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May 31, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:48:23

2711 Shame Based DNA Death - Wednesday Call In Show May 28th, 2014

Neutrality as cowardice, conflict avoidance, conversational bullying, the lie of human nature, ideological cue cards, resource overuse due to non-ownership, sin taking self-esteem hostage, accidental non-murderer, ending you DNA through shame, mutually assured dishonesty, playing the victim, craving isolation and the origin of name-based anxiety.

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	Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio.
	Hope you're doing well.
	Mike, let's move on with the callers this fine, fine Wednesday night.
	Alright, up first is Nicholas.
	And Nicholas wrote in with a question about definitions.
	Specifically, your definitions of neutrality and hatred.
	He says you always talk about love, good and evil, but those two definitions seem to be left out.
	Neutrality and hatred, was it?
	Neutrality and hatred, yep.
	I'm not sure whether I'm indifferent to or enraged at that question.
	Do you want to break that down a little bit for me, my friend Nick?
	What do you mean by that?
	Well, neutrality, hatred I kind of get.
	Neutrality is a bit more, you know, maybe it's my Dungeons and Dragons teenage brain, but neutrality seems a little bit tougher to reconcile.
	Yeah, I kind of get that too.
	Um...
	Basically, for me, neutrality, it's never really made sense because you're kind of like old, help, good, and evil.
	But I always thought that, well, you're kind of just evil then because it doesn't matter if you help good people, but it really matters if you help evil people.
	That's kind of the only thing I got from it, but...
	But give me a situation where you would call something neutral or call someone being neutral.
	Hmm...
	Yeah, I have no idea, actually, because usually I don't know.
	If someone tells me they're neutral, I just write them off as actually not neutral, just evil, because I don't think neutral is a thing.
	I don't know about evil.
	I could go with you down the cowardly lane.
	I don't know if I could get with you all the way to the evil lane.
	Oh, yeah.
	Cowardice really ties into neutrality from these people who will tell me they're neutral, actually.
	Right.
	So neutrality is usually somebody who's a people pleaser who can't find a way to please both people in a conflict will usually claim to be neutral.
	All right.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah.
	I mean, how do most people resolve conflicts in this world?
	Given that philosophy remains as yet a fetal science in the world's mind, how do people normally...
	Deal with conflicts.
	We have them where they're natural, they're inevitable.
	I actually think they're quite healthy.
	But how do you think or how have you experienced people handling conflicts in the world?
	Okay, do you mean personally or am I looking at the grand scheme of things like watching people on TV and stuff?
	The grand scheme of things is watching people on TV? Well, I mean like watching political stuff and watching political figures deal with things or watching whatever, like popular figures deal with things.
	Let's just talk about personal, what you've seen.
	Yeah, personally, I usually just see people try to ignore it, actually.
	They don't really do anything about it.
	They'll act like it doesn't happen, which is pretty bad, but I... I don't really hang around that many people because of that reason.
	Right.
	Well, I think you're onto something.
	I'll tell you how I think or how I've experienced most people, quote, dealing with conflicts, and you can tell me if it accords with your experience.
	So, first and foremost, a lot of people really hope the conflicts don't arise.
	And the reason that they hope, hope, hope, usually in vain that conflicts don't arise, is because they don't want to be revealed as fundamentally clueless about virtue.
	Everybody talks about virtue.
	Everybody says, virtue, virtue, virtue, especially when it comes to raising kids or dealing with kids.
	And religion is all about virtue, virtue, virtue.
	But I would argue until, you know, sort of, We really get the hang of something like UPB. I believe it's UPB, but whatever it is that people are going to use, we need to have some way of knowing whether we're right or wrong about good and evil.
	And people don't have a way Of figuring out whether they're right and wrong about good and evil.
	So, if you use something as a power play against particularly children, but you pretend that it's based upon your deep knowledge of virtue, you're going to hate and fear conflict.
	Because conflict, wherein you have to take a moral stand, will reveal that morality for you is just a power play.
	It's just a way of achieving dominance Over another human being.
	In other words, you use virtue to serve basic ape, tribal, climb-on-the-other-person's-balls domination.
	So people, first and foremost, hope that conflicts don't arise.
	Now, when conflicts do arise, they hope to shame whoever is upset if that person doesn't have power.
	So if that person doesn't have power who's upset...
	Then you shame them.
	If that person does have power, you appease them.
	In other words, you side with whoever has the most power in any particular interaction, and then you twist yourself into gymnastics, patting yourself on the back and calling yourself a fine-ass funky moral person, right?
	Now, those of us who grow up with some memory or sensitivity to what it was like to be kids and all that, we remember all of this stuff.
	And we remember that everyone just sided with whoever had the most power.
	And then we wonder why there's so much bullying in schools.
	Anyway.
	And so, if you don't...
	And this is why people serve to...
	Sorry, this is why people desire power so much because once you have power, everyone will appease you and call themselves virtuous.
	And if you don't have power, you will be sacrificed and your needs will be sacrificed and you will be shamed and humiliated and bullied into having no needs so that people can conform to whoever has the most power in any particular interaction.
	Does that make any sense?
	Yeah, I mean, not exact, but yeah, seems about right.
	What's not exact about it?
	It was kind of long, so I don't think I got the beginning part.
	I don't think I can piece together the beginning part with the end.
	That's about it.
	Okay, so you're kind of playing me, right?
	I guess.
	No, like, I legitimately don't quite remember the beginning to make sure that...
	No, no, you said that's not exact.
	Oh, okay, yeah.
	So I'm asking you what's not exact about it.
	Not from a confrontational standpoint, but if we have a discrepancy in how we're talking about stuff, we need to know what that discrepancy is, right?
	Yeah, I just need a reminder on the beginning point.
	No.
	Let me try this again.
	You said, Nick, that this was not exact.
	In other words, you didn't say I need a reminder.
	You said this is not exact.
	I'm not pretending that it is exact.
	It was just a first run at a challenging question.
	But I'm asking you then what is not exact in your formulation.
	Or you can withdraw the formulation and say that that's not what you meant to say.
	Okay.
	I guess what I kind of meant to say was kind of give me just a thought-out definition without an example, like just a thought-out kind of static definition.
	I don't know what you're talking about.
	I gave you something without any particular examples, and now you're saying you want a definition or you want something without an example?
	Oh, okay.
	No.
	Okay, yeah.
	Okay, so you're now going to start tying the conversation up in knots.
	Yeah.
	You have a habit of doing that, right?
	So you said something which was not thought out, which is you said, well, that's not exact.
	And I asked you what was exact, and then you started to snow me, right?
	I'm not mad at you.
	I'm just pointing it out, right?
	Yeah, I just kind of got a bit lost towards the end.
	A bit what?
	I got a bit lost towards the end.
	Okay, but where did you get lost?
	At what point did you get lost?
	Or if you weren't listening, look, that's totally fine if you weren't listening to me.
	I just really need you to be honest, right?
	Yeah.
	It was kind of right after the swift point where you made about, you know, this is why we have so much bullying in school.
	That's when it started to kind of get foggy.
	Or not kind of get foggy.
	Now, you see how great honesty is, Nicholas?
	Isn't that wonderful?
	Yeah.
	Isn't that great?
	Mm-hmm.
	See, instead of snowing me, if you're really honest, then we can have a great conversation, right?
	Okay.
	So...
	Bullying.
	Should I say it again?
	Bullying.
	What happened to you there?
	Oh, no.
	Just like from that point on, that's kind of where it started to get foggy.
	Oh, I know.
	But why at that point?
	I mean, everybody listening and you and I both know the reason why.
	But why did the word bullying and saw the phrase bullying in schools jump you out of the conversation?
	Because I didn't see how that tied in with neutrality.
	Really?
	That's not true at all.
	Look, if you can tie your shoelaces, you can see how siding with the person who has the most power or can have the most intimidation, you can see how that ties into bullying in school, right?
	No, I – no.
	No.
	You can't?
	Okay.
	Were you ever bullied in school?
	No.
	It was like once, but it was barely anything because I actually fought back.
	Okay, so you weren't bullied in school.
	Were you ever bullied at home?
	All the time, yeah.
	Okay, go on.
	Oh, it was just my stepdad.
	He would mess around with me a lot.
	Go on.
	Right.
	Let's see here.
	He always gave...
	Okay, so I have two brothers and he always gave each of us our own, like, what is it called?
	A pet name?
	Which I've always found a disturbing term for your own children, but...
	Oh, like a nickname?
	Yeah, but usually when people say pet names, they're referring to something that makes them sound like an underling, not like a child.
	If that kind of makes sense.
	Yeah, so it wouldn't be like a nickname that...
	I don't really know what to be a good example of that because I don't really ever have nicknames.
	Did he give you a nickname?
	Huh?
	Did he give you a nickname?
	No, he gave me a pet name.
	A pet name?
	What was your pet name?
	What was it?
	This was a really long time ago.
	You don't remember?
	Oh, you don't want to share it.
	Okay, yeah.
	It's like Worl or something.
	I don't know why.
	Worl?
	Worl.
	I don't know how to spell it.
	Yeah, like a whirlpool.
	That's how I always thought of it, like a whirlpool.
	You mean like your conversation style a little bit?
	Okay.
	Sure.
	All right.
	I'm not siding with your stepdad.
	I'm just pointing out that that's where I went with that particular comment.
	Yeah.
	I honestly don't know where he got it from.
	No, but I mean, okay, so you have a pretty oblique and challenging style of communication, right?
	Oh, yeah.
	I mean, that's not a shock to you, right?
	Yeah, not at all.
	Okay, okay.
	Why do you think you have that?
	I don't know.
	Ah.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	You see, this is interesting.
	This is interesting.
	Because I asked you a why do you think question and you asked me an I don't know question.
	Those are two very different things, right?
	Like if I said, do you like ice cream?
	I saw you eating ice cream and I said, do you like ice cream?
	And you said, I don't know.
	Okay.
	Right?
	That wouldn't make much sense, right?
	Well, wait.
	What's the Book of Ice Cream about?
	I'm sorry?
	I think I'm knocking too much into that, but I guess...
	No, no, listen.
	I asked you a why-do-you-think question, and you said, I don't know.
	Those are two different things, right?
	Oh, I see what you mean now.
	Okay, yeah.
	Because I wasn't asking you for a certain knowledge with a signed confession, right?
	I was asking you, why do you think you have this style of communication?
	Okay, so why do you think you have this style of communication?
	I honestly, I don't really see kind of vagueness I don't really see kind of vagueness in whenever people tell me something unless it's my own friends.
	but in that case it's pretty aesthetic and it doesn't matter then.
	In that case, it's...
	But my parents, usually when they tell me something, I know exactly what it is.
	Hmm.
	Well, look, I mean, if you don't want to pursue this particular path of conversation, I can just give you my more technical definitions of neutrality and hatred and we can move on.
	Yeah, that'd be better.
	I think that probably would be more productive at the moment.
	Okay, so there are two kinds of neutrality.
	So there's neutrality, which is authentic, and then there's neutrality, which is...
	Inauthentic, right?
	Now, the authentic is, you know, do you like this composer versus that composer?
	It's like, well, I don't know.
	Do you want pasta or do you want fish?
	You know, I don't mind.
	Either one is fine with me.
	So you're neutral about the question, right?
	And that is fine.
	It has no moral content.
	It's honest and so on.
	But...
	If you do have an opinion, but you pretend that you are neutral, that's because you fear attack from somebody who has power over you in your environment, where truth or honesty or authenticity Openness, vulnerability, the vulnerability of speaking the truth.
	The moment you speak the truth, it's like giving a dragon your name.
	They now have power over you.
	The moment you say what you care about, the world says, in general, oh great, now I know that I can screw this guy, right?
	Now I know how to have power or control over him, which is why so many people go through the world like these closed vaults, the intense guarding of food, long rotted, so to speak, and People pretend to neutrality because they don't want to guide sadists into how to hurt them, right?
	Why is there a prison?
	There's prison because people like to not be in prison and don't like to be in prison.
	That's exactly how, you know, that's why there's not a lot of Playboy models and porn and chocolate in prisons, right?
	Because people like that stuff and therefore they won't, right?
	So the moment you express a preference, the moment you deviate from neutrality, Then you are opening yourself up to being tortured by other people who have power over you.
	And there's lots of people in the world who like to do that.
	So if you say, you know, like we just did the show on Elliot, Roger Dodger.
	And he said to his mom, I really, really hate...
	A, that your ass is all over the internet, and B, that you make this filthy ass, like, armpit for camel Moroccan soup.
	And she's like, great!
	Now that I know that, every time you don't do something I want you to do, or do something I don't want you to do, I'm going to make you eat this soup!
	And then he wonders why he has trouble expressing his desires in a clean and clear way with women, right?
	Because he expressed, I don't like this soup, and she's like, great!
	Now I know how to punish you!
	So there's the neutrality, which is defensive, which is, I don't want to show the torturer what hurts and what doesn't hurt, because that will guide his knife.
	So that would be...
	Now, hatred is, you know, you can't really have much hatred towards neutrality, to genuine neutrality, like I don't care whether we have pasta or fish, right?
	You can't really hate that.
	But there's two kinds of hatred, right?
	There's hatred of...
	Good and evil are two extremes in human condition.
	They are constantly trying to win and dominate over each other.
	And this is one of the reasons why evil people are better sophists.
	They're much better at language.
	And good people are often tongue-tied, which is very much common if they're not given a gun in movies.
	If good people are just trying to be good, then they're generally nerdy and tongue-tied.
	And evil hates goodness, but it has a more complicated relationship with goodness than goodness has with evil.
	Evil hates goodness, but evil needs goodness, right?
	Because good is productive, good is reality-based, and so good produces, right?
	Like the aristocrat needs the serfs so that he can steal their food and take their women and so on.
	Whereas good doesn't need evil, right?
	So, good has a hatred of evil, but does not depend upon evil, doesn't have a need for evil.
	It's not parasitical.
