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April 23, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:01:56

2676 When Guilt Serves Exploitation - Sunday Call In Show April 20th, 2014

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	Good morning, everybody.
	Stefan Molyne from Free Domain Radio.
	I hope you're doing very well.
	So I wanted to just do a brief follow-up.
	So I put out a show called Why They Are Winning, Why We Are Losing, which was a strong urging, I guess you could say, for people to lift their values, to support this show, to create their own show, to repost videos they find important, and so on.
	And it's interesting.
	It's always really interesting to see You know, if you don't create goods for people, and if you've never been an entrepreneur or whatever, or even a waiter, I guess, you don't realize necessarily the degree to which you are dependent on the kindness of strangers.
	And it is a vulnerable position to be in a position of asking for something from people and so on and trying to make a good case for it.
	And I do find it really fascinating.
	It is really tragic, but it is really fascinating to see how people handle power and the degree to which people...
	When I ask for things over the internet, or I guess in person for that matter, it puts me in a position of, for most people, what it does is it puts me in a position of being a child and them in a position of being a parent.
	And it is really terrifying to But enlightening to see the degree to which or the amount to which people flip into their parental alter egos when I become the child who is daring to ask for another piece of porridge.
	Please, sir, can I have some more?
	And it is amazing the degree to which reason and evidence goes out the window.
	Not for everyone.
	Thank you for those who did decide to subscribe and donate.
	I hugely appreciate that.
	But it is really fascinating the degree to which parental language comes in.
	You know, you're arrogant, you're disrespectful, you're ungrateful, you're this kind of stuff.
	For those who feel that strong urge to, when I am asking for something, to become abusive, it is interesting.
	It's something to look at within yourselves to say, how do you handle power?
	I read an article many many years ago in the Harvard Business Review called Firing Your Customers and it was against the idea that the customer is always right and it pointed out that A minority of customers will cost the most.
	Like 20% of customers can cost you up to 80% of your resources.
	And if you want to grow, it's important to fire them.
	And I think that's really important.
	You know, one of the things that is very helpful is pruning the tree, is what Stalin would call a purge, which is when You put out something and you see how people react.
	And if they react in a sort of hostile and abusive manner.
	And if they say crazy stuff, like when someone tells me, Steph, your show has changed my life.
	Here's a dollar.
	And I say, that's kind of crappy.
	And they say, well, it could be his last dollar.
	Like, I would ever want to take someone's last dollar.
	I mean, people have emailed me and said, you know, I'm going through financial hardship.
	I really want to donate to your show, though.
	And I say, listen, don't.
	Don't do that.
	Eating is more important than philosophy.
	We can do some hierarchy of neat stuff here.
	And so it is obviously important.
	If it's your last dollar, then don't send it to anyone.
	Use it to buy some milk or bread or something like that.
	And people say, well, he's in college.
	This is the guy who sent me the money.
	He's in college and he doesn't have any money.
	It's like, okay, well, then don't send me a dollar.
	One thing you do have when you're in college is time.
	You have time.
	And you can spend that time promoting my show or whatever show you find to be compelling.
	So...
	It is interesting.
	It's great to get people off the channel who have those particular perspectives.
	I really want people who are mean to not like my show.
	I think that's really, really important.
	You either do the diet or you don't.
	And if you don't, I don't want you saying that you like the diet book.
	So I just wanted to mention that to begin with.
	But I know we've got some callers on the deck this morning.
	Mike, who be up with the firstness?
	Well, Steph, actually, before we move on to the first caller, I just want to make a note.
	You know, when people get upset about the dollar donation thing, when it's attached to a note, like, you've completely changed my life, and then there's a dollar donation.
	I think it's really important to point out to people just how little they're valuing themselves when they write a note like that attached to a $1 donation.
	You've changed my life.
	Here's a dollar.
	You're communicating a lot in that statement.
	And I think that's really important to look into because I know it hits me like a ton of bricks and we get those messages.
	Unfortunately, it's quite frequently.
	We get that kind of stuff.
	And it's definitely a bit jarring to see like, wow, you changed your life, had some big impact, and this is how much you value yourself.
	This is something that was really powerful for me to look at when it comes to supporting things that I care about.
	There's multiple subscription levels for Freedom Main Radio.
	We have $5 subscriptions, $10, $20, $50, and $100 for the people that I will bow down and kiss their feet on a daily basis if necessary.
	And at the $5 subscription level, it comes down to $0.16 a day.
	At the $10 subscription level, it comes down to $0.32 a day.
	At the $20 subscription level, it comes down to $0.65 a day.
	At the $50 subscription level, it's $1.64 a day.
	And at the $100 subscription level, it's $3.28 a day.
	Now, when I was deciding, you know, long before I was working with Steph, long before I was working for the show, when I was deciding, okay, this show's important to me.
	I'm going to sign up.
	I want to support this because, hey, if I don't support it, it's going to go away.
	I looked at those numbers, did the breakdown and said, wow, how much is this worth to me, to have this in my life?
	Is it worth a dollar to me a day?
	Is it worth 65 cents to me a day?
	I mean, you know, when you break down the numbers like that and compared to how much I was putting in the vending machine at my old job on a daily basis, it really kind of put things in perspective and helped me shift my priorities from a financial standpoint.
	And someone in the chat just mentioned church-going Catholics donate $10 a week on average.
	Listen, the video fundamentally wasn't about donating to Freedom Main Radio.
	The video was about living your values.
	Now, if there's something you believe is better than this show, it's better for the world to support that.
	But talk the talk.
	But also walk the walk along with it.
	If you talk the talk without walking the walk, without living your values, without going out there and, I hate to say, evangelizing that which you think is incredibly important, that's not good.
	Don't be passive.
	It's all about being active.
	It's about creating positive change yourself and not just waiting for someone else to do it for you.
	But a big part of this show is about inspiring people to take responsibility for their own actions, their own behavior, and realize the amount of efficacy that they can have in the world when it comes to making positive change.
	I know for a long time I was extremely passive when it came to making changes.
	It's like, oh man, I don't have the power to do that.
	I don't have the ability to do that.
	Other people can do that stuff.
	That's big stuff.
	I feel small.
	I can't do that kind of thing.
	But very quickly, I realized that was not the case.
	Most people walk around with kind of that small attitude where it's like, oh, there's these other big players in the world.
	They're going to do all the moving and shaking and create all this stuff, and I can just be incredibly passive because I'm not in that world.
	Yeah.
	I don't have that membership ticket to that kind of club to do those kind of cool things to affect positive change.
	But that's really all in your head.
	It's one of those things, if you believe it to be true, you're right.
	And if you believe you can affect positive change, guess what?
	You're right.
	Your own attitude.
	And the amount of work that you put behind that attitude, or don't put behind that attitude, really determines what you can and can't do.
	And I know for me, realigning my priorities with my values made a huge impact on my life.
	Stefan von Molyneux.
	I'm back.
	Actually, right after my intro, the entirety of Windows froze.
	That's what I call a powerful intro.
	I don't know if you just read that study about this first...
	Real-time recordings or real-time measurements of spanking?
	I didn't.
	I was looking forward to digging into that, though.
	Can you give a brief synopsis for everyone?
	Yeah, so this researcher had parents, primarily moms, wear recorders for a couple of nights at home.
	And what happened was he found that they were spanking their children a heck of a lot more than they claimed they were And, you know, they were not following any of the, quote, best practices for spanking, only as a last resort, after negotiation, no more than twice, you know, all that kind of stuff, right?
	None of that was occurring.
	They were basically just piling on to these kids.
	And instead of them, as, you know, parents say, we hit our kids sort of 15 to 20 times a year.
	It turns out it was 15, or so 18 times a week.
	Oh, God.
	Oh my god.
	A week.
	And the children in the study range from seven months to four years of age.
	Seven months?
	Like, I don't even have words for my outrage, but I'm sure I will find some.
	Though not on this particular show.
	But, I mean, just amazing, you know?
	I mean, I'm stunned at the degree to which it occurs.
	And this is when women knew they were being recorded.
	Imagine how bad it would be if they didn't have the mic pack around her.
	And it was for completely minor things.
	You know, they would hit their children just casually, just brutally, like apes.
	Hit their kids just for, you know, not listening, not doing the right thing.
	You know, nothing major, no major infractions.
	I mean, they didn't hear anyone.
	Didn't get things fast enough, wasn't paying attention.
	Whap, whap, whap, whap.
	It's like these hit bots.
	And this is why we can't have nice things.
	All right, we're up and running.
	If we would like to move on to the first caller.
	All right.
	Alright, up first today is Andrew Zee.
	Andrew Zee writes in and asks, why does the UK population always seem to fall in line under elite power in times of crisis?
	Churchill, Monty, etc., etc.
	Are you on the line, Andrew?
	Yeah, I'm here.
	You mean Monty, like the desert guy, right?
	Montgomery.
	Yeah, Montgomery.
	Yeah, he ran the desert campaign in Africa.
	Against Rommel in 42 just this massive piece of tank base to chess warfare and so why do Why did the British people do you think it's the British people in particular who fall in line?
	With these leaders when there is an external threat Not necessarily just just the English or the British it's it's it's more of a this idea that that there is a Elite power which rests above the people.
	I mean, as you've talked about, the kind of class system in the UK is kind of endemic.
	It's deep, deep in the psychology of the population.
	You know, this idea that there are other human beings who sit above you and are absolutely beyond any I don't understand or any realm.
	There's this kind of, you know, super elite power, like the monarchy or whatever.
	And, you know, the class system is so ingrained here that it's kind of unbelievable for people that really don't don't really live in the UK.
	And to kind of conceive of there's a kind of deep, deep sort of subjugation.
	It's unusual because there are people that wander this country and they have no perception that they kind of rise above their station at all.
	They believe that this power is all, well, all powerful.
	There is no way to connect with it or join it or overthrow it or these kind of things.
	I mean, that's the kind of thing I'm trying to get at.
	Why?
	Why does that exist here?
	What is this so special about this country where it has one of the most ingrained class systems on the planet?
	That's essentially it.
	Right.
	No, it's a big question.
	I mean, I can't, you know, answer it with any particular comprehensiveness, but I can share a few thoughts.
	British moms are pretty violent.
	And like 80 to 85% of British moms admit to hitting their babies.
	And there was just a study done recently.
	I think it was just released a few days ago on April 15th, a day or so ago.
	Two days, two or three days ago.
	And it's the first real-time study of spanking.
	I think it took place in the U.S. But, you know, this is the special relationship that U.S. moms have with U.K. moms.
	And so a bunch of parents, moms mostly, the vast majority were moms, they agreed to wear these recorders during a sort of typical evening.
	They did it for a week or so.
	And then they turned over these recordings to the researchers.
	And the researchers basically found that the moms were hitting their children continually and repeatedly without warning, without explanation, without reasoning.
	And where most parents say, well, we hit our kids 15 to 20 times twice.
	A year, the researchers calculated that these kids were being hit on average 18 times a week.
	The children in the study ranged from seven months old to just shy of four years.
	Seven months to three years old.
