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July 28, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

03:52:54

2758 The State as Secular Religion - Saturday Call In Show July 26th, 2014

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	Hello everybody, this is Evette Molly from Freedom Main Radio.
	I hope you're doing well.
	Yeah, we're going to have a show tonight.
	Let me tell you, up front I'm struggling through my nemesis, also known as Fluffy White Bread, which I had quite a bit of.
	For some reason it's giving me a carb crash, but it's okay because I'm propping myself up with java.
	I'm basically on the Elvis Presley, you know, pills to get you up, pills to put you down, yo-yo of optimum health practices.
	So, hope you're doing well.
	We got some calls, Mike.
	Let's get to them.
	All right.
	Up first is Richard.
	And Richard wrote in and said, Do you believe the modern progressive movement originally stood for equality and helping those in need, but has been co-opted to push cultural Marxism through movements like hashtag ban bossy and hashtag cancel Colbert?
	Or do you think that it's pretty much always been that way?
	Mm-hmm.
	Wow.
	Let's put everyone to sleep with a history lesson up front.
	This is the kind of stuff that makes people edge away from you at dinner parties.
	Well, what do you think, Richard?
	Well, I'd like to first give myself a little background with my political affiliation.
	I was originally a...
	I guess I would call myself a Marxist-Leninist when I entered community college.
	And I'm coming out of...
	Degree from my school with an IT degree as an anarcho-capitalist.
	And I believe as though the progressive movement, even though they do not understand economics at all, have always been for helping poor people out.
	And basically trying to Treat people as individuals who are basically all equal.
	I know that the Progressive Party jumped on the gay rights movement and just wanted to give gays the right to marry.
	Now I'm seeing that as a use for gender politics to thrive and cultural Marxism to be pushed.
	That makes sense.
	Alright, but why don't you tell me a little bit about what you mean by cultural Marxism?
	Again, for the people who don't know and make sure we're on the same page.
	Well, at least I think cultural Marxism is basically saying everything that we believe to be true in the progressive movement that Basically institutionalized racism against people who happen to be white straight males instead of what it used to be when the Democratic Party was first established as racism
	against black people during the institution of the Jim Crow laws.
	Yeah, I'm sorry.
	Did you want to go on more with that?
	Well, I mean, not really.
	I don't really know what else to say.
	Yeah, I mean, so for me, cultural Marxism is a way of taking down a free market economy by attacking all the structures that support it.
	It's a cowardly way, but a very effective way to overthrow Marxism.
	A relatively free country is to rot its social common law developed institutions from the inside.
	And Marxists can't take over the government.
	They can't win wars economically against the relatively free nations of the West.
	But they can tempt and nag and poison the cultural institutions that support the free market.
	And through that, they can bring about the collapse of the free market.
	And it's an astonishingly successful program.
	It has met almost no resistance whatsoever from those of us interested in defending what's left of freedom in the West.
	And it's not like an airstrike.
	It's just like termites.
	Basically, just your floors start collapsing and by the time you figure it out, your whole house is rotted out from the inside.
	It's something that's only possible because there's a state.
	If there was no state, then cultural Marxism, this kind of infiltration, would be impossible.
	So the way that they do it, and it's a long and complicated topic, so I'll just give you the very Brief version, and I don't claim to be definitive on this subject, of course, as is the case with almost all subjects.
	So the way that you diminish, of course, is you promote multiculturalism, which brings opposing tribes into mingling, which always creates huge problems in a society as multiculturalism increases, property crimes and violence increases, social trust withers and diminishes away, and it's an incredibly effective attack on the economy.
	The economy runs on cultural similarities.
	This does not mean racial similarities, but cultural similarities which engender trust, tribal trust, the in-group, out-group stuff.
	And when you bring lots of different cultural groups into a particular area, then a collapse of social trust, which incredibly harms the economy, occurs.
	So that's sort of one aspect.
	And of course, if you want to look at the opposite of that, you can look at the Jewish community.
	The Jewish communities, of course, have been around for over 5,000 years.
	And, I mean, you can't...
	Although a lot of Jewish people in the West promote a lot of multiculturalism, it sure as hell isn't happening a lot in the Jewish homeland of Israel where it's virtually impossible to immigrate there and it is practically impossible if you're non-Jewish so they're keeping a cultural diversity is incredibly rejected by Jews in Israel but you know quite promoted again not by all Jews but by a lot of Jews in the West so yeah multiculturalism is one way and a
	fantastic way to kill a culture Is to make it guilty.
	To make people ashamed of their history.
	To make people ashamed of where they came from and what they as a tribe or as a group, what their ancestors have achieved.
	And this is constant in cultural Marxism.
	So you've got the patriarchy, which is bullshit.
	You've got white male privilege, which is bullshit.
	You have colonialism, which is...
	Largely bullshit.
	It's not in so far as there was no such thing as colonialism.
	Of course there was, but in general the countries who were colonized do a lot better than the countries that weren't colonized.
	So I mean if you look at the countries that were colonized particularly by England, then those countries have higher per capita incomes.
	They're generally doing better as a whole than the countries that weren't colonized and That's sort of one aspect.
	And the second aspect is that if you want to look at a country that has not been colonized or threw off its colonial overlords and oppressors 400 years ago, you could look at Haiti.
	And Haiti is a complete crap hole.
	And so it's been unencumbered by Western standards of justice and social organization and government.
	And it's a complete...
	A crap hole.
	So you just make people guilty, right?
	So every time I talk about the West, you get the same bullshit that comes out.
	Oh, it's racist.
	Oh, colonialism.
	Oh, patriarchy.
	Oh, rape culture.
	I mean, it's just all they do.
	And it's the same goddamn thing that religious people do, which is they're just trying to make you feel guilty for being alive.
	It's also global warming and just whatever shit they can throw at you to make you feel ashamed.
	Like you have something to be ashamed of, like your history is shameful and so on, right?
	And I'm not, look, I don't like colonialism at all.
	But colonialism has been practiced by all cultures and all countries throughout history.
	Just like slavery, it's just that the West has done quite a bit to try and throw that stuff off.
	Where they say, oh, well, you see the whites, the Western race and so on.
	It was the First and Second World War and so on.
	But that was really the result of...
	A lot of leftist influences, as I've sort of gone into in history, in particular the institution of government schools, right?
	Children bond with whoever raises them, and when the government spends more time raising them than their parents, then they have a very grave difficulty saying no to the government and saying no to the government's demands, and they unconsciously begin to view the government As a parent and when the parent says be a share be nice you know have a welfare state be helpful to others or when the parent or the state says defend me and so on all this kind of nonsense it's um it's all just just complete nonsense and of all the cultures
	in the history of the world that has I think the greatest basis for pride it is Western European Culture that has as I've argued many times in the show provided by far the greatest benefits in the world to the world number one philosophy number two the free market number three the scientific method these are the three great boons that have occurred in human history and They came out of Western Europe and at least they achieved their full realization in in Western Europe in the last 2500 years and Western
	Europe has been fighting its overlords and the overlords sometimes win and sometimes the people win, but at least that struggle is occurring.
	It sure as hell isn't occurring much in places like Saudi Arabia or Sierra Leone or anything like that.
	I heard you say about how Government schooling basically makes children see the state as their parent figure because most of the time the people go into a public schooling system and then it harbors some sort of ideology where the state is supposed to take care of the
	children.
	I guess I would say in my childhood Most of my parents were kind of neglectful of me when I was younger and because of that I guess I saw a lot of parallels with my own life and with my own obsession of politics.
	So I sort of obsessed about politics and become a progressive and a communist and everything else like that.
	I'm guessing that I did that because I didn't really feel Too much of a connection with my parents.
	But now that I'm sort of self-actualized and I have an internship and I'm trying to make something of myself, I'm becoming more to the idea of libertarianism, where people have to take care of themselves and everything else like that.
	No, no, no.
	Libertarianism is not people taking care of themselves.
	That has nothing to do with the political philosophy.
	Libertarianism is don't use violence.
	Don't initiate the use of violence.
	Now, what that does in society, who cares?
	I don't care who dates each other, just don't rape each other.
	This idea that libertarianism is about selfishness or something like that, it's like saying, well, if you're against rape, you're just for sexual selfishness.
	It's like, no, actually, if you're against rape, you're against sexual selfishness.
	If you are against the initiation of the use of force, you are against sexual Human predation, like humans preying on each other like a bunch of jackals fighting over the leg of a gazelle.
	So it's just about the non-initiation of force.
	It doesn't have anything to do with, you know, you hear, and not you, but you hear these cliches, well, libertarianism is, I got mine to hell with you, and so on.
	It's like, well, that's like saying, well, if you're against rape, you're just like, well, I'm having sex to hell with you.
	Okay, let's say that's even true.
	But at least we're, you know, let's not promote the rape stuff.
	No, that's not actually what I meant.
	You know, I've been watching your show for quite some time, like six months or something like that.
	And I do understand that it has to do mainly with the non-aggression principle.
	But as I was trying to say, it seems as though because of the things that I've been more understanding of certain political ideologies, like that of libertarianism,
	not necessarily being what I said it was, but being like the way that you can help yourself is through actually trying to do things to better yourself and overall that would actually generally help the entire community.
	Especially with the non-aggression principle.
	Well, no, no, but see, you're trying to jump over the ban on rape to how internet dating sites work 50 years after people get that rape is wrong, right?
	I don't care.
	I don't care about any of that stuff.
	It doesn't, I mean, I've written books about it, so I don't want to mean like it's completely irrelevant and so on, but it doesn't fundamentally matter.
	So, we have an orgy of rape in the world, and we're just talking sort of about statism and the initiation of the use of force.
	All societies are founded on massive human predation, through debt, through taxes, through inflation, massive intergenerational, cross-geographical human predation.
	And there are those of us standing up and saying, we've got to stop using force and fraud to steal from the helpless, and in particular from the unborn.
	The children who are not even conceived should not be paying the bills for our rank materialistic greed.
	And, you know, they say, well, we don't own the earth, we only borrow it from future generations.
	Well, the same thing is true of the economy.
	We don't own the economy, we borrow it from future generations.
	There are those of us standing up and saying, we've got to stop using violence to pretend to solve these problems.
	And then people are saying, well, that just means you're selfish, or that just means you don't care about the poor.
	It's like, that's nonsense.
	I mean, we just got to stop using violence.
	Now, the other question that you had, if you don't mind me sort of backtracking for a sec, the other question you had was, did these progressives genuinely care for about the poor and there's a very simple answer to that and the answer to that is absolutely not.
	They care about the poor not in the way that you think.
	So progressives and Marxists and leftists and so on, they care about the poor in the same way that the church cares about sinners.
	The church has as its business model the production of sinners.
	The creation and production of sinners.
	That's the assembly line in religion.
	Sinner, sinner, sinner.
	Bad, bad, bad.
	Evil, evil, evil.
	Salvation, salvation, salvation.
	They're in the business of manufacturing sinners in the same way that a dairy farmer is in the business of manufacturing cows.
	And the production of sinners is essential because if a Priest comes to you and you are a happy, self-reliant, confident human being with close connections, people who love and support you and you have insurance and you have whatever, right?
	And you're happy and your life is great and a priest comes along and says, I'm here to save you, brother!
	You will say, from what now?
	From what do I need saving?
	So essentially...
	It's like the dietician offering to help you lose weight when you're already a very healthy weight.
	It's like...
	I think I'm okay.
	So the production of illness is the job of the fake curers, right?
	Production of imaginary illness is the job of the fake doctors.
	And so the poor are essential to Marxism and to leftism because the poor are the hell That they offer to save you from, or that they offer to redeem, right?
	Jesus goes into hell at the end times and pulls everyone back out.
	So they scare you with, A, you could be poor.
	So you better support a welfare state because it could happen to you.
	That's kind of the Rawlsian theory of justice argument.
	Yeah, and that's pretty funny because I actually can't, I mean...
	Leftism used to be sort of like an emotional response to me, so...
	Someone was talking to me about how we should not take taxes from people and pay for people to survive.
	Back when I was a leftist, I always thought emotionally, like, well, you're taking that from me and it's not necessary that I'm going to just take that and live off the system.
	I don't want to do that.
	That's my parents.
	I'm not that type of person.
	I want to get into this system.
	And pay money so other people can pull themselves out of the system.
	But until I actually understood economics, because I watched certain people like Milton Friedman and everything else like that in the School of Austrian Economics, I've basically essentially figured that out.
	And what I basically saw with the left, the progressive movement, was it was just all of these people who believed in the same thing that I believed in, maybe not the politicians that are in power, but the people who are in the left movement.
	But it seems as though that has gone astray and it's been hijacked by the social justice for you.
	No, it's not gone astray.
	No, it's not gone astray.
	It's not going to stray at all.
	Listen, you've got to think like the blank page.
	The blank page is the key to understanding human motivation.
	And the blank page is this.
	This is what you ask people from the left.
	Okay.
	You say, for a hundred thousand years, human beings lived at virtual starvation levels.
	I mean, do you know why we're one of the few animals that can run 20 miles straight?
	Because basically we ran our prey until they fucking died of a heart attack.
	They died of exhaustion.
	I mean, that's what it was like to get a meal.
	You had to run for 20 miles until the chest cavity exploded of the deer you were hunting, and it just would rather die on its knees in front of you than take another step.
	Right?
	For 100 or 200,000 years, however long you really want to measure the origins of the species, human beings lived a brute starvation level existence with an average lifespan of 20.
	I think it was 21 by the time the Roman Empire came along.
	And yes, it's true, if you made it to 20, you'd make it a lot longer, but infant mortality was ridiculously high.
	I mean, abysmally high.
	So for about...
	200,000 years, human beings lived in their own shit, dying of every illness known to mankind, and lived a starvation level existence.
	And that did not change hugely from about 100,000 BC until about 1780 or so.
	In agriculture earlier, but...
	And then...
	In the 1800s, it all changed.
	It all changed.
	The issues, the problems of starvation and waves of poverty and disease and death all began to change.
	And within a hundred years, caloric intake had more than doubled.
	Wages had more than doubled.
	A human's lifespan had gone up considerably.
	And then another 100 years after that, average human lifespan in developed countries is like 70 years old, 75 years old, 78 years old for women.
	Informatality has collapsed.
	And so you've got 100, 200,000 years, and then 100 to 200 years where everything changed.
	Now, if you really cared about the poor, you would try and figure out what Andy Grove used to call that strategic inflection point, that things where Everything changes.
	Those moments in time where everything changes and nothing goes back to the way it was.
	That's what you'd really focus on.
	And you'd say, what the hell happened?
	What happened?
	And whatever happened, let's do more of that.
	Well, you know what didn't happen?
	Re-fucking-distribution did not happen.
	It was not redistribution.
	Redistribution is the oldest idea known to mankind.
	Well, take from the rich and give to the poor and everybody will be middle class, right?
	This is...
	Just go to King Lear, right?
	King Lear has in it, basically the ideal world is one in which distribution shall undo excess and each man have enough, right?
	Distribution shall undo, which means level out excess.
	You've got too much.
	So someone's going to forcibly redistribute the money from people who've got a lot of money.