	Evil is parasitical, which is why you always want to say to politicians, you know, get a real job, because they're just parasitical.
	So, evil is much more neurotic about good in that it must praise good in order to get it to serve evil, like you're a heroic soldier, therefore you should, you know, go shoot people that I point at.
	It needs to constantly lie to evil people and redefine terms like, you know, theft is taxation and counterfeiting is central banking and blah, blah, blah.
	So, evil is the manipulator of language and only as a last resort does it regretfully pull out the gun and shoot somebody's dog.
	And so evil has a hatred of good because of its dependence on good and its need for good and its need to continually control good.
	Evil is obsessed with virtue, but most good people seek to escape evil and avoid it, whereas evil people need to control and manipulate good people so that they can steal from them in a more efficient manner.
	So hatred to me fundamentally comes out of that which is I'm antithetical to my moral class, right?
	The moral class of evil versus the moral class of good.
	And true virtue is hateful to evil.
	True evil is hateful to virtue.
	But virtue can escape evil.
	Evil cannot escape good without self-destruction.
	Does that help at all?
	Yeah.
	When it comes to actually learning about evil, I've watched a lot of the other podcasts and stuff that have.
	That kind of content, so that made complete sense.
	Good.
	And did you bully anyone in school?
	So I always thought that I didn't, but looking back at it, I probably did, but I never physically bullied anyone.
	It was always kind of, I guess, I don't want to call it emotionally, but basically, how can I call it?
	Status.
	You're always trying to gain status on other people, right?
	Yeah, I mean...
	Because you did it with me earlier, right?
	Oh, yeah, probably.
	No, not probably.
	You definitely did, because when I gave you an argument and I said, does that make sense?
	Not, is it perfect or do you agree?
	You say, well, that's not exact.
	In other words, you have the gold standard of what the exact statement is, and I wasn't quite there.
	And then when I asked you to explain it to me, it turned out it was complete bullshit.
	So you were trying to gain status over me by saying, well, that's not an exact answer.
	You know, like you're...
	Got the perfect definition, which of course, if you did, you wouldn't be calling in to ask the question, right?
	So you come in and say, I don't know something.
	I give an answer and then you say, well, that's not an exact answer.
	And it's like, well, okay, so do you have the exact answer?
	How does it get?
	And then you, you know, it was kind of bullshit what you were saying, right?
	And I don't mean this in a hostile way.
	It just was.
	And the reason for that was that When I ask, I put myself in a vulnerable position with you by saying, does that make any sense, right?
	Which I do all the time at these shows.
	And then you kind of drew yourself up haughtily and said, well, you know, for an amateur, that's not too bad.
	I guess an answer for your first try, not bad at all.
	And then I said, okay, well, what's missing?
	And you're like, oh, well, I don't know, right?
	So this, I would imagine, would be how you try to dominate people in school, which was to position yourself as an authority who knew better and intimate that they were somehow lacking in their...
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah, but actually, in those cases, I actually did know what I was talking about.
	See, you just did it again.
	Yeah, but this time I can actually back it up.
	You just did it again!
	Oh my god!
	Oh my god!
	You just did it again.
	Oh, in those cases, in all situations, whenever I had conflict with other people, I was always right and they were always wrong.
	Always.
	No exceptions.
	Ever.
	Come on.
	We're all wrong.
	I mean, probably not all of them, all of them.
	No, you didn't put any caveats in there.
	Listen, if you don't want to be straight with me, if you don't want to deal with this, that's totally fine.
	We've got people queued up the yin-yang to talk to me.
	If you want to keep moving on, that's totally fine.
	And probably that is the best thing to do because I think we've had about 15 examples of you not wanting to grab the bull by the horns at the moment.
	So Mike, if we could move on to the next caller, I think that would be great.
	All right.
	Up next is...
	He wrote in and said, I'm trying to escape the anti-civilization, anarcho-primitivist way of thought.
	I think I was attracted to it because at one point a fundamentalist Christian in anti-civ philosophy replaced original sin with its guilt and encouragement of self-loathing.
	I'm hoping for some specific insight to me from Stefan about dealing with the guilt of being alive.
	The guilt of being alive.
	My God, you have a complicated way of getting up in the morning, my friend.
	You're not a murderer, are you?
	No, no.
	Are you a rapist?
	Are you a molester?
	Are you a tax person?
	So you wake up in the morning and you're like, I don't know.
	Am I too guilty to brush my teeth?
	Am I too guilty to have cereal?
	Am I too guilty to get out of my house?
	What do you mean by the guilt of being alive?
	Well, when you look at the two main people that I've—well, I've studied a lot in this movement, and the two main people, Derek Jensen and John Zerzan, have written books and books and books full of examples about how human behavior is incredibly destructive.
	Like, we have 200 species going extinct per day, four football fields worth of deforestation every minute— You know, by 2050, we're gonna need 27 Earths.
	I guess that was a study that came out of the University of Hawaii.
	You know, sorry to interrupt, but let me tell you something, too.
	You know those goddamn Jews in the concentration camps?
	Do you know that they never flossed their teeth?
	No.
	Those irresponsible assholes.
	I mean, we all know how important flossing is to us.
	And yet, these guys didn't even floss.
	Those lazy, non-oral hygiene-pursuing sons of bitches.
	Okay, I don't understand.
	Well, is it human nature not to floss or human nature to floss?
	Well, I think the first question is, are people caged or are they free?
	So people talk about, oh, you know, we deforest this and we burn this up and we overuse resources and we're oil dependent and there's going to be a crash and this and that and the other, right?
	And it's like, okay, but why are you talking about human nature?
	It's like a biologist not even knowing he's in a goddamn zoo.
	You know, these lions, they just walk back and forth in these tiny little areas, and they never go hunting, and they seem to have no interest in mating, and they just go back and forth.
	They don't roam the plains and so on, right?
	This guy writes his whole book on the lives of the big cats, and he's in a zoo, and he never mentions once that he's in a zoo.
	Wouldn't that be kind of deranged?
	Yeah, I see where you're going with this.
	I've also been incorporating this into my conversations that the vast majority of what's happening and these facts all come from the state.
	Yeah, we're in a human zoo.
	Yeah.
	I mean, God, don't talk to me about human nature and not even know that we're in a zoo.
	You know, the nature of the animal appears to be to drink from a blue plastic dish with a picture of Buzz Lightyear underneath it.
	The nature of the animal, you know, the cats in a natural state, in the wild, the cats all poop in these little trays with little bits of sand in them, and then giant bipeds come and scoop up the poop and put it away.
	It's amazing.
	Do you know that cats spontaneously castrate themselves in the wild and have the skill to stitch up their own innards as well?
	It's amazing!
	It's like, you know you're talking about pets and not fucking cats, right?
	Yeah.
	So we're pets.
	We are taxed livestock.
	And then human nature is...
	But don't talk about human nature when we're in a zoo, right?
	Yeah, but...
	Basically, I mean, humans lived for millions of years a certain way, and then we introduced agriculture in cities, and it all built up to what it is today, which is pretty bad.
	I mean, we're shitting in our own mouths, you know?
	What?
	No, no, no, no.
	You just jumped out of the conversation.
	You went back to your propaganda cue cards, right?
	We're in a zoo, right?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	So do these guys ever talk about the fact that we're in a zoo?
	Yes.
	Yes.
	And do they talk about the fact that you can't really judge animals by how they behave in a zoo?
	You can only judge how animals react to being in a zoo, right?
	It's like saying there can't be any such thing as great white sharks because we can't keep them in captivity, right?
	So it's true, in a human zoo, Human beings act in destructive and irrational ways.
	I completely agree with that.
	I think that's quite true of animals as a whole.
	If you cage them, you deprive them of their freedom, you bully them, you indoctrinate them, you teach them all the wrong things, you give them cattle prod electric shots to the gonads when they get erections, and then you beat them for liking chocolate, and then you force them to smile when you put Brussels sprouts up their nose.
	Hey, guess what?
	Human beings can be a little fucked up if you fuck them up.
	Yes, I completely agree with that.
	Okay.
	You're right.
	And I'm not mad at you.
	Obviously, I'm just pointing it out that, yeah, why do we consume so many resources?
	Because government prints money and builds roads and supports regimes that produce these natural resources that are tyrannical to their own people, and the government indoctrinates people.
	The children and the government funds wars through counterfeiting and the government wants the massive consumption of resources because most governments get significant portions of their revenue from consumption taxes so they do everything they can to promote consumption which generally means getting as much money as possible into the hands of frivolous women who buy enormous amounts of crap that destroy the planet.
	So of course governments make a huge amount of money from The massive consumption of resources.
	What that has to do with human nature, I don't know.
	It's like saying, you know, orcas in SeaWorld don't roam.
	You know, like I've got this little butterfly in a jar.
	What do you mean they go to Mexico?
	Mine isn't going to Mexico.
	It's like, well, because he's in a fucking jar.
	So I'm just like, you had this sort of question or topic of anarcho-primitivism and the guilt of being alive.
	Human beings...
	In freedom are very, very, very, very good at conserving resources because we're good at not dying.
	So the question is, why on earth would human beings, if we accept the environmentalist argument or the general environmentalist argument, which is...
	Why would human beings despoil the planet itself and heat the atmosphere and boil the seas and melt the ice and cut down all the trees and poison the...
	Why would human beings do that?
	I mean, it's incomprehensible why we would do that.
	I mean, I generally don't take shits in my fridge and pee in my own swimming pool.
	Why?
	Because I own those things.
	I change the oil on the car that I own.
	I don't change it on somebody else's car usually, and I certainly don't change it on a rental car.
	I conserve the value of things that I own, and everybody knows and understands that.
	So when things are being despoiled, when things are being used up beyond reason, the first place you look is to non-ownership.
	And everything that these people are talking about are non-owned resources where governments profit by the overuse of them.
	So why people would say anything about human nature is kind of incomprehensible.
	Look at human nature.
	People take care of that which they own.
	In general.
	Not everyone, not always, but people in general take care of that which they own.
	Human beings, and I've mentioned this before a number of times on the show, human beings on the east coast of Canada on this giant island called Newfoundland, for over 400 years were able to not overfish the cod.
	Within 10 or 15 years of the government taking over the fisheries management, the cod have been permanently wiped out.
	So is it human nature to preserve the resources which they did when they were owned and responsible for those resources for over 400 years?
	Or is it human nature to prey upon and to spoil those resources?
	I don't know.
	Is it human nature to stay up for three days late?
	Well, if you shoot cocaine into people's eyeballs, I guess it is, right?
	But you've got to look at the artificial stimulant there first, right?
	So does that make any sense?
	It does.
	And on your COD example, I have a follow-up question, because I get a lot of the, in this movement, I get a lot of the mixing of capitalism and crapitalism, which I don't agree with.
	And capitalism, just to clarify, because people are going to be listening to this later, is just, I have an apple, you have an orange, we exchange it, and that's it.
	And the profit is me getting what you had because I wanted it, and you getting what I had because you wanted it.
	That's correct, right?
	Well, capitalism is love as opposed to rape, right?
	So if you don't rape people, you might not have sex and you might not love anyone.
	But at least you're not raping them, right?
	But now if you don't rape people, Then you may voluntarily have sex and you may even voluntarily fall in love.
	Now, if you don't use force, that doesn't mean you're going to be some massive capitalist whatever, right?
	But it means that you have the capacity.
	So capitalism is what spontaneously arises in human beings in the absence of coercion.
	That's really all it is.
	It's the absence of coercion.
	Now, capitalism describes a specific form of trade, which is generally the most efficient and win-win form of trade, which is voluntary trade by definition is win-win.
	And so people say capitalism and they think like some guy with a monocle, some guy who owns a factory, some guy who owns a bank, some guy who's driving down a gold brick private driveway in a Bentley made of diamonds.
	And this has nothing to do with capitalism.
	It's like saying, well, if you don't rape...
	Then you must be a player.
	You must be a ho, right?
	It's like, no, all you know about me is that I'm not raping.
	Doesn't mean you know that much more, right?
	And so what capitalism is, is whatever spontaneously happens when we put down the guns with each other, and we start reasoning with each other, and we start trading voluntarily with each other.
	Capitalism is not foundational to human existence, right?
	Because the idea that there's some sort of profit, material profit, in all human interactions is simply not true.
	I mean, kids are ridiculously time consuming and expensive.
	I haven't written a book for six years because I've been home.
	I used to write like two books a year.
	Now I haven't written a book in like six years because I've been home with my daughter.
	So...
	Children are ridiculously expensive and time-consuming, and we have them, at least for me, because I love life and I want more of it, and I love watching a child develop and teaching and learning from a child.
	It's just a great pleasure.
	So capitalism is just one particular form of trade that occurs.
	Its necessary but not sufficient requirement is that people stop pointing guns at each other.
	And lots of things happen when people stop pointing guns at each other, but trade is just one of them.
	Okay.
	And one other question, if you don't mind.
	Do you think this way of thinking might have to do – and this is a theory I've developed and had examples talking to people.
	Do you think this way of thinking, the guilt of being alive and the – being able to be persuaded into thinking this way, do you think it has – I think it has something to do with childhood trauma.
	I mean it seems like a lot of things do, but especially this.
	Because, for example, when I was younger, I mean, I was an indoctrinated fundamentalist Christian, and that's full of guilt.
	And then I seemed to move on to the next guilt fix, if you know what I mean.
	And that's one of the reasons I called in, because I'm sick of it.
	I'm sick of guilt, and I'm trying to get rid of it.
	Right.
	Do you think this is—do you think this—you called it— Terror porn, which I thought was brilliant.
	The global warming scares, teaching to children, things like that.
	Do you think this has to do with trauma, childhood trauma?
	Yeah, I mean, I think it does.
	Thermageddon, right?
	I mean, that's...
	Thermageddonites!
	Ah!
	Now the new sin is breathing and farting.
	So...
	There's two ways to get money out of people, fundamentally.
	The first is to provide them value in a voluntary basis.
