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July 28, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

03:24:25

2757 Buying Time Between The Sheets - Wednesday Call In Show July 23rd, 2014

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	Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio.
	Hope you're doing well.
	It's Wednesday!
	Ah!
	I just got that off the top of my head.
	So, Wednesday night, 8 o'clock, means it's time to chat with the fine Freedom Aid Radio listeners.
	By the way, please remember to...
	Cash in your philosophy chips at 50 cents a show if you'd be very kind.
	Come on!
	Some of these call-in shows are over four hours.
	50 cents a show.
	What is that?
	12 and a quarter cents an hour?
	You can do it!
	Those are wages that Singapore children would spit upon.
	So if you can go to FDRURL.com slash donate.
	FDRURL.com slash donate.
	Help us out.
	We want to grow.
	We want to spread our wings and fly!
	So, if you could do that, we'd be very happy about that.
	Mike, who do we have up first?
	Alright, up first today is Tiago.
	Diego wrote in and said, I have this problem where I cannot quote-unquote fake it when in the presence of less virtuous people, which isn't too good having to deal with them all the time in life.
	I tried before to play people's nasty games, but always fail to think in such ways and end up losing.
	How can I deal with the highly people-based aspects of managing companies, consumer bases, et cetera, when they are filled with non-fair players?
	Hello.
	All right.
	Hey, Diego.
	How are you doing?
	I'm doing fine, how are you?
	I'm alright.
	So, is it mostly work stuff that's the issue?
	Well, this is like some kind of perspective thing, like the question has to do more with future things than...
	It has a bit to do with the present, but most likely on a perspective of, for instance, working for myself.
	You know, the business world for me, I don't know, it just seems...
	It's not just the business world, but it seems sometimes to me to be full of this...
	Okay, Diego, Diego, Diego.
	Yeah?
	Deep breath.
	Yeah?
	You know you're babbling, right?
	I'm super anxious.
	I'm sorry.
	Yeah, listen, then you can just tell me that you're anxious.
	Like, if you want to keep bad people away, just be direct, honest, and open.
	And if you babble, you're signaling to people that you're confused, that you're upset, and also that you're confused and upset and are not willing to slow down and say that or deal with it.
	Does that make sense?
	I've really noticed lately how much people are displaying to me what their issues are rather than telling me, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, it makes every sense, but confused is what I am.
	Okay, so hang on.
	So you get on the show here, and what happened to you emotionally?
	Oh, it's this biological fight-or-flight mechanism thing.
	Anxiety.
	And then you try to cover that up?
	Well, it doesn't work very well.
	But yeah, I guess I try to manage it, yeah.
	Right.
	So, no, you weren't trying to manage it because then you'd say, oh, I'm feeling really stressed or really upset or whatever.
	And the reason why I'm pausing on this is because if you display that level of fear, you will invite aggressors into your life.
	Yeah, sure, of course.
	Well, I try to mask it up.
	Sometimes I think that will probably...
	Not help very much and people will actually see through it.
	Like sometimes I try to put this strong face or you can't touch me thing.
	I don't know.
	I'll just say it like, yeah.
	So, obviously you can't make bad people good, right?
	I mean, we're clear on that, right?
	Yeah, right.
	So then the question is, I think, really, how can we keep bad people away from you?
	Yep.
	So that they don't want to do business with you, they avoid you, and even that they become your enemies.
	I mean, there's no way to do good in the world without incurring the enmity of bad people, right?
	I don't think I got that one.
	Sorry.
	Well, so you can't do good in the world without annoying bad people, right?
	Right, yeah, sure.
	I mean, if you come up with a super security system that, with a combination of lasers and fog and grappling hooks, instantly catches all criminals trying to break into places, the criminals will be really upset with you, right?
	They will, yeah.
	So whatever you're trying to do that's good in the world, people who are bad, who are committed to bad things, will Be bothered by you.
	I mean, and it doesn't even have to be a moral issue.
	If you deny people their addictions, they will often, at least in the short run, be extremely angry with you.
	I don't know if you've ever tried to intervene in the lives of addicts, but yeah, but they get really angry.
	I mean, if you can sort of snap your fingers and stop all heroin from moving in the world, then people would be Very upset.
	Even people who would benefit from that, like Peaches Geldof, who died of a heroin overdose, she would probably be upset with you because you were denying her her drug of choice.
	And irrationality is not humankind's drug of choice.
	It's their drug of addiction, drug of infliction, which has been inflicted on them.
	So the reason that I'm sort of pointing out all of this is that you're saying, well, how do I deal, I think, with dysfunctional people?
	In the workforce and what you do is you have to find a way to not be afraid of your fear.
	So when you called in, you were afraid.
	There's nothing wrong with being afraid.
	It happens to all of us.
	But you were afraid of your fear and wanted to cover up and mask it and pretend it wasn't there.
	It's not fear that bad people sense as a weakness they can exploit.
	It's fear of your fear.
	In other words, I'm afraid, but I want to pretend I'm not.
	I want to avoid it and so on.
	That means that you have a bad relationship with yourself.
	And all gaps in intimacy are gravity wells for ill intentions.
	In other words, wherever there's a gap between parent and child, the bullies can come.
	Whenever there's a gap between husband and wife, the infidelity can come.
	The seducers can come.
	And whenever there's a gap between yourself and yourself, then you're basically sending up a giant red flare to draw exploiters in because...
	They know that you are not comfortable with yourself and with your emotions, even your uncomfortable emotions, and so they know that you will avoid yourself, and therefore they can provoke negative things in yourself in order to eject you from yourself into their net of exploitation.
	So I know that's a lot to sort of hear, but I think you were kind of demonstrating to me what was going on.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	That makes perfect sense.
	It's a perfect analysis.
	The thing with this question is that it's a bit of an abstract thing.
	I was one of those nasty listeners who wrote you like 20 pages of all the bad things that happened in my life.
	I think what I was actually hoping was to get some value out of the conversation, something that I really haven't been able to have, unfortunately, over my life.
	Definitely not with someone that I could actually trust, that I could actually feel that I can rely on in terms of reasoning, of capability of judgment.
	For instance, I got Free Domain Radio and I had lost faith in philosophy.
	And I must thank you for that, because...
	I don't know, I was in this bit of a nihilistic phase, you know, where I had started to research philosophy and psychology and I entered in academia in psychology and I left because I thought, oh my god, this is bullshit, or this is academic stuff, like you referred about the state, this intellectual thing.
	And basically, I've been kind of lost in my course in life lately.
	And I guess that's one of the questions, one of the many questions that I wanted to address here.
	And this anxiety...
	Yeah, go ahead, you're gonna say something?
	Well, so, lost, right?
	How do you know that you're lost?
	Lost compared to what?
	Lost compared to what?
	Compared to what I would like to, I guess.
	Well, that's not lost, right?
	That's not getting what you want.
	Because lost is one of these words that has a lot of emotional impact, but it doesn't usually help people very much.
	You know, you're lost, man.
	You're lost in life.
	It's like, okay, PPS, philosophy positioning system will help.
	But how would you know if you were found?
	I mean, we're not just doing amazing grace here, right?
	How would you know if you were found?
	And how would you say, wow, I'm so great.
	It's so great that I'm not lost anymore.
	How would I... I guess one of the first things that I would find would be, like, one career-wise, But I guess the most important thing in me that sometimes I forget about, I think it's much more emotional, would be on the intimacy side and finding connections with people and stuff like that.
	For instance, one thing that I have tried to pursue in academia and in my course was something that would lead me to truth.
	And I was wondering, will I find it in science?
	Will I find it in literature?
	Will I find it in philosophy?
	And I don't know.
	I seem to have found it in Freedom and Radio only, if you know what I mean.
	Okay, so hang on.
	So when you say that you're lost, what you mean is that you do not have...
	You feel like you don't have the truth.
	You don't have a methodology for the truth or a conclusion called the truth, which is like a firm foundation for you to grow from or to live from.
	Is that right?
	Exactly.
	And that has also to do with having tools and having tools to read reality and move myself in it.
	And I feel sometimes that I need to understand stuff To be able to move.
	Okay, so let's say that you now have a methodology, a foundation called the truth.
	And now does it feel with philosophy, or I guess the philosophy as we work it here, does it feel like you're still lost?
	Less so.
	Okay, so then it means that you are now able to be true to yourself, which means you're going to run into conflict with false people, right?
	Exactly.
	Okay, so...
	And now it is enhanced.
	Although, like, because I know the problem with freedom in radio is that the community is online, you know, it's not proximate, it's not, you know, it's not...
	How can I say?
	It's...
	Okay.
	I think you get what I mean.
	Sorry.
	Yeah, I mean, I'm trying to figure out why you're still so tense.
	It feels like you're squeezing words out like the last atom of toothpaste from a tube.
	Unfortunately, I don't know.
	I don't know why.
	What's going on for you emotionally while we talk?
	Yeah, definitely tension, like trouble having to put all these feelings and thoughts that go in my mind into actually peeking them out.
	It's a struggle and it happens in these situations to make the bridge between what I think and putting them into words.
	Especially since English is a bit rusty at the moment.
	I haven't used it spoken in a while.
	I think that's why.
	All right.
	Well, I'll give you just a couple of words, which if I understand where you are, Tiago, then I'll give you a couple of words and you can let me know if they make sense for where you are in your life.
	Okay.
	I mean, I know that you were raised because we have questionnaires now, of course, before callers call in.
	So, you know, verbal abuse and threats, no family love or support.
	And you had a household member who was depressed or mentally ill or made a suicide attempt.
	Is that right?
	Yeah, my mom, yes.
	And what was the story there?
	I basically was living to manage my mom's emotions.
	Some years ago she had this surgery which she didn't need to have and it's on the ear and the inner ear and it causes her sometimes to have these nausea things and this crisis.
	And since then she had a depression, but it's not very...
	Before that, problems were already in the house with my parents, always fighting.
	It's daily, with no conversation.
	If they're not fighting, there's no conversation.
	There's just this emptiness, basically.
	And...
	In the case of my mom, I was always the one empathizing and the one having to take care, and she was always complaining about her life and her work and this and that, and me and my feelings for her.
	In this house, I always had to be the grown-up in certain things, But in the other way, I feel like I don't have weapons,
	like the things that I learned, About human relations, about knowing yourself, everything I had to do by myself, I didn't get anything from these people.
	I had to take all the hits by myself and at the same time, I feel like I don't have the tools to make it out in life and to fend off by myself.
	And recently I took a flight, I went to London, I wanted to leave the home, I wanted to leave the country.
	I arrived there at a friend's house and I was paralyzed.
	I mean, and it happens here.
	For two years I've been in isolation, And, like, my brain kind of shuts off and I enter into this, like, self-numbness-inducing routines and...
	I can't even...
	I mean, certain basic things for me, like, seem, like, not impossible, but so hard.
	I'm sorry if I'm fogging you or something.
	No, no, this is better.
	Go ahead.
	Yeah.
	My mom would have these behaviors during conversations.
	She would say things like, one day what I should do is put a rope around my neck and end all of this shit.
	She would say stuff like that.
	Many times if I would hear some kind of silence in the house, I would worry and I would go check if she was still alive.
	The degree to which this kind of stuff...
	And the thing is that Whenever I talk, and I've talked with them about this stuff, and with other members of the family, about everything, all the shit that has happened and how it affected me, all they know to say is that it doesn't matter, like it was between my parents, or that you're too sensitive, or that you're just blaming your parents, making excuses, and yeah...
	Who was saying that you were too sensitive?
	Well, my mom said that.
	So your mom said that you were too sensitive?
	Mm-hmm.
	Like, oh, other people have parents that hate them and they turn out fine.
	Yeah, this type of stuff.
	Actually, it's this type of...
	I'm sorry, why...
	Why was she suicidal, do you think?
	Did she ever kill herself?
	No.
	She only made the threats, but, I mean, you don't do that in front of your children.
	I mean, she did that frequently.
	She would say that, ah, one day I end it all and stuff like that.
	And it stuck with me.
	Right.
	Because it was manipulative because she never did kill herself.
	She was just pulling the S card, the suicide card, as a way of dominating the emotional space, being the center of attention, being a narcissistic bitch, frankly, producing the most unholy dysfunction in her children because she was exasperated or she was frustrated.
	But did she ever talk about why she felt this way?
	No.
	It's like she says stuff, but then the next second it doesn't matter.
	It's this complete rollercoaster of nonsense.
	Oh, so she'd say, sorry, she'd say, I want to kill myself, and then a minute later, well, it doesn't matter.
	Yeah, a minute later, like, yeah, it can be completely, she can be laughing, like they can be having this most crucial...
	This most brutal discussion and later there's this little, because they are both very manipulative, mostly my dad.
	And so, you know, the debate is given and then they are laughing like nothing happens.
	It's like some people say to me, it's their conception of love.
	Love is subjective, you know, for them love can be arriving home and nagging at each other all the time.
	I get this.
	Yeah.
	It's just sad.
	So they're pretty fucking nuts, right?
	Yeah.
	Like just nuts and entirely inappropriate, self-absorbed, self-involved, selfish, acting out, no real sense of how they land on other people?
	Exactly.
	Yeah.
	It shouldn't affect you.
	It's between me and her.
	Stuff like that.
	It's exactly what you said.
	And erasing you, right?
	So anytime you have an issue with this incredibly dysfunctional behavior, anytime they would erase your emotions or your experiences, right?
	Yeah.
	And they do it all the time.
	So you can see how empathic people are in this house.
	Once I was confronting my mother, and I was attempting to put it in RTR style, and I was speaking my feelings out, and I was speaking how disappointed I was, and stuff like that, and she was seeing old cloths and Her wedding veil appeared and I was speaking my feelings and she was putting the veil on and she looked at me after I was speaking and she said,
	don't I look so pretty?
	And I looked at her and I left.
	So you were talking to her, she was putting on her wedding veil and then saying, don't I look so pretty?
	Yes, that was the answer to my complete outburst of feelings and stuff.
	Yeah.
	I'm assuming where you are, it's not legal to call it an airstrike on your family.
	No, it is not.
	That's completely insane.
	Yeah, but everybody tries to mask it as if it's not.
	That I am where I am in life.
	It's my fault.
	And that there are much worse parents.
	You should have had those parents who hit you.
	You would see.
	You would see how those parents are.
	And you would see how good your parents are.
	And you are just ungrateful.
	The way you talk about your parents is just disrespectful and arrogant.
	Yeah.
	Well, I would like to have a chat with your inner mom, if you don't mind.
	You would like to chat with my mom?
	Yeah, your mom, your inner mom.
	Because you slip into her.
	Okay, so if I say...
	You pretend to be your mom, I'll pretend to be you.
	And...
	So I would say, you know, Mom, I have some significant issues, big issues.
	I'm sad and I'm angry, frustrated about a lot of things that happened when I was a kid.
	I mean, suicide threats, you and Dad fighting all the time.
	And verbal abuse and threats, physical abuse, although I know that wasn't spanking, and just feeling this loneliness, this lack of connection.
	And then when I would try to bring issues up, just being completely ignored.
	At least that's what my experience was at the time.
	I mean, I think it's really time that we talked about this stuff.
	Again?
	You're talking about this again?
	What the fuck?
	I don't get what your problem is.
	I don't understand.
	Well, that's okay if you don't understand.
	I'm certainly happy to explain.
	So, are you saying that you have a problem with me bringing up my issues more than once?
	Like, is it that I'm only allowed to bring up any complaints or problems once?
	Is that right?
	I don't know what she would do at this time.
	She would start, like, warping out and say that she has stuff to do.
	And I would say, Mom, Mom, I need you to focus.
	Like, I need your eye contact.
	I need you to focus on what it is that I'm saying.
	Because if I can't have a conversation with you, I don't know how we can have a relationship.
	If I can't have a conversation where you listen to me, I don't know how we can have a relationship.
	Because look...
	No, no.
	All you and your dad know how to do is to get me nerves.
	And you know I cannot get nerves.
	So go away.
	Go the fuck away.
	She would say something like this.
	Oh, so wait.
	Are you saying that you have problems in that I get nervous?
	Sorry, you get nervous when I bring up things that are uncomfortable to you.
	Is that right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I don't know what she would say at this point.
	Well, then I would say, well, then how do you think it was for me, mom, when you kept saying you were going to kill yourself?
	Do you think that that might have made me feel just a little bit nervous at times?
	I was just kidding.
	It was just a way of saying things.
	I'm sorry, I don't understand what it means when you say that's a way of saying things.
	Like, when you say, I'm going to kill myself, and you say it to your child, that's neither a joke nor a way of just saying things.
	So what was going on?
	Well, you know, when I get nervous, I can't think, and I say these things.
	No, but you don't say random things.
	You say, I'm going to kill myself repeatedly.
	Do you think that is an appropriate and good parenting thing to say to your child?
	Tiago, I'm losing my patience with you.
	If you want to stay in this house, you have to comply.
	So I've got to get the fuck out.
	I have things to do.
	I have the laundry to do.
	Yeah.
	So hang on.
	So you're saying that when I'm talking to you about some problems I had in our relationship, some problems I still have in our relationship, The laundry is a higher priority for you than listening to me.
	Is that what you're saying?
	I don't think she would say yes, but yes, it is for her.
	Like the wedding dress and the wedding veil.
	Yeah, so mom, I need you to stop playing with things.
	I need you to put down the wedding veil.
	I need your eye contact.
	We actually need to have a conversation.
	I have some valid complaints about the way that I was raised.
	I need you to listen to what I'm saying.
	I'm not saying you have to agree with everything, but you need to listen and understand what I'm talking about.
	Do you at least agree to try to listen and understand what I'm talking about?
	I would never work.
	I've tried that for too long.
	Since I was a kid, I tried.
	Oh, but show me how it doesn't work.
	Show me.
	What would she say?
	I can't tell you anymore.
	At this point, I would have worked out.
	And if I didn't, she would have slapped me or something like that.
	Oh, so it would have escalated to physical violence?
	Yes, she's done it.
	Once she pushed me against the bed table and the lamp went to the floor because she completely gets this thing.
	She excuses herself because she says she's a nervous person and she can't control herself, you see.
	Oh, she can't control herself?
	Yeah, she can't control herself.
	Poor thing.
	So she's saying that she does not have physical control over her own body?
	Basically, yeah.
	What do the people around you say about...
	Your mom.
	Oh, she's perfect.
	She's great.
	Poor thing.
	She has so many problems.
	She's doing the best that she can.
	No parents are perfect.
	Every parent does what they can with what they know.
	There is no parenting school, you see.
	What do you mean there's no parenting school?
	Of course there are parenting schools.
	Yeah.
	That's like saying, well, I'm going to go and hack people up with a scalpel because there's no medical school.
	Well, of course there's medical schools.
	You go to school to learn how to be a doctor, how to be a surgeon.
	There are tons of parenting schools.
	There's parenting books.
	There's parenting classes.
	There are online parenting classes in person, in group, individual.