	And this guy was writing in the 16th century.
	The idea that we take from the rich and we give to the poor goes back to Robin Hood.
	I know it's misinterpreted, misunderstood.
	It goes back to ancient Rome.
	It goes back to ancient Greece.
	We're just going to take shit from those who have too much and give it to those who have too little.
	So the redistribution, the leftist argument of forced redistribution is the oldest idea known to mankind.
	What wasn't the oldest idea known to mankind was property rights and free trade.
	And that's what changed.
	Property rights and free trade.
	Changed radically, fundamentally, and permanently improved the human condition.
	And so, if you really cared about the poor, you'd say, holy shit, they had a really terrible time of it for 200,000 years when there was nobody who was rich.
	And you'd rather be a poor human being, you'd rather be a homeless human being in 21st century America than the king of France in the 18th century.
	Who would open...
	His bedroom windows to drink in the sights of late medieval Paris and would vomit because the stench was so bad.
	And so you would look at that and you'd say, what changed in the late 18th century through to now?
	What changed?
	It sure as shit was not redistribution because that had been an argument that had been made for thousands of years.
	It had been implemented for thousands of years.
	The people always took from the rich and always gave to the poor and everybody ended up broke and destroyed.
	And that cycle just repeated itself over and over again in human history.
	And so if you were a leftist and you really did care about the poor, you'd look at what actually solved the problem of poverty.
	And they don't.
	They don't.
	They just try to resurrect the oldest flesh and brain-eating zombie of the human species, which use guns, take stuff from people who've got a lot, and give it to people who don't have as much.
	And that is the same old bullshit.
	It comes right out of religion.
	It comes right out of ancient Rome.
	It comes right out of ancient Greece.
	It comes right out of ancient Egypt.
	It comes out of Shakespeare.
	It is the oldest and stupidest idea in human history.
	And it's a vote-buying idea, which is why it's always promoted by the church and by the ruling class.
	The ruling classes and the priests are parasites on human misery.
	They are parasites on human dysfunction.
	And because they farm and profit from misery and dysfunction, they aim to grow misery and dysfunction.
	And because through the government you appeal to the population as a whole, rather than people who have some fucking clue what they're talking about, You can go to the average IQ, and remember, in the 19th century, the average IQ was far lower than it was now.
	The average IQ, like in the late 19th century, it's off the top of my head, I think it was like 70 or 80, right, among whites.
	And so you say, to a dumb person, you say, well, that guy's got a lot, and this guy doesn't have enough, so let's take some from this guy and give it to this guy.
	And the dumb person says, yeah, that seems right.
	That's how it works in my family.
	If he has two beefsteaks and he has no beefsteak, we take one from him and we give it to him.
	Everybody has one beefsteak and we all get along.
	So idiots think that that's how you deal with the problem of poverty.
	And through the state, idiots matter.
	In a free society, they don't.
	Bill Gates and Steve Jobs didn't go and talk to the average idiot and say, what should we build?
	Anybody who's trying to fulfill Say's Law that supply creates its own demand is initiating.
	I didn't go to the world and say, what kind of philosophy would you like to hear?
	Because I already know that.
	And it sucks!
	Well, I'm just kind of confused by the prospect of why people don't actually ask the question, how did we get...
	Here in the first place with all of this income inequality in the first place and why prices are so high in the first place.
	No, no, no.
	You're not listening to what I'm saying.
	People don't ask that because it was lies and violence.
	That kept the human condition down in the fucking gutter for thousands and thousands and tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of years.
	It was lies and violence that kept us down below the level of the ticks that live on the ass of rats.
	And the violence came from the kings and the lies came from the priests and the witch doctors.
	Violence and lies, the two great and ancient enemies of philosophy.
	The two grim satanic forces in the world that the light of reason and evidence aims to dispel from the human heart and from human society.
	Lies and violence.
	Now, when human society for hundreds of thousands of years has adapted for a species within the human species, The sociopaths, the predators, the psychotics, sorry, the psychopaths or so on.
	When they have all developed to exploit lies and violence by calling lies faith and by calling violence law, by redefining it as the complete opposite of what it actually is.
	It's not revealed truth, people.
	It's lies!
	It's not law.
	It's an opinion with a club.
	You don't have rules when you have rulers.
	It's a fundamental reality of human life.
	You have no rules when you have rulers, because rulers are subjective, and rulers are there to manufacture rules.
	I said on Facebook the other day, tyranny is a shadow cast by sheep.
	You act on Like a slave, you breed the masters, and then the masters breed more slaves, and the slaves breed more masters.
	It is a cycle.
	It is a cycle.
	And the slaves have to break it.
	So how do you get the slaves to break out of the cycle?
	Hang on, hang on, hang on.
	So, human society evolved in the opposition of truth, right, to call lies, faith, and nationalism.
	And to call violence law and order.
	And so this whole system of lies and violence began to break down in the 19th century during the Industrial Revolution.
	And all of the people who had evolved to run the world through lies and violence started to say, Oh my fucking God.
	The whole farm is breaking up.
	Not just breaking down.
	The whole farm is breaking up.
	People are seeing the fences.
	They're seeing the electricity.
	They're seeing the farmers.
	They are now not so focused on running down a deer for 20 miles that it can actually take a moment to think about the world that they live in.
	And what did they want?
	Human misery, which is what the liars and the predators feed on, Was diminishing.
	And if human misery diminishes and property rights and free trade rule, there's no rulers.
	We were heading towards a state of voluntarism.
	So quick, get the kids!
	Get them into school!
	Holy shit, we can't have them thinking for themselves.
	We have to indoctrinate them for 15,000 hours straight because the market is beckoning them towards egalitarianism and opportunity.
	And it's solving their problems.
	So get them into school.
	Next, get them into a giant war.
	Get them so traumatized and broken.
	War is the manufacture of misery.
	War is the new original sin of the secular priesthood.
	Because war creates such a devastation of human misery that it becomes, it becomes the original sin that no sane human being can remotely believe in anymore.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	And so then you get them into war, which replaces the hell that no one believes in anymore by a very real hell that no one can avoid anymore, right?
	Yeah.
	And then you get them dependent on the ruling class, right?
	Why are people dependent on the priests?
	Because the priests hold the key to the salvation of a sin that they inflict.
	And so now you have the welfare state and the warfare state and the public sector workers and the pensionees and the retirement and Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, you name it.
	All of these people are now dependent on the state.
	And if you make people dependent on something, they will fight to the death to keep it alive because they believe if it's not alive, they will die.
	So it's a psychological thing?
	People keep the priesthood alive Because they believe that without the priesthood, they will go to hell forever.
	So they fight to keep the priesthood alive.
	People fight to keep the state alive because they believe without the state, they will starve.
	And the state has made, right?
	I mean, this is how you get people addicted.
	You give them free samples, and then you slowly ratchet up the price of the heroin, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	And so this creation of human misery, this creation of dependence on the ruling classes, and we are right back, right back to where we started, with one huge exception.
	We're right back to where we started.
	And now lies and violence run the world again.
	We almost got out.
	We got close to getting out.
	But the money classes, the aristocratic classes, the priestly classes, a lot of them jumped out of the church.
	And into the left.
	Where they put the state where God used to be and continue as normal.
	It's just a big search and replace.
	Our father, our leader, right?
	Who art in heaven, who is in power.
	Give us this day our daily bread.
	I voted for you, motherfucker!
	Give me my go-go juice.
	Hallowed be thy name!
	Romney!
	Romney!
	Obama!
	Obama!
	It is the same cathedral.
	They just replaced the stained glass.
	Let me finish, then I'll be quiet.
	So the idea that the left is interested in the elimination of poverty is ridiculous, because all you have to do is ask a leftist, how is poverty eliminated?
	And do you know what they'll say?
	We fought for an eight-hour workweek.
	We fought for an end to child labor.
	We fought for equality for women and minorities.
	Which is...
	You know, which is like me tripping Mike Tyson down a flight of stairs, then jumping up in his bloody body saying, Victory!
	I'm the best boxer in the known universe!
	I mean, the 8-hour work, I mean, parents don't want their kids to work, but they had to work, otherwise there'd be no food for them to live, right?
	So as you create wealth, then you create the capacity for children to not work and get educated, which then further grows wealth if it's the right education.
	So they have no idea.
	I mean, do you think people didn't want to work less in the 8th century?
	I mean, do you think people just woke up and said, uh, I guess some leftists told me it would be nicer not to stuff my kid up a chimney, but to send him to school?
	I'd never thought about that before.
	I mean, it's so ridiculous.
	It's so completely ridiculous.
	Of course people wanted to work less in the past.
	I mean, don't think your average fucking Egyptian slave was like, eight-hour day?
	Fuck no!
	I got nine tons of...
	Mortar to move and build a pyramid.
	Why would I want an 8-hour day?
	16 hours!
	17 hours!
	I'll do 20 hours if my back will take it.
	The average slave, Islamic slave, a slave in the Middle East, you know, getting castrated and working wherever the hell they were working.
	Do you think, like, I don't want my balls back and, you know, if you could give me a double shift, I'd be thrilled!
	Thrilled, I tell you!
	Ha!
	Of course people wanted less hours.
	It didn't take someone from the left to say, we should have an eight-hour workweek, and people were like, fuck, you know, I think they might have a point.
	I mean, it's true I'd rather shoot myself in the head with a spear gun than go back to work in the fields tomorrow, but it might be nice to work a little bit less.
	Oh my god.
	Or, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Oh, yeah.
	So anyway, so the idea that they take credit for fighting for a lower work week and so on.
	I mean, it was all happening anyway.
	The left, they come after freedom has created a trend and then they take credit for screwing up whatever trend is going on, right?
	So the left take credit for economic egalitarianism.
	That occurred, the Civil Rights Act, we got the blacks.
	No, blacks were doing much better, much better before the 1960s in terms of the improvement.
	Blacks were getting out of poverty at a rate even faster than whites.
	The black family, which slavery had not been able to destroy, was still largely intact.
	Now three-quarters of black kids are born outside of wedlock.
	As Thomas Sowell has said, the welfare state has done what even slavery couldn't do, which is to completely destroy the black family for the most part.
	And so what happens is people are trying to get free of lies and violence.
	And the moment they get free of lies and violence, they flourish.
	And as soon as they flourish, everyone who profits from lies and violence says, squish that bastard!
	Call in an airstrike of ideological proportions.
	That guy's getting away.
	They're getting away from the misery and the lies.
	That is our livestock.
	It's a lie stock is what we are.
	We are the lie stock of the human farmers.
	And they can't handle, they can't stand Anybody getting away and they can't stand the example of people being free and they can't stand the example of people being happy because then there's nothing to be saved from and no one begging to be saved and therefore it becomes a case of power sells but who's buying?
	Who's buying?
	Nobody's buying.
	Nobody's buying it and nobody's willing to exchange resources.
	For the insurance against a disaster they no longer believe in.
	And certainly no longer believe can be prevented by brute force and false ideology.
	No, I think it's repulsive and it's vile.
	And the destruction of pride is the primordial urge of the sadistic sociopaths who want to run the world.
	You can't have pride, you see, because of original sin.
	You can't have pride, you see, because patriarchy, because global warming, because colonialism.
	Because you have succeeded in life and other people haven't.
	So no pride for you.
	Well, sorry.
	I think that is all completely ridiculous bullshit.
	And I view that language and those words as an insidious form of brain virus that must be resisted at all costs.
	It's them or us, people.
	It's them or us.
	That's it for my speech.
	So, it really actually just seems like the entire progressive movement that started, I guess, with the institution of the Federal Reserve was all about getting people to be a dependent underclass, just like Lenin did when he took over the- No, no, the progressive movement started before.
	The Federal Reserve.
	The progressive movement started in the late 19th, early 20th century.
	And lots of prominent people, Fabian socialists were part of the progressive movement, H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw and so on.
	And basically they said, look, we can't take over these countries directly.
	And it's really hard to do it through political means.
	So we have to corrupt the society.
	We have to destroy the institutions that support the capitalist system.
	In order to create such misery, despair and hopelessness that people will turn to us to rule them again.
	Right.
	We have to break the legs of these cows who got free until they come begging for shelter and bandages again.
	Wow.
	It just blew my mind.
	I mean, I was already a libertarian, but I just didn't know that much about it, and I still had some sort of a soft spot for the progressive movement, but I guess they've always been about trying to get people to depend on On the state instead of actually trying to help people out because people could help each other out by having a free market, I guess.
	If you want to help the poor, go start a company.
	This is what's so completely lunatic about people like Elizabeth Warren who wouldn't know a free market job if it took a shit in her deep dish pizza.
	Why it's so completely insane for people like Elizabeth Warren to say, I care about the poor.
	It's like, you don't even know how to create a job, for God's sakes.
	All you've done is jump from one government tit to another.
	Like Tarzan with giant outer skies to swing from.
	Like, what the hell is Barack Obama or Elizabeth Warren?
	At least people on the right have huge disagreements with them, but at least a lot of them have actually started some businesses and made some jobs.
	The people on the left, they have no fucking clue what a job is, what it's like to work under government regulation.
	They're on the sunny side of state power.
	They're never on the spiky side of state power.
	They don't have the scimitars of the IRS and the regulatory bodies all pointing at them.
	They're on the sunny side of state power.
	They have no clue.
	If you want to help the poor...
	Stop being a demagogue and start being an entrepreneur.
	You know, I went and created, co-created a company, grew a company.
	We had 30 people working for us.
	Was it a huge company?
	Absolutely not.
	Was it a mom and pop operation?
	Well, a little bigger than that.
	We had 30 people working for us and we generated work for hundreds of more people through our business.
	So I was actually out there helping the poor.
	The people we hired were students.
	They were in debt.
	They were broke.
	And we hired them.
	We gave them raises.
	We helped polish their...
	I helped develop their professional skills, anybody who was interested.
	So I actually went out and helped the poor.
	And how do you know I helped the poor?
	I didn't make a big production out of it.
	I didn't give myself a orangutan Nixon arm patting myself on the back like some weird contortionist and waking up every day and kissing my own reflection in the mirror about what a wonderful philanthropist I was and how charitable I was and how everyone should praise me for being so generous.
	I actually went and created some jobs for the poor.
	And that company is still running and people still have jobs there.
	And they're raising families on those jobs.
	And they're paying mortgages on those jobs.
	And they're buying cars with those jobs.
	And they're saving for their kids' college education with those jobs.
	So I actually created a business which has now been sustaining itself for, what, 17 years?
	Beautiful!
	Fantastic!
	I am now growing with your help of Free Domain Radio.
	We're hiring more people.
	Our latest hire is someone who's out of school, needs a job.
	I mean, he could maybe do better than what we're paying him, but, you know, we hope to have it grow as time goes along.
	So I actually go and create jobs for people.
	But this idea that you're going to go, I've got 11 commandments and these are the commandments and this should happen and this shouldn't happen.
	It's like, oh my God, will you shut up?
	Go find a service that people need.
	Go create a job.
	Go hire some people and stop thinking that you solve poverty by hiding guns behind a teleprompter.
	So as an entrepreneur, I'm just quite curious because I do agree with you.