	These moms were raining blows down upon these helpless and dependent children to the tune of 18 hits a week.
	And there was no...
	There's supposed to be some, quote, best practices for spanking.
	And those best practices are only as a last resort, only for serious infractions, only after trying to reason with the child, and never more than twice.
	And they found these kids were being hit many times.
	One kid hit her toddler seven times straight.
	One day?
	In one day?
	No, yeah, in one go.
	Yeah, in one go.
	Hit the toddler seven times straight.
	It's just outrageous.
	And so all of these hits were completely from, quote, minor infractions, as they called them, which is to say, basically, the kids didn't respond in the way the moms wanted in the moment.
	That the kids didn't do something fast enough or weren't paying attention because they're three, right?
	Didn't listen.
	I mean, you have to repeat for kids.
	Of course.
	I mean, their brains are immature.
	Anyway, so...
	These moms would be, in my category, classified as soul murderers.
	And the children are growing up in a gulag.
	They're growing up in extraordinary amounts of stressful human violence inflicted upon them by their supposed caregivers.
	Now, are women going to be called to task for this?
	Of course not, because women exist in a parallel universe of zero moral responsibility.
	Because, no, fundamentally the only people who could call women to account for this are other women.
	And other women who are interested in gender issues, with a few exceptions, Karen's drawn, they are just busy saying how terrible men are.
	But this is an example.
	Sorry.
	Go ahead.
	Do you think there's a kind of, like, creating this kind of micro-fascist state within the family or something?
	Oh, it's not micro.
	It's macro.
	No, it's macro.
	The fascist state is this toddlerhood.
	The fascist state that shows up in politics is the micro version of that.
	This is the fascist state.
	As I've said, the state is an effect of the family.
	And if you grow up being randomly bashed, hit, 18 times a week by your caregiver.
	And this is when they knew they were being recorded.
	Can you imagine when the recorders come off?
	Well, yeah.
	Yeah, I mean, for me, what you're describing is the kind of a kind of a work camp or a kind of workhouse environment where, you know, these children become ownership in this.
	They become owned within this kind of power structure or something.
	They become sort of just some kind of, well, essentially a small slave, you know, that's being punished.
	No, no.
	Sorry, you're not.
	No, I mean, with all due respect, I don't think you're getting the complete level of horror.
	Ownership is not the issue.
	No, no, listen.
	Ownership is not the issue.
	Yeah.
	Because if I own a dog, right, if I have a dog, I own a dog, and I hit that dog 18 times a week, that could not be explained away because I own the dog, right?
	Does that make sense?
	And you say slavery, if you say slavery, well, the price of a slave was the price of a car, like a good car back in the day.
	And when you buy a car, it's your property and you take care of it.
	I mean, this idea that people bought slaves and then beat them and whipped them and starved them.
	I mean, I'm sure there were a few sadists who do that, just as there are a few people who buy cars and drive them into the ground.
	I remember talking to a guy once who ran a garage saying that some guy brought in his car At 40,000 kilometers or something, it never changed the oil.
	And basically the entire engine had to be replaced.
	So there are idiots who do that.
	And, you know, I mean, so there were people who sadistically tortured and beat their slaves, but the majority of people had way too much money invested in their slaves to hit them 18 times a week or to destroy them in that way.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I don't know that there's a parallel that you can say.
	Mm-hmm.
	Other than this is just sheer sadism.
	I'm sorry?
	So you think these children in any circumstances sit even below that, as it were?
	Oh yeah, no, there's no parallel.
	I mean, look, let me give you two scenarios, right?
	Just to sort of get the depths of horror that this article reveals.
	I'll do a whole show on this with more detailed references from the actual article itself.
	But imagine if...
	Men were recorded, pet owners were recorded, they were all men, and they were found to be hitting their dogs 18 times a week.
	Can you imagine the social eruption that would occur in that situation?
	You can't be crazy.
	The place would go insane.
	Yeah, I mean, what if it was men and they were hitting their cats 18 times a week?
	People would go mental, right?
	And men would be exoriated and reviled.
	So that's one example, right?
	But of course, they're only children.
	I mean, they're not cats.
	Who gives a fuck, right?
	That's number one.
	And number two, imagine if men were fitted with recording devices and it found that on average men hit their wives 18 times a week For things like being late with supper, the food not being warm enough, the coffee being brewed too strong, not paying attention, not bringing a beer when ordered, and that men would hit their wives seven times in a row at times.
	Can you imagine the social explosion that would come out of those findings?
	One of the things...
	I mean, in a previous life, I used to work in a therapeutic childcare community.
	It was a very famous one.
	I won't mention any where it was, but it was the pinnacle, supposedly, of the...
	It was the last chance saloon for some of the worst adolescent boys in the UK. It really was where some of the most traumatised adolescent boys arrived.
	And it was a very testing place to work.
	But...
	You know I came across children that were kept in cupboards and brought out to give oral sex to their parents.
	Oh, gosh.
	I've worked with children whose idea of getting close to an adult was to, in 20 minutes, offer them sexual favors, you know, this kind of thing.
	You know, complete devastation of young minds.
	And the violence, the levels of violence that were enacted against children was something that I couldn't really...
	You don't really understand it until you come face to face.
	With the devastation that actually appears in front of you and the way that you know that actually these children, there would be almost no hope for maybe 60 to 70 percent of them and they would dissolve into alcoholism, drug abuse or, you know, kind of become predatory paedophiles themselves or whatever.
	And all the violence You know, that was enacted against them wasn't, you know, people blame men all the time for it, but my own physical, my own experience and my own ability to read case notes and go through backgrounds and,
	you know, confer with kind of other people, other colleagues within the services that I worked in was that, you know, 40 to 50 percent of some of these problems were enacted by people.
	Women as well, you know, it was kind of their mothers, their, you know, other members of their family and whatever.
	So, I mean, you're right to, you know, when you're going down the violence route, the spanking and all that, that is, in my view, can be classed as abuse.
	But there becomes this kind of, in my own mind, this idea that these children become Chattels.
	I don't know how to describe their relationship with parents.
	And sometimes the modern family can be a quite disturbing thing to behold in a lot of respects because of the inescapable power dynamics and whatever that begin to construct themselves in a family, you know, with with native behavioral dynamics you know, with with native behavioral dynamics or whatever.
	And, you know, I think that for me, it's almost like, you know, I'm working on a project at the moment, which is is about murder suicides in families, how parents decide to kill their children and then kill how parents decide to kill their children and then kill themselves.
	And what.
	What I come across all the time when I'm looking at this for this project, this film project, which is going to be actually a drama-based project, is that there is this level of...
	I know you kind of rejected it, but it's this level of ownership.
	It's like the pharaohs used to kill their slaves and throw them into the pit after the...
	The pyramid was erected, you know, and this kind of thing, this whole idea that, you know, this misconceived concept of love, which parents direct to their children.
	It becomes this horrific maelstrom of ownership, slavery, violence or dependency, emotional abuse and then on the extreme degenerates into extreme sexual, psychological destruction and abuse of the individual to the point where the individuals are raised.
	It ceases to exist.
	It becomes like the children, some of the children I came across became this kind of, they looked and acted like they were actors.
	That's the word.
	They were actors.
	They'd learned how to, a series of, they constructed a series of behaviors and whatever.
	I would argue that probably, and this is just off the top of my head, subject to revision, but I would argue that the closest relationship in these kinds of situations, as described in this study, is prisoner of war.
	Because that's different from an ownership and a slave situation, because in an ownership and slave situation, you're profiting, either emotionally or financially, from whatever you own, right?
	But in a prisoner of war, it's overhead, right?
	And this is why prisoner of war situations tend to get so sadistic.
	So it probably is closer to a prisoner of war situation.
	And that is tragic.
	Now you say the sort of, and just, you know, I don't have a final answer, but you say sort of, well, 40 to 50% of this was committed or perpetrated by women.
	Well, I put 100% responsibility in general on On the women, right?
	Because either the women had...
	It could be wrong, but let me make the case and then you can tell me if you think it's fairly valid.
	Okay, so the woman either chooses to have sex with the man or she doesn't, right?
	Now, if she doesn't, that's right, but it's a horrible crime.
	In which case, if she's not ready to be a mother and...
	She's traumatized from the rape, of course, right?
	Then she should give the child up for adoption, right?
	Yeah, that would make sense.
	Right, so that's fine, right?
	And if she did choose to have sex with the guy and did not use birth control, and then let's say, well, people say, well, the man can use birth control too.
	That's true.
	But the woman is the one who stands to lose far more And therefore has a far greater incentive to insist on birth control, right?
	So if she had unprotected sex and she's not ready and the guy's not right or...
	If the mom is not in a position to care for a child, then again, she should...
	I hesitate to say have an abortion because I'm still swinging wildly like a pendulum on that issue.
	But certainly give the child up for adoption.
	That's what used to happen before the welfare state.
	The vast majority of teen pregnancies or whatever, the woman would go away with the female relative, have the child, the child would be given up for adoption, and the girl would return...
	To try and start her life, right?
	She'd move out of the family unit and just begin like a normal progression.
	She may even go back to high school or whatever, but it would be this secret, right?
	Yeah, there wouldn't be a moving into dependency at that point.
	Right, right.
	So this is how it used to be, and this is when, of course, teen pregnancy was far lower.
	Now you, of course, have a welfare state, and the change in behavior seems to indicate that women are having children for money.
	Why are they not giving up the children?
	Because they get money if they don't.
	So essentially the children are hostages that the taxpayers are forced to pay for because in the past these women would have given those children up for adoption and the children would have ended up much better off.
	At least according to the studies that I've read, children who were adopted do as well as the general population but children raised in single mother households do far worse than the general population.
	So these women are selfishly holding on to these little cash cows called children Using the state to extort money from the taxpayer to keep them in bonbons and soap operas and then they are beating up the kids.
	Do you think that the relationship between The people in the state, in terms of the welfare state, it's just a humongous corruption of these ties between communities and people to make their own decisions.
	And the welfare state in the UK, we're moving towards, obviously, maybe answering some of the questions I asked at the beginning.
	And I think the welfare state, as you've described, eloquently many times before is, in my view, the root of all...
	well, most of the evils we see in modern societies are based around this kind of dependency, this kind of complicit cutting off of the legs of the individual's ability to even conceive of moving on and becoming responsible or, you know, kind of setting aside something of themself You know, to kind of make a life based on what they can achieve.
	Well, okay, but hang on, hang on, because, yeah, I feel that there's this subtle white knight ghost floating through the relationship, the conversation that we're having, which could be wrong, but Christophe has said in the chat that he doesn't sort of follow the argument.
	So let me finish it up and then say why I think you might be white knighting a bit.
	So...
	Women can drop their children off at any time at a police station or a fire station or a hospital, and people will take care of those children.
	And those children, large numbers of resources will be devoted to trying to find those children a good home.
	Right?
	So, if I go out and work very hard to get a pet, and then I am paid to take care of that pet, And I can drop that pet off any time and lose being paid to take care of it.
	But I keep that pet and abuse it.
	Everybody would understand that I don't really want the pet.
