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June 12, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

03:01:16

2721 You Can't Fix Stupid - Wednesday Call In Show June 11th, 2014

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	Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio.
	How are you, my friends?
	Hope you're doing well.
	Our thoughts go out to Paul Elam and the Voice for Men conference, which has currently, I imagine, been chased out of its original venue by a large number of people threatening extraordinary levels of violence.
	So we wish him the best of luck with that.
	And we will...
	It's great to see the feminists as a whole really sticking up to their values of making sure that people get a voice.
	Because remember how terrible it is.
	If you silence women's voices, apparently that is considered to be just the worst thing in the world.
	But of the over $25,000 that was raised to fund the additional security costs that were being generated for the conference by death threats and bomb threats and threats of violence, For men getting together and talking about their issues, there was a special button on the Voice for Men website for feminists who opposed what other feminists were doing in their name.
	I think a grand total of $200 in change was raised out of the $25,000 that was needed.
	It only goes to show that like must police like.
	Men can't really fix feminism.
	That's women's job.
	Blacks can't fix white's racism against blacks.
	That's white people's job.
	And women need to police women.
	But I don't believe that that will happen anytime soon.
	So here we have just another example of how powerful The patriarchy really is in that men can't even get together and talk about issues that are important to them without estrogen-based bomb threats and death threats and murder threats derailing the event.
	It is truly tragic.
	And one of the great ironies, of course, is that men's rights movements are portrayed, or there was a petition even started on the White House to portray them as Domestic terrorists, but I think when you are making bomb threats and death threats and threats of violence against a group of men and women meeting peacefully to discuss men's issues, I think it may be a little bit of what would be called projection.
	All right, so Mike, who do we have up first?
	Alright, up first today is Marco, and Marco wrote in and said, I'm a student and my choice of work is limited.
	How do I ward off the effect of dumb people around me while doing lower wage work?
	Go on.
	Hi there, Steph.
	Hi, so where are you working?
	At the moment, I'm working for a private company that deals with patients with mental disabilities.
	And what are the dumb things that you're being exposed to that have you concerned?
	Well, it's mostly my colleagues, which unfortunately I can't seem to get into any constructive conversation with them.
	I mean, I try to open conversations with them.
	They just seem to be interested in trivial things.
	And there's a big discrepancy between what I do at home from an intellectual perspective and what I do at work.
	And it really affects me.
	Like when I come home, I really feel down from...
	From the people around me at work.
	So give me a typical conversation that you have with someone at work.
	Well, it's very difficult.
	It's like they don't want to enter into any conversation which might, for example, politics, economics.
	It's just work-related.
	It's not they refuse.
	Let's say, for example, they're watching the news and I'm starting to talk to them and we discuss some subject on the news.
	Once we go into depth, They just block off and say, Marco, you're a conspiracy theorist.
	You're overthinking it.
	Look, I don't want to talk about this.
	And then they just block it out.
	And the worst thing about it is...
	I mean, the reason I call them dumb, quote-unquote dumb, is because they don't link simple things together.
	I'll give you an example, if I may.
	Obviously, because we're taking care of these patients with mental disabilities, we've got to be careful about what they eat and everything.
	And I had a big scandal with them once because of their choice of food.
	Because they said, I'm giving them food that's unhealthy and I'm risking giving them a heart attack.
	And then one hour later, they give them a roast with loads of gravy.
	And I'm like, okay.
	I know that this is just a trivial example, but yeah, that's the idea.
	If you can ask me any other questions, because it's quite difficult for me to condense it.
	No, that's, I think, eminently clear what the issue is.
	All right.
	So, how was your childhood?
	Oh, okay.
	Well, where would you like me to start?
	How early?
	Conception.
	Oh, conception.
	Don't remember anything.
	Okay, let's see.
	There was a lot of jostling.
	Ate my twin.
	Anyway.
	Well, the first real memory I have is Easter.
	I think it was about four years old.
	And I remember the grass was as tall as me, because my parents had left the grass quite tall to grow, and I was like running around looking for my Easter presents.
	So that was a positive memory.
	And then after that, my other memories, I remember I was spanked about, I think, three times in total in my whole lifetime.
	Once it happened at seven years old.
	I don't know why exactly, I don't remember.
	But I remember my...
	My mother got really angry on me and she took down my pants and she spanked me on my bare bottom.
	That was, yeah, that was about seven.
	And then the other two times they weren't really spanks.
	They were once my mom hit me over the mouth and that was about 12 years old, I believe.
	And then my dad once hit me over the mouth when I was about 15.
	Besides that, I was just grounded whenever I didn't, let's say, submit to their authority.
	And if you had to estimate, what do you say on a scale from like 50 to 150, which is, you know, a pretty wide bell curve for IQ, where would you put your parents' intelligence?
	Hmm.
	My father, I think about, at least, now I think he's degraded, intelligence-wise.
	But then, let's say up to 18 years old.
	My mother, I reckon about a hundred.
	What, what?
	No, no, no.
	Oh, sorry.
	You didn't give me a number for your dad.
	Sorry.
	My dad, 100, 110 max.
	My mom, about a hundred.
	Okay, so they're average.
	Your mom's below.
	Yeah, average, slightly above average average.
	For your dad and average for your mom, right?
	Yeah, that's what I would say.
	And what would you estimate your IQ to be?
	Mine, I mean, I had a test done and it was 139.
	And that was done two years ago.
	Right.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	So do you ever remember being frustrated as a kid?
	Yes.
	With your parents?
	Yes.
	It was difficult.
	It always seemed like I was talking to them and it was like I was talking over them in the sense that information just passed through them.
	They couldn't deal...
	My mom tried to talk to me, but after a while she would just get...
	Frustrated and she would just say, go to your room and play with Lego or something, which is one thing I used to do as a kid.
	My dad, he was working a lot, so I would see him very little, maybe two hours every evening, and then he would want to watch TV and maybe he would spend half an hour.
	In fact, I rarely remember my dad spending almost any time with me.
	I can't even remember actually.
	Most of the time he spent was after I was 18.
	But before, barely any time.
	And I would have many questions and I never really found answers with my parents.
	So I sort of became a bit...
	I retreated into myself when I was about 12.
	So you have a lot of experience trying to gain value out of dumber people.
	I think that would be an accurate assessment, yes.
	So you get that you're doing it again, right?
	Yes, I do.
	I do understand.
	You do now.
	Did you before the call or are you getting it now?
	No, I mean...
	I'm getting it now.
	I don't know how to say it.
	Hang on.
	One of the primary markers of intelligence is the willingness to proactively adjust beliefs based upon empirical evidence.
	Would you agree with that?
	Yes.
	Okay, so one of the great challenges that you have is that you are, what, in the top half a percent of people's intelligence, probably a quarter of a percent, right?
	Yeah, I think more like that, or maybe top 20%, because I know Mensa is 150 and they're like top 5%.
	No, no, maybe someone can figure this one out, but let's just say you're 140, that is incredibly rare.
	That is incredibly rare.
	You're not in the top 20%, I guarantee you.
	If anyone in the chatroom can look that up.
	It's very, very rare.
	Because it's a bell curve, right?
	So you have the joy and the challenge of being surrounded by idiots in life.
	No, I mean, empirically, mathematically, this is just going to be a fact that you are going to be smarter than 1,000 people or 800 people in general, right?
	140 is Einstein caliber, I believe.
	And so you are going to be surrounded by idiots.
	Now, this is a very important thing.
	You cannot understand the world unless you look at it through the lens of IQ. Everything seems kind of weird and blurry and so on, but when you put the IQ glasses on, right, suddenly it's like, ah, everything becomes clear and it all makes a whole lot of sense.
	So, this is really important to understand that most people are idiots compared to you, right?
	And I will tell you that it may come across as a lack of emotional intelligence on their part.
	So, you may sort of have the idea that if you just kind of break through people, then They will achieve this depth and they will achieve this understanding and their intelligence will erupt and explode into the stratosphere because you have used the right combination of syllables to unlock their hidden brain power.
	Do you ever kind of get that idea?
	Yeah, in fact, I can.
	I actually, that's very accurate because every time when I talk to people, I always say, well, maybe it's me.
	I'm not getting the information across properly.
	Maybe I'm not expressing myself.
	Maybe I'm not.
	I mean, that's how I think when I talk to individuals, when I try to enter conversations.
	And another thing that happens is I just can't stand a trivial conversation.
	I mean, it's like the moment I get to work, the moment I open that door, it's like a wall hits me psychologically and I feel down because I realize that there's no one there that can offer me a conversation that can stimulate me.
	And because I'm also a student, I'm basically working 45 to 50 hours in three days.
	Friday to Sunday, so I can study Monday to Thursday.
	Okay, so let me just sort of give you an analogy that will help.
	So if you wanted to be a great boxer, right, and you wanted to train with equals, would it make a whole lot of sense to open the Girl Guide boxing gym where no girls over eight are allowed and then think that you could somehow make them into World Heavyweight Championships?
	No, that would be stupid.
	Right, so you would get really frustrated trying to box at an equal level with eight-year-old little girls, right?
	Now, there wouldn't be any kind of moves that you could make that would make them taller and stronger, right?
	Hello?
	Yes, yes, I said yeah, sorry.
	I'm sorry, I didn't hear it.
	Right, so the brain is a physical organ and the brain through a combination of genetics and environment is like 90% developed by the time you're five and IQ tests remain very constant throughout someone's life.
	IQ does not change much over time.
	We can't really get a whole lot smarter with one caveat that I'll get to, right?
	But if you think that the brain is not a physical organ, but you think that there's like a soul, were you raised religious at all?
	I was raised religious, but I've been an atheist for about, I'd say, since I was 19.
	Actually, no, 20 more accurately, since I was 20.
	So for about four years now.
	No, you haven't been!
	I mean, my mother was very religious.
	Look at me correcting the IQ 139 guy.
	But no, listen, you have not been an atheist because you still believe deep down in the soul.
	Soul, brother!
	You believe it.
	You believe in the soul because you believe that there's a hidden set of brains, right?
	That are down there that you can just tap into, right?
	That's interesting.
	Oh, I was correct.
	140 is in the top 0.38% of people.
	I said it was less than a half, around 0.25.
	Okay, so you believe that the soul is that everyone is equal, fundamentally, right?
	The soul is the ultimate socialism of the species.
	Because with the idea of the soul, everyone is equal.
	Because God creates souls.
	And God creates all souls to be equal.
	And so, you have, in this...
	Atheist theology, if I could put it that way, you have got the idea that somehow a brain is not like height, but the brain somehow has this hidden magical potential of brilliance within it, right?
	And you drive yourself crazy trying to get other people to be as tall as you are, right?
	Yes, that would be accurate.
	But you know, since you are a secularist and a materialist, and I assume you understand something about biology, the brain is just an organ.
	Indeed.
	Right?
	And the brain, like organ, has variability, like any organ has variability.
	And there's no greater variability in any organ in the human body whatsoever.
	The brain is the greatest.
	It's the most variability.
	Sorry, very clumsily put.
	But the brain has the ultimate variability.
	According to many tests, it varies between species, it varies between the genders, in that men tend to have a broader Or more shallow bell curve, which means there are more smart men and more dumb men, right?
	Whereas women tend to be clustered more around the median, right?
	Which is why there are fewer women in jail and fewer women at the top of intellectual professions, like in business or science or medicine or whatever, right?
	Just the way it is, right?
	So the brain is an organ, and the brain has...
	Evolved like every other one of our organs and evolution, you know Races are supposed to have split off I think 50 or 70 thousand years ago But even in the last 5,000 years people living in high altitudes You can see that they have adapted because there was a sort of genetic population that split off living high So you know it just takes a few thousand years to evolve The brain is just like every other organ it adapts to specific circumstances and there's a wide degree of variability Across individuals,
	across races, across genders, and so on, at least according to the information that I... And you can read more about this if you want.
	The Bell Curve is a famous book from the 90s by Charles Murray, which can give you that.
	So, people who are average are like a different species from you.
	Like a different species.
	And I think that's really important.
	If you want to be an empiricist, then you have to accept the science of intelligence, right?
	Yes.
	The IQ test, as you know, is not linear, right?
	Yes.
	Right?
	It's not like somebody with an IQ of 120 is 20% smarter than somebody with an IQ of 100, right?
	It's an extrapolation.
	It goes up like crazy, right?
	Yes.
	Yes.
	And human brains vary in size.
	And the number of neural connections within the human brains vary enormously in size.
	I mean, in certain genetic groups, the difference between one genetic group and another genetic group It's like a full cup of brain matter.
	I mean, there's huge differences in brain size within groups, between groups, within genders, between genders, and so on.
	It doesn't mean you don't treat every individual as an individual.
	Of course you do.
	But the reality is that you're trying to play basketball with people who are two and a half feet tall, right?
	Yeah.
	And you need to accept that biological reality.
	This is what I mean when I say that you're still kind of a theist in that you believe that everyone has some potential to grow their brain.
	And generally, this is not the case, right?
	When you are 18, you are as tall as you're ever going to be.
	You can eat a whole lot more food, but all you'll get is fat or not tall, right?
	Yeah, that's true.
	So, accepting the reality of the difference in brain size, in IQ, in neural connections, and so on, is really essential.
	It's really essential.
	I used to think that people were just emotionally defensive, and that's why they were dumb.
	Like, they...
	They'd get some piece of information that contradicted their worldview.
	Thought be gone!
	I've got the spray.
	Taser!
	That thought, it's approaching my core zone of identity, right?
	And so I thought, well, okay, if I get people to overcome their emotional defenses, then they'll be smarter.
	But the problem, but the problem It takes intelligence to overcome emotional defenses.
	It takes intelligence to understand why it's important to overcome emotional defenses.
	And dumber people, in my experience and opinion, have a much shorter horizon of what they will be willing to sacrifice.
	A much shorter horizon for the deferral of gratification.
	So a dumb person or an average person when faced with information that contradicts their core identity A smart person will say, well, you know, I guess it makes me feel uncomfortable, but I wonder why, and it's more important to be accurate and to believe in the truth than it is to be emotionally comfortable,
	so I will sacrifice my short-term emotional comfort for the sake of my long-term intellectual integrity, which leads you to happiness and integrity, consistency, all the good things that we want.
	Now, average people, they can't grasp That if you accept or are willing to explore information counter to your viewpoint, that is going to be better for you even though it's uncomfortable in the short run.
	They can't process that.
	It's sort of like saying to someone, you shouldn't eat your favorite food because it might give you health problems in 300 years.
	Now, if somebody said that to you, what would you say?
	Well, I'd say stupid.
	I think I'll take the risk, right?
	Because we don't live for 300 years, and so not eating my favorite food because of health problems in 300 years wouldn't make any sense.
	So I'm just going to continue to eat my favorite food, right?
	Yeah.
	So being able to empathize and project yourself forward in time, and be able to act in a way that is beneficial for your future self, no matter how uncomfortable to your present self...
	Is beyond the capacities of most of humanity.
	And you can just see this from the diet industry, right?
	I mean, everybody says, ooh, lose weight!
	Ooh, you know, you should weigh less!
	Lose weight!
	And people spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year on diets and diet books and crap like that.
	And the number of people who lose weight and keep it off is minuscule.
	Most people lose weight and gain more back.
	Now that's actually pretty easy.
	Don't eat crap.
	Exercise.
	It's not that hard, right?
	This is not getting a PhD in astrophysics.
	And people can't even keep crap out of their mouths and their feet on a sidewalk, right?
	And so they cannot empathize.
	This is why almost 30 million Americans now have type 2 diabetes, the non-genetic kind, right?
	Because stuff your faces with crap because it tastes good in the moment and don't exercise because exercise is uncomfortable in the moment and don't have any empathy for your future Ella Fitzgerald self that's going to lose eyesight and limbs and all that, right?
	So most people...
	When you bring up information that's uncomfortable for them, they don't have the intelligence to look down the road and say, well, I better process this uncomfortable information so that I can be happier in the future.