	Did you find it kind of harder to actually start your business because of regulations that were on smaller businesses that were actually trying to start up?
	Or is that incorrect?
	Well, look, I didn't run the business side of things.
	I did R&D, programming, a little bit of marketing, more marketing later in my career.
	I did sales, technical presentations.
	But I will say this, that nobody asked to see my programming license, which is why there's so much growth in the software industry, because it's unregulated.
	To a large part, governments can't afford to regulate the software industry, because they'll drive too much talent offshore, and basically then the arsehole Geeks will create better weapon systems for their enemies.
	So they have to, on that which all things depend, which is technology, they can't afford to license it.
	Technology and politics.
	You see, you don't have to have a PhD in political science to become a politician.
	You know, every asshole with a silver tongue can become a politician.
	They'd never license it, of course, because licensing, you see, is for fucking hairdressers.
	So do you believe through the technological know-how that people have and the lack of the need for a technical degree that we could actually bring the free market into fruition?
	Well, I mean, the degree to which people want a piece of paper to prove competence I mean, who am I to say?
	I mean, it's like insurance.
	Do you want insurance?
	Do you not want insurance?
	It's your choice.
	I am a big insurance-based life form.
	I like having insurance and I'm sure glad I got to life insurance before I got cancer because now my premiums can't go up.
	So I am an insurance-based life form.
	Other people are, you know, they fry bacon in the nude.
	They're comfortable with the level of risk that makes my nipples go inwards.
	So, if you want to go to some doctor who doesn't have a piece of paper saying he's a doctor in a free market, well, sign away and off you go, right?
	So, again, I don't care.
	I do think that it's wrong to prevent people.
	Look, if there was a PhD and multi-year apprenticeship licensing requirement for podcasting, Then I would not be podcasting.
	Right?
	Yeah, that's what I mean.
	So, I mean, people who want to listen to someone who has a PhD from Harvard in philosophy should go and listen to the person who has a...
	Sorry.
	I just thought about listening to somebody who has a PhD in philosophy from...
	Oh, man.
	I better stop doing that.
	That's kind of disorienting.
	But they can go listen to whoever they want.
	If you want to go, you know, laugh a lot and think some, then go...
	Listen to some intelligent comedian.
	If you want to think a lot and laugh a little, maybe listen to me.
	But if people want to say, well, Steph, what are your qualifications?
	It's like, if you have to ask for qualifications, you're not listening to the right show.
	Because the whole point is to think for yourself.
	To think that I'm right because I have a piece of paper behind me on the wall or don't is not to understand philosophy at all.
	And the idea that it's like, well, you see, if you had a lot of people who are given licenses by the government giving you a license and telling me that you were right, that would be good philosophy.
	It's like, no, that would be rubber stamping high IQ conformity.
	That would not be philosophy.
	The purpose of philosophy is to stimulate thought in others.
	To stimulate the methodology and capacity for rational and empirical analysis in others.
	So it's like, well, Steph, you don't have that piece of paper.
	I can't listen to you.
	I'm like, you shouldn't be listening to me then.
	You should go listen to someone with that piece of paper and then pretend that you've understood something about philosophy.
	Yeah, well, that's not what I was saying.
	But I was just saying because it's easier to get into certain technical fields even without a piece of paper telling you that you spent like, I don't know what, $100,000 or maybe even more dollars to get yourself in debt for like an entire lifetime.
	Do you think that just makes it easier for certain tech industries to grow?
	I don't know.
	I'm sorry.
	I think we're going to have to move on to the next caller because I think we're just getting question after question now.
	But thanks.
	Those are great questions.
	I hope that they're helpful.
	And Mike, if we could move on to the next caller, I would appreciate that.
	Alright, up next is Jordan, and Jordan wrote in on the subject of voting.
	He says, in a situation where a vote is being held which will directly decide actions against an individual's rights to life, liberty, or property, despite the fact that the vote itself is unjust and shouldn't be happening at all, would it not be the best course of action to vote in favor of the person's rights rather than just not participate at all?
	That question's a lot wordier than it looked like.
	Best course of action, I don't know.
	Best course of action, that's a pretty high standard.
	The best of all possible courses of action, right?
	I mean, that's a tough call.
	Okay, can you give me a real-world example where a couple of votes made a difference between a violent and non-violent law, or the enacting of a violent situation or not?
	I was looking at this more from a purely theoretical, philosophical definition.
	No, no, no, no!
	Do not insult philosophy by draping it in the cloud, fog, obnoxious absence called theoretical, right?
	Philosophy here is not quantum physics, it's engineering, right?
	Which is this practical application of principles, not...
	So if you can think of an example where this is a relevant question, I'm happy to discuss it.
	If you can't, I don't know what there is to discuss.
	This derived from a conversation I was having between my father and my brother.
	My father was saying that we're morally responsible to vote, which I obviously disagree with.
	My brother brought up the situation that if there was a group of people voting on whether to murder someone, you just wouldn't participate in that vote.
	What did I just say?
	Okay, I'll just go right to the practical example.
	What did I literally just say?
	Let's say that a libertarian gets elected and he...
	No!
	What did I just say?
	This is a practical example because we're able to currently vote libertarian, yes?
	That's not what I asked for.
	I didn't say, could you vote libertarian?
	Do you remember what I said?
	You said you want a practical example for how this could be applied today.
	I said, can you give me an example of a vote that was a couple of votes between one way or another of a wrong law going in or not going in?
	I can't give you a historical example, no.
	Right.
	Well, why don't you look one up and then you can give me a shout back.
	Right, you know that the odds of any individual vote changing an outcome is zero to all intents and purposes, right?
	Yes, yeah.
	Right, so as far as you as an individual goes or the people that you can influence, it is almost zero that you're going to have any practical capacity to change this.
	On the other hand, there are things that you can do that will for sure reduce violence in the world.
	So you're saying, well look, once in a thousand years my vote might change something, so should I do this or not?
	I'm going to spend a lot of time and energy working on this.
	And I'm saying, look, the opportunity cost of you thinking about this and going to vote and becoming informed on the issues and of course having no say.
	So what if you vote something?
	So what?
	I mean, people voted in World War I because Woodrow Wilson said, we're not going to war in Europe.
	Next thing you know, they're getting fucking drafted, right?
	Yeah.
	And so the idea that...
	I mean, look at Barack Obama's campaign promises that we're never...
	Gitmo is still open as far as I understand it.
	And so the idea that this will never happen, but if you...
	Focus on promoting peaceful parenting, on educating people about spanking, on educating people about aggression, on intervening in child abuse, on helping spread the word.
	You are tangibly and personally reducing the amount of violence in the world.
	This show has got precisely zero unjust laws I repeat myself.
	Zero unjust laws repealed.
	Zero.
	Yeah.
	On the other hand, hundreds of thousands of children are not being spanked as a result of this show.
	Yeah.
	So my concern is, why are you caring what happens in abstract discussions about violence?
	Let me ask you this.
	Did your father spank you and your brother?
	I remember, I personally have memory of two instances of spanking as a child.
	My parents are repentant spankers.
	They've...
	They've admitted the fault of their actions.
	If you're all really concerned about reducing violence, then you all have a giant goal in the world, which is to go to stopspanking.org.
	You can go to wonderful places on the net.
	You can share the Truth About Spanking video from me or the Bomb and the Brain.
	If you're really concerned about reducing violence in the world, then you all can get together and do fantastic stuff.
	You don't have to use anyone's resources.
	You can create your own.
	Your parents can start a YouTube channel called I Feel Shitty for Spanking or something like that.
	And they can talk to other people about the requests they have.
	And through that process, you guys can bring a huge amount of reduction to the violence in the world.
	It might be way bigger than this show, which would be fantastic.
	But this idea that once in a thousand years, maybe a vote might go one way or the other, I mean, God, you guys are ignoring all of the practical things that you can do to tangibly reduce violence and creating some asswipe imaginary Dungeons and Dragons scenario that'll never happen wherein you might.
	Yeah.
	And I do do that.
	I'm constantly telling people, everyone I can talk to, about peaceful parenting, about voluntarism and stuff like that.
	So this is just kind of a question that came up because my father brought up, he isn't a big fan of our non-patriot attitudes.
	And so this was an issue that got brought up that he thought that if we weren't participating in the vote, that we're just serving to allow the progressives to win, basically.
	Which...
	He sees as a really bad thing, I would agree with him, but not much worse than if the Republicans win.
	So, yeah.
	I mean, that's just what brought it up, and I don't think it's this big almighty issue.
	It was just a question that came into my mind.
	So, you know, Democrats run up the debt with social programs, and Republicans run up the debt with war to paint with a very broad brush, you know, to say which is worse.
	Well, certainly if I'm a foreigner, I want the Democrats in power, and if I'm I'm an upper-middle-class person.
	I want the Republicans in power.
	But the idea that you're gonna stop creeping socialism with votes, I mean, that's their game.
	That's their whole point.
	It's what they've been working on for over a hundred years is to slowly win power like Hitler did through legitimate democratic means.
	And they know the game a hell of a lot better than we do, and they have the media, and they have the public schools, and they have the churches, and I mean, forget it.
	I mean, you can't fight it.
	You can't fight it.
	You can't fight the government through voting.
	And it's like trying to become a pacifist by picking up a gun.
	It's just not going to work.
	And if you want, you know, you can go do it.
	I guess if it makes you feel better, I don't care.
	But don't, you know, do it because...
	It'll make you feel better.
	Don't do it because you think it's going to actually achieve anything.
	Or don't do it unless you understand that you're pursuing a fruitless quest to reduce violence and abandoning a real and tangible capacity to reduce violence.
	That it's masturbatory, emotional anxiety management at the expense of the world.
	Nothing to do with actually making the world a better place.
	And if you're honest about it, you can do whatever you want if you're honest to yourself about it.
	Yeah.
	No, you're completely right.
	There are a lot better things that I can spend my time on than that.
	Well, thanks very much.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Can I thank you really quick?
	Of course.
	I have a 10-month-old daughter, and like I said, I had a brief history of spanking.
	I wasn't super spanked as a kid, and I hear some of these stories from people on your show, and I had a really good childhood in comparison.
	But I had never really thought about it until listening to your show that, you know, spanking is fundamentally just completely ass-backwards messed up.
	So I have to thank you for that, and my daughter, I'm sure, will be very thankful for it in the future as well.
	Fantastic.
	Do you mind if I say something to your daughter?
	I think my wife's getting her ready for bed.
	No, you can play this back to her later.
	Oh, okay.
	Yeah, go for it.
	Who's a goochie-goochie little girl?
	Who's got big cheeks?
	Goochie-goochie little girl.
	Who's got a peaceful daddy?
	Who's a lucky girl with a peaceful daddy?
	Who's only going to use her bum for sitting on?
	Who's a lucky girl?
	Welcome to the future.
	I just wanted to mention that.
	She'll appreciate that.
	Thanks.
	All right.
	It might be less scary if you don't show her the video.
	For sure.
	Okay.
	Well, it was good talking to you.
	Oh, thanks, man.
	I appreciate it.
	Yep.
	Bye.
	Alright.
	Holly is up next.
	Holly wrote in and said, Why is it that I have no desire to have children and my brother and I have both chosen to remain child-free?
	Could you also please help me understand why I despise people's desire to have baby after baby when they are such a pain in the butt and so expensive to raise?
	It may be a matter of physiology, Holly.
	I mean, if you think that having babies is pain in the butt, you might want to review some videos that, if memory serves me right, can really help make you faint.
	Oh, like childbirth videos?
	Something like that.
	Anyway, so did you ever want to have kids?
	No.
	No, the whole idea makes my skin crawl.
	I just don't see why people like to have them when they're expensive, they're time-consuming, your whole life just gets revolved around them.
	I've just always wanted to do my own thing.
	Right.
	We're talking about babies, not estrogen-based parasites, right?
	Right, right.
	But, I mean, I watched so many of my friends.
	It got worse.
	Worse as I got older and I've watched so many of my male friends get oopsed by other women and troubled and trapped and just bled dry of their finances and it just angers me that there's so many people out there just sprogging and babies after babies and they're not even taking care of the ones they've got and they're having more and it just drives me insane.
	Right.
	So...
	Well, we have, I mean, there are two questions then, right?
	So there are two issues.
	The first issue is you don't want to have children, and the other issue is you hate irresponsible parents, right?
	Yes, I do hate irresponsible parents.
	I actually like children in and of themselves.
	I just, it drives me crazy when people just don't seem to desire having their kids around after they go out of that cute little infant stage.
	They're just, I mean, I've got several relatives that I don't even know why they had them if they're not enjoying them or appreciating them.
	But I also worry my brother and I are both remaining child-free.
	I have no idea.
	I think they're accidents.
	My brother and I are remaining child-free, and my mom and dad often ask, like, what did we do to make you think that parenthood was so awful?
	But I've never had a desire to raise them.
	Well, okay, but these two don't fit together, right?
	Logically.
	Because if you don't like The idea of being a parent, then you can understand why other parents don't want to be around their kids, as you see, right?
	Yes.
	And of course, if you really did like kids and wanted to have kids, then you would want to have children for yourself, but you would be frustrated with parents, right?
	Right.
	I guess they don't go together.
	The thing is, I can be around my nephews and stuff and be fine with them, but I can give them back.
	I wouldn't understand why anyone would want to just dedicate their whole life to just raising them.
	You have all these horrible stories about these people who abused their children and spanked their children.
	I think my parents did a great job, and I don't think I could ever equal what they did.
	I don't think I have the patience for it.
	What do you mean the patience for what?
	I would not be patient with a child at all.
	If I had to be patient for more than two hours.
	No, no, you're just telling me, you're telling me different ways in which you're not patient.
	But patient for what is what I said?
	Oh, patient for the screaming and the whining and the, you know, constant need for attention and just all the things that come with having a kid.
	So did you scream a lot as a child?
	I did not.
	I was taught to be seen and not heard.
	I wasn't taught to act up in restaurants.
	Wait, wait, wait.
	Oh, oh, oh!
	Oh, you didn't.
	No, you did.
	Okay.
	We'll go back to that.
	All right.
	All right.
	Seen and not heard.
	Well, not in such a bad way that, yeah, just I wasn't taught to misbehave.
	I wasn't allowed to be a little brat.
	Oh, no, no.
	Okay.
	All right.
	The Fog Machine.
	I feel like I'm in the front row.
	Metallica concert, but without the topless broad on my shoulders.
	What do you mean, seen and not heard?
	Well, I mean, my parents didn't allow me to talk back to adults.
	They didn't allow me to just be a total ass.
	What is talk back?
	What does talk back to adults mean?
	I never quite understood what that means.
	They didn't allow me to just go, you're being stupid, or tell people that, you know, be a little...
	You know, children can be very honest sometimes.
	I wasn't ever...
	I didn't tell the lady at the swimming pool she was fat.
	I didn't say rude things to people.
	I didn't demand adults just constantly give me attention.
	It's all about me.
	I learned to respect the boundaries that I had as a child.
	Okay.
	What does it mean that you...
	Are seen and not heard.
	Because you've told me about all the things that you weren't allowed to do.
