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June 5, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

03:28:34

2715 No One Left Behind - Wednesday Call In Show June 4th, 2014

How do you overcome the fear of rejection? What is the morality of accepting a pension after an eighteen year career in the military? How can one overcome the anxiety associated with big goals or dreams? Stefan Molyneux breaks down the myth of the independent soldier, why success is connection and leaving no one behind.

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	Good evening everybody.
	Stefan Molyne from Freedom Main Radio coming at you live in 3D. High definition, new camera.
	So extreme, so powerful, so foundational that willing experiments in the hunter follicle Mad Hunt of Mankind had been able to find 11 to 12 stragglers on the top of my head.
	That's how high definition the camera is.
	For those of you who never knew I had freckles and nose hairs, oh yeah.
	We're upgraded, baby.
	Thank you so much for the donators.
	We got, what?
	A Canon Vixia HFG30. Because I thought the G29 just sucked.
	But yeah, it's very cool.
	It records AVHD and MP4, which is of course, you know, the number of USB drives we have to buy to keep the source footage from the other cameras was ridiculous.
	So, yeah, so really it's a nice camera and I think we basically, we're never touching it, right?
	We've got this.
	I spent all day yesterday fighting around with settings.
	I think we've got them just right.
	So thank you so much.
	You can check this out on YouTube if you have an interest too, but thanks to all the donators.
	FDRURL.com forward slash donate if you would like to help out for these kinds of things.
	But basically Mike and I are just through conduits.
	We grab a few dollars from the...
	Slow, lazy river of money going from donators to improvements to the show, and this is one of them, so I hope that you like it.
	So, Mike, did you have anything to add?
	I guess we'll be talking Friday.
	I'll be talking Friday in Toronto, and we've got Detroit in a couple of weeks.
	Anything else going on?
	No, nothing huge is going on right now other than the two upcoming events.
	And I'll remind people as well, if you want to check out our new podcast application, get access to all the past Free Domain Radio podcasts, searchable features, all that fun stuff, all the feeds, go to fdrpodcast.com, fdrpodcast.com.
	It's pretty cool.
	Major thanks to Kevin and James for their work on that.
	And other than that, I think that's it.
	Oh, also, I would like to send out a message in a bottle to the people from the Netherlands.
	Mike might not let me go to the Netherlands.
	I decided to give a speech.
	Now, given that Mike was integral to the design of the studio, and sadly, it locks from the outside, so you might consider this a plea for help.
	I guess I'll have to do all the uploading here so it doesn't get edited out by my captors.
	But it's okay, because I'm sure that eventually I will be traded For Al-Qaeda members by the Obama administration.
	But yeah, so I got invited in September to go and speak in the Netherlands.
	If you're in the Netherlands and would like to sort of have a meetup or whatever, then email Mike.
	And Mike, what is the number of people who need to email you in order for you to give me permission to go to Europe?
	How many people live in the Netherlands?
	Well, you see, I'm happy to go and find out.
	But that's sort of a circular problem, isn't it?
	If you're interested, you're in the area, you want to see stuff in the Netherlands, send me an email, let us know, and we'll see.
	We'll see if it's going to happen.
	All right.
	Okay, so who do we have up first?
	All right, up first today is Stuart.
	Stuart wrote in and said, I fear rejection so much that I rarely attempt anything that I desire.
	How do I overcome this fear of rejection?
	Well, Stuart, let me tell you, I'm hugely relieved that we finally have a man on the show.
	That...
	I feel like a pinball bouncing around boobs, so it's really nice to have some of the other equipment on the show.
	So, can you give me an example of what kind of rejection is happening and what's going on?
	Sure, sure, sure.
	First, Stefan, I'd like to compliment your great posture in your Skype photograph.
	I'm looking at it, and it looks quite impressive and regal.
	But that aside, the type of fear, I believe, it's quite visceral, and And even though I may have a logical understanding that it's made up perhaps, I still feel it.
	And it would simply be whenever I encounter someone and they're anything less than happy, for some deep-rooted reason, I automatically assume it has something to do with me.
	It has something to do with their displeasure with me, you know, being mad at me.
	Even if I know it's completely...
	It's illogical.
	I still get that visceral emotional stress response.
	And it keeps me from doing a lot of things in life.
	Yeah, I can imagine.
	I can imagine.
	Now, you said a lot of things that were very honest, and I appreciate that, but enormously incorrect, I think.
	Okay.
	And that's good, right?
	Because, I mean, if you had it all down, right, had it all down, there wouldn't much be point in calling in.
	So, you seem to have this idea that you don't know where it came from.
	And I don't think emotions are that mystifying or complicated.
	And you also said that it's irrational, which is a very interesting approach to your emotions.
	So, there are a couple other things, but those are the two things I'd like to focus on.
	And the reason being that this is a very common error, and an error that I have made in my life as well.
	So, let's start with the first one.
	Sure, sure.
	So, when people are upset, you think it's about you, and you sort of frame this like it was kind of a little paranoid, or a little self-involved, or a little narcissistic, or, you know, I'm sort of putting words in or whatever, right?
	But why would you assume that?
	Why would you assume that it's not completely correct at some point?
	Why would you assume that the origins would be either mysterious or incorrect?
	I would say that there's no base of reference to why they could possibly be upset or angry with me.
	It's just that feeling that I get.
	And many times in my life-- - No, no, no, no, no.
	No, no, sorry.
	We're talking about the past, right?
	Not the present.
	Okay, okay.
	Right?
	So why would you think that the origins were both, were either mysterious or irrational?
	Okay, well I guess, you know, there's certainly not, in that sense, regarding the past, you're right, they're not irrational based upon my past.
	And they're not actually quite mysterious.
	You know, of course, the nature of the show into our childhood.
	And based upon my childhood, it's actually completely reasonable, I suppose you could say, as to where these feelings come from.
	The problem I have is the emotional triggers is what are holding me back.
	You know, my ability to break free from that.
	No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
	You gave me some framing for the discussion, right?
	Okay.
	Okay, so let's not start talking about emotional triggers because you gave me context as to why, as to the problem that you have.
	And you said it was basically mysterious in origin and irrational in the present.
	Okay.
	And so I really want to sort of stop and focus on that because the language that we use is very important in the problems that we solve.
	Like if I'm trying to solve a mathematical problem with Colors, I'm not going to get very far, right?
	Certainly.
	If I'm trying to write a novel with numbers, you have to have the right tools for the job.
	And words are tools.
	Words are weapons, sharpen the knives.
	And so you have brought this problem to me And I'm sorry to be grinding on this point, but it really is important.
	I hope you'll accept that, you know, if not now, at least in a few minutes.
	Certainly.
	Mysterious in origin and irrational.
	I would argue that the problem you have is not anxiety or fear of rejection.
	The problem you have is that you say that it is mysterious in origin and irrational.
	Okay.
	Bye.
	Thank you.
	I don't imagine that it is mysterious in origin, is it?
	No, it is not.
	Okay.
	And we'll talk about that in a second, but first I just want to understand why you would approach it with me as if it was mysterious in origin.
	I'm not criticizing.
	Please understand.
	I'm not saying you did anything wrong or anything bad.
	No, no.
	Absolutely not.
	I believe it was my inability to communicate then.
	Because before this call, and I'm completely candid with you, I want to share everything.
	I think it was just my poor choice of words, my poor representation.
	That is not correct.
	No, because you did communicate very clearly that it was mysterious in origins.
	Do you want me to tell you why you did that?
	Please do.
	Please do.
	Because it wasn't actually you who was describing your problem.
	It was your parents who were describing your problem.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	Because you would have been criticized and rejected, I would assume, and you know, correct me if I'm off base, by your parents.
	Absolutely.
	Right.
	Now, parents who criticize and reject their children end up with children who are fearful of rejection, right?
	And what do they say?
	Its origins are very mysterious and it's irrational, right?
	Parents who harm children always love to proclaim when those children grow up that the origins of the problem are mysterious.
	Who knows how I could have ended up this way?
	Who knows how my child could have ended up this way?
	It's a mystery, right?
	This is bothering you?
	No, no, not at all.
	Well, what is it?
	How is it affecting you?
	I'm sorry, are you saying this conversation or fear, the topic we're discussing?
	No, how is what we're talking about affecting you?
	No, it's relating.
	I'm relating to it.
	Um, uh, it's, you know, the, this, this, the statement you made of, you know, coming from my parents.
	Sure.
	Absolutely.
	I haven't spoken to my mother in quite a long time.
	I have a shallow relationship at best with my father, and most definitely my mother's The speech to the rest of the family is she doesn't know where this, you know, our tumultuous relation comes from.
	She doesn't know the origin of it.
	I mean, she certainly does.
	But, you know, so perhaps I'm parroting, you know, that defense.
	Right.
	Right.
	So parents say, I don't know why my child is this way.
	My child is irrational.
	And parents, so often, that's the end of the inquiry for most people, right?
	I mean, that's only the beginning of the inquiry to me, right?
	So, first of all, if the origins are irrational, that doesn't make much sense for parents to say, right?
	Because the child is a product of the parents.
	It's not exclusively and there's elements of choice and blah-de-blah-de-blah.
	But basically, when you're young, you are as much a product of your parents as a painting is a product of a painter, right?
	Correct.
	And so basically the painter is saying about the painting, I have no idea where this came from.
	And it's crazy.
	Right?
	The painting is twisted and tortured.
	Look, there's a nun biting the head of a crocodile while being anally raped by Catgirl.
	What kind of crazy shit is in this painting?
	I don't know where it came from and it's really weird and disturbing.
	I mean, if you had a painter Who hung this kind of crazy stuff in a gallery and then said, I have no idea where these paintings came from and they really are irrational and crazy and disturbing and twisted.
	What would you think of such a painter?
	I think they've not been in touch with reality.
	Yeah, they're crazy.
	They're really crazy.
	And so anybody with eyes to see, which is very few of us tragically, but you know, getting better every day, the painter is obviously not describing his paintings.
	He is describing himself, right?
	Correct.
	When a parent says about a child's dysfunction, I don't know where that came from, what the parent is really saying is, I don't know why I did these terrible things to my child.
	It's not the origin of the child's dysfunction.
	It's the origin of the parent's abusive behavior that remains mysterious.
	And it remains mysterious, so knowledge, self-knowledge does not interfere with sadism.
	If you really want to be a sadist, if you really want to crush and hurt your child, the last goddamn thing you want to do is empathize with your own childhood, right?
	That really...
	Cock blocks your sadist rape, right?
	Yes.
	So, people who are resolutely against self-knowledge are against it because they want to be able to continue to be cruel and sadistic and Vent their horrors on their child rather than deal with those horrors themselves, right?
	I mean, abusive people are against self-knowledge like thieves are against security cameras, right?
	It interferes with getting the job done of being cruel, right?
	So when parents say, well, I'm sorry, go ahead.
	I'm saying that the benefit they get out of that is releasing their pent-up tension or whatever it is on the nearest victim, which children, unfortunately, are often that victim.
	Well, you say it's unfortunate like it's an accident.
	But I don't think it's an accident.
	I mean, people have children for the same reason that people about to throw up grab a garbage can.
	You need something to vomit into.
	Having children to act as your poison container is the main reason why there are people in the world, I believe.
	Really?
	I mean, given the way that parents treat their children in general, even in the West, let alone in other, even more horrendous cultures.
	I mean, people don't have children because they wish to share the joys and the glories and the benefits and the happiness and the love and the intimacy of existence.
	They have children because...
	Hot rocks were placed in their hands by their parents and they need some more helpless being to carry them and burn and burn and burn.
	So that's sort of the first part when parents say, I don't know the origins of, you know, parents are saying, I don't know the origins of this guy's fear of rejection.
	It's a complete mystery!
	And then when they're saying, The child's dysfunction is irrational, they're saying I'm irrational.
	Like if a painter says, the paintings I produce are weird and creepy and twisted, what is the painter really saying?
	That he or she is weird, creepy and twisted.
	Exactly.
	And any painter who says these weird paintings, I don't know where they came from, but they're really disturbing.
	And I think Any painter who says that is clearly describing himself in a completely dissociated way.
	And that's why I said when you began talking about it that almost everything you said was incorrect.
	Because it was your parents' defenses about your dysfunction that you were telling me as if they were your thoughts, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	I'm still talking to them, right?
	Because you're giving me these mm-hmms, which are basically fuck yous, right?
	No, no, no.
	I'm actually...
	I'm quite emotional right now.
	I know I'm not perhaps expressing it, but I'm...
	I'm really attempting to reconnect with that time and I'm shaking right now.
	Okay, well tell me a little bit about what kind of criticisms you experienced at the hands of your parents when you were a child.
	Well, could I get into the actual rejection end or do you want the verbal end?
	or?
	Whatever works for you, whatever is at the top of your emotional roller coaster.
	Sure.
	It's a long story.
	I'll try to give the best abbreviated version I can in that my parents were married.
	They were married for about five years in their early 20s.
	They had me.
	They were separated or divorced within a year of my birth.
	Both parents remarried within five years.
	Both started new families and more or less throughout my childhood Excuse me?
	I was basically just kicked back and forth between the two households, as if, you know, the extra baggage unwanted in either home.
	You know, step-parents didn't want me around.
	And more or less, I was out of my own at 16.
	Wow.
	Did you have half siblings?
	Yes.
	On both sides.
	And how did they get along with you?
	They were much younger.
	On my mother's side, almost five years younger.
	On my father's side, eight and nine years younger.
	So they more or less, you know, we weren't at the age of developing a relationship.
	I have great relationships with them all now.
	And it's actually, we came to find out that my parents often would try to pin us against one another, you know, set us up against each other.
	And it wasn't until I became an adult that I was aware of that.
	Right.
	Right.
	And so did you, I mean, what was your coping strategy for this horror show?
	Well, my mother, my father was the verbally abusive one and my mother was the physically abusive one.
	At an early age, I learned that Even in kindergarten was the first time I got into a physical fight.
	At an early age, I learned to use violence as a coping mechanism and verbal abuse from my father.
	So often when confronted with confrontation, I would use violence or verbal abuse as my shield and armor.
	Sorry, you would use that?
	I would.
	Yeah, I would.
	I was non-aggressive, but certainly if I was infringed upon in any way, I would be immediately ready for battle.
	I moved a lot as a child also from bouncing back between households.
	I went to seven different schools in five different years.
	Naturally, being the new student, you're an easy target.
	However, as soon as someone would approach me, aggressive towards me, try to bully me, I'd probably kick their ass.
	That's typically what happened.
	Unfortunately...
	What do you mean kick their ass?
	Well, I mean the first time it happened, I remember being bullied and made fun of and mocked and pushed around in maybe middle school and I ended up like Punching the bully and like pushing him down a flight of stairs.
	And at that point, you know, of course he was afraid of me.
	So, you know, that was how I was able to cope and defend myself.
	You pushed him down a flight of stairs?
	Yeah.
	How old was he?
	We were both about 12 or 13.
	And it was one of these sort of school stairs?
	No carpets, right?
	Correct, yeah.
	You were lucky you didn't really harm him, right?
	Absolutely.
	Look, I'm not defending the guy.
	I mean, he was a bully and all that.
	No, absolutely.
	I'll say with pride that, you know, once I moved out, you know, at that young age was when I started to really see myself.
	I mean, now I have no taste for violence whatsoever.
	But, you know, being in those environments, I mean, these were the examples set before me.
	My mother, she was very violent, you know, using implements, you know, hitting me and my brother quite violently.
	So, you know, this was the behavior I learned at home.
	Sorry, do you mean brother or stepbrother?
	I'm sorry, half-brother, half-brother.
	Half-brother, okay.
	And as I mentioned, you know, and also, you know, you bring up, like, hitting of children.
	So the very first time I was ever reprimanded in school for hitting...
	I was four years old.
	I was in kindergarten.
	Every single year, from kindergarten up until maybe into high school, with the exception of fifth grade, I got into a physical altercation.
	And the very first one was in kindergarten at four years old.
	And what that leads me to believe is that if I'm using physical violence at that age, where did I learn this from?
	I mean, I would have to believe it was used upon me to use physical violence as a sort of conflict resolution.
	Yeah, let me give you a general and helpful rule, which is whatever your parents did to you at 8, they did 10 times to you at 2.
	And 20 times to you at 1.
	Wow.
	That's my belief.
	Can I prove it?
	Of course not.
	But that is my, I think, very rational assumption.
