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April 19, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:54:44

2671 Help! My Ex-Girlfriend Is In The Attic! - Wednesday Call In Show April 16th, 2014

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	Hi, everybody.
	Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Made Radio.
	I hope you're doing well.
	This is the Wednesday Night Call-In Show.
	Mike, let's dive straight in to the philosophical cue of bug-shot question-asking listeners.
	Who do we have on first?
	All right, Michael's up first.
	And, Michael, what is your question?
	Hi, Steph.
	My question, I'll start with more of a statement.
	I'm turning 25 in about a month and I guess I'm really not happy with how much progress I've made and where I'm at with my life.
	I think I could be more successful given the opportunities that were available to me.
	And I'm not really sure.
	I'm kind of angry at my parents for kind of getting me off to a bad start as far as coming from a divorced family and You know being alone a lot of the time So I just want to know how much blame can I put on my parents knowing now that it's up to me to change My own course That's a great question.
	That's a great question Tell me a little bit more about what was dysfunctional in your household when you were growing up.
	You mentioned divorce.
	What else?
	Right.
	Well, if I think back to my childhood, the biggest thing I think about was being very alone.
	My parents divorced when I was seven, and both my parents worked hard.
	And I remember being like a latchkey child.
	So I'd go home and nobody would be home until 6.30.
	And even earlier than that, I would go to school before everybody else for the before care, they called it.
	And then I'd be after school.
	I'd be stuck after school at aftercare.
	And sometimes I wouldn't get picked up until 6.30 or 7.
	And I just remember being very lonely for a long time.
	And so I think it really delayed me with getting used to social interactions.
	I think I'm still catching up.
	Why do you think your parents worked so much at everything other than parenting?
	They obviously didn't have their priorities straight.
	I know you talk a lot about everybody has the choice and can afford to parent your children basically.
	And I guess they prioritized the stuff and having the lifestyle over parenting me, even though that lifestyle wasn't very extravagant.
	We did have a house and, you know, and cars and, you know, well fed.
	But I really can't answer that.
	I don't think they can answer that.
	Why can't you answer that?
	You've known them for a quarter century, right?
	There shouldn't be any mysteries with this, right?
	Well, I guess they do want to.
	No, no, come on.
	Come on, come on, come on.
	Did you come here to work or chat?
	No, I'm trying.
	Saying that they had missed priorities, saying that they didn't want to is not adding anything to the conversation, right?
	I'm sorry to be annoying, but if you want to work, then we have to work, which means you have to dig deep and not give me automatic answers, right?
	Okay.
	I don't know.
	They had bad priorities.
	I guess they didn't want to is not...
	Any knowledge.
	There's no knowledge in that, right?
	There's just all ways of saying the same thing.
	So, why didn't they want to spend more time parenting?
	Reach down deep inside yourself and try and find an answer that's not automatic, that's not empty, right?
	I'm not criticizing, I'm just, you know, let's really dig in.
	Oh man, it's so hard to say.
	I guess because I didn't come first, they were more important to themselves than me.
	You're just restating exactly right.
	Well, why did that guy go north?
	I guess he wanted to go north, right?
	Well, maybe it was normal in their childhoods.
	My dad grew up without a lot of people around and my mom's family has very little emotional connection involved.
	So maybe that's a hint.
	So, your father didn't have people around, your mother didn't have emotional connections, so they didn't want to be close to their children, is that what you're saying?
	Again, I'm not criticizing, I'm just trying to understand what you're saying.
	Well, based on what I've learned from your show, I would think that means to make my childhood like that, they would normalize their own childhoods and they wouldn't have to say anything was wrong with their childhoods.
	If they had lonely childhood, it only makes sense for your child to have a lonely childhood.
	It's not lonely at all.
	So now you're saying what I'm saying.
	Right?
	It's still not quite the same as really digging into the knowledge yourself.
	You spent 25 years with these people.
	You spent 18 or 20 or maybe even 25 years living under the same roof.
	You will never know anyone better than you know these people.
	Right?
	Yes, correct.
	But it doesn't sound like you know much about them at all.
	Well, I am saying I didn't spend much time with them, even though they're parents and, you know, I spent the most time with them than anybody else.
	And I listen to similar calls where people can't dig deep and have frustration when I'm even listening to it, but it's frustrating now, not being able to know how to answer the question.
	Why did they divorce?
	My dad beat on my mom when I was seven.
	No, he cheated on her.
	Oh, he beat her?
	Oh, cheated.
	Sorry.
	Okay.
	Right.
	Right.
	Well, they were both cheating on you, but I guess at this point they cheated on each other, right?
	Correct.
	So, how did she find out?
	That part's not clear to me.
	I do know that my dad took me on one of his dates with the woman he was cheating on my mom with, and I met her.
	He took you on a date with his mistress?
	Well, I don't think it was a date.
	I think they worked in the same place, and so he introduced me to her.
	And we had some kind of friendly...
	Wait, sorry.
	Sorry.
	Didn't you just say it was a date?
	Okay, I misspoke there.
	I know I'd been introduced to her when I was so young.
	I remember one time meeting her, but I don't remember anything other than that.
	And my dad had exposed me to all his other girlfriends too, so I can't really say I recollect all those experiences either.
	Now, was this the girlfriends after he left your mom or before?
	Was it just like the one time that you know he cheated?
	And do you think he just cheated once on your mom?
	I've been thinking about it a lot lately, and I think if you cheated when the stakes were as high as when you have a kid, I think it's pretty likely that it happened too.
	Right.
	But I don't have evidence.
	Right, right.
	And why did so many women want to sleep with your dad, do you think?
	He's a pretty charismatic guy.
	He can appear confident on the surface.
	I happen to know he's really insecure, but I don't think that comes across to a lot of people.
	I would say I think he tends to attract really low-confidence women, including my mom and the woman he's with now.
	So maybe there's something that my dad has that low-confidence women are attracted to.
	I mean, obviously that's true.
	Wouldn't that just be stupid women?
	Yeah, I think that's one subject.
	Yeah, I mean, I don't want to sound indelicate, right?
	But there's no way that affairs can really end well, in general.
	I mean, there's exceptions, blah-de-blah, but...
	You know, you can jump out of a plane and land in a haystack, I guess, but nobody thinks it's a good idea to jump out of a plane.
	And the reason I say stupid is that it's obvious, right?
	Like, why would you get involved with a married man?
	I mean, to be a homewrecker, to see his kids, to know he's going home to kiss his wife, I mean, it's so skeevy.
	It's so gross.
	It's like, these people are covered with this fine, viscous vegetable oil of infinite sleaze.
	And it's just such a terrible idea all around, and it doesn't take a lot of intelligence to figure that out.
	I mean, I mentioned this story before, but once I picked up a woman at the gym, you know, attractive woman, well-read woman, nice woman, and I said, hey, let's go for a coffee.
	No ring on her finger, no ring on my finger, I'm single, we go for a coffee, and like after an hour of some pretty good chatting, she mentions her husband.
	And I'm like, I'm sorry, what was that?
	You're who now?
	Your husband.
	What the hell are you doing?
	I said, oh, well, we don't have sex, so I'm here with you.
	I'm like, really?
	So you don't have sex with your husband, and so you get picked up by guys at the gym.
	That's how it works?
	And she said, yeah, kind of.
	Basically, I'm attractive.
	My husband doesn't want to have sex with me, but I'll have sex with other men.
	And I said, not with this man.
	Not with this man, you won't.
	And that's not even hard.
	Actually, I could have said that too.
	I mean, that's not even a complicated one, right?
	Because I said to her, I said, well, look, it's pretty easy as to why I'm not going to have sex with you.
	First of all, Let's say I don't really like you that much, which is kind of how I'm inclined at the moment.
	If I don't really like you that much, then the sex is going to be an act of self-hatred.
	You know, I mean, that's just gross, you know?
	Like, ew, you know?
	Please, turn off your personality and close your peephole so that I can picture you as someone else, have sex with the glory hole, and then shuffle off into the walk of shame and curse my penis until the day I die.
	Not great stuff, right?
	And so I said, either I don't like you, in which case the sex isn't going to be any fun, or let's say I do really like you.
	Well, then the sex is better, but you're married.
	So I can't have you.
	So there's just...
	I mean, tell me, this brain surgery, I mean, this is just obvious, isn't it?
	I mean, you have to be a narcissist.
	It's...
	That's what I think.
	No!
	That's not the word I used.
	Do you remember the word that I used?
	To describe who?
	Stupid.
	You said they were low-confidence women.
	What did I say?
	They were stupid women.
	Yeah, like, we have this...
	Whenever there's dysfunction, we go to...
	Labels.
	And I get it.
	Like, I understand it.
	Whenever there's dysfunction, we go to labels.
	Oh, they're selfish.
	Oh, they're self-involved.
	They're narcissistic.
	And I get it.
	I've used these labels too myself.
	But the frank reality, as you know, is there's a very wide distribution of intelligence, right?
	As George Carlin used to say, he said, think how dumb the average person is.
	Well, half of them are dumber than that.
	So they could be low self-esteem, but maybe they're just dumb.
	Then I ask, why did I come out of it?
	I view myself as pretty smart and I often do see my parents as pretty dumb.
	I look at their mistakes and it seems obvious how to avoid those mistakes.
	Well, I mean, you could be smarter.
	You could have got the, like, they've tracked some genes that promote intelligence and brain growth and all that, so you could have just had, you know, some brown-eyed people can have a blue-eyed kid.
	There's a lot of mutations, right?
	You mutant, right?
	No, but dumb people can have smart kids and smart people can have dumb kids.
	I mean, IQ is one of these things that is very stable throughout your life in general.
	And it is by far the best predictor of success in a wide variety of fields.
	So maybe they had all these dysfunctions or whatever.
	Maybe...
	Were their jobs particularly intellectually taxing?
	Were they like high-powered lawyers or executives or neurosurgeons or something?
	No, not at all.
	My dad teaches golf.
	And my mom does a pretty easy desk job that doesn't require a lot of intelligence.
	Your dad teaches golf?
	Oh no.
	Hit the ball this way!
	Not that way!
	Here, let me hold your hips.
	Hey, I'm married.
	Yeah, I know he's probably pulled that one.
	Well, I know that he has pulled that one.
	Not while he was married, but...
	The batteries for these pants don't power themselves, baby.
	Right?
	I mean, I'm sorry.
	But it's like, hit the ball this way, not that way.
	I'm not saying golf is easy.
	You know, there's lots of stuff that's difficult but retarded.
	And I guess it's true.
	No, listen.
	Running with an egg on your head is really, really difficult.
	And it's completely retarded.
	And yeah, golf is really difficult.
	And you hit a ball into a hole.
	Yeah.
	So it's retarded, a hole, right, in general.
	Like, I'm not saying...
	I've played golf before, and it's fine.
	And there's games...
	I don't like golf in particular.
	What I don't like about it, it all comes down to, like, one hit, basically.
	I like squash, where if you screw up, you get another chance in about nine seconds, right?
	But it's...
	I don't know.
	And I love tennis and all that.
	I love beach volleyball in particular.
	I love that.
	And I've done lots of sports.
	I'm not anti-sports, but it's just stupid stuff.
	And spending your life saying, hit the ball this way, not that way.
	I mean, it's just, it's a stupid way to spend your life.
	Sorry about that.
	But it is, right?
	And, you know, as we can see from Tiger Woods, with great golf gifts does not come great wisdom with women.
	I think that is, sadly, the gods do not seem to spread the peanut butter evenly over the peaks and valleys of human accomplishment.
	And, yeah, I mean, so it could be that they're just dumb people.
	And they may have psychological problems, but they may have psychological problems because they're dumb.
	You know, being dumb is a psychological problem, and it manifests in a bunch of different ways.
	But it all comes back down to, I don't know, an IQ of 85 or 88 or 90 or 91.
	You know, to be a good lawyer or to be an executive, you need an IQ of at least 125.
	And if your parents, you know, one's got an easy desk job, the other one's like, hit the ball this way, not that way, and doesn't go insane from boredom.
	I mean, that's the thing that I find amazing.
	I mean, yeah, go play some sports, but it's like the gym rats, you know, like the guys who are like, I am big.
	I cannot fit through revolving doors.
	I must buy two seats, one for each bicep, in a wide-bodied airplane.
	I have tiny testicles from steroids, and I can bench press a Humvee.
	And the reason that that stuff is so retarded is, I mean, I like lifting weights.
	I don't really like it, but it's good for me, right?
	It's a good feeling.
	But my god, these guys spend like four hours in a gym?
	I mean, that's like having a hobby called digging ditches.
	I mean, wouldn't you just go insane from boredom?
	Four hours at a fucking gym?
	Are you kidding me?
	Spending a lifetime saying, hit the ball this way, not that way.
	Look, there's nothing wrong with it.
	People are dumb.
	And dumb people are useful for things like, I don't know, lifting trees, finding tires, voting.
	You know, lots of different things are useful.
	But...
	Lots of people are just kind of dumb, and dumb people are not good at complicated things.
	And do you know what a complicated thing is?
	Believe it or not, I am actually tying this back into your initial point, right?
	Believe it or not, parenting is a really complicated thing.
	And a lot of stupid, stupid people become parents.
	In fact, the lower your IQ, the higher your fertility is statistically.
	Because smart people think ahead.
	And they say, oh shoot, if I have a kid at 18, that's pretty bad, so I better hold off.
	Dumb people are just buckets of common eggs.
	I mean, they're basically, it's just like mitosis.
	They just like shake hands and there's four of them.
	And then they shake hands again and there's eight, 16, 32, 64, 128, and suddenly you're just buried in fucking morons.
	I mean, they literally, it's like a fucking Petri dish.
	Do you know there's that old thing where they say there's this chess board and the philosopher goes to the king and says, oh king, here is my deal.
	I will be your servant.
	You must give me one grain of rice on the first one and two grains of rice on the second one and then four and then 16 and then 256.
	And the guy says, yeah, that's not sounds too many.
	And by their last chess board, he owns like a last chess square.
	He owns like all of the...
	Grain in the known universe.
	It just keeps the power of squares.
	Well, this is stupid people.
	I mean, they really are.
	They're just replicants.
	You know, they can't share a cup of coffee without squirting nine idiots out of their armpits.
	And so it could be that they just found saying to people, hit the ball this way, not that way, and this piece of paper goes in this box, and this piece of paper goes in this box, A lot easier than parenting a child who obviously is smarter than they are.
	Steph?
	Yes?
	Hey man, I appreciate the response, but I know my parents are dumb.
	I really want to know what I can do, like how I proceed from here.
	Wait, you know your parents are dumb?
	I mean, they're definitely not as smart as me, or even close, in my opinion.
	Right.
	Yeah, and just for the other listeners, parents may not be malicious, they may just be retarded.
	I mean, it doesn't really make a huge amount of difference in some ways in terms of the effect.
	But parenting is tough.
	You've got to really think ahead, especially if you've got a smart kid.
	I mean, it's tough.
	I say to my daughter, listen, would you mind cleaning up the Monopoly game?
	I'll get some dinner ready, you clean up the Monopoly game.
	And let's say I'm cooking her something she wants.
	And she says, no, I don't want to clean up the Monopoly game.
	And I say, oh, that's no problem, because like a gimme for you is a gimme for me.
	And she says, what?
	And I said, well, look, if you're not going to do something that's helpful to me, then I'm not going to, like I get one, you know, how we have get out of jail free cards.
	Then, if you're going to use your get out of jail free card, like you don't want to clean up the monopoly, then I get a get out of jail free card as well.
	Because that's fair, right?
	If you're not going to do something that I want, I get a get out of jail free card for you.
	And she's like, what do you mean?
	I said, well, you know, then you'll want to go do something, like you'll want to go to the animal shelter and play with the cats or whatever it is, and I'll just like, no.
	And she's like, well, I don't want you to have that.
	And I said, I don't want to have that either.
	I don't want to have that either.
	I don't want to have the get-out-of-jail-free card.
	But if you're going to have one, I've got to have one.
	Like I said, when I have a piece of candy, you want a piece of candy.
	And what do I say?
	I say, yes, of course you can.
	I share, right?
	Because I don't get something and you don't.
	And you don't get to not do something you don't want to do without me getting at some point over the next day or two to not do something that I don't want to do.
	In fact, I said, you know what?