	I mean, people don't even have enough brains to take their head out of the goddamn Cheetos bag and go for a walk.
	And, you know, you're asking them to process philosophical abstractions that make them very uncomfortable.
	So that is really, really important.
	Really important to understand that you are surrounded...
	By mostly monkeys.
	You don't say to monkeys usually, hey, let me make a deal with you, man.
	You give me this banana now, and I'll give you five bananas tomorrow.
	Or next year.
	The bananas are like, ugh.
	The monkeys are like, banana, good!
	I mean, that's what they do.
	And most people, I mean, they're mostly monkeys.
	Confirmation bias, good!
	Well, you know, it's going to make you unhappy down the road if you keep imbibing false information and go for confirmation bias and exclude information that's counter to your perspective.
	No!
	Confirmation bias, good!
	Confirmation bias, part of tribe.
	We like tribe.
	Contrary information makes me uncomfortable and makes my armpits sweat, diarrhea, and therefore confirmation bias, you bad, make me feel bad.
	Oh, banana!
	Right?
	This is basically what you're doing.
	This is what you get as a constant monologue, but this is all the subtitles that people come with.
	Does it make any sense?
	Yeah.
	Well, it made more sense than I could ever think it would.
	I never saw it that way.
	Well, tell me where I'm wrong.
	I mean, you know that IQ is testable.
	You know it's highly variable in the population.
	And you know that you're in the top 0.3%, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, I perfectly agree with you.
	I mean, there's nothing I disagree with you.
	It's just now that I'm a bit shocked about everything.
	I'm just realizing now.
	I mean, now I also realize why I've been doing this.
	Yeah, which is that you're used to managing and crossing your fingers and hoping for intelligent stuff from relatively dumb people.
	And that's kind of cruel, right?
	It's kind of cruel to say to the guy who's four feet tall, you should try to become an NBA star, right?
	I mean, it's just kind of cruel, right?
	Yeah, that's true.
	I just guess because this is the way I was raised up.
	I mean, especially my parents.
	Because dumb people don't like to hear that they're dumb.
	This is why democracy is a massive subsidy to idiots.
	Because you get a vote with an IQ of 139 and a guy with an IQ of 85 gets a vote as well.
	Which, I mean, is completely insane.
	At least in the free market you'll accumulate more dollar votes and the idiot won't accumulate more dollar votes, right?
	And sorry, somebody just said in the chat window, well, obesity tends to accumulate where there's poverty around.
	No, no, no, no.
	Sorry, obesity and poverty tend to be the result of a low IQ population.
	And because the deferral of gratification is one of the primary marks of intelligence.
	And so when you have a low IQ population, you will get poverty because people aren't willing to To study, to learn, to grow, to do research, to make context, to do all of the sacrificial stuff that's, frankly, in the short run, a hell of a lot less fun than playing Candy Crush.
	And they also won't say, well, you know, Cheetos taste better than broccoli, but I should eat my broccoli because blah-de-blah-de-blah, right?
	But sorry, go ahead.
	Yeah, I mean, I just realize now because I have...
	I mean, all my friends, all the friends that I've ever managed to gather...
	I mean, let's say I don't have a lot of friends.
	I have about 10, I'd say.
	And in most cases...
	That's a lot of friends.
	Well, friends, I mean, quote-unquote.
	I mean, friends who would stick up for me, I'd say two.
	Then let's call them acquaintances, you know, Facebook friends.
	It's...
	I just realize now that I've...
	I've sort of been postponing deleting them, just because it's been so difficult for me to find, you know, people who I can have a constructive conversation with.
	I mean, until I found, of course, Free Domain Radio and the chat rooms and everything.
	How can I say it?
	Now I just feel like I should just go and delete most of my Facebook lists.
	Well, listen, listen.
	Because there's no point to keep them.
	Here's the thing, which is that you've probably heard of the Donnie-Kruger effect.
	The Donnie-Kruger effect is basically that dumb people do not know that they're dumb.
	Dumb people vastly overestimate their own abilities.
	It's what makes them dumb.
	If you think you're already excellent at something, you don't tend to practice it as much.
	And there's so many studies being replicated the world over that idiots think they're geniuses.
	And geniuses are very humble.
	And that's one of the marks of intelligence, is knowing how much you don't know.
	Right?
	So here's the mark of an idiot.
	Anyone who says, bloody, bloody, blah, period.
	Right?
	Right?
	And I get this on my videos all the time.
	Well, the simple truth is that...
	Monkey, monkey, monkey.
	Bah!
	Throw poo.
	Period.
	And it's just like, okay, so you're an idiot.
	Because you think that there's just one simple truth.
	Like the Elliot Rodger video, you can scroll through the comments and you'll see comment after comment of...
	Well, the simple truth is he was just a narcissistic idiot.
	Okay, well, if you think that the entire...
	If the growth of a complex human being who did unimaginable evil is as simple as, then you're an idiot.
	And idiots, deep down, they know they're idiots.
	Like, deep down, they know they're idiots.
	Like, deep down, Danny DeVito is not secretly waiting for his Calvin Klein underwear model gig, right?
	Deep down, they know that they're idiots, but they can hide their idiocy from themselves if they stay away from competent people, or they use the wonderful phrase that mostly monkeys use, which is, you're overthinking this!
	Right?
	No, I've heard that.
	Oh my god.
	You're overthinking this.
	It's like, no, I'm not overthinking anything, you idiot.
	I'm just thinking.
	That's all.
	I mean, who says that?
	Jessica Alba.
	You're over-sexifying this.
	You're over-attractive this.
	I mean, whoever says to a Danica Patrick, you're over-fasting your car.
	Or to somebody who's in the Boston Marathon, you're overrunning this race!
	It's like, no, it's, you know, they're just running.
	And so, when people say they're overthinking, what they're saying is, my monkey brain cannot process your higher primate concepts, and therefore, I'm going to assume that, not that I'm deficient, but that you have too muchness, right?
	Right?
	You're over tall!
	No, you're just saying that you feel short, right?
	If you say you feel short, that's fine.
	Say, I feel short next to you.
	Not, Steph, you're over tall!
	It's just ridiculous, right?
	And, I mean, this is mostly, we are surrounded by mostly monkeys.
	And, you know, if you start a business, if you try to get people to do anything in this goddamn universe, you will realize that we are surrounded by mostly monkeys.
	And they're, you know, baldish monkeys, and a lot of them know how to operate a smartphone because Candy Crush is fun, but they are mostly monkeys.
	And when you and I are learning how to program computers and reading our Rothbard and reading our Mises and reading our Rand and reading our Aristotle, right, they are watching Army Wives and tearing up with sentimentality about the fallen, wounded warriors of the general imperialistic propaganda.
	And we have to be careful because these idiots have votes.
	And we have to be careful because these idiots can punch.
	And when you arise like some glorious white ice maleficent demon of thought with his snowy beating wings over the darkened troll-like orcish landscape of human ignorance, people get startled and they lash out.
	I thought I was tall.
	I just met a man who's 25 feet tall.
	He is...
	He is over tall.
	I must punch his kneecaps because it is a sin against my shortness to be over tall.
	And there's a lot of aggression and bullying.
	And this is why nerds get bullied.
	Because nerds make jocks feel as stupid as they generally are.
	And they're frustrated.
	They get frustrated.
	And so...
	And of course the only reason why mostly monkeys survive is that women will breed with mostly monkeys and so on.
	They just did a study that came out recently where women ogle genitalia a lot more than men do.
	Men mostly look at faces and then maybe look at boobs and butt or whatever, but women go straight to the genitals like this homing periscope beacon of estrogen-based suction padding.
	So look, the reality is be empirical.
	You are surrounded by mostly monkeys who are threatened by your intellectual capacity, and my suggestion is stay as far away from them as humanly possible.
	You know, vampires are not smooth and suave and debonair and all kinds of George Hamilton cocoa butter tans from the underworld.
	The human vampires are just these tiny little dull people who want to wrap you in their dismal, dank, dripping, bat-infested caves of small-minded inconsequentiality.
	They don't want you to break through the surface and head for the skies.
	They just want you to stay down and stay small.
	And they're basically saying, don't make me feel stupid.
	Don't make me feel stupid.
	Because stupid people don't get that the whole point of intelligence is to make you feel stupid.
	What's the whole point of thinking?
	Is to go to new places which you're not good at.
	You know, most people, they want repetition.
	Oh, this show is on Friday night.
	I like this bar.
	This is my beer.
	This is my town.
	This is my costumed group of people who kicked the ball down the fieldings.
	And that's my repetition.
	I'm going to have a relationship with my wife that was pretty much the same as my parents' relationship with each other.
	I'm just going to repeat stuff that I did before because I don't want to feel stupid and put myself in new situations where I don't know what's going on.
	So I'm just going to get stuck in this Groundhog Day revolving door of the same day over and over and over and over and over again so I never don't know what to do!
	Whereas smart people are like, oh my god, I'm so bored.
	I know this stuff already.
	Oh my god, give me something new.
	Give me something new.
	That's what I'm always doing.
	Let me find something new that blows my mind.
	Let me find something new that I'm stupid about.
	Like I've just started doing a whole lot of research on immigration.
	And I don't...
	I don't know what the hell's going on.
	I love people who blow my mind.
	Which means they make me feel like an idiot.
	Because I am mostly an idiot.
	That's called being smart.
	It's to know that you're mostly an idiot.
	What do I really know about quantum physics?
	And what do I really know about Planck?
	And what do I really know about Tesla?
	And what do I really know about electromagnetics?
	And what do I really know about Pashtian foreign policy?
	I mean, there's just so many things that I don't know.
	I'd like my intelligence to even be one star in an infinite night sky, but it's not even that.
	It's like a firefly on the far side of a black hole.
	And so I love people who come and blow my mind.
	Right?
	I love Socrates.
	I love Aristotle.
	I love Rand.
	I love Coulter.
	I love the people who just, I don't agree with everything they say, and so what, right?
	But the point is they just, they blow my mind.
	And that's the whole point.
	When you have intelligence, you constantly want to feel like an idiot, because that means you're learning something new.
	If you don't have intelligence, you can't stand feeling like an idiot, because I can handle, my ego can handle being completely incompetent at something and not knowing crap about anything because I have the intelligence to know that that is the necessary part of the acquisition of wisdom and knowledge and all that kind of stuff, right?
	I mean, people think that my theory on ethics, universally preferable behavior, is something arrogant.
	And I've mentioned this before, but it's just ridiculous.
	I'm basically saying, when I publish an article, which I guess I did first in 2006, and then the book came in, I think, 2008, I'm basically saying I'm in my 40s and I don't know what right and wrong is.
	I don't know what good and evil is.
	My whole life prior to this has been based upon a lack of knowledge.
	Now, To know the value of pursuing secular ethics and the implicit admission when putting out a book on ethics, which is to say, before this, I didn't know what ethics was.
	I was guiding my life on wings of bullshit in the darkness with a spinning compass.
	And all great leaps forward in knowledge are a confession of prior incompetence.
	And only intelligent people know the value of that and are willing to do it.
	Dumb people will not admit the value of feeling dumb.
	Because for you and I, we can study something and escape the feeling of being dumb, but dumb people can never escape that feeling.
	So if they admit that they're dumb, well...
	They're just, I guess, recognizing their incapacities.
	Now, I mean, Ayn Rand wrote a lot of the sort of Eddie Willer's characters, I think his name was.
	Average people who could appreciate really great people.
	I'm not a great singer, but I love to hear.
	I love to sing, but I love to hear a great singer.
	I'm like, oh my God, I'd love to be able to open my mouth and oh, just that beautiful tone and sound that people make almost effortlessly sometimes.
	So I am not a good singer, but I can appreciate a good singer.
	But most people who are not intelligent cannot appreciate great intelligence.
	They can only appreciate great intelligence when it shows up from central casting, when it shows up in a stereotypical matter.
	Einstein, he looks like a mad professor, so he's smart, right?
	Whereas other people don't look that way and therefore don't get the same.
	You know, he was a cliche in terms of how he looked and how he acted and so on, which is not to say he wasn't a genius.
	Of course, he was.
	So I think that's just really, really important to understand.
	Funniest thing, again, just it's tragic.
	You know, people talk about entitlement mentality.
	I mean...
	How on earth does the average person imagine that they get a say equal to a political genius when it comes to how society ought to be run?
	I mean, again, democracy only appeals to mostly monkeys because only mostly monkeys think that their vote equals the vote of an intelligent and competent person.
	They understand when it comes to something more direct, which they can't steal from.
	They understand like, okay, so you stay awake during the appendicitis operation and then you and the surgeon will debate about which cut to do next.
	They'll be like, no, put me out, cut.
	I don't know what the hell I'm doing.
	Put me out, cut and stitch me back up.
	You're the expert, right?
	So they get that with that kind of stuff.
	But when it comes to, I don't know, how to organize national defense, what currency should be, how to educate children, suddenly every naked ape with an asshole and an opinion considers himself a stone genius that's able to pierce through the lies of self-interested politicians, throw the spear over the hedge and have it land in the bull's eye for perfect future.
	And that's entitlement.
	And that's entitlement.
	And then you say to people, you know, you don't really know as much as other people about stuff.
	You really don't know as much about other people as stuff.
	You can't make as good arguments.
	You think you're making arguments, but you're just making syllable sounds with your eating hole.
	And they're just shocked and appalled because their whole life they've been told, one man, one vote.
	You are equal to everyone else.
	You have the soul.
	You have the soul of Einstein.
	Einstein just had bigger hair and a better job at the patent office.
	And the reality is most people are way short and we're trying to get them taller.
	We're not going to have a free society until people are willing to examine information that runs counter to their immediate emotional preferences and the emotional preferences of the idiots around them.
	And this is the ultimate, you know, Gulliver's travels, right?
	Where the Gulliver is a giant and he gets the Lilliputians through all these little ropes and keep them bound up and tied.
	This is a great intelligence or a great mind among the petty, nearly, mostly ape average people.
	That until we can get people to be smart enough to be able to process information that runs counter to their emotional preferences, we're not going to have a free society.
	Why the hell do I focus on not hitting children, on raising them peacefully?
	Because that will raise IQ to the point where we might actually have the capacity to change people's minds.
	Because right now, we're lecturing to a bag of hammers.
	We are trying to change the minds of a bucket of rocks.
	And we are trying to throw our seeds onto red-hot Georgia asphalt.
	And then, hey, nothing's growing, man!
	What's going on?
	What's the matter?
	I keep writing on my blog and doing my podcast and talking to people.
	I keep throwing water on the seeds on Georgia asphalt.
	I'm not getting any trees!
	What's wrong?
	Well, What's wrong is that we are not recognizing the secular truth that the brain is an organ that is mostly damaged by religion, by parents, by culture, by what laughingly is called education these days.
	And we can't change the education.
	We can talk people out of religion and we can talk parents into being better parents.
	That moves the seeds from the middle of the road to the side of the road.
	And that means that we can grow intelligence to the point where people will be able to process information counter to their immediate emotional preferences.
	But for God's sake, for the love of all that is holy in the future, do not hang back with the brutes, right?
	Don't go pick nits off the back of the mostly apes and think that you are contributing to the progress of mankind.
	Yeah, I mean, you're right.
	It's just very, I mean, it's very difficult.
	At least, you know, obviously I have no choice.
	I have to go to work.
	It's paying pretty good.
	And I could choose another job, but it couldn't sustain my studies and everything else.
	So in a way, I am sort of restricted to this.
	And as you mentioned...
	Hang on, hang on, hang on.
	No, no, no.
	Okay, sorry.
	I'm sorry I just gave you a lecture.
	But look, you know that people work at the zoo, right?
	Yes.
	Now, how often do you think the monkey guy comes home and says to his wife, fuck me, I'm telling you.
	I am cleaning that goddamn monkey cage all day.
	I am wiping their asses.
	I'm throwing them bananas.
	I'm putting flea powder on them.