	Tons of parenting schools around.
	Yeah.
	I was the one reading parenting books when I was 16 years old because, you know, my dad is absolutely proud that he has never read a book in his life besides school books.
	I was the one searching and trying to fix stuff.
	And what is the status of your relationship with your parents at the moment?
	The status is terrible.
	I keep getting this torture, this manipulation.
	Since I didn't make it out when I left to London and I came back, I said to myself, I'm not going to their house.
	So I was mad.
	I went to a hotel and I stood there for some time.
	And then people are like, you're crazy.
	You don't have a job.
	You don't have income to sustain yourself.
	Swallow the toad.
	I don't know if you use this expression in English, like swallow it and get there and think that you don't hear what they say.
	Stuff like this.
	Yeah.
	Well, you can't communicate with people when there's a threat of physical violence.
	Right?
	So, there's two things which utterly kill communication.
	One is leaving the conversation, and the other is verbal, emotional, or physical abuse.
	Right?
	So, if you're having a conversation with someone, and that person, let's say your mom, leaves, leaves the conversation, like walks out and slams the door, then there's no possibility of communicating because...
	It's like trying to sell something to someone who left the store without buying anything.
	Well, they've left the store, right?
	Yeah.
	Right.
	And also, if there's emotional abuse, you know, you're stupid.
	I can't believe you're talking about this.
	What's the matter with you?
	This is all in the past.
	You're clinging on to things.
	You're holding on to things.
	Just, you know, insults, basically.
	And then, when there is any threat...
	Of physical violence, hitting, slapping, throwing, and so on.
	So there's no possibility of communicating with someone like that.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Yeah, I was going to mention the kicking, which happened not so long ago.
	Because when I start to say some truths, they don't like it.
	And the giggling, manipulative faces go away.
	Especially with my dad.
	And there was this day where I said him something subtly and he kicked me in the leg.
	Yeah.
	And I'm 20 years old.
	Yeah, I sympathize.
	I mean, one of the last conversations I ever had with my mom was, you know, she keeps telling me about legal stuff that never goes anywhere.
	And I, you know, it was just constant.
	And it would like, all she would talk about and it was, she'd never asked me my thoughts or opinions.
	And I said to her, You know, mom, I just feel like this legal stuff is just taking over anything that we talk about.
	It's just all we talk about.
	And it's basically you who does the talking.
	And I'd just like it if we could talk about other stuff once in a while.
	And I was really literally, it was like that tone.
	It was not, I wasn't angry.
	I was just like asserting a tiny preference for not having her monomania topic of conversation.
	And like she just went to from zero to a hundred in a nanosecond.
	She was You're screaming at me, throwing things at me.
	I was in league with the bad people.
	And it's just like, okay, so if I express a tiny little preference, like, let's just break up this monologue of yours once in a while and talk about something else.
	I didn't say we had to talk about even me or my stuff.
	But I recognized that a torrent of verbal abuse and physical threats in terms of throwing stuff Escalated almost immediately from merely expressing a preference about maybe widening her topic or our topics of conversation from her talking about one thing.
	Yeah, so it became pretty clear to me after that that, okay, well, if I can't express any preferences in this relationship, then it's not a relationship.
	I'm like a talking hole that my mom vomits into.
	I could be a hand puppet.
	I don't need to be here.
	If I can't express even the tiniest preference in this relationship, let me express another preference, which is to not have this relationship.
	Right.
	Right.
	Yeah, I would much prefer not to be in contact with essentially my abusers.
	Right.
	So why are you?
	Because I'm afraid that if I leave and I don't have the tools at this point to make it out by myself and not be stuck in this low-wage job life routine.
	Why?
	How do you know?
	Well, I don't...
	For instance, if I wanted to make a business of my own, like, what, I don't know, what will I put of value?
	No, no, no, come on, come on.
	No, no, no, hang on.
	Hang on, Tiago.
	So, low-wage jobs are fine.
	You know, my brother and I kicked my mom out when I was 15.
	I was working three low-wage jobs.
	I mean, you can make it.
	Right?
	But the idea that it's like, well, if I don't, if I can't start my own business, then I'm stuck here.
	I mean, I think that's unrealistic.
	Right?
	Right.
	It's just that I see all these people my age, they're in college, and they're going to have their lives kind of sorted or something.
	And I'm...
	Oh, wait, hang on, you're saying the people in college?
	I'm going to have this great time.
	Well, they are going to have a better job if it is...
	No, listen, you're paralyzing yourself.
	You're paralyzing yourself because you're saying, I can't go on my own.
	I can't go my own way because, well, there are people going to college.
	They're going to have a great life.
	I'm going to stuck in these low-rent jobs.
	I can't start my own business.
	I'm going to assume that you're a young guy, right?
	Yes, I'm 20, yeah.
	Okay.
	You don't know what opportunities are out there, but let me tell you something.
	I crawled my way up to the middle class from a single mom, welfare, rent-controlled shitbox of a childhood.
	I too, to some degree, know where I speak.
	We were broke.
	Man, we were so broke, it was ridiculous.
	We got eviction notices regularly.
	We didn't have food.
	I had to eat food that had gone off.
	I had to hang around friends' places to try and get meals without actually asking for them.
	Every dollar that I made, barely any of it went into Fun stuff.
	I did inherit a thousand bucks from my grandmother once, which I turned and bought a computer, which I learned how to program, which turned into a great investment.
	That thousand dollar computer and 20 grand in therapy were the best investments of my life.
	But yeah, broke.
	Broke.
	Like, no money.
	Like, can't cough up seven bucks to join a swim team.
	Like, no money.
	The ice cream truck comes.
	I'm checking under the couch just to see if I can have any food.
	Hungry.
	Just broke.
	And I worked crappy jobs and low-rent jobs.
	I was a dishwasher.
	I was a waiter.
	I cleaned offices.
	I had a paper route.
	I, you know, just did.
	I worked in a bookstore.
	I just did what I had to do.
	And I'll tell you something.
	There's this great secret in life, which is that If you're competent, the world is your oyster.
	If you're competent, people will grab you from the crowd and pull you up on stage, like Courtney Cox in a Bruce Springsteen video.
	If you're competent, if you focus on just being really good at what you do and learning, I learned a lot about customer service from being a waiter.
	I learned a lot about music and listened to some great audiobooks while I was cleaning offices.
	I learned a lot about culture.
	I listened to plays.
	I just listened to audiobooks when I cleaned offices.
	Every job I tried to learn something from.
	I wrote plays.
	I wrote novels.
	I wrote poems while I was doing all these low-rent jobs.
	I continued to work at being good at What I did and that way I got good references for the next job and I took risks.
	I took a job programming COBOL 74 computers on a tandem operating system, which I'd never even heard of or done before in a trading floor organization, a stock trading organization, a bond trading organization that I knew nothing about other than just some general economic stuff.
	If you just focus on being competent, you can start sweeping the floors and end up owning the penthouse.
	You don't know where you can go if you just focus on being good, providing value to customers, providing value to your employer, right?
	Being worth something.
	You know, I remember when I worked in a hardware store, first time I worked in a hardware store, I didn't know what to do, so I walked around cleaning.
	You know, just, oh, I'll clean this area.
	Oh, there's dust under here.
	I'll clean under there, right?
	The guy let me do it for a couple of hours, and then he's like, dude...
	I'm paying you.
	Do something that covers your wages.
	Do something that makes me some money.
	And I got it.
	I'm like, okay.
	I will.
	And I actually lied to this guy.
	He's like, do you know how to fix screen doors?
	I'm like, yep.
	And then he's like, go fix some screen doors.
	I'm like, can you just remind me?
	Anyway, so how long did it take to learn how to fix a screen door?
	Like 10 minutes, right?
	So...
	If you simply focus on providing value, be open to, learn things, provide value.
	And, you know, I mean, I remember, and I worked in another hardware store.
	I would work, yeah, Tuesdays and Thursday nights, 5.30 to 9.30, and Saturday, 10 to 6.
	And then occasionally Sundays we'd do inventory, which was a time and a half.
	But, yeah, some guy left his wallet full of money.
	I took it to the manager and said, this wallet...
	It's full of money.
	Call the guy or whatever, right?
	The guy came in, was super grateful and all that.
	And since then, like from then, I got to take all the money to the bank that the hardware store made that day because the guy knew I was honest.
	He wasn't going to take 20 bucks out and put it in my pocket because this is back when I was making $2.50 an hour.
	Right.
	Right.
	When I was in boarding school, I lost a nice pen.
	They said, oh, we found a nice pen.
	I went and saw it.
	I said, oh, that's not mine.
	The guy said, oh, that's really honest.
	You get this positive reputation for honesty, for integrity.
	You wouldn't believe.
	Until you run a business of your own, you literally won't believe how rare competent people are.
	Enthusiastic, competent, eager to learn.
	You just keep adding to your human capital at all times.
	I don't mean obsessively, like you can't rest or never boot up Skyrim when there's the New York Times to be read.
	But I'm talking about...
	Get a reputation for competence, for integrity, for interest in the business, for enthusiasm for what you're doing.
	Develop a love of the customers who pay your bills, except for those who leave 50 cent tips.
	But if you go and literally you can start as a dishwasher, you can own a restaurant chain and you can do that relatively quickly and You just have to be really competent and learn everyone else's job.
	Talk to the manager.
	Find out what he knows.
	Find out what the business priorities are.
	And just keep working on that.
	You don't know where you can go.
	Listen.
	What have I done that has made money in my life?
	I worked in business and I worked in software.
	I was a programmer.
	I was a director of marketing.
	I was a sales guy.
	I never took...
	A business course.
	I never took a sales course.
	I never took a marketing course.
	So education, who gives a shit, right?
	If you're smart, you educate yourself and you save the employer all that money.
	You learn on the job, which is much more profitable because you get paid to learn rather than ending up in debt.
	And what else have I done?
	I agree.
	What else have I done?
	Well, I do this media stuff.
	I mean, the podcasting, which I started in 2006.
	And who taught me that?
	Well, nobody taught me that.
	Nobody taught me how to do shows.
	Nobody taught me how to do philosophy shows.
	Nobody taught me how to...
	What did I know about?
	I mean, I'm a database coder and a UI coder.
	What on earth do I know about processing WAV files and creating MP3s and writing XML scripts and creating websites?
	But you just do it.
	You muscle through and you do it.
	I remember the first time, this is way back in the day, I needed to open up A database record, save something, read a value, change it and save it.
	It took me nine hours.
	Nine hours I was sitting there because this is when online help was non-existent and there was no type-ahead drop-downs.
	Just learning how to do it took forever.
	It took forever.
	Nine hours.
	I remember that distinctly.
	And so all the things that people are really good at, they become usually very good at it Without education or sometimes even despite education.
	One of the guys who I hired who was one of the worst employees I ever had had two PhDs.
	Another guy I worked with had a PhD from Harvard and he was terrible.
	He was terrible.
	Now some of the guys who had like a one or two year college degree were fantastic.
	Because the college degree was an expression of their passion that had started at the age of eight when they took apart their Xbox or whatever.
	Right.
	And so don't think that there's some escalator up to the top, right?
	You can drop...
	Look, let me give you another example.
	You can drop a competent person anywhere and they would rise to the top.
	I would have been an excellent apparatchik in the Communist Party if I had the misfortune to be born in Russia back in the day.
	Do you know That the quality of the school that a person goes to has zero impact on their long-term success.
	Let me say that again.
	The quality of a school a child goes to has zero impact It has zero impact on where they end up in life.
	Go to a crappy inner-city school, go to a $35,000-a-year top-of-the-line private school, it has zero impact on where someone ends up in life.
	Do I have a PhD in philosophy?
	No, I'm doing philosophy.
	Have I taken media relations or journalism or broadcasting?
	No!
	Fuck learning it.
	Do it!
	And learn that way.
	You don't know what is out there if you simply focus on being competent and capable.
	Woody Allen said 99% of success is showing up.
	Right.
	And that has a lot to do with it.
	You show up and you do your best.
	And you don't know where that's going to take you, but almost without a doubt, if you've got the intelligence to listen to this show and you work your old Protestant ass muscle of infinite clenching up the slippery grease pole of success, there is absolutely nothing and nowhere that you can't get to.
	The only limits are those we set for ourselves once we're adults.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Would you say that this is more motivational than actually about what I know or what I left?
	I feel that if I'm where I am at this point, it's not out of nothing.
	And also, I've been clinging to that idea of some vocational thing.
	Like, would you say people have this vocation?
	I've been trying to understand what's my talent or what is my...
	in that line of thought.
	Because I also agree completely with you about academia.
	I had my suspicions from experience.
	And then when I heard your podcasts, I got that kind of confirmed.
	But, you know, even if you want to get a job, they say on the job descriptions, a degree in blah, blah, blah.
	I think that's completely ridiculous.
	But no, no, not all of them.
	Not all of them say you need a degree in blah, blah, blah, right?
	Okay.
	Like most say.
	Yeah.
	No, no, no, no.
	You're looking in the wrong places then.
	You're looking for white-collar jobs in large companies where they need degrees to cover their asses, right?
	Right.
	So small companies.
	Right.
	I mean, you're looking in the wrong place.
	You're looking in the wrong place.
	And look, go be a waiter.
	Go do anything.
	You don't have to, like, at 20, you don't have to launch into, well, this is the career that's going to take me through retirement.
	I mean, God almighty, no.
	Be a waiter and chat to your customers.
	I'm working at a call center now in sales.
	Okay, fine.
	I did that too.
	I call-centered.
	I did call center for political interviews where I got to realize just how bullshit political interviews are.
	I also did a call center for calling people up who had not paid their gas bills.
	Just show up and work and get used to working.
	And I remember missing a bus once to get to a job.
	I ran, like sprinted for 45 minutes to get there on time because I missed the bus.
	And I remember one guy, before I was going to go do my master's.
	Yeah, that's right.
	Gosh, I'd forgotten about this.
	So I put an ad in the paper and it was listing my skills and abilities.
	And so a couple of people called.
	One guy called me and was very interested in having me apprentice to take over his courier business.
	He had a courier business.
	And I was really tempted because, you know, we got along well and I sort of talked about my philosophy of business and he took me around to see.
	And I had no car.
	It took me like almost two hours on buses to get to where he was and walking.
	I just didn't want to tell him I didn't have a car, right?
	And a nice guy, he had sons, so I really grilled him on why his sons weren't taking off the business or whatever.
	In the end, I ended up not doing it because I wanted to go do my master's.
	And it's not a regret or anything like that, but the reason that I was able to...
	I'd written a whole bunch of business essays just for fun.
	Just, you know, what are my thoughts about business?
	I worked in a bunch of places as a temp, you know, basically typist and graphics guy, like PageMaker 5 and stuff like that.
	And...
	I'd read a lot about economics, so I had some idea of intelligent questions to ask.
	I mean, you pursue your passions, you work, and you talk to people.
	I got business opportunities when I was a waiter because I would talk to customers.
	And you never know where things are going to go if you find something that you're passionate about.
	Just keep studying that.
	Who knows when that's going to make you your money, right?
	Like now, I make an income off, you know, history and philosophy and self-knowledge and all that kind of stuff.
	But I mean, I studied that stuff for 20 years before, you know, the ka-ching of the first donation, which was, I think, $8 landed in my inbox, right?
	Right.
	So, you just need to keep focusing on what you're passionate about and keep talking to people about what you're passionate about.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Like, for that explorative, for that go-get-it attitude, it's like, I don't know, did you feel like you had the strength, that you had the skills to deal with people, to select, to filter stuff?
	Because, I don't know, the problem is like sometimes...
	No, no, no.
	No, I didn't.
	I remember giving a...
	I don't know.
	These are examples, hopefully, that they'll help you.
	So I was working at this trading company doing COBOL programming, while on the side, I was building with my partner the business that I eventually ran with him and another fellow for, I don't know, seven or eight or nine years.
	I can't remember exactly now.
	And...
	So we had a presentation and I said, you've got to make it at lunch because I'm working at this place and whatever.
	And so I went to lunch and I was giving a presentation at a big bank and I felt like a complete fraud.
	I went from like junior programmer to attempting to sell a big environmental management system to a large bank and then I was going back to junior programmer.
	And this meeting just went on and on and so many questions and I was really sweating buckets because...
	I'm a pretty conscientious worker.
	And I was like, I got to get back, get hourly.
	Like, if you're not there when you're a waiter, I mean, the restaurant is hugely in problems, right?
	They're massive problems.
	Right.
	And you just get fired.
	So I was used to these kinds of things.
	You don't show up, you're fired.
	And I was like, oh, you know, I'm taking a two and a half hour lunch.
	I got to get back to work on COBOL programming.
	And, you know, I went back and nobody cared.
	Because, you know, it was a different...
	It's stressful.
	I mean, you know, I'll tell you this.
	So I'm up there presenting to this bank.
	It was one of my first ever presentations.
	I'm presenting to the bank.
	And I'm gesturing at things that are being projected on an old 640x480 VGA projector that's about the size of a small Sherman tank and overheated about as much as leaving it in the desert sun.
	And I'm gesturing and I'm sitting there, blah, blah, blah.
	And then they start asking me all these questions, right?
	And I had no idea whether I'm supposed to stay standing up with this light shining in my face and text on my face.
	I don't know if I'm supposed to stay standing or go and sit down.
	Like, no idea.
	And finally, you know, a guy I'm doing the meeting with, he writes, sit down and pushes it across in a piece of paper to me so I could read it because I didn't know.
	I mean, the whole planet for me when I became an adult was like, Being airlifted to Japan in the 18th century.
	Like, I just have no idea what's going on, right?
	I didn't know any of these human habits and contexts and all this kind of stuff.
	So, yeah, there's lots of that stuff.
	There's lots of...
	Screw your courage to the sticking ploys and just make it work.
	And most times it does.
	Sometimes it doesn't.
	But, yeah, go...
	Go make it work.
	I had a couple of meetings where I was invited to come down for a presentation.
	I had one meeting, I was invited to come down for a presentation and the whole senior executive board I sat down at one end of the conference table and there's literally like eight men and women, very powerful business people.
	And they're grilling me because they have notes about what the salesman promised them and what we were actually delivering.
	I had no idea.
	It was quite an alarming experience.
	They were like, well, he promised this.
	Where's this?
	And this is, you know, he's your representative and you're the guy who's actually delivering.
	So you tell me what's going on and stuff like that.
	I was defending R&D tax credits at another company that we came in.
	Most times it was pretty easy to come in and just grilled me about how this was actually research and development and not just coding and this and that and the other.
	It is really exciting.
	You get some combative conversations in business.
	You get jerks in business.
	And sometimes you get jerks who have legitimate complaints, which is always a real challenge.
	And it's...
	It's hard.
	A lot of it is hard.
	I do, to some degree, envy the people like Bill Gates, whose dad was an IP lawyer who teaches him all about business, who he calls up while he's negotiating with IBM about MS-DOS. I wish that.