	I want that get-out-of-jail-free card.
	In fact, I forbid you to go and clean up that Monopoly board.
	You are not allowed to go and clean up that Monopoly board.
	That is exactly not allowed.
	I really need that card because there's something coming up where I want to not do something you want to do.
	So don't, don't clean up that.
	I insist that you don't!
	And she's already off cleaning it up, right?
	It's not, you know, it's the UPB, right?
	I mean, it's just universally preferable behavior in parenting.
	But, you know, I don't think a lot of people come up with that kind of stuff where it actually becomes a lot of fun and I'm insisting that my child not clean up and she's racing off to clean up, right?
	It takes a little bit of brains, right, to do that kind of stuff.
	And so, yeah, a lot of parents just aren't particularly intelligent.
	So the first thing is, like, I'm really sorry.
	And people who aren't dumb gravitate to what makes them feel good in the moment, right?
	Which is why poverty and obesity are...
	Correlated, you know?
	Cheesecake, good.
	Exercise, bad.
	I am a good robot.
	I like good things.
	Now, there's no tomorrow for this robot.
	And so, I don't know why he sounds like constipated Thurston Howell, but...
	And so, it's easier to go to work than to parents, right?
	And what happens then is...
	Your parenting gets tougher and your work gets easier.
	Whatever you practice gets better and whatever you don't practice gets worse.
	Your parents got better at doing stupid work and they got worse at doing the challenging parenting thing.
	Also, dumb people don't know that they're dumb.
	This is one of the very frustrating things about dumb people, which I'm sure I don't have to tell you.
	But the real problem with dumb people is they think they're really smart.
	They think they're experts and stuff.
	And any chance, like any time they get a look in a mirror, they're fucking horrified.
	They're like, I am the most gorgeous thing that God has ever shaped out of clay, kisses, and oil.
	And then like you show them a picture of themselves and they look at the elephant man and it's deeply disturbing to them, right?
	And so when you're smart, they shy away from you because it's like, whoa, I didn't understand what he said, but I'm not dumb.
	So I'm going back to work.
	Hit the ball this way, not that way.
	So, like, I'm really sorry about that.
	This is what dumb people tend to do.
	And, again, it's not an insult.
	It's just, you know, if I talk about short people not being able to reach the top shelf, people aren't like, oh, you're against short people.
	It's like, no, I'm just, I can measure things, right?
	And, you know, I'm not going to be for any hair commercials anytime soon.
	And dumb people are just dumb.
	And it's really tough to be raised by dumb people because they do stupid things.
	Like, they work too much.
	They have affairs.
	They find other...
	Women with silicone for boobs and rocks for brains to have affairs with and they just do this stupid shit and then they're bewildered by their lives not turning out well.
	I keep trying to walk through the wall where there's no door.
	Somebody must have punched me because my nose hurts, right?
	Like they just they don't get it and so I'm really sorry.
	Now I know we don't want to get to sort of what Where to go from here?
	But it is important to evaluate the intelligence of people around you.
	And you'd be surprised how many dumb people there are.
	And when you say, well, they're obstinate.
	No, they're not obstinate.
	They're stupid.
	Oh, they're narcissistic.
	It's like, no, they're not narcissistic.
	They just don't have the mental ability to put themselves in someone else's position.
	Like their brains are so precarious, if they move them too much, they fall over.
	I'm sorry?
	I'm saying, doesn't that absolve them of any responsibility if they're too stupid?
	Like, the short guy, it's not his fault he can't reach the cabinet.
	It's like saying the dumb person, it's not their fault they can't because they're stupid.
	Yeah, I mean, that certainly is a possibility, right?
	I mean, you talked about your parents basically making bad decisions.
	You didn't say, you know, and then they tortured me with Gilligan's Island reruns and electrical cables, right?
	Right.
	It was more passive abuse, I'd say.
	How was it passive abuse?
	By not being there.
	Yeah, neglect for sure.
	Absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	And, you know, if they were too dumb to be good parents, then there is a kind of benign neglect.
	And so, you know, there's just one possibility.
	I mean, I obviously don't know them, but this is just one possibility.
	So...
	My suggestion would be to have as few dumb people around you as possible.
	I mean, I think that's really important, right?
	I mean, the problem is if you grow up in a dumb gene pool or in a dumb neighborhood or in a dumb family, there tends to be like a lot of dumbness around.
	It's like, hey, you know, we grew up in little Italy, lots of Italians, right?
	Right, and you grew up in minor Dumville, and guess what?
	Lots of minor Dumville people around, right?
	So I would just say, first of all, you have to take a break from the Zombie Brains Rockhead crowd, right?
	And try and find people who are as smart as you and find ways of interacting with them that's not how it was with your parents.
	Does that make any sense?
	It does make sense.
	Now, what do you want to be doing with your life, though?
	What's missing for you?
	Well, I mean, right now, I'm basically having a quarter-life crisis, and I've been working at a corporate banking behemoth for the last two years, and I just have to face facts that I don't really fit in here, and I don't like the work that I'm doing.
	My plan right now is to quit my job in a few weeks.
	I've saved money to enroll in a programming bootcamp, which is a program that would enable you to have the skills to join a startup or any kind of tech firm.
	And my ultimate goal is to learn to design apps for Bitcoin to make Bitcoin more popular and user-friendly.
	Why do you need to go to school for that?
	It's not really school.
	It's like a 10-week program.
	I know that all the resources are free online, but I think I'd benefit from it.
	They're all about immersion.
	And I think if you want to learn Chinese, you go to China.
	And if you want to learn programming, especially starting behind, I should go to an immersive boot camp.
	Yeah, but the analogy is not correct, right?
	Because you're saying if you want to learn Chinese, then go to China, right?
	If you want to learn Mandarin, go to China, right?
	But that would be saying, look, if you want to learn programming, go join a programming company, right?
	But I'm just pointing it out, right?
	Okay, so you've got 10 weeks there, and you're going to be starting up your programming career and working on Bitcoin, right?
	Correct.
	So I must confess that I'm completely at a loss.
	Why?
	Why are you calling?
	You're like, I don't know what I want to do with my life.
	Other than I'm quitting my job, I'm going to go on a 10-week hardcore coding course, and then I'm going to code for Bitcoin.
	Okay, so sounds like you know what you want to do, right?
	Well, yeah, I mean, I'm just kind of mad at my parents that I ended up in this situation, that I wasted all these years, and that I went to college doing something I didn't like.
	And part of that's my fault, but part of that's my parents' fault for pressuring me to do that.
	But how do I... I know it's up to me to change it now, which is why I've improved myself to the part where I've made these decisions to go to this camp and better my situation.
	But I'm kind of angry about how much time I've wasted.
	And I kind of blame them for a lot of it, and myself, but a lot with them.
	And I'm wondering if that blame is placed correctly.
	In what way did they pressure you to go to college and take something you didn't like?
	Um, they paid for it, and, uh...
	That's not pressure.
	I guess they didn't...
	Okay, yeah, they didn't pressure me as much as I knew that they would be disapproving if I didn't go.
	I mean, sorry, that's just this image of, like, this mafia hitman who's like, you know, I'm taking you out for dinner.
	The dinner will be free because I'm putting the heavy muscle on you.
	Sorry?
	But don't worry, there'll be escargot in the main course.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	I was saying that, but that's why I place responsibility on myself, too, because I did choose.
	It's not like anybody was holding a gun in my head to go to college and to take this job, especially nobody put a gun in my head.
	There wasn't any disapproval in that decision.
	But I'm just saying if I had better parents, I would have known what I wanted earlier in life because they would have fostered my interests and let me explore more things.
	So I'm kind of mad about that.
	But why?
	I mean if they weren't around, how were they preventing you from exploring more things?
	Well, it's like I picked up guitar when I was like 13, and my parents definitely weren't around a lot then.
	And so if you're around, if I'm around my kid, and my kid shows an interest in guitar, I'd say, hey, let's get you lessons.
	Show me what you've learned.
	You know, I would encourage him and, you know, tell him he doesn't have to do it.
	But, you know, if he wants to, I'll help him any way I can.
	I don't really think I got that.
	You don't really think you got that.
	I never know how to parse statements like that.
	You didn't get that.
	So you'd get into guitar, and what would happen?
	And it was on me.
	There was no encouragement.
	Still to this day, my parents haven't asked me to play anything for them.
	I've been playing for 12 years.
	Right.
	Right.
	I'm sorry.
	Can you play me something?
	Not right now.
	You don't have a guitar?
	Not on me.
	Well, I don't mean on you.
	Is there one in the room?
	No, I'm at work.
	Oh, you're at work?
	Okay, all right.
	Do you have any recordings?
	Yeah, I have recordings of me playing with the band.
	Great.
	Send it to Mike.
	Mike, will you throw a recording in here so we can hear this man's sound and listen to his groovy, tasty shredding?
	Or just record something.
	I want to hear it.
	Do you want to hear it, Mike?
	Yeah.
	I'd like to hear it.
	Yeah, I love hearing some guitar myself.
	So, yeah, absolutely.
	I believe there's a song called Smoke on the Water.
	I don't know if many guitarists know it.
	But no, I mean, if you could, I'd like to, yeah, we'll splice it in here.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	And I think that's great.
	So I just wanted to sort of put that in.
	Look, you have every reason to be pissed off.
	I mean, you have every reason to be pissed off.
	And obviously your parents knew how to follow their own desires.
	I mean, my rule is if someone's incapable of something, you don't blame them for it, right?
	But you said your father was charismatic.
	Now charismatic means you have to know what other people want and sort of dole it out to them.
	Charisma is basically about making other people feel small and making other people feel like you're glorious and that they should really want to spend time with you so that they will give you gifts and they will surrender and submit to you.
	It's a hierarchical state of mind or positioning.
	So what I'm saying is if your dad's out picking up women, then he knows what women want, at least trashy, low-quality women.
	He knows what they want, and he's able to provide it.
	So your father has some capacity to empathize or at least to understand what other people want and provide it to them, right?
	And he also knows what he wants because he's out there pursuing it, right?
	So your dad can't say, well, I didn't know that other people have desires, right?
	He has desires.
	He's acting on them, and he's doing it partly by understanding what other people want, right?
	Women.
	So, yeah, he is responsible for that, right?
	I mean, just because you're dumb doesn't mean that you're completely off the hook as far as any decent human standards go, right?
	Right.
	So, no, you have every right to be angry at them.
	And, you know, if you have a passion and you've been playing, you said, what, 12 years?
	12 years.
	So you've been playing guitar for 12 years.
	And if your parents have never wanted to listen to it, I mean, I don't know, a certain kind of freedom in that.
	Right?
	A certain kind of freedom is in that, right?
	You know, you can go have your life if you want.
	You can, you know, we owe our parents justice as adults.
	And justice is an accurate assessment of the virtue of another human being.
	That's really all justice is.
	It's an accurate assessment of the virtue of another human being.
	And if your parents are dumb and selfish and uninterested in your passions and so on, then in my view, you can go and have your life.
	And you really don't have to care about what their preferences are.
	You know, they got to get out of jail free card.
	You got to get out of jail free card, right?
	Right.
	Yeah, go ahead.
	Now there's like apologies.
	Like my dad has apologized for hitting me and he's like, I'm sorry I wasn't always there for you.
	And my mom's, you know, I'm sorry.
	I wish I was there for you more only after I confronted them about it, of course.
	And so they've apologized.
	And I mean, I just don't know what my relationship to my parents is now.
	Well, first of all, you know exactly what your parents' relationship is with your parents, right?
	If you're going to be smart, then don't pretend that I'm dumb, right?
	You know exactly what your relationship is with your parents.
	I don't know how to carry forward.
	You know exactly how to carry forward.
	I mean, start trusting your own intelligence, right?
	You know when I said surround yourself with smart people?
	Well, this would be an example, right?
	So you know exactly how to deal with your parents or what your relationship is with them, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	Which is, you confronted them, and they apologized.
	Now, did your parents say exactly what you said?
	I'm sorry I wasn't always there for you?
	No, it was more like, I wish things could have been different.
	Yeah, yeah.
	You know what we call these?
	No, hang on, hang on.
	Yeah, I mean, I don't even need to hear more.
	You know what we call these?
	Beanaps!
	They're called BNAPs.
	B-N-A-P's.
	And do you know what a BNAP is or a BNAP? It is a bullshit non-apology.
	I'm sorry I wasn't always there for you.
	Well, that's a complete false dichotomy.
	That's a straw man.
	What does it mean to be always there for someone, right?
	I mean, I'm sorry that one time when you wanted dessert, but I really had to pee.
	I wasn't always there for you because I spent two minutes peeing.
	There's no such thing as being always there for someone.
	So the moment that someone gives you some apology that is a supposed apology for an impossible standard, they're basically saying, fuck you.
	They're basically just saying, fuck you, you're insane, you have these impossible standards, but I'm going to appease you because you're too irrational to talk to, right?
	I'm sorry I wasn't always there for you.
	Now, I'm sorry I was hardly ever there for you, that's a different apology.
	Did you see the difference?
	Yeah, I mean, I don't want to get too caught up on me paraphrasing my mom, and I'm not sure if it went, if always was the operative word, but it did seem like it was kind of a appeasing apology.
	We just stopped talking about it already, and I'm sorry now, are we done with this?
	Well, do you know, I'm sorry, are we done with this?
	Do you know what that is?
	Fuck you.
	That is a bullshit, that's a bullshit non-apology.
	I'm sorry you feel that way.
	I'm sorry you're upset.
	I'm sorry that you're angry.
	I'm sorry that you're disappointed.
	I'm sorry this.
	Right?
	That's a B-nap.
	That's a bullshit non-apology.
	It's a B-nap.
	And it's just like ding, ding, ding.
	I mean, do you know if there was like a bell that went off every time in the world a B-nap was uttered?
	Do you know what the only thing we'd ever hear is?
	Bells?
	It would be a world of bells.
	Bullshit, non-apology!
	Bing, bing, bing, bing!
	Bullshit, non-apology!
	Bing, bing, bing, bing!
	Bullshit, non-apology!
	Bing, bing, bing, bing!
	I'm sorry you found your childhood so tough.
	I tried to do my best, but clearly it wasn't good enough.
	Bing, bing, bing, bing!
	Beanap, baby!
	I'm sorry that you took that the wrong way.
	Bing, bing, bing, bing!
	Beanap!
	It's just, it's embarrassing.
	It's just ridiculous to hear up.
	I'm sorry you didn't enjoy that meal.
	That you asked me not to cook.
	Bing, bing, bing!
	Right?
	I'm sorry that I... And it's an apology comparing your upset to an impossible standard.
	Which is basically saying, you're a complete perfectionist, but I have to apologize because you're also insane.
	Right?
	And...
	I mean, now I'd like to show you the exact...
	Yeah, yeah, go ahead.
	I'd like to dig up in my phone the exact apology.
	Okay, you go find it.
	I'll rant.
	You go find the exact apology.
	Another thing, was it in a text message?
	It was a text message, yeah.
	Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, baby.
	Bullshit non-apology. Non-apologies are like real apologies require eye contact.
	They require empathy.
	They require listening.
	They require repetition.
	And you know what they require most?
	Fundamentally, they require an interest that you are satisfied.
	Right?
	Because bullshit non-apology is, I'm sorry that, now can we move on?
	What, you want to return to this?
	Are you kidding me?
	We already talked about this.
	Are you hung up on this?
	Are you stuck?
	Look, I can apologize again.
	I can apologize all day.
	Either you're going to accept my apology or you're not going to accept apology.
	I can't make you accept my apology.
	I can only say over and over again, I'm sorry.
	Is that enough for you?
	Are you satisfied yet?
	I'm sorry.
	Holy fucking bullshit non-apology orchestra is coming to town playing the video game of woe is me from the kingdom of doom and gloom and self-pity and fuck you and oh my god.
	Bullshit non-apology.
	Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing!
	I wish there was just fucking womby zombie bats flying around with little bell clappers between their balls and every time there was a bullshit non-apology they shit up someone's nose.
	That to me would be the best way to cure it.
	But, did you find it yet?
	Oh, you wanted me to look for it?
	I thought once I heard you say a text message is a bean app...
	No, no, go find it.
	Hey, I'll keep going because bullshit non-apologies, they are my fucking antichrist.