	Do you think they can give me a goddamn halfway decent conversation the whole day?
	All they want to do is scratch their armpits and throw rocks and feces at schoolchildren.
	You know, those selfish bastard monkey apes.
	I mean, I didn't get this job because I just love smelling monkey poo.
	I got this job because I wanted to have some decent conversations.
	And those selfish hairy bastards will not give me a decent conversation.
	Do you know how hard it is to go to work knowing that they could have great conversations with me?
	They're just selfishly choosing not to.
	How many times do you think his wife could hear that conversation?
	Not many times.
	I see your point.
	I can see exactly what you're...
	Of course you can, because you have an IQ of almost 140.
	So you can see what I'm saying.
	Which is expectations, right?
	So basically, I should stop expecting a monkey to talk.
	It's just...
	You should respect the empirical scientific reality of IQ. May I make a point to tell you why I've had difficulty with this?
	Please.
	Every time when I try to do this, either by the people around me, they either call me arrogant, they call me elitist.
	My parents said, I'm over the top.
	I'm going to segregate myself in life.
	I'm not going to have friends.
	I'm not going to have people surround myself if I act like this.
	And I'm always against the so-called, well, they didn't say establishment, but they said you're always against everyone.
	And I was actually, especially during my teens, I was bullied quite badly.
	My dad would always say, whenever I would ask him to come to school and talk to the kids or something, he'd say, smoke doesn't appear if there's no fire.
	So you're doing something wrong and you should just stop doing that because I'm not going to come to school because you're always creating problems.
	And he came to school once or twice and then he said, I don't understand.
	I keep coming to school and there are always problems.
	It can't always be them.
	It has to be you.
	That's what he said.
	And it basically took three years of me being bullied until I went and I selectively beat up every single bully that hit me.
	And then basically I got kicked out of school.
	And then my dad said, your future is screwed and everything.
	That was during the period when my parents divorced.
	He left for over three years.
	I didn't have any phone call from him, nothing.
	So that was a period when I stopped going to school.
	I took a job because it was only me and my mother.
	And she didn't ask me to take a job.
	I did it because I just felt that...
	You know, I just wanted to get away from school because to me school was synonymous with being abused and hit.
	And it affected me so bad that I would literally on purpose just go around, take different roads just to avoid the school because I'd be afraid that the guys who I beat up that bullied me would come with other guys to beat me up.
	Sure.
	And after many years my dad came back.
	He was remarried.
	And he offered me the opportunity.
	He said, look, I'm going to the United Kingdom.
	He basically had a conversation with me.
	Well, he apologized, so to speak.
	And he offered me the chance to come here.
	What did he apologize for?
	He apologized for...
	Well, he didn't apologize for the bullying thing, because when he came back, I didn't discuss that with him.
	At that point, at that time in my life, I didn't even see the reality.
	It's only after I was listening to your shows, like, let's say in the past few months, that I actually really realized why I've...
	Why I've developed as I am.
	So I didn't even consider that as a problem then.
	In my mind, I was the issue.
	So I didn't ask my dad.
	I didn't request forgiveness for him for the fact that he wasn't there for me because I didn't...
	Okay, hang on, hang on.
	Okay, sorry.
	Okay, so in your mind, you were never the issue.
	In your dad's mind, you were the issue because it was easier to blame you than to confront bullies.
	Yeah, but...
	See, dumb people, they're not smart, but they're cunning.
	I mean, pigs can open complicated locks.
	So just because people aren't smart doesn't mean that they're not cunning, doesn't mean that they know how to manipulate.
	They know how to manipulate.
	They know how to seek their best advantage by using medium-sized words.
	But no, it was not your thought that you were the problem.
	That was your father's thought, and I just really want to be very clear about that.
	Yeah, I just want to tell you that I actually interiorized it at that age.
	I actually thought, I mean, for a good period of time, before I watched your show and heard about you, I actually thought that I was the problem.
	I actually interiorized what my father told me.
	Internalized.
	Internalized, sorry.
	And I tried to realize, I was trying to figure out how can I be a better person?
	Where am I going wrong?
	And that really, really affected me for many years.
	And my social life was zero and everything.
	It's only after I sort of confronted my dad, after listening to some of your shows, and I told him, look, you weren't there for me and everything.
	He said he was sorry, but it was one of those empty sorries that you mentioned.
	I don't know exactly how you said it, but in one of your shows, you said those...
	Oh, the bullshit non-apology?
	I'm sorry that you were upset.
	I'm sorry that you had such a hard time.
	I'm sorry that you felt unsupported.
	Okay, I got it.
	Exactly.
	That's exactly what he said.
	And more so now, after realizing things, I've sort of felt a detachment more between myself and my dad.
	For my mother, because she was mostly there for me, I mean, for better or for worse, she was there for me more than my dad was there for me.
	And in a way, I actually keep contact more with my mom than with my dad.
	But I do feel a difference.
	And I even told my dad that I said, we have nothing to discuss.
	We have nothing in common.
	I said, when I was a kid, I would look up to you.
	Now, I look down to you.
	I can't look up to you anymore.
	And he didn't like that.
	Especially right before my parents divorced, my dad was quite aggressive towards my mom.
	That really destroyed my progress in life because he would be drinking a lot.
	He lost a lot of money.
	He had a furniture company.
	He lost about almost one million dollars.
	And...
	He started blaming it on my mother and they had argues and every night I would sit in my bed with a knife, just basically listening to my mother and father argue.
	My father would say that, woman, if you talk, if you tell my son anything about what happened there, I'm going to kill you and I'm going to bury you in the garden.
	Wow, are you kidding me?
	So he literally made specific and personal death threats to your mother?
	Yes, and I would basically sit with a knife.
	There were many years where I was just, instead of thinking about school, where I would have bullies of course, but instead of focusing on school, I was sitting with a knife in my bed waiting to hear my mother scream so I could go and kill my dad.
	That's how I spent basically two to three years of my life before my dad actually left.
	Wow.
	So I think I can understand why this clusterfuck of an asshole dad is having a bit of trouble dealing with bullies, right?
	Because he's a psychotic bully, right?
	Yeah.
	I'm sorry.
	I'm so sorry.
	That's just terrifying.
	Absolutely horrendous.
	So you got a job working with the mentally deficient, but you kind of had that job throughout your whole childhood, right?
	Yeah, though honestly, I didn't specifically look for that job.
	I know there might seem a link.
	I just needed a job.
	Now, hang on, hang on.
	Okay, I know you're smart, right?
	But you've just told me something really horrifying, and you have no emotional content to your voice at all?
	I've...
	It's taken many years, but it's the only way that I've managed to deal with it is I've closed I mean, even telling this has been a big thing.
	I normally am quite cold towards saying things about it.
	In my mind, it's like when I left my mom's house, I tried to, and my dad's place, I tried to exteriorize and just sort of block everything out because it was the only way to cope to be able to study because these things were affecting me in my own personal life.
	And I was, counseling wasn't doing, I would have like, my hands would be shaking.
	I couldn't It was horrible, and the only way I could deal with it was just to say it was something in the past, just forgive and forget.
	I know you can never forget, and you'd be stupid to assume, a person like myself, that I could ever forget that, but it's the only way I can go forward, is by just saying that's it.
	There's nothing I can do about what happened in the past.
	And it might seem like I'm cold now, but it's taking a lot of time for me to have this ability to control myself.
	My feelings.
	And it's like a defense mechanism that I formed for myself in order to be able to keep myself...
	Oh man, you got some words.
	Holy crap.
	Sorry.
	You're such an intellectual.
	You're such an intellectual.
	Why is it good to control your feelings with regards to this behavior?
	Are your feelings your enemy with regards to this?
	Yes, I believe I've got very little control over my emotions in many cases, and I get...
	No, no, you seem to have enormous control over your emotions because you're telling me about repeated death threats against the woman who gave you birth, and you might as well be reading me off a laundry list.
	I have control in terms of dealing with it, but inside me, how it feels like, I might not be showing it, but...
	How can I explain it?
	Look, if you're going to just explain your feelings, then I won't continue to push them.
	I mean, if I say, I think something's missing here and you've got good explanations for it, then I'm not going to continue because that's just a hole with no bottom, so to speak.
	Anyway, listen, I hope that this has been helpful for you in terms of putting things in perspective.
	But, you know, the first thing you do when you meet someone is scan their IQ, right?
	This is so, so important.
	I mean, the first thing, if you're in some foreign country, you don't just walk up to people and start talking in English.
	You look for signs that they might speak English, right?
	Sunburns.
	I don't know what, right?
	You look for signs that they might speak English.
	It doesn't mean that they won't.
	It's just, you know, you look for signs, right?
	But you need to start really scanning for IQ, right?
	And adjust your expectations accordingly.
	Adjust your expectations accordingly.
	I'm having a conversation with my wife about something and my daughter will interrupt and say, Daddy, Daddy, explain it my way, like explain it in a way that I can understand, right?
	That's perfectly valid, right?
	She's a member of the family, so we'll try and downshift whatever we're talking about to her capacities, right?
	And that is really important to understand.
	You have to have respect for your own intelligence and you have to respect the biology of IQ or you'll spend your whole life looking for souls in the hearts of dead people.
	It's a huge waste.
	I see what you mean.
	Well, thank you very much, Stefan.
	I really appreciate everything you've said and yeah, I look forward to listening to your shows and hopefully I'll get to talk to you in the future again.
	Please do.
	You're welcome anytime.
	And thanks for your call.
	Thank you very much.
	Mike, did you want to add anything about your challenge in finding competent people?
	Because, you know, anybody can come work on this show.
	You know, I've said this for years.
	If you want to come work at Free Domain Radio...
	Just make a proposal and make it work.
	I didn't advertise for Mike to come and work.
	He's just like, hey, I've got these ideas.
	I'm like, hey, then you've got a paycheck.
	But it's hard to get people.
	Oh, quality people are so incredibly difficult to find.
	Especially finding quality people with skill sets in various areas.
	It's looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.
	So if you are a quality, smart person that has a proposal and you want to do something of value for the show, we absolutely love those kind of proposals.
	I love when cool stuff shows up in my inbox unsolicited.
	So feel free to send it my way, operations at freedomainradio.com.
	You can leave out, though, the general, I would like to help the show.
	Can you hold my hand and walk me through how to provide value?
	Because that in and of itself actually doesn't provide value and actually takes more value from the show than it provides in return.
	Mike, I... I have a resume that goes back to my paper route.
	Maybe you could figure out how I might be able to add value to the show.
	I have my third grade teacher's reference.
	If you can't figure that out, then automatically, no.
	But anyone can get a job here.
	Anyone can work at Free Domain Radio and make some decent coin.
	You just have to do stuff that grows the income.
	I mean, that's...
	That's all you have to do.
	And it's a fantastic job.
	It's the most meaningful thing, I will submit, that you can do with your short time on this planet.
	But finding people, you know, people have these suggestions, right?
	How many times do people say, Mike, you should do this?
	And you say, that's a great idea.
	Why don't you give it a shot?
	And then what?
	Nothing happens.
	Absolutely nothing happens.
	You know, you should really cut this down, video down, take this part and put it with this part.
	Well, you can just download from YouTube and do it.
	Well, no.
	I'm more of a typist.
	I'm an idea guy.
	You should do it.
	Like, you know, anyone but me should do it.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Yeah, but it is funny.
	There's so many opportunities, but people never think about it that way.
	And I don't know why.
	I guess, I don't know.
	I mean, I guess people just don't get, you know, we've given research jobs to people and they just, they do a crappy job.
	Not everyone, but some people do a crappy job.
	And, you know, I tell you, I mean, if...
	Never hear from them.
	Yeah, or they just disappear.
	Yeah.
	I had an animator working on the documentary last year.
	He just vanished.
	It's like, what are you doing?
	What are you doing?
	We're not done.
	But, yeah, I don't know.
	People just don't process it.
	You do a good job.
	You could be living the life of your dreams, spreading philosophy, peace, and virtue around the world.
	No, no, no!
	A new video game has come out, so I'm busy.
	I must watch the new series of Orange is the New Black.
	I must binge watch it instead of doing something of value.
	Yeah.
	I don't know.
	Like if Ayn Rand said to me, listen, I need someone to help him with research.
	I mean, I'd move there.
	I would just have gone and done that.
	That's how Nathaniel Brandon got his whole career.
	I mean, he just basically moved to where Ayn Rand was.
	When he was 16, he met her and it's like, okay, well, what can I do?
	You know, let's talk.
	And it is incredibly rare.
	You know, this thing that...
	The men of ability, women of ability and intelligence are hard to find.
	It's very true.
	It's very, very hard to find good people.
	This is why the number of people complaining about not making enough money is just completely insane.
	It's like there's gold three feet in the ocean and everyone is scuffing up and down on the beach saying, there's not really much gold here.
	There's no gold.
	Where's the gold?
	I want some gold.
	And it's like, it's in there three feet.
	Just got to go pick it up.
	Well, that's wet.
	I want to get my feet wet.
	Here's my gold.
	I want gold.
	How come other people get all the gold?
	I want the government to get me some gold.
	It's like, it's three feet away!
	Go get the gold!
	It's in the ocean right there!
	I can see it!
	Go get it!
	It's right there.
	This is not a puffer fish that's going to bite you.
	It's not a gold shark or anything like that.
	It's not a rapper's discarded teeth.
	It's real gold.
	I don't know.
	I just want some gold.
	Where's my gold?
	I need some gold.
	It's the same thing with lava every time.
	It just drives me nuts.
	Anyway.
	Yeah, the show that I actually listened to, stuff that a listener called Forever and a Day Ago, called Designing Your Life.
	And in that, he pretty much laid out what he just said here, that, hey, you know, if you want to submit a proposal, figure out a way to provide value to the show, you can work for Free Domain Radio tomorrow.
	Make it happen.
	And I listened to that like 47 times, and I was like, whoa, I guess I could do that.
	And, well, I did that, and now I'm here.
	I think probably, I don't know.
	Over the years since that's come out, three quarters of a million people, maybe a million people have listened to that show.
	Mike, you are one in a million.
	Hopefully we can find two in a million and just make it happen.
	No, it's not just this show, like trying to get people to, like I want people to do, to come and take my money to do stuff that I need to have done.
	And, I mean, just getting people, it's like, I will give you money.
	You know how this works.
	You put an ad in the newspaper, caught in my eye.
	I said to my baby, this sounds like the ticket for you and I. It's an ad in the paper, you come, you do stuff for me, and I give you money.
	It's like, this is how it works.
	And it's just like, people don't return phone calls, they show up once, they never come back.
	It's like, oh my God.
	Oh my god, why is it so hard?
	It's like, there's like nine competent people in the world, and I know a couple of them.
	And, uh, oh my god.
	Oh, I like this.
	So here's somebody saying, I will never move near where Stefan is.
	I'm in Florida, and I hate snow.
	Oh, fuck.
	Okay, you should stay in Florida, because if you feel that you have to move near where I am, then I don't think you're really the right person to try and do this show.
	The problem, you see, with an entirely digital show is I need to be physically there.
	You know, it doesn't have to be a cassette tape handoff.
	I live in a different country than Stefan, yet somehow this works.
	Hmm.
	I don't know.
	I mean, I don't know why anybody would want to be doing anything else, but I guess lots of people like it.
	All right.
	Well, I appreciated that stuff.
	Up next today is Don, and Don has been very patient wanting to get on the show.
	His question is, where does my moral responsibility begin, and where does my parents' moral responsibility end?
	If I could just take a moment real quick to sing your phrases...
	No!
	We have no moments!
	One of the things I was thinking about today...
	If I could just take a moment and give you some dead air in return, that would be fantastic.
	Oh, I'm sorry.
	There's a bad connection.
	One of the things I was thinking about today was just what my life would be like if I hadn't come across your podcast on YouTube.
	It was a pretty scary thought.
	I can't thank you enough.
	I know I've written to Mike and explained to him some of the stuff that I'm very grateful for, but I just wanted to thank you.