	But, you know, I get a kind of pride that he doesn't.
	A friend of mine, his father is now dead, sadly, but his father was head of the engineering department at a major Canadian university.
	This guy wanted to go pursue a PhD.
	Well, he's got a live-in guy who got a PhD and became an academic.
	Does that smooth the way a little bit for him to get what he wants?
	Otherwise it's like, who do I talk to?
	How do I get it done?
	Who knows, right?
	exactly yeah it's exactly it's weird for me because like I understand that it's not about having a degree or stuff like that For instance, even though you do realize that you took a master's degree.
	For some reason.
	So I get this...
	It's a bit ironic, almost.
	So it leaves me a bit confused, to be honest.
	Oh, you mean like because I took a master's degree?
	Yeah, why the hell did you go?
	Well, first of all, I mean...
	Yeah, I applied for the master's, I mean, partly because there was just this unbelievable recession going on back in the day.
	And...
	So I wanted to apply just because I didn't know what was going to happen.
	I was thinking, well, maybe I'll work or whatever.
	And there was just nothing.
	I couldn't get any jobs at all.
	And so for me, I mean, the master's, it was my best time in university, basically.
	I didn't have to take a lot of classes.
	I got to write lots of papers, and I met some really smart people.
	I had great conversations with them.
	But if I only had a high school education, then I'm sure some people would use that to say, oh, well, he's only got a high school education, and therefore I'm not going to take his argument seriously.
	But, you know, frankly, fuck people like that.
	You know, I had a guy, one of the best presenters I ever heard was a guy who worked at an airport who hadn't even finished grade 12.
	I think he dropped out of grade 11.
	And, you know, he did make jokes about it.
	He said, I'll give you all of this information He's unburdened by the heavy mantle of higher education or even lower education and all that.
	But he was incredibly competent, incredibly knowledgeable, and a great communicator because I guess he'd spent time working on that stuff and learning about stuff rather than going to school for it.
	And going to school, I mean, it had some benefits, it had some minuses.
	Basically, the only value that I got out of that master's degree was what I walked into the school with, which was my passion and commitment for learning and for reasoning and for researching.
	And I don't remember anything that came out of any of my life.
	If you ask me now, I took full-year courses on medieval economics.
	I took full-year courses on the Second World War, on the Protestant Reformation.
	I can maybe remember three or four things that have any value whatsoever out of three different Ivy League universities and five years, seven years if you count theater school, seven years of higher education.
	And so, you know, if I had to do it over again, it's hard to say.
	I mean, I learned a hell of a lot more about philosophy doing this show than I ever would have sitting in a library.
	Because then I don't talk about it and I'm not doing it.
	I'm just reading about it and writing about it.
	Exactly.
	But the reality is that you're not calling me up because I have a degree, right?
	You're calling me up because you think I hopefully have something of value to say to you about how to get what you want in life.
	And I don't think there's anyone who agrees or disagrees with me because I have or don't have a degree.
	And if they do disagree or agree with me because I do or don't have a degree, then they don't understand philosophy.
	It's like the people who say, well, I don't agree with everything Steph says, but maybe 70% to 80% and blah, blah, blah.
	You don't understand philosophy.
	If you speak like that, you do not understand philosophy.
	Because you can say, well, Steph has made good arguments here.
	His arguments are faulty here.
	The evidence holds up here.
	The evidence goes against him here.
	But just saying, well, I agree with a lot of Steph says, but I'm going to retain a quarter, 25% for illusory independence.
	Anyways.
	Yeah, I only listened to Steph for his degree in theater, right?
	Yeah, and I mean, degree in theater has been hugely helpful.
	You know, all that improv, which I use in the role plays, and some of my spontaneous jokes and all that.
	I mean, it's...
	All the presentations I did in the business world have been very helpful in public speaking and all that kind of stuff.
	So I'm just sort of pointing out that you are a very young guy...
	To be raising spears against your own thundering future horses, right?
	Like, you know how when you've got an infantry and then you've got these horses, you raise these spears, these giant spears at about 30 or 35 degrees, and then they run into the horse's chest of the horse, right?
	Well, you've got a future, right?
	That you can thunder towards, and it feels like you're jumping ahead of yourself and raising these spears to slow down or kill your passage, right?
	Right.
	I just wonder, you know, when you say surround yourself with the right people, you know, find your tribe.
	I just wonder if everything would have been easier if I had that.
	Sometimes, you know, even though I'm conscious of what I need to do, what I need to go learn, what I need to go get, I feel this emotional vacuum and this heaviness.
	No, no, no, no.
	You do not feel your own emotional vacuum, Diego.
	Whose emotional vacuum are you really feeling?
	Exactly.
	Exactly.
	I just feel empty sometimes.
	Well, look, it's going to be very tough for your parents if you have a life of success and intimacy and happiness, right?
	Right.
	Right?
	How are they going to feel if...
	I mean, I can only assume they had terrible childhoods, which is not causal, right?
	Everybody says, well, this happened because of the terrible childhood bullshit.
	Mm-hmm.
	Bullshit.
	I mean, that's deterministic, right?
	And I've been there.
	Oh, my mom, but her mom was like this and blah, blah, blah.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I feel a lot of sympathy for that.
	I really do.
	I feel a lot of sympathy for people who were punched as children exactly until the point they start punching others.
	Then my sympathy evaporates.
	But anyway...
	So, yeah, they had a bad life, and a lot of people, because there's this trope about bad childhoods, they use it as an excuse.
	They use their wounded, hurt inner child as an excuse to hurt others, which is what kills their inner child.
	The wounded inner child is not something that you use as a smoke bomb under which to commit murder.
	You don't use it as squid ink with which to...
	Chew off people's legs.
	You don't use it as a cover for immorality.
	You don't use your hurt past as a lowering of standards for yourself and a justification for the harm you do to others, because that is to turn your pain into sadism, which is to kill any chance of recovery.
	So with your parents, yeah, but they made a choice, right?
	And they said, well, my childhood was terrible.
	At some point, at some level, they said, my childhood is terrible.
	So I, you know, I'm just going to indulge myself in bad behavior.
	And I'm then, rather than deal with any of the difficulties of people having problems with me, I'm just going to wish away their issues, right?
	And when people give up on their power, when people give up on their authority, when people give up on their efficacy, when they give up on their responsibility, which is really all one and the same, then what happens is they end up powerless, right?
	Powerless.
	If you make excuses for yourself and you wish away the problems people have with you, then you end up as a powerless human being.
	Now, powerless human beings usually end up exercising brutal power over those who can't get away, right?
	Adulthood is the free market.
	Childhood is communist, right?
	Because you can't get away.
	You can't escape.
	I mean, if there's a shitty restaurant, you just don't go eat there.
	But if a shitty restaurant you're forced at gunpoint to eat, they don't care.
	You can put stuff in the suggestion box, but unless the guy has some weird conscientious streak, he doesn't care.
	He's just going to give you the basic sloppy cannons.
	Maybe I'm weak.
	Maybe I should be able to deal with it.
	I should be able to stay in their house and get some more stability or something.
	Oh, man.
	Oh, no, no, no.
	No, there is no weakness.
	There's no weakness as great as false strength.
	So, look, let's say, and I made this analogy last show, but let's say that...
	You were born, your mom was a heroin addict, you were born addicted to heroin, and they put heroin in every single one of your meals until you were about 20.
	And then you decide not to be a heroin addict.
	And you didn't choose to be a heroin addict, that's just what they fed you, what was in your mom's veins when you were growing.
	Now, when you are recovering from an addiction, you cannot be around addicts.
	This is not my argument, this is not my argument, Approach this is, as far as I understand it, about as common a set of wisdom in the addiction world that you can imagine.
	So if you are a recovering heroin addict, you cannot go and hang around a whole bunch of people shooting up heroin, right?
	And it makes absolute every sense because it doesn't matter how conscious I am of stuff, when I am in this situation, I end up falling to the same level.
	Shit and manipulation and it's just...
	I don't understand what you're saying.
	You're right.
	That analogy is perfect.
	Even if I try...
	Oh, when you're around them.
	Yeah, of course.
	If you're an alcoholic and you've been an alcoholic for 20 years, if you go hang around a bunch of alcoholics, you're going to drink.
	Right?
	The whole point is prevention, right?
	You can't be around these people, especially because they...
	And all the things I'm talking about are way easier to quit than emotional addictions.
	Yes.
	Because it's physical and obvious and immediately detrimental to your health and so on.
	I just feel like maybe I'm terrible.
	Like I should be able to manage my emotions better.
	And if I can't do that here, how will I do it outside with other people?
	No, no, no.
	Listen, Diego, if you were able...
	To be around your parents and not act as if you had grown up with them, you would be insane.
	Right?
	Listen, it would be like me saying, Tiego, stop understanding and being able to speak English.
	Can you do that?
	No.
	Can I speak to you a sentence and have you not understand it?
	No.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	Because you know the language.
	You cannot be around it and not process it and not understand it.
	Right.
	Triggered.
	Yeah.
	Oh my god.
	I just don't know.
	No, and it would be an incredibly...
	If you could be around your parents and not feel anything, you'd be psychotic.
	You'd be a complete psychopath, in my amateur opinion, because...
	It would mean that you had no history, no connection with your feelings, no call and answer response to your environment.
	You would be completely psychotic.
	It's incredibly healthy that you can't be around your parents without falling into those patterns.
	It means that you actually can have a connection to your environment.
	And have a response to what happens around you.
	The sad thing is that if we were talking three years ago, I would be so repressed.
	I would be so out of touch with my feelings.
	So in this robotic state of being, it's just sad.
	Yeah.
	I don't even know what would be of me if I hadn't found you, basically.
	Yeah.
	Well, I appreciate that.
	I mean, it means a lot to me that you say that.
	I really, really appreciate that.
	And I'm glad that the show is really helping you with that.
	And I really want to express, there is a kind of merry horror to your depiction of your mother that is incredibly disturbing.
	You know, the word creepy is often overused.
	But dude, man, your mom is seriously fucking creepy.
	The worst about all this is that I loved her.
	It's this terrible victim loving the abuser thing.
	And I felt pity.
	Oh, poor thing.
	And I engulfed myself and I... How do I say?
	I... I disappeared even more.
	And I lost...
	You had to.
	No, listen.
	You had to.
	Because your mother can only live with ghosts who obey her whims.
	Same with my dad.
	Your mother cannot exist with independent critical thinkers who have their own emotional life.
	So, yes.
	Children will do anything to survive.
	Children will do anything to survive.
	And the price of survival varies in families.
	Right.
	In my family, there's a reward for survival, right?
	There's a reward for emotional self-expression and disagreement and debate and all that kind of stuff, right?
	But in your family, I'm incredibly sorry to say...
	In your family, the price of survival was suicide for you.
	Right?
	Exactly.
	I'm only allowed to express...
	And people who say that they are capable of killing themselves are also saying that they're capable of murdering others, because they're capable of taking a life.
	And how can someone else's life mean more to you than your own life?
	Unless it's an extremity, like your child is being attacked by a bear or something.
	And so what Scheingold calls soul murder is when to manifest a preference in a relationship is to be savagely attacked.
	And it's painful enough as an adult to have that happen.
	And when I did it with my mom, when I expressed a preference, and I mentioned it before on the show too, another time I did it where it's where We were at a pizza hut, one I actually worked at, and having some food.
	And I said, you know, she's going on and on about all this health, medical, and I'm like, you know, mom, it's really stressful.
	You should read a book or two about stress to try and help you manage some of the stress that you're having from all these health issues.
	I mean, I didn't believe the health issues, but, you know, again, she's screaming.
	She ended up throwing a pitcher of ice water at me.
	And it's like, so then to have any preference is to be attacked.
	And this was tough enough as an adult.
	As a child, this was impossible.
	I could not do it when I was four or three or eight or ten or twelve.
	Same with me.
	Because you simply, you can't survive without your parents.
	And there's no fundamental addiction like the child's addiction to retaining the parent's Interest, whether it's positive or negative, right?
	Yeah, exactly the same with me.
	And so, for you, existence was slaughter.
	Preference was murder.
	Life was death.
	I was only allowed to think and express that wish they wanted.
	Right, and that's not thinking.
	That's merely echoing.
	That's how I surprise how I even retain minimal critical thinking skills.
	I don't know how, really, after all this shit.
	And that's heroic.
	But then the block in your head towards becoming who you are is your mom's block of Right?
	It's like with my mom, it always felt like a kind of sword fighting contest wherein she could call in an airstrike and I had a toothpick.
	But there was like, I'm going to try and exist over here.
	Maybe I can try and exist over here.
	Block that, right?
	I mean, I would...
	Go and climb tree houses and I would spend like all evening reading comic books or writing stories in a tree house.
	Or, you know, I remember my brother and I wandering the streets.
	We just couldn't go home because my mom was in one of those moods.
	And I remember us literally, we were so thirsty and this is, we had to, there was a spring somewhere in the woods near our house and we spent like an hour trying to find it because we were so thirsty and we drank down and ate like deer from the stream in the woods.
	I did stupid, crazy stuff.
	I would go down and play on the train tracks.
	On the train tracks.
	A completely insane thing to do.
	When I was like 11 or 12 years old, my friends and I, we would race across giant trestle bridges 1,000 feet above a rocky river at nighttime.
	And if a train came, I'd ring God.
	I mean, it happened one time.
	I almost fell down the tracks.
	The wheels thundered by like Ten inches from my face.
	I mean, stupid, insane shit, because I just didn't want to go home.
	I never wanted to go home.
	Never.
	Right.
	So there's this, if I exist, I am blocked.
	If I want, I am blocked.
	If I try to will my ghostliness into muscle, flesh, balls, and penis, I am blocked.
	And that is going to be part of your psyche.
	That is your survival mechanism.
	To live is to die.
	To think is to be attacked.
	To exist is to be struck.
	To will is to be destroyed.
	So all of that makes you a perfect slave if your adulthood is to be a slave.
	And then you get pushed out into the remnants of the free market.
	And it's like, okay, well now you can't do any of that stuff.
	So you have to transition.
	Now, we do have neuroplasticity.
	We can change.
	We can transition.
	But whenever you start to will something for your life that's for you, you're going to feel this heaviness and this, what's the point?
	And, you know, it doesn't matter.
	That's all your mom just blocking your existence.
	And you internalized your mom to survive your mom.
	Right?
	You inhale the ghost to kill the ghost.
	It doesn't die, right?
	I mean, but you become...
	You internalize the abusers because it's safer to hit yourself than to be hit by others, right?
	Absolutely.
	Makes sense.
	Yeah, this is what you were saying makes so much sense.
	If I say, hey, Dad, do you know that some people who don't have a degree are successful entrepreneurs?
	What the fuck?
	And who do you think you are?
	What do you know to do?
	You can't do anything.
	What are you going to do without a degree?
	Without a degree, you are nothing.
	Yes.
	Wow, he's got a lot of opinions for a guy who's never read a fucking book.
	Yeah.
	Oh, yeah.
	Does he run his own business?
	Is he an entrepreneur?
	You know what he usually says to me, he loves saying this to me, he's, you don't know fucking shit about reality.
	You don't know anything about reality.
	And what I think is, I wonder why.
	Yeah, so maybe you could make...
	Yeah, maybe, you know, in time, Diego, you could make as great a set of decisions as your dad did, say, in marrying your mom.
	Because people like that...
	I don't care what people say.
	I mean, I care what you say, right?
	But I mean, in general, when I'm evaluating people, I don't care what they say.
	I just want to look at what they do.
	And like some guy who married a nine pounds of creep in a six-ounce bag cupcake from hell like your mom, what the hell credibility is he going to have with anyone?
	I married this woman.
	You need to listen to me.
	Actually, I need to listen to you only to do the opposite, right?
	I mean, this is...
	You know, my mom...
	And it's sort of funny, like, how many people say, oh, that Steph, he has mommy issues.
	Like, this is some sort of problem within me that I just, you know, I guess I'm just neurotic about my mom, you know?
	We don't say about women who got gang raped, oh, they just have rapist issues.
	You know, they're just resentful towards rapists.
	You know, they just can't get along with rapists.
	They have rapist issues.
	It's like, well, no, see, this is just a man's heart, so what the fuck does it matter unless it's going to go out there and defend you against a goddamn bear or go get some soup for your children?
	Right?
	So, with...
	No?
	Did I remember what I was going to say?
	I think I went on one too many...
	Yeah.
	One too many tangents.
	But it was important, so I'm sure it will come back.
	But...
	You were talking about...
	Tell me what you think.
	Oh!
	Right.
	How people...
	Oh, yeah.
	Sorry, I remember.
	I'm just asking.
	Okay, I remember now.
	Okay.
	So, my mom was a fantastic...
	Like, you know, if you're a photographer, back in the old days, you have to develop these photographs.
	They came out as negatives, and then you developed them into pictures.
	Now, if you're really good, as a photographer, you can hold up the negatives, and you can still see what these look like.
	You can have black and white reverse images on most cell phone cameras.
	You can hold up the negatives to the light.
	A friend of mine did photography as a teenager, and he showed me all this stuff.
	You can hold up a negative to the light, and you can see in your mind's eye exactly how the camera, how the picture is going to turn out.
	So you take a bunch of pictures, and you find the right one, and you develop it and all that.
	Right.
	Well, my mom was like a perfect negative, right?
	Because I got to see, like if your parents are a chain smoker and they die of lung cancer when they're 50, you're like, shit, I really shouldn't smoke, right?
	I mean, and my mom was this fantastic example of like, oh, okay, so that's what happens if you deny responsibility and simply get angry at everyone who attacks you or everyone who criticizes you, anyone who questions you, anyone who has any kind of problem with you.
	Actually, angry with attacking you was okay.
	So I really got to see, oh, this is what happens if you just rely on your looks.
	Oh, this is what happens if you're aggressive and violent towards your children.
	Oh, this is what happens if you can never admit that you're wrong.
	Oh, this is what happens when you're verbally abusive.
	Oh, this is what happens when you always, always, always think that you're in the right and fight incredibly dirty whenever criticized.
	And that was like a fantastic example, and I've been saying this ever since I was a teenager, that my mom is like a great example of, don't do any of this, because it's really, really, really unpleasant how it turns out.
	And it really is.
	It really is unpleasant how it turns out.
	So you can get that, right?
	So you can be the recoil from the gun that shot your younger self, right?
	In other words, you can...
	Say, oh, this is what happens when you're creepy and manipulative.
	Oh, this is what happens when you claim knowledge you don't have.
	Oh, this is what happens when you're abusive.
	This is what happens when you kick.
	This is what happens when you play around with a veil like some retarded adult Barbie when someone's trying to talk to you about something important, right?
	Oh, this is what happens when you're an asshole.
	Okay, I'm not gonna do that, right?
	Like, when you're a kid, when you see an adult who's drunk, you're like, oh, that's what happens when you're drunk.
	Well, that's horrible.
	So I don't think I'll be doing that.