	But I'm abusing...
	I'm keeping the pet and taking out my frustrations about not wanting to have the pet because people are paying me.
	Yeah, I mean, that's like...
	That's a kind of really harsh but exceptionally poignant way to describe.
	No, you say harsh, but harsh has no value philosophically.
	What's harsh about it?
	Women can drop these kids off to get better homes any time they want.
	Exactly.
	But then they will lose some benefits.
	They will lose being paid to take care of their children, which they're not really doing.
	They're basically just brutalizing them and then turning them loose like rabid wolves on society who then pays further prices for their greed.
	So they're hostages for money.
	So, women who are...
	Now, the one situation where I could see a woman is not to blame is if a woman is taking great care of her kids, the kids get kidnapped and a man abuses them.
	Terrible.
	One in a billion, but terrible, right?
	Absolutely.
	But women choose to have sex, choose to keep the pregnancy, choose to keep the children...
	And so I'm not sure how we can not say that women aren't 100% responsible for this stuff.
	At that point, I think I'm in complete agreement with your idea because the child becomes a prisoner for somebody else's fortune.
	It becomes just a conduit to gather some cash, you know, or sustain the host.
	So the parent has a completely parasitic Yeah, the child is kept as a hostage for government resources, extracted from decent men and women and their children in the form of debt at the point of a gun.
	It's a hostage situation in general, which is one of the reasons why it's so decrepit.
	And basically what happens is then you're paying For the production of dysfunctional children.
	You are paying the worst elements in society to have kids in general, right?
	And let me tell you why I think there's some white knighting going on here.
	Again, it's just my thoughts.
	It's not a clinchy argument.
	So, when...
	I think you sound roughly my age-ish.
	You don't have that silver lint of the...
	No, no.
	Silver lint of my teenage years.
	Right, right.
	So...
	When you were a kid and you heard about the patriarchy and you heard about men hitting women and men, you know, wearing wife beaters and putting their hands down the front of their pants and demanding that their woman get them a beer or make them a sammich, right?
	Did you ever hear the argument that, well, men have, you know, and I'm not saying I agree with the argument, but this is a general perception.
	We see men have grown up in a patriarchy and it's been a patriarchy for thousands of years.
	You know, they're doing the best they can with the knowledge they have.
	We just need to lovingly educate them and support them in trying to weed them off this kind of behavior, which is not really their fault.
	I mean, they just inherited this particular attitude and they saw their dads do this to their moms.
	They saw their moms accept it.
	And so, you know, let's cut the massive amounts of slack and approach them with love and acceptance and curiosity and really help to slowly educate them out of These problems, which really they didn't create, but just inherited because of the momentum of the patriarchy.
	Right.
	Did you ever hear that?
	Well, I kind of can agree with that, having come across violent men in the past, you know, just this idea that they have not to.
	No, but did you ever hear that argument?
	Well, I've heard that, yeah.
	I mean, essentially that if you just treat them with a bit of kindness and respect and education.
	I mean, are you saying that that's the wrong thing?
	I don't really understand.
	No, no.
	What I mean is, did you ever hear sort of in the mainstream media or the portrayals, did you ever hear of abusive men saying, Being given a lot of sympathy for growing up in a patriarchy and it's not really their fault.
	No, not at all.
	They're never seen as victims.
	They're always perpetrators of crime or evil or monsters.
	And they go to jail.
	Yeah.
	They're incarcerated.
	They go to jail.
	Fined.
	That's it.
	Yeah.
	Ostracized.
	So this has been my perspective for years, which is...
	If it's true that we should explain away women's evil with reference to environment and the welfare state and history and blah blah blah, okay well let's make that case.
	Then we owe massive apologies to all of the men who put through the legal ringer for far less egregious crimes.
	Hitting your wife is far less of a crime than hitting a child.
	Because the wife is there by choice.
	The wife has economic and legal and moral independence and massive amounts of support systems to get out.
	The wife has got to test drive the husband and so on.
	Kids are just born into it.
	Hitting a child is far worse morally than hitting a wife or hitting a husband.
	If men did not get off the hook because of the momentum of history or the environment or this or that or the other, then by God, let's not let women have that same excuse because that is not treating women equally.
	Women keep saying, I want to be treated equally to a man.
	I want to be treated equally to a man.
	Okay, then no fucking excuses for hitting babies because men don't get any excuses for hitting adult women.
	They go to jail.
	Absolutely.
	I mean, there is absolutely, it's destruction for somebody, you know, the male will be destroyed by society for engaging in that behaviour.
	I'm not saying the behaviour is right, because it's something I would never countenance, obviously, but the level of moral outrage that is directed towards that kind of behaviour is perfect.
	It's humongous.
	It's just huge.
	The fundamental reason emotionally that men cannot hold women to the same standards is that men are terrified of women.
	And look, this study shows exactly why.
	If you get hit by a woman 18 times a week, From being a baby to being a teenager, what the fuck do you think that's going to do to your perception of women?
	Men are terrified of women.
	I mean, at two levels.
	One is that men want sex and women can say yes or no, and so nobody wants to displease women for fear of being knocked out of the gene pool.
	And that's one aspect, and I think that has some effect.
	But by God, if you were beaten by a black man 18 times a week, And if everyone you knew was beaten by black men 18 times a week, from babyhood to teenage-dom, and then you say, well, I have no idea why everyone's frightened of blacks.
	Well, because the blacks beat everyone as babies, for the most part, right?
	And so this is something fundamental to understand that there is a great deal of rank terror, feral hatred, and Stockholm Syndrome worship of women because women are so incredibly violent in general, on average, to children.
	And they're more violent towards their male children than they are to their female children.
	And so men grow up absolutely terrified of women.
	And this fear of women is so foundational to everything in society.
	The fear of a woman's anger, the fear of a woman's hostility, the fear of a woman's discontent and displeasure is so foundational to everything in society that, like, if you can't see that, then you can...
	I'm not you, but if people can't see that, they don't understand why society is the way it is.
	So where does the...
	Where's...
	Who sank...
	What sanctions this?
	How has this come to be?
	Where did the women find legitimation for this behavior?
	What rationale is being in the complicitness of the child?
	In you.
	With all due respect.
	And again, knowing your sensitivity to these issues, I'm just sort of pointing it out.
	In you, in the white knighting.
	Because you're looking for environmental explanations for women's behavior.
	Okay.
	Right?
	So I can only assume that you experienced some significant aggression from a woman as a child.
	No.
	Actually, males.
	Always men.
	Never women.
	Always men.
	It's funnily enough.
	All right.
	Let's ask about that, again, if you don't mind.
	So if it's the men who were abusive towards you as a child, for which I'm incredibly sorry, Essentially, I think, In times past, the kind of social ramifications of families dissolving had greater impact, I think, socially than they do now.
	So partners used to stay together more and that kind of thing.
	I think that's probably what it is.
	I've never actually faced any significant abuse from anybody, but any abuse or any kind of violence I've confronted has always come from the male domain.
	But I have experienced firsthand the ramifications and outcomes of all types of abuse on children.
	Do you know you just did it again, right?
	White knighted again.
	I'm sorry.
	You just did it again.
	I'm just pointing it out, right?
	Because I said, well, why were the men in your life who were abusing you?
	And you said, well, but society back then frowned more on women getting divorced and blah-de-blah-de-blah, right?
	I'm not taking responsibility.
	I'm not apportioning responsibility in the correct place.
	Is that what you're saying?
	Yeah.
	Well, I mean, so are you saying that you were abused by your father but not by your mother?
	Well...
	The kind of things that I confronted as a child were to do with, you know, things to do with people not stepping up to their plate and taking on their responsibilities.
	But also, you're correct when you're saying a lot of these men suffer at the hands of women in terms of the dependency that men suffer.
	Have had foisted upon them in this society.
	Men seem to think sometimes they don't exist if they don't have connection to women on all the levels that they believe they should.
	So almost, in my view, some men don't exist outside of the realm of women.
	Is that truthful or what?
	I think that's an extreme way of putting it and certainly the men going their own way guys would say men don't exist if they are focused on meeting the needs of women and not sort of thinking about themselves and so on.
	But so you were not spanked by your mother but or disciplined by your mother but only your father?
	I've been spanked by teachers.
	Actually, some of the worst violent episodes were from in education for me.
	But within the family, I... I'm sorry, male or female teachers?
	Both, both, both, yeah.
	Because you just a few minutes earlier said that you've not experienced any abuse at the hands of women?
	Nothing that really sticks out.
	Some of the things that you've talked about, such as...
	Within the family, women can sometimes dominate the space of men in terms of the emotional space, and the men become sucked into this kind of emotional world.
	I've experienced that.
	Where women have dominated you emotionally and you've been looking for ways out.
	And that's some of the way I've experienced relationships with women in the family is from this kind of the way that a lot of them seem to have this idea that their domination of the emotional space and absolute right to dominate that space.
	That's where I've come across it most.
	You are one abstract guy.
	Oh my goodness.
	I feel like I'm getting a PhD abstract rather than personal experiences.
	Women dominate the emotional space.
	Wow.
	I can't see that being like a Valentine's Day, thank you for dominating my emotional space.
	I mean, what does that mean?
	Give me some examples.
	Look, women spend 80% of the money.
	Women drive home purchases or women drive interior decorating.
	I mean, you and I, a cave with a big screen TV for the most part, right?
	That's useful stuff.
	Women drive a lot of this stuff.
	It's not bad or anything.
	I think that it's important to bring some Realism.
	Do we need this room repainted?
	I get that women like to nest, and that's fine.
	A man's job is his penis.
	A woman's home is her vagina.
	I get all of that stuff.
	But it is important for men to say, you know, this is shared, right?
	I mean, men earn the majority of the money, and women spend the majority of the money in a family.
	And I think it's time for men to say, no, no, no, come on.
	Let's save some money here.
	Let's not spend money on stuff that is not particularly productive, right?
	I have suffered financial abuse firsthand.
	I know what that's about.
	The idea that if things are not being bought or things are not being done, then there's something wrong.
	I've had that, this idea that...
	You know, that is something I have struggled with.
	What is the emotional cost, Mr.
	Abstraction?
	Well, the emotional cost would be withdrawal.
	Withdrawal of affection.
	You know, this kind of idea, you know, this kind of movement away.
	You know, the coldness appears.
	I've had that.
	That's been very, very difficult.
	That's on a romantic level.
	To be blunt, isn't that the woman saying, if you don't give me money, I'm not having sex with you?
	That's essentially what it is, yes.
	Well, I mean, call it what it is, right?
	Emotional withdrawal and coldness.
	It's like...
	Sorry, Port Vagina is closed to supertanker incursions until the toll fees are paid, right?
	I'm from Britain.
	I've just drank a cup of tea here.
	You know, it's like, remember my feet, man?
	Oh, so now it's your environment, which is why you're so abstract.
	Trying to, you know, it's like two opposing magnets trying to put responsibility into the people in the world.
	Okay, quick question for you then.
	So, the state, is the state A female or a male?
	What's happening?