	They are like, oh, bullshit non-apologies, I want to bring a fucking flamethrower.
	You want to watch the world burn?
	Yeah, but only right after people say bullshit non-apologies.
	I want nuclear shadows of souls up against the wall somewhere right after bullshit non-apologies.
	It's so fucking passive-aggressive.
	It's so pitiful.
	It's so cowardly.
	I'm so sorry that you are so immature as to be bothered by these tiny inconsequentialities that many years have passed.
	But my gosh, I suppose I'd better appease you because I'm such a big a person and I can give yourself a little apology to keep you moving along.
	Oh my fucking god.
	Oh my god.
	Did you find it?
	I can't find it.
	It doesn't matter to me anymore.
	No, no, let me tell you.
	Let me tell you.
	Listen.
	Turn around quickly.
	Do you notice how you're followed by a butt?
	And, uh, not bad, I might say.
	Right?
	Or, as they say in Nevada, a beaut!
	Are you happy?
	A beaut!
	Fucking YouTubers.
	It's butt!
	It's beaut!
	It's not butt!
	It's beaut!
	It's the beaut of the joke!
	Hello!
	Anyway, so you notice how you're followed by a butt, right?
	Well, bullshit non-apologizers, the BNAP tribe, they are like human beings in that everything they say, every apology they make, is followed by a butt, right?
	I'm sorry that I hit you, but I had a bad childhood too.
	I'm sorry that I hit you, but it was a very stressful time.
	Your father was having affairs.
	We were low on money.
	Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
	I'm sorry that I hit you, but I was also hit as a child and I tried to do my best and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	And then I had those health issues and you were really difficult.
	You had a lot of energy.
	You didn't listen.
	I'm sorry that I hit you, but fuck you.
	Followed by a butt.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	You know what's followed by a butt when you walk around?
	An asshole.
	An asshole.
	When you walk around, you got your sphincter, you got your balance, you got your sphincter, you got your asshole, and right behind that is the butt.
	Right?
	An asshole is always followed by a butt.
	An asshole always ends with a butt.
	Right?
	They always have to put the butt in.
	This is everywhere.
	And it's really...
	Comparing to the ideal standard and being followed by a butt is like the one-two punch of the B-nap.
	The bullshit non-apology.
	So...
	I am sorry.
	Yeah, yeah, go for it.
	Okay, one sec.
	Hang on, hang on.
	I'm bracing myself for the full-on butt B-nap cannon straight to the forehead.
	Okay, go.
	Okay.
	Thank you for expressing your feelings today.
	I'm sorry for all I did and truly wish I could have been home with you as a child, Jesus.
	There are far more regrets.
	Wait, wait, where did Jesus come from?
	From me.
	Is that you?
	Okay, okay, okay.
	Just read it verbatim and then we'll do it.
	Sorry, okay.
	Thank you.
	Thank you for expressing your feelings today.
	I'm sorry for all I did and truly wish I could have been home with you as a child.
	There are far more regrets I have and wish I could turn the clock back.
	That's it.
	Okay, so let's take this again more slowly.
	Okay, so start it again.
	Okay.
	Thank you for expressing your feelings today.
	I'm sorry for all I did and truly wish...
	Ah, wait, wait, wait.
	No, no.
	See, you've got to slow down to get the full-on BNAP wet fish to the head, right?
	So, first of all, I'm sorry for all that I did.
	All that I did.
	Nothing specific.
	Right?
	And what that means is that while you were talking...
	Is this your mom or your dad?
	This is my mom.
	Yeah, I assume it was mom.
	Okay.
	So while you were talking, what she heard was...
	Can you repeat that back to me?
	I agree with all you said.
	Because I don't know.
	I wasn't listening, right?
	Because you obviously said I was bothered by this, this, this, and this, right?
	I didn't like this, this, and this.
	This upset me, right?
	Now, is she repeating back to you what you said?
	No!
	All that I did.
	I don't know.
	Just fucking cast a wide net.
	I don't see any details, right?
	No, no.
	In the next part of the sentence, the full sentence is, I'm sorry for all I did and truly wish I could have been home with you as a child.
	Now, I don't know what that...
	Hang on, hang on, hang on.
	I don't know what that means.
	Like, I have no idea what that means.
	Like...
	Does she mean that she did at the time wish that she could be home with you?
	Does she wish now that she had wanted to be home with you in the past?
	Does she wish now that she had been home with you in the past?
	Like, I don't know what any of that means.
	She did what she did when you were a child, and let me tell you a very important secret to understanding why people won't do what they do, or what their values are.
	It's what they do.
	If your mother had really wanted to be home with you as a child, then she would have been home with you as a child.
	If your mom had won a lottery ticket that said, spend a day with your son and you get a million dollars, what would she have done?
	Spend the day with her son.
	Exactly!
	So there's your motivation.
	If you want it, then it happens.
	If, on the other hand, you've spent, say, I don't know, a quarter of a century not doing that, then saying, I wish I had been home with you more, is completely meaningless.
	Because empirically, she doesn't wish that at all.
	Because she didn't.
	Do you see what I'm saying?
	Yeah, I do.
	I would have done anything to grow up three streets over.
	No, that's not a good example.
	Scratch that, because you were a kid, right?
	My sole goal in life is to learn how to fly a remote-controlled helicopter really well.
	That's all I want from life.
	Do you have a remote control helicopter?
	I don't.
	Are you planning to get one?
	I'm not.
	Have you ever had one?
	No.
	So what the fuck are you saying?
	You say that you have a desire which is the complete opposite of how you acted.
	Does this make any sense?
	It seems kind of convenient.
	It's like, yeah, when it doesn't matter at all anymore now, I wish that I could have done the right thing.
	No, oh man, no, no, no, this is what you know, sorry.
	Ah, she's still doing it!
	Because she's not with you in the apology!
	Right?
	Being with you means listening to you and asking you how you're doing and trying to figure out what matters to you and trying to figure out what can be reasonably and morally provided for you to make you happy and all that kind of stuff, right?
	Do you know how that's not possible?
	In a fucking text message.
	A text message is one way, right?
	No eye contact, no feedback, right?
	No conversation, no two-way street.
	It's the same as your childhood!
	Does she live, like, on another continent?
	No.
	So it's not impossible for her to see you, right?
	Yeah, I mean, I don't really want to see her that often.
	No, no, no, no, but if she wants...
	How can I put...
	She's saying, I really wish I had been there with you while you were a child when you needed me and wanted something emotionally from you, and she's saying it in a text message!
	And she's not there with you when you've expressed the need for something that you want from her as an adult.
	She's still not showing up!
	It's exactly the same as your childhood.
	I really wish I could have been there when you needed me.
	And she's saying it in a text message.
	And she's not being there when you need her, saying how much she wishes she was there when you need her.
	That makes sense.
	It's crazy.
	Dumb.
	I mean, that's not even tough, right?
	Not you.
	It's like, oh my god.
	Okay, go on.
	That's all I've got.
	Okay, to the third sentence.
	Okay.
	There are far more regrets I have and wish I could turn the clock back.
	Okay, so impossible, right?
	I mean, you can't turn the clock back.
	If I had to do it all over again, guess what?
	You don't get to do it all over again.
	There's no mulligans in childhood when your children are grown up.
	That's something, you know, for your dad there.
	But there's no do-overs, right?
	Right, so I wish I could do it all over again.
	But the sad thing is, you're giving her a chance to do it over again right now.
	And she's sending you her text message!
	I can't take it.
	I can't take it.
	Oh, if only I could do it over again and really be there for you when you needed me.
	In a text message.
	In a text message.
	You don't have to go back to when I was a child.
	Just go back ten seconds.
	Don't hit the send button, get off your fucking ass, get in the car, drive and see your kid, apologize in person, and keep apologizing with no buts and no bullshit and no beanaps until, you know when?
	Until your child is satisfied with your apology!
	Until they have achieved emotional satiation and really get That you understand who they are, what they need, and where their emotions are coming from.
	Right?
	I'm sorry that I didn't provide you any empathy, so I'm going to do that by only talking about my feelings in a text message!
	Yeah.
	I mean, to...
	I overcame the desire to immediately after you said she could have gotten her car.
	We did just have a fight like an hour before that.
	Like I confronted her on not being there and she got really defensive and I like left and then took my train and got out of there and then a text message came later that night.
	Right.
	But it doesn't matter.
	She could have called.
	Yeah.
	Eye contact calling.
	Your son has just expressed that he has a big problem with your parenting and you not being emotionally and physically present during his childhood.
	That's not the right time to send a text message.
	Only talking about your thoughts and your feelings and not asking your child anything about his feelings.
	How do you feel After the apology?
	How do you feel after the fight?
	How do you feel after our conflict?
	How do you feel about your childhood?
	But I have these feelings of regret.
	I'm typing them out to you.
	I'm hitting send and then turning off my phone because I really regret not being there for you emotionally when you are tired.
	If I had to do it all over...
	Oh wait, I am doing it all over again, and by God, I'm doing the same thing.
	Except there's no awareness of that.
	Because they're dumb.
	Yeah, but they're stupid, right?
	Well, you know, that to me, I mean, if she can tie her shoes, then I can't give her an out for that, right?
	Does she try and climb into the car through the exhaust pipe?
	No.
	I can't give her one for that.
	That's so obvious.
	You weren't there for me emotionally.
	Let me type you something in a text message talking only about my feelings and not asking you anything about yours.
	Yeah.
	You know what my grandma said to me the other day?
	She said she heard about this fight and then she said, as we signed off on the conversation, she was like, I just want to make sure that you love and respect your mother.
	That's what she said.
	Oh, my God.
	Oh, my God.
	Oh, no.
	Oh, she didn't.
	Oh, my God.
	I told her those are involuntary feelings, and she had nothing to say to that.
	Oh, my God, she didn't.
	Oh, no.
	Oh, no.
	Oh, God, you're killing me.
	Literally, I'm, like, leaning up against the wall here.
	I'm only being held up by the new studio.
	There is no...
	So after you complained about your mother not being there for you, your grandmother really made sure that you knew how important it was that you be there for your mother.
	I don't think it was in direct response to that conversation, but she had heard that we were having somewhat of a falling out.
	Oh, God.
	Well, I guess...
	I guess it doesn't skip a generation.
	Well, with you, I guess it does, right?
	Hopefully with your kids, right?
	I'm so sorry.
	Oh my God.
	Oh my God.
	That's just terrible.
	I'm so sorry.
	I mean, how...
	This is manipulation, right?
	So people can be dumb, but they can be very cunning manipulators, right?
	I mean, animals can do that shit, right?
	I mean, you've got frogs that pretend to be poison frogs, and no one will eat them, right?
	I mean, they're not smart, right?
	And LSATs are shitty, but...
	But they're cunning, right?
	They camouflage, they mimic other animals, they, you know, they're all very cunning, right?
	So this is just like base of the brain mammalian slash reptilian cunning, right?
	And it's just so deeply manipulative.
	And look, I'll tell you, I mean, even if the apology is genuine, it's like, doesn't mean you're friends, right?
	Right.
	You know, like, I'm sorry I backed my car over your dog.
	Like, I'm genuine.
	Oh, my God, I feel terrible.
	It doesn't mean you've got to be friends, right?
	Even if you accept the apology.
	It doesn't fix to bring the dog back.
	Yeah, it's after the fact when it doesn't matter.
	Well, it's nice that there's an apology, and it will help get you some closure, but it doesn't.
	Because this is the thing, right?
	I gotta move on to the next caller, but this is the thing.
	I'm so sorry.
	You deserve so much better.
	Like, I'm so sorry about this BNAP shitstorm you've got going on around you.
	But it's so predictable.
	It's not going to happen.
	It's not going to happen the way you want.
	It would literally be like shaking your fist in someone's face until they learned how to do gymnastics.
	It just takes a lot of training, a lot of life experience, a lot of understanding, a lot of knowledge, a lot of coaching on the part of their parents.
	People who don't have empathy, don't have empathy!
	And the fact that your mom reacted in this way, it's so mental, right?
	This is sort of the best she can do based on how she was not doing it for 25 years.
	I'm 47 years old.
	If I've spent 47 years not learning Gaelic, the language, then I don't speak Gaelic.
	People come speak to me in Gaelic, and I can say, well, it's not my fault I can't speak Gaelic now.
	I mean, you can't expect me to speak Gaelic if I don't speak Gaelic.
	And it's like, well, it's true.
	You don't speak Gaelic now, but that is the result of choices that you've made over the course of your life, right?
	So, yeah, you have every right to get angry, but just remember the BNAP. The BNAP principle is essential to living a life free of the sticky webs of bullshit idiotic manipulation.
	Anybody who offers you a BNAP is highly, highly suspect.
	I get two BNAPs, I'm out of there.
	And I can't point out one BNAP and say, that is not an apology.
	Well, who are you to say what my apology is?
	An apology is like, you fucking idiot.
	Let me tell you, an apology is supposed to satisfy the listener, right?
	And hierarchical pricks...
	Who won't subject themselves to someone else's genuine needs always get angry when you don't feel emotional about their apology.
	Well, I'm sorry that you got so upset at me expressing myself.
	I'm sorry that you got upset at me just making a joke, right?
	And you feel like, fuck you, that's not an apology.
	And then they're like, who are you the hell to say?
	I apologized.
	I said the words, the syllables are in the air, and therefore the entire emotional...
	Process is complete, right?
	Well, you know what?
	Someone can write out a Japanese sentence in phonetics and I can pronounce it.
	That does not mean I speak Japanese even though the syllables are in the air, right?
	Actually speaking Japanese is a very complex and challenging thing.
	There's many years of study.
	I can make the sound.
	I can listen to a Japanese movie if I want and I can speak back the dialogue having remembered it, having no clue what I'm saying.
	Right?
	So, it's literally, I mean, God, I don't know how to explain it.
	It's so insane.
	Like, if I'm apologizing to someone, I'm attempting to speak to them in a language that they understand.
	Right?
	Like, if I'm trying to speak to somebody in Japanese, and I'm shitty at speaking Japanese, and they don't understand me, do I get to scream at them and call them an idiot?
	Wouldn't that be moronic if I did?
	Like, wouldn't that be just like, I mean, you're like almost too stupid to breathe out of both nostrils.
	And when you are apologizing to someone, it is your job to make them feel better.
	It is not their job to supply you with, quote, better feelings so that you don't have to keep apologizing.
	You know, who are you to figure out whether my apology is valid or not?
	It's like, well, who are you to figure out if you enjoy my cooking or not?
	It's like, hey, these are my taste buds.
	Fuck you, I'm sorry.
	It doesn't taste good.
	Well, who are you to figure out what tastes good or not to you?
	It's like, I think you don't know what any of the words you're saying mean.
	So, I'm really sorry about that, but I certainly wouldn't put up with the bean apps.
	The bean apps are the death of relationships if they're indulged in long enough.
	So, anyway, best of luck.
	Keep us posted if you can.
	Mike, who's up next?
	Alright, up next is Travis.
	Travis writes in and says, I am a senior in high school and I want to discuss the non-aggression principle with my classmates.
	But they have become so accustomed to statism that they resort to very dismissive straw men.
	How does someone my age convey philosophy to my age group?
	Well, you set fire to straw men and you run from the building giggling.
	No, I don't know.
	It's a travesty.
	Sorry.
	Yes, so you want to discuss the non-aggression principle.
	How old your class is?
	18, 17.
	Actually, I wrote a paragraph.
	I mean, it's not a really long paragraph, but do you mind if I read that?
	It would make everything more sufficient, I think.
	Hey, it's your choice, man.
	You tell me if it's a good idea.
	I'm a senior in high school, and I really want to use the knowledge I've gained from listening to the show to promote the non-aggression principle and philosophy to other people.
	However, I don't seem to have the adequate skills to do such a thing.
	Whenever I make the argument for anarchy to fellow high school students, I feel shut down very quickly by their so-called rebuttals.
	They seemingly make some good points, such as to say, quote, To say taxation is death is to commit the black and white fallacy, unquote.
	They think that applying the non-aggression principle to all aspects of life is being too idealistic and not looking at the big picture.
	Whenever I hear this, I get this mad in the sense that I'm...
	Hang on.
	Hang on.
	I'm sorry.
	Well, but we got to stop, right?
	Keep your place, right?
	So this is what they say, right?
	So basically they say it's committing the black and white fallacy and it's too idealistic, right?