	Like, hey, I've got a restaurant.
	The food is really good.
	Waitresses and waiters are friendly, and it's clean, and it's quiet, and it's great.
	And that's one...
	Way that you can provide value to people.
	And the other way that you can provide value to people is to take something from them and then pay, have them pay for you to give it back.
	Right?
	Hostage taking, ransom, whatever, right?
	I mean, years ago my mom took a bus to New York to go meet some guy and Some guy at the bus station took her luggage and said, give me $5 and I'll give you your luggage back.
	Now, he's not giving her a positive.
	He's offering to reinstate a negative that he has created.
	So, at the end of it, you're back to where you were, but she was out $5, right?
	So, in one, you offer someone a positive.
	In another...
	You either threaten to take something away or you do take something away and then return it if they pay you money.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah, it does.
	Alright.
	So, religion is not in the first category.
	Because they have nothing to offer!
	Because there's no God!
	A blessing from my stout leprechaun friend is not the same as an iPod, right?
	They have nothing to offer because there's no gods, no devils, no heaven, no hell.
	They have nothing to offer.
	They can't give you anything.
	And this is why religion is like the government.
	The government doesn't have anything to offer.
	Government doesn't have anything except what it steals, right?
	Hey, give me 20 bucks and I'll go steal a bike for you.
	Look, I'm a capitalist.
	No, you're a politician.
	So, sin is taking your self-esteem hostage and returning it to you for money.
	They might as well kidnap your children and offer to sell them back to you for $5,000 a year.
	And if you pay them $5,000 a year they won't steal your children again, right?
	So, what I've called negative economics is when you take stuff from people and then you offer to give it back to them for money.
	Now, the earlier you can get your mental hooks into people, the more you can steal from them, which is why religion has little luck on people raised as atheists when they're 30, but has a lot of luck On babies being baptized and children being indoctrinated and so on, right?
	And so religion and environmentalism are imaginary viruses that infect your mind and not your body, the cure of which is also imaginary, but the money which changes hands is always very real, right?
	Gold versus the brain virus.
	This is the story of most of human history.
	And it works because we're social animals, because we need each other, and we've talked about this before, so I won't give it much detail here.
	But it works fundamentally because And I would imagine this is your challenge, and tell me if it's not, of course, but it works because the idea that our parents, like ancient Aztec tribes,
	offered us up as sacrifice to the ghost-ridden sociopaths of imaginary religions and taught us to hate ourselves So that we could buy shreds of morphine for the ravages of self-hatred from liars and cheats in funny hats.
	The idea that our parents would do this to us and call it good is so agonizing to people that they would rather pay to have a voodoo curse lifted off them By crazy sophists with silver tongues.
	Rather than say, Mom and Dad?
	Really?
	You taught me that I should hate myself for getting up in the morning.
	You pushed this dusty, dried-ass Jewish zombie corpse into my goddamn crib so that I had to push it off With 10% of my income for the rest of my life, you dangled me over a precipice called hell itself.
	People got angry at the late Michael Jackson dangling his kid over a balcony.
	Well, at least there wasn't an infinite lake of fire with psychopathic demons stuffing icicles of fire up its butt until the end of time.
	You dangled me over hell.
	The very bottomless chasm of hell and then had me pay in money, in terror, in sleepless nights, in self-laceration, in guilt, in the opposition to my sexual nature, in the opposition to my animal nature, in the opposition to my critical faculties.
	You had me, after dangling me over the gates of hell, for my childhood, you had me pay for two farts of air conditioning a year, thousands and thousands of dollars, To lift a curse that you made up.
	Now, thinking that about your own parents is absolutely horrifying to people.
	It's like spine-tingling stick insect with toes of ice crawling down your inn.
	It's horrifying.
	And so people say...
	Okay, well, alright, so maybe the God thing and the Jesus thing and the whatever thing, I'm not, you know, can't really buy that.
	I've learned some science and so on.
	Oh, look!
	There's lots of scientists doing the same thing!
	What a relief!
	Now I can go plant trees as my penance.
	Now I can go donate to these environmental groups as my penance.
	And now I can discharge the virulent hatred that I have for life that I was infected with by going and terrifying everyone else about the evils of their existence and frightening children with global warming and the devastation of the seal pups and the end of the polar bears and the killing of all that is fuzzy and cute and nice.
	Hey, look, kids, remember all those cute stories in your animal books?
	They're gone, baby!
	We called in the airstrike-cold industrialization of the little fuzzy bunnies are nuclear shadows on the cabbage patch.
	How do you like that?
	Well, it's horrifying, right?
	What do you think?
	I think you're really on to something.
	I was in therapy for most of my 20s, and I'm still...
	I mean, if you have some more time, I can tell you some more about my childhood, or we can wait till another call.
	Please do.
	Like I said, I was in therapy for a while, but the guilt just kills me.
	I actually made a list for my childhood.
	My parents, they were married way too young.
	Oh!
	Oh, you didn't!
	No, no, no!
	No, wait, I'm sorry.
	I promise I will get to your list.
	What did you do?
	I don't know.
	Stuck up for them?
	What did I do?
	Well, you began with an excuse, right?
	No, no, I didn't.
	I was saying that as criticism.
	It was the first one.
	I promise.
	It was criticism.
	They were married way too young.
	They married way too young.
	It was criticism.
	All right.
	Okay.
	I'll buy that.
	Go ahead.
	I promise.
	The next thing I was going to say is they were— Don't make me curse you for money, man.
	They were— They were pretty bad drunk drivers with the kids in the car.
	They did drugs right in front of us.
	They cheated on each other.
	Wait, wait, wait, wait.
	Oh, my God.
	Are you saying that's because they were young?
	No, I'm saying it's because they were assholes.
	Yeah.
	Okay!
	So don't tell me it's because they married too young.
	No, I swear.
	Lots of people married young, don't do that stuff.
	Okay.
	Alright, keep going.
	There was constant fighting with the neighbors right in front of us, and we had to move several times because of it.
	One of them, there was smoking in the house, and they would say, you know, it's your fault.
	It was...
	You put me under so much stress.
	It was your fault, and I always got that...
	It's your fault.
	It's your fault.
	You're an accident and this and that.
	My life is ruined because of you.
	I heard that constantly.
	Were your parents actually Jesus?
	No.
	I got nailed up because of you.
	My life was ruined because of you.
	Why are you related to that asshole who ate the apple?
	Oh my God.
	Here I am groaning and right crown of thorns because of you people.
	Oh my God.
	I mean, Jesus is basically just a Jewish mom.
	But anyway, go on.
	Actually, you know, the...
	Yeah.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Good plan, Mom!
	I got out of that on my own, luckily, in my 20s.
	I figured out that it was all nonsense, but there was physical fighting between the two of them, and of course, that spilled over to the children.
	What do you mean?
	Do you mean the children fought amongst each other?
	Oh yeah, we fought both.
	They hit us, we hit each other.
	It was pretty bad.
	And this happened, of course, it was spanking.
	Because I've been listening to your podcast for a while, so I try to be...
	Spanking happened at least every other day, if not more.
	And it was over the most trivial...
	Spanking, no, spanking doesn't happen.
	Okay.
	Rain happens.
	Spanking is inflicted.
	It's like saying theft happens.
	Well, okay, it was inflicted.
	It happened constantly, as did yelling.
	The spanking got bad.
	I mean, it wasn't just hands.
	When I got too big to be spanked, my dad's pretty big.
	He would hold me down.
	And then they would just hit with whatever was near, usually belts or spoons.
	God, I'm so sorry.
	I'm not even a third of the way through this list, so...
	Yeah, no, keep going.
	But don't laugh.
	No, I'm sorry.
	Yeah, like I said, there was a lot of hitting, throwing things.
	They were big...
	They employed that horrible...
	My mother would sleep.
	She worked nights, and then she would wake up and use this I'm tired excuse to throw pans.
	I remember when she threw a ketchup bottle, hit me in the head.
	I started to have flashbacks in therapy, which it got pretty bad.
	I remember, for example, the...
	I wet the bed for a long time and of course they would blame me for that without trying to do any research to see why and it got to the point where I would want to get up during the night and they would tie me down to the bed and I can't remember why and I actually confronted them about it and they couldn't remember why either and that of course this It was just followed by more verbal abuse, more emotional abuse.
	Both of my parents constantly, in between blaming the children for everything, would threaten to kill themselves.
	You caused this, and I'm sure you can see where the guilt is coming from.
	What?
	Do you mean your guilt?
	Yeah, my guilt.
	I'm just...
	I've spent my...
	Well, I know.
	I don't see where the guilt is coming from.
	I've spent...
	I'm not trying to be facetious.
	I really don't.
	Oh, because the whole childhood was spent blaming me for everything.
	But, I mean, wasn't it so over the top that it...
	I mean, how could you internalize that?
	Well, I mean, it happened from when I was born.
	All of my earliest memories just...
	I stopped blaming myself for most of it in my 20s, but guilt.
	No, no, hang on.
	I'm sorry.
	I'm probably dense, and maybe I'm just lacking empathy here, so I genuinely apologize for this.
	But do you want to finish the list and we'll come back to it?
	Because there may be more.
	Well...
	I'll just give you the CliffsNotes.
	I have a handicap.
	Also, it's actually kind of serious, and they would use that.
	I don't really want to get into details, but it was blame, and they would use it against me.
	All I can remember from childhood is just living in fear, constantly living in fear of being hit, of being yelled at, of being Bullying, intimidated.
	I mean, it was...
	But I will say, I have defooded them.
	They're gone.
	They're long gone before I heard about that.
	But that's the CliffsNotes.
	The rest of it just overlaps, and it's kind of the same thing.
	Right.
	But there had to be a reason.
	So guilt is when you internalize a value system, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, if somebody, I don't know, kidnaps you and makes you worship an owl at gunpoint, you sort of say, oh, holy owl, you are so very beady-eyed, and boy, you can rotate your head a lot, and I can't believe you could cough up half a mouse skeleton.
	You are the most owly of owlish things.
	Yay, owl, right?
	But you wouldn't, like, when you were released, you wouldn't say, okay, let's go find an owl church now, right?
	You'd be like, wow, I'm glad out of those people's clutches, right?
	So what I mean is there must have been some reason or some way in which your parents had enough credibility with you that you were willing to internalize some value system, right?
	Right?
	I mean, you said they took drugs, they threw things, they beat people up, they beat you up, they beat each other up, they were drunk drivers, I mean, they were physically assaulted, you know, like, so over-the-top crazy that To have guilt over something,
	there must be some credibility on the part of people who try to make you guilty, right?
	You know, like, I mean, the number of times every day I'm probably told that I should be ashamed of myself for some damn thing.
	Oh, Steph, you should be ashamed of yourself for...
	Whatever, right?
	Whatever it is.
	It's all expletive nonsense.
	Right?
	And I don't actually, I feel very proud of what I mean.
	Thank you very much.
	But people are always like, you ought to be ashamed, shameful, racist, sexist, whatever, right?
	Hate people, hate families.
	And I don't, I mean, they don't have any credibility with me at all.
	And I'm not trying to compare random internet idiots with your parents, but what I'm saying is that to internalize guilt means that you must have accepted some values that they had.
	And given how they were just like walking advertisements for everything not to do with your life, you know, it's like the 500-pound guy telling me that I'm out of shape.
	You know what I mean?
	It's like, without saying, listen, I know it may not be easy for you to hear this, particularly from me, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
	So in what way did they have any credibility with you?
	And I can understand imitating it, like, oh, yeah, yeah, Dad, you're right.
	Like, I had to do that with my mom.
	I'd sort of reflect back to her, oh, yeah, you know, the world is doing you hard, and yes, the insurance companies are all out to get you, and yes, the doctors did all these terrible things, bloody, bloody, when I was a kid, right?
	Right?
	But I didn't believe it.
	I just had to mouth it.
	Does that make any sense?
	Yeah.
	I don't feel guilty because of them.
	I feel...
	I don't know.
	I think guilt just became a habit.
	Because like I said, it went for...
	No!
	No!
	No non-answers on this show!
	No non-answers on this show!
	Guilt just became a habit, right?
	I've given you at least a theoretical etymology for your guilt, right?
	Yeah.
	So, tell me where the guilt comes from, because if the guilt is transmogrified into this Anaka primitivist environmentalist stuff, then even if we deal with the environmentalist arguments, it's going to find some other place, right?
	So, where is the guilt, and what is the guilt specifically?
	I don't know.
	I guess, I mean, they...
	My self-esteem was destroyed, and it took a while to build that back up.
	But then, I think it's because I, for whatever reason, at this point, I don't feel like I've achieved enough in my life.
	Okay, okay, sorry.
	So, self-esteem was destroyed.
	Okay, does that mean that you accepted that you were a bad kid because they said you were a bad kid?
	Yeah, for a long time.
	Why?
	Why?
	Because...
	I mean, even as a kid, you must have known they were batshit, right?
	Yeah, but I don't want to give you another non-answer, but I mean, from birth, that's all I heard.
	No, no, if that's where you genuinely are, give me another non-answer, and I'll yell at you again, because I have the compassion of a soap dish.
	But no, I mean, don't start censoring yourself, because we'll get to the truth about this.
	That's all I heard from birth, is that Everything terrible is me, you know?
	No, I understand that.
	Did you think your parents were good people when you were a kid?
	Not, no.
	But it was a push-pull situation.
	We're nice to you sometimes, and then we beat the shit out of you.
	But that's even worse!
	It means they know how to be nice.
	It's even worse when they mix in some nice stuff, right?
	It's like your mom makes you half really great meals that you love and half really terrible meals.
	It means the terrible meals follow the good meals so they'll taste even worse, right?
	It's like the good meals then become part of the sadism.
	Oh, I could make you something you like.
	Oh, yeah.
	Oh, I could do you mac and cheese and tomato.
	Oh, yeah.
	I could do chocolate chip cookies.
	Oh, no.
	He is ass broccoli quiche.
	Sorry.
	Too bad, right?