	So, do you not remember when you were 4 at home?
	Unfortunately, much of my childhood I've really blocked out.
	When I see pictures, when people have discussions, perhaps it can spark a memory, but to just recall memories, I only have several snapshots.
	I really think I've repressed a lot of it.
	Well, it could be.
	I mean, it could also be damage from being hit, right?
	Sure.
	Trauma, I think, also interferes with our capacity to Generate and sustain long-term memories.
	It's not just like it's all there and repressed.
	Again, I'm no expert, but I think it has an effect on our capacity to retain.
	So at what age can you begin to remember things more?
	Well, you know, I'll say like around four or five, I have just a few memories of being alone, you know, without my family around.
	But I would say around five, first grade, is when my memories are better.
	Do you remember being hit by your mom at that time?
	Oh, absolutely.
	She was extremely violent.
	Screaming, mercilessly, hitting 20, 30 times within a minute or two until she was out of breath.
	Screaming, violently shrieking.
	I'm so sorry.
	I know.
	I know the scenario.
	My mom was the same way.
	You can relate.
	Oh, I can relate.
	Yeah, because the terror of a violent parent out of control...
	I mean, it's why there are Godzilla movies.
	It's why there are Comet Hitting the Earth movies.
	It's why there are giant sea monster movies.
	You know, nothing that big exists in the real world.
	But when parents are out of control...
	The existential terror that that creates in children is, I think, one of the most primal forces driving society as a whole.
	Because you don't know.
	You know now that you lived through it.
	You sure as shit didn't know at the time that you were going to live through it.
	And you don't, I mean, people who've not experienced that, and I don't mean to speak for you, of course, but if you've not gone through something like that, Then you don't know what it's like to be on the receiving end of somebody who is desperately striving to seek satisfaction through brutality.
	You don't know what it's like to be on the receiving end of sadism, of somebody whose happy, happy, joy, joy center lights up when harming a child.
	And people who've not been on the receiving end of that should really shut up about stuff that they don't understand.
	I mean, feel free to ask questions, of course, right?
	But I assume your mother, right?
	I mean, she was attempting to achieve some sort of grim...
	Ungodly, bloody satisfaction out of her cruelty.
	Some mastery over an emerging and moral human soul.
	When you realize that your caregiver is deriving intense, possibly orgasmic satisfaction over battering you, you really cannot ever feel safe In that person's presence ever again.
	Ever again.
	You know, the last time I spoke with my mother was in her presence was a few years ago.
	And I don't remember exactly the nature of the conversation or what happened, but it started escalating.
	She raised her voice.
	And I didn't even think about this.
	I immediately said, what are you going to do, hit me?
	And that was just my response because I believe that's just what naturally came after the yelling.
	I mean, here I am a grown man, and it's just ingrained in me that after the verbal abuse comes the physical assault.
	Yeah, but she didn't, did she?
	No, no.
	You know why, right?
	I'm 200 pounds now.
	Yeah, you're a big boy now.
	Look at that.
	Now that you're bigger, she has magically learned self-restraint.
	Oh!
	Isn't that amazing?
	now that there are consequences to beating a boy, now that the boy has become a man the bitch keeps her hands in her pockets and only launches the ice magic of verbal abuse, right?
	Yeah, female sadism is at the icy root of so many of the world's problems that is so unacknowledged
	This is to me why women, when women pretend to be victims in the world, I don't want to eclipse our conversation with a rant, but it is so deeply offensive to so many hundreds of millions of us Who were victims of extreme female sadism as little boys and little girls.
	The idea that women bleat around and cry, victim, victim, victim.
	The world is so dangerous for women!
	Fuck!
	Try being one of these bitches' kids and see what kind of patriarchy we had access to.
	So I'm incredibly sorry for what you experienced.
	Thank you.
	So the question is, why are you still experiencing it?
	Why is the bitch winning?
	That's what I'm trying to figure out.
	That's why I'm here.
	And how old are you now?
	33.
	So it's time, right?
	Certainly.
	It's time to let this shit go, right?
	Certainly.
	I believe maybe when I was in my mid-20s was when I really started addressing this stuff.
	I started seeking therapy or a psychiatrist maybe when I was 18.
	I knew I had a problem early on, severe depression.
	I was thrown on antidepressants and pills and sent on my way.
	And I actually believe that that was it, you know, chemical imbalance.
	And no, you know, as you put it, no circumstantial evidence was even considered.
	It wasn't until maybe my mid-20s when I really started to, I guess, really become aware that, you know, this is more environmental than biological.
	And I started to address these issues.
	I basically locked myself into isolation for about five or six years.
	I mean, I would work six months, 100 hours a week, and then the next six months, I wouldn't leave my room, wouldn't leave my house, have food ordered to my house.
	I mean, it was a very miserable existence.
	Okay, I got to interrupt you because you're giving me a narrative.
	That I vehemently disagree with.
	And that doesn't mean that you're wrong.
	I just don't want to pretend to listen when I'm rebelling against what you're saying, if you don't mind.
	Okay.
	Please.
	Yeah, I appreciate it.
	Okay.
	So if you want to try and get to the emotional truth of childhood victimization, of this level of astonishing sadistic abuse, think rape victim.
	I'm not saying that it's the same or whatever, but it's really important to break through the defenses, right?
	So let's say I had been brutally raped by a couple of guys.
	Would I say I had a problem?
	Would I say the issue, the issue appeared to be environmental.
	When I say environmental, you know, I simply, you know, one of the analogies you made was that in one of your previous podcasts was, you know, it one of the analogies you made was that in one of your previous podcasts was, you know, it would be ridiculous for a Holocaust survivor to then state that they have, you know, I have social anxiety disorder.
	Meanwhile, you know, look what they just went through.
	And I believe that that's what I was trying to communicate, that it wasn't based upon, you know, biological issues.
	It's based upon, you know, the trauma inflicted upon me.
	I mean, you were irradiated with evil, right?
	And I had no one.
	You know, it wasn't just being irradiated with evil.
	I was completely isolated from family.
	I'm sorry, say again?
	So between all of this going on, as I mentioned, being balanced back and forth between one family to the other, not being wanted in either because my father had his Happy household with his new wife and children.
	My mother had her in the household.
	No, listen, listen, listen.
	We're getting back into story time, right?
	You could email me this stuff.
	Sure, sure.
	Which means that we're not communicating at the moment, right?
	Okay.
	So, you were the victim of repeated, sadistic, multi-year assaults.
	All uncontrolled assaults on a child are attempted murder in that it can so easily happen, right?
	Sure.
	I never know what you do when you give me these monosyllables.
	I find them quite annoying.
	I apologize.
	No, don't apologize.
	I'm just telling you.
	You may be doing nothing wrong, but it's just like I'm giving you some truth bombs and you're like, uh-huh, yeah, sure.
	I'm attempting just to remain composed here.
	Do not attempt to remain composed!
	Do you want to solve the problem or not?
	No, I do.
	Okay, so stop trying to be composed.
	Do I bother about remaining composed?
	No, and I appreciate your energy.
	I do.
	Okay, so give me some heart, brother.
	Certainly.
	A torturer wishes to get information out of you, we assume, and when the torturer gets the information out of you, then the torture or your life is over, right? then the torture or your life is over, right?
	Yes.
	Yes.
	In the movie with Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster, The Hannibal Lecter movie, Silence of the Lambs.
	There's that creepy guy who kidnaps women to get their skin, right?
	It puts its lotion on the skin, right?
	So then when he gets...
	Right?
	When the skin is soft enough, he kills the woman and the torture is over, right?
	But when you have a sadistic mother...
	There's no information that you can give her that will make her stop assaulting you, right?
	Right.
	She never gets enough of a skin suit to put you out of your fucking misery, right?
	Right.
	There is no end to the sadistic joy that she takes out of putting on her spiked metal gloves, grabbing your balls in your heart and squeezing them until they pop into another dimension of pure hatred.
	right?
	You know, the most confusing part was How she would behave this way and then immediately turn around and tell us how much she loved us.
	That was the craziest part.
	Okay, let me tell you how that's not crazy.
	Let me tell you how that's not crazy.
	That is exactly what brainwashers do.
	They torture you and they tell you that they love you because they wish for you to associate love With torture, love with masochism.
	They wish for you to bond with their evil, which is why they always attempt to redefine love.
	So after the torture ends, your body gets flooded with endorphins as relief for the end of the assault.
	And at that time, they choose to try and commit the bond into your spine, right?
	Because these bitches never want you to get away from their abuse, right?
	And so they will tell you that they love you to cement the Stockholm Syndrome.
	Like the man who beats up his wife brings her flowers.
	That night, the next morning, you name it.
	He is always attempt to get the endorphins of ending the abuse, replace a positive attachment to a loving person.
	Look, I stopped trying to murder your soul.
	your flood of gratitude I will now harvest as a love that will bond you to the rotating tit blades of my evil motherhood from here to eternity.
	And you're trying to stay composed, right?
	Right.
	It's your parents who want you to stay composed.
	I'm shaking right now.
	Well, I don't imagine that many people bear witness to the evils that you suffered, right?
	No.
	What did your stepfathers do?
	So...
	At the time I was 13, and I guess I can think of one of the first times I was big enough and strong enough to really defend myself to my mom.
	That's about when that kind of stopped, but that's when my stepdad started in.
	That's when his violence started.
	He actually was a terrible, terrible man.
	He was an alcoholic.
	He used methamphetamine.
	On one occasion, when I was about 15, He started hitting me, and I defended myself.
	And my mother called the police, and the police showed up.
	And they weren't going to do anything.
	They were content with just leaving.
	And I begged them to take me somewhere, whether it be like Child Protective Services or something.
	I said, I can't stay here.
	I'm not safe.
	And, you know, he said, he's like, the only...
	He said, the only place I could take you is to Juvenile Hall.
	And I said, let's So here I am like 15 or 16 years old.
	I get taken to a prison.
	I get strip searched.
	I get thrown in a cell.
	But I was actually safer there than I was at the house.
	And the next day I was released because I wasn't charged with anything.
	I didn't do anything.
	My parents came there to collect me.
	But that's how I felt.
	That was the environment.
	I don't think that that's true, that the only place the policeman could take you was juvenile hall.
	I mean, there are shelters for abuse victims.
	There are foster homes.
	There are, I mean, there's a whole Child Protective Services funding and money and all that.
	So I don't think he was telling you the truth, in fact.
	What do I know?
	Well, that's why when I asked him to take me somewhere, that's what I believe.
	Like, you know, Child Protective Services are somewhere.
	Somewhere where I'd be at least looked after with some decency.
	I was only a child.
	No, but basically the policeman joined in, right?
	I mean, expecting policemen who are generally the products of child abuse to effectively deal with the victims of child abuse is literally like putting a vampire in charge of the blood bank.
	That's when I left.
	Right after that's when I left.
	Right.
	Yeah, when I first fought back, my mother called the cops as well, and the cops gave me a big lecture about something called the generation gap.
	Right.
	You know, it's really important because, you know, sorry, I'm getting an echo.
	It's driving me crazy.
	Did something change?
	Mike, can you hear anything?
	Yeah, it's coming through Stuart's side.
	Yeah, Stuart, did you change anything?
	No, I'm wearing headphones.
	Can you turn them down at all?
	No, that's better.
	Okay.
	Is it okay now?
	Yeah, no, I think it's important for cops because, you know, when a woman calls the cops and says that she's been raped, the cops show up and the rapist is still there and she's got bruises and they say, well, you got to stay here because all that you have is a romance gap.
	You have a romance gap between you and this guy, so I'm just going to leave you and work it out.
	Oh, and if the woman says, you've got to take me away because he's going to rape me if you leave, and the cops say, well, yeah, but we can only put you in jail.
	It's like, well, isn't he the rapist?
	Hasn't he been doing the illegal stuff?
	Well, but you have to come with us to jail.
	So it's really important that you try and get along with your rapist, right?
	I begged to go to jail.
	I begged him to take me.
	I didn't care.
	Right.
	And of course, nobody asks, right?
	Did any of your teachers in the 15 years that you were in government schools fighting for a good portion of those, did any of the teachers ever say, hey, I wonder where this little kid learned how to punch people?
	No.
	No.
	And my parents would sit there and say the same things.
	I don't know where he learned this from.
	Oh, my goodness.
	Oh my God.
	I don't know where these paintings came from.
	And you know, like, fuck you, humanity.
	I'm sorry.
	I just, I got to rant for a sec because this, I just feel so strongly about this.
	Like, fuck you.
	You assholes who just let children drift through this hell of childhood.
	And look the other way, because you don't want to be inconvenienced, because you don't want to confront abusive parents.
	Fuck you, everyone.
	As I've said before on this show, nobody ever called the cops when I was getting the shit beaten out of me.
	The only time everyone called the cops was when I was having a party.
	Suddenly, oh, are there sounds of happiness coming from that place?
	Call the cops!
	A child screaming in fear and agony, fuck him!
	Oh, is that fun?
	Are there women there?
	Call the cops!
	Cops came by and said, well, it's not that loud.
	I don't know why everyone's calling.
	Because the child is having fun and the child is not being abused.
	So now everybody wants to call the cops.
	Any anonymous call could have literally saved my life because I could have been killed by that woman pretty much every day of the week and twice on Sundays.
	And this is what is so insane of people who survived this lurid, often estrogen-fueled hellscape, is that when you live in hell and everyone around is turning into molten flames of pure moral shit,
	But they keep pinning these sad-ass, three-feathers, droopy angel wings on their shoulders and flutter around saying, "Look! We're good! We're good! We're good!
	What a lovely society we are!" We take care of people!
	We love children!
	I'm gonna get sentimental over long-distance commercials.
	It's my grandson's birthday.
	It's Mother's Day!
	When you see through the veil Of social, self-congratulatory, moral bullshit!
	When you have lived in the hellscape of being brutalized by a caregiver and no one talks about it and no one does anything about it and you're the one who gets punished.
	You're the one who gets punished as a child for doing what you've been taught to do.
	It's literally like society says, two and two make four, two and two make four, two and two make four, right?
	Two and two make four, two and two make four, two and two make four.
	Four is two and two.
	What's two and two make?
	Four.
	Bam!
	What do you mean you said two and two makes four?
	Fuck you, kid.
	Detention for you.
	Because you get hit, you get bullied, you get hit, you get bullied, and then you hit and you bully and the school is like, fuck you, kid.
	Detention for you.
	When you have seen what it's like to be a victim, a helpless victim in society, society is revealed as a twisted hellscape society is revealed as a twisted hellscape of child torture and the enablers of child torture.
	How the fuck did my mom know she could get away with everything that she did?
	Because she did, and she could.
	And still, years later, after I've gone public with the abuse, people will still, if I run into them, how's your mother?
	Still.
	You have no idea of the shit people say to me, well, she's your mother, and that because she's my mother, that I should forgive her of all this abuse.
	When I argue that she is my mother, she should be held to a higher standard.
	She should be more responsible than just some stranger.
	Can I tell you?
	What I said to someone who gave me that she's your mother argument?
	Please do.
	Someone said to me, Steph, but she's your mother.
	And I said, yes she is!
	And that's why she's not fucking dead now.
	The bond was strong enough that I didn't fucking kill her.
	And that's my forgiveness.
	But the idea that I'm going to go and cut her birthday cake?
	That's insane.
	I have to see her.
	I'm going to my grandmother's in a few months and I have to see her and it's terrifying the hell out of me.
	She'll be there and I don't even know what to do.
	I mean, I'm contemplating not even going.
	I'm going to visit my grandmother in a few months who And she did defend me through all this.
	She was the only person that stuck up for me through all this time.
	Is it your grandmother on your mother's side?
	Yes.
	So she created your mother.
	Didn't you get the whole painting thing we were just talking about?
	Oh, absolutely.
	She created my mom.
	Absolutely.
	So, help me to understand why...
	My grandmother, again, I know how you feel about excuses.
	My grandmother was in an arranged marriage at 16, had my mother at 17, and it was a disaster.
	She's in her 70s now, and as long as I've ever known her, she's been nothing but a wonderful person to me.
	So for me to, you know, associate...
	Oh, so she's acknowledged your abuse?
	Oh, absolutely.
	She supports me not talking to my mother.
	When the rest of my family gives me the whole, she's your mother thing, she says, I know how you feel about her and you shouldn't talk to her.
	That's how you feel.
	So why are you going when your mom's going to be there?