	Like you weren't allowed to be honest, even if it was upsetting perhaps to others.
	You weren't allowed to talk back.
	I don't know.
	What is talk?
	I don't understand what that means.
	You're allowed to talk back to me now, right?
	Like in this conversation, you can talk back to me.
	And I can talk back to you if I disagree with something or have questions about something I can ask.
	And you can disagree with me.
	Yeah, I go to my nephew's house and he's five and he wants to play with me, but sometimes I'd like to have an adult conversation.
	His parents never stop him from nagging me to play video games with him.
	I would not want to have to deal with that as a parent.
	Listen, if you're committed to not answering my questions, I don't know how we can have a conversation, to be honest with you, Holly.
	I mean this in a friendly way, but I feel like I'm trying to push a magnet called a question.
	You've got an opposite pole magnet that I'm chasing around the planet.
	Right.
	I guess my parents used the term seen and not heard.
	I don't know if I ever understood it from their aspect of...
	No, but let's get back to...
	Sorry, so you don't understand that term, but it's sort of like you're saying that there's two opposite poles.
	Like you're either a brat, as you call it, or you're seen and not heard, right?
	Yeah.
	Why would those be the only two options, right?
	Well, I've never known anybody to have a kid that was different, other than, you know, the ones that were polite, and then there's the ones that are just out of control, and they're not being parented at all.
	You know, taught to respect people, taught to be polite.
	Well, okay, so your five-year-old, was it your nephew?
	Yes.
	So he wants you to play video games with him?
	Yes, constantly.
	I mean, I mean, I'm kind of the fun one.
	When we go over there, my husband and I go over there, somehow everybody else has taught him not to ask them to play.
	I like to encourage him to be creative and stuff, but he's always wanting to play video games.
	And I'm like, look, I'm trying to have an adult conversation.
	His parents will not get him off me.
	You know, she's with us right now.
	We're going to have dinner.
	We can't play video games all the time.
	You know, they don't tell him anything.
	They just ignore him.
	And it's like, why did you even have kids if you're just going to ignore them?
	So the video game console or tablet has become the babysitter, is that right?
	The babysitter, yes.
	Or the television or, you know, any electronic media at all.
	Anything stimulating.
	Seems to babysit, yes.
	And how many times have you seen your nephew's parents have a conversation with him?
	They kind of dump him on me when we go over there.
	They don't really even talk to him other than to maybe say, no, we're not going to play that loud.
	And then they just kind of leave him.
	I've heard him a few times yell at him and tell him to shut the F up.
	And I just don't understand why...
	Wait, wait.
	These people say shut the fuck up to a five-year-old?
	When he gets really annoying, yeah.
	You're getting on my last nerve.
	Wait, wait.
	When he gets really annoying...
	Yeah, well, he's...
	You can't possibly be justifying this in any way, shape, or form, right?
	I'm not.
	I'm not.
	I wonder why they've even had to.
	Yes, you are.
	Yes, you are.
	Because you're saying that it's caused by his being annoying, right?
	Well, in their vocabulary, he's being annoying.
	In my vocabulary, he just wants attention.
	Right.
	But why even have him if you're just going to tell him to shut the F up?
	Right.
	So this is desperately terrible parenting, right?
	I believe so.
	That's not what I would do if I were a parent.
	I will tell you, it is desperately terrible parenting.
	I don't even want to go on a rant about the electronic babysitters.
	No, no.
	But...
	He's hungry for connection, and the only way he probably knows how to connect is through electronics, through shared electronics experience.
	That's the closest he can get to human intimacy.
	But to actually have conversations about things, right?
	So I said, wow, this morning, and I was reading something where Americans' net wealth has dropped by a third since 2003.
	It was masked for a while by rising house prices.
	My daughter said, well, what does this, wow what, right?
	And I said, well, this is a, it's going to take a while.
	And, you know, we sit down and I draw, you know, so I went through money printing, the war, the housing market, the boom, and all of that, the interest rates.
	And, you know, she followed well and took a long time.
	But that's what, you know, that was sort of instructional and she had questions and comments and distractions and all of that.
	Sure.
	That's what I think I would do if I were a parent.
	Right.
	My question was, how many times have you seen these parents of the five-year-old nephew have a conversation with...
	I don't think I ever have.
	Okay.
	All right.
	Yeah.
	If you make that the conversation, I mean, other than the shut the F up and quit bothering everybody and, you know, I really rarely ever see them say anything nice to this kid.
	Right.
	People make this mistake, and it probably comes out of their own impoverished childhood that has remained unexamined, which is criminally irresponsible.
	People say, well, you know, I learned all this stuff before I became a parent, so I guess it was okay.
	It's like, well...
	I didn't learn how to fly a plane before I grabbed a plane and started flying it, so I guess the resulting crash into the daycare wasn't really my fault, now was it?
	You're going to fly a plane and you know you've got at least nine months to prepare for it.
	Learn how to fly a fucking plane before...
	Anyway, so of course he wants attention.
	Yeah.
	For children, the family is the world.
	Like, everything that we all get from the world, they get from the family.
	I'm sorry, I've got a couple of questions.
	Just a couple of comments.
	If people are in the chat room, when you hear this, if you do want me to do a rant on the electronic babysitters, just let me know.
	I wasn't sure.
	Mike's encouraging me.
	A few other people, but I don't want to.
	Well, I've heard you say, you know, your child is like a little slave to you.
	You're in charge of their whole life.
	You know, the way you talk about that, the poor kid just wants attention and I just, I have no idea why people have children if they're gonna treat them like that.
	I just, I think I treat my dogs better, you know.
	Okay, so how is, so you say that your parents were really great, but you don't seem to have any great parents around you.
	In fact, you seem to have some pretty terrible parents around you.
	How is that possible?
	Well, they're not on my side of the family.
	My brother, my blood brother, is not going to have children either.
	My parents sometimes ask, what did we do wrong?
	And I have no idea other than I think they raised the bar so high, I don't feel like I can get there.
	I would never dream of trying to raise a child and do a good job of it when I'm not that patient.
	And I might be the one to say, shut the fuck up.
	I just can't, I have no desire to try because I'm afraid I'd fail.
	But at the same time, too, I don't know my brother's reasons for not wanting to have children, but something.
	We both came out of the same household, raised the same way, and neither of us have a desire to procreate.
	You are an entire massive cluster of non-answerists.
	It's really quite fascinating.
	I mean, the fog defense is strong in this one, Batman.
	Fog penetration device activated.
	Re-ask the question.
	Maybe I can...
	How many...
	Let me ask it another way.
	So, how many meaningful, respectful adult-ish conversations did you have with your parents growing up?
	Oh, so many.
	My parents taught me so many things.
	They were so patient with me When I wanted to learn, you know, my dad taught me about, like you were talking about the economy and the housing crash.
	When I was a child, we talked about that.
	We talked about the German wall coming down.
	You know, if it was on the radio, we talked about current events.
	They helped me with homework.
	My mom was always there to help me write papers.
	If I didn't really know how to phrase something, she'd explain to me maybe what the question meant.
	I did excellent in school because they gave me a great background of knowledge and worldly And when you wanted them to do things that were your preferences, how were they?
	Pretty good.
	If I wanted to go to the zoo, we'd schedule a time.
	It wouldn't happen right then, obviously.
	You can't just go by the whims of your child.
	But if I wanted to go to summer camp, they'd put me in summer camp.
	If I wanted to watch something on television, they'd let me watch it if it wasn't adult.
	I grew up watching a lot of documentaries and stuff, but I was severely interested in that stuff.
	So it was perfect for me.
	They didn't always have time for me.
	They worked, but they spent a lot of time with me.
	My mom, before I went to kindergarten, stayed home with me and my brother and taught us things and read to us and spent time with us and encouraged our creativity.
	Right.
	Well, look, I mean, it could be, I mean, the information that I'm aware of, which I think is pretty current, is that personality is largely innate.
	You can temper it slightly as a parent, but the degree of, say, sociability or shyness to some degree that kids have is largely innate.
	It's just how you're born.
	And...
	Your degree of optimism versus pessimism is to some degree, to a large degree, just the way you are.
	Don't go changing because you get.
	Yeah, so look, it could be that you and your brother just got the really short...
	Patience gene, right?
	Short on patience gene.
	And that's just the way you are.
	And even though you had that modeled to you as your parents, maybe it's just not, you know, it's just not who you are.
	I mean, and you get the kid that you get and kids born...
	the way that they're born and like we were just out with some friends today and they have a three-year-old kid who is like literally jumping up and down with with glee and and grinning from ear to ear and my daughter was never like she's always had a very skeptical eye and she's a very happy kid but not giddy in that kind of way and you know that's her her sister is not like that her sister is very shy and Both super nice kids and very nice parents.
	But this is just maybe the mistake they made was just the accidental genetic combination of whichever sperm made it through the egg twice in a row, right?
	Sure.
	Yeah, and I'd probably get some of my impatience From my father.
	My brother, he seems to be patient.
	He's the exact opposite of me though.
	I'm the eternal optimist and he's pretty pessimistic about things.
	Just neither of us, he's actually kind of considering it and I think they're talking about adopting and but it's so far away.
	There's genetic problems in my family and I think yeah actually I think it's my fault because I'm bipolar And he does not want to have a child that goes through that, but I'm like, you don't know what you're talking about.
	He's worried it's going to run in his family.
	Hang on, hang on, hang on.
	When you say bipolar, what you mean is you have been told that you're bipolar, right?
	Yes, yes, and I've seen your show about...
	So, as you know, this is an adjective that claims to describe a cluster of behaviors...
	For which there's no medical evidence.
	I totally agree with you on that, but because I was diagnosed, he is concerned that it runs in our genes.
	Right, so is there a genetic test for bipolar?
	No.
	Absolutely not.
	Is there a blood test for bipolar?
	Is there a brain scan for bipolar?
	No, there's not a brain scan.
	Is there anything other than a bunch of words, the DSM-5 and 4, That has anything to do with the words bipolar.
	No, there's no way to find out if it's true or not.
	That's just a medical...
	Well, no.
	It's not agnostic.
	If people are putting forward a positive claim that there's something in the brain or an imbalance in brain chemistry that's called bipolar, I would really like to see the evidence that supports their claim, right?
	Right.
	Are you taking meds for it?
	Yes, I do.
	All right.
	And how do you find those?
	They seem to help me.
	They keep me from...
	When I'm depressed, I don't actually get, like, sad.
	I just don't feel anything.
	So when I take the meds, I tend to, like, be a little bit more in touch with my emotions, I would say.
	Right.
	Yeah, you know, Muslim is a label, but no genetic basis, right?
	And Muslim is not heritable except through language.
	Islam is not heritable except through language.
	So anyway, I'm sure you've read Robert Whitaker's book and other books skeptical of the diagnosis, but I guess it's just important to be...
	I've done a lot of...
	Oh, I'm cautious.
	I'm not over-medicated by any means or thinking that...
	I think they help me, but I don't know for sure.
	And I just know when I'm off medication, I don't feel right.
	Yes, I have.
	And how is that?
	It goes pretty good, but I'm generally not a sad person or a worried person.
	I don't tend to fear things like people who seem to be in talk therapy need to work through problems.
	I don't have a lot of issues other than I feel bad for my nephews.
	You know, I don't tend to worry about things, so I don't have a lot to talk about.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	What is the relationship?
	How is he your nephew?
	He's my nephew through my husband.
	Not blood.
	He's my husband's brother's kid.
	He's your husband's brother's kids.
	Yeah.
	So your husband's brother is a bad parent.
	He's a quiet parent.
	He doesn't say anything or do anything.
	Your husband's brother is a bad parent.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	You don't have the option to not do anything with kids.
	That's called being a bad fucking parent, right?
	I mean, if I got a guy locked in my basement, I say, well, I just don't feel like cooking today.
	It's fine if it's just me, but if there's a guy in my basement who needs to eat, that's kind of different, right?
	Right, right.
	He doesn't really stand up for his kids.
	He doesn't really stand up for his kids.
	Oh, man.
	Well...
	Oh, man.
	Holly, you're killing me.
	I'm sorry.
	You got me.
	Oh, my God.
	The issue is not that he doesn't really stand up for his kids.
	Right?
	Right.
	The issue is he's not parenting them.
	He's a bad parent.
	Okay, see, why is this hard to...
	You just told me...
	Why is it when I try to get something across, I go into this fog ninja defense ghost hunt?
	I suppose I don't want to say anything bad about him, but it's difficult to watch.
	And what does your husband think of his brother as a parent?
	He generally keeps his mouth shut about it too.
	Well, what can we do?
	I didn't say, oh God, oh God, please listen.
	I didn't say, what does he do?
	See, you have this capacity that when I ask a question, you reinterpret it to be as avoidant as humanly possible, right?
	And just, I'm picking on this one, right?
	And I mean this in a friendly way.
	I'm just trying to give you that feedback.
	Sure.
	Right?
	So every time I say something, I have to go through five non-answers and persist to get to the answer, right?
	I said, what does your husband think?
	I said, what does your husband think?
	You automatically translated that into what does he do?
	Right.
	My husband doesn't think they should have had children either.
	And is your husband standing up for your nephew?
	No.
	Why not?
	He figures that's their business and it's how they parent.
	That's their problem.
	He raised his step-grandchildren before he met me.
	And he was their everything.
	Wait, his what now?
	His step-grandchildren.
	I don't know what that means.
	I'm trying to build this family tree, but I'm running out of planning.
	Yeah, he married an older woman when he was younger that had...
	Kids that couldn't take care of their kids, so he was a step-grandparent.
	He was married to...
	And how much older is he than you?
	Grandmothers.
	He is six years older than me, seven years older than me, roughly, depending on...
	And how old was his first wife?
	How much older?
	Oh, she was much older.
	I haven't even really asked the technical aid.
	What, 25 years?
	15 years older.
	She was a teen mom and her kids were teen parents and he raised her kids' kids.
	So he has no desire to have children either.
	So she had kids and was her kid also a teen mom?
	Yes.
	And she was a neglectful or abusive mom?
	I would say she was.
	She was pretty neglectful at least.
	We've just fogged again.
	I don't know of any direct abuse, but as far as neglect, I know that that was there.
	But if there was no abuse, really, and it was just only some neglect, then why would your husband raise them?
	She was just never interested in taking part in their lives.
	He did all the activities with them and took them to school and did the softball thing and the band practice.
	You know, he was the one involved.
	So he did that for his wife's children.
	Is he doing that for his brother's children?
	Not really.
	Why?
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	I don't understand.
	Is it because they're actually blood-related?
	I mean, I don't understand.
	That's what I don't get.
	You'd think he'd...
	Yeah.
	You'd think it'd be the other way around.
	But...
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I mean, they're young and defenseless.
	Well, I mean, there's lots of rabbit holes to go down, but probably too many to talk about at the moment.
	Let it just be said that, I mean, yeah, you could have less than patient set of genes.
	I kind of wish you had people around you that were helping you be more direct in your communication with people, because I think that you put my questions, it feels like this is my thought, I don't have proof of this, but I have this thought that you Put my questions through an emotional filter and adjust them to be easier to answer.