	And you know that she can make a good meal.
	So then you say, well, why can't you make a good meal?
	Hey, this is what I made, you ungrateful little bastard, right?
	It's like, okay, well, I guess I'll just wait till, like, non-psycho mom comes through the personality rotation and maybe I'll get some good kibbles, right?
	Do you have a theory?
	Do I have a theory?
	Hey, I always have a theory.
	I'd love to hear it.
	No, I don't know why your parents had credibility with you.
	I mean, they're so lunatic that I don't know.
	Look, and I'm not saying don't be traumatized.
	I'm not saying that you're reacting.
	But this internalization is something that remains a bit of a mystery.
	Like you're saying, well, they told me all of this stuff and therefore this happened to me.
	Which is to say that you're just a clear pane of glass that your parents' light shines through.
	That there was no possibility of judging them based upon the empirical evidence of their existence and their interactions and their choices, right?
	That's what I'm trying to sort of figure out.
	And you say something like, well, my self-esteem was destroyed and so on, which is a meaningless phrase.
	And I don't mean that it's not painful what happened to you as a kid, but there's no self-knowledge in that.
	It's a statement, you know?
	Yeah.
	Like if I said to you, somewhere in India there's a hill, do you disagree?
	No.
	Does it really add much to your knowledge of the world?
	No.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	So my question is, how on earth did they have credibility with you?
	Or, is it your siblings?
	What do you mean by my siblings?
	How so?
	Well, siblings are often the beta enforcers of the alpha abuse, right?
	No, I don't think it was them.
	So your siblings are equally skeptical of your parents?
	Oh, yeah.
	Okay.
	But you said the siblings beat up on you too, right?
	Yeah.
	It went both ways.
	We fought.
	We physically fought when we were kids because that's all we ever saw.
	Well, you see, again, here you have no ego interception of stimuli.
	We fought as kids because that's all we ever saw.
	I know.
	I get it.
	I get it.
	I understand it.
	Okay.
	You have to excuse yourself because you did things similar to your parents.
	So you have to say that your behavior was caused by your parents, which means that you can't give any responsibility fundamentally to your parents because you're still not accepting responsibility for the choices you made as a kid, while understandable in the environment.
	Which is why your very first statement was an environmental trigger or cause of your parents' behavior.
	They married too young.
	To assign responsibility to your parents means to assign some level of responsibility for you as a child, right?
	You had a choice as a child, and not every child who is exposed to violence chooses to beat up on other children.
	Yeah, you're right.
	It wasn't, I was very, I got in a lot of fights when I was a kid.
	I took it out on a lot of people.
	No, no, no.
	Oh my god.
	No, I chose to.
	No, no, no.
	Your passive voice is your god.
	It's your physics.
	I got into a lot of fights.
	What does that mean?
	Did you pick fights?
	I picked fights.
	You started a lot of, you beat up other children.
	You didn't get into fights, right?
	Like, oops, I stepped in a puddle on a dry day, right?
	No, I picked a lot of fights.
	Okay, now did you pick fights with younger kids?
	I picked fights with everybody.
	I was fairly large as a child, so younger kids, older kids.
	I fought a lot until I realized I could get arrested for it.
	Oh, so when the consequences became negative to you, you decided to change your behavior.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	So the fact that the consequences were terrifying and physically destructive to other children didn't stop you.
	In fact, that probably was the driver, right?
	But when it might have turned out to be negative for you, so in the same way, I guess when you got big enough, your parents stopped hitting you, right?
	No, they would just hold me down and then hit me.
	But at some point, you must have gotten so big that they couldn't even do that, right?
	When I left, and that was around 17.
	Right.
	And then I assumed you went back at some points and they weren't beating you up that way, right?
	No, when I left, I never went back.
	Okay.
	But it would be a tackle, hold down, and then hit with whatever was available.
	Right.
	So what did you get out of picking fights with other kids?
	Why did you do it?
	Don't give me this.
	That's all you saw.
	Um, I mean, that was raised by a single mom.
	That doesn't mean I became a cross-dresser, right?
	I know.
	I'm trying to...
	I just...
	I feel like shit now that I'm thinking about it.
	Well, good, good.
	Because now we're getting to the core of why you're susceptible to this guilt manipulations, right?
	It just...
	It was satisfying.
	I guess that I had control over somebody else.
	It was just...
	And I was inflicting...
	It was just satisfying.
	I guess it was sadism.
	These are all just labels.
	Okay.
	And you can have power over people without hitting them, right?
	I mean, a nutritionist has power over people, right?
	Because they can alter the whole diet.
	A doctor has power over people.
	A personal trainer has power over people, right?
	A salesman can have power.
	I mean, you don't have to hit people to have power influence, right?
	So it's not power over people fundamental.
	It's fundamentally to it.
	But it was satisfying.
	Tell me what that means.
	So what would happen prior to you starting to beat up another kid?
	I'd be angry or probably most likely not at them or I would find some excuse to do it for whatever.
	This kid said something to me and Any excuse, it didn't really matter what it was, and then it would just start, it would be a fight.
	Well, it would be a fight, again, is a very passive way of putting it, right?
	I would start to fight.
	Fight happens, right?
	You would start to fight.
	Like, would you push the kid?
	Would you throw the first punch?
	I'd usually throw the first punch.
	Right.
	So you, of course, had a lot of experience fighting quite quickly, right?
	Whereas other kids don't, right?
	Yeah.
	So it's kind of like, you know, if the next time I'm on Joe Rogan, he just starts using Taekwondo on me, right?
	Because he's experienced and I'm not, right?
	Yeah.
	Unreal Tournament 3?
	Yeah, maybe it's equal.
	Anything that involves actually hitting people, no thanks.
	Flak monkey, not fist-to-the-throat guy.
	Okay, so...
	And how hard would these fights go?
	More than once somebody went to the hospital.
	The kid I started the fight with went to the hospital.
	With what?
	Broken something or bleeding or a concussion.
	What do you mean broken something?
	A couple of times a broken nose.
	A couple of concussions.
	So you were actually quite lucky that you didn't kill anyone?
	Yeah.
	Right.
	So you're like, in a way, an accidental non-murderer, right?
	Yeah.
	Wow, I haven't thought about this in a long time.
	And of course, concussions, I don't know the degree of repetition, but concussions can cause brain damage later in life, right?
	Yeah.
	And what do you think about this?
	What do you feel about this as we talk about it?
	I feel horrible.
	I haven't thought about this in a long time.
	Of course you haven't!
	Why?
	Because you've got environmentalism and you had God, right?
	You were paying other people to keep you away from this, right?
	So you could focus on the rainforest rather than the rain of fists that surrounded you as a child, right?
	Yeah.
	How did you not get arrested?
	When did you stop?
	When I was a teenager.
	That's a pretty wide age gap.
	When did you stop?
	I think around 13 or 14.
	And I only remember getting into one fight in high school.
	What was the feeling like?
	Did you know that you had broken someone's nose?
	Did you knock out some teeth too?
	No teeth, but nose, yeah.
	I mean, did you feel that when you hit the person that you had crunched their nose?
	Yeah, I did.
	And what did that feel like?
	Well, the one time it was just accidental and I didn't know.
	Okay, stop describing it to me.
	Stop being outside of yourself.
	We're talking about something very important here.
	And if you want to deal with the issue, then we'll deal with the issue.
	But don't describe it to me like you're reading a grocery list.
	What did it feel like on your fist to crunch a little child's nose?
	It felt good.
	It felt satisfying.
	Right.
	So it wasn't like you were relieving a pain.
	It wasn't like taking an aspirin for a headache.
	This was an active...
	Pleasure that you would pursue, right?
	Yeah.
	Right.
	How many kids did you put in the hospital?
	Three, I believe.
	And if they were sitting around you now as children, broken, bleeding, what would you say to them?
	I'd say I'm incredibly sorry.
	Just humor me.
	Pretend that they're there, and what would you say to them?
	I'm sorry.
	How can I make this up?
	How can I make this up to you?
	No, no.
	There's no restitution.
	That's a cheat.
	Restitution is another way of avoiding guilt.
	So let's say there's nothing that you can do.
	To make it up to them.
	The social humiliation, the physical pain, the loss of face, the fear of going back to school and seeing you again.
	There's no restitution.
	Let's just take that out the window.
	So go back to telling them what you would like to say to them.
	Um, Oh, I'm sorry.
	I don't know.
	All I can think of is excuses.
	is denied.
	Okay, so let's say you can't do excuses.
	Can you explain to them why you did what you did, in your opinion?
	Um, I, I feel in my, in my, in most of my life, I feel unsatisfied and I feel powerless.
	And this made me feel powerful for a very short and pathetic period of time.
	Go on.
	I don't know what else to say.
	Do you have any particular feelings?
	After?
	No, right now.
	You haven't thought about this stuff in years.
	You brutally assaulted children while you were a child.
	You haven't thought about this in years.
	We're talking about it now.
	Do you have any feelings about it?
	I feel horrendous.
	What does that mean?
	I just...
	I don't know.
	I mean, you know, the first thing that comes to us, oh, it's typical me, you know, like I fucked up again.
	I don't know.
	You know, I did something else wrong.
	I don't know.
	Oh, so self-pity.
	Yeah, that happens.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	All right.
	So how do you feel about pitying yourself for breaking the heads and bodies of other children?
	It makes me feel even worse.
	I don't know.
	Alright, so let's put aside self-pity.
	Because you can't actually blame your parents, which I think you should, until you accept responsibility for what you did.
	Right?
	You didn't do it because your parents did something.
	Because that's deterministic, that's causal, like there's no other possibility.
	Right?
	You knew, you knew you shouldn't have done that, right?
	Even at the time.
	Yeah, I do.
	You did.
	Right?
	I shouldn't have done it at the time.
	You're right.
	No, no.
	At the time when you were a child, when you were in your early teens, you knew at the time you shouldn't have done it, right?
	Yeah.
	And how did you feel afterwards?
	Well, after the satisfaction wore off?
	I didn't feel much of anything.
	I just put it behind me.
	Uh-huh.
	Right.
	Well, that's not good.
	Because that ensured repetition, right?
	Because there wasn't enough negative reinforcement from guilt and shame and horror at what you'd done to prevent you from doing it again, right?
	Yeah.
	All right.
	has it cost you as a human being to have done these things?
	I'm not really sure what you mean.
	I don't know.
	Well, you beat up children.
	You put kids in the hospital.
	You served up concussions and broken noses.
	You provoked fights with innocent children.
	And you did to children what your parents did to you.
	Do you think that's had an effect on you?
	Yeah.
	On your capacity to love, on your capacity to self-empathize, on your capacity to reason, on your capacity to look for win-win negotiations, and your capacity to be vulnerable?
	Absolutely, it has.
	Okay, so what have the costs been, not only of having done this stuff a decade or two ago, but having not thought about it?
	Well, along with the guilt is actually pretty much all of what you just said.
	The way I handle situations, and I have dealt with it through therapy, is I instantly get mad, and then I have to just back off and rationalize the situation.
	Why aren't you getting mad at me?
	Well, because I don't want to feel like this anymore.
	I don't want to feel guilty.
	The focus of my life at this point is self-improvement and self-knowledge.
	What am I going to get mad at?
	at, you're right.
	And this is not a situation for me to get mad.
	I was in the wrong.
	Why would I get mad?
	Well, I'm mad.
	I just, I don't think it's an appropriate response to get mad at you.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	You're trying to help me.
	me why would I get mad at you should I I don't think so Do you have kids?
	No.
	No, of course not.
	Never.
	I got a vasectomy.
	I could never imagine bringing kids into this world.
	Well, that's one thing it costs you.
	Right.
	Are you in a romantic relationship?
	Yeah.
	And how's that going?
	It's going very well.
	We've been together for a long time.
	We have similar pasts and we've talked about...
	When we have difficulties with these things, we talk about them and work through it, you know?
	So, does your girlfriend...
	Sorry, how long have you been dating?
	Over 10 years.
	And she doesn't want kids either?
	No.
	Why not?
	She was in very similar circumstances to me when growing up.
	We don't think we're appropriate parents.
	And does she know about you hitting other children?
	I don't know.
	I don't know if I've ever...
	Like I said, I haven't thought about this in a long time.
	I might have to tell her.
	Really?
	How long were you fighting for?
	You said it ended when you were 13 or 14?
	Yeah.
	So when did it start?
	Me fighting?
	Yeah.
	It started as long as I could, as early as I can remember.
	I think as soon as I went to preschool, which is three or four.
	So ten years.
	Yeah, at least.
	So ten years, yeah, so ten years you spent hitting other children.
	Yeah.
	And you've never owned a ten-year relationship, brought up a ten-year history of violence.
	I think I put it out of my mind.
	I think I did so on purpose.
	Are you kidding me?
	Are you telling me this relationship is going really well?
	It is.
	Oh, come on.
	Come on.
	I've told her about all the other flashbacks that I've had.
	This is something I have not thought about.
	Well, you haven't talked about it and she hasn't asked about it.
	She's asked about my childhood.
	We've talked plenty about my childhood.
	I just...
	What?
	So wait a minute.
	Are you telling me in 10 years of her asking about your childhood, you never once remembered that you hit other children?
	Do you want...
	I mean, are you going to try and have me believe that?
	If we've talked about it, it hasn't been in this kind of detail.
	Oh, come on.
	Stop fogging me, bro.
	You said she didn't know, and you said because you haven't thought about it.
	And then I asked, does she know this about your childhood?
	She's asked me a lot about my childhood.
	I just never told her about my 10-year habit of assaulting other children.
	And I asked you, did you ever remember it while she asked?
	And now you're fogging me.
	So the answer is you have kept it from her, right?
	I don't think I have.
	I just haven't, I have not thought about this and especially- Okay, how long did it take for me to get this out of you?
	I asked and you answered.
	I said, what effects, right?
	And you started to talk about, right?
	And you and I have been chatting for, what, half an hour, 35 minutes?
	We got...