	Wait, are you saying that your grandmother knows that you're going to visit when your mom is there?
	No, my mother lives in the vicinity.
	And my mother will certainly come.
	She tries to reach out to me often, and I just refuse to speak with her.
	And I just know...
	Wait, wait, wait.
	But why would your mom know that you were there?
	I'm going to be having like an orthopedic surgery, and I'm going to be with my grandmother for several months.
	So she's just heard it through the family.
	Right.
	Well, you tell your grandmother that your mom can't come over.
	Right?
	You need some support here.
	You need somebody to be on your side.
	This woman brutally assaulted you for many years, hit you with implements 20-30 times in a row.
	Of course she can be in the house with you.
	So you say to your grandmother, no, she can't come over.
	I appreciate the support.
	Thank you so much.
	Been great if you did a little bit more for me when I was a kid.
	It'd be great if I could have come and lived with you guys rather than staying where I did.
	But, you know, she can't...
	No, she can't, obviously, right?
	I mean, your grandmother understands, right?
	She completely understands.
	Okay, so that's what...
	I mean, this is...
	You know, you'll cure your feelings of being rejected when you do some fucking rejecting of your own, right?
	I've been slowly building up the strength to stand up.
	And what you said before, that statement of, you know, that's why she's not dead, because she's my mother.
	That's how I feel.
	And I've never said that.
	I'm like, that's how I feel.
	It's exactly how I feel.
	You know, all the people, I mean, the people are shocked by that.
	But that just means that they have no empathy for the victims of such severe abuse.
	And people are like, he just talked about, you know, it's like, well, yeah, I mean, you know, when people try, like when people abuse you and harm you in your formative years, for years, you develop murderous rage towards them.
	It would be insane to not do that.
	I mean, that is humanity.
	That is having even a vague sense of self-respect and pride.
	It's the people who beat you up for years, you develop murderous rage towards them.
	Try beating a dog for years and see what the fuck happens.
	The same thing with human children.
	We're just mammals too, right?
	Stefan, for years, I have repetitive homicidal nightmares.
	Years where people were trying to kill me, waking up in sweats, and I didn't realize where they were coming from until...
	I disassociated with my mother, and then on one or two occasions, whether it would be she spoke to me on the phone or something happened where I thought of her, and then the nightmares would start up again for days, and I made the connection of what it was coming from.
	Yeah, no, with me it was just insomnia.
	I couldn't sleep, and I had abusers around me.
	And it just became psychological survival after a while.
	You work on self-knowledge until you become vulnerable enough that abusers are completely intolerable to you.
	Like at a physical level, like even if you wanted to, you couldn't, right?
	And look, I mean, I understand your grandmother had it rough.
	Your mom had it rough.
	I get that.
	I really do.
	And I've got a whole podcast on this More than one, in fact.
	So the point is, it doesn't matter.
	It doesn't matter how rough your parents had it.
	And this is a pure consequentialist argument.
	I've made the other arguments at different times, so I'm not going to repeat them here.
	Whatever excuse we give for others, we accept for ourselves.
	The moment we say, well, my mom had it rough and therefore it was okay that she was vicious and sadistic or it was less bad, then we are not putting a giant brick wall on the rolling boulder of abuse.
	At some point, somebody has to goddamn well take responsibility and say, 100% responsible for change.
	My shitty childhood gives me no excuse for abuse.
	Self abuse, abuse of others, abuse of institutions, abuse of religion, abuse of power.
	Abuse of knowledge disparities, abuse of economic strength.
	My history of abuse gives me zero, zero, zero, zero right to abuse others.
	And if I am capable of doing that, then it is capable of being done.
	Another Anthony Hopkins film about some bear.
	It's a pretty stupid film.
	But what he says is great.
	He says, what one man can do, another can do.
	If I give myself zero percent permission to abuse, A, my abusers win because they got me to lower my standards and harm my child who's innocent.
	B, I don't have to condemn them Because I can give them the out of having had bad childhoods, but then when I give them the out, I give myself an out.
	We are universal machines.
	Whatever rules we give to others, we take for ourselves, right?
	Whatever excuses we give for others, we will take for ourselves.
	Now, if you are capable of stopping the cycle of abuse, then your parents and your parents' parents and your parents' parents' parents were capable of stopping the cycle of abuse.
	It's not like we have some magical knowledge now that wasn't around before.
	Therapy is 150 years old.
	The idea of talking about your problems and raising children peacefully and reasonably is thousands of years old.
	You can find Romans writing about it.
	Whenever you look at art, whenever you look at the portrayal of childhood, From Rousseau to Dickens and all the way back to the Greeks and the Romans, a lot of times, childhood is portrayed as a state of grace and peace and reasoning.
	Portrayed!
	Look at Leave it to Beaver.
	Did you ever see a spanking in that show?
	That was in the 50s.
	The Andy Griffith show, did you ever see spanking in that?
	The Flintstones, did you ever see spanking in that?
	Did you ever see yelling and hitting?
	No.
	No, no, no.
	It's more concentrated now, this benevolent portrayal of childhood.
	But imagine if you throw spanking in a TV show, everybody would go insane with horror and shock.
	And when I was a kid, I saw childhood portrayed on TV as a funny, gentle, family ties kind of, everybody get the talking stick and let's reason this through and have lots of giggles.
	And that's what everybody wanted to watch.
	And yet if they heard child abuse, they didn't do anything.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	You said, and I wrote this down because it really impacted me.
	It really meant something to me.
	You said, and I'm quoting, what does not anger us, we normalize.
	And what we normalize, we reproduce.
	And more than, more than, excuse me, More than anything.
	Don't know.
	Don't keep covering up your feelings if that's what you're doing.
	This is anonymous.
	Nobody knows who you are.
	Absolutely not.
	I'm choking up.
	I do not want to reproduce this.
	I want to have children someday and I do not want to do this to them.
	And this angers me and I allow it to anger me.
	What angers you?
	This behavior, the treatment of children.
	What does not anger us, we normalize.
	what we normalize, we reproduce, and there's no excuse for it.
	No, there's no excuse for it.
	No one would ever consider treating a colleague or a friend or any grown member or any grown adult period in this manner.
	And to treat a child this way, it's absolutely insane.
	It's insane.
	There were these, in the 1920s, people would go and visit Russia.
	A lot of communists, of course, from the West would go and visit Russia in the 1930s.
	There was a whole Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who went and wrote about life under Stalin, saying how wonderful it was, how well-fed the workers were.
	And they were called Potemkin villagers.
	What would happen is they would round up a bunch of good-looking proletariats, they would feed them well, and they'd put them in a village, and they would give them, you know, songs, and they'd have them only work two hours a day.
	Of course, everyone outside this radius was starving to death and eating dogs and all that kind of stuff.
	And they would have all of these people troop over and see all these wonderful little communist villages.
	And if we would say, communism is a dream come true, Shirley MacLaine was writing about that in the 70s in fucking China.
	Nutbag.
	Communism is wonderful.
	Look at all these happy people.
	The children, they barely have to work.
	They're so well fed.
	It's a paradise here, right?
	The media portrayal of children is the Potemkin village of our torture system of children.
	It's what everyone looks at to cover up the abuse.
	It's one of the fundamental things that allows the abuse to continue.
	The lack of portrayal, accurate portrayal of child abuse in the media.
	And the reason for that is you have to be in an altered state of rage in order to justify your abuse.
	And if it comes at you through the media when you're not in that altered state of rage, it tickles your conscience and then you will attack the advertisers who support such a nefarious show.
	Sorry?
	The behavior is shocking.
	It's shocking to see that sort of abuse to a child.
	No, no, it's not shocking because so many parents do it every day.
	It's shocking to see it when you're not in that state of rage.
	It's shocking when your defenses are dead.
	Absolutely.
	I believe, you know, if you were in a calm state of being walked upon, something like that, your jaw would drop.
	It would be, I don't know, it would be so disgusting.
	And the reality is that, you know, I was just saying this to my daughter today.
	She has a friend who's got some conflicts with her parents.
	And I was just saying, you know, I said, you know, we spent all day together, you know, and a couple of days, a week or so ago, two weeks ago, we went on a vacation together.
	And I said, you know, I'm so glad that we really like each other because we spend an enormous amount of time together.
	And it really is so easy and so enjoyable to parent peacefully and positively and with good humor.
	And it's incredibly delightful.
	I'll give you just a tiny story.
	We went to the animal shelter today because we traveled a bit too much for...
	Pets, but she really likes cats.
	So we go to the animal shelter and we're there for about an hour and a half playing with the kittens and all that and the cats.
	And then we grabbed a bite to eat on the way home and we played Hangman.
	I don't know if you've ever played that game.
	You know, you make the lines, you guess the letters and then you build a little hanging thing, right?
	And I gave her the word hand and she was guessing a couple of letters and I gave her a couple of hints.
	And We started joking about all the things that could be.
	So I gave her...
	She got H-A-N. She couldn't get the D. She got H-A-N. And we're in a restaurant where we sometimes have a horrible but delightful sugar bomb breakfast of pancakes.
	And she pointed at the display and she said, Dad, I know what it is.
	Handcakes!
	Which I just thought was...
	I don't know why.
	I just fell over laughing.
	I thought that was just so funny.
	And...
	She is, it is just so easy.
	It does not have to be this combat to the death sadism bomb of dominate or be dominant.
	I mean, it is easy and it is so enjoyable and it's like marriage, you know?
	I mean, marriage to my wife is easy and enjoyable and incredibly fun and all of that.
	And that is because I gave myself no excuses.
	I refuse to let the standards of evil people chip away at my capacity for integrity.
	I refuse to let the standards of evil people chip away at my capacity for integrity.
	And that is really essential.
	Now, if I... I'm able to completely stop the cycle of abuse and I have actually reversed the cycle of abuse because not only have I not abused my child or my friendships or my status as a husband not only have I not abused I haven't gone to the middle like I haven't gotten to the average
	I have gone To the future.
	Because most people will give themselves some standards of crappy behavior even if they're raised relatively well.
	The norm in society is still abusive.
	Because the norm is still, at least here in Canada and in England and in America, the norm is still spanking.
	The norm is still timeouts.
	The norm is still, it's the size and power of the parents.
	The norm is still government schools.
	The norm is still daycare.
	The norm is still not breastfeeding for the requisite 18 months.
	The norm is the acceptance of the dominance of brutal peer relationships in the child enclosures called government schools.
	The norm in society will be viewed in the future as abusive.
	Now, I wasn't near the norm as a child, but I did not grow into the norm by having integrity.
	There's an old idea in Christianity, which C.S. Lewis writes about in the Screwtape Letters, which is, if you are tempted to greed, let that be your spur to generosity.
	If you are tempted by lust, let that be your spur towards chastity.
	If you are tempted to pride, let that be your spur towards humility.
	In other words, the temptations of the devil should further provoke you to virtue, which thus enrages the devil completely.
	And thus, your bad habits are fuel for your best achievements.
	And that is true of child abuse.
	You are absolutely not condemned to repeat this.
	In fact, this is the greatest gold I can offer you out of the mountain of raining shit you grew up in.
	Which is that in the furnace of our crippled histories come the greatest lights the future can see.
	So we don't just bound back to the middle.
	We are like a rubber band pulled.
	We either break or we snap to significant virtue, to deep integrity, right?
	You let go of a rubber band, it does not immediately achieve its form or shape.
	It ricochets.
	It rebounds.
	And the fall of your history can either be a grave or a trampoline.
	Except you don't even go back to where you started.
	You go as high as humanity can go.
	That is the great opportunity that is provided to the victims of child abuse by philosophy.
	Which is you don't have to return to the norm of society, and God help you if you do, because the norm around you did fuck all to save you from repeated beatings and brutality, right?
	So you don't want to achieve the normal in society.
	No.
	Because all society is a prison.
	And to be involved in the prison in any way, shape, or form is compromising.
	I don't want to be a prisoner.
	I want to be the guy who delivers the food to the prison.
	I don't want to be the guy who delivers food to the prison.
	I want to be the guy who mops the blood off the floor in the prison.
	I don't want to be the guy who mops the blood off the floor in the prison.
	I want to be the guy who changes the light bulbs in the isolation chamber.
	How about not be around the prison at all?
	The abuse that you suffered can be that Which propels you to greater virtue than would otherwise have been conceivable or possible perhaps even for you.
	And the price of admission to that paradise, the ticket of which is often stamped by Satan himself, the price to that paradise is a refusal to forgive and a refusal to forget.
	What do the Jews say about the Holocaust?
	Never forget!
	Never forget!
	What does everyone say about child abuse?
	Forgive and forget.
	Yeah, try saying that to a Holocaust survivor.
	Fuckers.
	No.
	The price of turning evil to virtue, the magic alchemy machine of getting gold out of the spilt blood of childhood hopes, is a refusal to forgive and a refusal to forget.
	Which means Great integrity to principles.
	Far greater than the average.
	And that's how society improves.
	Those who have suffered the most reject all excuses and raise mankind through the ferocious recoiling from the lax standards of their brutalized upbringings.
	If society were to ostracize these abusers, how do you think it would take for the paradigm to change?
	If the society...
	Oh my god.
	If the society were to ostracize these abusers, are you separating society from the abusers?
	If the virtuous people...
	Where is this society that you speak of?
	I would like to see it one day before I'm dead.
	The ones that oppose it are at best complacent.
	They choose to not be involved rather than speak up.
	Who opposes it?
	Who opposes it?
	I do.
	Your listeners do.
	Others do.
	No, no, no.
	You and I, first of all, you colluded at the beginning, with all due respect, because you told me that it was incomprehensible where it came from and irrational, right?
	So you were colluding through your parental alters, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	So enablers want the abusers to do what they're doing.
	Something struck me earlier that you said your stepfather took over when you got too big for your mom, right?
	Correct.
	And I can tell you exactly how that happened, if you would like me to.
	Please.
	That happened because your mom realized that she wasn't big enough to beat you up anymore.
	So she provoked and goaded and got the bigger man to do it for her.
	She was still doing it.
	it.
	She just had a big ball sack meat puppet to hit you with.
	Women's capacity to provoke male violence is another one of these unspoken things in society.
	I mean, I'm not saying men aren't responsible.
	Yeah, it was still completely responsible.
	But the white knighting that comes from attacking people who are upsetting women is still a very powerful Force in society.
	She was still running the show.
	She just twisted his nuts until he punched you in the head.
	So where is this society?
	Society loves child abuse.
	Needs child abuse.
	Society is child abuse.
	Otherwise it would be called philosophy.
	Truth.
	Our entire social structure is predicated and built upon the crushed bones of innocent children.
	They are the bodies buried in the foundation of all our institutions.
	Churches and schools and governments, prisons.
	Human beings are fed into the Pink Floyd meat grinder as children and they are used to build bombs and chains and Books and academics.
	Everything that we look around and see is a ghostly mirage of almost real things created from the sprayed blood of little bodies.
	I mean did you have, other than your grandmother, Who still, in my opinion, is not acting proactively enough to keep you safe, but...
	No, she wasn't acting productively enough, no.
	But, I mean, who didn't...
	Yeah, who helped you?
	Who's helped you as an adult?
	Who listens?
	Who gives a shit?
	I had no one.
	I had nobody.
	Right.
	Right.
	And you'll see endless shows on TV about cops rooting out killers and murderers and rapists and so on, right?
	Because that's all about terrifying people with the symptoms, but nobody wants to deal with the goddamn causes.
	Everybody's just all about managing the symptoms.
	Nobody wants to get down to the root causes of stuff.
	So the idea that society would ostracize abusers is to be incomprehensible.
	I mean, what would they all just launch themselves into space and leave you and me and 50 other people on the planet?
	I mean, I don't know what that would mean.
	Then how does this change?
	What must happen?
	Well, I think conversations like this are important.
	I think that people have the cover story of caring for children and all we do is call them on it.
	That's the only hope we have.
	Like, there was no cover story called Blacks Are Equal Under Slavery, right?
	There's no cover story.
	It was like, well, blacks are animals and we need to Christianize and civilize them and whatever, right?
	And so there was no cover story.
	There was no cover story under Nazism, like, we love the Jews, the Jews are the best, you know, everything to protect the Jews, right?
	But there is a cover story under child abuse, which is we care about the children, we love the children, we'll do anything for the children, the children of the future, blah, blah, blah.
	There's nothing I wouldn't do for my children!
	So we have a cover story.
	Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, except sympathize with any harm they may have achieved and therefore reduce the prevalence of child abuse and make those who've seen, who've lifted the cauldron of society and seen straight up the ass-flaming coal on Bowels of the planet, of the Satan hell we call the world, except give them some support and some peace.
	So, I just go with naive realism.
	Oh, okay, well, if we really care about children, then we should not be hitting them, right?
	Well, if we really care about children, we shouldn't be yelling at them, right?
	If we really care about children, blah-de-blah-de-blah, right?
	Now, people can't say...
	Well, we don't care about children, we just want to vomit our own emotional shit into them and call it parenting.
	They have to say, no, no, no, it's loving to hit children, right?
	Is it not improving?
	And at some point, I don't know, whether childhood's improving or not, I keep posing this to experts and it's a mixed bag.
	It's a mixed bag.
	You know, the sad thing is that although daycare and all that is really bad for children, at least you're not allowed to hit children in daycare.
	So in some ways, they're doing a little better.
	But, you know, when I was a kid, there was probably more hitting, though not much.
	But now there is this biochemical warfare against children, right?
	These SSRIs and all that.
	So it's hard to know.
	It's really hard to know.
	But anyway, we're getting heavy into abstraction.
	So as far as the rejection goes, I had this just on Saturday with a caller, so I'll just touch on it briefly here, and then I think we'll have to move on.
	But as far as the rejection goes, it's to her are the two syllables you need to add all the time.
	Right?
	You need to put it in the past tense and ascribe it to an individual, right?
	So I could easily say, my needs are unimportant now, right?
	Because when I grew up, to those around me, my needs were unimportant, right?
	So I could say, my needs are unimportant.
	And that's what I had to say when I was a child in order to survive the spiky shrapnel of narcissistic manipulation that I was...
	Entombed by, right?
	I had to say my needs are unimportant because if I asserted my needs I could have gotten beaten up or killed, right?
	So, no asserting needs when I was a child.
	That was a terrible idea.
	Now, That universal has to be cornered and killed, or however you're going to do it.
	It was very important.
	It was very essential.
	It was very helpful.
	But it becomes self-abuse if two factors are not added to my needs are unimportant.
	Number one is it needs to be placed in the correct time context, which is not my needs are unimportant, which is an eternal, right?
	That's something that moves forward with you every moment and defines everything.
	So you have to say my needs were unimportant to her.
	That makes it in the past to one person, which takes it away from in the future in general.
	Does that make sense?
	Absolutely.
	So your needs were unimportant to her.
	You put the to her and you rescue yourself.
	You put it in the past and you open up the future.
	How do I translate that to interactions with others?
	No, no, no.
	Forget the interactions with others.
	No, no, no, no.
	I've just given you months of work right here.
	Okay.
	The language that we use is the future we are creating.
	You had a terrible childhood.
	Stuart, I'm incredibly sorry about your childhood.
	You're 33 years old.
	It was, what, 18 years ago that you bailed?
	Yes.
	So if you had a child, when you bailed, your child could...
	Could vote now, right?
	So that is a long time ago.
	Yeah, that is a long time ago in a galaxy of selfishness far, far away.
	Your future can be different from your past, but only when the past is in the past, right?
	You can't drive staring at the rearview mirror.
	You're just going to crash, right?
	Your needs were unimportant.
	You were cruelly treated.
	You were sadistically brutalized by her.
	To her.
	From her.
	With her.
	Under her.
	She ain't around anymore.
	So rage about the past, anger about the past, specified to particular individuals Allows you to not generalize.
	To generalize is to protect the instance.
	To generalize is to protect the instance.
	If a bad man beat me up, a bad black man beat me up, and then I say all blacks are bad and will beat me up, that's to protect that one guy.
	All moral generalizations that are non-empirical, right?
	All moral generalizations are to protect Specific evildoers.
	Right?
	If your parents were Nazis and you say, well, all Germans were Nazis, that's to protect your parents, right?
	That's clear, right?
	And if we say, all people with bad childhoods end up as abusers, that's actually not even true in general.
	It's only about a third.
	What do the other two-thirds have?
	Like magic bat wings from the angels?
	Self-knowledge.
	It's a choice.
	It's a choice.
	And it's the same choice that these abusers attack the children, right?
	Right.
	So you've got to focus on, yeah, you were rejected then by her.
	And it's not even you who was rejected.
	This is the last piece of the puzzle.
	Because she did not evaluate you and reject you.
	Was there any conceivable child that she would not have harmed?
	Is there any child of light and angel and a little Lord Fauntle Roy with a million dollars and a halo that she would not have abused?
	She would tell my half brother That she wasn't his mother, that she was not his mother, and that she was just watching him.
	And she would tell him this repeatedly until he would cry, thinking he had no mother.
	And still to this day, she tells this story jokingly, laughingly.
	It's disgusting.
	And she can, because everyone's still supporting her in it, right?
	Yeah.
	So, this is the great...
	Liberation from abuse.
	It was never personal.
	It had nothing to do with you.
	You were just a garbage can to vomit into.
	I don't choose some particular garbage can to vomit into because I'm mad at that garbage can or I want to hurt that garbage can because it's offended me.
	I just need to vomit.
	It's not personal.
	So you were not rejected because that would mean someone would have had to evaluate you and found you wanting.
	Children fundamentally cannot be rejected, right?
	Because they're being created and therefore they can't be rejected.
	So you were a shit bad luck accidental victim of a sadist.
	And if any other kid had been in the same situation, the exact same thing would have happened.
	You were born into a war zone.
	The bombs weren't for you.
	There was no target on you.
	There was no crosshairs.
	There were no laser-guided sights pointing at your pale little forehead.
	Sorry, I'm assuming.
	But it was never personal to you.
	That's the last thing to let go.
	Is that...
	The bond, the only bond we can imagine is that at least they're taking pleasure in being cruel to us.
	But they take pleasure in being cruel to everyone.
	They just happen to have the most power over us.
	It's not personal to you at all.
	You weren't even there.
	She would no more expect you to take it personally than I would expect a punching bag at a gym to press assault charges, right?
	It's just something I'm working out on, right?
	Just something I'm punching because I want to stay fit in my sadism, right?
	But to take it personally, it's understandable.
	That's the only bond you can create.
	Well, I only show up because at least she hates me, but she didn't even hate you.
	Because that level of cruelty, there is no other.
	There's no other person in the room, right?
	It's like saying a guy in the gun range shooting at the paper outline of the guy really hates that guy.
	Right?
	So it had nothing to do with you.
	Just really fucking bad luck, and I'm sorry for that.
	But it was in the past, it was just her, and it had nothing to do with you.
	That's freedom.
	And that's the truth.
	I have something to work on for the next few months.
	I was rejected by her.
	And that's what I have to understand.
	mind.
	You were rejected by her is the first level.
	Puts it in the past and makes it about her.
	And then the next level is I wasn't even rejected by her.
	Like, do you know what?
	She doesn't have the capacity to accept.
	I didn't buy a car today.
	Did I reject all those cars?
	No, I never even looked at them.
	I never even examined them.
	If I look over two cars in great deal to buy one or the other, I've rejected the other.
	I didn't sleep with most of the world today.
	Did not have sex with most of the world today.
	Am I rejecting most of the world in my sexual pursuits?
	No.
	Just hasn't happened.
	Hasn't been considered.
	Hasn't been pursued, right?
	She didn't reject you fundamentally because you were never there for her as a person.
	because if you were, she couldn't have assaulted you in that way.
	Thank you, Stefan. Stefan.
	them.
	You're welcome.
	I hope this helps, and I certainly wish you the very best of luck at your grandma's.
	I'm going to follow your advice.
	I'll have a discussion with my grandmother, and I'm confident she'll support me.
	Good.
	Well, drop us a line and let us know how it goes, all right?
	Thank you, brother.
	Thanks, Stuart.
	Take care.
	All right, up next is Donnie.
	Donnie wrote in and said, what is the morality of accepting a pension after an 18-year career in the military?
	Oh, Donnie, are you there?
	Go ahead.
	Go ahead.
	Does it matter?
	Does it matter what I say, really?
	Does it matter?
	You're taking the pension, right?
	I'm kind of in a place where I could probably get away without it.
	However, is there anything that I can say today that will have you not take the pension?
	Seriously.
	I mean, let's just be really honest.
	You really want me to be honest?
	Yeah, I could walk away from it.
	I have no real qualms with that.
	I'm a big boy.
	I mean, literally, my transcript from the military, I have like 10 pages of stuff I know how to do.
	I can go walk out into the world and there's 40 people waiting to hire me.
	In a down economy, there's 40 people waiting to hire me.
	It's really not that.
	The path of least resistance for me to get out, instead of wait until 20, is actually to do what the system tells me to do.
	And they're going to tell me I have to take it.
	I mean, think of the authoritarian to the extreme.
	I'm required to do these things to even get out.
	I mean, it's ridiculous.
	You can take it and donate it to the show.
	I'm just kidding.
	Okay, so what did you do in the military?
	Oh, yeah, lots.
	I was an electronics technician, so I ripped apart radars and radios.
	I trained for EOD for a while, but I got injured and never ended up doing it, but I sure know how to do a whole lot of stuff.
	What's EOD? Disposal.
	The Bomb Squad.
	Yeah.
	Okay, okay.
	Yeah, I'm one of those.
	The military had its acronyms.
	Jesus.
	I'll skip the acronyms.
	I was infantry for a while, and I am currently an intelligence analyst, which is one of the few...
	Honestly, of all the status paradigms you can get trapped up in, I found the one where...
	How good you are at your job actually equates to how good of a soldier you aren't, because you constantly have to ask why, what is going on, how is this happening.
	If you can believe in such an animal, it's a thinking soldier.
	You kind of get caught up into that.
	You suck me in too fast.
	You suck me in too fast.
	I didn't even get to say hello and that I'm ridiculously pleased.
	I'm ridiculously pleased that you beat the cancer, man.
	I would be a sheep if it wasn't for...
	I mean, you connected like the last two dots in a critical thinker's world.
	Like, my whole job is to critically think and then I'm wandering around as a statist.
	There's no such thing as a critical thinking statist, but you just kind of like...
	I've destroyed half of my world for about four months, and I'm like, oh, Jesus.
	But, hey, we're good now.
	Like, I feel so much better.
	It's a huge weight taken off my shoulders, and I don't think enough people say thank you for not dying to cancer.
	So, good job.
	Well, thanks.
	I wish I could take the credit, but, you know, medicine...
	I guess I could, because I exercised and all that for years, so I appreciate that.
	I have had eight surgeries...
	I've had eight surgeries.
	I know some of the shit that you went through with the chemo and, you know, recovering and getting all that.
	Give yourself a little credit.
	Come on now.
	No, I will.
	It was hard work, but I'm glad it's done.
	So, Donnie, you sound, if you don't mind me saying so, pretty fucking chipper.
	I've been waiting for this for four months, so it's hard to not be chipper.
	There's a little at least closure that I can hear.
	Donnie, Donnie, Donnie.
	Weren't you sort of involved in getting people killed?
	Directly, no.
	Indirectly, yeah, I'll buy it.
	I mean, I can get down.
	I mean, if you would like to kick me, go ahead.
	I'll jump on.
	No, listen.
	No, no, no.
	Don't stop manipulating me, man.
	Don't start being offended at me.
	Listen, you worked on radar, right?
	They don't use the radar to find clouds, right?
	What do they use the radar for?
	To guide drones and shit like that, right?
	Well, no, the one that I did was inbound projectiles.
	Oh, so it's the defense?
	Yes, yes.
	No, no, we can draw whatever lines you like.
	I'm not comfortable with it.
	The whole reason for the call is, you know, I was a little uncomfortable with the The source of the funding of a pension, let alone, you know, the implications of, you know, is this mercenary work?
	And I mean, yes, I was a full-blown, statist, right-wing, crazy person, and now I'm kind of come back around.
	And there's the little bit of morality to it, but there's also the...
	Every nickel I pay in taxes kind of goes back to them borrowing more money, and that will cause the collapse of the system eventually.
	So I don't know if there's a morality or a strategy.
	Donnie, I think we need to back up a little bit here.
	Okay.
	Were you stationed...
	No, don't tell me.
	Doesn't matter.
	You seemed surprised that I would mention that the purpose of the military is to kill people.
	No, I'm not surprised at that at all.
	And that was the job that you had, maybe not directly pulling the trigger, you say you were in the infantry.
	Did you experience any direct combat?
	Nope.
	Because I changed jobs over the course of the last 18 years, that was like early, late 99 to 2001 I was in infantry, so it was really before everything kicked off.
	Right.
	Okay.
	So you were murder support, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, is that way off base?
	No, I mean, by the rubric being used, any job in the military would essentially be murder support.
	So I'm along with you.
	Right.
	Right.
	And your childhood, what was that like?
	Uh, probably exactly what you would imagine.
	Uh, standard, typical Christian parents.
	Uh, spanking being the primary rubric.
	Uh, grounding, working into grounding as I was older.
	You know, um, I would say on the scale of one to horrible, you know, the rubric probably about a 60% authoritarian.
	It could have gotten worse, but it wasn't.
	So...
	And they, I would imagine, were quite keen on you going to the military?
	Oh, yeah.
	Well, I mean, in their world, the whole concept was very honorable.
	I mean, this is a...
	Not looking forward to putting their kid's life in danger, but at the same time not really looking forward to...
	Or still looking at it as a we raised somebody of honor kind of mentality, I guess.
	So the thou shalt not kill...
	That was not...
	Like they felt they could shuffle those around, right?
	Like discard the ones they didn't like so much?
	Like the Ten Commandments?
	Well...
	Um, no.
	The non-simple answer is no.
	The complicated answer is So it sounded like a great idea at the time.
	But growing up and learning more and not being such a follower kind of changes the perspective on it.
	Yeah, because, I mean, if you basically can redefine anything as self-defense, then there's no such thing as immoral violence, right?
	Right.
	I don't blame that on parents.
	I blame that as the general overall...
	The overall status paradigm is everything that we do is in the national interest, yada, yada, yada.
	And if you buy into it, you buy into it.
	And I bought, I'm out now, but I bought into it at the time.
	Right.
	Well, obviously you cost the taxpayer, right?
	And you weren't doing productive stuff for the economy, right?
	Through the 17 years, right?
	Well, there are probably some statist arguments that could be made that the military has preserved the price of X and Y and has actually bolstered the stability of the America.
	I call it making the world safe for Walmart.
	You can go into these places and instead of Having the kind of regime that will just nationalize the banking system and the oil, you know that BP has those oil wells.
	BP owned most of the oil wells in Kuwait, so as soon as Saddam Hussein took Kuwait, America comes to the rescue, because that would have really shit on England's...
	Overall economy.
	So by being imperialistic, we have kind of created our own luck.
	It doesn't justify it in any way, shape or form.
	But at the end of the day, the Americans do receive value based on their imperialism use of their imperialistic use of their troops.
	It doesn't make it right.
	Wait, wait, hang on, hang on.
	You're saying it doesn't justify it, but you're kind of justifying it, right?
	At least you're making an argument for that.
	It's not economically efficient, otherwise Walmart would do it itself, right?
	Okay, so it's a net loss.
	Yeah, so it's a net loss.
	Okay, so yeah, some people make profits, as is the case with all imperialism, but it's a net loss.
	Yes.
	So you're already a net loss to the American taxpayer.
	You're in an ethics deficit, you know, with some sympathy to all the propaganda you experienced and the lack of critical thinking skills and skepticism that your parents and school inculcated in you, where you'd say, well, it's a big life decision to go and maybe kill people.
	Maybe I should look into the ethics of the organization I'm joining before signing up.
	But you were, you know, a young man, right?
	You were in your late teens.
	So...
	With sympathy, right?
	I mean, to, again, the level of propaganda and so on, but you have cost the taxpayer millions and millions of dollars and increased the risk of attacks upon the taxpayer through your adventures in imperialism, right?
	Indeed.
	And the taxpayer doesn't Want to fund the military, at least not at its current level, which is why it has to be funded through taxes.
	And the taxpayer does not want to fund your retirement because you could, of course, say to everyone in your community, listen, I'm not going to take the government retirement, but I'd really like you guys to chip in and then we'd see how much they liked what you were doing and so on, right?
	Yes.
	Truth be told, I think the nationalistic lunacy that America suffers from, I think if you crowdfunded the VA and stuff like that, you might actually see a surprising return.