	Well, I mean, it has to appeal to both voting blocs, right?
	So for the males, it provides some economic freedom.
	It provides national defense so that the amygdala and neofrontal cortex doesn't...
	It rouse itself too much, and for the women it provides massive subsidies for terrible decisions.
	It's both.
	There's a study that has shown that the people who are conservatives, who tend to be into smaller government, religion, and a larger national defense, or more spending on the national defense, like the Romney budget, which is all about cutting the government, actually going to add tens of billions of dollars a year to defense spending.
	And they found that the conservative brain is wired differently from the liberal brain, or the left-wing brain versus the right-wing brain.
	The right-wing brain reacts more strongly to negative stimuli and threats.
	You get a fight-or-flight mechanism kicking in.
	The liberal brain does not respond as negatively to threats or negative stimuli.
	You know, they show a picture of somebody with looks like they've got a spike through their hand and the right wing brain goes nuts and the left wing brain is like, well, that's, you know, that's bad.
	And of course, people are coming to all kinds of judgments about this.
	But that seems to me kind of like a male-female thing.
	And the left and the right does to some degree fall along male and female lights, males on the right, women on the left.
	And of course, men are more hardwired to perceive threats.
	Yeah.
	Why?
	Because we're the protectors.
	And so it's kind of important for us to be able to perceive threats.
	Women are less able to perceive threats because they have a protector, right?
	And it's sort of like if I'm walking through a lion preserve, then I'm a lot more alert than if I'm driving through a lion preserve in a Humvee, right?
	Because in the second part, I have a protector called the Humvee, which will keep the lion's jaws away from my neck.
	So, anyway, I think that those would be the general ways it breaks down, and the government tries to appeal to both.
	But in general, the stakes for women's bad mistakes are more immediate and higher than for men's bad mistakes.
	And so, if a woman gets pregnant with the wrong guy...
	Then, you know, I mean, she's got the pregnancy, she's got the birth, she's got breast milk pouring out of her.
	You know, to give up the child is, I'm not saying it's easy, it's horrible.
	Absolutely excruciating, you know, for a woman with any sensitivity, which is not to say every woman, right?
	But they have, the stakes for a woman's bad decisions are immediate.
	And, you know, women, when they have kids, they just become these black holes of resources.
	Resource, resource, resource.
	Healthcare, bills, need money, need shelter, need heat, need food, right?
	It just sucks it all up, right?
	There's nothing wrong with that.
	It's just the way, you know, it's how we get this giant brain is to give birth to kids.
	Just throw resources at it again.
	Yeah, you just got to throw resources.
	We're born like a baby horse can...
	Walk within hours or days of it, you know, we take like almost a year.
	I mean, we're born way too early and that's because our brain, if it grew any bigger, would unfortunately split the woman open like a banana with a truck driving over it.
	So we're born earlier, and there's nothing, again, this is just the biology.
	We get the giant brains, and in return for the giant brains, we have disabled women littering the planet, breastfeeding, and right?
	So women become these black holes of resources in order to grow the brains needed to plot the criminal offenses that the children of single mom are prone to.
	And obviously, sorry.
	It's okay.
	Obviously, the state and corporations and big business understand this, and this becomes an opportunity to make a hell of a lot of money at that point, I should imagine.
	Oh, yeah.
	This is why there's so much male bashing going on.
	It's because women have made bad choices in their men, and they need to go and see media that portrays all men as idiots so that they don't feel like they personally have just made bad decisions.
	I don't sit there and say, well...
	The ideal woman is 12 feet tall, but I guess I'll put up with my wife.
	Because they say, well, there's no 12 foot tall woman, right?
	So it's an unrealistic expectation.
	The funny thing is that men have been hammered for their unrealistic expectations about women.
	You know, I want big tits, but no big ass.
	I generally get big tits with a big ass.
	It's kind of the way it works, right?
	And so, you know, airbrushed Playboy models, or Playgirl, Playboy models, sorry.
	It's unrealistic.
	But the thing is too, the degree to which women are hungry for male bashing in the media, Simply is there to tell women that there's no such thing as a good man.
	Everywhere you see men look ridiculous and foolish and, you know, Homer Simpson, an American dad, and they're just dysfunctional and foolish.
	Completely unrealistic, like superheroes, like billionaire Bruce Wayne, the bad suited crime fighter or whatever.
	And so women then get to say, well, if there aren't any good men, I guess I did the best I could with what I had.
	But there's this massive conspiracy in the media to not hold women accountable for For making bad choices with the men that they've chosen to have children with.
	And it's natural, and women will pay hugely for this, and that's why.
	And so women have a much higher and more immediate need for resources if they make mistakes than men do, right?
	I mean, a man makes a mistake like, oh my god, I smoked a pack a day for 30 years, now I have lung cancer.
	Well, it's very deferred, it's very, you know, then he needs resources or whatever, right?
	But people then at least say, well, you know, you were stupid to smoke, right?
	Or, you know, that smoking was fun.
	I hope it was as fun as, you know, I hope it makes up for the lung cancer or whatever.
	But women, when they have kids, yeah, their needs are like bang right away.
	Like, I gotta have healthcare.
	I gotta have a dentist.
	I need, and the kids need, they're hungry, right?
	Men make mistakes and it takes usually years and years to show up.
	But women make mistakes and this giant black hole of feed the pregnant, feed the breastfeeding mom.
	The mortgage, the car loans, the credit cards, the whole lifestyle you have to build around a contemporary family and a contemporary nesting mentality is just truly staggering, isn't it?
	The amount of resources and finance that that kind of...
	That kind of mentality can construct.
	Yeah, and a single man can downsize, and a single woman can downsize to some degree as well.
	But a single man can downsize, and he can go live in his car or whatever, but a woman with two kids, she can't really downsize.
	And this is why moms need free health care, free dental care, free education in public schools.
	They need welfare.
	All of this stuff.
	They just need, need, need.
	And not all, right?
	But, you know, majority.
	All women need those resources.
	And they either get them from a good man or a predatory state.
	And this is why irresponsible femininity is one of the biggest drivers of the growing fascism.
	But it's getting to the point where men are becoming feminized, does Steph.
	The point is that the magazines, the whole kind of concept that, you know, you can emasculate a male, therefore it becomes less of a threat.
	And this is actually referring back to my original question, fantastically enough, and this is what you're very good at, is that, you know, this whole idea that the male as a form of resistances I think it's the only thing that's against tyranny and resistance against fascism is having those tools eradicated,
	those tools that exist within a man are being dissembled in some form by the feminized media.
	You just have to look at the TV, the garbage that comes through as popular culture, the pop music, The culture that exists around mainstream media, especially entertainment media or whatever,
	the images that the modern male has to aspire to are more female constructs and more marketing constructs than they are any form of Relationship to any identity a man may construct on his own.
	Is that correct?
	Yeah, I mean, I think it's certainly true to say that as women have turned more and more to the state to give them resources, then the requirement for male virtue has gone down.
	Now, these are trends.
	I still hold individuals responsible.
	But, I mean, this is why you can't shrink the state right now, is that there are too many child hostages.
	You simply can't shrink the state because, let's say, you're going to cut the welfare state by 50%.
	Well, the welfare state is almost exclusively serving the needs of single mothers.
	That's why there's a welfare state.
	It's because women are irresponsible with their eggs and because men are irresponsible with their sperm.
	And therefore, that lack of responsibility turns into a predatory clawing at the wallets of everybody who's kept it in their pants or at least in their balls.
	And so...
	What would happen if you cut the welfare state?
	Well, these women who are not particularly attractive to a quality man, as I've sort of made the case before, you know, oh, you have two kids, you're on welfare, you didn't finish high school, yeah, let's roll, right?
	I mean, that's just not, I mean, we sort of evolve above the lions, right?
	The lion, you know, a new guy comes along, he just kills all the kids, right?
	Because he wants his genes to reproduce, right?
	So it's not to the point where a man will say, okay, you strangle those kids and we will get it on, right?
	I mean, some women do that, very few, but some women do, right?
	Well, the guy, he was going to leave me because of my kids, so I killed my kids, right?
	It's rare, but it happens.
	And so if you cut back the welfare state, where are these women going to get their resources from?
	Now, if it were just the women, I'd say, well, you know, if you make these bad decisions, then, like men for the most part, you have to live with the consequences of those bad decisions.
	But they have children, which means to say they have hostages, right?
	And so, it's not the kids' fault.
	And so, literally, what is going to happen To the kids, and there's just too many.
	There's too many.
	Single-parent households are far too common now.
	I mean, even if you could outvote them, which you can't, because they have such a massive incentive to get resources, and men don't have as much incentive to deny those resources, right?
	Because it's not their kids who are hungry, right?
	So they're driven.
	They're single-minded, focused, get resources, get resources, get resources, right?
	And, you know, a good woman does that by being a great wife and a great mom and a great friend.
	And, you know, when my wife was breastfeeding, I was happy to provide as much income as I could while she was not working because I love her and she's a fantastic woman and never been, you know, what's mine is hers and all that kind of stuff, right?
	So normally women get resources from a quality man, which is why Men pursue quality and women should be attracted to it.
	But once a state steps in, there's just too many now.
	Literally, what would happen?
	I mean, children would get sick.
	Children might die.
	Children would go hungry.
	Because these women, what are they going to do?
	There'd be a transition period that would be really rough.
	And this is why I don't see any possibility of this.
	I mean, outside of women's general capacity to strike terror into the heart of men, Because of the history of being hit by so many women, which has diminished to a small degree because at least in a lot of places you can't hit kids in school anymore.
	But there's no possibility.
	I mean, all that would happen is the media would pounce on every child's suffering as a result of the welfare cuts and they would say, you see what the people who want to cut welfare are doing to these poor children?
	And the sad-eyed moms and the fear.
	It's not possible.
	You can't stop it.
	It's got to crash.
	I don't think there's any other way.
	So the whole kind of destruction of any concept of autonomous male power is being consciously eradicated by the state.
	Do you believe that?
	Well, I don't know that they're sitting there saying, let us consciously eradicate male power.
	It's just that we don't have the ethics to deny need, right?
	The ethics to deny need is fundamentally what ethics are about.
	Like, why do you need nutrition?
	Because the stuff you want to eat ain't good for you in general.
	Right?
	And I get that, right?
	I mean, the stuff I want to eat is sugar and fat and salt and crap like that, right?
	And we need ethics to deny need.
	Because when people screw up, they get very needy and they desperately want people to cover...
	They're screw-ups.
	They want to win the lottery so they can pay off their credit cards.
	Like the banks.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	The banks do it in the same way.
	They screw up and they want everyone else to cover their losses.
	It's natural.
	So they're screaming babies, essentially.
	They're screaming to mama.
	Well, no, because you shouldn't deny a baby its needs.
	So having the strength of character To deny other people's needs when those needs are unjust is really important.
	And what happens if you don't deny people's needs, people's unjust needs, I'm just going to say all the needs I'm talking about are unjust, just so I don't have to keep saying that word.
	When you don't have the strength of character to deny need, then you fail to produce the negative examples to keep further need at bay, right?