	10 years with you and your girlfriend, right?
	Yeah.
	Okay, so please don't tell me that it just never came up.
	Then you're right.
	You kept it from her because you're ashamed.
	You kept it from her because you don't know how to process it.
	And you kept it from yourself because it was the most efficient way of keeping it from her.
	And she didn't pursue the question because I'm sure as shit that she has incredible stuff to be guilty about in her own history.
	Because what kind of person would be attracted to someone who feels guilty for being alive And who keeps massive, formative, 10-year events of his history away from his partner.
	Because you have a mutually assured destruction pact, I would imagine, with your girlfriend to both avoid topics wherein you will have to confront your own guilt.
	She's got them.
	You've got them.
	And you've got these big-ass minefields in the relationship where you don't go, you don't ask, you don't inquire, you don't pursue.
	I don't have anything to be guilty of, so I have no problem exploring guilt.
	Why would your girlfriend for 10 years not know this about you?
	you because there's an under the table pact to not talk about stuff.
	And that's why I'm questioning when you say the relationship is going really well.
	I'm not saying it's a bad relationship, but it's a little on the incomplete side if after 10 years she doesn't know about your 10-year history of assaulting children, right?
	Yeah.
	I'm not saying it's terrible.
	I'm not saying it's what.
	I'm just saying that if you don't know that this is an incomplete communication matrix with your girlfriend, then I'm telling you it is.
	She can't know you if she can't know this.
	You've called in because guilt is a huge problem in your life.
	You feel guilty for being alive.
	You're drawn to irrational dogmas that promote guilt for breathing.
	This is a core issue and it has so much to do with you assaulting other children and it's a core issue, a core personality driver in your life that your girlfriend knows nothing about.
	Right?
	- Yeah. - You got a vasectomy because you don't want to hit your own kids, right?
	Yeah.
	So what effect has it had on your life?
	It ended your DNA.
	Four billion years of evolution to you, cut right off.
	I'm not saying, I mean, I'm not saying you have to be a parent.
	I'm not saying it's better to be a parent.
	It's a reasonable question.
	The only reason we're all here is because we had parents who made the beast with two backs, so it's a reasonable question to ask.
	But hitting children cut your balls in two, and your girlfriend doesn't even know that.
	You killed your whole lineage from guilt.
	Because if existence is guilt, why create a human being who will simply be guilty, right?
	And why is she not asking and why is she not pursuing it?
	Because Like a lot of couples, like most couples, part of what keeps you together is the mutually assured destruction pact, right?
	I won't ask, you don't ask.
	We go on as if nothing happened, right?
	Well, I guess I'm going to tell her and see what happens.
	Well, what's gonna happen is it's gonna be a challenge to your relationship, right?
	I'm just trying to prepare you for that.
	It's great that you're gonna tell her.
	I think it's important.
	But it's going to be destabilizing because part of your relationship is built on not telling her right Yeah, I guess so I've never even considered that before.
	Well, what if you found out that she had sent Other little girls to the hospital with broken noses and concussions.
	What if you found that out about her and that she did this for about 10 years?
	Well, it may be making an excuse for her, but based on her history, I would understand.
	No, you wouldn't.
	Oh, my God.
	You know, it's not that you're lying, but you're not telling me a shred of truth here.
	You are not telling me a shred of truth here.
	Sorry, I'm sorry to be so blunt, but I just have to be clear.
	When I brought this up with you, what did you say about your emotions?
	That it makes me feel horrible.
	Right.
	But suddenly, if it's your girlfriend who does it, you understand.
	You judge yourself horribly negatively for what you did, but you wouldn't judge your girlfriend negatively at all, right?
	Come on.
	You can't be that sexist.
	You can't be that much of a man-hater.
	That whatever men do makes them feel like shit, but if women do exactly the same thing, we understand, right?
	You couldn't treat her as that much of a child.
	or yourself is that much of a demon, right?
	Yeah, I, um...
	You would judge her as negative as you judge yourself.
	Not as negatively as I judge myself.
	Why not?
	Because I'm very hard on myself.
	I always have been.
	You are not hard on yourself.
	You have avoided the guilt of hitting children and you tell me you're hard on yourself?
	You haven't thought about this stuff in years.
	You've kept it from your girlfriend to avoid all of this guilt and to avoid dealing with what you did, putting children in the hospital.
	And then you tell me you're really hard on yourself?
	But I didn't do it on purpose.
	That's like a guy running from the law for 10 years says he's always turned himself in.
	I didn't do it on purpose.
	I know!
	I'm not saying you did, but don't tell me you're hot on yourself.
	You're trying to get off from scot-free, right?
	All right.
	You're hot on your balls.
	You're easy on yourself.
	What is your fear of what your girlfriend will think when she finds out you put children in the hospital?
	That she'll see me in a Very different in negative light.
	Go on.
	And possibly take action like...
	I don't know.
	Might have long-standing repercussions for all I know.
	What action might she take?
	Maybe she'll leave And why would she leave?
	Because I guess it's not every day you find out that you're dating a sadist or...
	And are you a sadist in your opinion?
	Not anymore.
	I feel very, very different toward children now than I did.
	When you were 13 or 14, what was the youngest child that you attacked?
	I don't know.
	It was in my age group, so within a year or two.
	So when you were 13, you might have hit an 11-year-old?
	Yeah.
	What was the smallest child that you ever hit?
	At that age?
	I don't know.
	It's a pretty big difference between 13 and 11, right?
	I can't remember.
	It was a It happened a lot.
	It's a blur.
	Most kids at that...
	I was bigger than most kids at that age, so pretty much everyone...
	So it wasn't fair?
	No.
	And you were much more experienced, right?
	Yeah.
	So you're like a big karate expert taking on smaller kids, right?
	Well, that's a little exaggeration, but yeah.
	No, no, no.
	Listen, it's not an exaggeration.
	Look, by the time you were 13, you've had 9 or 10 years experience in fistfights, right?
	Yeah.
	That's a lot of training.
	The kids you picked on may have never been in a fight before, right?
	10 years of experience versus never being in a fight before.
	What do you think it's like playing tennis if you played tennis for 10 years and someone else has never picked up a racket before?
	How do you think that goes?
	Not well.
	What about chess?
	I played chess for 10 years.
	What do you think?
	If I play my daughter, how's it going to go?
	Not well.
	Right.
	That's what I mean by not fair.
	You're bigger, way more experienced, I would imagine, in general.
	Not for everyone, maybe, I don't know, but...
	All right.
	Are you sitting down?
	I'm pacing.
	Okay.
	Can you do me a favor?
	And this is one of the reasons why it's tough to connect, right?
	Can you just sit down for a sec someplace?
	Just try and take a deep breath, relax your body.
	I just want to ask you something.
	Okay.
	Are you ready?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Deep breath.
	Alright, can you close your eyes for a sec?
	Okay.
	Thank you for your indulgence.
	You're walking past a park.
	And you see a 13-year-old boy, for real.
	You're walking past a park, some park in your neighborhood.
	We can say it's a cloudy day.
	We can say it's mid-afternoon.
	We can say that there's a V of geese flying overhead.
	We can say that there's a shoe hanging from a power line.
	And you're walking past and you hear a crunch, crunch, crunch.
	And you see a 13-year-old boy pounding the nose in on an 11-year-old boy.
	What's your physical reaction?
	There's blood.
	There's coughing.
	There's spluttering.
	The kids' hands are waving back and forth, trying to wave off the attacks.
	And what is your physical reaction to that?
	To run as fast as I can over to the 13-year-old and restrain him.
	What do you say to the 13-year-old?
	What the hell are you doing?
	What are you thinking?
	Go on.
	Why would you hit someone who's that much smaller than you?
	Go on.
	Pretend that it's real.
	I mean, at a later time, I would say, what's going on at home?
	Go on.
	I mean, just talk to me.
	I...
	Tell me how you, you know, how did that make you feel?
	Why are you doing that?
	What satisfaction did you get out of doing that?
	Why would you hit somebody who's obviously that much smaller than you, especially since the kid obviously couldn't defend himself?
	Did you know what was missing from that?
	Thank you.
	I was thinking about the other kid.
	But you didn't say anything to the other kid, the victim, right?
	No, but I was thinking about it.
	Right.
	Right.
	So what's next?
	Thank you.
	- Did you sell me?
	I don't know.
	I called in for your insight.
	I don't know.
	I'm incredibly sorry for what happened to your childhood.
	it.
	I mean, I've heard some pretty horrifying stories.
	This is definitely the top ten.
	The only thing I can think that didn't happen to you was rape.
	And that's not exactly a gold medal for childhood experiences.
	And I'm incredibly sorry that You experienced all the horrors and all the abuse that you experienced as a child.
	I'm incredibly sorry that you made the choice to assault others.
	I don't believe...
	I mean, I'm not saying as a child you're responsible as an adult.
	You're not.
	You're not.
	But you knew it was wrong.
	You knew it was not the right thing to do, right?
	Right?
	Yeah.
	Well, don't agree with me.
	That sounded very noncommittal if you didn't.
	Yes, it was wrong.
	I mean, I assume you hid it.
	I assume that you, right?
	But you didn't feel any remorse afterwards, right?
	No, I didn't.
	Like, was it like they deserved it or at least I won or what?
	I just, I would just put it behind me.
	I don't know what that means.
	You mean just not think about it?
	I wouldn't think about it.
	Right.
	Right.
	And it is a very confusing thing to have been abused and be an abuser.
	It's a short-circuity kind of thing, right?
	I was abused.
	I was never an abuser.
	It wasn't like I was never cruel or mean.
	I'm not trying to say I'm saintly here or whatever, right?
	But I certainly have never hit anyone in my life.
	And I've never been verbally cruel or bullying or anything like that.
	So it is very confusing to have like the gun of moral outrage that is aimed at your parents and bounces back on you to some degree.
	Because your outrage at your parents must to some degree be short circuited by your assaults on other children for 10 years, right?
	Yeah.
	Now, look, I've got to tell you, I mean, of course, if you had been raised by decent parents, and I'm talking like even halfway decent parents, even by contemporary standards, if you had been raised by decent parents, you would not have done this, right?
	No.
	But the problem is...
	That you think of yourself as a victim, you don't think of your victims.
	That's the problem.
	That's why you're susceptible to guilt.
	Because the shame and the horror at what you did to other children who were innocent of the crimes against you, right?
	You weren't hitting them, you were hitting your parents, but they were too fucking big, right?
	All the children you hit were innocent of the crimes against you.
	You hit the wrong people.
	You lashed out against the innocent because you couldn't hit the guilty, right?
	Yep.
	Thank you.
	Are you feeling anything in the call that you're not communicating?
	Because I'm just talking to a wall here.
	And I got more available people to chat with if you can't connect to anything.
	No, I'm just listening.
	Well, stop listening.
	This is supposed to be a conversation, right?
	Don't be passive here.
	This is your chance.
	If you want to escape the guilt for being alive, you have to confront this.
	If you want, you don't have to confront it at all.
	You can go on being guilty for being alive and Calling your relationship wonderful.
	But if you're not connecting with anything, and I don't think that these kinds of windows open up a lot in most people's lives, but I can't have a passionate conversation about responsibility with somebody who gives me...
	I don't know what to do now.
	Because this opens up...
	Oh, God, you're just driving me crazy.
	Who said anything about doing anything?
	Did I tell you I need you to do something?
	Did I give you a laundry list of activities?
	I have to do something.
	Did I tell you or ask you to do anything?
	No.
	So what are you talking about doing?
	Mental work, something, anything.
	I have to deal with this.
	I asked you if you were feeling anything.
	Yes, I feel terrible about what I've done.
	I feel terrible about what I've done.
	How does that sound to you?
	I feel terrible about having hit children who didn't deserve it.
	I feel terrible about having hit children who didn't deserve it.
	You might as well be somebody who doesn't even speak English reading something out that sounds like English in their native language.
	Okay.
	I mean, I don't know what you want from me.
	Do you know what it sounds like when somebody is emotionally connected and communicating?
	I guess not this.
	Listen, I'm telling you, you'll listen to this back later and you'll be horrified at how emotionally empty you sound.
	I'm not generally outwardly emotional.
	I'm internalizing.
	And I'm sorry, that's just the way I deal with things.
	I process them internally.
	Great.
	Okay, so then you should keep doing that, right?
	Because that's worked out really well.
	You're guilty for being alive and you don't tell your girlfriend about 10 years of hitting people.
	So if you have this way of dealing with things, then you should obviously just keep doing that, right?
	Because it's working out really well.
	So what should I do?
	I'm confused.
	I don't know.
	I don't understand.
	How should I be reacting?
	I don't understand.
	I think any kind of reaction would be something.
	You want me to tell you how to react?
	You're talking about hitting children for 10 years for the first time in as long as you can remember, and you have no emotions about it that I can see.
	Because what can I do?
	It's been decades.
	What can I do?
	I'm not asking you to do anything, and you can't do anything.
	You hit children for 10 years.
	You can't do anything about that.
	I mean, if I had stolen a candy bar, which I did, you know, decades ago, am I supposed to feel bad about it now?
	Are you really talking about putting kids in the hospital at the same level as stealing a candy bar?
	No, I'm not.
	Is that how you process it emotionally, like you stole a candy bar?
	I don't know.
	I mean, any answer I give you is wrong, so I don't know.
	Right, because you're trying to control me.
	You're trying to manipulate me, right?
	No, I'm not.
	Yeah, you are.
	You're saying whatever answer I give you is wrong, so I can't do anything because I'm not going to give you the right answer.
	I'm not asking for the right answer.
	The guilt is in your life, it's in your bones, it's in your bone marrow, right?
	That's what you called in about.
	Help me with my guilt, right?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	So I'm helping you with your guilt by pointing out that you're not connecting with what you did at all, which means it's being projected into all of these world dramatic hysterical events like anarcho-primitivism and environmentalism and forest predation and earlier with the religion and so on, right?
	Yeah, but apparently I don't know how to do this properly.