	I don't know if it would be the volume that would require all of the promises levied.
	But I think it would be significant.
	There's a whole lot of nationalistic lunacy, regardless of the understanding.
	There are libertarians who jump on the nationalistic bandwagon, which I find odd.
	I don't know.
	To that, honestly, I couldn't know.
	For as many people as you see on Facebook that are willing to post the American flag and just the daily statist nationalistic meme.
	Okay, so maybe it would work.
	Sorry, I think we're getting off topic.
	So maybe it would work.
	So I guess, look, you know now that your retirement is going to be funded through debt and counterfeiting, right?
	Yep.
	Do you have kids?
	I'm not even planning on it.
	I do.
	I have three.
	Okay.
	So, you know...
	No, I don't spank them.
	Oh, good.
	Good.
	Well, you know that.
	And no, I hope you won't encourage them to go into the...
	Checkmate!
	But, so, it's not going to change the world if you don't take your pension.
	But you have a much better chance of changing the world if you don't take your pension.
	Because if you don't take your pension, and look, I'm not going to tell you what to do.
	I mean, that would be ridiculous.
	I mean, you've had enough taken orders, even if I could give them.
	But let's just say, if you don't take your pension, then you will be a really fucking serious human being about ethics.
	And what that will drive for you is probably going to be enormously powerful.
	Now, if you take your pension, then you're kind of like a dabbler in ethics, which I think is usually not a very productive place to be.
	You know, it's like those weekend warriors, you know, they just end up getting injured.
	So if you want to kind of have a smallish kind of life, then I think, you know, you can take your pension or whatever.
	But if you say no to the pension, then your unconscious is going to be, wait, what?
	We're doing what now?
	We're giving up on these thousands of dollars a month for the sake of a principle?
	Well, shit, we better start really doing this principle thing, right?
	And then you will have a weight and an authority about you that will make you a pretty unstoppable force.
	Because when you don't do bullshit, you walk through bullshit.
	And what I mean by that is that if you really commit to your values, you become a pretty unstoppable force.
	And you don't become an unstoppable force until you've taken a couple of bullets, if you'll excuse the analogy, for the cause.
	I've taken my bullets, Mike's taken his bullets, this may be your bullet.
	If you take bullets for the cause, you no longer suffer fools, and you're no longer impressed by trolls, and you just don't give a shit about people who are only words, who only have words what they say.
	So if you are interested in really having an effect on the world, That doesn't mean that you have to become an activist or whatever but if you're really interested in becoming a powerful moral agent in the world then making sacrifices based upon moral principles will give you a weight and a substantiality and an unstoppability that almost transcends physics if that makes any sense.
	Nothing in the military can make you bulletproof but there's something about really committing to your values and That pays off in unguessed ways.
	Because so many people just talk about stuff and end up just doing whatever they want.
	But if you do actually guide your life by principles, you become solid in a world of ghosts.
	Yeah.
	I had kind of come a bit to that conclusion.
	I want to say the only thing that really kind of...
	The only thing that has kept me away from, I think you stated it way better than I could, but the only thing that has even given me a little apprehension is the overall strategy to it.
	And the forced taxation paradigm is what makes the state viable.
	It is the thing that propels it forward.
	The better the economy, the better the free market provides, the better the state manages to do.
	And I was just sitting on this place where I'm like, well, maybe I should make the state fund my activities, because my activities are totally subversive.
	And that's pretty much the only hiccup I've really had with the whole thing.
	I was probably a lot more confused about it four months ago, but, you know, I made an appointment with Mike and stuff like that, and, you know, things get pushed, it happens, and I don't...
	That's not a complaint, just a...
	I've had a lot more time to think about it than the day I mailed in to Mike.
	And the only thing that's really...
	Sorry to interrupt, Donnie.
	What about...
	You know, kids, I assume, are pretty young, right?
	And...
	When they grow up, they'll want to know where your money comes from or came from or whatever, right?
	I mean, that's natural for kids to do that.
	And if you take the pension while being a voluntarist, how's that going to feel in terms of explaining?
	Yeah, okay.
	I'm very spotlight.
	And then are you going to say to your kids, you should do the right thing, even if it's uncomfortable, right?
	Yep.
	Indeed.
	We've got to plan for those big, big-ass future conversations with our kids, right?
	Oh, lots of them.
	I have two kids from a previous marriage, and that's very difficult.
	I'm working it as best as humanly possible, I think, but it's awkward.
	But my marriage that I have now is absolutely great, and my three-month-old, I have much hopes to not be as immature and as unlearned as I was when I started with my verse two.
	So I hope they'll forgive me for the first five years.
	We'll see how that works.
	But, I mean, what you're saying makes complete sense.
	I just wasn't completely sure if just a strategy-based, you know, they force us to feed, they force us to fund all of their asinine activities, and the power of that mechanic just screams to me so often.
	Yeah.
	I can definitely see the moral argument you're making.
	And the thing that brought me to libertarianism was the moral argument.
	So it doesn't take a whole lot to convince me out of this because I've really been moving that way anyway.
	The people who make real changes in the world are the people who communicate through deeds first and then with words.
	And, again, you sound like a person of significant moral depth and courage.
	And I really wanted to, you know, express my admiration for that.
	I mean, the journey that you have been on is remarkable and impressive.
	They've actually taken me away from the other analysts because I was teaching them how to actually critically think.
	It wasn't going over very well, so they stuck me in the mailroom.
	Right, right.
	Yeah, so you are somebody of rare moral character in that this is even a question, this is even an issue, and so on, right?
	So, I mean, kudos and congratulations and fantastic.
	So how far do you want to take this moral journey, right?
	If you want to go all the way, Then people come along who are just like, why is this person doing this?
	Why is this happening?
	Why is this person not sitting at the back of the bus?
	Or why is this person not backing down?
	You know, like Snowden, right?
	I mean, the guy's living in Hawaii, making 150 large a year with a very nice, I assume, girlfriend.
	And he's like, nope!
	I'm going to go live in Russia on the run with half the US Congress calling for my murder, right?
	You say, well, why?
	Like, so when Snowden talks about something to do with ethics, we listen, right?
	Because he has done something first.
	And if you are willing to take bullets for a cause, people will listen to it.
	If you're kind of not, then people will just assume that you're mostly talking to yourself.
	So I think that is...
	That would be my best suggestion.
	If you want to live a fairly quiet life of personal ethics and do the good stuff within your family, which is great.
	I've got no issues with it that fundamentally.
	But if you do want to be a bigger moral force in the world, then in a weird way, the more you sacrifice, the more power you get.
	I mean, I have my particular stands that I'm very public with, voluntary family relationships and non-aggression principle and all that kind of stuff and peaceful parenting.
	And I drove that stake into the ground deep and I have never budged or backed down despite some pretty intense pressure.
	And I have only doubled down, you know, come at me, I come at you twice as hard.
	And that is slowly changing the world.
	I mean, it's certainly not going to eliminate it in my lifetime.
	But if you plant your tree deep enough, the world begins to turn around your certainty.
	And if you want to be that kind of person that the world has to pivot around, it doesn't mean the whole planet, but it may be just your community or your veteran buddies or whatever it is.
	If you plant your tree deep enough, it doesn't spin around the world.
	The world spins around it.
	And that, to me, is the best and most important way you can use Your moral courage.
	The moral courage that the good Lord Jesus put in your heart.
	Wow.
	Wow, did you just go theological on me?
	Jesus, what the hell happened?
	A little hat tip to your inner parents.
	Okay, I like that, but let me add just a little tick on the tree.
	Like I said, I've had eight surgeries.
	So, there's kind of a you-break-it-you-bought-it aspect to this, almost.
	Like, I mean, I played their game for a long time.
	I played by their rules.
	I did what they wanted.
	And this has resulted in a less-than-stellar physical condition.
	You probably still wouldn't want to wrestle with me, but at the same time, I've had a rolling bike and inscript for five years.
	My last surgery was April.
	In a purely you-break-it-you-bought-it aspect...
	Wait, wait, wait.
	Hang on.
	What did you do in the military that caused you harm?
	It sounds mostly like electronics and desk jobs.
	A lot of this stuff was training.
	When I was infantry, I messed around and did some stuff.
	When I was in the Navy, I was an electronics technician by my job, but then I trained to be a SEAL for a couple of years.
	I have played very rough.
	I have the coolest insurgent resume you'd ever want to read.
	It's all just electronics and bomb making.
	Yes, he can shoot somebody at 800 yards.
	It is the greatest insurgent resume, but for practice, For medical purposes in America, it's, oh yeah, he knows how to fix a radio.
	So, I mean, I've had a couple of surgeries on my stomach, and I have like four compressed discs in my back.
	Just in a purely you-breaking, you-bought-it aspect, just for me.
	I mean, not necessarily for- But they didn't.
	No, no.
	You keep using that phrase, like the army bought something.
	They don't have any money.
	The army didn't buy anything.
	They've got no money.
	The only thing they have is what they steal from people.
	It's like, well, I trained with the mafia, and so I should keep getting mafia money.
	Mafia doesn't have any money.
	I mean, the taxpayers didn't break you.
	Why should they have to pay?
	Mm-hmm.
	Yes.
	Now, that having been said, again, this is just counterarguments, right?
	No, I called.
	You are the best devil's advocate ever.
	Hang on.
	Donnie, it's your job.
	Here's the counter-argument.
	So your argument is, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, fine.
	But I am a father of three children.
	I need to be well to be an effective parent for my three kids to give them an energetic, engaged, loving father who's not constantly popping pills and going in and out of hospital and running up debts and worried and not sleeping and getting sick or whatever, right?
	So I'm not saying don't take The healthcare, right?
	What I'm saying is, don't give me this, they broke it, they bought it kind of thing.
	Like, if you're going to take the healthcare or you're going to take the pension, you just need to look at it for what it is.
	It's blood money from a lying, murderous organization that's taken from people at gunpoint and taken from people who aren't even born yet and taken from the poor through counterfeiting.
	Right?
	Just look at it for what it is.
	Just don't give me a cover story like somehow the army broke you and therefore the army is going to pay for you.
	The army doesn't have any money, and you chose to go in.
	Knowing that there's massive injuries, I mean, what, four times as many people have died From training and accidents that have been killed by insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan?
	You know it's a hugely hazardous job, and the army didn't buy you, you sold yourself.
	And the army didn't break you, you broke yourself, and the taxpayers aren't responsible for a damn bit of your choices.
	Just look at it for what it is, then you can take it or not, but at least look at it for what it is, right?
	Right.
	Yes.
	I don't have a lot of individuals who I can bounce these kinds of questions off of.
	Let me give you another counterargument.
	Hang on, let me give you another counterargument.
	Okay.
	Would you have joined the military if you didn't get healthcare and a pension afterwards?
	Like if they'd said to you, yeah, we're going to pay you this, we're going to ship you over here, and then at the end of it, you get nothing?
	Yes.
	Oh, you would still have done it.
	Yes.
	Honestly, I would have done that at the time.
	It's really not about the long term.
	It's really more about the, like you said, I have to be functional.
	And my understanding of the military when I joined it was that should I be shot, I wouldn't have to pay for my own health care.
	Or funeral, right.
	Or funeral, exactly.
	So it wasn't about the long term.
	I mean, truth be told, I never really thought I'd make it 20 years.
	I'm a smartass.
	I'm snarky.
	I don't do what they tell me.
	I was never a believer.
	I've never preached army to anybody.
	Oh, come on.
	Oh, come on.
	Don't give me the independent soldier bullshit.
	Oh, come on.
	Come on, man.
	I don't do what they tell you to.
	When they said go here, did you go there?
	No.
	Yes.
	What I'm saying is...
	Yeah, when they said salute, did you salute?
	When they said you can't leave the base, did you leave the base?
	Did you go AWOL? You did what they told you to.
	Come on, don't give me this independent soldier stuff.
	I mean, you may have been more independent than other people around them, but please don't tell me you were some kind of free thinker in the military.
	Or you had some sort of free, you know...
	I can be a free thinker at a job, I can just walk in and quit anytime, but that's not the case with you, right?
	Well, yeah, right.
	I can't walk in and quit.
	And I probably would have already if I can.
	I just can't.
	Like, anything after 10 years, you're pretty much, you sign your last contract, you're indefinite, and you're kind of stuck in that for a while.
	And that's, I mean, you're absolutely, there are certain terms and conditions that you kind of accept with the job.
	But as far as that goes, I mean, I've been in during wartime for 16 years.
	I know guys that are starting majors, and I'm like, I'm three pay grades below them just because I really haven't bought into the system.
	I don't do what I'm told.
	I really am.
	I mean, as far as the free thinker goes in the military...
	No, no, no.
	Okay, you've got to stop saying this stuff.
	You do what you're told.
	Otherwise, you'd have been kicked out, right?
	Look, you just need to be honest about all this stuff.
	Don't give me this independent soldier stuff.
	If you're independent, you get kicked out.
	I want to sleep in tomorrow.
	I don't like this food.
	I'm going to go across town to a restaurant.
	I don't want to go to Iraq.
	I'd rather go to Hawaii, right?
	Come on!
	I mean, this may be something you tell yourself.
	I understand what you're saying.
	But you can't sell it to me, right?
	I've got to call you on that.
	No, I understand where you're coming from, but to go into the military requires a certain amount of minimal understanding.
	You get fired from a job if you don't show up.
	So if I sleep in and I don't show up, I can't get fired from my job, but I would only show myself as the guy who you would fire anyway, and it just comes with detrimental stuff.
	I'm talking about the Literally, the military really is all about bullying.
	I mean, you don't have to do what they tell you.
	You do what they tell you in the extent to which...
	The military is not about bullying!
	Oh my God!
	The military is about killing.
	It's about blowing things up and killing people.
	Your military...
	Yes, there's bullying and there's rape.
	Yes, that's all terrible.
	But the military is not what's happening in the barracks.
	The military is what's happening on the other side of the red line, which is people getting blown up, right?
	US military has killed tens of millions of people since the Second World War.
	It's not about bullying.
	It's about killing people.
	Massive amounts of people.
	On the systemic level, yes.
	On the individual level, it rarely appears to be that far gone.
	But yes, I understand what you're saying.
	You're literally telling me that the post office is about bullying people.
	No, the post office is about delivering mail.
	Fundamentally, the post office is about ripping off the taxpayer by holding mail hostage, the same way that the military is about ripping off the taxpayer by provoking conflicts.
	But because you're probably not going to have a conversation like this again anytime soon, I've just got to really give you...
	Because your kids are going to want to know how straight you are with what you've done and where you've come from, right?
	Right.
	And I think that you have a ways to go in demythologizing your time in the military.
	You were propagandized, you were lied to, and I think that's incredibly tragic, and I have massive amounts of sympathy for that.
	Your parents did not listen to God.
	Sorry!
	Thou shalt not kill is pretty clear.
	And certainly in the 90s, the idea that you can go and All around the world and defend whoever you want and attack whoever you want and call it self-defense is certainly open to debate at the very least, right?
	But I bet that debate did not happen at your house, right?
	So I think that you were lied to by your parents and you were lied to by your culture and you were lied to by the media.
	And I think that's absolutely tragic.
	And you got involved in a pretty ugly murder organization, which is horrible and tragic.
	You got damaged based as a result of all of these lies.
	You did not achieve good in the world.
	You instead contributed to instability around the world.
	There's a reason why America is considered to be the biggest threat to peace the world over, and you're one of those reasons in that you joined, again, with all sympathy to the propaganda you received.
	But...
	If you are more clear and more straight, I always say we can do anything we want.
	We just have to be ruthlessly honest about it.
	And this is why I have to sort of push back on the I was the independent soldier, which just can't be true based on you have to obey orders or you get court-martialed, right?
	And you get court-martialed even if you obey orders to disobey orders, as we saw with Bradley Manning.
	They didn't break you and therefore, like if I knock something over in Walmart, that's a lot different than if someone signs up for a dangerous occupation knowing it's a highly dangerous occupation.
	The occupation Sorry, the organization of which has no money and only gets its money through theft.
	Then them saying, well, they broke me, therefore they have to pay me.
	They didn't break you.
	Your propaganda broke you and your choices broke you.
	The lies you were told broke you.
	And that's why I'm really trying to focus on getting a clear picture in your head, at least as far as I see it.
	And...
	They can't fix you because they don't have any money.
	They can go and steal more money from people to pay for your health care, but they don't have any money.
