Thanks very much.
Thanks very much, everyone, for calling in.
I believe we've traversed the widest variety of topics known to mankind in, what do we do, ethics, family, parenting, and Jonah.
Jonah with a sperm whale, so to speak.
But...
Yeah, thanks everyone.
Mike, did you have anything that you wanted to add or any reminders of where we're going and what we're doing?
I missed a bit earlier.
I was just telling people earlier, you're going to be at the Toronto Bitcoin Expo on April 11th through 13th.
That's in downtown Toronto.
And the NextWeb Europe conference, that's April 24th and 25th in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
We did have a date for a Vancouver conference on the schedule, but that has been removed, so everyone knows about that.
But yeah, Toronto Bitcoin Expo and the NextWeb conference in Europe.
Looking forward to seeing people there.
All right.
And thanks everyone for a great call.
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