	I didn't take the time to do that the first time I spoke with you, so I really appreciate everything that you do.
	You're welcome.
	I appreciate your appreciation.
	Thanks very much.
	So, this moral responsibility issue, when I emailed Mike, he sent me a podcast that you hadn't released yet about parental responsibility, which I found very helpful.
	It answered a lot of my questions.
	It's just, I really have to get this issue down good because, you know, like I talked to you about the last time I'm in recovery, and there's just a big focus on Taking responsibility for yourself.
	So, but I think that they tend to go a little too far and I think the first time I got sober, I was sober for a couple years and I went from, you know, being an addict who didn't take responsibility for anything to like taking responsibility for everything and that included stuff that I found out now I didn't have responsibility for.
	You know, like my childhood and things.
	Okay, thanks.
	I'm sorry.
	It made me a tough time.
	I have a tough time following what you're saying.
	Can you boil it down a little bit?
	I feel like we could go on like that for quite a while.
	So is your question, to what degree do your parents have moral responsibility?
	Yeah, I just, I don't know where...
	Okay, no, no, see?
	You just got to get used to the briefer replies, right?
	Okay, so your parents have moral responsibility to the degree that they inflict moral responsibility.
	I have the capacity to understand English, the degree to which I coherently speak English.
	I can't do these shows and then somebody calls me up and I say, I can't do these shows and then claim that I don't know English.
	So if you want to know the degree to which your parents are morally responsible, take the moral responsibility they put upon you as a child and magnify it by a thousand.
	So if you were responsible for not hitting as a child, then they are a thousand times more responsible for not hitting as adults.
	If you were responsible for being nice and using your words, not your fists and sharing and caring and being respectful and so on, then they had that times a thousand.
	Okay.
	I mean, there's really nothing complicated to it.
	And you don't need UPB.
	I mean, it doesn't hurt or anything.
	You don't need UPB or anything like that.
	You just have to say that parents who inflict moral rules are subject to those moral rules.
	Okay.
	I guess then the question is, at what point in my life did I become responsible for my behavior?
	I guess that's what I'm having a hard time with.
	Well, the moment you started inflicting moral rules on other people, the moment you asked other people or wanted other people to respect your property, then you're responsible for respecting their property.
	The moment you want a benefit that is universal to everyone and you know you're a human being, it's universal to you.
	Human beings should respect property.
	So they don't take my stuff.
	I am a human being.
	Human beings should respect property.
	I am a human being.
	Therefore, I must respect property, right?
	So the moment you create a universal, then you expect or inflict it or anticipate that other people follow it or get upset when they don't, you have moral responsibility, right?
	Okay.
	Hmm.
	Like, hey, don't take my stuff.
	Hey, that's mine.
	Hey, man, you should really share, right?
	Right, so...
	Well, I guess like...
	My daughter has moral responsibility for sharing, right?
	Because, you know, when she's eating something and I say, can I have a bite?
	And she picks me off a tiny corner and gives it to me.
	I'm like, okay, great.
	So if I'm having something...
	That you want to bite off, that I'm enjoying, then I'm going to give you something that size.
	And she's like, ooh!
	Right?
	Because she's creating a universal, right?
	And I said, if I'm having a popsicle, what do you say?
	He said, Dad, give me half.
	It's only fair, right?
	Which isn't because I'm five times her size.
	But if she's going to give me a tiny corner, I'm like, okay, well...
	This is the categorical imperative, right?
	Act as if your actions create a universal rule.
	So I'm like, okay, so you feel that it's appropriate for you to give me a tiny corner.
	In other words, it's a good thing to give a tiny corner of something that somebody else wants to have more of.
	I'm fine with that.
	And I said, in fact, you know what?
	I'm thinking of eating something tasty later today, so please only give me a tiny corner so I don't have to share much.
	And she's like, oh, fine.
	And she gives me more, right?
	Okay, great.
	Fantastic.
	You know, then I'll share more later.
	But if she ever were to give me a tiny little bit, then I would have my snack later and I would give her a tiny little bit.
	Right.
	So she's morally responsible for sharing because she always wants half of mine.
	And then when she tries to give me a tiny little corner of hers, then I'm like, okay, well, that's our rule then, right?
	Because I'm not going to have a rule that's good for you and bad for me.
	That's not fair, right?
	So yeah, she's five and she's responsible for not hitting.
	She's responsible for not stealing.
	She's responsible for, if she wants me to share with her, she's responsible for sharing with me.
	She's responsible for not yelling when we're in enclosed areas.
	She's responsible for not shrieking or, you know, singing these beltingly high Disney ice pick through the ears tunes in a closed car in the winter.
	She's responsible for these things, right?
	Because she knows what the rules are and she's already agreed to the rules.
	Okay.
	Now, I mean, I'm explaining to her well, right?
	But the moment she imposed, the moment she says to me, it's only fair, bingo!
	Gotcha!
	You little wench, I gotcha!
	Because you said, it's only fair.
	Now, you are imposing a moral rule upon me at the tender age of four, which is when it started.
	So the moment that she starts wielding the ice magic of moral absolutes, bang!
	U-P-B'd!
	A-B-C-E-C-S-U-P-B, right?
	I got it.
	I mean, I got...
	I got her.
	I got her.
	Because she's now imposing universals.
	And the moment somebody starts imposing universals, they are then subject to universals.
	So, yeah.
	I mean, the parents say, you know, you need to treat me with respect.
	It's like, okay.
	So respect is a virtue.
	Well, did you treat me with respect, right?
	Or people say, well, circumcision isn't a problem because...
	The baby doesn't remember it.
	It's like, oh, okay, so then if you drug someone and rape them and they don't remember it, then it's fine because you don't remember it.
	So obviously roofing and date rape is not a problem.
	Oh, no, that's a problem, right?
	That's all this kind of stuff.
	Or one guy, when I was at the domestic violence conference this last weekend, one guy was putting me up against the wall, basically saying, well, what about kids?
	Some kids in the plurality of human personalities, there are surely going to be some kids who absolutely need corporal punishment and will hugely benefit from it.
	And I said, well, would you be willing to make that argument for wives?
	You know, given the vast differences emotionally in women, won't there be some wives who will massively benefit and actually require and can only get that benefit through wife beating?
	And he's like, well, I don't really want to make that case.
	I said, well, yeah, okay.
	I bet you don't, right?
	Because that would be counseling illegal stuff.
	And I said, but, you know, we obviously, women are there by choice and children aren't, so we must have higher standards for children than we do even for spouses and so on.
	So, yeah, I mean, the moment somebody imposes a moral rule, and you can look into Hoppe's argumentation ethics for more on this as well.
	Yeah, the moment somebody imposes a rule, then...
	They're subject to that moral rule and have moral responsibility, right?
	Right.
	I guess so, but when you're talking about your daughter, like, she's got good parents that are teaching her, you know...
	You know, I had completely different parents, and I guess that's where my question comes up.
	That's what I'm confused about.
	I'm not trying to...
	No, no, no, no, no, no.
	You didn't have completely different parents.
	You didn't have completely different parents.
	You just had hypocritical parents.
	I mean, did your parents say, listen, if you want something, just use violence to get your way?
	No, I mean, my dad used violence, but...
	No, no, no.
	Did your parents ever say to you, well, you know, if you want something, just push some kid over and hit them until they obey you?
	Absolutely not.
	Right.
	Now, when they wanted you to do something, what did they do?
	Hit me or screamed at me.
	Right.
	Right.
	So did they ever say, well, you know, first you start screaming at someone to get what you want.
	You know, like if you go to the store, son of mine, you go to the store and there's a candy bar that you want, but you don't have any money.
	First you scream at the shopkeeper and then you just start breaking things up in his store and punching him until he gives you the candy.
	Yeah, not so much.
	Not so much, right?
	Not so much.
	So it's not that they were totally different from me.
	They just were completely hypocritical in that they give you moral rules that they exempt themselves from.
	And then this is how we grow up thinking that the government can do differently than its subjects, right?
	Than the citizens.
	Because that's what almost all parents do is they create these moral rules for children and then immediately exclude themselves.
	And they create these moral rules so that they can have a legitimate reason for bullying and abusing their children, which is what they really want to do.
	The rules are just the excuse.
	Right.
	Well, I guess that's another thing to thank you then for is thank you for modeling that behavior for me because...
	No, but you want to repay me with something?
	Absolutely.
	It's non-monetary, right?
	So you can repay me with this.
	What...
	Have you been hypocritical about it?
	What are you avoiding in this topic?
	I guess one of the things I was feeling bad about was picking on my sister when I was younger.
	And I've had anger issues my whole life, which I've finally started working on now.
	And I always thought of myself as a really nice guy, so I think that's the big thing.
	And what did you do to your sister?
	Me and my brother, me and my older brother just treated her with it.
	No, no, no.
	What did you?
	Forget your older brother.
	Don't start diluting me, brother.
	What did you do to your sister?
	We just picked on her mercilessly, and it was terrible.
	And what was that?
	What do you mean?
	We just picked on her.
	You could keep repeating it, but I'm asking you for clarification.
	I don't know made fun of her and then when she got upset or wouldn't do something that I asked her to do like if I was watching her I would call her crazy and I would call my mom and say Kristen's crazy or having a breakdown or you know I mean it was just terrible and I feel horrible about it now.
	Wait, I don't understand.
	So let's say she was sitting there reading.
	What would you say? - I don't remember how it would start.
	I just know I picked on her a lot.
	Oh, come on, Don.
	You said you did it mercilessly, which I assume means consistently.
	So don't tell me you don't remember.
	If you want to pay me back, and I appreciate your compliments to the show.
	But I need honesty about, because this stuff is abstract is fine, but we need to know why this is even an issue for you, right?
	So what did you say to your sister?
	What kind of stuff would you say to drive her nuts?
	Call her stupid or weird or make fun of different things that she would do.
	She used to have imaginary friends that she talked to a lot and she would walk around the yard talking to her imaginary friends.
	She was very lost and I just picked on her.
	What do you mean she was very lost?
	She was the youngest child.
	It was a very abusive home and I think she took it the worst.
	Well, no, but we're talking about your abuse, right?
	She wasn't lost.
	I mean, with brothers like you, I'd make up imaginary friends too because I'd need someone to talk to who wasn't cruel, right?
	That was probably the best that she could do in the situation to maintain any kind of capacity for human contact would be to talk to imaginary friends who liked her and weren't vicious.
	Sure.
	So she was not lost.
	She was victimized.
	And how long would you and your brother persist in this behavior like would it last for an hour or two hours or what?
	I think it was on a pretty regular basis and I've just different family members have said things to me about it recently when I started raising issues about my family that's one of the things that I got back was well you picked on your sister when you were younger and so you're the problem and I guess I've just been having a hard time with that.
	And I know that I did.
	I remember some of it, but...
	And I really want to make this right.
	Don, why did you do that, do you think?
	Well, I think I... I mean, it would have been nice.
	It would have been nice.
	And this is something, sorry, just to give you where I'm coming from.
	It doesn't mean I'm right.
	I'll tell you where I'm coming from.
	I mean, when children are victimized, it would be nice if they were like hobbits under the vagina eye of Mordor, you know?
	It would be nice if they were supportive of each other and gave each other some sort of comfort.
	I've never quite understood why children who are victimized turn on each other in such a feral manner.
	I mean, didn't you want some comfort?
	Didn't you want some peace?
	Didn't you want some whispered conversations under the stars while holding hands and having your heart overflow with love?
	I mean, I didn't...
	I mean, I took the brunt of the abuse from my dad, the brunt of the physical abuse, and I... But so you knew how terrible it felt, right?
	So why would you want to do that if you know how terrible it feels?
	I mean, we're talking about me as a child here.
	I would never in a million years want to do that now.
	I... I'm not asking you to defend yourself now.
	I'm asking you to defend what your thinking was back then.
	Maybe it...
	Maybe it made it seem normal to me that that's how people treated each other because I was trying to make sense of what happened to me.
	I mean, it was...
	No, no.
	This is maybe...
	This is all just theorizing.
	What was the emotional driver?
	Like when you'd see your sister sitting at peace, what was the emotional driver to disrupt and harm her?
	Maybe.
	I should say maybe.
	That's good.
	I appreciate your openness.
	What was the emotional driver?
	I don't know.
	I was scared all the time.
	Maybe I wanted her to feel as lost and crazy as I felt because I... It's not even like he hit me all the time, but I never knew when it was going to happen, and I never knew what it was going to take.
	And one time he even just lifted his hand, and I thought he was going to slap me, and so I flinched, and he just kind of laughed at me like, why are you flinching?
	Like, he had no idea why.
	And I'm incredibly sorry for that, but we lost your sister in this.
	We started talking about you again, right?
	No, no, don't apologize, right?
	And I hugely sympathize.
	I mean, don't get me wrong, right?
	But you have some empathy for yourself.
	I'm just trying to understand.
	So you see your sister sitting peacefully and you'd be like, aha, now I'm going to co-call her stupid and weird and make fun of her and tell mom she's crazy and try and drive her crazy.
	Well, I would see her.
	I don't think I would do that when She was just sitting, I would see her doing something that I thought was weird, and I always thought of myself as normal, and I thought my brother and sister were weird, and especially my little sister, so I just, I hated her for not being normal, whatever that was, for being different.
	Why did you hate her?
	Why did you hate her for not being normal?
	Because I felt like it was an inconvenience and an embarrassment.
	What did it mean to you?
	Why?
	Why was it an inconvenience?
	I mean, if she's walking in the garden talking to her imaginary friends, how is that inconvenient to you, right?
	You can just go read a book or whatever.
	Because people would say things to me, like neighbors and friends that I had over, you know, they would say things about my sister.
	And my mom would always pretend like there was nothing wrong with her at all and everything was fine.
	And...
	I mean...
	I wanted to think everything was normal, I guess, and she was like proof that it wasn't, I think.
	For now that I'm thinking about it, maybe.
	Keep going?
	So she was like the visible wound in the family?
	Exactly.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Like she was the sign of all the dysfunction that I wanted to be private.
	Right.
	And so if she would just shape up and be, quote, normal, like you, then everything would be fine, right?
	Then it wouldn't attract attention.
	But how on earth was she supposed to find normal, which was you, even remotely appealing when normal was vicious and cruel?
	Do you know what I mean?
	I mean, it's like, I want you to be like me, sis, and I'm going to torture you until you want to become like me, the torturer, right?
	Yeah, it sounds crazy now, you know, to think about that, but...
	Now, if you had resisted the temptation to be cruel to her, like, if you had, I don't know, like, I don't know, what age are we talking about here?
	5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, like all those years.
	Oh my god, so horrible.
	Alright, so let's say that she had been talking at the age of 8, talking and playing games in the backyard with her imaginary friends, right?
	Did it ever...
	I'm sure it must have.
	Did it ever cross your mind, Don, to say, I'm going to go out and ask her about her invisible friends?
	Like, I'm not going to go and be mean to her.
	I'm not going to call her stupid or weird or fucked up, or I'm not going to insult her or put her down.
	I'm actually just going to go and try and understand what's going on in that wonderful imagination of hers.
	Maybe I can play with her, too.
	We actually did get to a point where that happened eventually.
	I don't remember how old we were, but that was like a paradigm shift.
	I don't know.
	But when you were younger, did it cross your mind to do that?
	Never crossed your mind?
	No, I don't think so.
	I just, I didn't like it.
	Did you ever watch TV when you were a kid, like sitcoms and stuff like that?
	And so you would see siblings having conversations and not torturing each other mentally, right?
	So this wasn't a completely foreign concept.
	You probably saw it many times a week, right?
	Oh, sure.
	So how could it never have crossed your mind if you saw it many times a week on TV? I have no idea, but I don't think I ever had any thoughts like that.
	What do you think would have happened if you could go back in time?
	What would you say to your eight-year-old self if you could go back in time, Don, and give him some advice?