	Yeah, exactly.
	I don't want to do the same shit at all.
	Definitely.
	I don't want to...
	I just wonder if I can correct the damage, basically.
	If I... So basically, so Tiago, what you're telling me is after we've been talking for what, an hour and 20 minutes, you're right back where we started.
	Exactly.
	Okay, so what the hell is the point of this conversation then?
	Yeah, you're right.
	It's ridiculous.
	No, you're just, you're pumping me all this helplessness, right?
	Yeah, you're right.
	Well, I'm pumping it right back.
	It's your choice.
	You want to fix it?
	It's fixed.
	You don't want to fix it?
	It's not fixed.
	But throwing up your hands and saying, well, but how could I possibly repair all this damage?
	Make the fucking choice.
	Do it.
	Okay.
	You're right.
	Sorry.
	You're right.
	I mean, tell me.
	Tell me where I'm wrong here.
	But don't just give me this, like, mommy fell on my balls and broke them.
	I mean, just, you know, do it or don't do it.
	But don't throw your hands up and say, but how do I, you know?
	Just go and make commitments, follow your passions and live, right?
	But don't give me this helplessness fog, like after I've been pumping heart and soul into trying to get you off your ass.
	Oh, I can't get off my ass, right?
	Come on.
	Yeah, I have to.
	Yeah, sorry.
	You're absolutely right.
	I mean, no, you haven't had a man probably in your life who's...
	Being able to just, yeah, this helplessness stuff, you can do it if you want, but you know exactly where this leads, right?
	Your mom was helpless, helpless.
	She can't control herself.
	She's helpless.
	She just says stuff.
	She doesn't mean it.
	It's just a joke.
	She's helpless.
	She can't control her body.
	She hits you.
	She's helpless.
	She's emotional.
	She's tense.
	She's helpless.
	You tell me where that helplessness leads.
	Right?
	I get it.
	Is that what you want?
	Well, you know exactly, you of all people in the known universe, Tiago, know exactly where that helplessness leads.
	So if you end up there, I have huge sympathy for you as a child, but if you end up there as an adult, you are absolutely completely and totally responsible and more responsible than most because you have the exact life story and life experience, 20 years of experience with these jerks, knowing exactly where that helplessness and aggression leads.
	So if you feed me that helplessness, You're doing it, at least in the future, with the full knowledge of where it leads, right?
	Absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	That's why guys love The Godfather so much.
	Have you ever seen that movie?
	Okay, you gotta watch that movie.
	I mean, I think there's one scene, I mean, Brando's fantastic in it, but there's this one scene in it where this singer comes in and he wants to roll in a movie and he's not getting it, and the guy cries, right?
	And because I grew up around women, and women, women, women everywhere, as far as I could see, right?
	Just this forest of boobs and manipulations just all over the place, right?
	So, you know, when a woman cries, right, what does everyone do?
	Oh, that's so sad.
	That's terrible.
	Are you okay?
	Let me help you.
	I'll make you some tea, right?
	Yeah.
	And so this singer is crying because he can't get the movie role that he wants.
	Do you know what Marlon Brando's character does?
	Right.
	Slaps him in the head.
	Pull yourself together.
	What are you crying for?
	You want to get a movie role?
	Go get a movie role.
	I want to snivel here.
	I get tears are important and all that.
	Cry tears of connection.
	Don't cry tears of self-pity and helplessness.
	Right?
	I think in what you're saying, it's interesting because that reminds me of my dad saying, like with bullying in school, for instance, you got to get used to it.
	You gotta man up!
	You should...
	No, no, I'm not telling you to get used to any abuse.
	Absolutely not.
	I'm not telling you to get used to any abuse.
	I'm telling you to act.
	If people won't clean up their fucking act in your life, they don't have to be in your life, right?
	You are the gatekeeper of the fortress of your fucking future.
	Right?
	None shall pass!
	Enough!
	Right?
	You don't have to let anyone across the bridge who doesn't, you know, if they're coming obviously armed, you know, it's not like a fucking Trojan horse scenario.
	If they're completely obviously armed and assholes, you don't have to let them in.
	Yeah.
	You're right.
	I'm not telling you to put up with anything.
	I'm not telling you you're helpless.
	I'm telling you you're full of power.
	But if you just retreat into the, oh, but how do I, and there's no way, right?
	Okay, well, then you can stay there, and you can then become your mom in time.
	But you know exactly where this leads, right?
	And I don't want to become that at all.
	Right.
	And I'm not saying don't have sympathy for yourself at all, but don't fall into this...
	Mom-based ooze pit of sentimental self-pity.
	I think I'm going in extreme.
	That's a giant sucking vagina hole of disaster.
	Yeah, definitely.
	I think we got the name for the show!
	Oh, Mike's going to be like, man, do I have to look at vaginas again for the thumbnail?
	This is going to take a week!
	I'll take those bullets for the show.
	See if we can combine it with the Miley Cyrus show.
	I think if you zoom in on that.
	Thank you so much, Stefan.
	I think she actually must work for her gynecologist.
	I think it works about the same way.
	Anyway, Tiago, I've got to move on to another caller, but is that useful enough?
	Thank you so much.
	It was such a pleasure to talk to you.
	You're welcome, man.
	Thank you so much for what you do.
	Best of luck and really keep it posted.
	I will.
	If you think you can or you think you can't, you're right.
	Either way.
	Alright, so Mike, what's up next?
	Next is Thomas, and he wants to talk.
	UPB. His question he wrote out is, can there be non-obligatory positive morality?
	I.e.
	stealing is morally negative, not stealing is neutral, and giving is morally positive.
	Would you like to elaborate on that, Thomas?
	Yeah, can you hear me?
	Yes.
	Yeah, so basically my question is...
	Whether you can have a moral positive, such as giving is moral, but it would pass the coma test because instead of saying that not giving is immoral, and therefore if you're in a coma you're immoral, that not giving would be...
	No, because the coma test is second to the universality test, right?
	So let's say you have a UPB called giving is universally preferable behavior, right?
	How can that be universalized?
	Well, I guess everyone wouldn't be able to all the time.
	Yeah.
	No, you can't.
	No, because for me to give you something, you have to receive and keep it, right?
	I mean, if I mail a check to you and the mailman steals the check, then he's stolen something because he's just carrying it to you.
	You are the recipient, right?
	So think of two guys in a room.
	I have an iPod Touch.
	Sponsored by Apple.
	It's not as bad as the Surface in elementary, but anyway.
	So, I have an iPod Touch, and you have universally powerful behavior called giving.
	Now, I must then give the iPod Touch to you to be moral, right?
	Yes.
	And then you must immediately give it back to me in order to be moral.
	Because it's universal.
	Everybody has to do it all the time, right?
	I guess I was, yeah.
	And so you and I end up passing back this iPod Touch like a game of morally insane hot potato, and neither of us ever ends up keeping it because to give is moral.
	Now let's say there's one iPod Touch and three people in the room.
	I can't give it to you and the other person simultaneously, and even if I could somehow, if I had two, they'd still, we'd all be passing the right, we could never, and nobody would ever be able to complete the act of giving.
	Because the act of giving requires that You receive and keep that which is given to you.
	Like if I give you an iPod Touch and then I take it right back, I haven't given you anything, right?
	Or if I give it to you on the condition that you throw it in a sewer, I still haven't given it to you.
	Or if I give it to you on a condition that you give it to someone else immediately, I haven't given it to you.
	So the act of giving requires that someone receive and keep what is being given, and therefore it can't be universalized to say that giving is universally preferable behavior.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah, I guess, yeah.
	Not to mention what would happen with your kidneys, right?
	I mean, you've got to give you, everybody's someone in need, you can give your kidney at all times, but that person who gets the kidney has got to give it to someone else, and it just, you know, ends up with the kidney squirting all over the world, right?
	But sorry, go ahead.
	So I was like, just, I think I was confused about how something is morally neutral, like, I understand how stealing can't be moral, because it can't be universal, because if If stealing is good, then it's not stealing, because stealing has to be against their will.
	So stealing can't be moral, but then how do you go from that to therefore stealing is immoral?
	No, stealing is immoral is not the right way to phrase it, because immoral means such a wide variety of things to different people.
	So the UBB framework is, can it be universalized, first of all?
	Morality, by definition, has to be universal behavior, and I go into the reasons for that in the book.
	Can it be universalized?
	Now, stealing can't be universalized.
	The retention of property rights can be universalized and is in fact physically embedded in our biological systems in that I own my body and you can't make my body do anything directly, right?
	I mean, you can put a gun to my head or whatever, but you can't make me do something directly.
	I can make my arm move up and down.
	You cannot make my arm move up and down, right?
	Stealing can't be universalized.
	Self-ownership and respect for property rights can be universalized and therefore it passes that test.
	So it's not to say stealing is immoral is not too philosophically precise.
	When you hear the word immoral, think naughty.
	If I say, well, doing X is naughty, is that a philosophical statement?
	No, that's just kind of a finger-wagging Elizabeth Warren-style kindergarten cop stuff.
	But if I say, stealing cannot be universally preferable behavior, Then that, I think, is something a little bit more technical.
	Because immoral or naughty, they're just basically slanderous against the action.
	Bad!
	Naughty!
	We spit on it, right?
	Stealing is racist!
	But it doesn't really add anything to the discussion.
	That's why I've sort of tried to focus on the framework.
	Stealing cannot be universally preferable behavior.
	And since universally preferable behavior is a synonym for morality, stealing cannot be moral.
	Does that make any sense?
	Yeah, but giving also can't be moral, correct?
	If I understand right?
	Well, no.
	Giving is neither moral nor immoral, right?
	It's morally neutral.
	But it doesn't pass the universalized test, so...
	Well, I know.
	That's why you know that it's not moral.
	Morality has to be universal.
	Now, giving cannot be universally preferable behavior.
	It can't be universalized for reasons we already talked about.
	Therefore, it...
	Can't fall into the category of morally required, right?
	Like respect for property rights and personhood, like don't rape, don't steal, don't murder or whatever, right?
	And so giving is something that I would consider morally neutral.
	Now, giving to someone in need who deserves it, well, whatever, right?
	I mean, maybe you could put that in aesthetically preferable actions.
	But giving is morally neutral.
	It has no fundamental moral content.
	It might be a nice thing to do.
	It's like maybe being on time, but giving also can be bad.
	I can give someone a shiner, right?
	I can give someone an STD, right?
	Giving is too morally neutral.
	It's too broad a term.
	Sorry, the word giving is too broad a term.
	Being compassionately charitable might be aesthetically preferable action, but it can't be universalized, and therefore it might be nice to do, but it can't be enforced through coercive coercion.
	In other words, if a beggar says, give me $5, and I don't give him $5, he can't stab me and take the $5.
	It can't be coercively enforced like self-defense is.
	Okay, I'm still not quite grasping the differentiation between like...
	Stealing, where stealing can't be universalized, but then it can be enforced through violence?
	No, no, stealing can't be enforced through violence, but property rights can be enforced through violence.
	If someone steals, then you can use violence to gain restitution, for example.
	Well, but that's fundamental to the non-aggression principle, right?
	So you can't initiate the use of force and theft is a form of force, but you can use self-defense because self-defense can be universalized because it's reactive.
	Giving is proactive, right?
	And you can universalize the right to self-defense and it doesn't violate universality because it's reactive.
	Whereas rape, murder, theft, and assault, they're all proactive behaviors and therefore can't be universalized.
	But self-defense can be universalized because it's reactive to somebody else initiating the use of force.
	Okay, yeah, that makes sense.
	So that pretty much answers my question.
	Thanks.
	You sound quite depressed.
	I'm a bit nervous, but I'm fine.
	But you're happy in your life?
	Everything's all right?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	All right.
	Well, thanks very much for your questions.
	I appreciate that.
	And Mike, if we can move on, that would be excellent.
	All right.
	Up next is Christian.
	And Christian wrote in and said, As far as I can tell, my girlfriend is virtuous and would be a good mother.
	The only real problem is that she's also really hot.
	And I'm concerned that this fact could be clouding my judgment.
	A problem we'd all like to have.
	Oh, I don't know about that.
	I mean, I think my wife's a total hottie, but...
	All right, so your problem is that your girlfriend is hot.
	No, I mean, that's not really the problem.
	The problem is that I'm worried that that might be clouding my judgment.
	Oh, okay, okay, okay, so you got boob eye.
	I mean, I don't know if I do.
	I mean, because obviously you've never seen my girlfriend, so your judgment can't be clouded about this, so I just want you to wait.
	Can you send a picture to Mike?
	Yeah, yeah, I guess I could.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, just put it in Skype, and I'll have a look.
	Okay, sure.
	Let me see here.
	With clothes, please.
	This is a family show.
	Yeah, of course.
	Aw, got clothes.
	So, yeah, just give me a second.
	I've got to find it on my computer.
	You've got to find one with clothes, all right?
	Yeah.
	One taken with her knowledge, right?
	Yeah, with her consent.
	If we asked for a video...
	I don't want to see any webcam visa signs at the bottom.
	Alright.
	What are you putting this thing?
	You've got to give me a second, man.
	I've got to figure it out.
	It's an iPhoto, so I'm not really sure how to put that on a Skype.
	It's like an iShot.
	You know how your iPhone automatically uploads it to iPhoto, but you can't really find the file that easily on the hard drive?
	Okay, well, can you look for it and still talk?
	Sure, sure, sure.
	I can try to multitask.
	All right, well, why don't you tell me about her virtues?
	Okay, so...
	Well, okay.
	First of all, there are some things that might be relevant to the conversation that I should say first.
	Because she's...
	All right.
	I'm noticing the dodge, but you can go ahead.
	Okay, okay.
	I'll just tell you about her virtues, first of all.
	So she's very generous, and she's very kind, and very warm, and courageous, and...
	I mean, she's quite intelligent.
	I don't know if that's a virtue, but she's very loyal.
	She's pretty even-tempered.
	Yeah, I guess those are the virtues.
	But I'm unsure.
	Is virtue like...
	Is it on a spectrum?
	Because obviously there are several kinds of virtue.
	And are you either virtuous or not?
	Or can you be...
	I mean, is it...
	You know what I mean when I say, is it a spectrum?
	You're really not asking me that question for real, are you?
	I mean, do you really need me to answer that?
	I mean, you have a brain, right?
	Yeah, as far as I know.
	Do you think people are either 100% good or 100% evil?
	No, but I mean, where do you draw the line between virtue?
	No, no, no, no.
	You didn't ask me where you draw the line.
	You said, is virtue a spectrum?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Is it a spectrum?
	I guess it is, yeah.
	In my estimation, yeah.
	Of course it is, right?
	I mean, it's like you're not 100% healthy or dead, right?
	Health is a spectrum, right?
	I mean, why wouldn't...
	You know, knowledge is a spectrum.
	Nobody's perfectly knowledgeable or perfectly ignorant who's alive, right?
	But different degrees of knowledge, right?
	So...
	So, Steph, I found a picture in my folder here.
	It's like a private kind of picture, so I don't want you to share it because it's...
	Oh, no, listen, don't worry.
	It's in the vault.
	I'm just curious myself.
	There's some boob in it.
	I mean, no nipple or anything, just it was a picture made for me, you know?
	All right.
	Okay.
	So, let me see.
	I'm sorry, listeners, you're going to have to sketch this yourself because we'll never see the light of day.
	Okay, I just dropped this.
	So, you see that, Mike?
	So, you're saying she's virtuous and she gives you boob shots?
	What?
	So, she's virtuous and she gives you boob shots, right?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	So, that's what I'm saying.
	This is what might be clouding my judgment, you know?
	So...
	But yeah, anyway, about the virtue thing, so where do you, I mean, so let's say, for example, that you're honest but not patient, right?
	So honesty is a virtue but so is patience.
	So where, I mean, when do you cross the line from being virtuous to not being virtuous?
	Do you have to have You know, 50% of the virtues to be virtuous?
	What do you mean?
	She must be really attractive to you if you're willing to be this confused about things.
	Yeah, she's really attractive to me.
	Well, I'll tell you this.
	Looks like her babies aren't going all kinds of hungry.
	Exactly.
	Exactly.
	I mean, she could have triplets and they'd be like, no, no, no, I'm full.
	Yep.
	And she could lose one in the middle.
	All right.
	Okay, so...
	All right, thanks for the memories.
	And...
	So...
	So why is all this stuff...
	You realize you're kind of tying yourself in knots here, right?
	What percentage exactly of virtue versus patience versus this?
	I mean, this can't be answered, right?
	It can't?
	No, I can't.
	I mean, how...
	How could that be answered?
	Well, 51.5% measurable by this objective metrics over this period of time, which you can calculate, but this, I mean, you can't answer that.
	Yeah, but when, I mean, in this conversation, I mean, I've been listening for maybe six months.
	You talk about people as, you know, some people are bad.
	Obviously, you don't mean that they're 100% bad, but you say, okay, if, for example, the Randian definition of love, right?
	Love is a, An involuntary emotional reaction to virtue in other people if we are ourselves virtuous, right?
	When can you say that a person is virtuous?
	Well, does she accord to rational standards of virtue that you recognize as virtuous?
	Okay.
	Then she's virtuous.
	And if she's committed to becoming more virtuous, then she's only going to get more virtuous from here, right?
	So if you're a boob man, boobs grow from here.
	And if you're a leg man, the getaway sticks get longer from here, right?
	So if you're a virtue man, then this is one thing that compensates for getting old and haggard for all of us is that The beauty of our hearts, the beauty of our conscience, the beauty of our virtue grows in strength as we age, right?
	So if she's virtuous now, it can't be by accident because most times people are raised to not be virtuous.
	They're raised, particularly women, they're raised to be compliant.
	And so if she has achieved independent critical thinking and she's virtuous, in other words, you say she's strong, she's kind, warm, loyal and all that, So if she's virtuous, it means because she's really made a commitment to virtue, she's made a commitment to philosophy, she's made a commitment to self-knowledge and overcoming all of the programming and deceptive cultural bullshit that we're all fed as children.
	So, fantastic.
	She's on that path to virtue.
	She's committed to it.
	She's open to learning more about it, in which case she's only going to get more virtuous from here.
	The virtue is that one muscle that grows until you're dead or crazy.
	You know, like, if I want to be an expert skier, I'm going to peak at 30 or whatever, and then, you know, it's going to go downhill from there, right?
	And so, but virtue is the one thing that Can just keep growing.
	It really grows in the practice.
	And so, if she's virtuous, it must be because she's pursued a program of self-knowledge and virtue and overcoming the lies of culture and superstition and government schools and all this, that, and the other.
	Fantastic!
	If she has made that commitment and has already reaped the rewards of virtue, then you don't need to sell her on it.
	She's going to continue to grow in virtue over the years, and that's fantastic.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	I guess it is.
	You are just...
	Yeah, you're blinded.
	Sorry, dude.
	That was my test, and you are a boob blind.
	Yeah, okay, but okay, so...
	What?