	So, if a woman has a child with a bad man, Then she either, you know, has an abortion, gives it up for adoption or raises it dropping out of high school and living in a parent's basement and she can't go out and she can't do anything and she's got this pretty terrible existence.
	And then all the other girls say, oh man, I don't want that, right?
	You know, if you deny the catastrophes of bad decisions and the consequences, then we no longer have signposts to guide us along the way of life.
	There's no, don't go here, right?
	Don't do that.
	There's no map.
	There's no boundaries.
	There's nothing.
	Just like an amorphous kind of blob spreading around.
	Yeah, it's like this old Stephen R. Donaldson series.
	There was this leper named Thomas Covenant.
	And he had to do what's called a VSC. I mentioned this before.
	A visual search of extremities.
	Because he was a leper, his extremities were numb.
	So he didn't know that he had any pain.
	He had to go and check and see if he'd scraped or bumped or bruised or cut or something like that.
	And the disasters of some people's lives is a signpost to other people.
	And when you deny that, I'm not saying that these people should die.
	I mean, I have a great deal of sympathy for a lot of people and so on, right?
	But if you shield people too much from the negative consequences of their own decisions, you know, whatever you subsidize increases.
	Charity is so unbelievably tricky and so unbelievably difficult to get right.
	I mean, I've tried it many times in my life, and a few times it's worked, but for the most part, I might as well have just set fire to my money and time and resources and all that kind of stuff.
	So, it is very tricky.
	It's very tricky, and of course, you shouldn't...
	It's like trying to paint the Mona Lisa with a...
	Set of paint buckets being thrown into the jet stream of a idling airliner.
	You'll get some color, but it ain't going to be any details, right?
	Jackson Pollock.
	Listen, let's talk a little bit about, just to move on, before we move on, let's talk a little bit about what we're going to do in Amsterdam.
	Oh, yeah.
	Well, I'll let you kind of tell people what you're doing, and then we'll feed into that.
	Why are you in Amsterdam?
	Well, first of all, we're going to be filming massive amounts of revenge porn.
	Against who?
	I don't know.
	No, actually, it's because I'm going to do a show on revenge porn.
	Best research ever.
	But, yeah, so I'm going to go to Amsterdam to speak at the next web conference.
	I'm really looking forward to it.
	It's going to be my biggest speech to date.
	I'm looking forward to it.
	And you're going to be in Amsterdam as well.
	And we're going to do a little walkabouties.
	We're going to do a couple of interviews with me.
	We're going to sort of Me rolling around Amsterdam chatting with people and asking them questions and trying to figure out what their level of philosophical and political knowledge is compared to their knowledge of who Kim Kardashian is or something like that.
	So, yeah, we're going to have a sort of little walkabout and a little sort of mini documentary for this trip, which I think would be a lot of fun and people will get to see me.
	Out of my layer of the big white 2001 Space Odyssey ping pong ball that I normally live in.
	But sorry, go ahead.
	I think it would be a real treat for some of the subscribers and followers to see you in a different space, in a different country.
	That would be fantastic.
	And just...
	It's going to put you in a different location and context and discuss things and whatever.
	It's going to be, for me, a really exciting thing.
	The ideas you have are obviously gaining traction because People are prepared to fly you halfway around the globe and put you in a huge forum with some very big players on the internet space.
	I think Free Domain Radio and yourself is set to really be a part of, if not the creator of a revolution in thinking and the way people approach their relationships.
	To knowledge and kind of deep thinking and introspection and then kind of project that out to the world.
	I mean, the whole free domain radio thing seems to be exploding.
	As you've told me, it's kind of exponential growth and we can hopefully bring more people in and give them a good short documentary or a little film and introduce people to you in that sense as well.
	So that's what I'm excited about.
	Yeah, and of course, if people want to join the meetup, they can email Mike, operations at freedomainradio.com.
	We're going to do a meetup, and I think you're going to come and film that.
	We have these great conversations at the meetup, and it's a shame sometimes that they never get anywhere, like out of the room.
	So yeah, I appreciate it, of course.
	We're going to rely on donations to help you cover your costs, which we'll talk about when the film comes out, but tell people a little bit about the quality.
	Of the equipment, if not necessarily the subject.
	How are you going to make it look great?
	We're going to film on Super 16, true film quality, which means that essentially it's going to have a filmic quality to it.
	It's going to have that nice look that people recognize from going to the movies or watching any kind of quality sort of film or documentary.
	We're going to...
	Take that video harshness away, that YouTube box, and we're going to put you in the real world.
	And, you know, that's going to create...
	In my view, that will be a lovely thing to look at.
	We're going to take a look at Amsterdam.
	We're using Blackmagic cinema cameras and high-quality audio.
	And, you know, this thing will look nice and it will have lots of interesting things in it.
	And Amsterdam being a beautiful city...
	We can capture some of that.
	And I'm sure you're looking forward to actually seeing the city.
	I don't think you've actually been before.
	No.
	But there are areas we don't want to take you to, maybe.
	Would it be the red light capital of Europe and all these kind of things?
	There's a lot of interesting dynamics in Amsterdam.
	There's kind of libertarian-wise, there is no war on drugs in these places.
	Drugs are openly smoked and used in places like Amsterdam.
	And, you know, so there's going to be a lot of interesting things to discuss and take a look at.
	And I think from that point of view, that'd be something that you're probably going to find very interesting.
	And hopefully the viewers and the people that see the piece, the film that we create, that is going to be on free domain radio on YouTube, I should imagine, at some point.
	Sorry, I've always said I don't really want people to be too interested in me.
	Just really focus on the ideas.
	But I also want to help people to understand, you know, there's stage staff and then there's like staff.
	And it's not like I'm completely opposite in my sort of personal life or anything like that.
	But, you know, Freddie Mercury was the guy who could command billions on stage.
	But you don't go over to his house for tea and he screams, we are the champions in your face at full volume, you know?
	There's the sort of stage and then there's the sort of other guy.
	And there's so hopefully a little bit more of the other guy in this kind of situation.
	All right, do you mind if we move on to the next call?
	No problem.
	Nice to speak with you, Stefan.
	It's great.
	Nice to chat with you as always.
	And again, looking forward to Amsterdam.
	For somebody who asked, you do not have to attend the Nextbed conference to come to the meetup.
	All right.
	Up next is Andrew R. He writes in and says, I'm currently in the process of telling my family how I feel about our relationship.
	I'm having trouble.
	I'm having a difficult time dealing with the guilt that always seems to arise within me after those conversations end.
	Do you have any thoughts on why it is that I feel so guilty?
	Alright, so where does the guilt come from?
	I mean, emotions usually come from an argument, and sometimes that argument occurs too deep in our brains and too early in our experience to know.
	But what do you think the argument is that is occurring that would help you sort of bring along this sort of feeling of guilt?
	That's a tough question, I guess.
	It comes primarily, I guess, from the confrontations I've had with them.
	I've confronted my mom four times now in the past, I guess, four or five months.
	And it always leads to an explosion in anger from my end.
	And I always end up leaving the conversation, I guess, in anger.
	And then a week later, she'll call me and leave a voice message that And she acts like nothing happens.
	She doesn't talk about the conversation that we had.
	She doesn't communicate that she cared about me expressing my feelings to her.
	But for some reason, I still feel guilty when she calls me and I don't call her back.
	Alright, why do you think you get so angry when you're talking with your mom?
	I'm not saying you should or shouldn't, I'm just curious why you think that is occurring.
	Yeah, I totally know why that is.
	It's her responses to my, basically, when I tell her how I feel about the relationship that we currently have, and also the relationship we had in the past.
	For the past year or so, I've been really taking self-knowledge pretty seriously, and I've been digging into my past, digging into my childhood, and kind of realizing that a lot of it was pretty traumatizing.
	And when I've confronted her about it, and my grandparents too, I'm just met with dismissal, complete dismissal, actually.
	And that's where my anger comes from, I think.
	All right, so you...
	I have criticisms about how you were raised based on some feelings or experiences of abuse.
	You bring that up, and how is it waved away?
	I mean, what is the magic wand?
	What are the words that are used to invalidate your experience?
	Sure.
	The first one that comes to my mind is she always says to me, well, you had a good childhood, or I don't remember any of that, or The one that really, really got me, and just as a side note, I'm really considering defooing at this point based on these confrontations.
	The big one recently was when I confronted her about her meth use.
	And she told me that she was experimenting like I was with drugs and alcohol when I was 18.
	And I couldn't...
	I was honestly...
	I just didn't know what to say, and I eventually...
	Did you, in fact, have a child when you were 18?
	No, no.
	Right.
	Right.
	So, kind of a bit different, right?
	Yeah.
	Alright.
	Okay.
	Alright.
	Sorry, did you want to add something else?
	No, I guess I was just thinking how...
	Just, I can't believe.
	I can't believe that She would say something like that, and I'm still in disbelief.
	I don't know if I'll ever get over that disbelief.
	Why do you not believe that she would say something like that?
	I just don't understand how somebody can be so disconnected from their emotions like that.
	I'm currently in therapy.
	I'm working with a therapist, and he's been really helpful.
	Exploring why that might be, and it makes a lot of sense that, you know, she didn't get her childhood needs met and everything, so I can understand to a certain degree why she'd have, she wouldn't be able to really express those emotions, but it just, that kind of abuse, I just, it just, I don't know.
	What happened that was abusive?
	Just, and again, you mentioned Matthew, so I'm not going to be shocked by anything, but what sort of stuff are you talking about?
	The big thing that I confronted them about was just feeling neglected and feeling as if my thoughts and my desires didn't really come into play in their minds.
	I didn't feel like I was really asked what I wanted to do with my life or how I was doing.
	I guess a vivid example is I would come home from school and I would go into my room.
	This was middle school, high school.
	I don't know, maybe earlier.
	And I would be in my room and my mom would come home maybe 10 minutes after I got home and she would swing.
	The bathroom was right by my bedroom, so she would swing in there real quick and say hi to me while she went in there.
	And then she would go into the kitchen and watch TV for the rest of the night.
	And that was basically kind of our relationship and still is pretty much whenever I see her.
	So that's not a relationship, right?
	Absolutely not.
	You know, that's avoidance, right?
	Yep.
	I mean, it's tragic, of course, right?
	And I'm incredibly sorry for this, but I know actually a lot of people whose parents don't really want to spend time with them.
	It's really sad, and it's very, very difficult as a kid, right?
	Because you know that it's a weak bond, and you're hard to feel interesting yourself if the woman who gave birth to you isn't really that interested in you.
	But, you know, you're saying, I'm thinking about defooing.
	It's like, from what?
	Right.
	No, it's like, you know, like I said, I've been married for 20 years.
	My wife and I live in separate houses.
	We don't have sex.
	We haven't talked in years.
	But I'm afraid of ending my marriage.
	I'm like, ending what?
	I know.
	I've thought about that so many times.
	It's popped into my head.
	But for some reason, I still feel like every time she calls or, you know, she sent me an email the other day showing me pictures of a puppy that she's thinking of buying.
	And this is...