	It's about punching children in the face.
	It's about breaking their noses.
	It's about the crunch of their nose splitting in two.
	It's about you potentially having killed children.
	It's about you not stopping Doing what you did.
	It's about you not connecting with what you did.
	It's about you not processing what you did.
	It's about you giving yourself a get out of jail free card called, well, what can I do about it now?
	But you understand, if you don't do anything about it, it's going to keep doing things to you.
	Like, cut your balls off and keep you distant from your girlfriend and have you wake up every day guilty for being alive.
	You understand?
	This is your physics.
	This runs your life.
	This is the essence of what you call your ideology.
	This is the essence of your relationship with yourself.
	Well, you have to take ownership in order to give ownership.
	it.
	Thank you.
	You at the moment are unable to process your anger at your parents because of your shame of what you did.
	You terrorize children.
	It wasn't just the punching.
	They knew that you were the kid who puts children in hospital, right?
	They knew that you were the kid who might get them killed!
	Do you understand what that's like?
	To be in a classroom with a kid like that?
	You were like a terror bomb for these people's childhoods, right?
	Yeah.
	And that's why I said no restitution is possible.
	You were like a shark in the swimming pool.
	For some kids, for 10 years.
	And you didn't have to do that.
	Thank you.
	And it's not your parents fault that you did it.
	I hate them for everything that they did.
	And I can cut you some slack for when you're three and four and five maybe, maybe even six.
	But at some point, before 13, you should have stopped, right?
	I should have, yes.
	What would it have meant for you to have stopped?
	Life might be very different by now.
	Well, Go on.
	I... I don't know.
	Some of the decisions I've made, the ideology I... Oh!
	God!
	You're driving me nuts!
	Is it still all about you?
	Do you think it might have been different for the other children in your environment if you had stopped beating them up?
	Thank you.
	Is it all about your choices and your life and how things might have been different for you?
	Are you kidding me?
	Look, I mean, I'm trying to feel less guilt, not more.
	So if this...
	I don't know.
	Like I said, every single thing I'm saying to you is incorrect.
	I'm not talking enough.
	I'm not reacting the right way.
	Oh, Chris, please don't do the play the victim thing.
	Please don't do the play the victim thing.
	I just don't know what you want from me.
	And at this point, like I said, years later, what can I do?
	What would you, I'm trying to move forward.
	Okay, then you should move forward.
	Thank you.
	then you should keep doing what you're doing and you should keep moving forward.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	Right?
	So if you know how to deal with this stuff, and if you, you know, you know that avoiding it and not thinking about it and not talking about it with your girlfriend and so on, if you want to just keep moving forward, then, you know, keep moving forward.
	I'm trying to point out that you do need to get in contact with what you did to these children.
	Thank you.
	Because it's already in contact with you.
	Right?
	It's already running your life.
	You had a vasectomy.
	Because you couldn't trust yourself around children, which meant that you did not believe that you had the capacity to empathize with children, right?
	Yes, that's why.
	Like I said, I just can't imagine bringing them and having to deal with anything that I had to deal with.
	Well, see, again, this is what you keep going back to.
	And I obviously get that this is where you are, so I'm not going to try and change it.
	I'm just pointing out that I'm saying that you didn't have kids because...
	You were afraid that you would hurt them, and then you said, well, I didn't want my children going through what I went through.
	I guess you mean if you became your parents and so on?
	Yeah.
	Right.
	Because I see a lot of my reactions, and not as much anymore, but I, especially when I was younger, a lot of my reactions are similar to the way they reacted.
	And through therapy and a lot of self-work, I just, I don't, I don't do that anymore.
	But I wouldn't want any of that, not 1% of that, to be aimed at any child.
	Okay, let me just try one last thing.
	I appreciate your patience.
	Give me the name of a kid you beat up.
	First name.
	Lewis.
	Lewis, okay.
	So Lewis is out of the hospital, and he's back in your classroom, I assume, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	What's it like for Lewis walking to school knowing that you're in the classroom?
	I'm sure he's terrified.
	Pretend you're Lewis saying I. What's it like?
	I'm terrified.
	I don't want to go there with that person.
	I think I'd run in the other direction or I'd tell somebody or I'd – I don't know.
	know, I'd be terrified.
	What does he think the girls think of him?
	Maybe, probably that he's a wife.
	I'm a wimp.
	They don't think I can stand up for myself.
	What does he think when the recess bell goes off?
	I'm more terror.
	I would stay where the monitors can see me or I would stay inside or I would stay far away from that person.
	And how long would that feeling last?
	A long time until I I don't know.
	I'd have to...
	It would last for a long time, as long as I was in the same proximity as that kid.
	And then what?
	What about if he's not in your proximity?
	I'd still probably be worried about other kids doing the same thing, or anything like it.
	Or running across you in the neighborhood, or...
	Right?
	Yeah, or out in public, or anywhere really.
	Yeah.
	This is not a good feeling. .
	And what if you were some kid who'd heard about you putting Lewis in the hospital?
	I would feel the same way.
	Just, you know, stay away from that kid.
	Get away from that kid.
	I tell other kids, stay away from him.
	Or, you know, terror.
	Not as much as Lewis, but still terror.
	And when do you think that those feelings of shame and anxiety would end, if ever, for Lewis?
	Lewis?
	I don't know.
	A long time, probably into adulthood.
	Could you find him now?
	No, I don't even know his last name.
	A lot of it happened at camp, so I mean it was...
	I have no idea.
	Kids from all over the country.
	Could you find any of your victims now?
	I could try.
	If you had paid a million dollars to find one.
	I could...
	I certainly could try.
	I can only think of one or two that I can even remember their last names.
	Okay.
	Alright.
	And if you were typing out a Facebook post to them?
	What would you say?
	Now?
	I'd say...
	You know, I don't know if you remember me or not, but...
	Oh, they remember you.
	Okay.
	I was a giant...
	I was an asshole.
	I did things to you that no kid should have to deal with.
	I... I'm sure it affected you in a negative way, and I'm really sorry, and...
	You know, I don't think there's any way I could possibly make up for it now, but I just wanted to...
	You're really sorry, Chris?
	I'm really sorry.
	You're really sorry.
	Do you know the terror that I felt as I walked the halls looking for you?
	Knowing that, you know, if I walked the wrong way or took the wrong turn or took the wrong step, I was going to get pushed into a locker or God knows what.
	Do you know what that was like for me?
	Do you know how that felt?
	I don't.
	I'm sorry.
	What do you think everyone else thought?
	As they see me cowering in corners.
	Trying not to get my face broken.
	and try not to get fucking killed.
	I'm just, I'm incredibly sorry.
	I can't imagine how you must have felt.
	I'm telling you how I felt.
	And you're the one that did that.
	You balled up your fist and you put it into my face.
	You broke my nose.
	You could have killed me.
	You put me in the hospital.
	Then you say you don't know?
	I'm sorry.
	I don't know what else to say.
	I'm sorry.
	What you say is you ask him more about his thoughts and feelings.
	You become active in the conversation and don't do the passive aggressive thing of I don't know what to do.
	I keep asking him how he thinks and feels.
	Is that really what I do?
	I'm not trying to be flippant.
	I really don't know.
	Just ask Mike, as Lewis, more about what he experienced.
	Ask him what it was like the day after, the next day.
	Being curious about other people.
	So try that.
	Can you tell me what it was like on the day?
	On the day that it happened?
	I mean, you know...
	Going along your day, you have plans, you have things you're going to do when I'm done with this, plans for the weekend, social plans, hang out with friends, and before you know it, you're out cold in the hospital, not knowing what happened.
	Do you think I went and did my plans that day?
	Do you think I lived the life that I wanted to live?
	Do you think I could play the sports?
	Go on the dates?
	Do all the stuff I wanted to do with a broken nose in a hospital bed?
	Did it ever get any better?
	Did you ever feel any less bad about it?
	Well, my nose healed.
	But what do you think it was like when I went back?
	I mean...
	It could have happened the day I came back or the day after that.
	Did anything happen?
	Were there any consequences for this happening to you?
	Were there any consequences?
	No, there weren't.
	So what does that teach me about the world?
	Now I'm in an environment where I can get punched in the face if my nose broke and possibly killed if I fell down, hit my head on a bench or something.
	Who the fuck knows?
	And nothing happens?
	No one cares?
	And my parents send me back?
	Do you know what a living hell that is?
	For me?
	me?
	How's it affected your life?
	You know what it's like to be anxious when you get out of bed in the morning?
	Retrace, forward think, retrace all the steps that you're going to possibly take throughout that day and try and avoid bad situations.
	You think you can focus on, hey, let's have a good time today.
	Let's hang out with our friends.
	Let's do something enjoyable when you're trying to not get killed on a daily basis.
	When I stand in line at the grocery store and I'm having panic attacks because I don't know if the guy behind me in line is going to not like the way I look or not like something I do or say, and he's going to punch me in the face and kill me right there.
	Thank you.
	Standing in line at the grocery store.
	I got bagels in one hand and I don't know if the woman in front of me is going to scream at me, slap me across the face.
	I don't know what people are thinking.
	I don't know what people are doing, looking at me.
	Are they eyeing me up?
	Do I mind someone or someone that hurt them?
	Are they going to do something to me?
	Who's going to protect me?
	I'm incredibly sorry.
	I know that doesn't mean much now, but I'm incredibly sorry.
	You didn't deserve that.
	You don't deserve that.
	I don't know if there's anything I could ever do to make it up to you.
	I'm incredibly sorry.
	There's no justification for that.
	I don't know.
	I don't know what else I can say.
	I'm really sorry.
	I really am sorry.
	Keep asking.
	Is there anything I can do?
	Is there anything?
	No, no.
	no keep asking him about his experience did anyone help you?
	Did you have anyone to talk to?
	They sent me back, didn't they?
	I was right back there.
	Got out of the hospital right back there.
	Nothing happened to you.
	Nothing happened to someone that puts a kid in the fucking hospital, breaks his nose.
	Do you think they're going to give a shit?
	I mean, no one talked to me.
	Boys will be boys.
	It's part of growing up.
	Yeah, getting your face fucking punched in is part of growing up.
	I'm incredibly sorry.
	Louis, did your nose ever heal?
	Okay.
	I knew a kid who got his nose broken and he had a bump, like a lump for the rest of his life.
	My nose healed, but you know, my eyesight, my left eye, it's...
	I still get headaches every so often.
	It gets in my eyesight, my left eye, it gets a little blurry.
	And, you know, that started when I wound up in the hospital after he punched me.
	And what hasn't healed is the fact that someone makes a sudden move near me and I flinch like I'm about to get assaulted. .
	You know what that's like when you go out on a date?
	You meet someone that you're interested in and you're out there and you want to impress them.
	And some guy makes a sudden move and you fucking duck your head because you think you're gonna get fucking hit?
	Do you think there's date number two?
	Do you think there's date number two?
	Do you think there's date number two?
	Well, I'm, you know, I'm just ping him and say thanks for the call or whatever.
	It's, you know, it's very tough, you know, when somebody has a long history or experience of Avoiding particular feelings, it's very tough to reconnect, right?
	This is sort of the price of avoidance, so I am...
	Yeah, I'm very sorry about that.
	I mean, I think he was trying in a way, but emotions is usually not something you really have to try for.
	Right.
	Yeah, it doesn't look like he's coming back.
	Let's give him a minute, because if I can get him back, that'd be great, but he's not even online.
	Yeah, that feeling of guilt is not going to go away until he fully connects to the seriousness of what he did.
	Yeah, I mean, I guess he became for their children as his father was for him.
	And that's, it makes it very tough to, you know, when you displace your legitimate, the legitimate agony of your victimization.
	When you displace that into aggression, it becomes very hard to separate that out later and feel legitimately angry against your abusers, right?
	Yeah.
	I've always thought of myself to be pretty fortunate in that when it came time to Look at the moral reality of the people around me and the more reality of the things that I did in my life, that there wasn't much that I did on the bad side of things.
	It made it a whole lot easier to look at the moral landscape and assign responsibility without having to deal with stuff that I had done.
	It's definitely another added dynamic that makes things even more challenging.
	Yeah, I mean, that is a pretty extreme case of bullying, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, that is...
	I mean, putting kids in a hospital on a repeated basis, hitting kids years younger than you, I mean, this is pretty extreme.
	I'm incredibly sorry for all of the circumstances that led to where kids ended up.
	What can we do but try and give people the truth?
	And I think that if he is able to empathize with his victims, which is going to be a painful thing to do, then it certainly is possible that he is going to be able to connect more with himself and feel less apocalyptic about life as a whole.
	I hope so.
	I was on the show probably eight months ago, and I've certainly come a long way in the time since then, so hopefully he listens to this and gives it some thought and is able to connect to those emotions.
	Right, right, right.
	Okay, so let's do one more caller if we can.
	All right.
	Up next is Cameron.
	And Cameron wrote in and said, I was constantly bullied as a child for having a goofy, ugly Middle Eastern name.
	As a result, I isolated myself from the world and hid from people.
	I've since changed my name and moved to a different state.
	I thought these two changes would forever erase my fear of the world.
	I thought that I wouldn't have to hide anymore.
	That wasn't the case.
	I am now even more of a recluse.
	Is this a Simon the Boxer phenomenon?
	Am I so used to isolation that I now need it, like Simon needed violence?
	Hey, Steph.
	Hi.
	Well, thanks.
	It's a great question.
	I appreciate you calling in.
	Yeah, you know, there is this fantasy that you go someplace new and you're like a different person, you know?
	Yeah, dude.
	First of all, I think I'd like to thank you so much for giving me this opportunity.
	And also, I wasn't nervous before the call, but now I'm incredibly nervous.
	So I thought I'd just make that explicit.
	Oh, no, I appreciate that.
	Thank you.
	I appreciate that.
	All right, so I'm going to go out on a limb and I'm going to guess...
	That it wasn't just the name, right?
	Yes, definitely.