	Yeah, I am boob blind.
	No, no, no!
	Don't run back to the boobs in your head yet.
	Kind of hard to avoid.
	All right, why...
	Why did I just know you're boob blinded?
	I'm not sure.
	I'm not sure.
	Why don't you tell me?
	Because I said she must have pursued a program of rigorous self-knowledge and critical thinking in order to become virtuous in a largely corrupt society, right?
	Yeah.
	And you just blew right past that, right?
	Yeah, you're right.
	I did.
	Why did you just blow?
	I know why, but tell me why did you just blow right past that trap?
	I don't think that she has made a conscious commitment to the pursuit of self-knowledge.
	Well, what do you mean you don't think?
	I can't know.
	What's the evidence that she has?
	What is the evidence that she has done that?
	The default position is ignorance and illusion.
	That's the default position.
	It's not human nature, it's just the way that we're all raised.
	So the default position for all human beings is ignorance and illusion.
	Possibly with a side peppercorn source of hostility towards critical thinking.
	So, if the default position for everyone is ignorance and illusion, and you don't know of any rigorous program of self-knowledge in the pursuit of virtue that she has undergone, then what is the answer?
	That know that she has not undergone.
	Okay.
	And now how long have you been seeing her?
	Yeah, that's the thing.
	Almost two years.
	So it's at that point where...
	So you'd know?
	Yeah, I know that she hasn't made a conscious commitment to self-knowledge.
	But then how can she have these virtues?
	If you're saying that you have to embark on this kind of...
	I'm sorry, I'm getting a rough static patch every now and then.
	I don't know if there's anything you're doing, or maybe your cell phone's on or something, but every now and then it just goes...
	Alright.
	Okay, I'll try to sit still.
	Maybe I'll just rub it up against my t-shirt.
	Okay.
	Well, what you're saying is that in order to develop these virtues...
	Basically, people aren't virtuous from the beginning.
	We're ignorant.
	And then through the pursuit, the conscious pursuit of self-knowledge, we develop virtues.
	But...
	Well, and we develop virtues in opposition to our culture.
	And this is what I wanted to say, which is relevant to the conversation, because this girl is Chinese.
	I'm Norwegian, but I live in China.
	And so she's been, I guess, subjected to a lot of crazy culture.
	Even crazier than where I grew up.
	But she recognizes...
	Okay, was she abused as a child?
	Not by Chinese standards, but by rational standards?
	Not according to the questionnaire that you sent me.
	No.
	Okay, but was she spanked?
	No, I've asked her about all this.
	She was not spanked.
	She was never hit.
	Well, she has been yelled at.
	Their parents do yell as a discipline measure.
	And she was, I assume, of course, raised in a government school?
	Yeah.
	But she...
	And...
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Well, what happens a lot in China is that people are just so...
	They're so viscerally...
	Like, on a visceral level, they reject...
	That kind of schooling, they just kind of zone it out and play on their phones all day because it's such an antiquated system of education.
	They're just so bored and they hate it and they're afraid of their teachers and they're not really learning a lot in school.
	So she recognizes that system as deeply flawed and that it lacks virtue.
	And do you want to, I think you do, right?
	Want to have children with this woman?
	Yeah.
	This is why I'm calling you, because it's at that point now, after, you know, we've been going out for almost two years, and I think that I love her in the Randian sense, as far as I can tell, if I recognize my emotions the right way.
	At this point, I have to either break up with her or marry her, because it's not fair to string a woman like that along for the best part of her childbearing years.
	And how old is she?
	24.
	And how old are you?
	Right.
	Have you talked with her about having children yet?
	Oh yeah, for sure.
	And have you talked with her about how to raise them?
	Yes, definitely.
	And?
	And what?
	And what does she say?
	Well, she doesn't want to raise children in the Chinese fashion, she says.
	Because she's met my parents, and she really likes my view on a lot of things about this peaceful parenting stuff.
	And she tells me that you really convinced me as to...
	For example...
	When she's at home, her parents sometimes will use a raised voice with her.
	And before, she would take that and she would accept that as natural.
	But now, after we've talked about all these things, Now she's in the situation where she's telling her parents, look, if you're going to yell at me, I'm not going to talk to you.
	That's not a peaceful way of parenting.
	Our relationship has to be based on...
	I mean, she shows an ability to, you know, intellectually process these things and then make them manifest in real life.
	She's really taking seriously parenting.
	And she wants to do it peacefully.
	She does not want to spank any kids.
	She doesn't want to raise her voice to any kids.
	She doesn't want to tell them, you know, because I said so.
	Nothing like that.
	She's really seen how my parents raised me and how that was very different from the norm in China.
	And do your parents, did they raise you peacefully?
	Yeah, they certainly did.
	And what do your parents think of your girlfriend?
	They love her.
	They really, really like her.
	It didn't escape me that the relationship I have with my girlfriend is kind of similar to what my dad has with my mom.
	No, that's good.
	I mean, there's nothing wrong with that.
	I mean, if your parents' relationship works and they're good people, I mean, I hope that my daughter doesn't choose a man the opposite of me.
	That'd be no good.
	Some bad guy with a mohawk.
	Okay, so then help me because, you know, something doesn't fit for me at all here in this conversation, Christian, and it could be my limitations, so maybe nothing you're doing wrong.
	But, you know, she's...
	She's virtuous.
	Your parents who raised you peacefully love her.
	You both want to have kids.
	You want to raise them peacefully.
	I mean, what's missing here?
	Like, why is this even a question?
	Well, I want to check in with you, right?
	Because I trust your judgment a lot, so I wanted you to weigh in.
	No, no, no.
	But because there's no warning flags in the conversation that you're having, I mean...
	Then...
	And if she had, like, a 0 ACE score and what, you said you had a 0 ACE score, an Adverse Childhood Experiences score?
	Sorry, Mike, is that the case?
	Yeah, that's correct.
	Okay.
	Well, actually, when I looked at it the second time, the number four, it said or.
	Like, did you ever feel like your family wasn't always standing up for each other or something like that?
	Yeah, no family lover support was the...
	Yeah, but there's an or.
	Remember?
	There's a second part of that.
	Let me just see if I can pull that up here.
	Because I did have some issues with my sister.
	I never really liked my sister.
	We had some conflict.
	I don't know if you think that's relevant or not to this.
	I don't really have a lot of conflict with my parents.
	They raised me peacefully.
	They always encouraged my critical thinking and rationality and reasoning and all that.
	I was never...
	Okay, but listen, Christian, so based on the information that you're giving me, what doubts could there be?
	Well, she is not...
	Well, my doubt comes from the fact that she is not...
	She's not very knowledgeable, you know?
	She's not the kind of...
	Like, you have a wife who's a psychologist, right?
	And she's highly educated, and I'm sure...
	She practices psychology, but yeah, she's very well educated.
	So you can sit up, you know, and talk for a long, long time and have really long, interesting conversations, and that works for you, right?
	I can have conversations with her, too, but they're more on a...
	They're not on a highly educated level like I would have with a close friend of mine, like a male friend of mine.
	But what is her education?
	She works at a lab at a hospital.
	They analyze blood and urine and big machines.
	That's her education.
	So I don't know what you call that.
	Yeah, but does she want to stay home with your kids if you have them?
	Yeah, so, I mean, the job is, I mean, if her job for five or ten years is going to be raising kids, then...
	But I asked you about her education, you told me about her job.
	So, is she high school, is that right?
	No, no, no, no, no.
	She's got, so, three years of higher education, but higher education in China, you know?
	And it's like a technical...
	Okay, dude, I mean, you've got to have some respect for my time here.
	Like, I mean, I really would like to help you, but...
	You know, you're saying, well, she's, you know, not quite as educated.
	And I say, oh, well, no, she's got three years of higher education plus, you know, after high school.
	Yeah, but that doesn't necessarily mean that she's, you know, educated, right?
	In the sense that we use the term in this conversation.
	Technically, if you have lots of education, that means you're educated.
	Technically, yeah, sure.
	But...
	Yeah, I mean, she's got, what, 15 or 16 years of education?
	I think that pretty much means educated.
	Okay, but I'm saying she's not very knowledgeable about the world.
	She's, uh...
	Okay, then stop telling me about the things she does know about and tell me where the deficiencies are.
	Right, this is what I'm saying.
	The deficiencies are that I can't, like, if I made a reference to some, I don't know, the Milgram study, or if I made a reference, I mean, she wouldn't know.
	No, no, no, that doesn't matter.
	It doesn't matter the degree to which she doesn't know stuff.
	It matters the degree to which she wants to learn stuff.
	Okay, so then we're good.
	So she's interested in learning new stuff.
	Is there a language barrier between you guys?
	No, I'm fluent in Chinese.
	Okay.
	And biracial kids you're okay with?
	Yeah, sure.
	I mean, unless there's something I didn't think about, that could be a problem with that.
	I mean, it's not, I mean, I don't think it's a huge issue.
	And certainly if you raise your kids philosophically, but I think that for some kids, and again, I'm not obviously trying to paint with a very wide brush here, but in reading some of the Elliot Rogers stuff, some of the biracial kids, he was half Chinese, half white.
	And they sort of feel like not quite in the white community, not quite in the Chinese community.
	They could get cattiness sometimes from whatever, right?
	So it's just...
	But if you raise your kid philosophically, you know, they won't pretty much care about tribal stuff.
	Yeah, I thought about that.
	But, you know, you mean like if it were a guy, if I had a boy and he was super short or...
	No, or a girl.
	I mean, aren't like half white, half Asian girls pretty hot, usually?
	No, no, dude.
	I'm not talking about how hot they are.
	I'm talking about where they fit into the world.
	Okay, okay.
	Not what fits into them from the world.
	You mean like, yeah, like third culture kids, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, no.
	Yeah, I'm talking about that.
	Okay, well, I mean, you know, if you respect your parents and your parents love her, I mean, I would think that that would be more, you know, telling than Anything that I could say.
	I mean, it's fine to have different interests.
	I mean, it's fine to do your own thing.
	You know, my wife didn't care about Unreal Tournament, but I quite liked it for a while.
	And so it's fine to have different interests, different focuses.
	The important thing is that you're emotionally connected and you're on the same page about raising kids.
	And you can talk to her about what you think and feel.
	I mean, I love abstract discussions with my wife and that's her particular thing.
	But the question is really, to what degree is she committed to lifelong learning?
	If that's your commitment but not hers, then you're going to outgrow her.
	But if it's both your commitments, then knowing different things is a plus, because you can bring different things to each other's knowledge base, right?
	Okay, so check, check, and check on those three.
	Okay, so I don't need to have like a...
	She doesn't need to be like my best male friend, you know, that we can talk about economics and history and philosophy and all that.
	I mean, philosophy, I can talk to her about.
	No, no, no, that's not what I said.
	What I'm saying is that she should care about economics, history and philosophy because you care about them.
	If you listen to this show, she should take it for a spin, right?
	I mean, she should, right?
	Yeah, sure, sure.
	Because that is what you're interested in, right?
	Yeah, she's always asking me about my interests, always asking me about what my childhood was like.
	I think those are good signs.
	She always wants to know more about me, you know?
	She's always super curious about me.
	Okay.
	Well, listen, I mean, I've had enough of the sales job.
	I mean, you know, you're either telling me the truth, in which case there's no problems, or you're not, in which case I'm not going to get to the truth.
	So I hope that's been helpful.
	And Mike, if we could move on to the next caller, I'd appreciate that.
	And best of luck with your future, my friend.
	Alright, Marcin is up next.
	He wrote in and said, I've recently broke up with someone based on my beliefs, philosophy, and self-discovery.
	How do I know if I did the right thing, considering the other person has a different opinion?
	Hello?
	Hi, can you hear me alright?
	Yeah, what does it mean when you say, did the right thing?
	Well, um...
	I guess I should just elaborate about that, maybe.
	Pretty much I've been with a good person for like seven months and a lot of people think that like it wasn't a good thing to do because she was like a nice quote-unquote person and maybe It was a mistake, too.
	Wait.
	Sorry, did you say a nice quote-unquote person?
	Was she not actually a person?
	Was she inflatable?
	Did she have a kind?
	I mean, what are we talking about?
	No, I mean, you know, people who don't really know her.
	Like, say, my mother says she's very nice, but she doesn't really know her.
	But she's nice when, I don't know, when we eat dinner.
	And so, yes, she's nice and polite and always smiling.
	So that means she's nice.
	Does that make sense?
	Okay, so people who don't know her think that she's nice, but you don't.
	Yeah, I think she's kind of likes any kind of emotional characteristic.
	I don't know.
	Hello?
	Yes, I'm sorry.
	I'm waiting for you to finish your sentence.
	Yeah, I'm sorry.
	I'm just so nervous and it's like four in the morning.
	Oh, yeah.
	I'm not typing.
	All right.
	No, but I still want to know what it means.
	So how would you know if you made the right decision?
	Did the right thing you said?
	I mean, do you mean did the moral thing?
	Did the thing that was good for your heart or for your safety or for your happiness?
	I'm not sure what did the right thing.
	I'll just be playing with you, right?
	Let's be honest.
	And I'm not trying to pester you.
	I'm trying to get clarity.
	Yeah, I just...
	Let's maybe simplify this.
	Just a lot of people think that I'm an asshole because I did this.
	Oh, because you broke up with her.
	And what was the immediate cause of the breakup?
	What happened right before?
	Well, pretty much it was a long distance relationship.
	And I started listening to your show for some time.
	I went to therapy and I just realized that I've been making the same mistakes dating similar women for years now.
	So there wasn't anything like big, nothing really big happened.
	Like, you know, on her side, she didn't like cheat on me and on anything like that.
	But I pretty much kind of outgrew her, I think.
	All right.
	Outgrew again is one of these things that I don't even know what that means.
	I kind of pursued my self-discovery, right?
	And I listened to a lot of her shows and I tried talking to her about like my past, which I haven't really done before.
	And she wasn't really interested in philosophy.
	And when I pretty much told her about my parents and stuff, she was like, well, you know, they did the best they can, doesn't really matter.
	And I'm like, what?
	How does that...
	Oh, so she...
	Wait, wait.
	She sort of mentally colluded with people who abuse you, right?
	Oh, yeah.
	I think.
	And just for those who don't know, we do an ACE questionnaire before people call in, so...
	I mean, you were pretty badly abused by your mom.
	Rage slapping and all that kind of stuff.
	And so, she basically sided with a woman who beat you up as a child.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Let me tell you something, my friend.
	You did the right thing.
	Alright, so that's helpful.
	No, listen, you absolutely did the right thing.
	Do not give your penis to people Who praise child abusers or defend child abusers.
	Yeah, that's right.
	But you know, there's just so many people who do that, who like praise abusers that...
	Oh yeah, no, I get that.
	That's why there are abusers, right?
	Because they get praised and defended by every mouth-breathing, spittle-nose-breath idiot who comes along, right?
	I mean, that's why.
	Why did your mom do what she did?
	Because she knew in the future you'd meet women like this woman.
	Yeah, and she would always say that.
	And about pretty much all of my girlfriends, which turned out to be very beautiful parasites.
	But yeah, they're nice.
	Yeah, so, you know, one of the things that is another clue is that your mom, who was a child abuser, thought this woman was nice.
	And nice means she's going to collude with my child abuse.
	And she's not going to stand up for you.
	And she's not going to cause me one lick of trouble, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Yeah, it makes sense.
	Yeah, so good riddance.
	Good riddance.
	Yeah, and because of that, I also started to sort of evaluate my friendships and just people I know.
	Well, it turns out there are so many people like that, and it's hard to open your eyes sometimes.
	Yeah, and just for women who may be confused by this, right?
	So...
	Let's say that you were raped.
	And the boyfriend, some guy you're dating, says, well, yeah, but I mean, the guy was probably horny.
	Yeah.
	Right, that would be like, here, let me give you a nice cupcake of get the fuck out of my life, right?
	Yeah, I'm not sure what happened, yeah.
	Right, so if you've been, you know, beaten up by your mother as a child, and someone's defending that person, then it's like, here, I'd like to give you a card called Get the Fuck Out of My Life, right?
	Yeah, I kind of tried to make it a little less violent with her, but, you know, it doesn't really matter in the end.
	Oh, yeah, no, I'm not saying you would say that to someone.
	That's sort of the intention, right?
	The intention is, listen, I would like you to go to the end of that long pier, take three more steps, and...
	But yeah, I mean, however, you can do it in a nice way.
	But this is one of the great things, you know, the fact that you wasted seven months must mean that she was quite hot, right?
	Yeah, and pretty much before her, I've had like, well, let me put it straight.
	I've had like hotter girlfriends, but they would treat me really, really badly.
	So when you have like an ex-girlfriend that's kind of hot and doesn't treat you quite as badly because she's...
	Yeah.
	So your mom's hotness was what?
	Honestly, I don't know.
	Just like what I think.
	Are you saying you've never seen a picture of your mom when she was young?
	It's kind of weird to look at it in that way.
	Oh, no, it's not.
	Oh, no, it's not weird.
	It's not.
	It's essential to look at your mom when she was young.
	Because this is your template.
	This is what your dad chose, right?
	And we tend to follow sexually successful strategies.
	And the one thing that's true of her mom and her dad, as I said before, is they fucked and made us, right?
	And so as men, as biological organisms, we are programmed to do whatever dad did that made us.
	In other words, we are going to be default position attracted to women like We're going to try and be as much like our dad as we can and we're going to try and have sex with women like our mom as much as we can.
	Because that's what worked to produce us.
	And our genes don't know that there's not a small tribe with, you know, 20 of the women who are basically photocopies of each other and 20 of the men who are basically photocopies of each other.
	They don't know we've got this wealth of choice on the internet and can date big boob vixens from China.
	They don't know any of that stuff.
	So the genes are like, oh shit, did your dad bang your mom and make you?
	Okay, be like your dad.
	Choose someone like your mom because that's what works in this tribe, right?
	Right.
	So it is absolutely essential to figure out why your dad married your mom, because that's what you're going to be drawn to, right?
	I think, to be perfectly honest, that my father pretty much married my mom because of her looks.
	So she was very pretty, right?
	Let's say like an eight, I guess.
	Sorry, why is this difficult?
	I don't understand.
	Can you not figure out whether your mom is pretty?
	I mean, does she get pixelated when you look at her?
	I mean, what happens?
	I don't know.
	Just subjectively, I wouldn't find her necessarily...
	I'm not saying fantasize about having sex with your mom.
	I'm asking you a question.
	Was she attractive when she was younger?
	Okay.
	Again, I don't understand why that's so tough.
	Okay, yeah.
	I'm sorry because, yeah, like I said, it's like four in the morning and...
	I'm sorry.
	So yes, I agree.
	She was.
	Okay.
	So then the template for you is that...
	Was your dad wealthy?
	Yeah, reasonably.
	He's the provider.
	He's basically a sailor, so he's not around very much.
	So I guess, yeah.
	And how's your wealth situation?