	This is after I've sent her responses, you know, telling her how I've been feeling, having these confrontations, and she doesn't respond to any of it.
	And then she sends me like a picture of a puppy that she's thinking of buying as if nothing has happened, you know?
	Sure, because it's working.
	Right.
	It is.
	I mean, it's working, right?
	So if she ignores it, so let's sort of break down this a little bit in more detail.
	Does she at least sort of admit and understand that the meth use was not optimal parenting?
	Yeah, I think she would.
	Wait, wait, what do you mean you think she would?
	She has.
	She has admitted that.
	So she admitted that she was dysfunctional and destructive as a parent during her time of meth use.
	Nope.
	She didn't say it in those words.
	Okay, no, but what words did she say?
	I mean, that's not going to be exactly the same.
	Okay, let's see if I can remember.
	It was very avoidant.
	It was very dismissing.
	And she said, you know, I thought I got my life together and I thought I was doing a good job and I guess not.
	Oh, so basically it's your problem.
	Like she was doing fine and she had her life together, but the fact that you have a problem, the only problem that she has with her behavior is that you have a problem with it, nothing to do with her behavior, right?
	Yeah.
	Right, right, right.
	Well, let me give you some insights into guilt.
	Okay.
	Because guilt is one of the most powerful emotions.
	In the world, and it is one of the most fascistic emotions in the world.
	It is also one of the most predatory emotions in the world.
	It is responsible for more theft than the government and the church combined.
	It's a very, very huge, huge issue.
	Guilt.
	Now, I'll tell you what I think guilt is.
	You can tell me if it makes any sense to you or not.
	This is not a philosophical argument, right?
	Just so everybody knows.
	I was trying to differentiate.
	This is not syllogistic.
	But I don't think that makes it any less compelling or important.
	It may make it more important.
	But I will tell you what guilt is, and then you can tell me if it fits your situation.
	Sure.
	Guilt is the feeling that you owe a debt you are not paying.
	Yeah, that does hit home.
	I feel like I should...
	And then the guy ships it to me and I don't pay him, then I'm not paying a debt that I owe, right?
	Right.
	So guilt is the feeling that you owe a debt that you're not paying.
	And that's what makes us so susceptible to being manipulated by guilt.
	Because, as I've said for many years, there are no unchosen positive obligations.
	You did not choose your parents and you don't owe them.
	My daughter doesn't owe anything to me.
	I owe my daughter because I chose to have a child.
	She doesn't owe me.
	Now, if I'm good to her, I can make the case that she should be good back to me.
	But if she's not good back to me, really pretty much the only place I need to look is my own behavior.
	What have I not modeled for my daughter that she is this way inclined?
	And she is.
	We play Monopoly.
	She's happy to give me money if I'm running low.
	I mean, she's very kind.
	Very competitive, but I guess I could look in the mirror and know where that's coming from.
	She's very kind.
	But she does not owe me obedience.
	She does not owe me respect.
	My wife doesn't owe me obedience or respect.
	I don't owe my wife obedience.
	Listeners don't owe me money.
	It's not a contract, right?
	You earn it.
	I make the case for it.
	So guilt is the feeling that we owe a debt that we're not paying.
	And the best way to exploit people is to create a unilateral obligation.
	This is a terrible way of putting it.
	I wish I could make this more poetic and fiery, but this is important to be precise about.
	And not to get carried away by emotion because emotion is really the cause of the problem here.
	So I'm not going to get all preacher on the mount fiery.
	I really want to be precise on this.
	The best way to exploit people is to create a unilateral obligation.
	That unilateral obligation might be pay your taxes because you breathe, right?
	It might be ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country, right?
	Which is basically saying Ask not how to ride the unicorn, ask how the unicorn can ride you.
	It's what philosophers here, right?
	And if you can create in someone a sense of obligation that is involuntary, obviously one-sided, and universal, then you can crank the money spigot out of them until they fucking croak, right?
	Right.
	Right.
	And so we get this, you know, social contract or people say with the Bundy ranch, well, you know, Bundy, he owes the government a million dollars, right?
	Which is, uh, based on what?
	They just basically went in, said this land is ours and started charging him money.
	By what possible rational standard?
	Why doesn't he just go to Washington and say, okay, well, I now own the Capitol building.
	Yeah, I pointed at it.
	Yeah, I pointed at it.
	I'm going to write it down in a nice font.
	I now own the Capitol building.
	And they owe me a million dollars in rent.
	And so, hey, look, if everyone can just claim ownership and claim money, then society would cease to function, right?
	Yeah, it's kind of like an implicit ownership of a child or something.
	Well, yeah, so let's get your mom, right?
	So society creates a number of one-sided obligations, right?
	You owe Jesus your allegiance because Jesus has the capacity to remove from you a sin that Jesus placed on you, right?
	I am going to paint you an imaginary color in my mind, and then you must pay me $10,000 to have...
	That color washed off.
	I mean, we get that's crazy, right?
	Right.
	I'm going to give you an imaginary illness, and then I'm going to cure you from this imaginary illness with an imaginary cure.
	For real money, right?
	Why can't you use imaginary money?
	Well, there has been little point for that, right?
	Little point for that.
	And so this creation of the feeling of obligation...
	You used the roads.
	You went to public schools.
	You owe the government your taxes.
	You got a bill, didn't you?
	You owe the government your taxes.
	You may even owe them your life if you're conscripted.
	And the implanting of fake obligation in people's minds is the greatest predatory mechanism the species has.
	And this is what you're susceptible to, I'm susceptible to it, all but sociopaths, right?
	All but those who lack conscience are susceptible to it, but at least the sociopaths know how powerful it is, right?
	Right.
	And so we're constantly told that, you know, motherhood is everything and they're your parents and you owe them.
	They gave you life, right?
	Like any retard can...
	They don't have to understand anything about it.
	They're not fucking Frankenstein.
	It's not like a grim German Gothic castle, 90,000 volts of lightning and maniacal cackling laughter and then you rise out with stitches in your neck.
	Well, I guess I have stitches in mine.
	But there's no, right, they don't give you life like it's a gift to give.
	They're not like people creating animatronic Japanese sex robots with massive amounts of twisted engineering expertise, although still more useful than the Most of the work that physicists do.
	Yeah, yeah, I said it.
	Bitch all you want.
	So, they don't give you life.
	They had sex and nature took over, right?
	I mean, if we say parents gave you life, then we have to award the title of a PhD in biology to single-celled organisms who split into two, right?
	Look, they gave each other life.
	But that very phrase, they gave you life, they provided for you, they supported you, they fed you, they clothed you, they took you to the doctor, is all to create an obligation on the part of the child.
	Now I owe them something back.
	And it's terrible.
	I mean, the moment you create one-sided obligations, you are signaling clearly that you intend to lower your standards.
	Somebody who wants to use government money for his business is automatically signaling that he wants to lower his standards.
	Because if he wanted to maintain his standards, he wouldn't be going for government money.
	So, with your mom, you have been programmed, literally programmed, to believe that you owe her something, regardless of her behavior.
	This is why people like abstractions, because abstractions don't have behaviors, right?
	Now, what do we owe our parents?
	Well, I think we owe them what we owe everyone else.
	We owe them a fair and just evaluation of their behavior, and we owe them honesty.
	And fundamentally, relationships are based on emotions, right?
	If you don't like someone, then you don't like them.
	It's a tautology, but it's important, right?
	If you find someone boring, if you find someone frustrating, if you're indifferent to someone, if you hate someone, if you don't like that person, that's the relationship.
	There's not this abstract thing called the relationship that you deny yourself based upon.
	The moment you start denying yourself in a relationship, it is no longer a relationship.
	Right?
	Right.
	It's like saying there's a band there, but no one shows up.
	There's no band there.
	If people are avoiding the stage, there's no band.
	And if you're avoiding honesty and openness in your relationship, it's not a relationship.
	It's sort of this mutual avoidance.
	And so your mom is relying on tens of thousands of years of propaganda to say you owe your mom a response.
	And I don't...
	You know, I've been saying this for years, and I've never heard a case that's any different.
	I mean, women make goddamn vows to their husband.
	You know, my mom made a vow to my dad to be with him until death do they part, in sickness and in health, for better or for worse.
	And then, in a couple of years, she just divorced his ass.
	Yeah, that's what my mom did, too.
	Yeah, so your mom divorced him.
	Your dad, right?
	And they chose each other and made fucking vows to each other, right?
	And then they're like, no, no, no, not for me.
	And I'm like, okay, well, as I say to my daughter, freedom for you is freedom for me.
	Right?
	If you have the right to just say no to stuff you don't want to do, then so do I. If you're not going to compromise, I don't have to compromise.
	And so with my mom, it's like, well, you chose my dad.
	You made vows to him.
	I never chose you.
	I never made any goddamn vows to you.
	I was trapped with you.
	You only felt trapped with my dad after.
	They actually had consciously chosen and spoken obligations to each other.
	They promised to stay together until death do they part in sickness and health, for better or for worse.
	They actually entered into a contract with each other.
	Voluntarily entered into a contract with each other for a lifelong union and partnership.
	And then they said, no.
	Don't want it.
	So, I've always failed to understand how moms and dads can break agreements with each other that are conscious, explicit, and voluntary, and then somehow expect their children to To owe them for unchosen, involuntary relationships.
	I mean, do you understand?
	That absolutely makes no sense whatsoever.
	Totally.
	Yep.
	It literally is saying that the slave has a higher obligation to respect the property of the owner than the owner has to respect the property of the slave.
	It is such a mad logical contradiction that To think, to ponder it, and to try and hold it into your brain is to court insanity, or to absorb culture, which is sort of the same thing.
	Yeah, just to build on what you're saying, I was talking about my situation with a friend of mine a couple weeks ago, and we were trying to figure out why it is that my mom denies my reality or my My experience so vehemently, I guess.
	And my mom, she doesn't have any hobbies.
	She doesn't have any friends.
	And she's told me on numerous occasions that I'm the only person in her life that matters.
	And I'm the only, like, I'm the shiny light.
	And I'm everything, right?
	Well, no, except when you say something that she doesn't like.
	Then you're nothing, right?
	Right.
	I mean, I'll believe that you're everything to me when she says, tell me more about what's bothering you, right?
	Yeah.
	But sorry, go on.
	Yeah.
	So when I confront her about the fact that her one and only actually does have issues and actually is broken in many ways and he's trying to rebuild himself, then that is...
	Terrifying to her because that means she then has nothing in her life.
	I'm sorry, I just missed that.
	Who was broken?
	Oh, sorry.
	Myself.
	So her son, the one and only, the shining light in her life, that only thing that matters isn't perfect or isn't what she thinks he is.
	Then that's maybe too traumatizing.
	No, no, that's too imprecise.
	No, no, that's too imprecise.
	It isn't perfect.
	I mean, I don't even know what that means, but that's a defense for your mom, right?
	So what is it precisely that your mother is having trouble with in what you're doing?
	What does she not like?
	It's not not being perfect because, I mean, it doesn't really mean anything.
	Yeah.
	What causes trouble in your relationship with your mom?