	I would tell him that he was choosing the wrong team, that he was on my parents' side and he blamed my brother and my sister for dysfunction when it was really my parents that were dysfunctional.
	And that I should have supported them because we had to survive that together.
	And what would you tell him to do the next time he saw his sister, your sister doing something like talking to imaginary friends?
	I would tell him to be curious about it.
	And I would remind him that she's just dealing with a really unhealthy situation.
	And she's doing whatever she can to survive.
	and I should encourage that and be curious.
	And what would you say that it will cost him if he doesn't change?
	It will cost him and everyone around him a lot of pain and regret and things that he can't change back.
	No matter how hard he tries or how bad he wants to.
	I would also tell him, if I could...
	Send that message in a bottle back through time.
	I would also tell him that his cruelty will probably make Big Don into an addict.
	Sure.
	Absolutely.
	Because it's a lot of pain to...
	The pain that we suffer, you know, this is an old argument from the pre-Socratics and Socrates, it is better to suffer evil than to do evil, right?
	Sure.
	And you suffered a lot of cruelty, but then you did the cruelty.
	That's something, again, I always struggle to try and sort of figure that one out.
	And I'm not trying to make you feel bad or wrong or weird or anything like that.
	I just, I find it hard to figure out how, if you know how painful it is to be yelled at or screamed at or called stupid or lazy or whatever, to turn around and do that to someone else.
	What would have happened, do you think, Like, if you just, you send it back in time, what warnings would you give your younger self if you say, well, don't be cruel to your sister, don't fall in with your brother, don't be that jerky, don't be that cruel, don't be that mean, don't harm yourself and her to that degree, your young, bursting hearts?
	What would you say will be the consequences of not doing it?
	What will happen?
	I don't know.
	I mean, I wouldn't have the tremendous amount of guilt that I have, you know?
	Yeah, but you did it because the alternative must have been worse.
	Like, why are people cruel?
	They must be cruel because the alternative is even worse.
	In other words, you had a rock so hot that you just wanted to give it to your sister because you felt it would burn your own hands right off.
	And somehow, you must have felt that she was better able to handle the abuse than you were.
	Well, that's ridiculous.
	So, to not have harmed your sister.
	Well, that's ridiculous.
	That she would have been better to handle it than I would have.
	But that's the logic of what you were doing, right?
	Because if you hadn't been verbally abusive towards her, some horrible consequence must have occurred, right?
	Right.
	For you.
	Okay.
	I can tell you what I just thought of.
	Okay, I'd be interested to hear it.
	It's not any statement of truth, it's just what popped into my head.
	I think that the choice may have been, abuse your sister or kill your parents.
	I think that sounds, yeah, I think that sounds about right.
	Or fight back.
	Tell me.
	Yeah, so tell me what I mean, because I don't know what I mean.
	It's just like I hated them for the way that they treated me, and I couldn't fight back to them.
	But my sister, I could pick on her.
	She was smaller than me.
	And I begged my mom so many times, like, why do you let him hit me?
	And why don't you leave?
	And she never protected me.
	In fact, the reason he stopped hitting me was because my brother called the police.
	So your dad was able to stop hitting you when he became scared, when it harmed his own self-interest.
	Exactly.
	Right.
	He never hit me again after that.
	So he could have stopped hitting you with a crush.
	It just wasn't in his interest to do that, right?
	Until the cops.
	Fuck.
	Fuck.
	I sometimes feel this giant urge to call an airstrike down on history.
	Me too.
	So if you had not harmed your sister, tell me the dominoes that would have fallen.
	What would have happened after what would have happened after what would have happened the moment you start not harming your sister?
	Well, I think that I probably would have taken that aggression out.
	I would have fought back more with my dad and I probably would have got really hurt or something really bad.
	I don't know.
	Well, like what?
	What do you think your dad would have been capable of?
	Um, I don't know.
	You know, the last time he hit me, he was on crutches, and he hit me with a crutch, and that's why my brother finally called the police, but he didn't usually hit me with things.
	That was the only time.
	But he was very strong, and he was just very angry, and he was a Marine, and I was just a skinny little kid.
	You know, it was the kid that would distract him when he got upset at my mom or my brother or my sister.
	But thinking about it now, it's crazy.
	I took the focus off of them, but then I took it out on my sister.
	So, it doesn't make any sense.
	Well, no.
	I think what we're talking about is that it might make some sense.
	Okay.
	Because taking it out on your sister might have kept you out of prison.
	Might have kept you from murdering someone or killing yourself.
	Yeah, actually I did pull a knife once too to get him to stop hitting me.
	I remember that.
	Or the hospital.
	I guess they couldn't cut me out of the hospital.
	Right.
	So did I call you today as the reason of my call?
	Because I was trying to avoid responsibility for this?
	Well, I thought that you were talking about your parents until you started talking about children, and then I knew you were talking about yourself.
	And look, I hugely appreciate your openness with this topic.
	Obviously, it is a very raw and rough topic, and it is horrible.
	To remember these things, right?
	It's essential.
	And again, I applaud your courage in doing so.
	But it is very hard.
	It sounds like your house was...
	You know, people use this analogy.
	But it was not like a war zone.
	It was, in fact, a war zone.
	It was a war against children.
	And like the state says, you torture this prisoner or I will torture you.
	Your parents serve the ultimate or hold the ultimate responsibility for your cruelty to your sister.
	I heard you say something not too long ago about how if someone offered you a million dollars, you wouldn't take that in exchange.
	You'd rather have a good childhood instead of the childhood you had.
	I didn't really agree with you.
	I thought, well, I'm doing well enough now.
	To where I would just take the million dollars.
	But the more I've thought about it, you know, I just spent a weekend with my cousin, this little girl that has wonderful parents, and now I actually saw what was stolen from me.
	And I would never take the money now.
	I just would.
	No.
	No, you can make money anytime you want.
	you cannot make better memories from your history.
	I mean, how much would you pay now to have taken the memories of the cruelty that was done to you and the cruelty you did under others out of your head?
	And to be as if it never happened.
	I would just give anything for a do-over.
	Right.
	Right.
	And I am amazingly and deeply and in a truly heartfelt way incredibly sorry for the childhood that you experienced.
	But you have not died inside.
	I can tell you that with all the certainty I can think of.
	Because you have the capacity for sorrow.
	And you have the capacity for guilt and you have the capacity for remorse.
	And you have a call to make to your sister.
	Well, I've been doing that.
	Which is...
	Yeah, it's going to be a series of calls, of course, right?
	I've been working on that.
	And, um...
	You are not damaged goods.
	You are not a walking corpse.
	A lot of people are.
	Right.
	But you're not...
	But the great challenge is to try to understand, and through that understanding will come forgiveness.
	I have no problem with forgiveness, but forgiveness is so often used to deny understanding.
	You forgave me.
	Stop asking me questions.
	I've forgiven you.
	I don't want to explore this anymore.
	Forgiveness is like this dirty...
	Band-aid over the sucking chest wound, like, let us not examine further because we've made this magic word called forgiveness.
	And I think that for you, forgiveness is going to have to do with appreciating the choice that you made to be cruel to your sister.
	And I know that sounds weird, but what I mean is, Nobody likes the idea of strangling a kitten, at least not anyone I know.
	But if it is like, strangle a kitten or the world ends, then you regretfully strangle the kitten, right?
	There was a consequence to not tormenting your sister that even in hindsight she may agree was the better path for her to be tormented.
	Let me spin you out of scenario.
	So Don, you gain the unholy willpower to stop tormenting your sister.
	And you convince your brother somehow to stop tormenting your sister.
	Which means that you don't get to pass through anything, right?
	It means everything accumulates within you.
	You don't get to Shrug off any of that burden onto anyone else.
	It all hangs on the earth, right?
	So what happens then is you begin the boil.
	You begin the pressure cooker, right?
	And without the capacity to discharge the venom that your father was beating into you, The bruises that take on a life and finger strangling movement all their own.
	Maybe you erupt in rage at your father and you push him in crutches down the stairs.
	Or you simply black out and wake up with a concussed unconscious or dead body at your feet.
	And maybe it's your father or maybe it's your mother because you beg for protection from your mother who sees fit to breed with such a vicious ape.
	Right.
	I think we can probably safely say that teasing or tormenting your sister was better than murdering someone in your family.
	Sure.
	In other words, given the trauma that your parents were inflicting on all three of you, was your sister less tormented by being called stupid, or would she have been more tormented with a murderer in the family?
	Yeah, obviously the talk deed wasn't as bad.
	In which case, you may actually have been doing her A strange kindness in the situation.
	I see what you're saying.
	That's very helpful.
	Because if, and sorry, people are confused in the chat room.
	The reason I'm saying that, and I don't know, this is just a possible theory to explore.
	Which is that if not passing along the abuse would have accumulated in a backlash against the parents or a teacher or a stranger or his brother or another kid to the point where a significant injury or death may have resulted, then it was less traumatic for his sister to be called names and teased and tormented, I'm not trying to minimize it, than it would have been for what would have happened if some massive violence had occurred.
	In the family.
	Which is one of the reasons why she may have taken it.
	Right?
	Because maybe she could have just, I don't know, hit you with a book or a bat or something.
	Sure.
	And then you wouldn't have...
	You may have stopped, right?
	So maybe she's like, okay, so I'm where the shit rolls downhill.
	But if I push it back up, a whole lot more shit comes down my way, right?
	Sure.
	Sure.
	Now somebody's saying I don't find murdering an abuser hugely evil.
	I am not saying that it is.
	But what I'm saying is that from a child's understanding, patricide or matricide combined with what would have happened in society as a result would be more traumatic than teasing.
	I'm not talking about a fundamental moral judgment.
	I'm talking about the practical effects of what would have happened in that situation.
	Right?
	Law courts.
	Kids go to jail.
	Family is broken up.
	Kids go to other homes.
	Kids have the stigma of, you know, as we find out with the internet these days, your brother is a murderer or your brother put your dad in the hospital or whatever it was, right?
	And then all the kids might get drugged, shrinking their brain mass.
	I mean it could have just gone wildly worse even than teasing.
	I see what you're saying but ultimately I need to own this.
	It's not...
	No, I'm telling you.
	Have I said don't own it?
	I'm telling you to own it.
	You did it, but you did not do it without context, and you did not initiate these wrongs.
	Okay, I see what you're saying.
	I mean, I can tell you, my daughter has never said a mean word to any human being in her life.
	With animals, she is like magically gentle.
	She is an absolutely peaceful but strong and assertive and makes her needs known and negotiates like a barker trying to sell a side of beef in Texas on crack.
	So you were put in a situation that you damn well didn't want to be put into.
	You did Survive it.
	You got to adulthood.
	Everyone got to adulthood in a situation of murderous, dangerous rage.
	And you retained your capacity for self-empathy and for empathy towards another.
	Which is no small feat.
	Your father sure as hell didn't, right?
	Well, he did, you know, he got sober and got his act together, but...
	No, he did not get his act together.
	You cannot beat children for years and then say that you get your act together.
	Well, but I guess between him and my mom, he's the one that says, okay, I did what I did.
	I'm so sorry.
	What can I do to make this better?
	My mom is still pretending that it never happened.
	Well, and we haven't talked much about your mom, right?
	I mean, how much did your mom incite your dad?
	Well, she spent all of her time at church, so that always made him mad, because she always went to church.
	She left us there with him.
	No, what I mean is, when your mom had a problem with you, did she enlist your dad to help solve the problem?
	I don't remember that being an issue, but...
	Oh, so would she hit you herself?
	You know, when he did...
	She didn't do anything about it, or she would say, like, oh, you made your point, you know, that's enough, and she would stop it, but, you know...
	Are your parents still married?
	No, I had divorced when I was, like, 16 or 18 or so.
	Right.
	Right.
	Well, I'm obviously...
	I'm happy that your dad is saying what he's saying, rather than doubling down, which is good.
	And I think...
	If you're not concerned about your father's capacity for violence in the present, then I think getting everyone together, maybe just the dudes, maybe dudes and sister.
	I'm not sure the mom would be a positive presence at the moment if she's still denying everything.
	But getting everyone together, just take a weekend and just chew your way through this shit.
	I think that's a really good idea.
	I mean, if your dad's willing to talk about it, And he's like, what can I do?
	I'm like, okay, you know, you gave me decades of abuse.
	Give me a weekend of absolute nonsense.
	Yeah, you know, he lives across the country, but if he really means that he'll be here, then he'll come.
	Oh, yeah, yeah.
	Dad, come on over.
	You know, like, when people say I'll do anything, I'm like, great, that I will take that as a fact.
	Yeah, I'm not going to be shy about that.
	No.
	I know.
	How are you doing?
	I didn't really expect this, so...
	I'm doing okay, though.
	It's really helped put this in perspective for me.
	Yeah, great heart, Don.
	Great heart.
	I mean, that's not easy to be that vulnerable, but that is the real strength in the world, right?
	This win-lose shit is just...
	You know, if plankton, krill, and sperm whales do it, then it can't be that sophisticated.
	But the vulnerability and the honesty is the real strength, and I hugely admire you for that.
	Thank you.
	Yeah, this cycle of violence is gonna stop with me.
	I'll do anything.
	I appreciate that.
	And my daughter appreciates that.
	The future of the world appreciates that.
	And if you have kids in the future, I'm sure they will enormously appreciate that too.
	Thank you so much.
	And hopefully you'll get a chance to drop us a line and let us know how it goes with your siblings and with your father and eventually with your mom.
	I will too, Stefan.
	Thanks for taking my call.
	I really appreciate it.
	Thank you, man.
	Great job.
	Great work.
	Yeah, thanks, Don.
	Mike, is there anything you wanted to add?
	Just, you know, I'm in awe of your emotional awareness and vulnerability in the conversation, Don, I must say.
	Incredibly impressive.
	And kudos to you.
	Thanks, Mike.
	Oh, very welcome.
	Up next is Caitlin.
	Caitlin wrote in and said, I find men are attracted to the quote-unquote parasitic female more than the quote-unquote good woman.
	I'm not sure the casual relationship between men pursuing the shallow beauty or the women creating the effect, i.e.
	makeup, hair, nails, etc.
	It's kind of a what came first, a chicken or the egg question.
	As it seems that all the good women are constantly passed up for the manipulative parasites, what would be your advice to the good women?
	Wow.
	That's a great question.
	That's a great question.
	And...
	Can you give me a little bit more...
	I mean, it's a great intro, just a little bit more background on that.
	I guess I... Gosh, I guess I'm getting older.
	A part of it, I guess, I don't know, I guess not having a lot of success with relationships in that, I guess...
	I'm sorry, I'm rambling.
	I have a lot of male friends, sincere relationships, not sexual, or I think they're sincere on my part anyway, and...
	Where they do complain about these women, these awful women, and I'm definitely, for better or for worse, I'm the friend, not the girlfriend.
	I love my friendships.
	I appreciate them very much.
	But with men, I kind of see them as very weak that way.
	I feel like maybe it's not to my benefit to be independent, to be considerate, to be giving, to be honest.
	And what age range are you in?
	I'm 35.
	And do you want...
	Do you have children?
	I used to want children more than God.
	I just thought it was a given.
	I was going to have children, but no one ever came along.
	So I don't want to have a child without a father, or a good father, with just anybody.
	So like you said, the primal, I want to select a good human being to have children with.
	Maybe it's luck.
	Maybe it's...
	I don't know.
	Maybe it's me.
	But they don't seem to be there.
	And if they are there, if I meet a guy who appears nice, he does tend to date women that I would never even friend on Facebook.
	They're a little trashy.
	They're a little...
	Oh no, come on, don't be nice.
	This is anonymous.
	They're a little trashy.
	Come on, like, let rip, sister.
	I mean, what kind of trollops are these himbos going out with?
	Oh my gosh, look, here's the thing.
	No, just tell it the world.
	People need to know this, so let's have it.
	That's why I thought your show was so great.
	The way you talk to these men is the way I try to give my friends advice.
	They're not getting pregnant, lying about being pregnant, getting someone to marry them, then quitting their job once they get pregnant.