	And that's why, you know, you can do anything you want.
	You just have to be really honest about what's going on.
	And that's sort of my urging.
	Sorry, end election.
	No, no, I called for the abuse.
	I really did.
	I mean, because nobody else is going to.
	I don't really know anybody else.
	Do you feel that this is abuse or are you trying to make a joke?
	No, no, no.
	Facetious abuse.
	I called for the shotgun blast to the face of truth and not the propagandized version I'll get at work and not the sympathetic version I'll get from any family members who were even remotely philosophically straight.
	They're coming around.
	It's taken a long time, and a lot of people I know are really getting on the...
	They'll call themselves libertarians, but they don't realize they're just leaning into the ANCAP bandwagon.
	And that's great.
	I like it, but they're not straight yet.
	I mean, it's a process.
	Everybody comes from somewhere, left or right, and then they start, you know, getting out of the entire paradigm altogether.
	Yeah, so listen, I mean, and this is why, you know, I said at the beginning, you seem kind of happy, kind of positive.
	And You were lied to a lot and you made some pretty serious mistakes and you got involved in some pretty ugly stuff.
	About the ugliest stuff that a human being can get involved in, right?
	Imperialism.
	Yep.
	And your body was partially dismantled.
	You've been on painkillers for five years.
	Eight surgeries as a father.
	And part of the payoff is in moral doubt.
	That's what I mean when I say you have...
	Oh, and you lost a marriage.
	So there's stuff to be upset about.
	And I'm just a bit concerned that you're kind of skating over some of that stuff and thinking that the major issue is the pension.
	But your culture did you wrong.
	Did you serious wrong.
	You were lied to about the virtue of getting involved in killing people.
	And that's a tough legacy, man, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	I can't change it.
	I can only take...
	I know, like, I've heard a lot of people who regret their past, and I want to...
	I can regret it, but I can't change it.
	So I don't want to sit in a corner and curl up in a ball and cry about it.
	I want to take the mistakes and make them positive.
	You are changing it.
	You are changing it, Donnie.
	Because you're reframing it all the time.
	You're constantly changing it.
	The independent soldier, the army is about bullying.
	I guess you could say it's kind of about killing it, right?
	You are constantly changing it from what it actually was, right?
	So you're saying you can't change it, but you keep changing it.
	What I mean is I just, I cannot go back and rewrite 2000 to 2010.
	You are going back and rewriting 2000 to 2010, and when you listen to this call, you'll understand what I'm talking about.
	You are rewriting it right now, and I'm urging you not to.
	Oh, okay.
	Yeah, I see what you're saying.
	You relied into becoming a paid killer.
	You are betrayed by the people who are supposed to protect you, your teachers, your priests, your parents, your culture, your friends, your family.
	They should have been saying, dear God in heaven, our child is thinking of joining a military where he's going to fucking kill people and might himself get killed.
	We better find out everything there is to know about this stuff.
	We better read every piece of skeptical...
	Left-wing bullshit about, let's chow down on a steady diet of Noam Chomsky and figure out all the downsides, the possible downsides of our child getting involved in a murder fest.
	You know, fucking parents, they go insane if there's like a micron of BPA in a baby bottle.
	And they're like, military?
	Sounds good!
	Great!
	Right?
	They were supposed to protect you.
	They were supposed to keep you from making stupid decisions.
	Don't drive drunk!
	Don't do drugs!
	No unprotected sex!
	No pregnancy!
	No STDs!
	No drinking!
	Military?
	Great!
	That sounds fine!
	Right?
	They were supposed to protect you.
	And they didn't.
	And that's what I mean when I say you sound kind of happy.
	happy?
	Well, I would say looking through that rubric that I'm just as culpable as they are.
	Well, would they be adults?
	Hey, I couldn't have signed a contract unless I was considered an adult.
	Maybe a younger, naive adult, but still an adult.
	There's a difference between somebody in their late teens and somebody in their mid to late 30s.
	Well, what about the second time or the third time?
	No, somebody...
	Okay, well, I'm just talking about the first time.
	Right, second time you've got...
	Sunk costs and waiting for a pension.
	But the first time, a kid who's 17 or 18, their brain is still seven to eight years from maturity.
	And you immediately started to blame yourself when I pointed out that your culture betrayed you.
	And your family betrayed you, in my opinion.
	And then you say, well, you know, but I was, you know, I'm as culpable as they are.
	Well, I would not argue that.
	You would not argue it or you would not agree with it?
	Sorry, I would not argue that you were as morally responsible as your 40-year-old parents.
	And look, you're a teenager, which means you're immortal and you don't care about consequences and all that sort of shit, right?
	Which is all perfectly natural for teenagers.
	But that's why you need parents.
	Had either of them been in the military?
	No.
	See, if my daughter...
	I mean, obviously, my daughter has already said she never wants to be in the military, not that I've talked to her much about it.
	But if my daughter said, I want to go and join the Peace Corps for two years in Angola...
	What do you think I would do?
	In a purely protective fashion.
	I mean, I don't think the Peace Corps is anything necessarily wrong with it, but Angola is kind of a hairy part of the world.
	You might not want to let your daughter go there.
	Well, I mean, if she was an adult, right?
	I mean, you could have gone against your parents' objections if you're 18, right?
	17, I think they need to co-sign, but...
	But I would go immediately, you know, and I would ask her tons of questions.
	And given I don't know much about the Peace Corps other than it seems to be a lot about keeping mosquitoes away in the jungle with Marijuana smoke.
	I would go and research the Peace Corps.
	I would go and research the mortality rates.
	I would go and research people's experiences of it.
	I would go and call people up who'd been there and find out what the experience was like.
	I would go down and interview the people at the Peace Corps.
	I would go and find out everything I could find out about Angola and diseases and political instability and kidnapping.
	I would just go and get everything In fact, conceivable that I could, so that I could bring hopefully some informed and valuable perspectives to her decision.
	And that's just the Peace Corps, right?
	Honestly, Steph, I don't have master's degree parents in philosophy.
	I don't come from that.
	Are you saying that it takes a master's degree in philosophy to get knowledge that can help protect your child?
	No.
	Did she never feed you any vegetables?
	Did she never tell you to go outside?
	Did she just feed you a steady tide of chocolate, marshmallows, and couch potatoes?
	No, but I don't come from that level or order of thinking.
	I really don't.
	I understand where you're saying that literally I was in a vulnerable state.
	And there was literally nobody there to do it.
	And we can point the finger at my parents.
	However, they were...
	Like, literally, my parents had me when I was 17.
	So by the time I was 17, literally, they were only...
	Wait, when they were 17, you mean?
	Yeah, yeah.
	So, like, my parents were really young.
	And by the time I was technically an adult, my dad was even...
	God, Donnie!
	Are you telling me...
	He was younger than me.
	Your parents had...
	Wait, wait, wait.
	Your parents had you...
	When they were 17, but they thought 17 for you was a great age to make major life decisions because it worked out so well for them.
	The only reason my dad didn't end up in the military is because he got hit by a truck.
	Literally, it's a level of pure ignorance.
	There's no malice to put there.
	It's a level of ignorance that you would just want to start drinking if I told you about.
	And that's all it is.
	There's no malice there.
	It's ignorance.
	I have difficulty attributing malice to somebody who is ignorant.
	It's very much like a child's mindset.
	Now, granted, you could say they're 40 years old and they're still ignorant.
	Okay, but if somebody is not exposed to higher level concepts and their whole life revolves around just, you know, bringing home the paycheck and drinking beer on Thursday and raising their kids in the American dream with hot dogs on the grill, people get caught in that.
	And I learned from that by watching it and never wanting to be it.
	And literally the military was my way out of it.
	But as far as attributing hatred to my parents, No, I never said hatred.
	I never said hatred.
	I never said hatred and I never said malice.
	Roger, I don't mean those.
	I'm just saying that bringing that visceral culpability to where you kind of want to blame them, I just can't find any logical way to do it.
	They were as dumb as I was.
	Hey, if you want a logical way to do it, I can give it to you in 10 seconds.
	Did your parents hold you morally culpable when you were 12?
	Somewhat, yes.
	Okay.
	What about when you were 10?
	Only to the level of things that I had been taught.
	If I had screwed something up for the very first time, it was a learning point.
	Everything after that was the rules of the rules.
	Got it.
	Okay, so...
	So you have moral culpability at the age of 10 or 8 or whatever, right?
	Like if you failed a test when you were 6, did your parents say, well, no, he has to pass the test because that would make him culpable for his mistakes.
	Like otherwise, he's being held culpable to his mistakes and therefore we should never have children fail any tests at any age, right?
	Because they're kids, right?
	No, that never happened to me.
	But like the previous guy, I had been bounced around from school to school because my parents really didn't have a lot of money.
	So it was the best living situation that could be provided at the time.
	I went to seven schools during my school.
	I went to seven different schools over the course of 12 years.
	So I was always the other guy.
	And your answer to that is simply that your parents didn't have enough money.
	Like everyone who doesn't have enough money has to move continually.
	Right.
	No, it was just an attempt to provide the best living condition possible.
	No, it wasn't.
	Because the best living condition possible for children is continuity and friendships.
	Anyway, so my point is that if you say that your parents at the age of 34...
	Or 35 have no moral culpability, then it means that they don't have the concept of moral culpability.
	Now, if they don't have the concept of moral culpability, they never should have imposed it on you as a child, right?
	Fair enough.
	So, anyway.
	Anyway, so I hope that that's some helpful perspective.
	I think we've got one more caller, so I do have to move on.
	Otherwise, they're going to get pushed for four months like you did, for which I'm very sorry.
	I hugely appreciate the call.
	I really do.
	And your moral fiber is...
	Your moral fiber is enough to pass a watermelon through my colon.
	And I just really wanted to point out that's pretty admirable.
	And I really wanted to congratulate you on your commitment to peaceful parenting.
	That is the most important thing for me, at least of anything that we've discussed.
	And I hope that you will drop us a line and let us know what you decide.
	I definitely will.
	Thank you very much.
	Thanks, Donnie.
	Alright, up next is Mark.
	Mark wrote in and said, I've been ambitious-less most of my life, but in the last few years it has changed.
	Now I have enormous ambitions to start a business and enormous anxiety over the possibilities of screwing up or failing.
	How do I best manage this kind of anxiety?
	Hello, hello.
	It's the money show.
	Alright.
	What do you mean by ambition-less?
	I spent a large portion of my teenage years, I guess really my life when it really started believing in determinism and then very quickly in nihilism and that sort of spiraled out of control for like the first 10 years of my real life.
	Why did you believe in determinism?
	Um, the argument logically made sense to me at the time.
	You know, all atoms.
	No, no, no.
	No, come on.
	Come on!
	The argument must have emotionally resonated with you.
	Look, and I'll say that for my own early beliefs as well, right?
	It must have had some emotional resonance for you.
	I mean, yes, the physics argument made sense, but my life as a child, yes, it definitely resonated and still does to this day.
	And why did it resonate with your life as a child?
	I was bullied very severely in public school, starting from about first grade up until eighth grade.
	And it only just barely started to taper off in high school, so I pretty much spent 12 years being bullied very severely in public school.
	And what about at home?
	It wasn't as bad at home.
	I don't want to lie and say that it was better at home, but I was spanked and there were timeouts and groundings, but the majority of the abuse that I suffered happened in public school.
	What about your connection with your parents?
	Did your mom stay home?
	My mom stayed home and my dad worked as an engineer for AT&T and then for Lucent when AT&T split up.
	There was a parent home all the time.
	What was your relationship like with your mom?
	I enjoyed spending time with my mom.
	We're very close right now.
	We have a lot of shared interests.
	She was definitely not the primary...
	She's disciplinarian, although I'm not saying that she's not morally responsible for the spankings that I received from my father.
	Sorry, she says she's not morally responsible for the spankings he received?
	No, no, no, I'm saying I don't hold her as not responsible for the spankings that I received primarily from my father.
	They're both responsible.
	Sorry, you threw a whole bunch of negatives in there.
	I'm just making sure.
	So, do you hold her morally responsible for the spankings you received?
	Yes, I hold her responsible for the childhood that I had and for the discipline, the way that my dad disciplined me.
	I mean, she approved of it wholeheartedly.
	And how did your...
	And did she also, like...
	Did she use him as her disciplinarian?
	In other words, did she say, your son did X, right?
	Yes, that happened a few times.
	She would say, you know, just wait till your father gets home.
	Well, okay.
	Hang on a sec.
	So if he was the primary disciplinarian and she was the primary one at home, it must have happened more than a few times, right?
	Only a few times that I can remember, but I'm sure it happened more than a few times.
	Yeah, it must be.
	And how would your father hit you?
	Spanking, not bare bottoms.
	There were a few times that I was hit on limbs or the back of the head, but primarily it was clothed, bare hands.
	And was it painful or not too bad?
	I remember it as being very painful.
	I absolutely dreaded any time it would happen.
	Yeah, I remember it as being very painful.
	And how often did it happen?
	I want to say about once a week, maybe a little bit less, but probably somewhere around once a week.
	And when did it stop?
	The very last time I can remember me or any of my siblings being spanked, I was 14 on a family trip.
	My brother was spanked in a hotel room and I ran into the bathroom and cried.
	I remember it vividly because I had just started growing facial hair and my mom had to be the one to show me how to shave.
	And that was the last time I ever remembered him hitting any of us.
	Do you know what age you were when it began?
	I can't remember.
	The earliest I can remember is about five, and I can't remember a time when spanking wasn't on the table, so at least five to fourteen.
	Most spanking, yeah.
	I mean, in studies recently, from seven months to four...
	There was lots of spanking going on.
	Let's not say seven months.
	Let's just say two.
	Maybe it was later.
	Maybe it was earlier.
	But let's just go with two.
	Once a week for 12 years.
	Give or take, right?
	Do you have any rough idea?
	Yeah.
	624 times you were spanked.
	And that's not including my siblings, so...
	Yeah, of course, you watch to that.
	And how many siblings do you have?
	I have two.
	I have a younger brother and my sister is the baby.
	Right.
	So that's 1,872 spankings.
	1,872 spankings during the course of your childhood.
	Give or take.
	What do you think of it?
	I'd be lying if I said that I like thinking about it.
	It's difficult to think about now because it's been so long and they have helped me a lot.
	During my 20s, trying to repair the damage that the spankings and the public school has done.
	It just becomes difficult to think about.
	And what have they done to repair the damage?
	I dropped out of the first college that I went to, and they allowed me to move back in.
	They supported me when I eventually moved out.
	I'm now, like I said in my email, I have the ambitions of starting a business, which is going to require me to save quite a bit of money for the next year or so.
	So they've been very supportive about letting me move back in.
	A lot of the skills that I'm going to need for the business are skills I'm learning here.
	No, no.
	Sorry, sorry, sorry.
	Come on.
	Come on.
	You were hit over 600 times by your father, but now he's giving you money?
	And that's what you call restitution?
	What am I missing here?
	I mean, you can't possibly expect me to accept that.
	It's true I beat my wife, but I did buy her a diamond ring.
	So that's restitution, right?
	I was thinking therapy, self-reflection, honesty about their own childhoods, apologies, curiosity about your experiences, apologies, curiosity about your experiences, not here's a room and board and some money.
	Yeah, I've tried having the conversation about how bad my childhood was and how...
	What they did, how it affected me, and that conversation went about as well as I guess you'd imagine it.
	They deflected, they passed blame, they said they did the best that they could.
	Do you think that if you hit your girlfriend you could buy her a nice fish dinner and it would be fine?
	No.
	Okay, so why are you making this restitution argument with me, which has to do with your parents giving you stuff?
	Honey, I know I hit you.
	Here's a gift card.
	We're fine, right?
	Yeah, we're fine.
	I don't want you to sell yourself at that fucking price, Mark.
	I don't want you to sell your soul for room and board.
	You're worth more than that, right?
	I'd like to think so.
	I'd like to think so too.
	I'd like to think so too.
	You are.
	But you first have to know that that's not restitution.
	So if you were
	and your siblings were hit 1,800 plus times, does that help you understand why bullying at school might have been more prevalent?
	Yeah, I'm under no illusion that my home life didn't completely determine what my school life was going to be like.
	Because you tried to say that to me earlier, that it was much worse at school.
	Well, at school, the abuse was, you know, a constant seven and a half hours at At home there were at least breaks.
	Did you tell your parents about being bullied?