	You mean like family-wise or like my personal...
	No, I mean, you personally, like, so when you start dating a woman, I mean, do you do the money display?
	Yeah, I think I know where this is going, and yeah, I was pretty much paying for everything.
	Okay, so, and how do you display your wealth to a woman when you want to date her, or you want to ask her out, or when you go to pick her up?
	Well, you pay for, like, a dinner, and you start with...
	No, but how does she know that you have money when she meets you?
	Like, immediately?
	Yeah.
	Because I show it, I guess.
	In a way.
	I know you show it.
	Come on, work with me, man.
	You know it's four o'clock in the morning.
	Jump up, do some jumping jacks, shake it up a little.
	It's not four o'clock in the morning for me.
	So how do you show it?
	How do you show the woman that you have money?
	Well, I would ask her out to a place and pretty much offer that I'll pay.
	For example.
	So you would say to the woman...
	I mean, not anymore, but...
	I would like to take you to a restaurant and I will pay for the meal.
	Yeah, or imply that it's normal that a man pays.
	Okay.
	So let's pretend that I'm a hot lady, right?
	I'm not taking my shirt off.
	Don't panic for the webcam viewers.
	Oh my God, we've done that before.
	Yeah, so how would you ask me out, right?
	So I'm flipping my hair, I'm thumbing through my Vogue magazine, I'm using my little pinky to scratch a little bit of lipstick off the corner of my collagen-pumped-up Michelin-style lips, and you find me impossibly hot because you've never processed whether your mom was sexually attractive, and so you've got a broken record gene thing going on, and you want to ask me out, and what would you say?
	Ask me out.
	I would probably buy you a...
	Pretend we're in an elevator at 4 o'clock in the morning.
	How would you ask me that?
	I'm like, hi, can I get your number?
	Or, hi, would you like to go out sometime?
	I don't know, I guess.
	I've never actually picked up strangers, so...
	But, yeah.
	Well, how do you normally ask a woman?
	I've met most of my girlfriends through college or friends.
	Well, I mean, acquaintances, I suppose.
	Alright, so if they bring hotness and you bring money to the table, then if you wanted to ask a stranger out, how would she know you had money?
	I guess, yeah, I would pretty much ask her out to a place or buy her a drink.
	Okay, but let me ask it to you because you're not kind of getting what I'm saying.
	Do you wear expensive clothes?
	No, I guess I wear a watch.
	Which is expensive.
	Okay, and how expensive is the watch?
	It's not Rolex.
	Oh, so you wear a Rolex watch, and that's your big dick money watch shot, right?
	Well, it's not Rolex.
	I mean, it's not...
	Oh, it's not Rolex.
	Okay.
	It's like a nice watch, and I guess if you don't know anything about watches, then yeah, I would say that...
	Like it looks expensive-y and gold-y and stuff.
	Okay, and do you have an expensive haircut?
	Well, it depends, but I'm sorry to interrupt, but yeah, in my opinion, I am reasonably attractive, and I've been told that, so I guess, yeah, it kind of shows if that's Well, no.
	Attractive and money, I mean, not always the same thing, right?
	Women date drummers.
	Yeah, I guess they do.
	And drummers, like, hit up homeless people for change, right?
	Yeah, sure, sure.
	So I guess...
	Okay, so you present yourself quite well, and then you ask the woman out, and how do you say, you say, I will take you to a restaurant?
	Is that right?
	Yeah.
	Or maybe even if it doesn't happen, even if I don't say that.
	And then we are at a restaurant, then pretty much it's implied that I pay.
	How is it implied?
	Well, pretty much we get the bill and sometimes she or a person say that, yeah, will you get that?
	Or like, do you have any cash or whatever?
	Or just, you know.
	Okay, and look, I mean, that's fine.
	I mean, the first time I went out with my wife, I paid, and then the next time she said, no, no, no, you got the last one, and she paid, right?
	Does that happen at all?
	Well, now that I'm trying to see a different person, and I'm trying to sort of mend myself and fix myself, then yeah, we pay for it.
	But you would keep paying, right?
	Yeah, in the past, yeah.
	Okay, so in the past you would keep paying.
	Now, do you have a nice car?
	No, I'm a young guy.
	I'm pretty much, I'm like, I'm wrapping up my studies and just because I've seen your show, I just thought that it's time to move on from my house and in a couple of months I'll be longer from here because I still, yeah.
	Okay, now what, how would you feel if the woman offered, like if If you ask the woman out for the first time, and you pay, let's say, or whatever, right?
	Or if she after pay, right?
	But how would you feel if she paid for a meal?
	You mean in the past?
	Yeah, I would be like, well, that's kind of weird.
	Maybe that's nice, but I will pay for the next one.
	And I would kind of feel awkward, I guess, in the past.
	Yeah, those aren't really feelings, but okay.
	Why would you feel these things?
	Because I kind of was raised that way.
	I was raised that way, I think.
	I was raised in kind of...
	To buy women's company.
	That's what you were raised.
	Yeah, pretty much in my society that if you want to go out, then it's just reasonable to pay for No, no, no, no.
	Fuck that.
	I know what the word reasonable means, and it's got nothing to do with buying people's time.
	So, under what justification is it...
	Hang on, let me finish my sentence.
	You're kind of interrupting me a lot.
	Under what theory is turning a woman who's dating you into an employee that you pay for her time, how is that justified?
	You mean just generally for me, or...?
	Well, you said this is how you were raised, so how was it justified?
	It's pretty much justified that, well, you got to get married when you're 20-something, and because women are those creatures who don't like stuff that men do, but they're pretty, and they can give you sex, so you better be a successful guy who earns money and show it, because otherwise you're not getting any.
	Oh, so basically, women are prostitutes?
	Yeah.
	I mean, am I stating it too boldly?
	No, you should be very frank with me.
	I'm very open to that.
	But no, I don't mind being frank.
	I just want to make sure I'm being accurate.
	So basically, if you want women to have sex with you, you give them money.
	Let me give you an example.
	When I had my first girlfriend when I was 18 or 19, which is like four years ago, She was very pretty, like a 10.
	And she was also very ambitious.
	And then I broke up with her.
	Well, she actually broke up with me.
	And then my father, who knew her for like two or three meetings, like brief conversations, up to this day, he sometimes says that, well, you know, she was so pretty and ambitious and you did the wrong thing to break up with that girlfriend because she was so great.
	Just because she was very...
	Yeah, so obviously she reminded...
	She reminds your father of your mother when she was younger, which means you dodged a very foundation-based bullet, right?
	Because your mom was kind of a bitch, right?
	Your mom was like hitting you all over the body and stuff.
	And so your dad's like, oh, she was great, just like your mom.
	It's like...
	Maybe even better.
	Right, right.
	Yeah, and even once I was like a little bit drunk and and he said this and I said, well, but don't you get that I wasn't happy?
	And he's like, well, when you grow up and you'll be older, then you know that this isn't so simple.
	And I'm like, what the hell, man?
	I mean, isn't isn't being happy very important?
	And I don't think he is happy and I don't think happiness is very important to him.
	Right, right.
	Look, I've made this mistake as well, so I'm not speaking from any kind of...
	And I made it when I was older than you, right?
	This paying for sex mistake.
	So I'm not trying to lord it over or be some sort of wise guy who never did this sort of stuff.
	But women are telling you everything that you need to know.
	Everyone does, right up front.
	I agree.
	And a woman who's like, yeah, I think you should pay, and maybe I will grace you with sex.
	Right?
	Well, you're not the only guy in the world with money, and that is not exactly the road less traveled up that hoochie-cooch, right?
	I mean, people have left probably some pretty interstellar microbes in that hoo-hoo that can probably crawl up your spine and turn your head around like you're some extra in a poltergeist movie.
	So, yeah, I mean, you're not the only guy with money, and...
	She ain't the only woman with a vagina.
	You know, it's something I remember, you know, it's when you're a teenager, you're like, oh, pussy.
	It's like the Ark of the Covenant, you know, you're like, you know, they could hide pussy in all of those boxes and crates at the end of Indiana Jones, the movie.
	And you're like, I'm looking, I'm prying over the crate, find me the pussy, right?
	I mean, you're crazy about that stuff, right?
	Because, you know, you're Your body is just like, photocopy, photocopy, grab something, squirt something, have a nap, photocopy, I don't care.
	Give me more.
	Hey, if you gotta, we just gotta get the egg, egg.
	You know, the giant flesh-based penis egg-seeking missile trailing cash and the sweat of desperation is pretty much the only rocket propulsion that teenage boys have.
	And so, I mean, I get it.
	I understand it.
	But it did sort of realize in my...
	I think I was 17 or 18.
	I was like, you know, I was looking around.
	I was looking at this crowd of kids in my high school.
	And I was looking at all these women.
	And they all had noses, right?
	And I just remember thinking, you know, for every one of these female noses, there's a female vagina.
	And there's a lot of noses in this room.
	And really not...
	Not shockingly rare.
	And so, yeah, they're telling you all they need to know.
	And look, I mean, I think it's ideal.
	I mean, biologically, a man goes to work and the woman stays home, breastfeeds the kid for the required 18 months, has another kid, you know, stays home, raises and all that kind of stuff.
	Fantastic.
	But then he's bringing home the bacon and she's frying it up, right?
	She's working hard to raise the kids.
	I mean, I have a pretty unique view in that because that's what I've been doing for five and a half years with my wife.
	And...
	But a woman who's like, well, I'm just here to be pretty, and you pay for that.
	It's like, you know your prettiness is for sex, right?
	And you know that sex is for children, right?
	And you know that you better damn well work when we have kids, right?
	And women sort of seem to forget that, and they think that they're all that because nature gives men hormones.
	I have value because your sperm wants something.
	It's a pathetic, pathetic way.
	It's literally like a man saying, I'm a fantastic businessman because I inherited a million dollars.
	And it's like, no, you're not.
	You are a trustafarian, lazy bastard who just happened to fall ass backwards into money.
	And women are born with the wealth of...
	Male hormones surging at them like a bunch of grasping tsunamis.
	And, you know, I understand.
	I get how It can make you feel all kinds of precious and sensitive and special and valuable to have men all drawn at you.
	But they're not drawn at you.
	They're drawn at your eggs.
	They're drawn to your eggs.
	You just, you know, let me crack the Fabergé so I can get at the egg.
	It's just you're the egg holder.
	And it's just biology.
	I mean, it's about as romantic as a trout is squirting semen into a stream.
	I mean, I guess it might buy the stream dinner if it would help.
	But, you know, I get that we all know this.
	But, men, we kind of get it, right?
	Like, I mean, we kind of get that having a lot of resources is going to get you some gold diggers, right?
	I mean, if you're rich, then you're going to get some gold diggers.
	And women, you know, there's actual books like How to Land a Millionaire and all that.
	So men, we kind of get, like, if you've got money, then you can get some, you know, GDHs, some gold digging whores around, right?
	But men, I don't think women quite get the degree to which men are egg digging whores.
	Oh, yeah.
	Right?
	I mean, because the women want the gold for the children, but the men want the eggs for For the children.
	So men are like just complete egg digging whores.
	And men are usually, we've kind of trained ourselves to say, okay, well, if you have a lot of money, say, okay, well, I've got a lot of money.
	So women are going to be interested in me, I guess, right?
	But, you know, I don't think Anna Nicole Smith found that cryptkeeper in a wheelchair sexually exciting, but she...
	I married him because we all know how happy all that money makes people, which is why she never overdosed and died.
	So men are kind of wary of this and say, okay, well, I've got a lot of money, so I'm going to get some gold-dingy horse and some nice ladies and nice women or whatever, but my money is a factor.
	My money is a factor.
	And like Muhammad Ali said, you know, what I want to do...
	A couple of quotes of his I like.
	One is, if I swing at you and I miss, you die from the pneumonia.
	But he also said, I want to go down the street just dressed in a t-shirt and old jeans.
	I'm going to go down there.
	I'm going to find some woman who doesn't even know who the hell I am.
	And she's just going to love me for who I am.
	And then I'm going to take her back up the road.
	We're going to go to my mansion and drive around in my Rolls Royce.
	And she's going to be so happy, but she won't even know I had all that money when I first met her.
	And I think that stuff is fantastic.
	So men know that this is the gold digger whore stuff is something that we recognize as men.
	But I don't think women have quite got that as clearly yet.
	That the men are just egg digging whores.
	And then they're like, well he had sex with me and then he never called me again.
	It's like, well yeah, because he's pursuing the Trout slash frog squirt in the stream strategy of reproduction, which is squirt and move, squirt and move, squirt and move, right?
	Basically, you're a cum-based sliding life form.
	Keep going, right?
	And I just don't think that women are quite as get it.
	Some rich old fart, like someone sent me an email once about how can you spot...
	A billionaire from behind, right?
	And it's this tubby fat guy with this hot woman and you can just see them from behind, right?
	And so there's these jokes that men sort of make about if you've got money, then you can attract gold digging horse.
	And they're, you know, going to pry you, pry the money out of you and move on if there's someone else to attach to.
	But I don't think that women have quite have gotten the men of the egg-digging whores, a lot of them.
	And they're just, you know, they'll say whatever, this and that.
	Because they think that the man's interested in them.
	The man's just interested in the eggs.
	And then the woman is like, well, he had sex with me and he doesn't seem to be that interested.
	I can't get him to commit.
	Or it's like, that's because he's an egg-digging whore.
	Yeah, that's true.
	So, anyway, I just sort of wanted to mention that.
	I think women need to sort of wake up a little bit to that.
	Yeah, and what's horrible is they will often...
	I mean, I don't know about men because I don't do that, but women will often say something like, yeah, but that's love, man.
	That's love.
	And then...
	But that's what?
	Like, I love you, man.
	You know what I mean?
	Like, yeah.
	What, women say that to you?
	Yeah.
	That you know...
	Well, of course, people can say whatever they want, right?
	A man can say, I'm rich.
	It's like, okay, but at some point, it would be nice to see a bank statement.
	A woman can say, well, I love you, but at some point, it would be nice to see a definition of love.
	Exactly.
	When I wanted to talk to my ex-girlfriend about, you know, what's going on with my life and stuff, and I pretty much asked her, why does she think that she loves me?
	And if she could just, you know, give me like, I don't know, like three words of my characteristics, like anything, like not even positives.
	And she pretty much couldn't.
	She just does.
	Okay, so check this out.
	So check this out.
	This is from anncoulter.com.
	From what?
	Excuse me?
	This is a woman, her name is Wendy Davis.
	She's a Texas state senator running for governor.
	She became a liberal superhero last June when she filibustered a bill to prohibit abortions after 20 weeks.
	Blah, blah, blah.
	Anyway, so Davis was someone who could give the Democrats real people credibility based on her own personal story.
	An absent father, a sixth grade educated mother, a teen pregnancy, followed by life as a single mom in a mobile home, then community college, and at last, Harvard Law School.
	And it's like, wow!
	And CNN said, Wendy Davis, from teen mom to Harvard Law to famous filibuster.
	And Bloomberg said...
	Texas filibuster star rose from teen mom to Harvard Law.
	And in the UK, Wendy Davis, single mother from Trailer Park who has become heroine of pro-choice movement.
	And this is actually not true at all.
	I mean, she's not like some courageous single mom who just managed to get her way through Harvard Law School.
	And I'll just give you a tiny little bit of what the reality is, right?
	So she claims she was raised by a single mom, went to work at age 14 to support her family, became a single mother herself in her teens, and then, by sheer pluck and determination, pulled herself out of the trailer park to graduate from Harvard Law School.
	Well, not really.
	So, her family wasn't working class.
	Her father owned a sandwich shop and a dinner theater, which puts her solidly into middle class land.
	Um...
	Now, no one who works in the media would ever know this, but everyone whose parents run a family business starts work at 14, if not sooner.
	It's just what you do.
	You help out, right?
	Her parents were separated, but that's not the commonly accepted meaning of single mom.
	And let's see here.
	As for being a single mother at age 19, she wasn't a single mother in the traditional sense either.
	She was married at age 18, had a child at 19, and divorced her first husband, a construction worker at 21.
	So she got married young, blah, blah, blah.
	So...
	But into the 1950s, you know, nearly half of all firstborn children were born to married women under the age of 20.
	Half of them.
	Just a few years after her first divorce, this woman was on the make, asking to date Jeff Davis, a rich lawyer, 13 years a senior, who frequented her father's dinner club.
	In short, they married and had a child together.
	The next thing Jeff Davis knew, the rich lawyer, he was paying off her college tuition, raising their kids by himself and taking out a loan to send her to Harvard Law School.
	Fuck me.
	I'm sure.
	Then Wendy left her kids with the sugar daddy in Texas, even the daughter from her first marriage while she attended Harvard Law.
	So he's paying for her life, he's paying for her bills, and he's raising her children and paying for all their bills.
	Single mother power.
	Right?
	Even the child that...
	Yeah, because this is some hard luck story, right?
	Let's see here.
	Slater says Davis' kids lived with Jeff Davis in Texas while she attended law school.
	Wendy Davis claims her girls lived with her during her first year of law school.
	Let's say that's true.
	Why not the other two years?
	And what was the matter with the University of Texas Law School, which is where her children actually were?
	And let me just finish this because it ends as you can imagine it will.
	Yeah.
	The reason Wendy Davis' apocryphal story was impressive is that single mothers have to run a household, take care of kids and provide for a family all by themselves.
	But Wendy was neither supporting her kids nor raising them.
	If someone else is taking care of your kids and paying your tuition, that's not amazing.
	Mr.
	Davis told the Dowling Morning News that Wendy, right, so he basically, you know, raised her kids, paid for her to go to law school, paid for all her bills, and didn't even have him living with her, so obviously wasn't having the sex, which is usually part of that god-awful bargain.
	Mr.
	Davis told the Dallas Morning News that Wendy dumped him as soon as he had finished paying off her Harvard Law School loan.
	Quote, it was ironic, he said, I made the last payment, and it was the next day that she left.
	Oh, my God.
	Yoink.
	Yeah, that's awful.
	In his petition for divorce, Mr.
	Davis accused his wife of adultery, and the court made no finding on infidelity, but awarded the man full custody of their underage children and ordered Wendy to pay child support.
	Now, that's incredibly rare.
	That actually happened.
	Good Lord.
	What?
	I guess he was a very good lawyer then.
	Yeah, I don't know.
	But, anyway, so, I mean, this is, I mean, what a complete gold-digging whore, right?
	I mean, and he was an egg-digging whore.
	I mean, they kind of deserve each other.
	The fact that he'd be surprised is not that surprising, because, anyway.
	So, yeah, you want to kind of avoid that kind of stuff.
	But, yeah, so, basically, if a woman agrees, if a woman defends the woman who beat you up as a child, then, yeah, good with this.
	Yeah, and look, it's a challenge, right?
	Because you don't want to appear rich when you are dating, but at the same time, you don't want to appear to be a loser, right?
	Yeah, but...
	Right, so it's a challenge, right?