	Oh, and then they will lie about who the father is.
	They'll get some bullshit job, then get married and then quit their job, and all of a sudden it's up to him.
	What else?
	God, they use children as leverage.
	It makes me...
	I also work in a public service field where I do see women milk their husbands for everything they can get.
	They've never worked.
	They've never...
	I don't think contributed.
	And the expectation of alimony for what?
	For fucking your husband?
	I mean, anyone can do that.
	I don't get the...
	Even my frustration with men is I don't even want a guy who's been going through that.
	I don't want to have to take what I worked so hard for while he gives alimony to someone else and child support to someone else.
	I've tried to steer away from the drama, tried to steer away from...
	Anyway, the...
	That was about the nicest rant from 20 years of frustration I think I've ever heard.
	So I'm sure that you are a very nice young lady.
	But is there anything else you wanted to add?
	Because I certainly have some questions, but I don't want to interfere with your flow because this must be a lot of frustration watching all these men.
	You know, be drawn after like sharks following a trolling vessel looking for the innards and goop and fishy smelling stuff of these women who are not exactly high rank?
	Yeah, exactly.
	They don't have...
	And for that matter, I don't even think that they are all that attractive.
	They're not, you know, they don't have...
	And I know attractive is, you know, it's...
	An objective thing, but they're not taking care of themselves.
	They get married and let themselves gain 30 pounds, and their skin looks horrible, and they're not moving.
	And for some reason, men fall all over themselves for this abuse.
	They love it.
	I don't know exactly what it's all about, and sometimes I joke with my mother.
	I don't mean this seriously, but I said, you raised me the wrong way.
	You raised me to be independent and considerate and try to be intelligent, try to be a good citizen.
	I don't know.
	Contribute.
	Take care of yourself.
	But that has definitely backfired in the marriage department, I think.
	Well, that remains to be seen, at least from my perspective.
	What about your dad?
	What was your relationship with your dad?
	You'll have a field day with that.
	He is an alcoholic.
	He was abusive to my mom, physically, emotionally.
	Slightly with me and my sisters, but it's only if we interfered with him hitting my mom.
	And a lot of it was like humiliation things, like shoving food in her face and dragging her upstairs in front of the neighbors.
	Even when we went out to dinner, he would always threaten to beat up the waiter.
	Somehow, somebody did something to piss him off.
	And all his friends just...
	The laughter thing there?
	Hang on, the laughter bit there?
	Well, me and my sister, we call it the Irish dark humor.
	We do, you know, those times were, made me cry as a kid, and as we talk about it as adults, it's so awful, it makes us laugh.
	Hmm.
	All right.
	Okay, we'll come back to that.
	What did your parents say to you?
	No, they tried for 40 years.
	They finally got divorced.
	My mom, I think she just got too old to handle.
	His alcoholism got worse.
	He was functioning less.
	He was getting arrested.
	I think she was just getting too old to handle it.
	I saw her falling apart.
	Oh, so wait a minute.
	So when it was really difficult for her, she dumped him.
	All right.
	What's my next point?
	Give it to me.
	I don't know.
	What about when it was difficult for you as a child?
	Yeah, it sucked.
	I begged her to leave him.
	We all did.
	And she hurt.
	No.
	But she didn't.
	But then when it became really difficult for her, as opposed to her children, she decided to dump the bastard, right?
	Yeah, it's pretty sick, yeah.
	So when you say to me, young lady, when you say to me that, oh, mom, you raised me to be so independent, you raised me to be so rational, you understand if I give you a Spock eyebrow raise of intense skepticism.
	Yeah, no, I mean, I guess...
	Look, I'll tell you what doesn't work in this conversation, and this is not to you, right?
	This is just to everyone.
	Don't give me your narrative.
	Don't give me your stories.
	Don't give me your...
	Fog, don't give me your show.
	I don't want jazz hands.
	I don't want razzmatazz, right?
	And don't try and condition my response before I get the facts, which you tried to do.
	You tried to paint a very positive picture of your mother, and I asked about your father, and the positive picture of your mother completely evaporated.
	You're absolutely right.
	Okay, so don't give me the propaganda.
	Don't give me the brochure, right?
	I didn't know I was doing that, but yeah.
	I know.
	That's why I'm not mad at you.
	You'll get the most out of this conversation if you don't tell me anything you've ever told anyone before.
	Because when we speak new words, we're not in the train tracks of just ways in which we've explained our life to ourself and others before.
	I appreciate that.
	So what the...
	What's wrong with your mom that she stayed with a violent alcoholic for 40 years?
	I swear to God, I don't know.
	I don't know what it was.
	Yes, you do.
	No, no, no, no, no.
	Don't...
	First of all, you're saying swear to God to an atheist, so I automatically know that you're not in the conversation with me.
	This is someone else.
	Yeah, it's an expression.
	No, I understand that it's an expression.
	But I don't go to India and say, for the love of Zeus, will you people...
	Pick up some of this trash, right?
	But you do know.
	You do know.
	You have known your mom for 35 years.
	And if you have no idea why she was married to your father, then you will not have the intelligence to dial Skype.
	I kind of don't have the intelligence to dial Skype.
	You can ask Michael.
	On Skype.
	So why did your mother...
	Was she religious?
	Was she going to go to hell if she divorced him?
	Well, no, because then why would she divorce him now?
	Was her father an alcoholic?
	Was her mother?
	What was her childhood like?
	Like, why on earth did she stay with a violent alcoholic who was ripping her children's mind and hearts apart limb from limb for 35 years?
	Why did she stay?
	I mean, I feel like it's, I'm just, I'm filling in a quiz, and by listening to you, and I really do listen to Okay, first of all, can you stop moving around because the mic makes lots of clicks and bumps.
	So don't give me your abstract and non-answer.
	Again, if you want to have the conversation, we'll have it directly, right?
	You know the answer to this because you've known your mom for 35 years and if you don't know something fundamental about someone after 35 years, intimacy is completely impossible, right?
	Okay, just tell me what you think.
	Why do you think if you had to answer And there were no consequences to any answer.
	What would you say?
	We had a big, beautiful house.
	And, um...
	You know, she worked, but she didn't make as much money as my dad.
	And I think it was...
	I mean, that's the only thing I can think of.
	Come on!
	No!
	Keep going!
	Keep going!
	I think it was a stat...
	She's from a blue-collar environment.
	She always wanted to be better.
	And she met this naval lawyer.
	He had money!
	Just say it!
	He had money!
	He had a big beautiful house, that's what you tell me right away.
	So, you know, he had lots of money.
	So you can be a drunk asshole, torture your children, but if you're bringing home the Benjamins, we're good, right?
	It's just hard to think of your mom that way.
	Oh, I know.
	I crossed that Rubicon some time back.
	So yeah, no, I understand that.
	I understand that.
	So what other part of your narrative is falling apart?
	Well, yeah, when his condition got worse, he stopped making money.
	There was no money.
	Oh, okay.
	So when he's bringing home the Benjamins, he can be a drunken, violent bastard.
	But when he's not making money and it becomes inconvenient, drop him.
	Like roadkill off the back of a truck, right?
	What other part of your narrative is falling apart now?
	The only thing I can think of is, um...
	Oh, well...
	I don't know what...
	Am I looking for someone with money?
	That's why I haven't met anyone?
	I don't know what...
	No!
	- Oh, something you already told me. - Oh.
	I don't know what...
	I mean, I guess, um...
	Well, she was having an affair.
	So was he, though.
	I don't know.
	There didn't...
	There wasn't like a real...
	I don't know.
	There weren't a lot of, like you'd say, ethics in the marriage.
	Yes, I would!
	Would you like a hint?
	Oh, good!
	Because you can't see my camera.
	I'm actually just jumping up and down in the studio here.
	All right.
	All right.
	Steph, I don't know what it is with these guys who are attracted to these women who like their money.
	I have no understanding why this happens.
	Okay, it was my mom, but still...
	I have no understanding why this happens.
	Because I say to my mother, I say, Mom, you just raised me to not care that much about money, even though you were married to a violent and abusive alcoholic while he had money and then divorced him, and he didn't.
	Mom, you just...
	You taught me how to be too rational and too independent.
	Yeah, I get it.
	A little...
	Do you?
	Yeah, you're right.
	Not really.
	I guess what I should say is...
	I understand the discrepancy.
	Discrepancy?
	It's not a discrepancy!
	It's a complete opposite of what you said!
	Right?
	A discrepancy is, I thought it was 10 bucks, it's 11 bucks.
	Not, I thought it was 10 bucks and a beluga ate me.
	So her words were different than her example.
	Your words are different from your example!
	Not hers!
	Yours!
	She had her marriage.
	You're 35, you're thinking about it.
	Your words are different from your example!
	You'll have to, you'll have to, uh...
	I don't know, you'll have to tell me.
	I'm not coming to the conclusion.
	That's fine.
	I appreciate that.
	I appreciate that.
	Mike's telling me to breathe.
	Mike's telling me to breathe.
	No, Mike!
	I'm going to my backup gills!
	Don't break the host.
	Do not break the host.
	I'm wearing a red shirt and I actually basically just like a red shirt with a red head.
	Okay, so Caitlin, you will get this when you listen back to this conversation.
	But you told me that these women who want men for their money and who are manipulative are completely foreign to you, right?
	Because your mother just raised you completely differently.
	I guess not foreign to me.
	I just don't understand why anyone wants them.
	So you don't understand why your father wanted your mother?
	I mean, I think he's sick.
	I think he wanted her because she was beautiful and elusive, and she made him chase her.
	She was a big prize to him, I think.
	That's the story I've heard.
	Right, so, but this is not a giant mystery.
	You just told me.
	She was beautiful and elusive.
	So she was beautiful, which means she's a status symbol for him, right?
	My money can buy this kind of quality pussy.
	Sorry to be blunt, but this is the basic biological transaction that occurs almost throughout the entire animal kingdom, from protozoa up to Angelina Jolie.
	And so he's like, well, look, I have enough money to buy this attractive pussy.
	And the attractive pussy says, look, my pussy is so attractive, it can build a house without even getting off the couch.
	It's magic!
	She worked.
	Does that count for anything?
	And what was the ratio of their income?
	And what was the ratio of their income?
	I could be very certain that it was his money.
	Right, right.
	So, he wished to buy the highest status woman whose physical form indicated the best genetic material for children, right?
	And she wished to sell her pussy for a man with enough resources to keep her in comfort while she raised her children.
	Now, did she stay home with you guys when you were kids?
	Yeah.
	She went to work.
	Why?
	I wish she had stayed home.
	I wanted her home.
	Why?
	I don't know.
	I know.
	I've resigned myself to the fact that I'm going to have to ask every question at least twice.
	But that's okay.
	I'm sorry I'm frustrating you.
	Why?
	No, no.
	I'm not frustrated.
	I'm really not.
	I mean, I'm excited.
	But why did she go to work?
	No, she didn't need to, right?
	She told me she liked working.
	More than time with you.
	Oh, she never said that, but I guess, yeah.
	No, I mean, I know what you mean.
	Empirically, that's the fact, right?
	Yeah, she liked working better than spending time with her children.
	And what did she do for a living?
	Oh, not for a living, but what did she do to get away from her children?
	She worked for...
	She was a lobbyist.
	I know.
	Oh!
	So she was really milked.
	You must have been quite attractive, right?
	I mean, what was she going to be next, a drug rep for doctors?
	She was literally a beauty queen when she was younger, literally.
	So yeah, she was a lobbyist and I guess she did pretty well there.
	She worked for some, you know, big name politicians.
	My tits say vote this way.
	Well, okay.
	My balls agree with your tits.
	Let's change the world, shall we?
	Oh, man.
	Oh, that's rough.
	I mean...
	Ah, vaginocracy at work.
	Okay, so...
	So, as a lobbyist, she was a manipulator, right?
	And obviously, I'm not saying she was done, right?
	But she was a manipulator for money.
	And...
	So the idea that men are attracted to women like this and this is incomprehensible to you is not incomprehensible, right?
	It kind of is.
	Why would a man want a woman who doesn't want to stay home with her children or loves them for just his money?
	Why do men want that?
	Look, it just depends what the status is.
	It depends what is the highest status.
	So if he says, my wife is a lobbyist, does that get him higher status than my wife is a stay-at-home mother?
	I don't know.
	I don't know what men prefer.
	To me, I would think, I mean, my opinion would be...
	Oh, I'm not asking you for like, what was the ancient Sanskrit word for horticulturalist, right?
	What I'm saying is that in certain circles, it is more prestigious to have a wife with a cool career than it is to have a stay-at-home mom, right?
	I mean, why did Hillary Clinton work when she didn't have to?
	I mean, they were getting $320,000 a year and living in government housing throughout most of the 90s.
	So why Did she work?
	I would assume it's because it was a higher status thing, right, for her.
	I mean, there was a whole lot of stuff going on in the 70s and the 80s, the super mom and the, you know, like if your wife is a stay-at-home mom, she was just not as high a status as a wife who was a lobbyist.
	So I would assume that he wanted the status of her beauty and he wanted the status of her cool career, right?
	Yeah, he was proud of her.
	Yeah, so that's why she would do it, because they're probably enormously vain and shallow people—let me go out on a giant limb here—enormously vain and shallow people who just do whatever it takes so that they can lord it over other people in terms of intimidating status, right?
	Were you saying sure, like, does that make sense?
	I mean, you know that I don't.
	No, I mean, yes, in general— I just, I'm not objecting.
	It's just, I've never thought of her that way before.
	Well, tell me if I'm wrong.
	I don't want to, you know, build a house of cards here.
	No, I think I've been, like, avoiding this conversation.
	Well, this is a bad place to come for a conversation that you're avoiding, right?
	Ask the last guy.
	Yeah, don't hold back.
	I really, I always appreciate your insights.
	Yeah, I guess...
	Where does that leave...
	I don't know, I mean...
	Like, my original question, like, why...
	Why would my...
	I mean, God, who knows?
	I mean, yeah, my father's a sick guy, but, like, are all guys who, like, women like that drunk, alcoholic, rage-aholic...
	Look, I'm not good at that.
	That's a silly question, right?
	You're just saying that to buy some time so that you either can avoid my next...
	Of course not, right?
	I mean, there's lots of different ways that that dysfunction manifests itself, right?
	So the reason that you're not married is that you are neither committed to lying nor telling the truth.
	You're in the gray zone.
	You're in the null zone, right?
	So you're neither committed to being an estrogen-based parasite, neither are you committed to being philosophical truth at all costs.
	So the guys who were once the manipulator and the The regular old whatever, right?
	They don't get that from you because you're not committed to that.
	You haven't fallen into that godforsaken deep well of self-eating pussy nonsense, right?
	But on the other hand, you are not clear in examining your history and to the point where some guy with deep self-knowledge and someone's going to come along and he's going to be like, whoa, my head is spinning.
	I don't know which way is upward.
	You know, she's telling me how independent and not like other women she is.
	And her mother raised her right.
	And then when I hear more about her mom, she sounds like exactly the kind of women that she's criticizing all these other women for being.
	So I don't know.
	This is too much work.
	I guess I never thought of it that way.
	I never know whether that means...
	You are a sea squid!
	Huh, I guess I never thought of myself that way.
	I never know whether that's an agreement or not.
	No, I agree with you.
	I'm just, um...
	It's enlightening.
	How about that?
	So, you've self-neutered yourself, right?
	You've kept yourself from the tribe of apes and the tribe of philosophers for a reason, right?
	Wow, I... What reason would that be?
	It's very lonely.
	Well, would you like me to tell you?
	Yes, I think I'm going to take the lead.
	All right, okay.
	Let's say you and I go on a date.
	All right?
	And you start telling me this stuff.
	And what am I going to say?
	Like, it's me, right?
	Let's just say I was single, you were single, we went on a date.
	What would I say?
	No idea.
	Hint, I've been saying it, right?
	I would say all of the stuff that I've been saying, right?