	Yeah, for the first five or six years, I would constantly tell them that I was being bullied, and I would ask them what I should do about it.
	And?
	Well, my mom's advice was that I'm very sensitive and that the other boys are picking on me because I'm sensitive and because they know that they can make me cry.
	And so her advice was to...
	So it was your fault?
	Yes, essentially.
	So they hit you 600 times as a child...
	In painful ways.
	But the fact that you were susceptible to aggression outside the home was because of your great mysterious otherworldly ghost called sensitivity and had nothing to do with any behaviors they may have done.
	Here's a dinner.
	We're fine now, right? - Yeah, I suppose that is essentially what I'm saying.
	So you had to fix what they broke without them changing, breaking you.
	That's a great fucking gig.
	They hit you repeatedly, they hit your siblings repeatedly, but it's your job to fix the effects of being hit while they still continue to hit you for another half decade.
	Nice.
	Nice.
	Thank you.
	Wow.
	You know, I mean, when I put it this way, isn't it amazing what people get away with?
	Yeah, I don't know why this is so surprising to me, but I really felt like I was doing well with self-knowledge and getting in touch with myself and my emotions, not even a minute in.
	I'm already blown away.
	Well, because you're appeasing.
	It's easy to feel like you're making progress if you don't confront people, right?
	It's easy to diet if all you're doing is reading the books.
	Hey, dieting is easy.
	I'm reading a lot.
	Are you changing your diet?
	No, but I'm reading a lot.
	And I'm not criticizing.
	I'm not.
	I really want you to Understand that there's so much more to do, which is good, because you want to do so much more with your life, right?
	Now, if you had really pursued self-knowledge and you were still feeling stuck and all that, that would be a huge problem, right?
	So I hope this is good news, right?
	No, no, this is good.
	This is good.
	So you told me, I have a great relationship with my mother.
	We're very close, right?
	Yes.
	But you can't talk to her about your childhood with her.
	So what that means is I have a relationship with my mother that she can call close that serves her needs and not mine.
	Yeah, I, yeah, that is, that is the way it is right now.
	And what happens if you are honest with them?
	I know that I would like to think that they would listen and be supportive, but like I said, I have...
	I have brought up this kind of stuff before.
	I went out to dinner with both of them and talked about parenting and bullying and spanking and the effects it has on children.
	At that time, my mom didn't want to talk about it and my dad made excuses for himself, so I don't know what would happen.
	He said that he was hit worse when he was younger, that life was much harder for him, that I had a very easy, nice childhood compared to others.
	Wait, wait, sorry.
	Let me just understand this.
	Did he say, I was hit worse than you?
	Yes.
	So he admits that it was bad.
	Just wasn't as bad, right?
	So for him being hit was bad, but you should be grateful for him hitting you.
	I think the argument was I should be grateful that I was hit less, but yeah, no, it's a ridiculous argument.
	No, but that's still bad, right?
	Because if him being hit was worse, then he's saying that it was...
	Right?
	Bad.
	That hitting is bad and he got hit more.
	Right?
	Right.
	So he knew that being hit was bad, so he knew that hitting you was bad.
	Right, I don't really even know.
	So...
	I don't know what to say.
	Do you want to do a role play?
	You be him and I'll be you?
	Sure, I can try that.
	Alright.
	So, Dad, I'm really troubled and bothered and upset by the amount of hitting that went on in her family.
	By my calculations, I was hit over 600 times.
	And it was very painful and violent and terrifying.
	It's had a huge and lasting effect.
	It affected me at school.
	It affected me in my relationships.
	It's affected my ambition, my sense of security and safety, my bond with you and mom.
	I think this level of aggression and violence has had incredibly negative effects, and it bothers me, and I'm pretty fucking pissed off about it.
	Well, I mean, when I grew up...
	Hitting was very commonplace.
	It was just the way that we parented back then.
	Dad!
	Okay.
	I just told you something about myself, and what did you do?
	I began to explain to you why your childhood went the way it did.
	You started talking about yourself.
	That's not what I was talking about.
	I wasn't talking about you.
	I wasn't talking about your childhood.
	I was talking about me and my childhood with you as the father.
	Well, if you're just gonna jump down my throat like that and not give me any chance to explain and answer your questions, I don't see how I can help you.
	No, I didn't actually ask a question.
	I also didn't ask you to explain anything.
	I simply told you that I'm very angry and upset about the way that you hit me when I was a child and how much you hit me and how much you hit my siblings.
	Over 1,800 times you hit us.
	I don't think it could possibly have been that many times.
	Once a week, three of us, 12 years.
	You can do the math.
	1800 times you hit children hard, painfully. - Look, the past is far, far in the past painfully. - Look, the past is far, far in the If you're still dwelling on this now, maybe you should go and see a therapist, but I don't see how I can possibly help you.
	There's nothing we can do to go back and change what was in the past.
	Do you think that it was good or bad to hit us that much?
	I think that you kids sometimes were more than me and your mother could handle, and we had to keep you under control, and we did it the best way we knew how.
	So it was good.
	It was necessary.
	So it was good.
	I deserved it.
	It was no failure of parenting on your part even once.
	It was us kids' fault that we got hit so much, right?
	Yeah, it's hard for me to continue with the roleplay because at this point, my dad would have stormed off by now.
	Yeah, he would have said something along the lines of, I don't know what you want from me.
	You're just attacking me.
	And then he would storm off.
	Because he's very sensitive, you see.
	He can hit children 1800 times and make them cry in pain, but you see, he's very sensitive to being upset.
	Like all cruel people, he's incredibly sensitive.
	He really doesn't like being upset.
	Now, he can hit children 1,800 times, but being upset is very, very unpleasant for him.
	Do you see how hypocritical that is?
	Oh, yeah.
	Did you get a chance to storm out of being spanked?
	No, not when I was younger.
	Right.
	And parents, you know, not parents, a lot of people, right, the moment you bring up any upset, the first thing they'll do is just start excusing and justifying themselves.
	And it's weird, because it's like, I told you I was upset, why are you talking about you?
	What are you, Anna from Frozen?
	And it's easy to get dragged into that, right?
	It's so easy.
	You sit there and listen as the person explains why they did what they did and justifies and excuses and fogs and avoids.
	And it's like none of that is actually, you know, they don't...
	The three words of care and compassion are not, I love you, but tell me more.
	Right?
	Dad, I'm really upset with you.
	This really bothered me.
	My daughter says that to me.
	You know, you went to Amsterdam for five days.
	I'm really upset with you.
	Tell me more.
	Well, it was a very good speaking opportunity.
	And, you know, it might get us some donations.
	And don't you like having me at home?
	And when I was a kid, my mom was gone a lot.
	What a load of self-serving, treacly-mouthed, existentially stink-ridden bullshit.
	Tell me more.
	Tell me what's upsetting you.
	you i'd like to i'd like to know i i don't really even know like what to do what to do now um I mean, I've moved back in.
	I'm...
	Me and my fiancé live here with them now.
	I don't know how I would start the business without their materials.
	Listen, it's the same thing I said to the previous caller.
	You can do anything you want.
	Just be relentlessly rigorous and honest about the situation.
	You don't have to talk to your parents.
	You don't have to not talk to your parents.
	You can stay, you can go, you can do anything you want.
	This guy, last guy, take his pension, don't take his pension.
	With one exception, in the eight-year history of the show, I have not told anyone what to do.
	And I'm not going to tell you what to do.
	Because what's the point of that, right?
	I mean, there's no point in that.
	But don't try and sell me, I'm so close to my mom.
	That's all.
	And don't try and sell yourself, I'm so close to my mom.
	Look at it for what it is.
	You were hit a lot.
	They thought it was a great idea.
	They have not apologized.
	They have not made any restitution.
	They are doubling down or standing by the harm that they did to you as a child.
	It is what it is.
	We are empiricists, first and foremost, if we are philosophers.
	And we do not lie to ourselves about that which is or is not.
	Success is connection.
	The success of this show is my connection with you in this call right now.
	I mean, I feel it.
	Is it just me?
	No, it's not just you.
	I mean, you can feel this.
	It's like we've got physics between us, right?
	I mean, we can't even see each other, but it's like we're bound, right?
	In language.
	Connected.
	And that's success.
	It's success in these conversations.
	It's the success of this conversation as a whole.
	It's why it's growing.
	Success is connection.
	Without connection, people can't watch your back and you can't trust that you're doing the right thing.
	We can't think every consequence.
	We can't think through every possibility.
	So we need to have people around us who are going to watch our back and help us from Making bad decisions helps stop us from making bad decisions.
	It's like if we only ever gained weight in our back and we couldn't really feel it, we'd need people around us to say, am I getting fat back there, right?
	You need someone to check your back for moles, right?
	Success is connection.
	Success is the offloading.
	Of paranoia to the rational judgment of others.
	Because when you don't have people watching your back, you have to be paranoid about everything.
	So, you asked about, you know, you felt unmotivated and you want to achieve everything.
	Someone achieves some success in life.
	And I'm telling you, success is connection.
	Now, if you aren't connected to your parents, but you think you are, I don't think you're going to have the right ingredients for success.
	Because you need to know the difference between being connected and not being connected.
	And if you want to be in relationships where you're not connected, be my guest!
	Right?
	I'm not Elliot Rodger in his Tall spire of omniscient evil control, right?
	The tower that he writes about in his manifesto where he gets to see and order the world, the same tower he was denied access to when he was four and wandered off and hurt himself on a cactus.
	That's the same tower.
	Same tower.
	To be successful, you're going to need to be connected to people.
	Connected to your customers.
	Connected to your employees, connected to your business partners, connected to your investors, connected to your suppliers.
	If you're connected to people, they'll trust you.
	They'll let things slide a little bit.
	They'll give you some warning.
	They'll give you a heads up.
	You will navigate with radar rather than with bashing your face into rocks because you're blindfolded.
	Success is a team effort because we can't see ourselves completely.
	And those people who seal themselves off to egalitarian feedback become unstable and do not achieve what they want to achieve.
	You can think of Ayn Rand.
	You can think of Marx.
	You can think of Lenin.
	You can think of a whole myriad of people who don't have equals around them who are giving them feedback on what they need to hear so that they can relax and know they're doing the right thing.
	And they're not constantly second-guessing themselves.
	Success is connection.
	So if you want to succeed, you need to know the difference between being connected and not connected with people so that you can keep people around you who are going to connect with you and watch your back.
	Watching someone's back means risking the relationship on principle.
	Risking the relationship on principle.
	I count my principles higher than my relationships because without my principles there are no relationships.
	I have to tell the truth to people around me who I love because if I cannot tell the truth to them I cannot love them and they cannot love me.
	Connection is success.
	If you want to succeed in your next endeavor, you must, must, must know the difference between connected and convenient.
	Between love and appeasement.
	Between respect and fear.
	Between connection and mere proximity.
	Because if you have people around you who you are really connected with, Who will remind you of your principles as the foundation of that relationship?
	Success is inevitable.
	And if you don't have those people around, failure is inevitable.
	So I think that your lack of motivation comes from knowing fundamentally that you can succeed without connection, but not knowing what connection is yet.
	Does that make any sense?
	It does.
	Right now I'm trying to figure out how I would go about figuring out the difference between a connected versus a convenient relationship when I don't know how many of those I've ever had.
	Dude, I just told you.
	Do you feel this?
	Is this anything that you can say to me right now?
	No.
	No, I don't.
	Do you think that I'm going to get angry with you or abuse you or put you down or hang up on you?
	No matter what you say.
	Is there anything that you can say that would make me do that?
	Again, I would hope not, but no, I don't think so.
	Right.
	So that's what I'm talking about.
	That's why we record and publish these conversations.
	Listen, I could make pretty good money just by offering private conversations, never publishing anything, and charging people for that.
	We get those offers all the time.
	And I say no.
	I say we record for publication in general.
	I don't accept payments for any conversations.
	If people want to donate, that's fine.
	I don't want to get paid for private conversations because I'm not about one-on-one When we could have one on a million.
	So you and I are having this connection and we can see and you can hear when people get a connection, which is what I'm striving for in these conversations.
	When people get a connection, you can hear it.
	It clicks, right?
	And they relax and they speak.
	Now what you did was fly off into abstracts rather than stay connected with me.
	That's a good sign that you're not connected, right?
	Well, how am I going to know the difference, right?
	Well, That's why I said you and I have a connection, right?
	That's why I was pointing out and describing what a connection looks like and feels like, right?
	And then you had to jump away from that because it's threatening to the relationships or what you call relationships around you, right?
	Right.
	Yeah, I have a lot more work to do.
	No, no, now you're jumping away again.
	What's the most connected thing that you could say, the most honest and open thing that you could say to me right now?
	That I am...
	I'm overwhelmed...
	That I've never had a conversation like this.
	That, no, I don't think anyone's ever really listened to me in this way before.
	And it's...
	I'm finding myself having a hard time knowing how to respond.
	You started to say you were over...
	I assume you meant overwhelmed, right?
	Overwhelmed, yeah.
	Okay, so tell me more about that, if you wouldn't mind.
	Yeah, no, um...
	I don't know, it's just, um...
	like when when the conversation started my whole body was was very tense and then when it began it just got just everything is is tense my My whole brain is firing at once.
	A dozen things to say pop into my head and they all compete.
	And here I am just sort of babbling.
	I'm usually very good at picking my words and conversing.
	I'm usually very wordy.
	You're doing much better than you were earlier.
	I'm doing a little better than I did when I started.
	Much better.
	Much better.
	Go on.
	I guess I'm not...
	Just then I stopped thinking and I just started letting the words happen and I was able to talk like I normally do.
	Um...
	Yeah, I thought I was doing so much better than this.
	In fact, I literally just had the conversation with my fiancé where I was saying, you know, I'm doing a lot better since I started listening to Free Domain Radio and a couple of the other podcasts that I listen to, and I started making the case for that, and then I get on here and I can barely talk.
	And how are you feeling?
	I mean, I'm...
	I think I'm more anxious than I was before, but I'm...
	I mean, the anxiety before was a paralyzing anxiety because I didn't know what to do.
	I didn't know where to go from where I am right now.
	Now it's just...
	I think I know what I have to do, but the prospect of doing it is going to be, to put it as mildly as possible, extremely unpleasant.
	I... I've tried to have the conversation with them once and I let them run away.
	I have to have the conversation again and again and again with my parents until it either sticks or I've had enough and I just know that it's time for me to move on from whatever this is, whatever you want to call it because it's not a relationship.
	That's what I think right now.
	So, plans and thoughts.
	what are you feeling anxiety mixed with relief um anxiety I think I'm scared.
	What's going on physically in your body at the moment?
	Oh, I feel like I'm like 200 degrees right now.
	I'm sitting here and I'm sweating in the air conditioning.
	Heart pounding?
	Yeah.
	Oh yeah.
	Fingers sweaty?
	It's like I'm doing cardio right now.
	You know why, right?
	Because there's a crack in the wall, right?
	Right.
	Right.
	So tell me more about what you feel?
	I... I feel like I have been looking for...
	Now I'm getting off into abstracts again.
	It's hard to keep...
	I feel like it's hard to keep myself pinned down.
	Deep breath.
	No, just take a deep breath, right?
	Because you keep wanting to jump out of your body and into platonic abstract land, right?
	Right.
	It's a very common thing that I do.
	Okay, so stop it.
	Right.
	So, person to person, forget everyone else.
	Human being to human being.
	What is the not connecting?
	What does that cost you?
	This conversation won't be as useful as it could be.
	My relationships will suffer.
	My personal life will suffer.
	No, no.
	Listen, listen, listen.
	Connection is listening.
	Listening, listening!
	Do you remember when we were doing the role play with your dad?
	And I was you and I said, this has really bothered me and your dad started waffling about his own life.
	Right.
	And then he said, I'm trying to answer your question.
	I'm trying to, right?
	And I said, I didn't ask a question, right?
	I said, what has it cost you when you're talking about the future?
	Right?
	Listening with a wide open mind and heart in the moment is the essence of connection, right?
	Right?
	Let me ask again.
	Take a deep breath.
	What has this lack of connection cost you in the past?
	Ten years of my life in determinism and nihilism.
	It's cost me a decade before my life really has been able to start.
	Ten years, approximately.
	Is what this cost me.
	What are your thoughts when you think about ten years?
	Ten years.
	Sounds like a prison sentence.
	It makes me...
	It's hard to get it through my voice.
	I... Unsurprisingly, I was beaten a lot as a child, so I have a hard time expressing emotions now.