	I mean, yesterday I listened to a call you had with someone who...
	And you were talking about bullying.
	And clearly...
	You know, I didn't really have the connection with my parents.
	So, I mean, I was bullied, but I didn't get the opportunity to go to my parents and talk about it and to let them know that I was being bothered.
	And I'm sure you got the inference that I didn't really have the greatest bond with my parents based on this subject.
	Right.
	Yeah, I mean, look, if Newt Gingrich can become a politician when he sounds like some mashup between a National Geographic show on amphibians and a Dr.
	Seuss book, then anything is possible in the world of names, right?
	Yeah.
	So what was the lack of connection that you felt with your parents?
	Well, when I went to my dad, can I first give you an example of what occurred when I told my dad that I was being bullied?
	Yeah, yeah, please do.
	Yeah, so I told my dad that I'm being bullied, and the kids are constantly teasing me for my Middle Eastern name, and my dad just said, You know, Shaquille O'Neal didn't like his name, and his dad told him to just make people learn it, and that's that.
	And basically, I recognized from a young age that any time I shared a feeling or a thought, he just ended up lecturing me instead.
	And that's basically, I knew that I couldn't go to him anymore.
	Right.
	And sorry if I... I'm struggling here because I'm...
	No, no, you're doing fantastically.
	You're doing great.
	The pause is in no way disapproval.
	Yeah, I mean, didn't Joe Frazier change his name to Muhammad Ali?
	I don't think anyone said, well, that's it for him.
	Cassius Clay, Cassius Clay.
	Cassius Clay.
	Was Cassius Clay his first name?
	Yeah.
	That was his original name, I believe.
	Yeah, that was his original name, yeah.
	His original name.
	And then he went to Muhammad Ali, right?
	Yeah.
	Right.
	Right.
	So people didn't say, well, you know, that's it for him.
	Then we're not having him around anymore, right?
	Oh, Joe Frazier.
	He's another boxer, though, right?
	I'm not completely off my rock, am I? No, he's another boxer.
	Right.
	Okay.
	All right.
	I'm back.
	So...
	The goal of lecturing for parents...
	Lecturing is like the crack of the parent's medicine chest.
	It is a great way of insulting your child.
	And I resist lecturing as much as humanly possible.
	And if you can imagine, for me, that's not always the easiest thing in the world to not go off on a monologue.
	And...
	So, lecturing is...
	A way for the parent to say, well, you only have this problem because you're a kid.
	I never even had this problem.
	Or if I did have this problem, I found it very easy to solve.
	In other words, it can be solved with a few choice words.
	There's nothing particularly difficult about...
	Oh, I know why.
	I was thinking of Fraser.
	Somebody was talking in the chat room about the TV show, Fraser Crane.
	Ah!
	I was programmed!
	It's not an error.
	Anyway...
	So, yeah, so lecturing is a great way of making your child feel, well, how did you feel when your father was lecturing you?
	Incredibly irritated.
	He would just...
	Every time he would lecture me, I just felt small and incompetent, and maybe that's the reason why I'm afraid to become an adult and become independent, and because I... Oh, you're not going to give me one of these, that's the reason why's thing, right?
	Tell me more.
	Well, look, I am certainly not a determinist.
	I believe in free will.
	But while the past has an enormous influence on us, there is no giant taser that the past has hooked up our ass that makes us do stuff, right?
	There is choice in the matter.
	Which is not to say there's no influence, but when people say, I am this way because of my past...
	You're right.
	Well, then there's no changing it, right?
	So you're as tall as you are because of genetics and environment, right?
	Okay, so you're as tall as you are because of genetics and environment.
	And there's no free will at the moment that can alter your height.
	So people don't call into this show saying, Steph, I'm too short.
	Fix it, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Same thing with baldness or, you know, Steph, I can't grow a really great mustache.
	Can you talk my follicles into changing their ways?
	Yeah, I don't have a problem with that, but I can maybe use a bit more hair on top.
	Oh, you have that full-on Middle Eastern, the beard starts like two inches below the eyes?
	No, no, not that bad.
	But, yeah, I got more hair on my face than my head.
	I saw this guy.
	Sorry, this guy had this, like, he was a Middle Eastern guy in my high school.
	And he had this, like, totally low forehead.
	And then he grew a beard, which looked like he was basically, you know, peering through a yak.
	It was just amazing.
	So when people say, I am this way because of my past.
	Mm-hmm.
	Then there's no possibility of changing it, right?
	Yeah.
	Now if people say, my past plus my choices have resulted in who I am, well, then we have something to work with, right?
	Yeah.
	Now I wonder why I did that, why I said, you know, I'm...
	Oh, it's to forgive your parents, right?
	Yeah.
	Because if you are who you are because of your past and nothing could have changed it, right, no choice could intervene, then your parents shouldn't be blamed because they are who they are because of their past.
	Sorry?
	Can I say something?
	Yeah.
	I thought I blamed my dad for being the one who made me feel incompetent by saying I felt incompetent because my dad was lecturing me.
	Well, you talked about your feelings, right?
	But I'm just saying that this is generally why we talk about the past being causal, so that we don't have to get angry at the people who harmed us.
	I'm not saying you don't...
	I'm just saying that's my theory, right?
	I mean, I think that's why it happens.
	I'm not saying...
	I mean, maybe you're the exception to the rule.
	I'm still trying to process what you said.
	I think I just might not have grasped it.
	Okay, well, let me put it to you this way.
	Okay.
	If my dad is short, and that's a good part of the reason as to why I'm short, I can't get mad at my dad, right?
	Agreed, yeah.
	Because it's genetics, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	There's no choice.
	He didn't choose to be short, right?
	Yes.
	I mean, nobody chooses to be short except, I guess, maybe jockeys, right?
	Even they're probably just working with what they've got, right?
	Yeah.
	And so whenever we basically...
	When we geneticize or environmentalize our characters, we are saying that who I am is like height.
	I can be frustrated at being short, but I can't get angry at my dad because he was short too.
	Or even if your dad's tall, you still can't get angry at your dad for being short, right?
	Yeah.
	Right?
	So people say, well, I'm frustrated with who I am.
	But who I am is not the result of anyone's choices.
	It's environment plus...
	Like environment, like no choice environment.
	So I am who I am as the result of environment plus genetics, right?
	I want to say right, but I'm confused because...
	Well, don't if I'm wrong.
	Yeah, no, no.
	I'm not saying you're wrong.
	I'm just...
	I'm frustrated that I'm not processing this because when I mentioned that I felt incompetent because my dad was the one that blamed me, I was still making my dad culpable in a way, but I guess I'm missing something.
	No, no, you're not missing anything.
	I wasn't saying, listen, you're not holding your dad accountable.
	Okay, okay.
	Right?
	You simply gave a, I am this way because of my childhood, right?
	Yeah.
	Statement, right?
	And then I pointed out that that's not accurate because there's choice involved as adults.
	And then you asked me, why would you do that?
	And I said, here's why I think you should do it.
	It wasn't because I was trying to pick on something that you had said about your dad.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah, now I got you, sir.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	All right.
	So if you don't have a strong connection with your parents, then what people make fun of you for is inconsequential.
	They will make fun of you or bully you or something, about something, right?
	So it doesn't matter what they're making fun of you.
	So for you saying, well, I'll change my name, Yeah, if you want to change your name, what do I care, right?
	Yeah.
	But for you to say the problem was my name is an inaccurate diagnosis in my humble opinion.
	That's new to me and that's Zbigniew Brzezinski is a national security advisor, and even he doesn't know how to spell his own name.
	Dude, you're right.
	I mean, there may be four M's, a silent Q, a dryad fart, you know, an ent twig, and some hieroglyphics in there.
	And he is still, I mean, the number of people who've got silly names is Legion, right?
	Yeah.
	So the question is, what do you think was the issue?
	Well, the issue was a lack of connection with your parents.
	I agree.
	I mean, I defooed from my mom before I even knew what defooing meant, because I didn't see any substance in her.
	I didn't see any value in having her around.
	And I still live with my dad, and I'm just too hesitant to...
	Make the call and defoo again and go on my own.
	And I thought that the problem was this name thing and my fear was always becoming visible on social networks again because, you know, I could end up being cyberbullied if people found out that I changed my name.
	So even that was bothering me.
	Right.
	So it hasn't solved the problem, right?
	Yeah, it hasn't solved anything.
	Right.
	And this is, you know, this is the great...
	The illumination of the species is tied into the basic fact that there is no external solution to the problem of insecurity.
	That was poetic.
	No, but it's true.
	There is a huge amount of profit in the world by pretending to people that there is an external solution to the problem of insecurity.
	If I lose this weight, if I have this makeup, if I get this haircut, if I dye my hair, if I have abs, If I have a tan, if I have a car, if I have this amount of money, if I get hair transplants, if I get my teeth whitened,
	if I get this scar removed, if I get this mole removed, if I get a tummy tuck, if I get plastic surgery, if I get these contacts that make my eyes look like alien vampires, if I get my eyebrows to be thinner, if I get my nose hairs plucked, if I get a nose job.
	I could go on and on, right?
	Yeah.
	Mm-hmm.
	If there was a solution to the problem of insecurity, then life would make no sense if there was an external solution.
	You cannot buy or change or move or alter or pay your way into virtue, into self-acceptance, into truth.
	Truth is something you accept.
	It is not something that you buy, right?
	You're right.
	And the truth of the matter is that the problem was not your name.
	Please go on.
	It was a symptom, right?
	And changing the name is changing the symptom, right?
	And when you change the symptom it doesn't solve the problem, right?
	It's what people do.
	They, you know, oh, this girlfriend didn't work out, I'm going to date someone new, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
	Like, so by the time people are in the third marriage, they finally figured out that they may have something to do with marriage failure, and then what they do is they...
	Look at themselves.
	Start to work on themselves, right?
	Start to work on yourself, right?
	Yeah.
	So that means I'm not working on myself, because I'm...
	Oh no, I didn't say you weren't working on yourself.
	I mean, you're listening to this show, you're calling me.
	I didn't say you weren't working on yourself.
	What I'm saying is that the cause of your bullying was not primarily your name.
	That's a revelation to me.
	That is, I mean, yeah, it is.
	It really is.
	Right.
	Now, seriously, if Brad Pitt had your name, right?
	Right.
	And had his, you know, confidence and cool and all that kind of stuff, right?
	His name would become cool.
	You're right.
	And people would be naming their kids after him, right?
	Yeah.
	A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
	Or as Gertrude Stein put it, a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.
	Right?
	And...
	Cool by any other name is still cool and unattached by any name whatsoever remains vulnerable.
	Unattached to the parents remains vulnerable.
	Right.
	So, if it's not the name, what can you do?
	Do you think?
	I was just going to ask you that.
	That's why I knew it.
	That's why I wanted to get in there under the wire.
	Sharp son of a gun stuff.
	Let's see.
	I can confirm my dad and sit and talk about this with him again and tell him that, you know, anytime I brought this up to you, you lectured me instead.
	Would that be valuable at all or...
	I think that the only relationships that exist are based on truth.
	Everything else is just a mutual and isolating delusion.
	Yeah, and my relationship with my dad is so superficial.
	And ever since I found your show, it's been waning.
	I mean, I just...
	Well, and I would urge you to, as I do in general, when people aren't in sort of physical danger, I would urge you to, you know, sit down and really try and connect with your dad, which can be a long-term, bumpy, sometimes frustrating path.
	But I do think that you should try to connect.
	I... I can't be satisfied on one-tenth rations of shitty food for my diet.
	You know, I'm an in-or-out kind of person, and I can't...
	You know, it's a mortality thing, too.
	Like, it's always been pretty conscious of the old death train coming down the tracks kind of thing, right?
	We're all tied to the tracks, so to speak, and the train is coming.
	And I, you know, with my family, I just, you know, after trying for months to connect with them, I just couldn't spend that time anymore.
	Another brunch, another Christmas, another Thanksgiving, another birthday party, another outing of not connecting, not talking, of making noises that sound like conversation, but are actually just a dry fencing of permanent erasure.
	Yes, Steph, I know I have no shot at connecting with my dad.
	I mean, it seems like I'm sort of avoiding the whole thing, basically because I'm financially dependent on him for the most part.
	Well, I mean, that's obviously not inconsiderable, right?
	You don't have to starve to death for the sake of truth.
	I mean, the key thing is, as I said, truth is not something to be bought but to be accepted.
	And wherever we have doubt, we investigate further.
	That's a scientific method, right?
	We generally don't investigate whether gravity exists anymore.
	But where we have doubt, we investigate further.
	Where we have certainty, we do not investigate further.
	Yeah, so I'm certain.
	That's why.
	Well, so if you're certain, then to accept that, I think, is important.
	Because once we accept the limitations of our relationships, then we can move the bar higher, right?
	Right.
	Move the bar higher as in what?
	As in expect more from other relationships that we have or could have in our life, right?
	Why do I keep telling people to raise the standard of their relationships?
	Because that's the only way that you're going to end up monogamous, right?
	Is you keep raising the bar in your relationships.
	That is the only way to remain monogamous because you have to keep expanding your relationships.
	You have to get used to keep expanding your relationships in your life.
	Something somebody said to me when I was a kid, they said, oh, you know, if you don't get married, you might date 10 or 20 people in your life.
	But if you get married and you work at it, you can date a thousand people in your life because you and your partner will be continually changing.
	So we have to get used to.
	My wife and I keep raising the bar in our relationships.
	We keep working on intimacy.
	We keep working on openness.
	And it's a fantastic right.
	Never a dull moment and always a delightful experience.
	And a goofy one, too.
	So the other day, we were someplace where there was...
	It's spring here, and there was a chorus of mating frogs going on outside the window.
	Loud!
	You know, boy, the country.
	Well, we were visiting not always the quietest place in the world.
	So there's this chorus of mating frogs.
	She was reading, and I turned to her and I said, Hey, honey, you know, this frog porn has really got me going.
	And I just jumped out of bed and I sang it.