	I probably am.
	Very quickly.
	I probably am because it makes me real upset that I can't really say anything because I'm not directly related.
	Oh, you didn't just say that.
	Well, I don't feel like it's my...
	Your story is so fragmented.
	I don't feel like it's my...
	Was your husband directly related to his step-grandchildren?
	No.
	No.
	Did he step in and do things?
	He did.
	So maybe, yeah.
	Was that good?
	It turned out good for them.
	So you just told me, because I'm not directly related, right after you told me that your husband did it to people he wasn't directly related to as well.
	Right.
	This is what I mean.
	Is it okay for me to step in?
	Did you notice?
	I'm just curious.
	Did you notice that complete opposite disconnect?
	Yes, now I see it.
	Now I see it.
	No, but did you notice at the time?
	No.
	But you see, that's what I mean when I say, Holly, you reinterpret things so that they're easier emotionally in the moment.
	Right.
	Right?
	So you said, well, I don't want to get involved.
	Because I'm not directly related, that's your out, right?
	How would I go about getting involved?
	Well, I can give you some suggestions if you like.
	Yeah, I would know where to start if you could.
	Yeah, that would be...
	That'd be great.
	Well, I think the first thing you would do, the less you pay attention to children, the more annoying they get.
	When I hear annoying, I hear lonely.
	Yeah.
	I hear needy, desperate.
	And not because children are needy and desperate.
	Right?
	That's like, saying that children are needy and desperate is like saying, those goddamn babies, they're so lazy, they never clean up after themselves.
	Right.
	Right.
	Right?
	Right.
	So nothing I think can be dealt with until you work to repair your relationship with your nephew.
	Now working to repair your relationship with your nephew means recognizing that the deficiency is not in him but in his environment.
	Because it's very easy to blame the kids for the deficiencies in the environment because that lets us off the hook, right?
	Right, and I'm not angry with him.
	I feel bad for him.
	Good, okay.
	Not good you feel bad for him.
	No, but good that I'm directed right in that.
	If you want to work to solve things and have him feel less annoying to you, less annoying to other people, then you can, I mean, do you guys do often things just the two of you?
	Yes, yeah.
	Sometimes I'll watch him when his parents go out or we'll just, when we're over there, I'll spend time just with him.
	You know, but I don't like the video games.
	I try to play in color, draw things.
	But what about conversation?
	Not mutual activities, but conversation.
	That's a little more difficult because it's hard, you know, to get him to talk about...
	I don't know how to, like, bring him out.
	Well, you tell him, right?
	I mean, I tell my daughter when we've spent half a day just doing stuff, like proximity, fun.
	And, you know, like tossing balls around or, you know, we took one of my...
	Plates that my wife had put aside in the It's a Bachelor stuff drawer, right?
	Which was like of questionable taste and odd matchings.
	And we took this big giant blue plate that I had when I was a bachelor and we, you know, we did crafts on it.
	We painted it and put gems on it and stuff.
	It's actually quite pretty.
	So if we've been doing that stuff for a while, I will say, listen, I really...
	Became a parent to have conversations.
	I didn't become a parent to do crafts.
	Now, don't get me wrong.
	I like the crafts and it was fun for us to do them together or if we've been throwing a ball around or whatever it is we've been doing.
	But I became a parent because I wanted to have conversations.
	Now, I put up with no conversations when you were a baby because you were all kinds of blah, blah, blah, right?
	But I need conversations.
	Right?
	That's the part of being in a family that I like the best.
	Now, I get it.
	You're five.
	We're not going to have conversations all day, right?
	Right, right.
	But this is what I need, right?
	Right.
	I can ask for that.
	And if you explain to children what you need in a relationship, and I think sort of four and a half, five, maybe four, it depends where the kids are emotionally, but You have to start reorienting them away from the bottomless narcissistic sociopathy of infancy where you only think about your own needs and that's all you should think about.
	You have to start reorienting them to mutuality.
	And I've seen a big difference in him since he's been in school, since he started kindergarten.
	He's learning a little bit more about manners and letting people interact and talk.
	Yes, but he's not going to learn connection in kindergarten.
	No, no, but he has gone a long way with the social interaction.
	You need to take some time with him.
	And, you know, as I say to my daughter, I said, I will selfishly guard the pleasure that I take in my time with you.
	And that means I can't not be who I am.
	I can't be someone who does everything you want because then I won't enjoy it as much.
	Right.
	And I want to, I will fiercely guard the pleasure that I have in myself.
	My interactions with you and to do that, to keep me happy in my interactions with you, this is what I need sometimes, right?
	Right.
	And so if you say, well, it's difficult to have conversations with him, then you have to take him to a place where there's no distractions, right?
	It could be, I don't know, away from the video games, away from the tablets, away from his parents, a place where it could be a walk in the woods, it could be, I mean, a coffee shop, I don't know where, it could be any place, right?
	Any place where you could sit across, and I have to remind my daughter about eye contact and all that, because children's thoughts follow their eyeballs, right?
	That makes sense, yeah.
	I could see that.
	Yeah, they look somewhere else, they're thinking something else, right?
	And so, you know, eye contact is important for connection.
	And you say to him, listen, this is what I need in a relationship.
	And this is what I need from you.
	And I'm happy to do, as I said to my daughter, I'm happy to do like 80% of what you want to do.
	And it genuinely makes me happy.
	But I can't do 100%.
	Right.
	And I said that also would not be good for me as a parent for that to happen, right?
	So 100% was fine when you were a baby, right?
	Right.
	And 100% was fine when you were one or you were two.
	Three, four starts to go to 95%, right?
	Right.
	Yeah, it works its way down.
	I said it has to keep tilting until, you know, when you get older, it's got to be 50-50.
	Because that's the soft landing of getting you into reciprocity and empathy.
	An adult.
	Right.
	So it's like, you know, you say you walk up a seesaw, you know, you get to the middle and it balances, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	So you need to explain to him what it is that you need and what it is that you want and say that I want to look forward to to spending time with you so much And I can't do that if you don't know anything that I need out of our time together or that I want.
	And what I want is not selfish, like polish my feet, sand down my heel, right?
	Wax my armpits or anything, right?
	I mean, what I want is time to know what you think.
	And we know that that's really the basics of any relationship.
	You can do...
	Any number of things together.
	You can go...
	I mean, just human beings, right?
	You can all go on a bus tour with 30 other people throughout Europe and you're all sitting on the same bus.
	That doesn't mean you know anything about each other or having any conversations about anything that means anything, right?
	Right.
	And so, have that commitment, right?
	Have that commitment with him.
	I'm sorry, go ahead.
	We could talk about what he's done in school that day, about his dog, about what was new about these games he likes to play.
	I just...
	No, no, that's half right.
	But he also needs to ask about you.
	True.
	I need to get him to converse.
	I have found it a constant source of challenge and disappointment, the degree to which children are not taught how to be conversationalists.
	Yes.
	You know, in my past lives, I knew children for years and never or almost never had any kind of meaningful conversation with them.
	And that's a shame.
	It is terrible.
	And then they grow up and they wonder why they can't connect and they wonder why their marriages fail and they wonder why their careers don't go anywhere.
	And it's because they have not been taught how to have children.
	A conversation.
	Because there's this illusion in families that if you're doing things side by side, somehow your hearts are facing each other.
	No!
	What do you see?
	You see a picture of family time.
	Oh, it's doing something.
	Right.
	You know, we're playing ball.
	We're playing Xbox.
	We're watching a movie.
	You know, we're biking.
	It's like, fuck!
	Yeah.
	Those Kodak moments you see in those frames.
	Life is not a series of activities masquerading as pseudo intimacy.
	I mean, I guess it is for a lot of people, but that ain't life, right?
	That's not life.
	And so having the capacity to have conversations is something that children really, really need to learn.
	If you can have great conversations, your life will never want for meaning.
	Your life will never want for connection.
	You will never want for love.
	You will never want for intimacy.
	You will never want for security.
	Because when you have serious and important conversations with people, your hearts bind together in hoops of steel.
	Yes.
	That's what my parents gave to me.
	That's what I'd like to see in his life.
	Then pay it forward.
	I'd be the one to do it.
	You don't have to be a mom if you don't want to be a mom, obviously.
	I don't need to tell you that.
	But you need to teach him how to talk.
	Yes.
	You know, we give them words, we don't give them conversations.
	Yeah, we just give them orders.
	Which is like giving them a bag full of numbers and thinking they know calculus.
	Yeah.
	That's really inspiring.
	I appreciate it because, yeah, I worry about him all the time.
	And now, you've got to do it now.
	Yeah, this is the age.
	The day that drips away makes it harder and harder and harder.
	This is the age.
	Yeah, and he's got a younger brother who's a year and a half.
	And...
	And it will cause problems with his parents.
	You think?
	It will.
	Yeah.
	But they will be helpful problems.
	You know, not all problems are problems, right?
	Right.
	A lot of the saying goes, opportunities in disguise, right?
	Right.
	Opportunities in disguise.
	I'll sort of give you an example, right?
	So I fiercely protect my enjoyment of these call-in shows, right?
	Sure.
	And how do I do that?
	Well, you interact with us...
	You argue with us.
	Sometimes you have to.
	Well, I always want to bring myself to the conversation.
	I don't want it to be me dominating you or you dominating me.
	And so if I feel like my questions aren't being answered, I'll say, hey, I don't think my questions are being answered.
	I don't want to be erased because then I won't look forward to these conversations.
	And if I don't look forward to these conversations, I won't have them.
	And if I don't have them, I think that that's a missed opportunity for a lot of people.
	I agree.
	I agree.
	I've always liked how you stop people and you calmly tell them they're not answering the question.
	And I know I was doing that too.
	I really appreciate you bringing that forward to me because I'm just concerned for, you know, he's the closest little kid I've got in my life probably.
	And I just don't want to see anything, I don't want to see him grow up horribly misguided.
	So if I can be of any help in his life, that would be wonderful.
	Right.
	Mike, have you ever had any experience of, say, a five-year-old who is not entirely as reciprocal as would be ideal?
	That's happened a few times when we've been over.
	And by a few times, I mean on a regular basis.
	Yeah, I was concerned that Isabella had broken her funcle.
	I noticed you're not nearly as physical.
	I used to play all these games with Izzy.
	I'd pick her up and run across the house and put her on the couch, put cushions on top of her.
	She'd burst out of the couch cushions and then chase me around.
	Lots of physical games.
	That started to slow down.
	I noticed you're not playing those physical games anymore.
	I was like, yeah.
	Part of me was like, I think I'm feeling more tired lately.
	But that might be a little bit of it, but that wasn't the total thing.
	The total thing was, you know, we had a lot of times it's like, oh, Izzy, let's go into town or go to the store or go do this or go take a walk or maybe we could play this game or go do this.
	And if it's not something she was interested in doing, she'd be kind of like, ah!
	No, how about we do this instead?
	Maybe tomorrow.
	Yeah.
	Which, I mean, Isabella, as far as negotiating for her own needs, is amazing.
	It's fantastic.
	But it started to impact how much I wanted to do cool things with her because it was not taken into consideration.
	The stuff that I would like to do.
	So we had a conversation about it and came up with some cool stuff that we'd like to do together that I would like to do, that Steph would like to do, and got a bunch of activities we're going to do moving forward.
	And there's that conversation.
	Yeah, the lack of reciprocity definitely impacted the relationship.
	And we had a great conversation about it, and I don't expect it to continue moving forward.
	But it's something...
	You know, it's something, there's a natural transition point.
	And exactly what age, exactly what time, I don't know.
	But Izzy's kind of around that point now where instead of it being straight, you know, child-focused, now she's old enough to understand other people have these wants and needs just the same as I do.
	And that needs to be taken into consideration.
	Otherwise, you're not going to want to play with me as much, and I'm not going to have as much fun.
	So it's an important transition and an important conversation to have.
	And I look forward to seeing how it flushes out moving forward.
	And if I become more physically rambunctious, we continue to play games where I pick her up and pile cushions on top of her and what happens from here.
	Right.
	We have a tendency, when we feel invisible, we have a tendency to step back and resent, right?
	Of course.
	But that's when we need to step forward and express.
	Yes, yeah.
	Because we respond to feeling invisible by inflicting invisibility.
	That's what resentment is.
	It's inflicting invisibility on the other person.
	But when we feel invisible, that's when we need to step forward and materialize for both parties.
	Right.
	Because that's how you maintain the connection.
	Right.
	So I hope that that will help you.
	I think it has.
	And he's very lucky to have you in his life and someone who's willing to take that stand.
	I'm his favorite aunt, so.
	Excellent.
	Well, hold on to that and keep that.
	Is there anything else you wanted to mention?
	No, that would be fine.
	Thank you.
	You've clarified a lot of things for me.
	Thanks, and keep us posted if you can.
	Thanks, Holly.
	Bye.
	Steph, can I make a personal request that you do the electronic babysitter rant?
	Pretty please?
	Please?
	Like now?
	Now!
	I think now's a good time.
	All right.
	All right.
	Yay!
	Oh, my parents.
	Oh, parents who are filled to the very top of the cranium with the crack of moving pixels as massive Mary Poppins-style radioactive distractions for your children, it is to thee that I must speak.
	We are very tempted in the bottomless need of children which we are not willing to strike away from our own hearts, right?
	Parents in the past, I mean, I honestly can barely remember my mother playing with me as a child and I can barely remember other people's mothers playing with them as children.
	You just like, go out and come back when the streetlights come on or whatever so that you can have some food and you're pretty much on your own.
	You just went out and did things with your friends and so on.
	But parents playing with kids was not really a thing.
	Now that's kind of changed in the last generation.
	And now we are significant playthings.
	For our children, which I think is nice.
	But of course, a children's capacity for fun is bottomless.
	The children have where their fun centers should fill up massive tapeworms of infinite stimulation, which you will never fill.
	So the idea is that you create this, shields up, Captain, and the shields are like a bunch of glittering iPads facing outwards towards the Klingon, literally Klingon, photon torpedoes of play with me fun that come from your kids.
	And it is entirely understandable.
	I mean, we all fall prey to it at times.
	And it is a guaranteed bit of time, screen time of some kind, a TV, iPad, iPod, iPhone, other kinds of things.
	Back in the day, it was an Etch-a-Sketch, not quite the same as nine-dimensional Rayman on a 60-inch television, but it was harder to be entertained.
	That has fundamentally changed children's environments in that they have infinitely stimulating babysitters.
	And I have no problems with video games.
	I think video games are a lot of fun.
	There are benefits to video games.
	They, of course, can improve hand-eye coordination.
	They can make your kids think more quickly.
	There can be real benefits to video games.
	And there can be an enormous set of pitfalls to video games.
	And I think primarily, it's all my opinion, but I think primarily...
	The major problem with screen time is the degree to which it substitutes for boundaries, right?
	So it's like, go over there, there's something shiny!
	And they go, right?
	That's not the same as saying, you know, mommy and daddy need some space, we need some time, we want to chat about something.
	And of course, kids, what they do is, excuse me, my daughter, she's like, She comes to me, occasionally I'm busy, right?