	Now that I've sort of opened up and re-evaluated my relationships, I just started to meet with an old friend, well, not a friend, but a girl that I've known before, briefly.
	And I decided that I would be completely honest from the beginning.
	And pretty much we've been like seeing each other for a couple weeks.
	And I kind of feel like, which is very strange, but maybe you've had it the same after you've stopped paying for women.
	That after a few weeks you kind of feel like you know this person better than all the girlfriends you've had accumulated.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I mean, once you're not buying people's time, you can actually get to know them, right?
	Once you're not an employer or a pimp, you can actually get to know people.
	And, you know, anyone who...
	Yeah, any woman who wants you to pay for her is going to make you pay.
	Because basically she's saying, I'm going to be sexually available to a man who puts out money, right?
	You flash your visa, I'll flash you my boobs.
	Well...
	Again, that is a sure sign of a disaster in the making and someone to be resolutely...
	You know, you've got to grit your teeth, you cross your legs, and you just avoid it, right?
	Yeah.
	Good for you.
	Thanks again for the amazing support because I don't think I would...
	I always was the kind of guy that knew that there was something more to life, but I just needed that final push and finding your radio.
	Well, and, yeah, of course, you have the curse of looks as well, right?
	Well, yeah.
	And the curse of looks is the challenge because, of course, if you're very good-looking, then men...
	I mean, women, of course, are going to get all hot and bothered for you just at a biological level in the same way that men do for attractive women.
	But they also...
	And this is true for...
	For women as well, as men, but you're a status symbol as well, right?
	Like, look what my vagina can catch, right?
	And you are the fly, and she is...
	Except that the fly just eventually dies and ends his misery, but I guess the same thing is true for men.
	Yeah, it is.
	But, yeah, I appreciate your call, and I certainly wish you the very best in your dating life.
	Thanks, thanks.
	Thank you.
	Yeah, anyone who can be bought is not worth the price.
	Yeah, pretty much my...
	Current date has paid for everything that she wanted to get.
	So I've never paid for her yet.
	So I think that's a good sign.
	Fantastic.
	All right.
	Fantastic.
	Good stuff.
	Good stuff.
	Thank you once again.
	And yeah, you're the man.
	Thanks, man.
	Keep me posted.
	And again, we can do one more, Mike, if you want to...
	All right.
	All right.
	Up next is Aaron.
	Aaron wrote in and said, I've heard you say that people should call the police in certain situations to resolve issues.
	How is this not immoral, seeing as the police are not effective at defending people in the moment and exists mostly to fine and put people in jail?
	Well, I don't know what you mean by immoral.
	Hi, how's it going?
	So, what I mean by it being immoral is, so if we can agree or accept that a police officer can't actually defend someone in the moment, like it's something that comes in after, but like, say you were...
	Yeah, well, hang on.
	Sorry, just before we start, have I said that people should call the police if there's an intruder in the home?
	Have I said people should call police if they fear they're about to get beaten up?
	I don't think I remember saying anything like that.
	I don't think we've even had those conversations with people.
	Right.
	Okay, yeah.
	Fair enough.
	I can't remember a specific time where you said that.
	Do I think that people should never call the police?
	No, I don't think people should never call the police.
	Here's one that I remember clearly.
	It wasn't about breaking into people's homes or anything.
	So there was this girl who was...
	She cheated on her boyfriend, and she was really drunk.
	And she went over to some guy's house with her friend.
	And it was kind of like a rapey kind of...
	Where this girl was too drunk.
	Oh, yeah.
	I remember.
	Sorry to interrupt, but for those who don't know.
	I said, basically, if her friend could not...
	This woman says that she was blackout drunk, which I personally didn't believe, but it doesn't really matter.
	But this woman said that she was blackout drunk and was unable to consent to sex.
	Right.
	And I said, so her friend should have prevented her from having sex.
	Because if you're unable to consent to having sex, then you are unable to express your wishes with regards to birth control or condom use, which means that you might end up pregnant or with an STD, which is a catastrophe.
	Again, I have a big problem with the no consent thing.
	If a woman is passed out, then having sex with her is clearly rape, right?
	Just as if a man is passed out, having sex with him, which is physiologically possible, is also rape.
	But again, because you can't consent to sex, it's like basically if I give you 50 bucks, that's generosity.
	If you take 50 bucks from my wallet while I'm passed out, you're stealing, right?
	So if we take the woman at face value and she was unable to consent to sex because she was blackout drunk, then her friend should have...
	couldn't get her out of the apartment, should have called the cops.
	And the cops would have prevented the man from having sex with her.
	They would have taken the woman probably to hospital because she may have had alcohol poisoning and she would have got the medical care and attention that she needed, right?
	Right.
	But it just, it seems like, or most of the time, you know, police escalate situations.
	They don't resolve them.
	And I get it.
	In this case, they could come in and they would have taken her to the drug tank or the hospital or whatever.
	But there's so much, like, unknowns with a police officer, like, just for who they are, like, the type of people who are Police officers are usually like, you know, narcissists or sociopathic or like don't generally like, you know, these aren't amazing, virtuous people.
	Yes, okay, but sorry, sorry to interrupt.
	Look, you don't, you don't have to convince me that some police are bad guys.
	I personally have never been, I've never had any problems with the police.
	I've never had any problems with them.
	They've always been reasonable to deal with, because I get that this is a dangerous and volatile situation, so if you're in the tiger tank, you don't poke it.
	I think you would be the exception, though.
	I don't think you'd be the rule.
	I think your interactions with the police would be an exception.
	It wouldn't be that this is what is generally happening when people are interacting with police.
	In these volatile situations.
	Well, look, I don't know how to argue if you say, well, this is generally what happens, and I say, well, this is not what happens to me, and you say, well, that's the exception, but you're just begging the question, right?
	Okay, well, then how about we look at it like this?
	So, if the woman calls the cop into the guy's house who was, you know, being rapey or whatever, and...
	This guy then goes to jail or whatever for attempted rape.
	No, he would not go to jail because you would call prior.
	Okay, so you're saying...
	Okay, I don't really understand.
	Okay, but let's say that the woman opens the door and the man is having sex with her passed out friend, right?
	So she should call the police because the man is raping her.
	But couldn't she not stop that situation in another way?
	Like, could she not throw the guy off?
	Could she not defend herself?
	Or does she have pepper spray or a knife or something?
	Like, it seems...
	Look, if...
	Okay, okay.
	So she could maybe do that.
	Absolutely.
	Right.
	But what if she's 98 pounds and has no pepper spray?
	She goes into the kitchen and grabs a knife or something.
	Oh, really?
	Do you think that's not going to be escalating the situation somehow?
	That is an escalation, but at least you're defending someone, you're defending your friend in the moment rather than calling in enforcers to take a man to jail, which I know he's initiated The use of force, but now this man is going to be rotting in a prison, which is completely immoral.
	Sorry, why is rotting in a prison completely immoral?
	Let's say he's a rapist, right?
	Let's say he roofied the woman, right?
	She got drunk really suddenly, really quickly.
	Maybe he drugged her.
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	It's pure speculation.
	This is just a theoretical situation, right?
	So, he roofied the woman and he's raping her.
	I have no problem with someone like that rotting in a prison.
	Now, I don't think that the prison should be the way they are.
	I don't think the government should run them.
	But I don't think the government should run the roads either.
	That doesn't mean I don't think there should be roads.
	Do you not see prison as just pure vengeance, though?
	What I see prison is as a way of keeping predators off the street.
	You know, when I go to the zoo, I don't want to mingle with the lions.
	So in the human zoo called the city, there are predators and there are prey.
	And the predators are the sociopaths and the narcissists and the manipulators and all this kind of stuff.
	And the politicians, of course.
	Now, if there's a guy out there who roofies women and rapes them, then they need to have him not do that.
	He needs to not be out there because my daughter might go to a bar and have a drink when she gets bigger.
	And so, until they can find a way to cure sociopathy or sadism, then these people need to not be in the general population, right?
	Well, okay, here are the two arguments that I hear about prisons.
	The one you've mentioned here is it's either to prevent future crimes, so for public safety, you put them in jail to prevent future crimes, or it's for punishment, that they need to atone for Whatever they did, they did it wrong.
	Now they have to serve their time to society.
	If I'm looking at it like that, okay, so if prison is supposed to be reforming them, it's obviously failed in that respect.
	It's not useful at all.
	Sorry, but nobody has succeeded in reforming criminals to my knowledge.
	I understand that.
	And also just to clarify, by criminals, I don't mean somebody selling a dime bag.
	I mean like real human predators, the kind of people who will tie you up and rape your wife or your husband in front of you, the kind of people who will torture you, the kind of people who will kidnap your children, the kind of people who will rape both men and women and children.
	I'm talking about baseline human predators.
	And there's no one I know of and the vast numbers of experiments and approaches have been taken.
	I don't know anyone who has ever been able to reform sociopathy.
	No, right.
	I get that.
	But I don't think that justifies letting them rot in a cell.
	And I understand that this sounds very radical and this is very different.
	Oh no, no, this is not radical at all.
	This is standard left-wing approaches.
	I'm not saying you're left-wing, but this is standard left-wing approach.
	Because you're using emotional language only for the predator.
	No, but...
	Right, so...
	No, no, listen, listen, because I'm talking about a woman who's being raped.
	And the only emotional language you're using is, rot in prison.
	Okay.
	In other words, you're using emotionally manipulative language to generate sympathy for the rapist, but you've expressed zero sympathy for the rape victim who might have now AIDS, who might have cervical cancer inducing viruses, she might have syphilis, she might have gonorrhea, she might have permanent problems with herpes, right?
	The man has drugged her and raped her possibly impregnating her and can you imagine being a woman faced with the choice of a child growing inside you whether to terminate that child which is not the child's fault or whether to have the child of your rapist or whether to give that child the rapist up for adoption what a horrifying experience that would be for the woman or to have a permanent STD or even a treatable STD is pretty gross or to have damage to your vagina if he doesn't use lubrication and so on so you're using emotional language designed to appeal only To the
	rapist's post-rape situation, you have not expressed a single shred of empathy for the victim of the rape.
	Okay, well, let me apologize then and say that, you know, I'm sorry for using emotionally manipulative language.
	And I do have massive sympathy and empathy for someone who would go through just like a terrifying, horrible situation like You know, being assaulted or raped or anything like that.
	It would just be horrendous, right?
	My problem with it is jail isn't self-defense.
	Like, it's not defense in the moment.
	It's like a punishment or a vengeance.
	Like, it's taking revenge after the fact, saying, well, the person isn't in danger right now.
	Like, the person was already raped, right?
	That person isn't in danger anymore.
	So now we're going to...
	No, no.
	Look, when a tiger gets out in a zoo, and it's happened in some zoo in the U.S., some kids were throwing sticks at a tiger and it leapt the fence, right?
	What did they do with the tiger?
	Even though the tiger killed one of the zoo attendees, what did they do with the tiger when they captured?
	Right back in the zoo, in the cage, I'm sure.
	They put it back in the cage.
	Does that bring the person that they killed back to life?
	No, but the standards for a tiger and human are completely different.
	It's not immoral to put a tiger...
	Why?
	Because a human is self-aware and is sentient and understands things and a tiger has no rights.
	Which means that the human is far more culpable for evildoing than a tiger is.
	I understand he is culpable and I understand that he's responsible.
	I'm just saying that Jail is not self-defense.
	So to confine someone against their will...
	But so what?
	No, jail is not self-defense.
	And it's not self-defense to put the tiger back in its cage.
	But it prevents the tiger from eating other people.
	Right, I get that.
	And that's where I feel uncomfortable, is confining someone to a cage against their will.
	I'm not okay with that.
	I understand that they are an evil person.
	Or they have done evil things and they're...
	And you know that they're very likely to repeat, right?
	So the majority of rapes are done by a very small number of men who rape repeatedly.
	Right.
	And also, like, the average pedophile goes through hundreds of victims before they get to prison.
	Right.
	Hundreds of victims.
	Right?
	So when you catch...
	A rapist, you most likely have caught a serial rapist.
	And when he's in jail, he's not raping people outside the prison system.
	Right, so you're saying you have to keep him there to prevent future crimes which he may commit or is statistically likely to commit.
	But he hasn't actually committed the crimes.
	So to determine if this guy is going to...
	You're saying, well, there may be future crimes, therefore we can put him against his will in a jail because he may do something.
	Wait, wait.
	What are you talking about against his will?
	Again, you're using this manipulative language.
	It's true that he's not there by choice, right?
	No, but look, if things being acted against your will is a big problem, what about his victims?
	Right.
	You haven't talked about, well, the rapist was raped against your will, or the guy he killed was killed against his will, or the guy he beat up was beat up against his will.
	You're only talking about the will of the criminal, of the violent predator, not of his victims.
	But what is him being in jail going to do for the victim?
	Well, we're just going in circles here.
	I mean, what's the point of having this conversation?
	I keep telling you it doesn't defend against anyone who's already dead, but it prevents future crime.
	Right, but you just said I'm not talking about the victims of the people who were the victims of this man.
	Yes, but the future crime!
	The future crime!
	What about the people he's most likely going to rape when he gets out?
	Right.
	It just seems...
	I guess I just don't understand that argument.
	Okay, let me put it to you this way.
	Let's say you're trapped in the San Diego Zoo in 2007, right?
	There's a tiger out there and you just saw him rip apart a teenage boy.
	Right.
	Right?
	You can't leave the building and you don't know if the tiger can get in the building, right?
	What do you most want?
	To get away from the tiger and not be hurt by the tiger?
	You can't get away from the tiger because the tiger is a lot faster than you are.
	The tiger knows the zoo and you don't know where the tiger is.
	What do you most want to happen?
	I want to kill the tiger or have the tiger be put in a cage or something like that?
	Exactly.
	You want your environment to be safe by having the predator back in the cage, right?
	Right.
	But I still don't understand the animal thing.
	No, no, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
	Hang on, hang on.
	What if there is a shooter in the zoo?
	Not a tiger, a shooter.
	And you just saw him gun down a teenage boy.
	Right?
	You don't know where he is, but you know the building you're in is not locked.
	And you think there may be more than one.
	What do you most want to happen?
	Absolutely anything that will prevent me from getting shot by the guy.
	So if the man needs to be shot in order to save the future crime that's imminent, potentially against you, you're fine with that, right?
	I'm not happy, but that's what needs to happen, right?
	I'm completely fine with it because it's in the moment.
	It's direct.
	It's self-defense.
	But no, no, no, no.
	So let's say that...
	What is the difference between 10 minutes and 10 days?
	Um...
	Time scale, I guess.
	It just seems to me vengeance.
	Like, if you go after someone 10 days later, and they're just sitting in a coffee shop somewhere...
	No, no, no.
	No, you're willfully invading the point, because you're too smart to not get it, right?
	You want someone put in a cage because they represent a threat to you in the next 10 minutes or hour, right?
	Right.
	Like, I just want that situation to be over with.
	Whatever...
	Whatever needs to happen for that situation to be over with and me to be safe.
	Yeah, you don't know.
	Don't give me this mealy mouth stuff.
	Look, you want the situation to be over by him being shot or captured, right?
	Now, do you want the police to hold on to him or do you want them to say, don't do that and then go home?
	I don't know.
	I have troubles with that.
	Oh no, come on, come on.
	No, don't wimp out on me now.
	You want the police to disarm him and keep him, right?
	To contain him.
	I honestly do not want him in a jail for 30 years.
	No, no, no.
	I'm asking you in the moment.
	We're not talking about 30 years.
	You don't want the police to say, with a megaphone, please don't shoot any more people and then go home, right?
	Would you feel safe?
	Of course you wouldn't, right?
	Because he's already been killing people, right?
	So you want the police to disarm him or shoot him if they can't disarm him, and then you want them to put him in the back of a car in handcuffs, right?
	Right.
	So you want people who are going to commit crimes which could put you at risk in the near future to be disarmed and kept in a cage, right?
	Whether the cage is the back of a car or some holding cell at the police station or whatever, that's what you want because that is vivid to you.
	That is immediate to you, right?
	But how is it any different for the future victims of someone, right?
	So in the...
	I think it was in the 80s.
	New York was insane, right?
	There were like 2,600 murders every year and then they just started locking up criminals and it went down to like 600 a year.
	Right.
	I think it's because...
	It works!
	I'm not saying it's the right solution.
	I'm not saying it's the right solution.
	But for sure, if a serial rapist is in prison, he's not raping outside the prison.
	That much we know for sure.
	Now, whether there's a way to figure out how to cure the serial rapist, or whether there's a way to...
	But we don't want to let the serial rapist out in order to find out whether he's a serial rapist by having him rape you, right?
	Right.
	And again, I'm not saying the state should do it, and the state obviously shouldn't be in charge of it, but until somebody knows how to cure sadism, sociopathy, human malevolence, and to my knowledge, nobody has any clue how to do that yet, and I don't think it can be done, because I think it's a whole developmental phase that occurs from birth to like four or five years of age, but that's neither here nor there, it's just my opinion with some science behind it.
	But until we know how to cure I mean, if somebody has a life-threatening disease that is airborne and they're out there sneezing in a mall, would you be comfortable having them quarantined in a hospital?
	Yes.
	But no, then they're just rotting away in a hospital room, right?
	No, if they're out there and can be patient zero for a plague, in other words, if their actions while free are incredibly dangerous to other people, Then I don't see how we could let that person be free.
	Right, but that's like an objective, like we can see that for sure they will infect other people kind of thing.
	Right, which is why we go through due process in an ideal society.
	It's why we go through due process in order to convict someone of a crime.
	Right, yeah, in an ideal society.
	And it's just hard, like, I guess maybe it's coming from like...
	I want people...
	Where is it coming from?
	Why is this even an issue for you?
	I mean, you're currently calling in prison, right?
	I want people to take responsibility for their own defense.
	It really makes me uncomfortable to think that people are like, oh, I'm just some helpless person in this situation and I need to call in these enforcers.
	And it's like, well, we wouldn't even need them if people...
	We don't even need the police if people would just...
	We're able to defend themselves.
	And, you know, I understand the laws are in different countries.
	They're not able to do that, but...
	Wait a second here.
	Are you saying that, like, little old ladies wouldn't need any kind of enforcers if, like, six-foot-two teenagers take their purse because they could do what?
	Like, spray them with blue rinse?
	Well, yeah, but the enforcer isn't actually going to help the old lady because the enforcers don't do anything in the moment.
	Like, the guy's going to take...
	Oh my God.
	I feel like we're having the same conversation round and round.
	We just had this whole conversation about if a guy who steals purses from little old ladies is in jail, little old ladies will not have their purses stolen by that guy.
	So of course the police are helping her.
	It just seems like they're not actually doing anything because people are still stealing purses every single day and jail is not a deterrent and jail doesn't cure anyone.
	So it's like, yeah, we can put that one guy in jail, but it's...
	Wait, wait, wait.