	Right.
	Do they know that too idealistic is not an argument?
	Yeah, well, I don't think they know that.
	I think they think that being idealistic is not making an argument.
	It's just saying, you know, go on, go on.
	Well, no, it's important, right?
	Because you need to figure out whether people can think.
	Right?
	Most people cannot think.
	Get this tattooed in reverse letters on your forehead so every time you're shaving in the morning you can see this.
	Most people cannot think.
	And that's not the worst part.
	The worst part is most people cannot think and don't know that they cannot think.
	So people say, literally, brain-dead shit like, well, it's just idealism.
	It's utopianism.
	It's like, you're just flapping your breadmashers.
	You're not making any intelligent arguments.
	You're not even making any dumb arguments.
	You're not even making any arguments.
	You might as well be yodeling down a fucking well and thinking you're Schrodinger's cat.
	I mean, this is not an argument.
	Well, you can't apply a universal principle universally.
	There have to be exceptions to a universal principle.
	Two and two making four, that's idealistic.
	That's unicorn from...
	Right?
	That's all they're doing.
	So, I mean, it's a universal principle.
	It's, like, NAP. What do they think the P is for?
	P-fucking-diddy?
	No!
	It's principle!
	Non-aggression principle!
	Not the principle like the douchebag guy with the pork...
	With the pork belly who goes down to the corner office and is all fired up about being, quote, in charge of people who are forced to be there at the point of a gun and spending money that their parents are forced to pay at the point of the gun and even non-parents are forced to pay at the point of the gun.
	Not that principle!
	A principle!
	Like, universal!
	Well, okay.
	The speed of light is 186,000 miles a second.
	That's true.
	And we've measured it to the moon and back, shoot a laser at the moon, it comes back, yes, it's 186 miles a second, but to say that it also extends to Mars, well, that's just plain crazy idealism.
	I mean, that's just utopianism.
	I mean, try doing that at a science conference.
	I mean, try getting a wrong answer in a math test, right?
	And then saying, well look, okay, there's 40 people in the class, 39 people got the answer right.
	But to expect 40 people to get the answer right, that's just utopian.
	That's crazy idealistic.
	That's just insanely optimistic.
	So you can't mark me down, because the law of averages is that it can't possibly happen.
	It's completely idealistic.
	So they don't know that they're just making an emotional argument.
	I'm trying to think of the logical category you'd call it.
	Maybe it's something like a straw man, except it's not even mischaracterization of the argument.
	It's something like poisoning the well or just libelous, slanderous bullshit.
	It literally is at the level of...
	That, you know, that is...
	I know you are, but what am I? I mean, that's literally where it's at.
	It's like, that argument has cooties.
	It's like, okay, I'm sorry, but, you know, let me put some tapioca in your toothless mouth and let you continue on your chompy little way.
	Right.
	I think that...
	I think the reason they're like that is because, I guess, I think they're, at an early age, were introduced to just these real, like, gray area with things, like, oh, you know...
	No!
	No, Travis, it's not that.
	I'm sorry.
	It's much worse than that.
	It's much worse than that.
	No, the reason that they don't want to know this argument, the reason that they fight it and react emotionally to it and use all of these stupid syllables to slander a rational argument by calling it idealistic and auto-tuned and not too funky and a little bit smelly and downtown brown or whatever other nonsense they come up with.
	Do you know why they do that?
	Because they don't want to know that they're actually in hell.
	They don't want to know that they're actually in hell.
	You know, if you were in hell, but you thought you were in heaven, and you didn't ever think you could get out of hell, would you want someone to relieve you of your delusion?
	Yes. .
	Well, then you are a philosopher.
	Right, but you're not the rest of the species.
	The rest of the species are like, don't unplug me from The Matrix, right?
	I mean, The Matrix is like the world, right?
	And I don't know.
	You're 17.
	Do you even know what I'm talking about?
	I don't know.
	Do you guys watch The Matrix?
	It's pretty old by now, right?
	The movie?
	No, I'm 18.
	I understand.
	Okay, so like most people, they don't look.
	Do these kids want to look?
	What do these kids want?
	Do they want to know that the society that they live in will send them to war at a moment's notice?
	That the society that they live in has laid them down with over a million dollars in debt before they even graduate from high school?
	Do they want to know that the society that they live in forces their parents to pay for shitty schools built by people who build prisons and force them to be there and are using them as dumb fucking blind livestock collateral to further in debt any children that they may happen to have?
	They don't want to know That they're in hell, and that they're livestock.
	They think they're all fucking ballerinas, and they're just livestock in a tube for the banksters to grind up and have a cell on burgers, right?
	So they don't want to know the reality of their society because Miley Cyrus has a new haircut.
	I mean, I think, yeah, I think the denial is really what it boils down to.
	They don't want to admit to themselves because I think they know.
	They know.
	And they kind of smile when I say taxation's theft.
	They kind of like, yeah, but, you know, it's necessary.
	You know, it's like they want to just kind of like bury the truth deep, deep, deep down, deep down.
	Well, no, it is necessary.
	It is necessary.
	No, no.
	But taxation is necessary for evil people.
	Of course it's necessary.
	Look, they think they're in school.
	They probably use the word school.
	So if you high school, they don't know that they are tax and public sector union hostages.
	They're hostages.
	They think that the teachers can get fired.
	They think that if a teacher's bad, we can just complain and get them fired.
	Are you kidding me?
	No, they're like the most permanent.
	Yeah, and the teachers are all like, well, you know, I didn't get into education for the money.
	I get paid a lot more else.
	Yeah, I don't think so.
	Right.
	Oh, okay, so if you're really into being a teacher for the education for the children, well then, by golly, you've got to get rid of those two months off in the summer.
	Because there's no better way...
	To make kids not learn things than give them two fucking months off from learning things.
	You know, there's no language class that says, work really hard at the language for a month, then don't look at anything for a month.
	Bingo!
	Right?
	It's just backsliding.
	You know, it's literally like saying to get to the top of that rock climbing wall, go halfway up and let go.
	You'll sail to the top!
	It's momentum, baby!
	Right?
	So, of course they're not in it for the kids.
	They're in it for the benefits, they're in it for the three hours of work a day that they have to do, and they're in it for the summers off.
	I've been a stay-at-home dad!
	End of the school day, all the fucking teachers are at the playground.
	That beats working, doesn't it?
	But it's for the kids!
	No!
	It's for the vitamin D! It's for the sunshine!
	It's for the sleeping in!
	It's not for the kids!
	Oh my God!
	And the thing is, the thing that's really funny is that a lot of the teachers complain that they're not paid enough.
	I mean, and that's like a common thing you hear from the left, right?
	Like, oh, our teachers, they're educating our children, damn it!
	You know, we should, we gotta pay them more!
	We gotta raise taxes!
	We gotta, you know...
	It's like, just...
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, well, I mean, look, the best way to have them paid more is have the parents pay them directly.
	Right?
	If you want to pay teachers more, you can get rid of the 20 or 30 or 40 percent, depending on where you are, you get rid of the 20 or 30 or 40 percent of bullshit fucking academic overhead, the bureaucrats between the teachers and the students and the parents, right?
	What should a school be?
	I mean, you don't need like 9,000 people to run eight grocery stores.
	Who aren't even in the grocery stores.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	They're at some fucking head office passing bullshit papers back and forth.
	You know, we need to really rearrange these vegetables according to the common core.
	Right?
	Let's fundamentally change the layout of these stores.
	Why?
	Because it's better.
	Are you saying that all the store layouts before were worse?
	No.
	It's just different.
	Well, if it's not different, why are we doing it?
	Well, it's better.
	Well, that means everything before was worse.
	No.
	It's like, fuck.
	My head got taken, right?
	I mean...
	If teachers want to be paid more, that's easy.
	You just privatize the whole fucking thing.
	Get rid of all of the overhead.
	I mean, do you know they spend $20,000 a year In New York on their students and pens are like fucking gold there.
	Like you can't even get a pen.
	God forbid you need some chalk.
	$20,000 a year per student.
	And the schools are complete shit heaps.
	Teachers want to get paid more.
	I would love for teachers to get paid more.
	Great.
	Let's privatize the fucking thing and let the parents pay you and then the good teachers will get paid more and the shitty teachers can go fuck off.
	They have no concept of the market.
	They don't think that...
	It's just...
	It's a complete...
	No, no, no, no!
	They have every concept of the market.
	They know the market completely.
	All right.
	Do you know how you know that?
	How?
	How do you know that teachers know exactly about the market?
	Talk to them about privatization.
	What do they say?
	What do they say?
	When you talk to teachers about privatizing education, what do they say?
	Fuck no!
	They say, but parents won't be able to afford it.
	No, I get it.
	They won't be able to afford to send their kids.
	No, they strongly resist the market.
	Anytime the market comes up, they're like, oh, no way!
	We're not doing that!
	They know exactly what the market is all about.
	It's not that they don't know it, they just hate it.
	They don't want to be tested!
	Your paycheck is a test!
	How much are you worth?
	Not how much do you think we're worth.
	We all think we're worth mountains of gold.
	I mean, not how much.
	How much are you actually worth?
	So when teachers test students, they say not how much do you think you know, but how much do you actually know?
	That's the question they want answered, right?
	So with the teachers, it's like, It's not how much do you think you're worth, it's how much are you actually worth?
	How quality is your education, how much quality in your education is perceived by the children and the parents?
	You see, the market is the test, and teachers only want to inflect tests on eight-year-olds.
	They don't want any tests themselves!
	I recently watched your video.
	It's from a really long time ago, like 2009 or something, where you're interviewing that guy who made that documentary about...
	Oh, The War on Kiss.
	Yeah, it was...
	That was one of my favorite videos, and I just watched it earlier today, actually, and it was astounding how...
	I mean, I need to watch the documentary itself, obviously, but it was just...
	I don't remember the details, but that was pretty amazing.
	And it's interesting that we're talking about that now.
	But I have a little bit more to say.
	I mean, time, obviously.
	Yeah, go ahead.
	But if you want to stop me reading.
	Okay.
	Where was I? They seemingly make...
	Whenever I hear this, I get the nagging sense that I'm being irrational, dogmatic, always dismissing coercion as if it was viewing it as sin.
	But I know better.
	However, I can't seem to move forward from this dismissal.
	I almost feel like a child being crushed by their pragmatic reasoning.
	Right, I know I'm saying stupid stuff.
	You're saying wonderful, intelligent stuff.
	Really.
	Don't say that about yourself, right?
	I mean, don't say that about yourself.
	I mean, there's no seriousness.
	I mean, don't let them infect your head.
	You're saying wonderful, intelligent stuff.
	And your mind at 18 is spectacular.
	It is spectacular.
	Now, you are surrounded by idiots.
	You know, this is the reality.
	Now, we wouldn't have to care about idiots except for democracy, and maybe we can talk about that a little later.
	I mean, I've got nothing against idiots except their vote counts as much as mine.
	Which is sort of like saying, well, I need a really delicate operation.
	Let's have the brilliant surgeon and the janitor vote on how it should go ahead.
	I'm going to get fucking Roto-Rooter in my eyeball and die.
	We have to act in self-defense against idiots because they vote.
	And because our money and our lives and our brilliance is taken from us and shuffled down the bottomless, gaping, dune, sand, demon maw of these retards.
	And so, no, it is a defensive measure at the moment to simply point out repeatedly that most people are completely idiotic.
	And wouldn't know an original thought if it showed up in Jessica Rabbit's body in their fucking sex fantasies.
	And so, this is just basic self-defense.
	Like, we need to understand this stuff.
	Teachers are the stupidest people around.
	And it's not just my opinion.
	Like, the people who are at the bottom of colleges become teachers.
	Because anybody with any brains is doing something on the internet.
	When you become a teacher, oh my god, what a ridiculous thing to do.
	I mean, whatever.
	I wish there were better words for it.
	But no, you are saying wonderful, intelligent stuff.
	And so don't do this false...
	A false modesty thing.
	See, false modesty works with smart people, but it doesn't work with dumb people because it's subtle, right?
	And it's ironic, and it's self-deprecating.
	Like, if you say, well, I'm just saying stupid shit, ha ha ha, smart people know you're not.
	But dumb people are like, yeah, he totally is.
	You have to be...
	Don't bring any irony to dumb people.
	Don't bring any irony or subtlety or anything like that to dumb people because they don't get the nuance.
	They don't even understand what nuance is.
	They think it's what they talk into to make their computer type.
	Anyway, go on.
	All right.
	Even more demoralizing is conversations with the authority figures in my life, particularly my father.
	They always unanimous, you can't say that unanimously, dismiss my opinions as that of a ranting teenager with hormones and rebellious attitudes.
	And once I get into the real world, I will learn to appreciate things like the FCC and the military.
	I understand that they are committing atrocious policies here, but I feel overwhelmed by their sense of towering authority and so-called experience.
	I fear that one day I will lose my libertarianism once I grow older and they will be vindicated.
	It seems like I can't make the argument for a free society without this universal dismissal and it really kills my motivation.
	I think what it boils down to is that I have an intense fear of people and I'm always concerned about what they think of me.
	Compared to you, Stefan, I am so ineffective against these people.
	I need to have the same confidence you have to illustrate.
	No, no, no.
	Listen, listen.
	Listen, I'm sorry to interrupt.
	Listen, you've got to be fair to yourself, though.
	You're 18.
	I'm 47.
	I have freedom, liberty, independence.
	I don't have any status in my life.
	I don't do that shit.
	You don't have that choice at the moment.
	If I go to people and I say, rape is wrong, and those people say, well, not everywhere, not always.
	I mean, we need to have one central rape agency that can rape at will.
	I mean, saying rape is wrong always and we shouldn't have any rape or rape is always wrong, I mean, it's just idealistic.
	I mean, you're going to grow out of this anti-rape thing.
	You know, you're gonna understand that rape is very often necessary.
	And you'll keep butter in your back pocket at all times.
	And you will learn to always pretend that you're tying your shoelaces when bigger rapey men come around.
	And you will really understand that society cannot be organized in the absence of rape.
	And if you try to eliminate People's belief in the virtue of rape, you'll get more rape.
	And so we have the minimum rape by organizing a central rape agency and throwing people in prison who don't rape.
	That's the very best way.
	And having trained rapists That go around the world raping people and having, you know, 720 rape bases all over the world.
	That is the best way to not rape.
	You know, take kids when they're 17 or 18 and put them through intensive rape training sessions that last for years.
	Force them at gunpoint to go out and rape.
	Pay them for raping.
	That's the best way to reduce rape in the world.
	Like, you'll...
	Would you ever want to...
	Would you ever want to accept that?
	I would not.
	It seems like This is my analysis of the field, but you probably have a better one.
	It's just I think they were born into a system.
	It's kind of like creationism.
	They like what they were born into, so they have to justify it afterwards instead of doing the rational thing of justifying it beforehand.
	So like creationism, they don't accept evolution because they already believe in God or in the Bible.
	No, no, no.
	Oh, boy.
	You see, you're trying to avoid the hell thing, too, right?
	Now you've become your friends, in a way, right?
	See, it's like creationism, but lots of people outgrow creationism.
	I mean, look, you listen to this show.
	Lots of people call in.
	I was raised in LDS. I was raised in Mormonism.
	And they fucking...
	I wake up and, like, oh, my God, they're fairy tales, right?
	Like, I can't believe everyone lied to me.
	Well, I can, because it's hugely profitable.
	Catholic Church is one of the most wealthy and profitable institutions in the entire world.
	The budget is $170 billion just in the United States.
	I get why they speak stupid shit, because it's magic spells to make money.
	I mean, or take money, right?
	So lots of people outgrow this.
	And so you're saying, well, but people are in the system and this and that.
	Well, fuck, I was in the system.
	I grew up in the system.
	I was a Christian.
	I was a socialist.
	I was a nationalist.
	I was a warmonger.
	I was a minarchist.
	I was a statist.
	I was pro-Iraq War.
	I mean, that's ten years ago and change.
	And you continue to grow and And you wake the fuck up?
	And people who choose to stay asleep?
	Well, I'm sorry, the magic fucking voodoo curse of free will blasts your defenses into shards of glowing evil bots.
	They are responsible.
	All these bastards Who love the freedoms that other people went to the wall for.
	They love those freedoms.