	Now, I assume you're still in touch with your parents.
	Okay.
	Yeah, of course.
	Why wouldn't I be?
	I mean, of course, I still have both my legs and I'm still in touch with my parents.
	I mean, what kind of crazy person would even ask that question?
	So then you invite me over to meet your parents.
	How's that going to go?
	Well, lately that hasn't, I mean, in my recent dating life, they're...
	No, no, no, don't!
	Stay on, stay in the conversation!
	Stay in the conversation!
	How is that going to go?
	I go to meet your parents.
	Hey, you're the drunken, violent guy who threatened to beat up waiters and terrorize my lover's childhood.
	Oh, you're the estrogen-based parasite who let him do it for money!
	How's that conversation going to go?
	How's our little get-together going to go?
	So you're just going to think I'm out of my mind?
	Like, I don't...
	How is it going to go?
	Well, he wouldn't like my home situation, but not all of them have been exposed to that.
	How?
	Oh, my God.
	Okay, four times.
	How is that conversation going to go when I meet your parents?
	Someone like you, it wouldn't go well.
	Me, exactly.
	What would happen?
	You, I think, would question, would say, your narrative is nothing like your reality.
	That was a trick question.
	I would never go.
	I would never go.
	You told me why!
	You already told me!
	Why wouldn't I go?
	You can tell that by just talking to me that I don't know what's going on.
	I don't know.
	It's not about you.
	It's about them.
	Let's say I love you.
	I think you are just the greatest thing ever.
	I love you.
	How am I going to feel about people who hurt you terribly?
	I'm not going to like them.
	I am really not going to like them.
	I am not even going to want to meet them.
	Why do you think I would just be the same way?
	This is not about you fundamentally.
	This would be about you then being caught between two people who abused you as a child and a man who says, people who abuse you as a child cannot be my friends.
	Especially because it ain't even over.
	It ain't even acknowledged.
	It ain't even restitutionalized.
	It ain't even forgivenessized.
	Right?
	I don't think I've ever met a guy that deep.
	Of course you haven't!
	Because you warned them off by spinning this load of contradictory nonsense called a personal narrative.
	That is your repellent for philosophers.
	But you're also not stepping over to become a full-on estrogen-based parasite, not even a partial one.
	So you don't get those guys either.
	That's what I mean when I say you're single because you're neither committed to lying nor telling the truth.
	I've never heard that before.
	Which makes perfect sense because you are the adult child of an alcoholic, which means appease, appease, appease, appease, appease, appease, appease.
	No identity, the managing of other people, the minimizing of conflict, the playing off of every side against each other, and the self-erasure of cross your fingers, hope to fucking make it through the week childhood existed.
	instance, right?
	So how can you take a stand on either one?
	Because when you grow up in this kind of hellish household with violence and drunkenness and unpredictability and lack of security and affairs and all that, how can you take a stand on anything?
	It's like trying to break down some quicksand.
	Blub, blub, blub, right?
	I guess all this time I thought I was avoiding that.
	Avoiding what?
	Being in a relationship like that.
	Oh, no.
	Sorry.
	You told me to be blunt.
	No.
	You want to be with an honest, deep, sensitive, caring, virtuous man.
	That's what you told me, right?
	All right.
	Caitlin, Caitlin, Caitlin, Caitlin.
	Who in your life desperately does not want that for you?
	Who wouldn't want that for me?
	Don't give me the hallmark.
	Give me the facts.
	Well, that's all anyone says is, oh, you're such a great girl.
	I hope you meet such a nice guy.
	I've never heard anyone say I don't want a nice person for you.
	Yes, but you have to go a little deeper than that, right?
	Because what people say, as you know, and what they do, rarely coincide.
	Who in your life, by the way, I've already told you, but who in your life...
	My parents.
	...does not want an honest man and a courageous man in your life?
	My mom.
	My dad.
	And...
	Yes, that is the correct answer.
	As your daughter would say, you're going to have to talk to me my way.
	Explain it to me my way.
	No, listen, you're doing great.
	I just wanted to check in.
	I mean, how's the conversation going for you?
	You cannot offend me.
	You really can't.
	Yeah, I was going to give you a hint.
	Hint, it was someone who used her vagina to make money and make you.
	But anyway, you got it.
	So my parents wouldn't want me to be...
	So, you know, go ahead.
	I don't know.
	Is some way my parents are sabotaging me meeting a nice person?
	Well, have your parents denormalized your childhood?
	In other words, have they said this was really screwed up?
	No, they never said that.
	Right.
	So, when your parents have not denormalized the abuses you suffered as a child, then you have to try and do it, which is very hard to do, which is why I always tell people, you know, get therapy and all that kind of stuff, right?
	So, if your parents haven't denormalized your childhood, then they are cursing you with repetition, right?
	I mean, if you had a screwed up childhood...
	And your parents have not denormalized that for you, then they're setting you up for a repetition, right?
	Now, you unconsciously are smart enough, you listen to this show, again, I'm going to grant you 120 plus, I grant that respect to everyone who calls in, unless enormously proven otherwise, and you haven't proven anything to the different.
	So you have unconsciously recognized that your parents are setting you up for a repetition, and you have frozen.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	Can't go forward.
	Can't go back.
	Can't repeat.
	Don't want to repeat.
	Can't go my own way.
	Yeah, I mean, that's...
	Yeah.
	That makes a lot of sense.
	Are there any men in your life that you find date-worthy?
	No single.
	Yeah, they're married.
	I'm older now.
	Most of my friends are married with children.
	What about when you were younger?
	Let's see.
	I was the friend, never the girlfriend.
	I was like the patter on the head.
	She's a cool girl, but nobody ever was interested in me that way.
	No one...
	What?
	Are you a virgin?
	Yeah, exactly.
	I mean, the only attention I would get from a man is if he just wants to...
	I mean, I guess I'll just put it bluntly.
	They just want to fuck me.
	They don't want anything to do with me otherwise.
	Right.
	The bungee bang-a-thon.
	Right.
	Got it.
	Okay.
	Yes.
	And actually, with a bungee, it's even more fun, but that's perhaps a video for another time.
	But...
	So you could get sexual attention.
	The romantic stuff is tough, right?
	Did you ask men out?
	Why?
	You know, I gotta say, I mean, I never had a lot of luck with that.
	I mean, the rejection would be, I guess, very humiliating.
	And I do think...
	No, no man understands that.
	That's a complete mystery to us.
	I mean, I don't know what you're talking about.
	What is this rejection thing of which you speak?
	I've heard nothing of anything to do with that.
	Wouldn't a man feel emasculated if I were to...
	Or wouldn't he think that I'm just coming up to him for sex?
	I mean, every time I've tried to show an interest in a man, I wouldn't ask him out, but, you know...
	Ask him more questions.
	Get to know him a little better.
	He takes that as, this girl wants to fuck.
	I've never had any genuine response to that interest.
	Yeah, but if I had a black guy who was my stepdad and he was an asshole, I wouldn't get to say all blacks are like that.
	I don't think all guys are like that, right?
	So your dad bought sex from your mom with a house Right?
	And then you think, well, whoever makes the move is going to be perceived as only interested in sex.
	Well, your dad was only interested in your mom for sex, right?
	And status and prestige.
	And I'm not sure she was a fine conversationalist, but not enough for him to stop drinking, right?
	So, because your dad was interested in your mom for the high-status fuck-a-thon that they embarked upon, doesn't mean that whoever makes the initiation in romance is only interested in sex, right?
	Because, I mean, if your mom wasn't that great a person, which she wasn't because she married an abusive and violent alcoholic for 20 years until he ran out of money and then she dumped him, then he can't have been interested in her because of her personality.
	Is that fair to say?
	I guess, you know, I always thought she did have a good personality.
	Like, I've had great conversations with her.
	She married an abusive drunk!
	Yeah, I mean, as far as what would you...
	Except for that.
	I mean, if you move that aside, that she married an abusive drunk and exposed her children to an abusive drunk for 40 years because he had money.
	If you take out the whole multi-decade child abusing prostitution ring thing.
	Yeah, okay.
	A fine person.
	I'm sure she can dissect.
	A Dostoevsky novel like nobody's business.
	But this is not a fine and dandy person.
	I mean, if I ever had a babysitter who even remotely raised her voice at my daughter, that person would be so gone.
	I don't know that I threw a wall, but she would be gone and never to return.
	But your father, drunken, violent, verbally abusive, physically?
	Oh.
	Yes, yeah.
	He was physically abusive, right?
	So I'm supposed to, interesting, your urge was when I said I have a babysitter, if I had a babysitter who even remotely raised her voice at my daughter, you'd say put him through a wall.
	Where the fuck does that put your mom's ethics?
	Yeah.
	Not, not...
	That was like the most neutral, non-committal...
	Yeah, I guess this is completely rewriting my vision of my mom, but hey, look, there's a fly in my hand.
	I know that you would see it that way.
	No, I'm thinking as you're talking.
	Okay, well, you tell me what you're thinking about, because I don't want to steamroll.
	No, you're not steamrolling me.
	I guess it's very hard to accept.
	My mom has been one of my only friends for a long time, you know.
	Oh...
	You're just trying to make my voice box shatter like the Death Star.
	I mean, I didn't have a lot of friends as a kid.
	Friends?
	Friends?
	Are you kidding me?
	Friends do not bring violent, abusive drunks into their children's lives for decades and then dump said violent and abusive drunk when he runs out of money because it's inconvenient to her.
	She could have had half his money.
	She could have kept that house.
	But guess what?
	No drunken, abusive, violent asshole in the house.
	She could have done that anytime she wanted.
	And it could have been Irish Catholic guilt, maybe.
	I don't know.
	Maybe that's why she wouldn't divorce him.
	No, no, no, no, no!
	She divorced him, right?
	So no, no, no, no!
	No Irish Catholic guilt.
	That's not an excuse.
	When it became inconvenient to her, the selfish bitch, then she dumped him.
	When it was inconvenient for you as a child in your formative years, when your visions of masculinity were being formed and your future was being laid down brick by brick, railway tie by railway tie, she was fine with it.
	Yeah, it sucked.
	I am not listening to you.
	I'm listening to little you.
	Right, Caitlin?
	No, I'm listening to little Caitlin.
	You listen to the little people.
	I don't listen to the propaganda of the big people, which is mostly just the alter ego, hand puppet, parental up the ass brochure for Hey, We Were Great.
	I listen to little Caitlin.
	Yeah, it was a shitty childhood.
	Terrifying, abusive, horrifying, unstable, terrible imprinting, terrible vision of adult relationships, mutual parasitism, sex for money, sacrifice of children.
	You tell me, other than an asteroid falling on the house, Or being raped by aliens, what could have been worse?
	Yeah, it really sucked.
	I hated my childhood.
	Right.
	But your mom is your friend.
	Your mom was in charge of your childhood.
	Your mother was in charge of your childhood.
	That's all I had.
	I'm sorry?
	I mean, that's all I had as a kid.
	Except I didn't have a lot of friends, so it's not like I had other people's homes to look at and say, "Oh, that's nice." So do you want to get married if it doesn't have to be the same as it was?
	Yeah.
	That's the only way I would get married, if it doesn't have to be like that.
	So, we're on a date, and I say...
	I say, so little Caitlin, how was your childhood?
	Does a guy really want to hear that it sucked?
	So I am on a date.
	Don't insult me by saying I'm a guy and we've been talking about your childhood for an hour and then say, well, would a guy even want to hear about my childhood?
	I am a guy.
	We're talking about it.
	Yeah.
	Stay in the moment.
	So little Caitlin, thank you for coming on a date with me.
	How was your childhood?
	It was awful.
	Go on.
	I'm sorry to hear that.
	What happened?
	My dad was abusive and my mom neglected me.
	Go on.
	I was alone all the time.
	Um...
	I don't know.
	I didn't...
	What would you say?
	I was, uh...
	I was always in an aftercare program where I was a little person then.
	I wasn't as tall as I am now.
	I used to get beat up a lot.
	I'd tell my parents and they didn't seem to care.
	They thought I was whining.
	And my dad would explode.
	Good one.
	I just, I wasn't taken care of as a child.
	I just, I was taken care of as a child.
	Go on.
	Do you want to hear more about my childhood, or...
	Yes.
	I'm not sure what else to say.
	Well, you didn't mention your father's alcoholism.
	You didn't mention the physical abuse.
	You didn't mention the affairs.
	You didn't mention the instability.
	You didn't mention the divorce that came later.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	I mean, why would you feel reluctant to talk about that with someone?
	It's not your fault.
	And it's the truth of your history.
	Not the truth of who you are.
	It's not everything that you are, and it certainly isn't everything you will be.
	But if somebody says where you're born, I say I was born in Ireland.
	And then I go to the end of the rainbow and give them some gold.
	So this is just where you came from.
	Wouldn't it be a lot for someone to take on if they don't know you very well?
	How are they going to get to know you very well if they don't know where you came from?
	Yeah, I guess I'm afraid people won't want the baggage.
	But it's only baggage because you're still avoiding it.
	I mean, my wife asked me on her second date, tell me all about your childhood.
	It was terrible.
	It was just terrible.
	It was just terrible.
	And we went over it all, and I remember later, she said, man, I was scanning for crazy.
	I'm like, there's no way this guy cannot be crazy.
	But, you know, she didn't get any.
	Now, 11 years later, she gets it.
	But no, I mean...
	You can't accept that the accident of your birth says anything about who you are in any fundamental way.
	All it does is say what you survived or what you flourished under.
	Yes, I'd be afraid people would think I was crazy.
	Right.
	Do you think that by hiding it, they think you're not crazy?
	No, seriously.
	Seriously, show people where the bodies are.
	That way they know you're not the killer.
	Yeah, that's interesting.
	I guess I thought if I told them how I grew up, they would think I was crazy and not want anything to do with me.
	Or that if I told...
	How has your other strategy called hide and provide counterexamples, how's that been working out?
	So you understand that your theory is not empirical and it's not factual.
	This is another brochure you're handing me courtesy of your parents.
	Right?
	Because if you said, well, listen, I have this goal to try and create intimacy by lying about my history, and you've been dating for, what, 15 or 20 years, and you have not achieved what you wanted, at some point you would revisit the practical efficacy of Of this theory, which you have not done, which means that what you're doing has nothing to do with your cover story, right?
	Yeah.
	It's your parents' propaganda.
	We will keep you with us by having you be ashamed of how we treated you, so that you don't connect with other people.
	All abusers, isolated, and you said as a child, one of the first things that you said on our imaginary date...
	Is I was alone all the time?
	Yeah.
	Right?
	And do you understand that that solitude, that solitude that you were talking about, is continuing because you are avoiding, Caitlin, Telling people the truth of where you came from by accident.
	You just came there by accident.
	You didn't choose that family.
	You just struggled to survive, as we all do, in that environment.
	So you are continuing the solitude of your childhood by avoiding the topic of your childhood.
	You're still about managing loneliness, right?
	Wouldn't it be best to tell somebody later about all that stuff?
	I mean, I would tell them eventually.
	I just wouldn't tell them right away.
	No, but the problem is that you either have to present yourself as someone without a past, which is bullshit.
	We all have a history.
	Or you have to lie about your history in order to get to that later.
	Does that make sense?
	That's what I was doing.
	Lie about the history and get to that later.
	No, but it doesn't work.
	This is why you're not getting a later.
	Because you have to falsify who you are, and then you're just like, well, that's okay, I'll be true later.
	But there is no later when you falsify who you are.
	It's like, hey, I'll pay you with openly counterfeit bills now, but later I'll come back with real money.
	Well, who's going to sell you anything for that?
	Yeah.
	I never thought of it that way.
	Well, that's because it has nothing to do with your cover stories.
	Well, I'll get to later, blah, blah, blah.
	Now that you know there's no later and you've known this for 20 years, it's not right.
	Now, my question is...
	Oh, no.
	Oh, dear.
	Do you want the second red pill?
	Yeah!
	She's like, yeah, fuck it.