	So are you saying that if, hang on, are you saying that if more violent criminals are jailed, that has zero effect on the crime rate?
	I'm sure it would.
	I don't know the numbers, but I would assume that, yes, it would.
	Wait, wait, wait, no, no, no, no.
	You just know, listen, if you're passionate about a topic, you got to goddamn well educate yourself on that topic first, right?
	Otherwise, you're just emotionally spraying nonsense, right?
	So, you need to look that up.
	I can tell you that if you put violent criminals in jail, the crime rate doth go down.
	Now, I'm a big fan of self-defense, too.
	I think anybody should be able to carry whatever weapons they want.
	No problem with it.
	I think we're on the same page as far as that goes.
	I'm not a big fan of the state.
	I'm not a big fan of the police system, right?
	But the reality is, if...
	But this is different from the question of, if you put violent criminals in jail, does the crime rate for violent crime go down?
	Yes, it does.
	Now, if you don't even know that, then you are emotionally driven by this and you're not thinking critically or rationally, right?
	So my question is, why is this an issue for you?
	Why is this so important for you?
	To the point where you have very strong opinions and no facts.
	Yeah, I wouldn't say I have no facts, but in that scenario, yeah, you're right.
	You've not given me—you tell me a fact you've given me.
	Well, the average response times for police are huge.
	You haven't given me those facts yet.
	And I'm not arguing with that.
	So first of all, you haven't given me those facts yet.
	And secondly, I have never disputed that the police will not defend you in the moment.
	Of course not.
	They can't.
	It's an emergency response, and of course they're going to arrive late.
	But guess what?
	Even in a free society, there's not going to be police teleporters.
	They're always going to...
	Of course, I've always talked about prevention in terms of treating children well, prevention in terms of get out of bad neighborhoods.
	Of course.
	But...
	You tell me a fact that you've given me so far that's not like rotting in a cell, manipulative crap, right?
	What facts have you given me in this argument as yet?
	I get...
	It doesn't seem...
	I'm not trying to corner you as a bully.
	I don't think you would see it as a fact, and maybe it's not a fact, but I just, I still, even though you put someone in jail for future crimes, And to prevent future crimes, I think it's a fact that that is just taking revenge on somebody.
	So are we taking revenge on the tiger by locking the tiger up?
	Are we taking revenge on the shooter by locking the shooter up?
	Who cares?
	I just want to get out of the building alive.
	Maybe it's weird.
	Maybe it's...
	And so what if it is revenge?
	So what if it is revenge?
	It still doesn't alter the fact that if he's in prison, he's not committing crimes outside of prison, right?
	Well, if it is revenge, then it's immoral, right?
	Like, it's not Why?
	What's wrong with revenge?
	Because it's taking action after the fact when you're no longer in danger.
	So you'd be the initiator.
	If you go out and take vengeance on someone, you're initiating force on them.
	So if someone breaks into your house and steals your stuff and runs away, and then a month later you see him First of all, that never happens.
	And secondly, what does this have to do with anything we're talking about?
	We're talking about due process and the incarceration of serial violent criminals.
	Because I've given you arguments with the degree to which rapists are serial rapists, pedophiles are serial pedophiles, and so on.
	And thieves are most likely serial thieves unless it's like Winona Ryder Star shoplifting.
	So the scenario that you're talking about I don't know if it's ever happened and certainly has nothing to do with our discussion.
	So my argument then goes back or my question goes back to what are we really talking about here?
	Why is this important to you?
	Help me understand.
	Do you have family members in prison?
	Have you been the victim of a violent crime?
	Have you committed a violent crime?
	Why is this even so important to you that you have all of these very strong emotions about things which you have barely any facts about?
	I've just had run-ins with a lot of police.
	Not a lot of run-ins, but I've had run-ins with police.
	And I've been in situ...
	Can you give me some context?
	I don't know what run-ins means.
	Everyone's had run-ins with the police, right?
	Non-violent stuff like drugs and possession and stuff like that.
	So have you been arrested for possession?
	And did you end up being tried or did you plead?
	Yeah.
	Were you charged?
	I was released with a promise to appear in court, and I had to go to the court.
	If I pled guilty, they were willing to do things that would be more beneficial to me, and I didn't plead guilty.
	Oh, so you went to trial?
	Yeah.
	And what happened?
	Nothing major, because that crime was, or the possession was a very small possession of just marijuana, which is ridiculous that I, in my opinion, that I was even arrested for the small amount that I had.
	And I have a record now, and I received a fine, but no jail time or anything like that.
	And what does the record mean?
	mean you can't be bonded or you can't work for certain places?
	And is that a permanent record?
	I haven't done this, but if I ever needed to do so, I could get a part in it.
	If I went through that legal process, you can do things to get it dealt with.
	Right.
	And, you know, I mean, I'm completely on your side about this.
	I think that the war on drugs is despicable and vile.
	And this is why, I mean, I say to people like there's no high that is good enough to put yourself through this kind of risk.
	And I'm incredibly sorry for what happened to you, and this is horrendous.
	But you know, like, I didn't talk about, well, this woman went to a place where someone offered her a joint, and therefore SWAT teams should have come in through the window and beheaded him with a...
	And I get that.
	Right, so I'm entirely on your side with regards to this, and your view of the police, who are...
	They are enforcement robots.
	You program them and they enforce.
	I mean, I don't know of any police.
	I'm sure there have been some in the history of the world who say, this law is unjust.
	I refuse to enforce it, right?
	I mean, they got a pension.
	They got a club.
	And, you know, they kick out police who are too intelligent, right?
	And if you've got an IQ over 120, they're like, no, no, you'll be too bored.
	Forget it.
	For some of the places, right?
	So, you know, I'm with you 150%.
	If you want to have drugs in a free society, have drugs in a free society.
	Nobody should be able to interfere or throw you in jail or scare you or put anything on your record or anything like that.
	I mean, assuming you're not driving a helicopter or flying a helicopter while stoned, I've got no problem with you doing what you want to do with your own body.
	So your view of the police, I think, is...
	Obviously emotionally very strong and I can completely understand why that is the case.
	How did you get caught?
	It was just really stupid.
	Me and my friend were smoking from a bong in his car in like a parking lot late at night.
	Like we just pulled over into this parking lot and I don't know if they were just driving by or Maybe there was some complaint or something, but we had the lights off and everything like that.
	And they just came up to us and sort of asked us what we were doing.
	And we were just like, oh, we were just pulled off to the side here.
	We're looking for directions of where to go on our phone kind of thing.
	And they were just like, get it out of the car.
	And we kind of just asked them like, oh, yeah, well, we can totally get out of the car, but can you just tell us like what the problem is?
	Like, what did we do wrong?
	Kind of thing.
	And they just kept saying, get out of the car, get out of the car.
	And we kept saying, well, give us a reason and we're more than willing to comply.
	And they then just like ripped open the doors and threw us out of the car and slammed us up against the windows and put us in handcuffs.
	And then they literally went under my seat and found a gram of marijuana and then went under my friend's seat and found one gram of Of marijuana and just like held it up and they're like, what the fuck is this?
	What the fuck is this?
	And like, we're just like, oh, it's marijuana.
	And I don't know, it was like we were these evil, horrible people.
	Like they were just really intense about it and like really serious and pretty violent in how they handled us.
	So you were going to drive stoned, right?
	My friend was, yeah.
	What do you think of that?
	I know that this isn't going to sound great, but I've had a lot of friends who smoke weed and it doesn't seem to affect their driving.
	I know they could just be completely lucky and that doesn't prove that it's safe or anything like that.
	I guess it's just in my experience.
	Do you think that marijuana lowers...
	Your reaction times?
	No, not in driving.
	I read this thing where marijuana affects your brain.
	The part that does mathematics and calculating math and stuff like that, it really affects that part of the brain.
	But the part where you're actually used to...
	Driving is a really passive thing, apparently, on the brain.
	And from what I read, these people were saying that it didn't seem to Um, affect that in the same way as alcohol would.
	Wait, it doesn't seem to affect it in the same way as alcohol, but the question is, does it affect driving competence, particularly in young drivers, right, who aren't as experienced?
	It's never good to drive drunk, but if you've had 30 years of driving experience, then driving drunk is less bad because...
	I mean, not saying it shouldn't be wrong or illegal, but you've had lots of experience, right?
	It's one thing if you're drunk and you've been an expert skier for 30 years, you can probably still ski down a hill, but if it's your second time on skis and you're drunk, then it won't be good, right?
	So you guys were young guys without a lot of driving experience and were...
	Stoned getting stoned in in a car which then you would drive right right and I think this article was saying that it didn't affect that part of the brain But I know there are Conflicting studies about that and there's some stuff that says it does and some so I'm not certain about that I'm just sort of saying what I read Yeah,
	I don't know that a lot of people will have I mean if anyone can get me a study in the chat room or Mike if you can get me one in Skype and I am curious.
	It would seem to me that it would have an effect on driving, but I'm certainly willing to hear evidence to the contrary.
	But when you were doing the part in the car, did you at that time have any certain knowledge about its effects on your friend's ability to drive?
	No, all I had was personal experience.
	So I didn't have any sort of certainty about it.
	Right.
	So you were certainly taking a risk, right?
	And not just with your own lives, but with other people's lives as well.
	Right.
	Well, yeah, he was driving, but yeah, I know what you mean.
	Okay.
	But you were there, right?
	I wasn't risking someone else's life, right?
	I was a passenger.
	Well, did you tell him not to smoke because he's driving?
	No, I guess not.
	Right.
	He says, no, you're laughing, but is this funny?
	Um, no.
	No.
	I guess it...
	Right, so...
	Because I'm trying to...
	Look, I'm not trying to say that the war on drugs is good.
	Obviously not, right?
	But I don't want stone people driving.
	I'm just...
	Look, again, I'm happy to hear the studies or whatever, if anyone can find something.
	But I don't want...
	Because driving is, like, on the highway in particular, or, you know...
	You know, it's, like, split second.
	Split-second can be a disaster.
	And I'm not hypervigilant, and I've never had a car accident, but I am very aware that driving is a split-second problem.
	Right.
	Yeah, it is.
	I agree with that.
	Again, I read that study a while ago, so I'd have to go look for it.
	But yeah, we can leave it sort of like that if you want, like uncertain.
	But just going back to something else we were talking about earlier, I used to be a drug addict and being friends with a lot of drug addicts and being in that circle, For obvious reasons, there's always this thing where it's like you never call the cops, no matter what.
	Calling the cops is not okay because there's drugs around, no one wants to get in trouble.
	So we would always come up with other solutions of dealing with problems that didn't involve the cops.
	So for me, it's like, oh, well, I know that there's these other solutions out there.
	Instead of putting someone in jail, There was one time when me and my friends, we were all getting high, and this guy was on a hallucinogen, and he was having a really, really bad trip.
	And he was being, like, aggressive and dangerous.
	Like, he was just rampaging through the house, like, punching holes in walls and screaming and knocking over tables and couches and all this kind of stuff.
	And we're just, like, really scared.
	We're like, oh, God, what are we going to do?
	So we just kind of, like...
	Wait in the hallways see where he goes into another room and then we just ran out of the house and Just went to a park and we just hung out at a park for like two hours or whatever and then we came back home The house was a mess and destroyed but like he was gone.
	He just left somewhere and you know, no one was hurt or anything property was damaged, but You know, we didn't have to call the police We didn't have to get him arrested.
	We didn't have to give him a record for that and Yeah, it sucks that the house was messed up, but even though he was doing something wrong, it's almost like, well, if there's that other solution, I'd rather not have this guy have a record.
	I'd rather not this guy be in jail.
	I don't know if that makes any sense or not.
	No, I get it.
	If you're doing a bunch of stuff that's illegal, then you don't want to call the cops.
	Right, right.
	But the problem is you're extrapolating a sort of personal fear of the police as a result of illegal activities to some grand theory of Police and incarceration, but not with any facts, right?
	So, I mean, obviously, you need to...
	Even if you're not...
	And you're like, well, I don't know.
	Maybe I haven't read the studies in a while.
	But, you know, you don't want to...
	You don't want to fulfill the stereotype of, like, people who are stoned or just kind of dazed and think they know stuff when they don't and all that.
	I mean, you don't want to...
	You don't want to...
	Go counter to the stereotype, right?
	Well, I'm just trying to give you my thoughts on it.
	And maybe those aren't very useful or anything.
	But I just...
	There seems to be better ways in my experience, and even though I'm not a drug addict now, and I haven't used drugs, and there's no threat of going to jail because of that, I still would just be really apprehensive about calling the cops.
	Of course.
	I understand that.
	But you want to, at least I think, you want to distinguish between Capturing a predator as opposed to you guys now again in a free society I you know until I'm just reading an article here about there was a test actually where the drivers who were stoned the instructor had to grab the wheel to stop this person from swinging wide and hitting the photographer and all that kind of stuff driving under the influence whether it's drugs or alcohol
	I mean a recent study 12% of drivers in America stopped on a Friday or Saturday night have been drinking.
	That's a terrifying statistic.
	I mean, it's like, what, 35,000 people die on the roads every year in the US? I mean, people are fucking nuts when it comes to driving under the influence.
	And I don't know if they feel like they're immortal or bulletproof.
	But if stupidity causes its own demise, that's one thing.
	But if stupidity often causes the demise of the innocent, that to me is crazy.
	A vehicle is a giant metal weapon.
	It's a tank.
	And people need to be clear-headed when they're driving.
	And I'm not happy that you guys, even in a free society, I wouldn't be happy if you guys were...
	Driving high as young drivers.
	And again, you know, the studies would have to come in and all that.
	But I generally think that a clear head is better for driving.
	I don't even like people to drive when they're angry.
	Because people drive like idiots when they're angry.
	You know, like you, I've had people, you know, they come, I go the speed limit, I'll maybe edge over, I go the speed limit.
	But I'll edge over to pass, but I go the speed limit.
	And, you know, partly because, I mean, I understand what can happen if the police get involved in your life.
	And, you know, people come up behind me.
	They're flashing their lights.
	It's like, no, fuck you.
	I'm going the speed limit.
	If you want to go and have an accident, go have it somewhere else.
	And then they'll, like, have people on a narrow highway, like, pass three cars and then just zip in before some truck comes along.
	And it's like, fuck you.
	You should not be on the road.
	Right.
	Like, fuck you.
	Go home and take the fucking bus because you are a monster and you're gonna get someone killed who's innocent.
	And if you want to pull a pole walker and wrap yourself around a tree, that's your business.
	And the tree's business, and I'm sorry for the tree.
	But if you're going to be out there playing nice with big people, with this giant vehicular massive sled of death running around at 100 kilometers an hour, then you need to be responsible.
	So I'm shocked.
	I'm always shocked at the number of people who do this kind of stuff.
	I'm incredibly sorry, and we don't have time to get into it, but I get that, you know, I mean, I've talked about this many times, the degree to which drug abuse is the result of a highly dysfunctional child abuse.
	And obviously, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm guessing that you didn't have the happiest time as a child.
	Right, no, of course not.
	And yeah, I get the whole drug thing, and, you know, I don't do that stuff anymore, so, you know, you don't have to worry about that.
	Can I just ask you one question?
	If you were in that situation that I was in with the violent guy in the house and you weren't on drugs and that was the only one guy on drugs, would you be completely comfortable and fine with calling the police on that guy instead of doing...
	Wait, you mean if my friend was so drunk she couldn't consent to sex and I found some guy having sex with her?
	Right.
	Okay.
	Yeah, we can use that.
	I would tell...
	No, I mean, I wouldn't just immediately call the cops.
	I'd tell them to get the hell off, or I was going to call the cops.
	And if he got off, then I'd get to a place of safety, and then I'd call the cops, because someone like that should not be out in human society.
	If you are willing to rape a woman who's unconscious, then you are not fit to be in human society, at least for whatever period of time it takes for whatever help you can get in prison, and there is some help you can get in prison.
	Right.
	But that's what we've got at the moment, you know?
	I mean, the governments run the libraries.
	Does that mean I can't go and take out a library book?
	No, it doesn't mean that.
	I mean, this is the system that we have.
	And the degree to which we can get human predators off the streets, I think, is positive.
	Now, again, this doesn't have anything to do with the woman's situation, because I don't know what was going on.
	I don't know what the truth was or anything like that.
	But in a theoretical situation...
	Yes.
	I wouldn't necessarily call the cops in the moment, but I think that people like that do need to be called to account.
	I think they need to, if you're going to drug someone and rape them, yeah.
	I mean, that could be my daughter.
	You need to be the fuck off the streets if that's what you're doing and that's proven and there's evidence and you're found guilty and all that.
	Then, yeah, I am very, very comfortable with having people like that off the street because if I'm in a zoo and there's a predator loose, I want that fucker away from my throat and away from the throats of my family.
	And if there's a shooter in a mall, I want someone to either shoot that guy with a blow dart or blow his fucking head off because I'm not taking a bullet because some nut job hasn't dealt with his issues or is on the wrong meds.
	And I am very comfortable with people being taken out of society Who have proven abundantly that they are only going to cause misery, pain, pregnancy, STDs and God knows what else to other people in society.
	I don't view any difference between a mammalian predator that is bipedal and one that's a quadruped except that the bipedal one has moral responsibility whereas the quadruped doesn't.
	So the reason I bring in animal metaphors is to point out Not that animals are like people, but because whatever you think is just for an animal is far more just for a human being, because a human being has a moral choice, which an animal doesn't have.
	My whole life is designed around never getting into a situation like that.
	My whole life is designed around never end up in a situation where I have to figure out whether I'm going to go to the kitchen and get a knife and stab someone who might be raping someone or call the cops.
	That's so incomprehensible to my life as a whole.
	You could design a life where that doesn't happen.
	I can't even imagine, but if I were somehow to end up in that situation, Yeah, I would definitely want someone like that.
	If someone was a rapist, I would definitely want someone like that out of society for X period of time.
	I don't know what that period of time is.
	I'm no criminologist.
	I don't know what could be done to make that person better.
	But I would rather somebody be, as you say, rotting away in a cage rather than rotting away on unconscious women they drugged.
	Right.
	Okay.
	Yeah, I don't know why I'm still having troubles with it, but it must be just something else that I need to look at, and I can do that on my own time.
	That's fine.
	Well, if you were abused as a child, and if what your parents did were illegal, then the cops basically didn't help you when you were a child, but then they dragged you out of a car when you were an adult, right?
	Right, right.
	Okay, well, I think that's good for me.
	Okay.
	All right.
	Well, thank you very much.
	I appreciate your call.
	And thanks, everyone, of course, for your call.
	I delightfully await the deluge of, you're a cop lover, whatever comes after this.
	And I'm certainly happy to be corrected on any facts that I have mistaken.
	And I will certainly put those first and foremost on Saturday Night Show if they should come pouring in, as I'm sure that they will.
	And thanks again, Mike, for running a great show.
	Thanks to all the callers.
	FDRURL.com slash donate to help out the show.

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