	Right of assembly, freedom of speech, freedom from arbitrary arrest, right?
	A minimal government.
	I mean, you know, we know that, but relative to the world, right?
	Blah, blah, blah, right?
	I mean, they love those freedoms.
	And those freedoms came about because people like you and me stood up to all of the momentum of history and said, bullshit!
	Right?
	And then we just got louder and louder and people went, hey, you smell something?
	It's a bean app.
	Right?
	But they have all these great freedoms because crazy people stood up against all the momentum and blind, stupid, dull sludge of history and said bullshit.
	And they got all of these freedoms because of that.
	And now, when people come along producing exactly the same thing as what they value, they just become the assholes of history.
	Like, the assholes of history were dicks to people who were anti-slavery.
	Well, you know, we don't want to all be slaves, because then who would own us?
	We have to have some slavery.
	No slavery is madly idealistic.
	It's got to be some.
	I mean, what are you, some sort of absolute?
	It's black and white thinking.
	See, get that.
	Anyway.
	So, I mean, they're all assholes of history.
	And nobody remembers them.
	I mean, unless they just remember them as assholes.
	They're just dull, blind, stupid sludge that makes it hard to turn the supertanker Of history, which should be a speedboat, because anyone with brains can turn on a dime once they get better reason than evidence.
	But there's all this dumb, blind, stupid, resistant, immature, idiotic, brain-dead sludge of humanity that we've got to fucking wade through when we should be dancing in low-gravity moon-orbit disco balls.
	And...
	They love technology.
	Oh, I gotta get a new cell phone.
	Oh, I upgraded my computer.
	Oh, do you know my new car talks to me and stops when I'm about to bump something?
	That's amazing!
	I love all this new stuff!
	Oh, what the fuck was that?
	Was that a new idea?
	Wait, is that not Wait, wait.
	Oh, fuck.
	That's not a piece of new technology that's kind of cool and shiny.
	That's a new idea.
	Love the new technology.
	I'm going to take a long, slow, post-Indian meal dump on that new idea.
	And these are the assholes of history.
	New idea.
	Urgh!
	Kill!
	Urgh!
	Kill!
	Urgh!
	Kill!
	Urgh!
	Ooh, shiny!
	Something shiny.
	I mean, this is just who we have.
	And I don't care about them.
	I would love to live in a world where I don't care about people who are stupid and resistant.
	But the problem is they're praising people with a giant set of military hardware pointed at my child.
	So I'm really annoyed that I have to care about the opinions of idiots.
	In a free society, you'd come across an idiot and you'd say, I'm gonna get you a popsicle.
	It's nice out.
	Be sure to wear a hat.
	It's sunny.
	Right?
	Would you like a banana?
	You should really step into the shade.
	Look!
	Here's a laser pointer and a plant sprayer.
	Look at that light.
	See how it sparkles?
	Isn't that cool?
	Now, I'm sorry, I have to run along.
	I'd like to buy you some fro-yo, but I'm not sure if you know how to brush your teeth.
	I must move on now.
	Enjoy your day at the park.
	Holding on to the rope with all the other people who wish we still voted.
	I could be nice to them.
	I could be nice to idiots in a free society.
	And I would love the opportunity to be nice to idiots.
	But right now, idiots run my fucking future.
	Idiots indebt my daughter.
	Idiots cheer a government that strips my rights.
	So, sorry, I'd love to be friends with them.
	I've got nothing against blind people.
	I think it's great, except when they're machine gunning in my general direction.
	Then I kind of care that they're blind and I care what they're doing.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	I was watching—this is to demonstrate how just completely idiotic—I mean, I would be nice to them, too, but sadly, their decisions just plague us.
	Because, like, Adam Kokesh, you know how he does those provocative videos where he—not provocative, but, you know, he asks questions, goes around the street asking questions.
	He was in the Obama inauguration in 2012, like, where he's re-inaugurated.
	Early 2013, or early 2013, yeah.
	And he was asking this woman, why did you vote for Obama?
	Or something along those lines.
	And she was like, have you seen the color of my skin?
	And like, is that really...
	I mean, like, I just paused the video for a second.
	Is that really the reason why you voted for him?
	Because if that is...
	Then she's a fucking racist.
	Yeah, she's a complete racist.
	Well, I vote for McCain.
	Why am I voting for McCain?
	Do you see the color of my skin?
	What do you think, shoot?
	He's white like me.
	We pearlies got to stick together.
	We're like teeth.
	We stick together in the gums of our great democracy.
	Anyway.
	So, yeah, I mean, this is, you know, I'd love to not care.
	Yeah.
	Stupid people are very energetic and also stupid people are dimly aware of the fact that without the state they wouldn't have as much stuff.
	At least that's what they think.
	I mean in the long run they would, right?
	Like teachers are dimly aware that if they actually had to earn the money from the parents of the children, if they actually had to be measured by the market in what they do, that they would not do well.
	So people who are, you know, IQ 70, 75, 80, 85, sorry, maybe 80, 85, 90.
	Forget the lower ones.
	80, 85, 90.
	Those people are dimly aware that in a free market, they make very good doormen.
	They make reasonably good pizza delivery drivers.
	A little lower, they're fine at shining your shoes.
	They're dimly aware that in the free market, they're not going to do nearly as well.
	And so they're very terrified of letting go of government.
	Now, the reality is they'd end up doing a lot better in the free market.
	But for a while, there'd be a dip, blah, blah, blah.
	And they hang on to the state because they're just kind of dimly aware that if they had to compete in an open, free competition with everyone, that they would experience some setbacks.
	Now, smart people say, well, I'm willing to accept those setbacks for the sake of A, a moral society without violent people in costumes everywhere, A, and B, because I know that it's going to be short-term pain, long-term gain, right?
	But dumb people will reject the principle, or won't get the principle of the non-aggression principle, and they're too dumb to see over the hill to the glorious paradise of earthly delights that lies beyond the hump of getting rid of the state, right?
	And so they just sit there.
	No, don't want to go anywhere.
	No, don't want to change.
	No, you're stupid.
	That's idealistic.
	You're dumb.
	I don't care.
	I don't like it.
	What about the poor?
	My roads!
	Right?
	And, you know, unfortunately, with the system that we have, they're just one giant fat-laden artery blocker in the heartbeat of humanity.
	We can't get past it.
	Because the politicians gotta all talk to the stupid people.
	You're the best!
	You're so smart!
	You're the moral universe!
	You're the shining city on the hill!
	You people are beautiful!
	Fabulous!
	Rock on, LA! You people are great!
	Give me some money!
	I'm gonna praise you!
	And they're slaves to the stupid.
	I mean, that's all politicians are, slaves to the stupid, right?
	I always wondered if people really, like, listening to political language, like, how they, like, why they don't understand that they're not making any appeals to rationality.
	They're just saying, like, you know, I want a car that's made in America.
	You know, they just make these appeals to just these vague concepts that don't even exist.
	Like, America doesn't even exist.
	It's just this concept that people cling to to make themselves feel safe.
	And, like, it's like, We need to get women in equal pay.
	We need to make sure...
	These are not even arguments.
	They're not even just anything.
	They're just these emotional...
	I don't even know how to describe it.
	I'm stuttering right now because I'm just in shock that people actually believe or even get swayed by this emotional crap that's the political race.
	It's just nonsense.
	Yeah, I mean, being a patriot is like being proud that you have a passport to Narnia.
	I mean, none of that shit exists.
	I mean, it's all just complete fantasy.
	But yeah, I mean, I'm, you know, I'm happy for women to have equal pay the moment that men have equal breastfeeding.
	I think, you know, once my boobs are squirting baby juice all over the place whenever I do push-ups, I think that's great.
	But, you know, sadly, biology has designed us to be different for good reason, and you can be a good mother and make less money, or you can go for equal pay and be a shitty mom, right?
	Or you can just go for equal pay and not be a mom, which is perfectly fine, too.
	But, yeah, look, I mean, the problem is that you don't want to be around these people.
	Fundamentally, why would you?
	You don't want to be around these people, but you have to be around these people, and why do you have to be around these people?
	Because you're forced to be there, and they're forced to be there, and you're in hell.
	You're in hell itself, right?
	And when you're in hell itself, you might as well chat with the devils, right?
	Because you can't leave.
	Well, now you, you know, 18 and all that, you're on the, you're on your way out, right?
	You can start to choose your own companions.
	You can start to hang around people who are...
	Yeah, you're about ready to jet, right?
	You're about ready to hit the afterburners and get the fuck out of hell, right?
	Yeah.
	And in college, I don't know how different college will be.
	I mean, I don't know if there's any libertarian societies.
	Why, why, why do you want to go to college?
	Because colleges?
	Oh, dear.
	See, when you get personal with me, it's like a...
	Look, I'm not saying don't go to college, but you just say, well, no, I'm done with high school.
	I mean, college.
	You've got to go to college.
	Why?
	Well, I mean, it's already been.
	I mean, it's like I want to quickly become a successful entrepreneur in something.
	I mean...
	Oh, then you want to be like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and those guys, right?
	Because they were pretty successful pretty quickly.
	And do you know what they didn't do?
	Mark Zuckerberg, do you know what he didn't do?
	Finish college.
	Right?
	Right, I understand.
	But I'm just saying, I think not going to college would severely be difficult to get there, is what I'm saying.
	Do you believe me because I have a master's?
	Do you think that I'm right because I have a master's?
	I'm dumber because I have a master's.
	People should be more skeptical of me because I have a master's, right?
	Like, well, if he's so smart, why the fuck does he have a master's?
	Right?
	I mean, if he's such a good businessman, why did he spend eight years getting an MBA, right?
	I mean, he shouldn't be out there making money, right?
	Okay, there was no internet back then.
	Look, if the internet was available when I was 20, I never would have gone to college.
	I'm just telling you, I'm not saying whether you should or shouldn't go.
	I'm just trying to shake up your thinking a little, right?
	I mean, Bitcoin!
	Bitcoin!
	That's all you need to say!
	Bitcoin!
	I mean, they don't care.
	If you have a master's in Bitcoin, there's no master's in Bitcoin.
	It's too new, right?
	But I used to sort of wave it around, and Mike sort of helped me out of that delusion, like the master's, right?
	It's anyone who thinks I'm right because I'm a master's Oh, I have a master's is not someone who...
	Like, people should be like, oh, a master's?
	Really?
	He ran through a socialist gauntlet?
	That guy's suspect, right?
	Like, I wish he hadn't even finished high school, right?
	Weren't you, like, indoctrinated by, like, Marxist professors, too?
	Like, weren't you, like, surrounded by them, like...
	Oh, yeah.
	I wasn't indoctrinated by them.
	I was a hardcore objectivist.
	I just fought them tooth and nail.
	I learned some debating stuff, right?
	But no, I mean, God, I'm dumber for having been to college.
	I learned much more in the business world.
	I learned much more as a waiter.
	I'm dumber for having gone to college.
	And I'm more resentful.
	Look, I'm not saying go or don't go.
	I don't like automatic thinking.
	Just mull it over.
	See if there are opportunities that don't involve going to college, if there's stuff you want to do.
	Right now, I think it's the best.
	I'm always open-minded.
	What am I studying?
	What do you want to study?
	Like in school, what are you going to study in college?
	Well, I already got accepted to the geosciences.
	So I could go to some petroleum path from there.
	Well, okay.
	So if it's something technical, I can sort of understand that.
	But then you probably won't have a lot of people who are really interested in politics, right?
	They tend to go into the arts, right?
	They're all the ex-priests trying to find a new part of the state.
	Yeah, that's...
	That's why I'm glad that they're, I mean, I'm sure they're all, you know, like the professors there, they have tenure, they're just, you know, they're there, but they won't talk about it as much in the science classes, but...
	Well, no, the good thing with the science is there's no political correctness in the answers, right?
	Right, because that's what science is supposed to be.
	It's so funny, there's a lot of feminists who reject a lot of things about evolutionary psychology, even though it's demonstrable.
	But they're so against it because it says, how dare you say that we evolved into these gender roles?
	Because that's so degrading.
	It's just, it's the patriarchal propaganda.
	It's like, you know, I mean, come on.
	Well, you know, if facts are degrading, you've just ejected yourself from civilized conversations.
	That round earth totally rubs me the wrong way!
	Well, okay, can you go rub yourself the wrong way in some other place?
	Please face the other way while you do it.
	All right.
	Well, listen, I've got to move on to the next caller, but thank you so much.
	You know, you're almost out.
	There'll probably be slightly better people in college to have conversations with, but it's still going to be pretty tough.
	And just try and limit your exposure to anti-philosophical people and unphilosophical people.
	It's, you know, if you want to learn a new language, you've got to hang around people who speak that language, not people who spit on you when you try and speak that language, right?
	Otherwise, you'll end up aversive to that which is best within you, so...
	Just try to limit your exposure.
	And you have some control over that by just not bringing it up, right?
	Right.
	And that's why I listen to you and Adam mostly, and other people.
	So, thank you, Steph.
	I really appreciate the call.
	I really had a great time.
	Thank you.
	I'm incredibly happy to be part of your Gay intellectual parent family.
	Like Adam and I are like two gay guys raising a bright kid.
	So yay!
	Fantastic.
	You know, he just, the man will not spoon.
	That's the only issue that I have.
	Anyway, so let's move on to the next caller.
	Thank you again so much.
	Appreciate your call.
	Thank you.
	Alright, Nick is up next.
	Nick writes in and says, how does a young man who has been enlightened to the concept of liberty and self-knowledge best recuperate from a damaging romantic relationship?
	Hello, Steph.
	Can you hear me?
	Yeah!
	Wow, gossip.
	Good.
	Good.
	Alright, let's get some dirt.
	What happened?
	Well, I mean, just to give you a little bit of background, my own political awakening...
	I sort of started my senior year.
	That's when I really truly embraced the message of liberty and freedom, and I started delving into a lot of these more abstract yet applicable philosophical concepts of non-aggression and just the NAP, the golden rule.
	None of this is gossip, so if you could just pass forward to the gossip stuff, like let's get to the romantic stuff.
	We just did the non-aggression principle.
	Yeah, okay.
	So if I could just fast forward then, in my senior year, I really started to socially blossom.
	And I had always been sort of a wallflower and I never really talked to many people, didn't make too many friends.
	And then senior year, all of a sudden, I had women that were actually interested in me because I could hold a conversation with them without trying to narrowly avoid wetting myself because I was so nervous in the past.
	But I got a girlfriend, and I was super proud of myself.
	I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm super pro.
	I'm in high school.
	I'm 18.
	I might be able to lose my virginity, yada, yada, all these bullshit dreams and aspirations that I had.
	And throughout the duration of that relationship...
	I basically heard a desire to lose your virginity is aspirations, but all right, go on.
	No, no, but I literally thought about it.
	It would keep me awake at night, like, oh, I want to be cool.
	I want to do this.
	I don't know.
	I look back on it.
	It's just kind of like retardary.
	Why?
	I'm sorry.
	Why is it retardary?
	Why is it retardary?
	I mean, your genes want to make new use, right?
	Yeah, but being...
	I guess you're right to an extent.
	No, it's like saying, you know, the other day I didn't eat...
	No, but it's...
	The fuck the genes care about that, right?
	The photocopier is not like, hey, that's not Shakespeare, that's your ass!
	It's like, I don't care, I got ink, let's photocopy, right?
	Photocopy has no opinions about whether it's something beautiful or something with a hairy butt crack.
	I mean, it's just like, there's photocopy, right?
	But no, look, the last saying it's stupid, it's like, I didn't eat all day, my hunger is stupid.
	I mean, it's not stupid to be hungry, and it's not stupid to have blind lusts.
	I just don't distance your body.
	You probably, unless your parents were two paragons of virtue, you're only usually existing because of blind lust.
	Right?
	I mean, so you, you know, this is why it's tough to get blind.
	Too mad at dysfunctional people, because if it wasn't for dysfunctional people, I wouldn't be here, right?
	I mean, if it wasn't for two completely Dysfunctional people who are so messed up they could have found each other by sonar across an airplane hangar full of functional people.
	I wouldn't be here.
	I just don't want you to look at your sexuality and lust and all that by saying, well, you know, but now I live the life of the mind and I'm above all that testicular rolling ball madness.
	Absolutely not.
	My penis is like a weather bay and only points in the direction of the windy virtues of the women.