	My life is a burning shred of its former existence.
	What the hell?
	Let's take down another pill.
	Okay.
	So, the second red pill, Caitlin, is the fuck are your friends doing?
	I don't have many friends.
	Right?
	No, no, no, no.
	You have friends.
	You said you've got lots of male friends.
	Yeah.
	They're all married, right?
	Right.
	So...
	What are they doing?
	Do they know that you falsify your history when you meet people?
	Have you falsified your history with them?
	I assume you have, because you tried.
	God love you for an optimist.
	You tried to falsify your history with me.
	How well does that usually work?
	I guess not well.
	I mean, I just thought I was protecting people from a sad story that they don't want to hear.
	Did you think that I was going to call you on this?
	I'm just curious.
	I really am.
	Did you think, like, well, I'm going to tell Steph that my mother was married to a violent alcoholic who abused me for years, but we're friends.
	Did you, I mean, seriously, you know this show, right?
	I was more or less calling to get, like, your opinion on other stuff.
	I really appreciate, you know, the depth you go into with everyone and myself.
	It is an act of kindness, to be honest, but...
	Yeah, I actually didn't expect it to get into me.
	I was just kind of talking about, in general, you know, why these, what I would, you know, parasitic women get people to love them and take care of them.
	That's not love.
	That's a penis cage.
	Thank you.
	My penis went in and got locked up.
	Oh shit, I'm attached.
	It's just a penis cage.
	That's all it is.
	I'm gonna send it out for foraging.
	Go, go find some eggs.
	Oh, did you get clamped?
	Oh, I'm attached.
	I guess we'll stick around, right?
	It seems like they're in love with them.
	You know, they'll do anything for them.
	No, they're not.
	There's not, look, I mean, beauty, physical beauty may engender lust, but never love.
	But any man who gets close enough to you to really care about who you are is going to put these obvious inconsistencies in the same box and say, Right?
	Like a red flag or something.
	Right.
	But the fact that you portray this with...
	I mean, again, you'll listen back to the beginning of this call and your jaw will drop below your cleavage.
	Because you will realize how you were portraying yourself and your family.
	I just thought people in general wouldn't want to hear it.
	Like the ugly stuff.
	Why?
	Okay, you keep repeating that even though I've rebutted it a bunch of times.
	Why would people not hear it?
	It's depressing.
	So?
	There are Russian novels!
	What's wrong with depressing?
	I guess I want to seem like I'm together and I'm stronger and I don't want people to know about the past.
	I don't want it to make me seem like I can't handle myself or my...
	I don't know.
	Okay, so let's start with you don't know and then build it again without your Times Square scrolling LED text, right?
	Why do you not want people to know about your history?
	I don't want them to think I'm messed up.
	What if they think you're messed up?
	They won't like me.
	Why won't they like you if you're messed up?
	It'll make me seem weak and crazy.
	So if you had a difficult childhood, that makes you weak and crazy.
	So you think that blaming the victim is the way to go.
	That's what most people do.
	Like, you know, if there's a woman who gets raped, everyone is automatically like, well, she must have been dressed provocatively.
	She was asking for it.
	It's her fault.
	- Yeah, I guess people with drama, these like drama stories seem to be the crazy ones, it seems. - So you will be blamed for your parents being abusive?
	Not blamed that they're abusive, but more like I'm a product of abuse and I'm damaged.
	Right.
	So you will be viewed as damaged goods and people won't want you.
	And so you falsify your past and you create a vision of your history that is almost in direct opposition to the facts.
	And then you feel that people will think that you're not screwed up because you're lying about your history.
	Or maybe I wasn't ready to tell them yet.
	I guess they wouldn't see it that way.
	I don't know.
	Do you tell them that you're not ready to tell them?
	Because it sounds a lot like just lying.
	Yeah.
	You know?
	It just sounds a lot like...
	Because if you say to me, Steph, I do have a difficult history, but I'm not ready to tell you about it yet.
	Well, okay, that's fine.
	That's your prerogative, right?
	But if you tell me that you had a great history when you didn't, that's just lying, right?
	And I'm not saying consciously, manipulative, but it is just lying, right?
	Yeah, it's another way to...
	Now, so either people know that you're lying or they don't know that you're lying, right?
	And so let's deal with the people who know that you're lying.
	And again, I'm not meaning this sort of consciously manipulative.
	So somebody who knows that you're lying is either going to call you on it or not call you on it, right?
	And I guess your history has been that people don't call you on it.
	And I will tell them eventually.
	If we get past a few dates and I feel like I'm comfortable with the guy, I'll tell him about my childhood if he wants to know about it.
	All right.
	Hang on.
	Do you tell him about it like you were telling me about it?
	Or was this like one of our first dates?
	Yeah, I probably, if they first ask, I don't know.
	Would paint a better picture than it was.
	I just like to give them the best case scenario and then like, you know, as they get to know you, maybe it unfolds that, yeah, things were not so great.
	But I got, you know, the truth is, I had a...
	I was provided with a good education and...
	Vacations, I don't...
	You know, it's not like I was locked in a box and...
	Not fed and...
	You know, I was educated.
	I was...
	I got a bike.
	I got a baseball mitt.
	I got a tennis camp.
	It's not like I was...
	You said like locked in a closet.
	So people get food and shelter in prison.
	What the hell does that have to do?
	I got a very nice shelter and better food, right?
	No, look.
	I mean...
	That's like saying, well, I didn't have the worst childhood in history, so I'm going to lie about my...
	Okay.
	So that's not...
	I mean, that's not...
	That's not valid.
	Now, let me ask you this.
	Let me ask you this.
	So if I say to you, between the ages, I'm on the first date, and I say, well, when I was 20 to 24, I traveled the world and backpacked, and I also got a master's degree from an Ivy League college.
	Okay.
	What would you say?
	I'd say, when did you backpack?
	Was it in the summer on your vacation, or...?
	No, it was all at the same time.
	Okay, so you'd say he's lying.
	To make...
	Okay, okay, so that's obvious, right?
	And trust me, it is obvious when you say, my mom was great, but she married a violent alcoholic for 40 years.
	It's exactly the same.
	It's as obvious, right?
	Now, what if I said, oh yes, Caitlin, I got a master's degree in business from Harvard, right?
	And then we go and we date and we date some more and we start to go away for weekends together and we're having sex and so on.
	And, you know, six or eight months later, I say, well, you know, I just said that because I wanted you to like me.
	The reality is I didn't compete in high school.
	Because I wanted to give you a better impression of who I was, and I didn't think you'd want to hear my stories about how I didn't finish high school because they're kind of depressing, right?
	And I didn't want you to think of me as ruined or spoiled goods or whatever, right?
	And what would you say?
	Yeah, I would say that's creepy.
	Well, just lying, right?
	I'd say it's a weird...
	Yeah, you're right.
	Yeah, that makes sense.
	So if you want to break out of the friend zone or out of the bungee bangathon zone, then you need to really commit to being honest with people.
	There is no shame in victimization.
	The whole point of abusers is to try and make you feel ashamed for being a victim, right?
	There is no shame for you in your father being an alcoholic.
	There is no shame for you in your mom being a vagina money quicksand of high cheekbones and good foundation.
	And this is just what you were born in and what you happen to survive in, right?
	And you're like, yeah, it was rough.
	It was really rough.
	I pulled through, you know, but I, man, it was rough, right?
	And if you want to get a real connection that can be a long-lasting relationship with kids or without or whatever, but if you want kids, you know, the clock is ticking away, so you've got to really boogie on this, right?
	So you've got to, you know, put your cards on the table and, you know, I want a marriage, I might want kids, and you've got to work like hell to process your history.
	And that means talking with your parents, confronting your parents, This means going into therapy.
	And this means really committing to full-on honesty.
	Because the funny thing is that you began this call, Caitlin, talking about manipulative women.
	And almost all you have done during this entire conversation is justify manipulating others.
	Yeah, I guess for a different...
	I didn't think I was manipulating anyone, I guess.
	But you are.
	Because you're withholding and you're telling the opposite and so on, right?
	Yeah.
	That's in order to create an impression in others, right?
	And the opposite of manipulation is the truth, right?
	And when you listen back to this again, the number of times you'll say, well, I don't know, followed by giving me a great answer, right?
	This is all, again, I'm not saying it's conscious.
	You're not sitting here like maneuvering this like some sort of Chess game.
	I mean, I know you're not like Emperor Palpatine with a thin mustache and a push-up bra.
	You're like, this is instinctual for you, right?
	This keeping these alliances and these relationships and keeping this appeasement and manipulation, it's just, it's second nature, almost first nature, right?
	You're not trying to do anything, right?
	I always thought of manipulation as you're trying to, well, as you said, get money, get a house, trick someone into loving you.
	I don't know.
	You are trying to trick someone into loving you.
	Yeah, that's true.
	You are.
	Right?
	You are.
	And it doesn't work.
	Because anybody who's capable of love is not going to want to stick around for that.
	And anyone who's not capable of love, by definition, isn't going to end up loving you, right?
	And it's unsustainable.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	Your mom ran away from the connection the children need because she didn't have the capacity for the connection.
	And your dad drunk because he was in a penis trap.
	Where you can only get out by leaving your balls behind, right?
	And most of your money.
	Yeah, but I mean there was no money at the end, that's for sure.
	I know, and that's when he got out of the penis trap because she ditched him, right?
	When there was nothing left but dust.
	But no, you can't.
	I mean, if you want to have a real connection that is sustainable, that can survive the slings and arrows of an outrageous life and illnesses and children and poverty and the ups and downs of finances and ambition, if you want that connection, it has to be founded on absolute openness, absolute honesty, which is the only thing that can create the real connection that can survive.
	All of the vicissitudes of life and you cannot build a castle on sand and you cannot build a relationship on manipulation at the beginning.
	You will forever I think be alone and you have a great mind and a great heart and what a tragic thing that would be to not have a man find it available and open and there to live.
	Yeah.
	Would it-- just for a perspective, would it be-- would someone understand Or would they be creeped out if I said, I'd rather not talk about it right now?
	Or would they just feel like, oh, there's something really shady about her?
	Why would you not want to be honest when you were asked a question?
	When I asked a question?
	No, when you are asked a question, when some guy says, how was your childhood?
	Like you said, I just don't want to be seen as damaged.
	Are you damaged?
	I think so.
	Then you want to manipulate.
	If you don't want to be seen as someone who you are, And we're all damaged to some degree or another.
	I mean, society is still pretty insane.
	Even if you have good parents, you have shitty schools.
	And if you have fairly decent schools, then you have religions and nationalism and wars and propaganda and idiots around you.
	And I mean, we're all damaged.
	But if you make a bigger deal of your damage than it is, which is by reversing and avoiding it, well...
	Then, to anybody with intuitive or experienced or wise eyes, you look significantly more damaged than you are.
	Yeah.
	I do.
	Do you know what I mean?
	I do.
	Yeah.
	The example of someone like you about where they went to school is a good example.
	I never thought of it.
	Whatever you do, do not go into that room!
	Well, where do people want to go, right?
	Yeah.
	And look, I mean, I'm serious about my compliments.
	I mean, I think you have a lot to offer.
	You are intelligent.
	You are coachable, which I think is fantastic.
	You have, I think, done a good job of fencing in this conversation.
	And, you know, you could be a great mom.
	You could be a great partner, a great wife.
	But...
	Don't hide yourself.
	It doesn't gain you anything but the grave.
	Yeah, that's good advice.
	If any men find you scintillating and email us, do you want to support anything to you?
	I think I'd have a hard time with that.
	Okay.
	Just let us know.
	Because we are going to get a lot of emails.
	Because you are very intelligent and very intuitive.
	And you have a great capacity for listening.
	And so we are going to get a...
	A flurry of emails with interest towards you.
	If you want to support them, if not, that's fine.
	Just let us know either way.
	I really do appreciate your openness in the conversation.
	It was great for me.
	I think it's incredibly passionate, the amount of time you spend with people and myself.
	I can't believe anyone would call you, like, anti-female.
	It's amazing.
	Or I could tell that even when you talk to the guys about the females that were taking advantage of them, I felt like you were extremely sincere in getting to the point and spending the time and sharing your intellect.
	I don't know.
	You're extremely helpful.
	And it's funny how...
	Yeah, I guess I didn't realize how...
	I thought I was perfect and everyone else was damaged who was manipulating me.
	I'm so damaged that when you said if anyone wants to write to you, I said, why would they want to write to me?
	They don't know what I look like.
	No, you didn't say that.
	You said I would be, I think, overwhelmed or I don't know how I would be able to handle that or whatever.
	But listen, we're all going to get old and ugly and we better be lovable for our personalities because, you know, my tits are going to hang down to my knees too.
	So it is just the way it works.
	So...
	No, I appreciate that.
	I mean, the idea that I'm anti-women or whatever, it's rampant sexism.
	I spent five years blasting the ethics of white men, and then the moment I blast the ethics of black men, I'm suddenly a racist.
	It's just this ridiculous...
	How many guys have I said, don't be an idiot, don't pay for it, don't think with your dick, and all that kind of stuff.
	And then I talk about how women use their sexuality incorrectly or manipulatively.
	And suddenly I'm like, oh, my God.
	It's just the usual double standard of not seeing women as people.
	And I hope that you get that I'm treating you as I would treat a man in your situation, which means just treating you both as human beings with hearts and minds and goals and passions and desires and fears, which we all share.
	I mean, when you said you were telling someone about...
	you know, again, Getting away from a female that was not good for them.
	You were saying, why do they do this?
	Don't paint your nails.
	Don't dye your hair.
	Or not even say don't do it, but if you don't want that, I don't know.
	It was everything I've heard from feminists.
	I can't imagine how people see you as anti-female.
	Oh, nobody does unless they themselves are secretly anti-female by infantilizing women.
	It's all just projection.
	You know, the people who say I'm anti-family or anti-black or anti-female, they're the ones creating separate magical categories.
	They never call me anti-white or anti-male or anything like that because it's their own racism and sexism that is occurring.
	And they're just projecting it onto me.
	I mean, I'm aware of that.
	That's not news.
	And it's also not at all surprising.
	But no, I, you know, men should not lie about their income and women should not lie about their physical appearance, right?
	I mean, men should not go and rent a Lamborghini and women should not paint their faces so they look completely different the next morning.
	I mean, don't fake your income.
	Don't fake your looks.
	That's, you know, my basic reality.
	I mean, if a man was renting an expensive car and lying to women and saying he was an airline pilot when he was a barista at Starbucks, I'd say, stop lying, you scumbag, right?
	And if women should be honest and open about their appearance and not try and pretend that they're five or ten years younger and You know, like getting Botox is like adding some zeros to your bank account and thinking you're making some money.
	You don't make your eggs any fresher.
	You just make the men kind of confused.
	Anyway.
	No, it does.
	That makes some sense.
	It does.
	No, I appreciate it.
	I've never been, I don't know.
	I didn't expect that.
	Good.
	All right.
	Well, thank you very much.
	I hope that everyone who called in will continue to let us know.
	I always want to know what happens in the long run, so please don't vanish off the face of the world and leave me pondering your future forever.
	But thank you so much for calling in.
	As always, as always, we hugely, you know, middle of the month can be a bit of a sag in terms of donations.
	I don't know why.
	I guess everyone's...
	Drunk up their money and spent it on hookers and blow, which is fine.
	You know, just leave a little leftover for us.
	FDRURL.com forward slash donate to help out the show.
	Massively, massively appreciate it.
	We don't know as yet what is happening.
	Did you get anything new while we're on the show, Mike?
	No, no new Detroit updates.
	Detroit?
	We'll keep people posted, that's for sure.
	We'll keep you posted.
	And...
	Thanks, everyone.
	As always, thanks for the people in the chat room for giving me some good feedback during the show.
	I will try and stand up straighter.
	I don't know how you saw that because I'm just recording locally.
	But have yourselves a wonderful week, everyone, and we will speak to you Saturday.

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