	Cause I'm cold-blooded, check it and see.
	You can count my babies, they're 103.
	Anyway, you probably don't even know the song.
	It wasn't that bad.
	It's fun, right?
	It's fun and it's continually growing and it's...
	Rich.
	And so when people sort of say at, they stay at like 10 or 20% and they say, well, I can't push my relationship any further, you know, with siblings or with parents or whatever, then I know for a fact that they're never going to have a satisfying or long-lasting marriage.
	Because you can't keep a marriage at 10 or 20%, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	And that's so dissatisfying.
	It's so dissatisfying.
	So I'm telling people, because, look, I want families to be stable, I want parents to be there for their kids, right?
	And the best way to have marriages stable and keep people there for their kids, to raise them in a positive and peaceful manner with enough resources so that the kids get what they need...
	The way that you get that is to have people raise the standards of their relationships.
	And if they're stuck in family or family of origin relationships that are empty and shallow and small talk and boring and so on, then you've got to tell people to raise it.
	And you raise that for the future kids.
	You raise that for the stability of the marriage to come.
	And if parents or siblings or whatever can't keep up...
	You know, for me it was like...
	Why would I sacrifice my relationship with my wife for the sake of people I never even chose to grow up with?
	I just won't do it.
	So this is why I think it's important to really work on continuing to raise the bar in your relationships.
	You keep raising the bar in your relationships and you see who can keep up.
	And you hope that people can keep up and you try and encourage them, of course, to keep up and so on, right?
	But it's sort of like if you want to win the Olympic gold...
	Then, you know, you say you start training with some friend, right?
	And you're really good at it.
	And even your friend maybe is pretty good at it.
	Whatever you're running or whatever.
	And you keep showing up and you're getting better and you're getting noticed and you're getting the best coaches and you're getting sponsors and all that kind of stuff, right?
	And your friend is like, you know, after a year, he's like, you know, I don't want to do this anymore.
	Forget it, right?
	I'm, you know, I'm done.
	I'm just going to run recreationally.
	I was like, that's fine.
	That's fine.
	Fine.
	But then I'm still going to go for the goals.
	If you want to stop training, that doesn't mean I have to stop training.
	I'm still getting up at dawn and running an easy 10k to get ready for whatever it is I'm going to do.
	The fact that other people are willing to give up on excellence should in no way prevent you from pursuing excellence.
	They will try and tempt you with that.
	This is as true in relationships as it is in everything else.
	Freddie Mercury had a band when he was in boarding school in Zanzibar.
	I don't think those guys ever became professional musicians.
	Did he then say, well, you know, I'm not going to become a rock god because you guys aren't that ambitious.
	No!
	Go for the best, go for the deepest, go for the greatest connection.
	If other people don't want to keep up or don't care or don't care enough about themselves or are focused on the afterlife or are too frightened of anything that has any depth, Fine, you know, stay there.
	But I was going to continue going into self-knowledge.
	I was going to continue into connection with others.
	And if the people didn't want to keep up or didn't want to follow me on that, that's fine.
	But that doesn't mean that I have to reduce my ambitions because other people don't want something.
	Right?
	That's like me saying to my wife, would you like a coffee?
	And she says, no.
	And then I say, well, I guess I don't either.
	It's like, that doesn't make it.
	I'll go get myself a coffee, right?
	Does that make any sense?
	Yeah, it does.
	And if you're willing to, sorry, and last thing is, if you're willing to accept low standards for relationships in your life, then you will always be vulnerable to exploitation because people won't be proactively loving you by watching your back.
	Thank you.
	You're going into the armed combat of dealing with the nutjobs of the modern world without any cover, without any airstrikes, without anyone watching your back in radio silence with a rubber water pistol.
	When people really love you, they're constantly scanning the world around you for dangerous people, and they're watching your back, and you're watching their back, and you're going through a little huddle like one of these Roman phalanxes with their shields out.
	You're going through the huddle and getting to where you want to go.
	And people are watching your back because they love you and they care about you, right?
	Mike, you spend a little bit of time watching my back?
	Absolutely.
	And you do the same.
	I watch my back too.
	Nobody watches Mike's back.
	Absolutely not.
	I mean, there's a reason I rail against exploitation, particularly of people you work with.
	Food.
	But no, we do that, right?
	Like we're constantly reminding each other about people we like, people we don't like.
	You contact me about people who are dangerous or crazy or whatever, and we watch each other's back, right?
	Absolutely.
	What else are friends for?
	It's called a tortoise formation, apparently, this Roman thing.
	You'd think it would have taken them a lot longer to make an empire going at that speed, but maybe he means something else.
	So, is your dad, is he proactively watching your back?
	Not at all.
	Right.
	Not at all.
	Yeah, and if you want to achieve anything other than the mediocre, you need people to watch your back.
	You do.
	You need people to watch your back, because there's dangerous people out there.
	And...
	If you don't have people around you who are watching your back, you're going to get bullied and exploited because you can't do the whole job of a tribe yourself.
	You're right.
	And I actually reached out to several of the folks in the community this past week prior to this call and I was incredibly nervous and I just needed to speak to some folks and I think I'm going to be developing some good relationships with some guys on the boards and I'm really proud of myself for that.
	Good.
	And how do you feel about the call now?
	I feel indifferent.
	You feel indifferent, did you say?
	Yeah, I feel indifferent.
	I'm trying to explore why.
	I guess I just see myself as being stuck at the moment, you know, being financially dependent on my dad and still sort being financially dependent on my dad and still sort of isolated and...
	Well, how do you know that the indifference is your feeling?
	I had no idea.
	That's a mindfuck right there, if you could go into that.
	Well, see, philosophy is a mindfuck, which is better than the skullfuck you get from the marine sergeants.
	I'm going to rip out your eyes and skullfuck your brain!
	It's a little different.
	We pour a little wine on it first, and a little Kenny G, a couple of candles, some frogs.
	Anyway...
	So you're saying that indifference is probably my dad's, or what did you...
	Yeah, I mean, so, you know, this raising the standards thing puts you on a collision with those who have low standards, right?
	Yeah.
	And so your dad is like, how keen is your dad about this conversation?
	He has no idea that I'm having it.
	And the irony is that I'm having it in his room right now because the internet connection is better.
	And I dropped like five times before the call and I was nervous.
	Okay, but if your dad was in the conversation listening to this right now, how would he feel?
	he would probably roll his eyes I know that's not a feeling, but he would feel indifferent.
	And what would that indifference be a cover for?
	A cover for the fear that this is the reality and he's not as close to me as he thinks he is.
	Does he think he's close to you?
	Yeah, he thinks he is.
	He thinks he really is.
	Right.
	Right.
	Yeah, so, of course, if I think I'm close to someone and that person doesn't think that they're close to me, then I'm in really bad shape, right?
	Yeah.
	It means I'm really only focusing on myself.
	That's pretty narcissistic, right?
	Yeah.
	I'm having a great time in this relationship, right?
	The other person's miserable and lonely, and it's like, why wouldn't I notice that, right?
	That's really...
	It's one of the worst indictments of a relationship possible, or what's often called a relationship, is one person says they're having a great time, and the other person is having a really bad time, right?
	Yeah, and part of that has to do with...
	My timidity and not actually being assertive with him and telling him where I think he's being abusive or being manipulative or whatnot.
	Hang on, hang on, hang on.
	Do you think that's timidity?
	No, it's actually probably...
	Good insight knowing what would happen.
	Well, no, it's a perfectly natural and healthy and base of the lizard brain human terror, right?
	Of saying to parents, I'm dissatisfied, but the relationship is existentially terrifying.
	It's not timidity, right?
	Yeah.
	You know, it's my timidity with the tiger that made me run away.
	It's like, I know you wanted to live, right?
	And, I mean, in history, what happened to most young adults who rejected their parents or who really criticized their parents?
	What happened in the tribal societies to those people?
	Can you repeat that one more time, please, Steph?
	So, some Stone Age tribe, right?
	Yeah.
	The child, the young adult, the son, proudly stands up and says, I don't believe in the gods of the tribe.
	I think you're all living wrong and we should reformulate along my lines.
	Either he'll be ostracized or they'll do something worse to him.
	We've given you a new hat.
	It's called a giant rock to the skull.
	Wear it well in perpetuity in the desert where the jackals will eat your bones.
	And that's it for your DNA, right?
	Right.
	Right.
	So we have developed, as a species, intense anxiety about bringing honesty to parental relationships, right?
	Correct.
	For two reasons.
	One is the parents usually had the political and economic power, or at least that generation did.
	It's number one.
	And number two, going in opposition to a father who, by definition, was sexually successful would lower your chance of sexual success, right?
	Right.
	I'm trying to process that one.
	So your father had sex with your mom and produced a kid.
	So if you do something that's the opposite of your father, who your mom wanted to have sex with, means that women probably won't want to have sex with you.
	So again, the genes or the emotional instincts to criticize or rebel against parents is sociologically, biologically, genetically extremely hard.
	It goes against...
	Our most fundamental instincts of survival.
	And it's only really possible because we have liberty now in a way that we didn't before.
	I'm sorry, I just wanted to mention something.
	We did get a message back from Cody.
	He apologized that he had to bail.
	Mike, do we want to say why does it matter?
	We've taken his name off, right?
	Yeah, we'll just say he had to go.
	Yeah.
	But he's okay.
	But it wasn't us.
	No.
	It wasn't us.
	So, yeah, so it's not timidity.
	I just really wanted to point that out.
	Yeah.
	Steph, that was incredibly helpful and I'm really grateful to be given this opportunity to speak with you.
	And, you know, I'm going to try and build better relationships and kind of get out of this shell because the better relationships I have...
	I'll have people having my back.
	They'll be interested in how I'm feeling, what I'm thinking.
	I'll just grow as a person and get out of the state that I'm in at the moment.
	Just before we go, and that was a very elegant trapdoor I felt opening up underneath me in the conversation, but the state that you're in right now, what do you want to change so much?
	I want to be financially independent, and at the moment I'm not.
	And a lot of it, that I want to change.
	Okay, good.
	But I think it's always a good plan to have.
	And so I certainly wish you the best of luck.
	There's a good community here, folks.
	You know, lots of caring, thoughtful people.
	And...
	You know, there are meetups.
	You can plan them.
	You can find other listeners in your area.
	The show's big enough now that we will be in most of the major cities in one form or another.
	You know, be proactive.
	Meetup.com.
	We have a...
	Is it slash free domain radio, Mike?
	There's ways that people can organize these things?
	Someone, a listener, just set up free domain radio meetups.com, actually, and has created a blog where she posts information about the meetups that have happened and posts a calendar about upcoming meetups.
	So check that out.
	Oh, I'm sorry.
	I thought it was Free Domain Radio.
	I thought it was...
	I couldn't figure out why they wanted to meet people who delivered packages.
	Anyway, I'll let that one simmer for a bit for those who care to look back at the roadkill of the drive of the show.
	Well, yeah, I wish you the best with that.
	And I think it's a great community.
	And I wish I had the opportunity to get more involved in this community stuff.
	But there are lots of great people out there.
	All right.
	Thank you for your call.
	Mike, any...
	Just run through the speaking announcements real quick.
	The Toronto Domestic Violence Symposium, that's going to be June 6th and 7th in downtown Toronto at University of Toronto, actually.
	It was just moved.
	You can get more information on that and buy your tickets at torontodv.com.
	That's torontodv.com for domestic violence.
	And also, the International Conference on Men's Issues, June 26th through 28th in Detroit, Michigan.
	You can go to avoiceformen.com, avoiceformen.com, and buy your tickets.
	It looks like there's some protests that are going to be going on in conjunction with the International Conference on Men's Issues in Detroit.
	It's looking like it's going to be interesting.
	I wholeheartedly recommend anyone, even anywhere near Detroit, come out to this thing.
	We're going to do some Freedom Main Radio meetup activities as well associated with it.
	I'm going to be there.
	Steph's going to be there, and I know a lot of listeners are coming in for it.
	It's going to be an interesting event for many, many reasons, so you want to be there.
	Naturally, I will be.
	I'm really going to confuse people because I have this sort of goatee beard thing going on, and I'm going to go from...
	I'm going to go in dressed exactly as the guy who won the Eurovision Song Contest.
	So it's going to be quite confusing for the protesters.
	They won't have any clue what to do with me, but that will be, I'm sure, enjoyable.
	I naturally will be singing the song with the full orchestra because I like to put your donation money to the most useless possible tasks imaginable.
	Yeah, thanks again to donators.
	We are going to buy a new camera, the...
	The camera that I have is, oh, I don't even want it.
	It's older than Isabella.
	And it was basically just a camera for general use.
	It's not a consumer camera.
	It's not a broadcast camera.
	So we're going to be getting a new camera.
	And those things run into the thousands.
	So if you could help out, we, of course, hugely appreciate it.
	That's freedomainradio.com forward slash donate or fdurl.com forward slash donate.
	We hugely appreciate it.
	We are going to try and shoot in 4K and then upload it over my cell phone because I have one too many kidneys, according to the cell phone company, and they have found a place And so you will get to see my nose hairs at the atomic level.
	Ooh!
	What could be more exciting?
	Nothing, I would submit.
	48-hour render time.
	I'm looking forward to it.
	Well, it's a 48-hour render time, but at least it's only a four-week upload time, because I'm in Canada.
	So apparently we send bits and bytes strapped to the legs of carrier pigeons.
	Actually, I believe it's passenger pigeons, which is even more...
	You know, that's funny if you know that they became extinct 30 years ago.
	Anyway, 50 years ago.
	So thanks again, Mike.
	Thanks again for the callers.
	We will be back on Saturday night.
	And yes, I will be dancing to the new camera.
	And thanks again to the guy who allowed us to publish The Dangers of Dating a Supermodel.
	And to all the people who threw Bitcoin at me for showing my tits.
	Always appreciated.
	And man boobs for the win, as always.
	So have a great week, everyone.
	Thanks again.

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