	Right?
	I mean, come on.
	It's okay to like tits.
	Really, that is really important.
	You know, when I was a kid, I don't know, I was like 14 or whatever, there was this girl in my high school who had, like, you know, gazongas for days.
	I mean, she had, like, hospital carts and, like, old granny wheelie things just to carry those things around.
	And I was like, yeah, I really want to go out with this girl, right?
	And she was like, she had the personality.
	Basically, it was like sandpaper on your spinal column.
	You know, it was just like...
	Oh, God!
	You know, but what I felt was that I could put my head between her tits, make motorboat noises, and then I wouldn't have to hear anything she said.
	That was sort of the plan with this woman.
	And I was going to ask her, and people wanted to know who I was going to ask to some dance or whatever.
	And I remember being in the corner of the classroom.
	I want to ask so-and-so, right?
	I told this story before.
	I want to ask so-and-so.
	And everybody knew about, you know, this is a woman whose tits could circle the world and all that kind of stuff.
	And why do you want to ask her out?
	I'm like, her personality.
	And right then, she laughed literally like a braying horse.
	She laughed like...
	Right?
	And I was like, yeah, because that personality is just, you know, but I can mute her with her boobs, right?
	So I'm just saying that it's not necessarily the worst thing in the world if she has a giggle like an electrified seal, right?
	I mean, it's okay to just have, you know, flesh things.
	And I'm not going to go act on them all, but don't say, like, that's dumb, in my opinion, because...
	We are.
	The whole brain is built on top of this reptile stuff.
	If you deny the reptile stuff, it's like carving out the foundation to a high tower.
	The whole thing comes down.
	Everything's built on everything else.
	Our fingers are not supposed to move individually.
	Do you know the way it works if you want to move a finger individually?
	It's really weird.
	What happens is Your brain tells all your fingers to move, like the base of your brain, your reptile part, says to your fingers, all move.
	And then a higher part of your brain says, well, except for those fingers.
	And it blocks, like it provides opposite nerve impulses to the other fingers.
	It's ridiculously inefficient, but we are piled layers upon plankton.
	We're layers above trilobites and single-celled organisms.
	We're layers above reptiles.
	And I don't think it's good to always say the top layer is real humanity.
	We're the entire triple-decker sandwich from the beginning of time.
	So I just wanted to sort of nag you about that.
	I'm sorry if that was annoying.
	No, I appreciate that.
	What you say is true to a great extent.
	I definitely agree.
	But I think the reason why I might have said that I feel sort of bad for being sexually irresponsible almost immediately in the relationship that I had with this woman.
	I actually have dated her for over a year and I just told her that I'd like to split things off a couple of days ago.
	There's your gossip.
	Actually, Pretty much immediately, almost after not even a month, we began doing, you know, sexually promiscuous stuff and whatnot.
	And for the first several months, and this is what I really feel bad about.
	Well, technically, if you're in a monogamous relationship, I think the promiscuity is not the right word.
	But what you mean is sexually irresponsible stuff?
	So you had sex without birth control?
	Right.
	Precisely.
	And, you know...
	And why?
	Why are we doing that?
	We stopped that behavior.
	No, no.
	Why?
	Why are we doing that?
	Let me think.
	You know, it was definitely a pleasurable experience, to say the least.
	And, you know, we just...
	Hmm.
	No, listen.
	You've got to answer that question.
	Maybe we just had the thought that, you know, it wouldn't be an issue.
	No, seriously.
	Look, if you told me, well, Steph, you know, I started dating a girl, and you know what really turned us on?
	Russian roulette.
	Oh, God, that was hot.
	You know, we'd get a nice Glock, and we'd load up the chambers with only one bullet, we'd spin that thing, and we'd point it at our dicks and our vaginas, and we'd just pull the trigger.
	And I just wanted to fuck the barrel end of that clock.
	It was such a turn-on.
	I'd be like, are you fucking kidding me?
	You what?
	You wanted to play Russian roulette with your dick?
	But unprotected sex with a fertile woman who you're not married to and who you don't love to death and trust with your life is Russian roulette.
	So if you said, I'm really into Russian roulette, and I love blindfolding myself and running into traffic, and I'd be like, why?
	You've got to know why you want to do that, so you stop doing it!
	I know that I would never repeat the behavior with anybody else ever again, and we actually sat down and talked about it for a long time.
	You're all sweating out the red spots, right?
	I mean, you're all like, oh my god, I hope you get your period.
	Yeah.
	I can't believe I did.
	That's some serious stuff, right?
	For such a long time, too.
	It totally is.
	And listening to podcasts for five or six months at this point has really pointed that out when I listen to other people who have had similar experiences and listening to your rants that are tremendously constructive about that kind of topping and really how important it is to understand what it is that you're doing when you bring another human being into this world and the responsibilities that follow that is I'm sorry to interrupt.
	I knew I should have said a cult revolver.
	Some guy says, a Glock has a magazine.
	If you put a bullet in it, it will fire every time.
	Thank you.
	No, no, listen.
	There's nothing, nothing that turns me on more than libertarian nitpickers.
	You know, when I run a really hot night with my wife, what I do is do a great speech and make one tiny mistake and have her stop the great speech to correct myself.
	And then I'm like, oh, fuck it.
	Take me now.
	I mean, so you people out there on the internet, you nitpickers, you're who I think of when I have sex with my wife.
	Because you people turn me on more than I can possibly say.
	In fact, I'm just going to come and lick this camera right now.
	Okay, go ahead.
	Right.
	And, uh...
	You know, I knew that...
	Now I've got another piece of equipment in here suing me for sexual harassment.
	Anyway, go on.
	I knew that it was a wildly irresponsible thing on a whole different level, too, because I could analyze from a past relationship that I had with her during my sophomore year of high school that she came from a home that never had a father in it, even from her birth.
	She had a terribly dysfunctional relationship And, you know, still does to this day with her mother, wherein, you know, it's basically a yelling war between the two that never ceases, you know, even over trivial bullshit like not doing dishes,
	can, you know, unleash a 20 to 30 minute rant on her mother's part, which is, you know, with a wall of just agonizing wishing for her to stop and, you know, just basically not complying with any of the incessant nagging that her mother brings to her.
	And I really feel bad that she even has to put up with that.
	And I've tried to take her through a conversation really, really recently just prior to speaking about her childhood and how she was raised, how she was spanked.
	I'm sorry, why does she have to put up with that?
	Why does she have to put up with that?
	She absolutely doesn't.
	And that's what I tried to convey to her.
	That basically she was staying there voluntarily and And she relayed to me that, yeah, she's totally financially dependent upon her mother right now.
	She's trying to get through college and she's paying out of pocket because her mother is in debt.
	And she's doing a great job at it.
	She's actually saved up enough time.
	So wait, I'm sort of confused.
	First of all, you said she has to put up with it.
	And then you said, well, of course she doesn't, without any reference to the prior one.
	You might want to square that circle at some point, brother.
	But then you say that she's totally financially dependent on her mother, but she herself is paying for her own college because her mother is in debt?
	Well, right.
	I mean, I guess in that case...
	Well, right.
	No, that doesn't make any sense.
	Don't well write me.
	What are you talking about?
	How can she be totally financially dependent on someone when she's paying her own way and that person is in debt?
	That's definitely a contradiction.
	I didn't even catch it.
	I never really even considered that, but...
	She totally could pay for rent and remove herself from that toxic environment.
	Wait, wait, wait.
	Oh, my God.
	Okay, you're with this woman for a year.
	You're with this woman for a year, and you never noticed this.
	Mm-hmm.
	Yeah.
	I think in part because she never wants to express any desire to do so.
	I wanted to leave.
	Are you in a place where...
	Where when you're thirsty, some guy gives you, like, a sippy cup with a soft straw?
	No, I'm in a place where you go down to your local Wawa and get a free cup of ice water.
	You know?
	I'm in the first world.
	It's totally possible.
	Okay, but look, how could you not know that this woman...
	Did she say I'm financially dependent on my mom?
	She did.
	And then did she say, my mom is in debt and I'm paying my own way?
	Yeah.
	And then you followed that with, I'm horny?
	Right.
	So, I mean, okay, one to ten, how pretty is she?
	She's gorgeous.
	I mean, probably an eight.
	So you don't want to contradict her because you might not have got to screw her, right?
	Yeah, right.
	I mean, tell me if I'm wrong.
	You don't want to upset her by pointing out some basic facts, right?
	Right.
	And I did point out some basic facts to her, I think, at least the other day, about how she was raised in the The horrible abuse that her mom perpetuated against her.
	But that was only after, you know, building up a relationship with her for over a year and getting to that state of vulnerability where she would actually be susceptible to that.
	And at first, you know, I ran into a huge wall of defenses.
	I was suspecting that I probably would.
	Listen, listen, listen.
	Obviously, you were a virgin with a gorgeous woman.
	You weren't going out with her a year so you could tell her the truth about her family, right?
	You start off with that stuff.
	You start off with how was your childhood?
	How's your family?
	How were you disciplined?
	You start off with that stuff.
	You'll wait for a year and then say, listen, I'd really like to tell you something.
	You find out whether you have a voice in a relationship before you start spraying yourself around like some Water blimp that's downed on a spiky forest, right?
	I mean, you have to start off by knowing whether you have a voice in the relationship.
	Which means that you ask questions and you speak your mind and you think and you talk and you look for reciprocity and curiosity and the capacity to handle disagreement.
	And the capacity to handle a challenge in values, which is basically, does the person have empathy, self-knowledge, and a capacity to think?
	Don't have to think-think, but a capacity to think.
	And if you don't have that, then your relationship Will fail.
	And it will fail one of two ways.
	Either you will break up with the woman, which is a failure, or you won't break up with the woman, which is even worse.
	And you wouldn't have broken up with her, or rather you'd have had this person tied to you for the next 20 years if one of your boys had made it past the goalie and made an egg grow big with brains, right?
	Right.
	Yeah.
	And I'm kind of glad now that I took that First option rather than the second, because I know that that would have completely squashed any of my genuine ambitions of aspiring to success in any way, shape, or form.
	That would have totally fucked my life.
	Yeah, all beauty wears off.
	I mean, either biologically, just in terms of women getting older, or it just wears off.
	Oh my gosh.
	And you're like, you're horrible.
	You're a horrible human being.
	I now see beneath your skin.
	I'm not saying she is a horrible human being, but I now see you beneath your skin, and oh God, right?
	Yeah, I listened to your podcast.
	I don't know when it was produced, but it totally talked about that.
	And I just realized I started looking at all the beautiful women that come into my job.
	And I thought about how my mother was beautiful when she was younger and all these other people in my life.
	And then I looked at that and I recognized that that's a totally bullshit thing.
	The way to evaluate someone as a human being is by how pretty they are.
	That is a purely genetic accident.
	Well, and let me tell you something.
	It's no judgment of virtue.
	Oh, no.
	And look, there's danger in beautiful women for a number of reasons.
	Of course, it's...
	It's heroin for our reproductive system, right?
	I mean, we're looking for even features, lustrous hair, hip-to-waist ratio.
	You know, we're looking for that silhouette which produces healthy mammal, right?
	And so it's just something to be aware of.
	Doesn't mean beautiful women are bad, but they're just That's sort of one aspect is that they're bad like if someone comes in and roofies your drink with heroin you're gonna have an interesting night and beauty is a drug it literally acts upon men like a drug so it's like drunk driving to date a beautiful woman doesn't mean you're not gonna get home safely but you really got to be paying attention not that I'm ever suggesting anyone drunk drive but in terms of its effect On our capacity to reason,
	it cranks up the reptile brain and literally shuts down the neofrontal cortex.
	And it's just like, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
	Baby, baby, baby, baby.
	Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
	Sex, sex, sex, sex.
	Status, status, status, status.
	Right?
	We literally, our brains dissolve.
	That's one.
	Now the second reason why beautiful women are, and it's true for beautiful men, I don't know, but beautiful women are dangerous is because there's always some horny guy Who will placate them if you won't, right?
	So they unspy men in general because if you don't tell her the bullshit that feeds her vanity, she knows there's 9,000 dicks with lizard brains attached squidging along the road who will also tell her any bullshit she wants to hear to feed her vanity.
	And so telling the truth to beautiful women is really It's tricky because it's like, oh, you're not dealing me the heroin?
	Well, I'm an addict.
	This guy's, you know, free heroin over here, so fuck you, right?
	So this is why, you know, you started to tell her the truth or started to hold her to some standards or started to get her, you know, to look into the Gordian Knot bitch fest she's gotten on with her mom and suddenly she's not so pretty, right?
	Because you're not feeding the vanity.
	And again, I don't blame.
	It's just the way that it is.
	So it is a real challenge.
	And one other thing I wanted to say.
	I was just thinking about this the other day, which is I, you know, my mom, very pretty, right?
	And she stayed pretty for, you know, quite a long time.
	I mean, sleep upside down in formaldehyde with your feet hanging from a tree of evil.
	That helps, right?
	But she was a nine, at least, maybe nine and a half.
	And My whole life when I was a kid, when I was younger, there were guys sniffing around her, right?
	Now, I knew her.
	I knew who she was as a human being.
	I don't have to get into the details here.
	I've talked about it a number of times before, but I knew who she was.
	And these guys were all like...
	They were snuffling around her like pigs looking for black-hearted truffles, you know?
	They were just snuffling...
	Snuffling around her, night and day, calling her, wanting to stay over, trying to be charming, trying to be debonair, trying to be cool, trying to be suave.
	It's like, she's a horrible human being.
	I mean, she is a horrible human being, and I just saw this endless parade of guys snuffling around her.
	And what this taught me in terms of contempt for the physical attraction to beauty can't be measured on a scale of mankind.
	Maybe if there was a divinity scale for contempt, you could begin to measure it.
	It's interstellar if not intergalactic in its breadth and depth.
	The contempt that I have for the men who sniff and snort around women who are soul ugly and flesh pretty.
	Because I saw these guys were parading through my house.
	And, you know, they'd only try and make friends with me if that would get them in good with mom, or rather, you know, the place that I originated from in mom, right?
	That's all they were looking for.
	That's all they wanted.
	And I knew that, of course, because as she got older, she ceased to function, and she couldn't pull the, you know, she's like late-stage Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire.
	She couldn't pull the trick off anymore, and then no guy wanted to have anything to do with her because she got older.
	And she couldn't cash it in for dates or trips abroad or she just couldn't crank the money dick, right?
	And it is horrendous to see the degree to which men will put up with repulsive human characteristics for the sake of cheekbones and whatever, right?
	And this is, again, I recognize that there are nice, beautiful...
	My wife, I think, is absolutely gorgeous.
	You know, she's physical perfection to me.
	So I'm not saying that all beautiful women are somehow malicious or evil or whatever.
	But with great power often comes great corruption.
	Not everyone who has power is corrupt.
	And beauty is power.
	It's not political power.
	It's biological power, which in many ways is one of the drivers for political power.
	Why do men want political power?
	Because power over people is high status, which gets the hypergamy of women to want to trade up to that man.
	Men want to own other men and women for beautiful women, right?
	Which is...
	What happens?
	Beauty is in many ways at the root of the tendency or the drive towards human ownership.
	You know, you'd be a rock star, you're a movie star, you're a politician, a showbiz for ugly people, right?
	And so if you get power, then you get women.
	My god, Henry Kissinger?
	Henry Kissinger looks like a beluga whale boiled in fat and formaldehyde.
	And power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.
	I mean, he gets women to fawn all over him because he has power.
	And the pursuit of political power is as much to do with biological as it is to do with sadistic lusts.
	And whoever beautiful women reject is what will not happen in the world.
	Look, men have to overcome the desire for female beauty, for virtue to occur, and men have to overcome the desire to bring women resources for a peaceful society to occur because they have to marry for virtue rather than for looks.
	And when you marry for virtue, you get great moms.
	And if you marry for looks, very often you will get terrible moms.
	And we all know, at least I believe I've made the case pretty strongly, though these many years, that the right and productive raising of children is essential to a future society.
	So when I say to men, don't go for beauty, what I'm saying is, Help the world become peaceful by choosing the best moms for your children, by choosing the best women as companions, by choosing the women who are going to watch your back, who are going to help you be virtuous, who are going to remind you of what's important, who are going to catch you up when you trip on your values and who you can do the same thing for.