	And she'll, oh, I go to mom, right?
	Oh, mom's busy, right?
	Oh, I go to electronics, right?
	And that is a challenge for children.
	Identity in many ways arises out of our capacity to overcome boredom, right?
	The personality is a muscle that flexes against the dead weight of boredom.
	And if The moment children are under-stimulated, they then must rush to electronic stimulation, is the degree to which they're not going to do things like pick up books.
	They're not going to do things like make up stories.
	They're not going to do things like draw pictures, at least, you know, physical pictures.
	And so, when you need space, It is important to tell your children you need space because they need to know that other people have desires that are not always in accordance with what they want to do.
	It's a reality of life, right?
	I mean, if you run a store, most people walk by and don't buy anything, those selfish bastards.
	Most people, shocking though it sounds, shocking though it may be to even contemplate, most people do not listen to free domain radio.
	I know.
	I'm as appalled as you are, as the very God's of the wisdom universes are appalled at this very situation most people don't care about what you want or what you do and so not because they're selfish right there's some guy in India who wants to be a singer good luck don't even know who you are and so who are we when we are stimulated we are not really ourselves So think of when you're sitting watching a horror movie
	or something visually very intense.
	You don't really have a sense of your own identity when you're being heavily externally stimulated.
	An analogy for adults, if you don't do media, is orgasms.
	I mean, you feel like good, but you don't feel like necessarily you have a very strong identity.
	Everybody who has an orgasm, male or female, pretty much describes it the same way.
	Exactly like a good FDR podcast.
	Oh, yeah, that is a trick question.
	There are only good FDR podcasts.
	But when we are being stimulated, it's not the same as being ourselves.
	You know that time in the morning, if you have the chance, when you wake up before you get out of bed, when you're sort of mulling and thinking and reflecting and questioning and maybe worrying a little or whatever it is?
	Well, that's you.
	That's you bouncing around in your own head thinking about stuff.
	That's you not being distracted by ghosts or chainsaw massacres or massive CGI or Thor's abs or orgasms or whatever.
	That is you having an identity, being someone, rather than receiving something or doing something.
	It's human being, not human receiving or human doing.
	It's human being.
	You have to exist within your own skin and And not be continually stimulated by outside forces.
	I think that becomes an addiction.
	Can you go and take a dump without checking your email?
	Well, that kind of becomes a good...
	I think that was the original Rodin's thinker.
	I think that was his original pose.
	So I think that it can be detrimental in the extreme because I think like to have screen time to have external stimulation at all times for children I'm bored is I'm coming alive to myself.
	I am becoming who I am when I'm bored.
	And stimulation is a huge distraction from identity.
	And without identity, you can't have moral fiber.
	You can't have moral strength.
	You can't stand up for what is right against the calumnies of those Who will lose if you stand up for what is right?
	So to advance the cause of good in the world, and I think to make sure that people have intimacy, you want to make sure your children don't grow up thinking that the world owes them stimulation.
	Because if you think that the world, which basically means people when they grow up, that people owe you stimulation, then you can't have intimacy because people then become tools which you Use to distract yourself from your lack of self.
	And there's a hole in the heart that noise and glitter and shimmer and possibly drugs and bad company will fill because the world does not owe you stimulation.
	In fact, the world should very often deny you stimulation so that you can become someone who has an identity, somebody who has a self, somebody who actually has an ego rather than a giant stimuli-drinking set of proboscis receptacles.
	So I do think it is very important to allow your children to be bored.
	It's something I remind myself of, and I'm not perfect in this way by any shape or form.
	But that, I think, is the real danger.
	You cannot substitute identity for stimulation and end up with kids who are going to be as strong as the world needs them to be to continue to make the world a better and better place.
	And that is the end of that rant.
	Ish.
	Awesome.
	Thank you, Steph.
	As someone who still has an issue at times, bringing the iPad to the restroom with me.
	I appreciate that.
	I believe you may have dropped its resale value a couple of bucks there, Mikey Mike.
	Or maybe increased it.
	I don't know.
	But any free domain radio listeners like to buy a slightly used iPad.
	No, I'm just kidding.
	Okay.
	Up next is Esteban.
	He wrote in and said, I am 25 years old, single, and have a four-year-old daughter with a girl that has suffered childhood trauma.
	Can you help me get perspective in trying to be the best father I can be in this circumstance and to balance my desire to have an impact on the world in a way similar to you with having a healthy, loving relationship in the future with a new woman?
	Hello, Stefan.
	Hi.
	Can you just tell me a bit more about the situation?
	Well, it's pretty complicated.
	I don't know if you would like to ask some questions to help take it into a good direction.
	Well, tell me a little bit about the daughter.
	Well, she's almost five.
	Right now she's living with her mother's parents.
	And me and the mother live in this city and the parents live in a town at about two hours from this city.
	So none of us are living with her right now.
	Okay.
	And what was the trauma she'd received?
	Well, the trauma is for my daughter's mother, not my daughter itself.
	But the girl, the mother of my daughter, she was sexually abused when she was a teenager.
	And she tells me that her parents used to fight a lot.
	She watched her dad kill her mother.
	I don't know.
	It's just this awful family.
	And this is the mom of your daughter?
	Yes, yes.
	Okay.
	And did you know all of this before you had children with her?
	Parts of it.
	I knew about the sexual abuse.
	I knew about some of the fighting and the Alcoholism of her father.
	But, I don't know.
	It's not to put an excuse on me or anything, but I was pretty inexperienced about all these things.
	I don't know.
	I didn't give her as much importance.
	And maybe there was some of this white knighting that you talk in some of your podcasts about.
	I don't know.
	Maybe you hope you can cure some of these things, you know?
	Did your parents know about her history?
	No.
	My parents were separated.
	I grew up with my mother.
	And no, my mother never really...
	I never talked to her about her history.
	I just didn't think it was my place to talk about someone else's trouble.
	I'm sorry, to talk about some...
	Well, just to, you know, obviously it's...
	Your ship has sailed as far as this goes, but for other people...
	Yeah.
	Listen, if you're inviting someone into your family, then your family has every right to know about that person's history, in my opinion.
	Right?
	You say, well, maybe it's not my mother's business, but it is...
	It is your mother's business because this person is now in your mother's family, right?
	Of course.
	And it's going to be part of your mother's life.
	That was the goal, right?
	Was to have her be part of your mother's life until your mother died, right?
	Well, that's the funny thing, Stefan, because even though I wasn't very experienced in all of this, I did recognize the signs.
	Some part of me knew that This was going to be a difficult relationship, and my mother also...
	No, wait, wait, wait.
	But, sorry, we're just going off into another topic now, right?
	Of course.
	So I need to stop you and just...
	Did you hear what I said?
	Well, that it was my mother's right to know about this history because she was going to be a part of her life.
	And what do you think of that?
	That you are absolutely right.
	And, in fact, After listening to you for a couple of years, I have recognized this.
	But as you said, the ship had already been sailed.
	But you're absolutely right.
	You're absolutely right.
	And I'm saying that because in the future, right?
	And the reason I think it's important, particularly with parents, to tell them about your fiancé's or girlfriend's history It's because your parents, hopefully, have accumulated some wisdom along the way of life, along the journey of life, right?
	And would say, look, I mean, if this girl has had a history of being sexually abused, was it by her father?
	No, no.
	It was by what they thought was a close friend of the family.
	Oh, great.
	So the family's close friends with a pedophile.
	Yep.
	That's not good, right?
	So you would, I mean, I would say, this person is not damaged to goods, this person is not broken beyond repair or anything like that, but you can't repair this person.
	And this person's repair is going to be a multi-year process of significant time investment in therapy, pursuit of self-knowledge, body work, you name it, right?
	But you cannot fix this person any more than I can look at a half-totaled car and take out a screwdriver and go to town and do anything other than more damage, right?
	So it is a job for, you know, professionals, people who are well-trained and so on who can help this person.
	You can't.
	And you can't even motivate this person to get help.
	I mean, you can say, this is what I think you need to do and here's the evidence for it.
	You can't make this person want to either start it or stick with it and see the process through to completion.
	And if she is an untreated victim of childhood sexual abuse...
	It is going to be, I would argue, impossible for her to have a productive, mature and healthy and loving and open sexual relationship until that trauma is dealt with.
	And that is a multi, again, all my opinion, but it's a multi-year process that requires significant investment and expertise and cannot be done by layman any more than you'd, she'd say, oh, I've got a heart murmur.
	You'd say, hey, I've got a spoon.
	Let me open up your chest and have a poke around, right?
	Yeah.
	And that hopefully would have, you know, not put her in the situation of having a kid where she's more likely to abuse the kid or get married where the marriage is less likely to work out, thus adding to the dysfunction in her life, right?
	Right.
	Sorry, there was just a question in the chat room.
	Someone said, can't help someone if not a professional psychologist, would people here agree?
	Well, I didn't say help.
	I said you can't fix that person.
	You can't fix that person because that is a multi-year dedicated process which is not appropriate in a relationship.
	So I just wanted to mention that.
	Of course you can help the person, yeah.
	I mean, but you can't fix them.
	You can't take on the onus of fixing them.
	And they have to pursue that.
	You can support them in the pursuit of that.
	You can listen to their progress in therapy, and of course you can help them, but you cannot fix that person.
	I mean, I can call someone to come and tow my car, but I can't tow my car.
	You need a truck for that, right?
	Yeah, right.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	No, no, go ahead.
	Okay, so what has happened to your daughter that is traumatic?
	No, no, no.
	The trauma is The trauma I was referring to is the mother's trauma.
	Because, of course, her trauma will affect my daughter, you know?
	Right.
	Sorry, how old is your daughter again?
	Four?
	Four.
	Almost five.
	And how do you think your wife has been as a parent so far?
	Not very good, Stefan.
	Not very good.
	We lived together with our daughter for about a year and of course I worked and so I wasn't in the house almost throughout the whole day and when I get home I found my daughter almost all the time watching TV or playing alone or something like that and the moment I get home she will jump on me and ask me to play with her and all of this and I wonder, baby, why?
	Didn't you play with your mom all day?
	You know, I find it kind of strange that she was so anxious to play with someone.
	And sure enough, she never played with her.
	She never talked to her.
	She never took the time to have conversations, like you were saying in the last call.
	More often than not, I will find...
	My girlfriend, I don't know, watching TV or chatting at the computer or doing anything but parenting.
	And she was more often than not impatient with her and not very negotiative.
	She will almost always try to play the authority card instead of negotiating with her.
	And I tried a lot to speak with her and teach her some of the things that I have learned from you, and some of it I think she got, but not to the point that I would have liked, you know?
	When you said she didn't talk to her all day, do you mean that literally?
	Well, no, of course.
	I mean, she will, hey baby, you want something to eat?
	Or, hey, are you okay?
	Or, hey, do you want to watch TV? I mean, there were not really conversations.
	Maybe once in a while she will, I know, tickle her or chase her around the apartment, but that's not parenting, you know?
	Right, okay.
	What happened after a year?
	Well, that's kind of a long story, but basically I couldn't take it.
	The situation with her, apart from not being a very good pioneer, she has very little drive to accomplish anything, to get a job, to get Hobbies to get friends, not even to get out of the house to take a walk with my daughter.
	And she had, since I knew her, she had aggression problems.
	And after about...
	Sorry, you said it was aggression problems?
	Aggression problems, yeah.
	And about seven months before we move in together, We had a pretty ugly discussion and she ended up being physically abusive to me.
	She pushed me and she...
	Anyway, we had never had a problem before.
	And it escalated from that.
	Why do you think you've never had a problem before?
	I mean, in my experience with aggressive women, you don't usually have a problem because you don't have a spine, right?
	Maybe.
	Maybe.
	I don't know.
	I guess the aggression...
	Hang on, hang on.
	So, did you stand up to her before and that wasn't a problem?
	No.
	Or did you stand up to her about something and then there was a problem?
	I mean, we had a lot of discussions before that.
	We've known each other for about six, almost seven years now, and There's always...
	Every time we had a fight, she was very aggressive in her language and in her expressions, but never physically.
	Never, never physically.
	And of course, I stand up to her and argue with her when I thought it was necessary, but...
	I don't know.
	It never got physical until that first time when we were living together.
	So while you were dating, she was verbally abusive?
	When we were fighting, yeah.
	While you were dating still?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Right.
	Again, this is after the fact.
	Don't have children with women who are verbally abusive, guys.
	Don't do it.
	You can make the choice, like if you find the vagina so enticing that you're willing to have it well-armed in the bedroom, If you don't mind vagina dentata or basically vampire fanged pussy in your life, that is your choice.
	I don't think it's a wise choice.
	I think it's a desperately bad choice, but at least you're an adult making your own choice.
	Please, please do not get married to or have children with verbally abusive women because they, sure as Sherlock, sure as Sunrise, will be verbally abusive to the children.
	Oh yeah.
	You may choose that for yourself.
	You have no right to choose that for your children.
	And yes, exactly the same is true for women to men.
	So she must have been very attractive, is what you're saying?
	Yeah, to me she was.
	Right.
	So you were willing to put up with the verbal abuse because she was attractive?
	I mean, if she had been 250 pounds, you probably wouldn't have, right?
	No.
	Which is exactly why women work on their bodies more than their personalities in general.
	Because women get a free pass from men because of how they look.
	And so they work on how they look rather than who they are.
	Again, not all women, but the trend is.
	So you're fueling this trend, which is kind of frustrating to me.
	Of course.
	As I said, I was very very inexperienced with women and when I found myself in a relationship with this very attractive girl that seems to really like me and all of this, sex blinds you man.
	Sex really really blinds you.
	Well and you know that this is not just your perception but sexual desire turns us into Apes with big dicks, basically.
	It actually suppresses our reasoning as men, right?
	Lust, sexual desire, or what we often call falling in love, which is becoming an egg-seeking sperm missile, it actually physiologically shuts down our higher reasoning centers.
	We literally devolve down to penis with bouquet of flowers.
	So it is really important to know that being pussy drunk, being punch drunk with lust is not a character flaw.
	It is nature's way of getting you to overlook the personality in order to get at the eggs, right?
	Yeah, and I broke up with her two times, two times before we lived together.
	And every time we got back together, it was because, I don't know, One day we were together, and one thing led to another, and we ended up having sex, and hey, we're back together again, you know?
	Well, sure, yeah, because she doesn't have to apologize if she can give you an orgasm, right?
	Exactly.
	She doesn't have to change if she can milk your dick instead of growing her ethics, right?
	Exactly.
	Right, right.
	Okay.
	Now, how did the kid come about, exactly...
	Well, you were talking before about how our parents can have some experience and wisdom and apparently my daughter was conceived in the exact same way that I was conceived.
	We were broken up and we ended up having sex like sometimes happens and After we had broken up.
	I mean, we had sex before, after we had broken up.
	Unprotected sex, I would assume.
	Unprotected sex, yeah.
	And later on, talking to my mother, she said, hey, that's what happened between me and your father.
	And I was like, oh crap, we should have talked about it long, long, long before.
	What did your mother think of her?
	I mean, she tried to be as nice to her as possible, but since the beginning there was a little tension between them.