	When I don't see her or when I don't want to call her back or when I don't want to talk to her, when I don't have interest, don't show interest in wanting to be with her.
	Okay, so, and you're being honest about that.
	You don't have this burning desire to see her, which you're crushing, right?
	No.
	Like an elephant sitting on an egg, right?
	Okay.
	Okay, so when you are honest in your lack of desire to see her, that's when she has a problem with you.
	What about when you do go and see her and you talk about your true thoughts and feelings about your relationship?
	How does she react?
	Yeah.
	She's just...
	It's another thing that makes me so angry.
	It's that she...
	You know, the four times that I've really sat down and talked to her, she leaves the TV on halfway through the conversations.
	She doesn't really look at me.
	She'll walk up and walk around the house.
	Oh, gosh.
	I'm so sorry.
	Let me just tell you, I've never met you before.
	I don't have the TV on.
	Yeah, neither do I. I am walking around.
	That's because my shows go better when I walk around and because I don't want to sit.
	Sitting is like smoking, right?
	But I am really trying to listen as hard as I can to everything that you say, and I don't even know you.
	So I'm sorry that you've had that experience of trying to talk about something.
	That's really important to you emotionally with your mom and finding yourself competing with a fucking tampon commercial for her attention.
	I'm very sorry about that.
	Thank you.
	That's terrible.
	Alright, so when you do something that she doesn't like, then that's a problem for her, right?
	Right.
	So, is it unfair to say that you exist to serve her needs?
	That your value is serving her needs?
	And if you do something which doesn't serve her needs, that's a problem.
	If you have needs of yours which contradict the needs of hers, that's a big problem.
	No.
	I mean, that'd be ridiculous.
	Sorry, that would be a ridiculous thing to say?
	Because I want to make sure we're on the same page here.
	I'm sorry, would it be strange to say that if you have needs that contradict your mother's needs, there's a huge problem?
	Oh, uh...
	No, if I understand what you're saying.
	It's a fair thing to say that the biggest problems are when you have needs that contradict your mother's needs.
	And her response to a divergence of needs or an opposition of needs is what?
	Attack.
	She attacks me in many ways.
	I feel like she puts the blame on me.
	Not quite a feeling, but okay.
	It's really an evaluation.
	Okay, so what do you feel when you're driving over or going over to talk to her?
	I feel just full of anxiety.
	I feel literally terrified.
	I really don't know why I'm so scared because I feel like I have an idea of what's going to happen.
	But I... Yeah, I'm just full of anxiety and just scared.
	Right.
	Why do you think that is?
	You know, I've talked a lot about this with my therapist, and my ideal outcome would be to have an amazing relationship with my family.
	But I... I just don't see it happening and I feel like the reason why I'm so scared when I attempt to make any kind of contact with them is because I'm realizing or it's solidification that it's not going to happen.
	I guess maybe it's really seeing them for who they are and coming to terms with that.
	Right.
	And I'm incredibly sorry.
	I mean, of course we all want amazing relationships with our family.
	Of course we do.
	I mean, how great does that make life?
	How great does it make life to have a fun, loving, intimate, warm, wise, and happy relationship with your parents?
	I mean, talk about winning the lottery.
	Oh, my God.
	What an amazing, amazing boost that is to your life.
	And it is absolutely tragic.
	When quite the opposite is occurring.
	I will tell you, and I'm sure this is not news to you, you cannot have as your goal an amazing relationship with your family.
	That's kind of megalomaniacal, right?
	It's literally like saying, my goal tomorrow is to have a relationship with it not being windy, right?
	You can't control that.
	You cannot control your relationship with your parents.
	You cannot have as your goal a great relationship with your parents because you can't control what they're going to do.
	And it's taking a page from their template and saying they must serve my needs to have a great relationship.
	Valid obligations are what you need to compare guilt to.
	To understand whether your guilt is something that is serving justice or serving exploitation.
	We want our emotions to serve justice, not Evil, right?
	We want them to serve virtue, not vice.
	And so, to me, that a couple of...
	Because people are always trying to impose unchosen positive obligations on me.
	I mean, as they are with everyone.
	I don't think I'm particularly singled out, but people are always trying to do that, right?
	And so, what I do is I say, okay, well, I know what a valid obligation looks like.
	So, a valid obligation has a couple of key characteristics.
	One, it's initiated by you.
	So we'll take the simple example of ordering a book from some guy through, I think, Ashley Madison is where you get your books.
	So you order a book from some guy, you seek out the book, you seek out the guy, and you initiate the interaction.
	Is that the case with parents?
	Of course not.
	Now the second thing is that you then receive the value that you ask for.
	So you order a book, and you get the book.
	And you only receive the book on the obligation or on the understanding that you're going to pay.
	In other words, if he knew you weren't going to pay, he wouldn't send you the book.
	So you only get the book because you have promised to pay.
	Does that fit with the parental relationship?
	I don't really think so.
	And then the third thing is you keep the book and you refuse to pay.
	But then you have some reason to feel guilty, right?
	You've initiated an interaction.
	You have received and kept the value which you only received and were able to keep because you promised a value in return and now you are failing to provide that value.
	So that is a breach of contract and that is something to feel guilty about.
	Now let's compare that guilt and obligation to a situation of parents, right?
	No.
	Before we do that, let's do spouses, right?
	So you voluntarily go out and you find a man, woman, or Thai-based ladyboy, I don't know, to get married to.
	And then you choose that person, you choose to get married, and you make all of these verbal contracts with the person to stay together forever, blah, blah, blah.
	So there you have voluntarily We've sought out and entered into a contract.
	Now, it's a little bit different in that it's not directly pay or whatever it is, right?
	But if you say to your wife, you have the kids and I will be the income earner, and then you don't give her any money, then of course you've broken contract and so on, right?
	But with regards to parents, you don't voluntarily seek out them as parents.
	You don't enter into the relationship voluntarily, right?
	And you do receive some value from the parents, but because parents don't give you that value on the explicit understanding that you owe them your time and money and resources for the rest of your life, then it's not a valid contract.
	Like, I don't think...
	That many parents say to their kids, I will give you some food, but only if you promise to answer all my calls as an adult, whether you want to or not, within 24 hours.
	I will take you to the doctor, but you have to promise to come to church with me for the rest of my life, right?
	I will educate you, but in return, you must promise me That you will come and spend Christmas with me until I'm dead.
	Right?
	That would be kind of an insane thing to hear from a parent.
	Because parents always say, well, we're selflessly devoted to our children.
	We give and we give and we give, right?
	Parents don't say, we give and then you owe me.
	Because then it's not giving.
	Charity must be freely given.
	If charity is given with the expectation of return, then it is no longer charity.
	If I say to a guy, I'm going to give you 20 bucks, and then I walk on my way, that's charity.
	If I say, I will give you 20 bucks if you perform all the songs that Justin Bieber has ever sung, then it's not charity.
	I am buying him, buying his time.
	He's now an employee, right?
	And this is the Gordian knot that is so hard to untangle when it comes to parental obligations.
	Were they generous?
	In which case, for them to say, you now owe me, is invalid, right?
	Here's 20 bucks as charity.
	Now, tomorrow, you owe me $25.
	Well, that's a loan.
	It's not charity.
	So if parents are genuinely being, quote, selfless when it comes to giving stuff to their kids, then they should not expect anything in return.
	If they do expect something in return, then it is...
	A relationship that is, I mean, it's not really contractual because you don't really have any choice, right?
	It's like me locking a guy in my basement and saying, well, you owe me 50 bucks for a sandwich.
	Guy's starving to death.
	It's like, okay, you try and enforce that contract when you go to court, right?
	Well, he signed something saying he was going to give me 50 bucks for a sandwich.
	It's like, dude, you locked him in your basement, for God's sakes.
	How is he supposed to, right?
	He's got no choice.
	So you can't impose contracts on kids.
	Now, if parents are generous, then they should expect nothing in return because that's called generosity, selflessness, charity, whatever you want to call it.
	That's a donation, right?
	But if they are buying you in the future by being generous with you, then they have to provide a level of service, right?
	And even then, it's really shaky as to whether it's any kind of valid contract.
	But if we accept that you owe your parents something because they provided you parenting services when you were younger, even though they had a voluntary monopoly, as we talked about earlier in the show, parents can give up their kids anytime they want.
	So when you hold on to your kids, you are imposing a voluntary monopoly over them.
	You are holding a voluntary monopoly over them.
	So, either they're doing it selflessly, in which case you don't owe them anything.
	You may feel generosity back in return.
	I think that's obviously fine, right?
	Generosity tends to beget generosity among the virtuous.
	It tends to beget exploitation among the non-virtuous or the evil.
	But if they are buying your time with their prior generosity, then you damn well can expect a level of service from them.
	Right.
	Right?
	And what level of service did you receive?
	I didn't receive any.
	Yeah, I mean, you were fed, right?
	Right.
	I assume you were provided some level of medical attention, some dentistry, you know, whatever, right?
	So you were provided, you know, stay-alive basics and stay-healthy basics, right?
	Right.
	So, you get that in prison, right?
	Yeah.
	So, yeah, I just, you really have to be strict with your sense of obligation.
	And the reality is that you don't have any sense of obligation whatsoever.
	I guarantee you that.
	And you've already told me that pretty explicitly.
	You don't have any sense of obligation.
	It is not out of guilt, right?
	That you want to call your mother.
	Why do you feel so strongly that you should call your mother?
	What happens when you don't comply?
	I get attacked.
	Exactly.
	Exactly.
	You calling your mother is out of fear of attack.
	It's not out of any obligation.
	It's not guilt, it's fear.
	Yeah.
	Guilt is easier to deal with, but fear is the more essential emotion.
	Again, tell me if I'm wrong.
	I don't want to tell you what your experience is, but...
	No, I think that's right.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I don't want to get attacked, so I will call her to stave off the attack.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Or as one woman, I said, you know, she said, well, I can pull that elastic band with my parents for a while, but after a couple of weeks, it feels like it's going to snap, and therefore I have to call them, right?
	It wasn't because she wanted to talk to them.
	It's just, well, I can only stand so much, and then, right?
	Right.
	The fear arises.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, because I... Yep, that makes sense, because...
	The times at which I felt the most fear were the times that I confronted my parents.
	Explicitly, like, confronted them about everything that was on my mind and how I felt.
	And that was when they, yeah, that's when they attacked me emotionally.
	Yeah, and so I said earlier, right, men are terrified of women.
	And without, this is why this patriarchy thing is, oh, it's so absurd.
	I mean, if there was a patriarchy, how the hell do little boys get hit 18 times a week or 20 times a week or 30 times a week by their moms all the time?
	Fucking patriarchy.
	Jesus Christ.
	But yeah, men are terrified of women and you're scared of your mom.
	Because she doesn't admit fault and she's done wrong.
	People who have done wrong and don't admit fault must forever find someone else to nail on the cross of their own guilty conscience.
	There's no more dangerous person than the person who's done wrong and will not admit fault.
	Because they'll find someone to blame.
	They will find someone to blame.