	For us to be contributing to the virtue of the planet does not require that we become this big scintillating bald searchlight of virtue attempting to reach the four corners of the world.
	It requires that if we want to have children, we choose great moms.
	Moms who will love.
	Moms who will be patient.
	Moms who will reason.
	Moms who will be calm and kind and loving and fun and non-aggressive.
	That's the way that you build a peaceful future, is you choose a great mom for your children.
	And anyone who goes on looks is not doing that.
	Doesn't mean you won't get great virtue, but by God, it's pretty unlikely, right?
	So, because, I mean, virtue, like any muscle, it develops in resistance.
	And women who grow up beautiful, and I've seen enough and known enough to know what happens in the long run, but...
	No, choose a great mom for your kid.
	You will fall in love six million different ways from Sunday, watching your wife and your son and daughter play insanely silly dress-up games until they can barely breathe from giggling so hard.
	I mean, what a wonderful thing to see.
	What did you see with this girlfriend of yours?
	You saw a woman whose template for motherhood is about as bad as it could be without your mom actually being demonic, right?
	What's she gonna be like as a mom?
	If she's saying fundamental contradictory lies and bullshit about her own mom, if she's putting up with ridiculous levels of abuse in her relationship with her mom, what's she going to be like as a mom?
	What if you got her pregnant?
	How would she be with a child?
	She would expose the child to this toxic grandparent, right?
	Well, she had actually said that she never wanted to expose her child to her mother in any way.
	But if she had actually had a kid at that point, then yeah, she would have.
	And actually, she was raised predominantly through her real infancy and youth in a daycare facility.
	And so she made it very clear that, you know, I know that when I have a kid, I'm going to Put them in daycare and I'm going to work and no concept of any of the knowledge of staying home.
	Yeah, so she'd be a shitty mom.
	And she would add to the 40% of American kids with attachment disorders and just clog up the planet with more dysfunctional broken people, right?
	Yeah.
	That's fucking hard to embrace.
	Choose?
	You're right.
	Choose your girlfriend like your future child has the deciding vote.
	Choose your girlfriend like your future child has the deciding vote.
	Future child does not care how pretty the woman is, cares how steady, how stable, how open, how warm, how caring, how loving, how patient, how virtuous the parent is.
	If you want to have kids, Think about your future child.
	Think about that child waking up with colic for the fourth time at night.
	And try and figure out that kid does not care how great that woman's calves look in high heels.
	Doesn't care how many fucking Gucci or Hermes handbags she has.
	Doesn't care how many Dolce& Gabbana shoes she has.
	Doesn't care how nice her hair looks with tinted highlights.
	Doesn't care how well her mascara hangs from eyelashes.
	Doesn't care whether she has a pimple or not.
	Doesn't care whether her belly is flat doesn't care whether her boobs sag or not cares Whether the mother's heart is a warm accessible open harbor of peace and future foundation of goodness love intimacy and virtue I Want to convey something else to you um
	Throughout our entire relationship, And listening to your podcasts and realizing more and more the kind of bullshit that I would have to put up with, we broke up multiple times.
	And then I explained to her, look, I don't want to be in a relationship with someone who's going to have tantrums and do all this childish BS and try to manipulate me.
	And my family actually sat me down and talked to me that, you know, you're kind of being a little beta, Nick.
	You're letting her...
	Throw tantrums just to get her away and you made a habit out of letting her do that.
	So I broke up with her.
	That's followed by a bunch of crying and apologies and then that behavior completely ceases.
	But then I progressed further and I realized that she's not in control of other aspects of her personality and I tell her I want to break up with her and then crying and apologies and then those same behaviors cease.
	And the last conversation that we had Was the childhood one.
	And immediately after I told her that I wanted to end the relationship for good, she broke down, started crying, and now she's having conversations with her mother about her childhood and says that she's making, you know, really great progress and that there hasn't been yelling around the house.
	And I want to definitely believe that it's genuine because I've seen progress, you know, all the other times that I've sat her down and told her, look, I don't want to be in a relationship with you if you're going to exemplify these behaviors.
	And she says that she's growing again, but I think that the kind of healing process that needs to take place is one that would take a long time because she fundamentally lacks a lot of self-knowledge.
	And I clearly do too.
	I'm not saying I'm a paragon of perfection by any means, but She never once said the idea that you presented that she can be independent from her mother.
	If she really wants to, she can remove herself from that toxic environment.
	She just kind of wants to heal the relationship and kind of work with her mother, I guess.
	So what are your thoughts on the apology immediately following the threat of divorce and actually successfully working to fix some of the behaviors?
	Well, I mean, would she be a friend if she was a guy?
	Would she be somebody you were thoroughly invested in?
	If she were a male?
	If she was a man.
	If she was a man and she had her emotional characteristics, family and history and temper and dysfunctional mom and aggression.
	You said she was aggressive in your relationship and yelling.
	If she was a man, would she be your friend?
	Never.
	Then fuck her!
	No, seriously, fuck her!
	Do you know what an insult you are handing out to good women around the world?
	By prostrating yourself before this dysfunctional TNA instead of going out and finding a great woman.
	It's so insulting.
	It's literally like A lot of the guys get mad because, you know, hypergamy and the women want to trade up.
	And it's like, well, they only want rich guys.
	They only want tall guys.
	They want good-looking guys.
	It's like, no.
	The men, the MGTOW guys, the frustrated guys who are angry at women, no.
	You're doing the same thing.
	Find the woman who would be your friend if she had balls.
	Who you'd be like, I want this person in my life.
	She's strong, she's funny, she's insightful, she's curious, she's self-knowledgeable, she's into lifelong learning, she's wise, she makes me laugh, she's a great dancer, whatever.
	But don't put two nutsacks in front of your eyeballs and thinking you're seeing virtue.
	If she was a man, Would you be invested in her possible recovery from dysfunction that's only happening because you were throwing her off the bus called you?
	No!
	That's so crazy to think about.
	My brain is spinning in circles because for the longest time she's been my best friend and I've really closed myself off to a lot of other people who have been in my life.
	She's your best friend?
	Don't cringe.
	She's your what?
	She's been your best friend?
	Literally for the last year.
	Yeah.
	Let me ask you this.
	Let me ask you this, my friend.
	Let me ask you this.
	Ask.
	Ask away.
	How have your other relationships been doing while dating this woman?
	I've distanced myself from Really all of my closest friends dropped off with a lot of people who I was very close with hanging out on a regular basis with in high school.
	Why?
	Because I've invested so much time and energy into her.
	No, come on, come on!
	That's not why.
	The reason...
	Oh, my God, you've got to see this.
	Oh, Nick, I'm sorry to be so blunt.
	I really am.
	But, you know, I'm happy to help someone out of a well who has...
	Like, I can't just say climb out of the well if you don't have arms.
	I've got to come in and push you out, right?
	The reason why she has cut you off from your friends is because your friends would tell you how crazy she is.
	Right?
	I've thought about that.
	Of course you have!
	Any woman who starts to separate you from your friends is doing so because she wants you to be in her private show of crazy without anyone saying, that's a private show of crazy!
	The quality of your future relationship is measured by the continuation of your existing friendships.
	The quality of your future relationship with Your girlfriend is measured by the continuation of quality relationships that you already had.
	Your wife, your girlfriend, the woman you meet, she wants you to have friendships.
	In the same way that sane people welcome competition.
	Insane people hate competition.
	Greedy, evil, nasty, dysfunctional people, they all flock to the state.
	They hate the market.
	Why does she want to have you focus only on her?
	Why does she not want your friends seeing your relationship?
	Because it's abusive!
	Abuse and isolation are the same thing.
	Right.
	And every time that we've ever, you know, broken up for those brief stints of times, you know, All the way up to a week, she's always said, you know, don't tell anyone, you know, whatever you do, because, you know, that's our business.
	That's our business.
	Your business?
	What are you, like, taking dumps on each other?
	That's bullshit.
	Your business.
	I mean, what are you saying, a kinky German sex dungeon?
	I mean, that's...
	Yeah, well, what she's basically saying is, don't tell people that we've broken up so that I can get back together with you, so that nobody knows about these interruptions, and nobody's going to say to you, are you kidding me?
	You just broke up with this woman three times in four months?
	Oh, fuck, just take the Band-Aid off, man.
	Like, stop circling the drain.
	Put a bullet in it.
	Stick it, a fork in it.
	Turn it over.
	It's done.
	You're right.
	God damn it.
	Wow.
	You know, being blunt is so exactly what I need, and I really appreciate that.
	I try to give all the listeners what I think they need.
	I know you can handle it.
	I know you can take it.
	And the reason I know you can take it is I'm not telling you, A, I'm not telling you anything you don't know, and B, I'm not telling you anything that your friends and family haven't told you.
	Like they're saying you're being the beta, blah, blah, blah, right?
	But do not let women separate you from your friendships.
	Now, that having been said, if you have dysfunctional friendships, dysfunctional family relationships, a relationship with a great woman is going to put those seriously into question.
	Because you just won't be able to go back to eating shit burgers when you've had sirloin, right?
	But that's not her, like that's just her being a quality person, right?
	I mean, when I really, when I finally got at the, like in my 30s, what it actually meant for someone to love me Which I didn't know.
	I didn't even know that I didn't know.
	When I finally understood what it was like for someone to love me, like I went back to these old relationships and it was like, ugh, you know?
	Like, oh, yuck.
	I didn't even know that I lived in a shantytown until I spent a month in a palace.
	So, but if a dysfunctional woman is separating you from your friends, you know, I mean, we all know those people.
	It can be men or women.
	They get into relationships and they fucking teleport.
	You know, it's like, shoo, shoo, shoo, shoo, shoo, Scotty, beat me up.
	They're gone, right?
	And they're just like face-to-face in 400-count Egyptian cotton sheet sex tents.
	And they're just gone, right?
	You say, oh, can we get together Friday?
	No.
	Sally's, you know, we're doing something with Sally.
	Can we do something together?
	No, she really likes, wants a romantic couples night.
	And that's nothing, right?
	But it's like every time, every time.
	And she's like, me, me, need me, I need you, I gotta...
	She might as well just suck you back up the vagina and throw you in the womb again, right?
	Isolated, separate.
	The moat, the estrogen moat has now sealed off the man.
	Why?
	Why?
	Why is she afraid of the man having contact with other men?
	Because then they're like, hey, let's switch the light on.
	Whoa, crazy town.
	You probably don't even notice it because you've got your head in vagina town.
	But when you take your head out of vagina town, it's crazy town.
	She doesn't want that view, right?
	Right.
	Steph?
	Nick?
	Jasmine?
	Can you...
	Jasmine?
	I'm trying to talk to him now.
	Wait, is that her?
	Are you kidding me?
	You're not, really?
	Are you talking to me with her in the background, really?
	Yeah.
	Is she listening?
	Jasmine.
	Is there anything she wants to add?
	Anything she wants to talk about?
	I don't mind if she wants to come and chat with me.
	She can tell me I'm full of crap or nonsense or terrible or whatever, right?
	Or she can say, great.
	Would you like to talk to him?
	Sure.
	She would.
	Alright.
	One moment.
	Yeah.
	Hello?
	Was it Jasmine?
	Hey Jasmine, are you on?
	Yes.
	You sound upset.
	What's up?
	I mean, I was just upstairs and I've been hearing all these lies about me.
	Lies told by him?
	All these lies he's been telling me.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	What's he been lying about?
	Like, I mean, he showed me your video about the traumatic stuff that happens when you're a child, and I get what you were saying, but, I mean, the only traumatic thing that's even happened to me was my mother screamed at me and called me lazy.
	Like, what kid hasn't that happened to?
	I mean, I've gotten screamed at by my mother, but...
	Well, do you want me to ask questions?
	You didn't even know me when I was that old.
	Wait, wait.
	Do you want me to, like, ask you questions, or are you just gonna tell me stuff?
	I mean...
	Sure, what questions do you want to ask?
	Well, Jasmine, how were you disciplined as a child?
	Like, when you did something that your mom didn't like, what happened?
	I mean, it depends what it was.
	If it was like a bad grade or a report card, when I was like really little, I'd get like a spanking and stuff.
	And then when I got older, I was like 10 and 11 and 12.
	Yeah, okay, so spanking when you were little.
	Yeah, and then I'd get my phone taken away.
	Okay.
	Well, hang on.
	A lot of children have gotten spanked.
	So?
	I mean, is that something you knew when you were a child?
	It's you and your mom.
	We don't have statistical averages.
	You know, when a baby is six months old and they're hungry, they don't say, well, there are starving children in India, so I shouldn't really need any boob milk, should I? Right?
	They just know that they're hungry.
	So how old were you when you were spanked?
	Do you remember?
	I mean, yeah, I was like six or seven.
	Or seven.
	Were you not spanked before the age of six or seven?
	Not really, and it was light.
	Like, I could barely feel it.
	It was just mainly the fact that a felt was coming near me, but...
	Jasmine, I'm afraid you have summoned my fog noise.
	Yes, I'm sorry about that.
	Do you want to know what it sounds like?
	It sounds like...
	Like, you know, the fog noises, right?
	And the reason is that when you say...
	I asked you if you were spanked before 6-7, and you said, not really.
	And that's a yes-no thing.
	I didn't say beaten.
	I didn't say were you thrown downstairs or clubbed with a harpoon or an oar.
	I mean, you were spanked before six or seven, right?
	I mean, I don't know the specific ages, but that's really not a big deal.
	It hasn't traumatized me like Nick's saying, and I guess hearing Nick talk about our relationship and all this stuff.
	Hey, hey, hey, hey.
	Nick didn't say anything about you being straight.
	No, I know.
	I heard him talking about our relationship and all this crazy stuff, and I don't know what you were saying.
	No, no, but you said the spanking didn't traumatize me, like Nick said.
	But Nick didn't say anything about you being spanked or traumatized because of spanking, right?
	So if you want to say to him, he shouldn't lie, then you should be accurate too, right?
	That's fair, right?
	I don't mean this in a mean way, but that's not what he said.
	Yeah, he said that to me, not on the station.
	When he talks to me, it's a lot different than when he's saying stuff to you.
	So, I mean, just hearing all this for the first time.
	How often were you spanked?
	Not often.
	That's not an answer, right?
	How often were you spanked?
	I mean, daily, weekly, monthly, once a year?
	Why is it about...
	Why is it about being spanked?
	The issue is me and Nick's relationship and him calling and asking for relationship advice.
	It's nothing to do with my past.
	Wait, how you relate to people has nothing to do with your past?
	That's like saying the language I speak has nothing to do with how I was raised.
	You speak English because you were raised English.
	Of course it has something to do with it.
	It doesn't mean it dominates or it's the only thing.
	But of course it has something to do with it, right?
	So how often were you spanked?
	Look, and you don't have to answer anything.
	I mean, you don't have to talk to me at all.
	But I would appreciate it.
	I mean, this is anonymous.
	I mean, nobody knows who you are.
	But how often were you spanked?
	I mean, Nick's about to show this to all of his friends and family, and they do know who I am.
	And it's not fair to say him talking, saying my mother's verbally abused me for many years and all this stuff about me where everybody can know, yes, no, this isn't right.
	It's not right.
	There's nothing right about that.
	Do you want to not talk to me?
	Wait.
	Okay.
	There's a lot in what you said.
	Well, first of all, Nick, if you're still there, are you going to show this to all your friends and family and say this is exactly who this is?
	Yeah.
	He says he has.
	You just told me you said you were going to show it to your family.
	This is my business.
	And you twisted all the words I've told you.
	About my life?
	I just wanted to know that part.
	So is it my understanding that you don't want to answer how often you were spanked?
	Do you think getting spanked is wrong?
	I'm just asking you a question.
	Do I think that hitting children is wrong?
	Yeah, of course I do.
	Getting spanked?
	No, getting spanked is not wrong.
	You're a victim, right?
	That's like some guy jumps out of the alley and cracks me in the side of the head.
	What the guy does is wrong.
	It's not wrong for me to get hit.
	I'm a victim, right?
	You're the victim in spanking, and yes, it's wrong to spank.
	It is a violation of the non-aggression principle.
	It's not self-defense.
	Do you know that 30% of moms admit to hitting their babies over the last month?
	80% of British moms hit their babies?
	I'm not saying your mom did, but yeah, that's completely wrong.