	Because, I mean, my mother is kind of smart and she recognized some of the signs.
	She recognized that she was a little aggressive and possessive and a little jealous.
	And there was always tension.
	Through the years, there has been this real animosity between the two.
	I'm sorry.
	Right.
	Right.
	I mean, you say your mother's smart.
	I mean, what she should have been doing is taping your dick so far back up your ass that it looks like a hammer.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	You're right.
	Moms, teach your sons about dangerous women.
	Don't worry.
	Society as a whole will take care of teaching your daughter daughters about dangerous guys.
	Can I ask you something?
	Bad boys are all over the place in the media.
	The dangers of dating bad boys.
	Men as pigs, men as sexist bastards, men as irresponsible deadbeats.
	That's everywhere in the media.
	You don't need to worry about that, although it won't do any harm to remind them.
	But dear God in heaven, Can moms teach their sons about dangerous women?
	Right.
	Is it possible that some women don't recognize the dangers of these women because they're not like them?
	Is it possible?
	Your mom had you the same way this woman had your daughter!
	Are you telling me she didn't know this could happen?
	This isn't possible?
	You're there!
	No, yeah.
	That's a clue!
	Yeah, of course.
	Of course she had the same situation.
	But I mean, the aggression, the, as you call them, the estrogen-based parasite.
	I mean, she's not like that, my mother.
	I mean, she was really responsible with my father and she made a lot of bad choices, but...
	She didn't try to manipulate my father or anything through me, you mean?
	Wait, are your parents still together?
	No.
	So, where did she get her money from?
	She worked, right?
	Yeah, she worked.
	Okay.
	And she didn't try and get any money from your dad?
	No, not really.
	I mean, by law...
	See, no, not really.
	It's not really the same thing, is it?
	Well, of course, there is child support.
	So she did.
	But my father never really assumed that responsibility.
	She was pretty alone when it came to money.
	Even when they were together, because when I was born...
	Wait, wait, wait.
	Did your father pay child support?
	Nope.
	Oh, I thought you said she did.
	He did.
	Well, she tried to get child support because it was right, you know, but she didn't get it.
	Why didn't she get it?
	Because my father never really took the responsibility and for some reason when my mother tried to take legal action against him, I mean, I guess they How do you say this?
	There was a result.
	He was supposed to pay money, but somehow he didn't pay it, you know?
	And did he see you?
	Very, very rarely.
	Well, why?
	Why didn't he see you?
	Stefan, he was uninteresting.
	No, no.
	He.
	He.
	Not she.
	Why didn't he?
	Don't start talking about your mom.
	Why did he not see you?
	No, no, no.
	It was a long sleep.
	He was not interested in really being present.
	He never really...
	No, no, no.
	You're just saying the same thing over and over again, right?
	Why was he not interested in being present?
	Why did he not want to see you?
	Not, did he not want to see you, but phrase it another way.
	Why did he not want to see you?
	I don't know.
	Maybe because...
	Well, no.
	Don't give me a maybe.
	I mean, he's your dad, right?
	Yeah, but as I say, we barely, we had very little contact when I was little, and even when I grew up, we barely talked, you know?
	So, besides, I mean, I know him from afar, but I know him, and he's not the type of guy that you can just ask him, hey, why didn't you, why weren't you there, you know?
	Well, okay, I understand that, but we know people very well, even if we've only spent a little bit of time with them.
	Did he stay with your mom at all after you were born?
	Yes, for about three years.
	About two years, so twice as long as you stayed with the mother of your daughter, right?
	Yeah.
	And why did he leave?
	Well, because, as I said, they conceived me when they were broken up, so They already didn't work as a couple, but they tried to do what they thought was the right thing and staying together.
	No, no.
	Okay, look, I understand.
	Don't give me the Hallmark card sentimentality version.
	Why didn't they work as a couple?
	Because my mother is a little bit independent and she's not very good at submitting and my father is pretty authoritative.
	He has a military story.
	He dreamt about being a politician.
	He is very cold, very...
	I don't know.
	They weren't...
	They didn't work.
	Oh, man.
	You've just taken full-on dose of mommy propaganda, right?
	You're like Momfga, right?
	So, she's just too independent and strong-willed and doesn't submit and that's why things didn't work out with your dad, right?
	She was just too strong-willed and too independent, right?
	No, we can talk about her flaws as well.
	Well, I can't because I don't know them.
	No, of course.
	But, you know, people who aren't very good at submitting don't tend to date I don't know if she got married or not, but don't tend to date and have children with very authoritarian men.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah.
	Okay, so I would like you to not give me the party line, but to give me, don't give me marketing, give me spreadsheets, right?
	So, why did your parents' relationship not work?
	Well, I'll tell you a story that I heard from my mother, so it's her side.
	I recognize that, but it's something she told me.
	When I was very young, we had this babysitter and she ended up resigning.
	And my mother thinks that she resigned because my father was harassing her, you know?
	Sorry, your father was what?
	Sexually harassing her.
	And how old were you when your mother told you this?
	She told me this last week.
	Right.
	She doesn't have any proof, right?
	No, no.
	Right.
	So, she's slandering your father without proof to you.
	Well, Stefan, I began to ask questions about my father very recently.
	In fact, since last year preparing to To talk to you because I never really asked her about him and she never really speak to me, as you said, slander him in front of me.
	It was because I started asking questions and really being curious about the story.
	Okay, what has your mother said about her own fault in the relationship?
	Well...
	Not much, really.
	No, not much.
	What does not much mean?
	Well...
	Let me ask you a more specific question.
	Has your mother ever talked about her own faults in the relationship?
	No.
	Okay, how tough is that?
	She admits zero responsibility and zero faults in choosing a guy to have a child with who doesn't stick around and might have harassed a babysitter.
	But she is no responsibility, no fault, no blame in any way, shape or form that she's admitted to you.
	You're right.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	What do you think of that?
	Well...
	I mean, I haven't really asked Emma's question, but she should have, of course, told me about a little bit more complete story.
	Oh, man.
	Look, I got lots of people who want to talk, so if you want to have a real conversation, let's have a real conversation.
	But if you want to keep making up excuses, I got to move on.
	I got to be respectful to my listeners, right?
	No, Stefan, I understand that.
	Please understand that English is not my first language, so some things are hard to say.
	No, no, no.
	Don't blame English.
	No, no, no.
	Your defenses are too good to be accidental, right?
	So let me tell you something.
	The reason we're talking about this, my friend, is because you said that your mother or some women might not understand the type of women like the mother of your child because, you know, they're just too dissimilar, right?
	Right.
	Okay.
	Now, how good is...
	So the idea that you would never pick anyone similar to your mother strains credulity, because your level of self-knowledge and criticism of your family of origin is not high.
	So the idea that your...
	I wish there was easier words for this, your wife, the mother of your child, your girlfriend, the ex-girlfriend.
	Yeah, ex-girlfriend.
	The idea that your ex-girlfriend is nothing like your mom is virtually impossible, right?
	Yeah.
	Now, how good was your ex-girlfriend at admitting fault?
	Awful.
	How good is your mom at admitting fault?
	Awful as well.
	Okay, so do you think that given that your mom is bad at admitting fault that she might have some insight into a woman who's bad at admitting fault?
	And saying, well, you know what?
	I got married.
	I'm really bad at admitting faults.
	I've understood that.
	I've looked into why my dear son grew up without a father.
	And it's because I chose a guy and I fought with him.
	Yes, he's got his problems, but I can't change him.
	I can only change myself.
	And I was really bad at admitting fault.
	I always had to be right.
	I didn't listen.
	And that drove him away.
	He wasn't perfect, but I can only focus on what I did.
	So I'm telling you, if this woman cannot admit faults and listen and work to improve things that are legitimate criticisms, this is going to go really bad.
	And how do I know that?
	Because it went really bad with your dad for pretty much the same reason.
	That is a speech that a helpful mom would have given and helps you avoid the situation where this poor, poor four-year-old girl is growing up with an indifferent, selfish, lazy mother.
	The reason that I'm sort of picking on your ex-girlfriend is because she's not like so depressed that she can't get out of bed or, you know, is just having horrible flashbacks to her sexual abuse, but she's watching TV and she's chatting on Facebook and, you know, she's hanging out and, right, so she's not non-functional, she's just non-responsive, which is kind of different, right?
	Right.
	So, and the reason, right, is that if you don't know this stuff, then you're going to be the prey to someone else who comes along.
	Now, your ex-girlfriend is not working, right?
	And how is she living?
	Right now, she's working part-time in a mall, but it's not a stable job at all.
	So the money she's getting, she's getting from her parents and her current boyfriend and the little job she has many years to do.
	And of course she is in debt.
	A lot of debt.
	And what do you think of the boyfriend?
	I haven't met him.
	I haven't met him yet.
	What do you think he's likely to be like?
	Well, from From what I've heard, he's pretty jealous.
	In fact, he doesn't like that she speaks with me even though we have a daughter together.
	He is pretty possessive and he tries to control her a lot.
	Right.
	Right, right.
	Right.
	And what are your plans going forward with this situation?
	Well, that's what I called.
	I really don't know because right now my daughter is living almost two hours away from both of us and I want to be part of her.
	From both of us?
	From both of us.
	From me and the mother.
	Sorry, I must have missed that part.
	Where is she living?
	She's living with her mother's parents.
	I mean, with her grandfather.
	Grandparents.
	Ah.
	I'm sorry.
	Okay, so why don't you get custody, if you can?
	Well, every time I bring up the subject, we end up having this really big fight and she gets it in her head that I want to take our daughter away from her, that I want her to forget about her mother or something like that.
	And I know that if I were to take legal action, it would be hell.
	Not only for me and her, but for our daughter.
	What about shared custody?
	What do you mean?
	Well, 50-50.
	She's with you half the time.
	Well, the thing is that I work full-time.
	If she were to live with me, I would have to move in with my mother or something like that.
	I don't know if that would be the best for her.
	For who?
	For my daughter.
	Besides, I thought I heard you before say something about the instability of shared custody.
	I mean, having two homes, two bedrooms, two Oh yeah, listen, shared custody is not great, but having a more functional parent in the child's life is better than having this part-time mall worker and her possessive boyfriend full-time, right?
	Or I guess no.
	Now she's with the parents whose close family friend was a pedophile.
	Yeah.
	Not good, right?
	Right?
	They raised a girl, not only did they have a friend who was a pedophile, but they raised a girl who was not close enough to them to tell them, I assume, when she was abused as a child.
	Yeah.
	Nope, they found out when she was almost 16.
	Right, so this is a highly toxic and dysfunctional family in my opinion.
	And so you're saying, well, how would it not?
	I mean, why do I even need to say this?
	Of course you need to try and get the kid out of there.
	Yeah, but I will be very honest with Josefán.
	My ex-girlfriend, she has had suicide tendencies.
	And on top of that, the aggression and all of these things, Part of me is scared that what what could she be capable of if I really really pursue this, you know?
	Okay, so I'm not sure why we're talking then I mean because I'm making suggestions and you're basically telling me they're not possible So if you've just called up to transfer your frustration to me, I guess it's kind of working But I mean I don't know what we have to talk about I mean, if you're scared she might kill herself if you go for shared custody, then I don't know what to say.
	I mean, I'm sorry that that's the situation.
	I can't obviously advise you to do anything that makes someone kill themselves or something like that.
	But, I mean, if that's the situation, then I guess the kid's going to have to fend for herself somehow.
	No, that's not what I want.
	Of course not.
	So what do you, I mean, what can you do?
	What are your options?
	Well, the best option, of course, is to fight for the custody and take measures so nothing bad happens.
	Well, you can certainly fight for shared custody, right?
	And again, this is all stuff you would talk about with a lawyer, but how often are you seeing her now?
	Like twice every month.
	For how long?
	For about a weekend, a full weekend.
	And do you go and visit her in the grandparents' house?
	Sometimes, and sometimes I bring it back to my place.
	Okay, so the mom has no particular issue with you spending time with the daughter.
	So if you go for shared custody, then that, I assume...
	I mean, she's not like throwing herself in front of the car, right?
	No, but I mean, I don't want to keep bringing problems to the conversation.
	There's issues with that too, but maybe the biggest question right now for me, because can this work?
	Can maybe she stay living with the grandparents and me being as much of a strong presence in her life?
	Do you think that could be good for my daughter?
	I mean, I don't know.
	I cannot possibly answer that with any degree of certainty.
	You know, I mean, there are certainly signs that this is not a good situation, right?
	I mean, you can't be a strong presence in her life a couple of days a month.
	Exactly.
	doesn't mean that you're immaterial to her life, but strong presence in your life, in her life, I would assume would be more more than that.
	And maybe, I don't know.
	Maybe you can give some advice about bringing a future relationship in this situation.
	Bringing which future relationship?
	I mean, me with a new woman.
	Oh, you know, I tell you, I mean, this is, a quality woman is probably going to run screaming.
	Like, I hate to tell you that, I mean, but when you say, well, listen, I have a kid with this crazy, kind of suicidal, lazy mom with a jealous and possessive boyfriend, I mean, what do you think a woman's going to say?
	Well, I know what I would say.
	What would you say?
	Nice to meet you.
	Have a good luck.
	Yeah, like, that's a tough situation.
	I'm sorry about that.
	but I don't you know a woman would have to be really hard up to view that as her best option no matter how great you are right of course you you I'm sorry.
	Thank you.
	So, I mean, my suggestion would be sit down and talk with a lawyer about what your options are for going for joint custody and See what you can establish from that standpoint.
	It's a hell of a burden.
	I'm obviously incredibly sorry that this is the situation as a whole.
	It's a complete mess.
	And of course, it's gonna go on and on, right?
	If the kid goes to college, it's still gonna be 18 years or 17 years to go, right?
	I mean, it's rough as hell.
	As I've said before, sex is a big person's game that makes real people out of thin air, it seems like.
	Of course, if you could go back in time and not have the 10 minutes of good old make-up angry sex and not be in the situation you would, but the kid is there now and it's certainly not her fault how she came into being.
	And it's not her fault who her mother is.
	I'm sorry that you weren't warned about this.
	I'm sorry that this kind of issue was not discussed with you.
	I think that your mom could have very easily helped you out with this.
	But I'm sorry that she didn't.
	And I think that might be something to talk about.
	Like, why didn't you warn me about, you know, this kind of person?
	But I would say that...
	I'm sorry?
	How would you approach this subject?
	I mean, eventually my daughter is going to have questions about...
	Everything that happened.
	How would you approach it?
	At what age is it appropriate?
	And now, even now, she has questions.
	And I don't know what to say.
	About what?
	About why we are not living together.
	About why we got separated.
	I think a show or two ago, I don't know if it's released or not yet, but just check out the feed.
	I did a whole speech on this, so you can refer to that.
	But, I mean, you want to say, you know, my commitment is to you.
	You know, you can't talk about the flaws with her mom because that's too...
	It's too volatile for the ex's situation.
	And at the same time, right, the problem is when there's a breakup, somebody has to get thrown under the bus, so both of you do, right?
	You can't both be perfect and there's a breakup in the parenting structure, right?
	And so this is the real hell to explain to kids.