	But it's infuriating to me, the amount of time that I lost because of this.
	I mean, it's infuriating that my parents and the school inflicted this upon me, and it's infuriating to me that it took me so long Just to even begin clawing my way out of the depression that I wallowed in for most of my teenage and early 20s, all of those years, it makes me incredibly angry thinking about it.
	Right.
	Because you were always and forever only an hour away from getting out of that prison, right?
	We've been talking for, what, about an hour?
	Yeah, something like that, a little less, I think.
	Right.
	Thank you.
	It's like you've got someone dying in the living room for 10 years and three drops of a medicine that comes out of a tap is denied to them and everyone just waltzes around like nobody's turning blue on the couch, right?
	Everyone in my life made this kind of stuff sound and seem so difficult.
	Talking to you now, it seems very silly.
	It seems very easy.
	Yeah, it's just talking and listening.
	Without the filter, it's just talking and listening.
	Earlier, when I was talking about...
	Yes, she's my mother, and that's why she's not dead.
	I mean, there was like, ooh, that's a filter, right?
	Ooh, I shouldn't say that, you know, whatever, right?
	But it's like, no, I always want to be honest.
	I've thought about that.
	We have so many private thoughts that isolate us, that we think, oh, it's just me who thinks that, you know?
	When comedians make jokes, as I said with Joe Rogan, I mean, just talking a lot about the private thoughts, you know, like there was, I think on the first SNL, George Carlin was there, and he said something like, I like to watch old movies and wonder how many of the extras are still alive.
	I think about that every time I watch one of those.
	We have these private thoughts.
	And we censor and we filter.
	And thus we isolate.
	And our true selves become like an embarrassing sin.
	We all sometimes eat too much.
	We all masturbate.
	We all fantasize.
	We're all cowards sometimes.
	We're all brave sometimes.
	We all appease, but we keep these things to ourselves so much.
	So it's just a simple act of, we're always thinking, right?
	Nobody has any shortage of anything to say, right?
	But when we grow up in unconnected environments, we're just so used to censorship because we don't want to...
	You can't dance with free abandon through a minefield, right?
	You constantly got to...
	Do I put my foot here?
	Is there a click?
	Am I going to lose a leg?
	Right?
	You're just afraid.
	Afraid of spontaneity.
	Afraid of connection.
	Afraid of honesty.
	All the time.
	Everything becomes so complicated.
	The simple Q&A, right?
	Like, I mean...
	A simple Q&A with your dad, when you role played, it lasted like, what, a minute and a half before he stormed out?
	We can only connect in reality and what we think is our realities.
	It's who we are.
	It's the reality of who we are.
	But you're always thinking and getting out of censorship, getting out of self-censorship, which comes from a disconnected and abused history, getting out of self-censorship is essential to breaking getting out of self-censorship is essential to breaking the cycle.
	Thank you.
	When you really connect with someone, you cannot harm them.
	When you are disconnected from everyone, you will certainly end up harming others or endangering yourself, cutting a risky behavior or whatever, right?
	Right, luckily I've never done any of those things personally, but I've had friends that have.
	Yeah, there's a lot to think about.
	I thought that I was getting better with the self-censorship thing, but I don't think that now.
	I mean...
	Look, you were just...
	Clearly.
	You were just trying to...
	Your unconscious was like...
	This is so common, you know, and I do this seven hours or eight hours a week just in these call-in shows and this is so common.
	Your unconscious floats up bullshit and sees if anyone notices.
	Right?
	You know, like in the old World War I, they used to put one of their helmets up on a stick to see if there was a sniper.
	So we put bullshit up and see if anyone notices whether it's bullshit or not, right?
	It's a warning, it's a ping, it's a radar, right?
	Is it safe?
	Is it safe for me to tell the truth?
	Does anyone even notice if I'm lying?
	You know, you don't bother coordinating your clothes to perform in front of the blind.
	They don't give a shit whether your shirt matches your pants, because they're blind, right?
	And if nobody even sees us, what do we care how we look?
	And if nobody hears us, What do we care what we say?
	We don't, right?
	And tonight, like, it's interrupting people a lot and saying, listen, you're giving me story time.
	You're giving me a script.
	You're reading our fortune cookies.
	You're just telling me a story that you've told to yourself a million times that explains nothing and obscures everything.
	And so you, like Donnie, the ex-soldier, right?
	Although part of his body will forever be at war, because he's injured.
	But Donnie was trying to give me all this stuff.
	Like he's just repeating this mantra, just wondering, his unconscious is like, hey, is this guy going to notice that what I'm saying just doesn't make any sense?
	And people try that with me almost every time they call.
	They'll say stuff.
	And when you listen back to this, like, you could write a book on the things that you contradicted yourself about.
	And I'm not criticizing in any way.
	I consider it a great honor that people say that stuff to me and then let me, hopefully as best I can, call them on it in a way that is productive.
	Right?
	Because you, you know, it's much worse at school.
	But it was a result of your home.
	Anyway, so, and you know, like, I'm really close to my Mom and all that, right?
	Well, your mom's married to your dad who'll storm out in about 90 seconds of honesty about your experience, right?
	She screws the guy who hit you, right?
	So people just, it's like, am I in the land of propaganda or am I in the land of honesty?
	That's what people are pinging all the time to see, right?
	right?
	And if you know you're saying something that's not true, if other people just nod and smile, then you're not in a safe environment, right?
	You're not in a place where intimacy or connection is possible.
	But you need to know what's true and what's not first, right?
	I'm sorry, does that make any sense at all?
	No, no, that makes perfect sense.
	It's a little disheartening.
	Hearing some of this, I'm not mad or upset that you said any of the things you said.
	I really had it in my head that I was doing better than I am.
	You're doing better than the vast majority of people.
	No, you're doing better than the vast majority of people.
	I mean, come on.
	How long have you been working on philosophy and self-knowledge?
	Four years.
	Which means that you're more open to correction than most people will ever be, right?
	Right.
	I'm much more open to correction than pretty much anyone else I know right now.
	I mean, I haven't stormed off, so...
	No, no.
	And good for you.
	Good for you.
	Do you mind if I finish with a rant?
	I'll be my guest.
	Well, thanks for the call.
	And when are you getting married?
	We were hoping for some time this year, but we want to start a business and we want to buy a house.
	We're not sure how the finances are going to work, but within a year or two is the plan right now.
	Okay.
	All right, so this is...
	This conversation...
	Is a highly improbable cross-pollination of connection and disconnection.
	Disconnected people usually have no contact with connected people unless they're willing to pay huge amounts of money for a really great therapist or something like that.
	Now, I don't do therapy.
	I just do honesty.
	But...
	This cross-pollination between connection and disconnection, between intimacy and avoidance, between integrity and dissociation Doesn't happen.
	In fact, most of society is designed to keep these things apart.
	Because really, connected people don't want to usually spend a lot of time with disconnected people because it's boring and exhausting, right?
	And disconnected people don't want to spend a lot of time with connected people because they feel inferior.
	They feel their limitations.
	They feel their absence.
	And they get disoriented when somebody keeps pushing back against the things that they say that aren't true or sensible or rational.
	Now people who are brought up in a connected household don't usually end up with people around them who are disconnected.
	In the same way that people who only speak Mandarin don't spend a lot of time with people who only speak Gaelic.
	People who come from disconnected households, well, the authorities in those disconnected households keep the connected people away.
	To avoid revealing the limitations of their disconnected parenting and thus the undermining of their authority.
	So...
	It's so weird and unusual for conversations like this to occur in a public, easily digestible format.
	So I do a lot of these truth abouts.
	And there are always...
	I mean, I don't know if they're trying to be sinister or something, but every now and then, people will say, oh yeah?
	You think that's the truth about Nelson Mandela?
	I'd like to see the truth about Stefan Molyneux.
	Dun-dun-dun!
	You know, like...
	Like there's some giant mothership where we keep all the fertile women bound up and inseminated by giant hydra-headed snakes ridden by Hercules or some weird magnificent stuff.
	Don't talk about the mothership stuff.
	Don't talk about the mothership.
	There's only one reason that the mothership is still alive anyway.
	I mean, there's nothing interesting really.
	But I will tell you the truth about me, if it's of interest to you.
	It certainly is what drives me.
	And it's not a secret.
	It's in everything that I do.
	But this is the truth about me.
	The truth about me, my friends, is this.
	No one who wants to come to the future need be left behind.
	No one who wants to join Progress gets left behind.
	I made it out.
	I made it out of the abuse.
	I made it out of the tyranny.
	I made it out of the hysteria and the hypochondria and the violence and the disconnection and the chaotic stone ape brutality of my origins.
	And part of me wants to just keep running.
	Straight over the horizon to the Cathedral of the Future that I built for myself here in Canada and stay there and keep everyone else at bay.
	But I don't like a lot about the Marines, but the one thing I really like about the Marines is no one gets left behind.
	They even go back for bodies.
	But no one gets left behind.
	And I got out and I took my time enjoying Being out.
	But after a while, I really could no longer ignore the reality that I was out, but very few other people were.
	I was out of the prison planet cage of abuse.
	I was out of Plato's cave.
	I was out of illusions and delusions, and I had found Improbable, mature, connected love.
	Satisfaction, happiness, joy, connection.
	Love.
	And I always knew that I had the skill and the intelligence and the verbal fluidity to do the dance that dislodges the demons.
	Yodel the high octaves of truth below the snow-capped mountain so that the avalanche of bullshit falls and reveals the glowing peaks of personhood in people.
	And I always knew that the avalanche of the world is a very good thing.
	And I felt That the good thing to do, the right thing to do, the responsible thing to do was to go back.
	To go back, not to drag people, because you can't drag people.
	Not to push people, because you can't push people.
	But to go back into the hell I came out of and to invite people to get out.
	Not to go in and bomb someplace and drag people out kicking and screaming with shrapnel in their leg.
	But to walk through the walls and pass the guard.
	Because when unreality becomes a ghost to you, you become a ghost to unreality.
	And you can walk through the walls of propaganda and nonsense which seem firm and matrix-like to everyone in them.
	You can walk right through that prison.
	You can walk right through the guards and all they feel is a warm trickle like they just peed themselves a little and walk down the corridors and with a breath and a blow you can open the doors.
	And you can say, you don't have to stay here.
	You can leave.
	This is the past.
	This is falling away into the chasm of history.
	This is the ape-like prehistory of our species that has made it to a place of cell phones and fluorescent lightings almost entirely because not enough people have circled back who got out.
	And say to all of the people licking their chains and beating each other with their manacles, And all of the people cowering in the corner, like the beautiful ones of the endless mice utopia experiments, and say to them, hey, the door is open.
	Do you want to go?
	Do you want to leave?
	It doesn't have to be like this.
	You don't have to live like this.
	This is not life.
	You don't have to be a man Trying to mate with ghosts until you become one.
	You don't have to be a man trying to do CPR to mummies, generations dead.
	You don't have to bond with your beaters.
	You don't have to have affection for your abusers.
	You can have a standard and a principle of love and connection that entirely surmounts, repudiates and escapes The historical interspecies predation of our collective histories.
	So come on, come on, come on.
	You don't have to stay.
	Through that tunnel, through that wall, over that fire, through those guards with their razor-sharp swords that never come out of their scabbards if you don't believe in them, you can get to light, to sunshine, to butterflies, to birds with rainbows for wings and unicorns and all the glorious and great things in life that you think are only myths but are the only real things there are, in fact.
	The only truth about me that matters is that I made a commitment years and years ago to go back and to offer to anyone Who wants to listen and who is willing to work.
	That no one who doesn't want to be there has to stay there.
	That no one who wants to come to the future needs to stay in the past.
	That nobody who wants to be free needs to accept their chains.
	Because if one person can do it, anyone can do it.
	If you see one person walk through the walls of a prison, guess what?
	It's no longer a prison.
	It is only a prison of the mind because we cannot walk through real walls.
	And if someone comes back and offers you the vision Of having walked through the walls and walked past the guards who slumber on the eaten hearts of their own offspring, then it's possible for you and you and you and you.
	No one who wants to be free need rest in their chains.
	Many people gave me that gift.
	I am doing my best to offer that gift to everyone else.
	The example and the encouragement and the interaction and the cross-pollination of the future with the past.
	Despite all the walls and all the barriers and all the prejudices and all the cultural moats and canyons and firewalls that are supposed to keep the enlightened from the ignorant.
	We're supposed to escape!
	But we can go back.
	And we can help others.
	That's the only truth about me that matters.
	That's the only truth that means a damn thing.
	And that's why I do what I do.
	Because it meant so much to me that a few people in my life came back and helped me.
	I know how powerful it can be to be exposed to something better than what you have had to endure.
	I know how powerful that can be.
	Like most of us, that's why I ask people, how is your body doing?
	And they say almost always the same thing when they're in a connected conversation.
	My heart is pounding.
	My hand is sweaty.
	I can't think.
	I'm a thousand thoughts of charm charging around my head and I say that's because there's a crack in the wall.
	That's because there's a crack in the wall.
	That's because there is no wall except what you've been told.
	And you can walk away from abuse and you can walk away from exploitation and blood sacrifice and intergenerational predation.
	You can walk away from the whole unnatural, immoral, predator-prey relationship that characterizes so much of turning and biting humankind, of the wheel of history that only ever rolls downhill.
	It doesn't have to be your life.
	It doesn't have to be the lives of your children.
	It can all end.
	It can all stop.
	You can move outside it.
	You can move beyond it.
	You can move past it.
	In the past, when we were 200 people or 100 people in a tribe, there was no escape.
	There was no escape.
	Now, we can move.
	We can change.
	We can reinvent ourselves.
	We can find our own tribe.
	We can find the tribe of truth, which is not a tribe, but a genuine connection of rational minds.
	It doesn't have to be what came before.
	We don't have to accept the pension of our prior combat for good and for ill.
	People are coming back to help you as they came back to help me.
	As I'm coming back to help you and Mike is coming back to help you and other people are coming back to help you.
	They're walking through walls You can too.
	That is how the world heals.
	That is how the children are protected.
	That is how the wars end and the rapes and the assaults and the vanity and the environmental destruction and the predation on the young, on the future, on the money, on the planet that currently characterizes what we laughingly call civilization.
	But we can have the true civilization, which is a civilization of volunteerism, of being guided by principles rather than history, of choosing connection rather than conformity, All the things that we know we are capable of, but we don't believe in because we've not seen it.
	And we are all empiricists.
	And that's why I try to show people in my actions, in my deeds, in my courage, in my conversations, what is possible.
	What one person can do, another person can do.
	So join us.
	Right?
	You don't want to live like this.
	You don't want to live trapped in this blood-soaked, amber, skin-encasing prison of history.
	Just, just join us.
	You have no idea.
	Let me correct that.
	You have an idea deep down how beautiful it is to be in relationships without censorship, without control, without hierarchy, without win-lose, without avoidance, without bullying, without manipulation and slam doors and pettiness and haughtiness and bullshit.
	Which is what all of that stuff in aggregation is.
	It doesn't have to be your future.
	The choices of those who came before are not your physics.
	They remain your choice.
	And I thoroughly and encouragingly and joyfully invite you to step out of the prison of history, individually and collectively, and let nothing come between your heart and other people.
	Let no cloud of history, no scar of history, no downtrodden hoofprint on your face of history come between your heart and its connection with good people.
	If you cannot connect with the people around you, strive to find people you can connect with.
	But let no cloud of history come between you and who you can connect with.
	That is how history wins.
	And don't be what remains when history wins, which is nothing but a shit stain on the ass of the planet.
	Don't be that.
	Only connect, as E.M. Foster said, only connect, only connect, only connect with truth, with reality, with empiricism, with reason, with each other.
	Speak your truth.
	If people recoil, find new people to speak your truth.
	Continue to speak your truth.
	If people recoil, find new people with whom to speak your truth until you can connect.
	And be who you are in the presence of others.
	Relish your existence.
	Relish their existence.
	And connect.
	Without vanity.
	Without makeup.
	Without push-up bras.
	Without the right car.
	Or the right haircut.
	Or any haircut for that matter.
	Without enough money.
	With too much money.
	In the wrong neighborhood.
	In the right neighborhood.
	With the right bands.
	With the wrong music.
	Who cares?
	Only connect.
	connect and when we connect with each other we free the world Thank you.
	And that's the only truth that there is around me.
	All right, thanks everyone.

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