	It is damaging to the child.
	It is damaging to emotional development.
	It is damaging to one's relationship with authority.
	And you know what is so terrible about it?
	Is that...
	Every time you hit a child, you're not negotiating with the child.
	You're not learning about the child.
	If you did badly on a test, the job of the parent is to find out why, to ask questions, and to take some ownership for the fact that it's the parent's job to get you ready for school.
	If you have a test, it's the parent's job to make sure you know the material and to understand it.
	And to do well on the test.
	And if you fail on the test, it's not some isolated failure of yours, it is a failure of the family system and the parents primarily, and the teachers to some degree.
	But to just hit a child when the child does something you don't like, Not only does it harm the child, and this has been very well documented and analyzed and understood psychologically, it's very clear.
	There's almost no...
	I mean, it's way clearer than smoking and lung disease, lung cancers and so on.
	So yes, to hit a child is morally wrong, and it's practically wrong, and it's bad parenting, and there's almost no parenting expert who's not a fundamentalist Christian or Jewish or Islamic parent There's no parenting expert that I've ever, and I've interviewed many of them on the show, I've read dozens of books, there's no parenting expert who says spanking is a good idea.
	Spanking is a very bad idea because not only does it harm the child, but it prevents the negotiation from occurring.
	I have been a stay-at-home dad for five and a half years.
	I have never raised my voice to my daughter, never yelled at her.
	I have never hit her.
	I've never threatened her.
	I've never punished her.
	We negotiate.
	We talk reasonably and it's beautiful.
	I mean this is perfectly how it should be and she's an incredible joy to be around and we have fantastic days together and I mean, how could I hit her?
	I mean, she's not here by choice.
	She didn't choose me as a dad.
	She didn't choose this household or this country to grow up in.
	She's here by my choice, and she's a prisoner of biology.
	She can't get up and leave.
	You know, I hit my wife, she can get up and leave me.
	She can call the cops.
	My daughter can't do anything.
	She calls the cops, and as long as I haven't punched her in the face, I'm off scot-free.
	So that's sort of the brief thing around spanking.
	So yes, it's not my opinion.
	It is traumatic to children.
	It is very difficult for children.
	And you have grown up without the ability to easily and productively negotiate for your needs because that wasn't modeled and that wasn't how your mom dealt with you when you were a child.
	I mean, I'm not saying she never negotiated with you, but if when push came to shove, she...
	Pulled down your panties and hit you on the butt.
	Or whatever she did.
	Then you don't have that experience of negotiating your needs.
	So when there's a conflict, you get very tense, right?
	Your fight or flight mechanism kicks in.
	You can't think straight.
	You get very emotional when there's a conflict.
	Because when there was a conflict with your mom, she hit you.
	And she was like five times your size when you were little.
	Right?
	I mean this with sympathy.
	I'm not saying you're like a damaged goods or a bad person.
	I'm saying that let's say you were hit once a week.
	And you're telling Nick he needs to leave me.
	That's exactly what you're telling me.
	You're telling Nick he needs to get out of this, in air quotes, toxic environment.
	He needs to separate himself.
	He needs to get far away from me.
	Everybody in his life does.
	That's exactly what you're saying.
	I told him that he has to leave you?
	Yes, that's what you've been telling him.
	And, you know, whatever it is you're saying, he loves listening to you.
	He's brainwashed and he will do whatever you tell him.
	So when you tell him to leave me, I'm gone forever.
	No, no, no, no, no.
	I am not letting you talk.
	I'm not your boyfriend.
	You don't get to talk to me like that.
	You got no hold of me.
	I'm a happily married man.
	I don't care how good you look.
	You do not get to talk to me like that.
	I am talking to you with science and evidence and sympathy.
	And then you're attacking me and saying that your boyfriend is brainwashed?
	That is incredibly...
	How do you get to talk to people like that?
	What gives you the right to talk to?
	Have I insulted you?
	I've been very empathetic and sympathetic towards you.
	I've asked you how you're doing.
	I'm asking you questions about your childhood.
	I'm giving you sympathy for the effects of it.
	Where do you get off talking to me like that?
	And I know exactly where you get off, which is that you were raised by a woman who, when there was a conflict, she got aggressive.
	And now, there's a conflict between you and I, or Nick and I, or Nick and you and I, or something like that, and you're getting aggressive, right?
	And then you say to me, well, what could the past possibly have anything to do with the present?
	This is exactly what I'm talking about.
	This is exactly how the past has to do with the present.
	This is what you were taught to do, both empirically by how your mom interacted with you, and intellectually, this is what you were taught to do in a conflict, was to get emotional and escalate and become aggressive, right?
	So of course it has a huge effect on you.
	This is as learned as the fact that we're both speaking English.
	You know, just saying it seems to be only happening when I'm talking with narrow-minded or judgmental people.
	People who only see it one way is black or white.
	Hang on, hang on, hang on.
	First of all, you're being narrow-minded and judgmental because I'm telling you that with sympathy that this comes to your history and you're just rejecting it all and you're the one who's being judgmental.
	I've not judged you as a bad person.
	In fact, I've explicitly said, I won't put up with the aggression, but I've explicitly said, you're not damaged goods, doesn't make you a bad person.
	I've said you're a victim in how you were treated as a child or to be hit by a caregiver is to be victimized.
	So you're the one who's being judgmental.
	You use the term brainwashed, right?
	Is that not a judgmental term?
	I mean, it's the truth.
	Oh, so it's not judgmental if it's true.
	So why would you want to be with a guy who's brainwashed?
	Who's so mentally weak that he just is the influence of whoever, like me, some guy podcasting on the internet.
	Why would you want to?
	What's this prize of this wonderful guy whose brain is so empty that it gets filled up by whoever happens to be around?
	I mean, you can't love someone who's that susceptible and that empty-headed that they're brainwashed, right?
	That's actually not true.
	That's you being judgmental by saying, I couldn't love somebody like that, and we're not together.
	Because he is listening and taking your advice, and he even has said that's why we're not together.
	Wait, wait, wait.
	Wait a minute.
	Sorry to interrupt you.
	I'm sorry to interrupt you, but you said that I was telling him to break up with you, but you're not together.
	Did he break up with you during the conversation?
	I didn't hear that.
	I mean, I talked for a bit.
	Maybe he muted and broke up with you during the conversation.
	But how is it logically possible for me to be telling him to break up with you when you're already broken up?
	We were working on things and it was going to be fine, but I knew after this conversation, I asked him, well, what if he's saying that we shouldn't be together?
	And he told me if he thinks that it's not right and he tells me that, then I'm really going to look into that and it probably won't work out.
	And I knew that's what you would say, something along those lines.
	I didn't say you'd say it exactly.
	I know you haven't said leave her forever, but I knew it would be something hinting at that in a subtle way and...
	So you're just walking away from this logical contradiction with a bunch of verbiage, right?
	Okay, okay.
	Look, I mean, if you don't want to talk to me, that's fine, but I don't particularly want to talk with you at this level, right?
	I feel like I'm being attacked.
	No, you're attacking.
	I feel like I'm being attacked.
	Don't you play the victim card with me, young lady.
	You are the one doing the attacking.
	You are using brainwashed, and you are accusing me of things, and you are being hostile.
	Don't play the victim card with me.
	Don't give me this best defense is a good offense nonsense, right?
	I have not attacked you.
	I've actually been very sympathetic to where you're coming from.
	I'm sorry?
	She's left.
	Yeah, well, I'm not shocked, to be honest with you.
	I'm not shocked at all I am.
	So, you kind of didn't tell me she was in the room, right?
	So, she's not the only one being manipulative here, right?
	Well, I actually had asked her to stay in the attic, you know, because I have a really nice...
	Oh, my God!
	You told her to stay in the attic?
	What are you, Hannibal Lecter?
	Get in the attic, woman!
	I'm talking to another man here!
	Did you tell me that she might be listening or that she might be listening in or that she was in the house?
	Because I thought we were having a private conversation here, right?
	I apologize, man.
	I expected her not to actually come in during the middle of it crying.
	I expected her to respect my wish to give me the isolation so that I could speak with her afterwards.
	Oh God, could you please give me a little bit more self-knowledge than that?
	Come on, you needed her to hear this.
	Don't give me this, I thought she would give me this.
	You know how you get your space?
	She's not in the house.
	That's how you get your space.
	I mean, do you live with the woman?
	No, I don't.
	You don't live with her, so she's over at your house while you're broken up, when you're talking to a guy about your relationship, and you think this is accidental?
	Do you think what you're doing is just an accident?
	You needed me to talk to her, you needed her to listen to this, right?
	Come on.
	I'm not blaming you, I'm not...
	Yeah, that's why I was trying to...
	No, that's why I tried to expose her to some of your ideas in the form of video, and she just actually spoke with you.
	Wow.
	And she's complaining that you got your wish.
	Like it was somehow you that facilitated.
	No, no, no.
	She's saying that you got your wish as though it was somehow you who initialized this conversation when I weeks ago organized it with a Why can't I? I'm just too flabbergasted.
	Michael.
	No, look, you needed...
	Do you remember how I was saying that the women who isolate men from other men don't want to be seen for dysfunctional, right?
	Now, she's not an evil person.
	I'm not saying she's all dysfunctional, all that.
	But in her interactions with me, there's no winning.
	I mean, I don't know if you heard my side of it, but I think you could agree that I was curious and empathetic and blah, blah, blah, right?
	Giving her the facts and saying she was a victim in this situation and so on, right?
	And she was having none of it, right?
	She attacked, she cried, she played the victim, just, you know, was not...
	There was no connection, there was no listening on her part, right?
	She was basically just waiting until she could say something inflammatory or insulting or whatever it was, right?
	That's true.
	Wow.
	And then when the conversation became difficult, when the conversation became difficult, in other words, when she couldn't get away with stuff that didn't make sense with me and I wasn't attacking her or anything, right?
	Then she ran away from the conversation, right?
	Yeah.
	And...
	Yeah, no, now she's feeling like she's being attacked, but when she listens back, she will realize that she's the only one who was doing the attacking, and then she plays the victim card, right?
	This is not healthy behavior.
	And, you know, I mean, obviously, lots of difficulties in history.
	As I pointed out with her, I was trying to empathize with her, saying, but this is what, as far as I understood, that you got from your mom, that your mom was aggressive in terms of conflict, and this is not someone to have...
	A productive conversation with when there's a conflict, she's got her full flight, my guess, right?
	The full amygdala and fight-or-flight mechanism is up, the neofrontal cortex is shut down, and it's win-lose, right?
	And it's say whatever you can say to win in the moment.
	It's escalate, it's insult, it's reject any kind of empathy, it's blah blah blah, right?
	Right.
	Holy cow.
	There's no way to live.
	How is this not visible to you?
	What about your mom?
	When we talk about her mom, what about your mom?
	How is this not visible to you?
	I mean this sympathetically.
	I'm not saying it's bad or dumb or anything.
	I don't know.
	I've been going to therapy for months and I need to definitely, absolutely bring this conversation up and drill it, you know, and fucking meditate about it and think about it because I actually got sat down by my parents, like I said.
	They actually told me, you know, these are big red flags.
	Literally, she used the same terminology that you do because my mother is a very emotionally intelligent person.
	Who made this readily available to me.
	That, yeah, this is a bad course that you're going down, Nicholas.
	And I chose to reject it.
	Right.
	And now you're right.
	Did your parents have these kinds of interactions with the woman?
	Like I just said.
	With her?
	No.
	No, none whatsoever.
	Nothing that directly, I'll say, confrontational.
	Right.
	So look, I mean, it's up to you, right?
	No, you're not evil.
	No, listen, if you're going to talk to her, I'm going to not talk to you.
	I'm sorry.
	Right, because I'm not sitting here watching you guys natter back and forth, right?
	Look, are you broken up?
	I'm sorry.
	Are you broken up at the moment?
	Yeah, we're done.
	Were you broken up at the beginning of this call?
	Yeah.
	Have I brainwashed you?
	Yes.
	Well, good.
	Mission accomplished.
	No, you've taught me how to think.
	Because that just means clean.
	A wash is clean, right?
	And it removes the dirt and the grit, right?
	But no, I mean, if you're broken up, then why is she over?
	I mean, how big is your penis?
	You're a brainwashed guy and she loves it.
	She's insulting you and she's insulting me who's talking with you and but she like oh my god anyway I don't think we can chat particularly with you obviously distracted right so I mean I would say go you know go chat with the fine lady and talk about whatever you want to talk about with her but I don't think we can continue this particular conversation Steph, you've been tremendously helpful in so many ways.
	I appreciate that.
	Probably not as helpful as Jasmine's been.
	And thank you for taking the chance to speak with her.
	Yes, and do tell her I hope that you did.
	Yeah, no, it's not negative.
	And do tell her I'm incredibly sorry.
	I really am sorry that we didn't have a better conversation.
	I really am.
	And I can certainly understand, because I didn't know she was listening, that she would be antagonized by some of the stuff that was going on in our conversation.
	I get that.
	I understand that.
	I really am sorry that we didn't have a more productive conversation.
	It certainly was not my goal to attack her or whatever.
	But sometimes when people bring up uncomfortable truths, parental alter egos move in And then you feel threatened.
	It's the parents who feel threatened.
	It's the parental relationship that feels threatened.
	But if you've ego identified too much with the mom, it feels like you're being threatened.
	And then you feel legitimate in attacking because it feels like self-defense and it feels legitimate and so on.
	So I'm sorry that we didn't have a chance to chat.
	You know, if she goes to therapy, if she ever wants to call in and chat, you know, I'm certainly happy to chat with her again.
	And I really am incredibly sorry.
	For everything that happened to her emotionally as a child that has put her into this particular situation.
	She has a make-or-break time in her life, right?
	She has a make-or-break.
	You have a choice.
	You have a choice.
	You can either continue to do this stuff with the escalation and the rejection of empathy and sympathy and a lack of examination about the past and explaining things away with nonsensical things and And using insulting terms and then playing victim and all.
	Like you can do all of that and there's plenty of people who will join in that macabre dance with you and will do all of these things to reinforce it and oh you were so wronged and I can't believe he said.
	They're all people who will fuel this fire in your life and because you're very pretty you'll never be short of people who will want to do this silly dance with you.
	But there is another kind of world out there.
	There is a better world out there where you can have disagreements and conflicts with people without name calling, without escalation, without all of that sort of stuff.
	And, you know, if this show can be a resource for that, I'm happy to have conversations publicly or privately if she feels that would be of use.
	But I think the strong suggestion is really, really get into some kind of therapy, particularly anger management, because there's no decent person in the world who will let you talk to him or her in that fashion.
	Like it's just not going to happen.
	So being behaving that way, all you're doing is ensuring that sort of decent, reasonable people will not be anywhere in your life.
	And the only people who will put up with it, and Nick may not be among that number anymore, are people who are either attracted to your physical beauty and willing to put up with emotional nonsense, which will never last and will never be satisfying for you.
	I mean, you want to be loved for who you are, not for the accidental biological whatever's, right?
	But it will simply ensure that the only people who will remain in your life are people who will put up with that kind of stuff, and that won't be very satisfying, and they will enable negative behaviors on your part to the point where it may at some point be a maze you can't get out of.
	So I hope that it is a positive experience in the long run, though it may be difficult at the moment.
	So thank you everyone so much for calling into the show.
	Nick, did you want to add something else?
	Thank you.
	Absolutely.
	I definitely will never be susceptible again.
	There's absolutely no way after having this experience under my belt that I could ever possibly fall into the same mental traps.
	But I was wondering if you would be willing to accept because she's asking me and I think it might be fair to give her a second.
	She would like to make a closing comment of some sort.
	Is that correct?
	No, I don't want a closing comment, because if it's not a conversation, then I don't want to give her a platform to vent or say anything else that's ugly or nasty.
	So if it's not that she wants a conversation, then I don't particularly want to expose the audience to any sort of more aggression or insults.
	But yeah, do drop us a line, Nick, and let us know how it's going.
	And I really do appreciate the call, and I appreciate...
	What Jasmine had to offer as well.
	I think it was very instructive.
	And FDRURL.com forward slash donate if you'd like to help out the show.
	And I guess it was a very interesting last part of the show.
	Although the first part was very good too.
	So thank you everybody so much for all of your support.
	I love you guys to death.

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