	And I can guarantee you, the person they will find to blame is the most sensitive and empathetic person around.
	Right.
	Bad conscience means fuck the good people.
	Because they're susceptible to feelings of obligation.
	They're susceptible to feelings of justice.
	Right?
	Mm-hmm.
	And so, people who don't admit fault will find the most sensitive and virtuous person around them and screw them up.
	Do you think evil people feel a sense of obligation?
	No, I mean, Hitler signs that, ah, there'll be peace in our time, I promise.
	He doesn't feel any sense of obligation, it's just a strategy to give him time to arm better, and I, Czechoslovakia, and Austria and Poland and Russia.
	So, if you are a virtuous person and you are around people who don't take responsibility for the wrongs that they've done, you are squarely in their lasers.
	You are in their crosshairs.
	And those bullets will never stop flying.
	Until they accept and admit responsibility and fault for the wrongs that they've done.
	And this is why Bad people need good people around them.
	If bad people are only surrounded by bad people, they have no place with which to discharge their bad conscience, right?
	It's like you've got to throw up and you're in a very beautiful house with very beautiful rugs.
	You're running around the room trying to find a garbage can, right?
	Or a toilet, or at least a sink, so you can throw up and not screw up the decor, right?
	Well, this is what bad people are like.
	They've got this conscience that makes them want to throw up But they can only throw up into the garbage can of a good person.
	And so they're running around frantically looking for good people to vomit into.
	Is that because the virtuous person or the good person has their garbage can open, I guess, in the sense of they're vulnerable?
	Well, it's because if somebody says to you, you owe me something, A bad person will say, well, is it beneficial for me to owe you anything?
	Will I get no?
	Then, fuck, I don't care what you're saying.
	You're just flapping your mouth hole.
	You might as well be speaking Swahili.
	Swahili are making distant peregrine falcon noises as you dive at Mach 12 for a rabbit, right?
	Right.
	They don't care about obligations.
	It's just a strategy, right?
	Hitler says to Chamberlain, or says to himself about Chamberlain, well, this old fool wants me to sign this piece of paper promising peace in our time.
	Does that benefit me?
	Yeah.
	Do I have to stick to it?
	Fuck no.
	It's ridiculous, right?
	He's nice when he wants to be.
	He berates people when it's to his advantage.
	Everything is just to his advantage.
	And so the reason that bad people rip wide the jaws of good people and vomit down them is because good people take obligations seriously.
	And also good people have self-doubt.
	Right?
	You doubt...
	Your motives and your relationship with your mother and whether you're doing the right thing and so on, right?
	Has she ever expressed any doubt about her behavior?
	Never.
	No.
	No.
	So in this way, when bad people say that they need you, they're actually kind of telling the truth.
	Right?
	They need you to disgorge their bad conscience into you.
	To make you suffer for the wrongs that they have done.
	And this is why bad people will try and...
	Like, you try and get away...
	I'm not saying you should or shouldn't.
	It's your choice.
	But you work that out with your therapist.
	But let's say you decide to defoo, right?
	You try to get away from your mom.
	And this woman who watches TV when you're over, talking about your heart's needs and your historical emotions and the depths of your experiences and so on, she's got half an eye on the TV, right?
	So this woman who is indifferent to your presence...
	May become completely unstabilized by your absence.
	Because now, she's got no one to vomit into.
	Yeah.
	And this is one reason why bad people, both male and female, often go into serial relationships.
	Because they need someone to vomit into, right?
	Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
	And this is why strictness around obligation is essential to protect virtue.
	You have to be very strict with sympathy.
	You have to be very strict with obligation.
	There are people in this world I would do anything for.
	And there are people in this world I will do nothing for.
	I have to be very strict.
	I'd like to be nice to everyone.
	I would love to be nice to everyone.
	But the recognition that there are people in the world So, I posted something on Facebook because last year,
	after a year of misdiagnosis and bad diagnosis, I finally flew to the States and had a lump removed from my throat which turned out to be cancerous.
	So, I went through chemotherapy, radiation therapy, which was tough.
	And I had people who'd come over to my house, eaten from my table.
	Some of them had been donators, right?
	Not like they were just parasites or anything like that.
	But people, you know, we'd shared laughs, we'd shared giggles, we'd shared tears, we'd been quite close.
	And...
	What happened?
	Well, I... Got sick, and I publicly announced that I was sick.
	Everybody was talking about it who had anything to do with the show.
	And maybe two or three of those people even bothered to write an email to say, best of luck.
	You know, if you want to talk or, you know, I'm really busy, but best of luck with all of this.
	You know, I'm sure it's going to be okay.
	It must be scary.
	You know, you just became a father a couple of years ago and now you're facing a life-threatening disease and so on, right?
	And some of those people have been sort of floating back into my life wanting favors.
	Can you...
	I need advice.
	I want to call.
	I need something from you.
	Can you give me some feedback?
	I need your wisdom.
	Can I have some money?
	And it reminds me of that time, of how difficult it is to face an illness and have people who you thought were in the friend zone not bother to do or say anything.
	Right.
	And some people said nice stuff, and then one guy said, oh, listen, I'm going to keep my subscription going no matter what.
	Even if you die and keep it going for your wife and kids.
	A couple of months later, what happened, Mike?
	Cancellation.
	Cancelled his subscription.
	With no reference to his earlier commitment, right?
	No.
	And so, yeah, so I posted something on Facebook because I got angry at people constantly floating back in my life as if they were there during the darkest time of my adult life and just asking me for favors as if nothing had happened.
	So...
	Yeah, so I wrote and I said, hey, let me make this easier on a lot of people.
	If you were my friend and you ate at my table and you didn't bother calling or writing me with any words of support and encouragement when I was battling cancer, and you now contact me wanting a favor or money or time or advice, let me spell it out for you.
	You are as gone from my life as my tumor, except my tumor has a chance of coming back.
	And these are just standards you have to have.
	You have to be strict with your sympathies.
	You have to be strict with your resources.
	You have to say no where there's no reciprocity, right?
	Yeah.
	Or at least if you say yes, you have to say yes with full knowledge, right?
	So if you say to yourself, look, I'm terrified of my mom, so I'm gonna call her so that she doesn't attack me.
	Right?
	Well, that's fine.
	That's a choice you can make.
	Right?
	I just...
	All I want is to give people headlights.
	Right?
	That's all I want.
	I just...
	That's why I don't tell people what to do other than seek the truth.
	Pursue the truth.
	If you call...
	You calling your mother obligation or I'm guilty because she was my mom and she gave me all these...
	But then you're not calling something by its proper name, right?
	You can't drive at night with no street lights, with no headlights.
	It's not like a racetrack.
	The lights are always on.
	So if you don't have much of a relationship with your mom but you're frightened of her attacks, Then you can say to yourself, well, I've decided to call my mom because I'm terrified of her attacking me if I don't.
	Okay.
	Well, that's fair.
	But the honesty is key, right?
	Does that help at all?
	Yeah, it does.
	It does.
	I do feel like I have to be more strict.
	I feel like that's kind of a tendency I have in my life in general is I'm too forgiving in a sense.
	I guess I'm I have a problem saying no, I'll be honest sometimes, you know?
	And I feel like that's...
	Well, no, see, you're not talking about it accurately again, which I understand, right?
	But you're basically saying, I have a problem saying no, which is not true.
	It's not accurate.
	Right?
	What happened was, if your mother attacks you for differences of opinion, for you setting limits with her, Then it's not like you just have some problem saying no.
	Like just some, wow, it's weird, you know, I have a problem, right?
	It's a natural scar tissue from the attack, right?
	So if you say, I have an aversion to saying no because I was attacked for saying no.
	Right.
	Then that's more accurate.
	You don't want to make something that is environmentally caused a personal issue without context.
	That makes a lot of sense, yep.
	Like if I, let's say I'm spontaneously developing bruises on my shins, that's bad, right?
	That could be something very serious, right?
	But if I keep walking into tables, right, then at least my bruises have an environmental explanation and I don't need to go to a hematologist and say what the hell is wrong with my spontaneous bruises, right?
	So if you have an external cause to your habits, then that makes sense, right?
	Totally.
	And so you were attacked for saying no and setting limits, and so you're scared of saying no and setting limits.
	Of course, right?
	I mean, if you're repeatedly attacked by tigers, you don't say, I have this weird problem with tigers.
	It's just so...
	It's so...
	You know, because I haven't been looking at this for too long.
	It's only been a couple of years now that I've been really looking at my parents, my family, myself...
	So it's really painful, I guess, to kind of look or realize that I was attacked my whole life, probably.
	Right.
	Right.
	It is very painful.
	And it is, tragically, the only way to stop it from continuing.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	If you keep getting mauled by tigers and you feel that it's somehow your fault or if you're approaching them the right way or if you do something different, then you're not going to get mauled.
	All that does is keep you going back into the tigers den, right?
	Right.
	If you feel that somehow your fault, the tigers are good, but you're just doing something wrong, you're provoking them, you're antagonizing them, and you have to have a relationship with the tigers.
	Well, the tigers want you to believe that because you're a tasty snack, right?
	Thank you.
	So it's just accepting, wow, you know, I've known these tigers for a quarter of a century, and every time I go into their cage as me, rather than as a mirror for them, they maul me.
	Well, sometimes tigers are just assholes.
	It's not your job.
	It's not your job to fix their DNA. It's not your job to fix their brain development.
	It's not your job to rewire someone else's brain.
	If they want to try it, it's their job.
	You can't reach in between their ears and fix their wires.
	There's no countdown timer, cut the yellow fuse and hope the bomb doesn't go off.
	You cannot rewire other people's brains.
	You cannot fix people's brains.
	You cannot fix people's capacity for empathy.
	You cannot make their arms regrow if they've been bitten off.
	You cannot make their eyes regrow if they've been gouged out.
	You cannot fix people's brains.
	Dear God, people have been trying to do this for thousands of years, and they've invoked gods and devils and demons and biochemical warfare known as SSRIs.
	They have tried threatening people with hell.
	They have tried everything that they can think of.
	They've tried LSD. They've tried dousing people in...
	Ice water.
	They have tried boiling them in warm water.
	They have tried LSD. They've tried just about everything that you can think of to get people to regrow empathy or to be better.
	They can't even figure out how to stop people from going back to prison, for heaven's sakes.
	So you can't fix people's brains.
	You have to accept them for who they are.
	If they have branched off into predator land, into manipulation land, into narcissism land, into sociopath land...
	We may sympathize, we may empathize, but we cannot fix and we cannot change their brains.
	We cannot change their brains.
	I don't know if they can or not.
	It doesn't really matter.
	But we sure as hell can.
	So it's really important to accept people for who they are, to not rely on their fantasies of who they are, to not rely on whatever brain bombs they've planted in you.
	To kick resources their way, to be who you are, to accept who they are, and to deal with the empirical evidence of who they have been below these many years.
	So I hope that helps.
	This is Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Main Radio.
	Have yourselves a wonderful week, of course!
	And if you would like to help out the show, fdrurl.com forward slash donate is the way to do it.
	I hugely appreciate it.

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