	I mean, is that, what were you going to say?
	Your mother's perfect, I was a jerk.
	Well, that's no good, right?
	Your mother's a jerk, I'm perfect.
	Well, that's no good.
	We're both jerks.
	Sorry you got stuck with us.
	Bad luck, right?
	You know, your mother, we were both jerks.
	Your mother is committed to being a jerk.
	I'm committed to getting better.
	Well, she's going to tell her mom that, right?
	And oh my God, right?
	So, you know, it's a mess.
	I mean, there's no easy way at it.
	I would just say there's nothing wrong with talking...
	7, sorry, 716.
	Wednesday night show that was out on the 16th of July.
	That has the speech that I'm talking about.
	So I would say, you know, just say, well, we'll, you know, this is big person stuff.
	We'll talk about it when you get older, but just know that I'm here for you and I love you and there's nothing I wouldn't do for you and I'm sorry that your parents aren't together.
	I'm sorry that you got to go back and forth between now three houses.
	I think that's terrible and it's not what I want.
	I don't have the power to change it on my own and So the best I can do is try and commit to offer you my commitment as your father to be with you as long as you live and to commit to you as much as I possibly can and And that I will always be available to you for conversation, for talk, for counsel, for guidance, for a shoulder to cry on.
	I will always be your rock.
	I will always be your physics as best as I can be.
	You can give her all of that stuff, but, you know, as far as getting into why the marriage broke up, I mean, that's just I mean, you're in the same boat as the mom because you had the kid with her.
	So if you put a big hole in the boat where the mom is, you both sink, right?
	Because the more you put down the mom, the more the kid's going to go, well, why the hell did you make a baby with someone like that?
	Right?
	There's just no way to...
	To come out on top of that stuff, which is why it really matters where you point your dick, right?
	So anyway, listen, I got to move on to the last caller, but thank you very much for your comments.
	And I really, you know, if you can keep us posted about how this goes, I really, really feel for your situation.
	I hugely respect you for committing to try and stay in your daughter's life.
	And I really hope that you can get something worked out where you get more access.
	I'm incredibly sorry for this whole situation.
	And you certainly have my best wishes going forward.
	Thanks a lot, Stefan.
	All right.
	Thank you.
	All right.
	Alicia is next.
	She wrote in and said, do you have any practical suggestions to help me stay self-aware so that I can give my children and husband the life that they deserve?
	Compared to what?
	Self-aware compared to what?
	How would you know if you're not self-aware or when you're not self-aware?
	Can you hear me first of all?
	Yes.
	Yes, I can.
	Okay.
	Self-aware as in just being aware of my triggers and handling them, coping appropriately instead of letting myself be emotionally drawn into them.
	I can't really give you my explanation in one sentence, but...
	Can you ask another question, maybe?
	Well, I give you the first hint.
	I assume that you love your husband and he's good to you?
	Yeah, yeah, he is.
	Okay, I assume that because you're not saying, how do I get my rat bastard of a husband to change and be a decent guy, right?
	There's that old myth about marriage.
	That all women marry their husbands hoping their husbands will change usually means becoming more successful.
	And all men marry their wives hoping their wives won't change.
	In other words, lots of sex, youth and fertility, which doesn't last either.
	It's a myth, but there's probably some truth in it somewhere.
	So, okay, so...
	Nothing to complain about.
	Okay, so my first hint would be to say, there's a principle that I live by, which is to say this, that if you are around people you love and who love you, all negative emotions come from the past.
	And that's exactly where they're coming from.
	Right.
	But that's important to remember, right?
	So if I have a strong negative emotion...
	Okay.
	...it comes from the past.
	Now, this doesn't mean that nobody in your present can ever make you feel bad.
	And I'm sort of trying to say it's just right.
	But that's my default position.
	And it takes a lot to budge me from that.
	Right?
	Because we have this drive...
	To blame past ills on the present, right?
	Or to put it more accurately, those who abused us in the past get off scot-free if we end up blaming people in the present for the crap they did to us in the past, right?
	Oh no, that's exactly opposite of what I'm trying to accomplish.
	I'm trying to find answers so that I can put the blame Where it belongs and move on.
	I'm having a difficult time actually getting to the truth of things in my past and have never really been told what I would say is the full truth.
	So I don't know...
	I can't be sure whether or not all of my negative emotions...
	Are being drawn from the past or what specifically they're being drawn from so that I can learn how to cope and figure out different behaviors is my problem.
	Right.
	Now, are you still in contact with your family of origin?
	I have two families of origin and I'm not in contact with either one of them.
	And do you have dysfunctional relationships in your life?
	I mean, other than maybe some difficult people at work or anything, if you work?
	I have many.
	I have had many dysfunctional relationships, past and present.
	And it seems to...
	What are the dysfunctional relationships in the present?
	Um, uh, mostly, uh, my adoptive family, um, uh, I tend to also draw in people who are like toxic for me as well.
	Or I am drawn to them in some way.
	But my primary toxic relationships are My adoptive family and my adoptive mother is probably the worst.
	So you were given up to adoption from your biological family?
	I wasn't given up.
	Oh, you were taken from your family of origin?
	Yeah.
	Well, I've seen your ACE score and I'm incredibly sorry.
	For what you experienced about...
	I mean, I'm just incredibly sorry for what you experienced as a child.
	I mean, it's just horrendous.
	I won't go into the details, but my sympathy is enormous.
	And now, your adoptive mother, what are the issues with her?
	She was...
	The family that my biological sister and I were put into...
	We were put into a family of four other biological sisters, and she was, I say, I think abusive towards me and my biological sister for, well, I was five for about 12, 13 years, I'd say.
	Just Extremely narcissistic.
	She was a bully.
	She would humiliate us constantly.
	It's an ongoing joke with many of my friends and my sister and I that we were Cinderella's of the family.
	She just pretty much put us in charge of all the household chores.
	Just drove us like horses, basically, at every other expense.
	I feel at my education's expense, at therapy's expense.
	It just...
	Kind of sabotaged us, actually.
	Until I ended up leaving at 17.
	And that just started a whole other...
	But, yeah.
	And she's just kind of continued.
	She won't recognize it.
	She denies it.
	I thought that maybe things would change once I started having children and picked up a relationship with her again.
	But, not surprisingly, the behaviors continued.
	Only this time it was about my mothering skills and little snide remarks and quips.
	Anyway, I have I recently got in contact with a therapist that I had when I was very young who suggested that I cut her out of my life.
	So I have since about December when we got into a huge blowout and she was physically aggressive towards me.
	So yeah, that's pretty much where I stand with her.
	She's just a very nasty lady, actually, so she's never been very nice.
	I'm so sorry about all of that.
	Yeah, I'm incredibly sorry about all of that.
	Sounds like a good person to not be around, particularly when you're raising kids, right?
	Because it's hard to...
	If you're being treated like a child, it's hard to be a parent with your own children.
	Yeah, exactly.
	At this point, it's about not wanting her influence in my children's life at all.
	Because she was a horrible one in my life.
	Why would I want her to have anything to do with them?
	Yeah, and this idea that, you know, of course, I'm sure you recognize it in hindsight.
	But the idea that, oh, well, we'll have kids and that will make things better, I mean, is...
	It's a lot of work to change...
	Yeah, to change what is called characterological fundamental personality disorders is a huge amount of work.
	It doesn't happen because there's somebody who's hanging off a boob and pooping in their pants that does not the miracle cure to personality disorders, right?
	Uh-huh.
	I didn't have children on the precipice that she would change.
	I didn't have children to win her love or anything like that.
	I think I thought for a little while it seemed as though she saw me as an adult, like as an independent person who deserves some respect, but I was wrong about that.
	I recognized it quickly.
	Like three months in.
	But yeah, I didn't have children hoping that it would bandage our relationship or cure it in any way.
	I just thought maybe she would have a little more respect for me as an individual.
	Right.
	Which didn't happen.
	Right.
	Right.
	Well, so as far as...
	Living in the present goes, right?
	I mean, that's the great challenge when, especially when you have a difficult past, is living in the present.
	We can't live in the present without reference to the past, right?
	I mean, we couldn't understand each other's English language if we didn't have a history, right?
	So you can't live in the now without having a past, right?
	But we want to make sure that Our unconscious is designed for repetition because throughout most of the evolution of the species and of the pre-species and all the way back to the amoeba, our unconscious is not designed for repetition because so little changed.
	You know, think of monkeys, right?
	I mean, how much changes From one generation of monkey to the next, fundamentally.
	I mean, maybe the habitat changes because the government is encouraging clear-cutting or something like that, but fundamentally, nothing Nothing changes, right?
	So it's really designed for repetition and the capacity to live with functional relationships when you have grown up with dysfunctional relationships is not what we're adapted for.
	We are adapted to pretty much expect the future to be like the past because so little change throughout most of human and pre-human history.
	And so when you, yeah, so now you have this expectation, I think, which is that the present is going to be like the past.
	And you're attuned to the same dangers in the present, even if they're not there, that you were in the past.
	It's obviously a form of post-traumatic disorder, right?
	But it's not really a disorder, given that throughout most of human history, our future pretty much was like the past.
	And everything that was done to us as children, we would expect to do to our own children and have done to us as adults and all of that kind of stuff, right?
	I mean, if there was child sacrifice when we were kids, there would have been child sacrifice when we grew up, right?
	I mean, that's just the way that it works, right?
	So recognize that your unconscious is actually trying to help you, but reminding or waking your unconscious up or your subconscious up to the fact that Your environment has changed and it needs to evolve is really really important and I I remind myself of this like I sort of consciously every day remind myself it's the opposite now right it's it it's the opposite
	of what it was now and there is no danger In my household.
	There's no danger in the people I live with.
	There's no danger in my friends.
	There's no danger in my environment.
	And that is really important to remember.
	That's my mantra.
	Stop swimming.
	We got to shore.
	Right?
	Stop panicking.
	The tigers are locked away.
	Stop freaking out.
	There are only dolphins in the water, not sharks.
	And reminding yourself if you've got to a place of security that you have got to that place of security and reminding your unconscious that the war zone is years and continents behind and away is the most essential thing to get the blind groundhog day Of the subconscious to stop repeating the same pattern of alarm and aggression and fear and compliance and resentment.
	Reminding ourself to adapt to peace is a very fundamental aspect of achieving and maintaining peace in the now.
	We are always A wet tissue paper away from our history of war, if that has been our history, right?
	We are always incredibly close to the front, to the shells, to the mustard gas, to the rats in the boots and the fungus between the toes.
	We are always close to that.
	And reminding ourselves how far we are physically despite how close we are mentally is essential to making sure that our fight-or-flight mechanism learns to recognize that the predators are gone, learns to recognize that manipulation and control and the base management of other people as self-serving human utility bots is done and gone.
	And that we have achieved peace And it's almost like they say the price of peace is eternal vigilance, which is kind of a paradox.
	But for me, the price of peace or the price that peace requires to stay in my heart is a constant empirical reaffirmation that war has been driven from my house and my heart and my family and my friendships.
	That the demons weren't just exercised, they weren't just driven out, but a goddamn stake was put through their heart and they can't come back.
	And that I think is the most essential thing, to live truly in the present with a recognition of the past, is first to recognize the past was brutal, second to recognize that the present is peaceful, keep the two as far apart, As each other in your mind as they are empirically in your years and your geography.
	Does that make sense?
	It does.
	What if my past is still a threat to my present?
	How is that?
	Well, my biological father When my sister and I were taken out of the home, he was jailed.
	And when he got out, he attempted to have visitation rights with my sister and I, which was shut down.
	When I turned 18, I was supposed to get the information of my biological family, but my adoptive mother has withheld it.
	I actually find this keeps me in this constant state of, like, paranoia.
	Like, my flight or fight is constantly going still because I don't know who this person is and if he would try to find me or if he already knows who I am or...
	I find that it is a constant in my life.
	I draw other people, like predatory people, into my life.
	It's almost like re-victimization.
	He's not the only person that I have fears of being a threat to me physically and a threat to my family.
	So as much as I have tried to leave my past in the past and be happy with the peace of my life, because I have a beautiful family.
	I have two beautiful daughters who are, oh my gosh, just, they've saved my life.
	But I'm still under this real world threat of not knowing what Where these people are or if they could know where I am.
	Like I moved across the country out of fear of certain people and I think now that we're going, we're moving back to our original province, it's really like messing with me.
	I'm having a lot of I'm just going through a lot of different things.
	Like I'm constantly battling with flashbacks and anxiety.
	It goes from anxiety to depression.
	So it's all of these physiological things that I'm going through as well.
	I can't keep my mind calm.
	Right.
	Why are you moving back?
	Family, work.
	My husband's being transferred.
	We've been out.
	We've been away for quite a long time.
	And since we had children, we find it very difficult to raise them on our own with no community.
	Especially since having children, I'm having all these Flashbacks and these depressions which I think are because of my own past but I can't really do it on my own.
	I'm a stay-at-home mother and I'm finding it very difficult to cope on a day-to-day without the family support so we're going back to be closer so that we're just not so lonely and And yeah, my husband's being transferred as well, so those are the main reasons.
	Yeah, I assume that's optional.
	And was your father your molester?
	My biological father, yeah, he was.
	It's alleged that he was.
	He was not charged for it.
	He was actually charged For attempted murder, I believe, on my mother and my sister and I. But these are all things that I don't have...
	I've never had anybody sit down and say, these are the facts.
	This is the truth on it all.
	Apparently, there was a case built against him over the molestation, but they decided not to go through with it because our identities had been changed at that point, and they were afraid that he would be entitled to our new identity, which would put us in danger if he were to get out at any point.
	So...
	Yeah, they decided not to go ahead with that.
	And I think he ended up getting eight years.
	It would match up because he got out when I was about 13.
	And then attempted to obtain visitation rights to my sister and I. Wow.
	And...
	To your knowledge, he has no knowledge of your current identity?
	Not to my knowledge.
	However, I've of course my whole life been looking with the little information that I have and I went on a site a number of years back And found a name that matched and spoke with a lady who said that he'd been looking for my sister and I, but has since disappeared.
	So it makes me very nervous that he could possibly know.
	I don't know how he'd I can't get any records, but it's hard enough for me to get records.
	Yeah, I mean, it's no huge consolation, but, you know, if you can't find him, then he probably can't find you, right?
	Yeah, but isn't that the same as closing your eyes and saying you can't see me?
	Well, no, I mean, again, you have an incentive to find him, you can't find him.
	But that goes not one way glass, right?
	I suppose.
	I still...
	I don't know.
	I guess it could just still be residual fear of him.
	Like...
	I don't know if it could be imaginary that I have these present fears...
	But it could be just the residual fears of what I went through with him.
	Like, I still have the nightmares, and so it makes it very present for me.
	But...
	Yeah, I mean, I have children to protect now, so that's what makes it...
	So terrifying for me.
	Of course.
	I'm just asking for myself because I'm sure you've thought of all of this, but is there any chance of going through the cops to find out what happened?
	I'm not sure because it was a closed adoption.
	So what would happen then is I would have to go through the child services in the area and I've attempted to obtain information from them but they make it very difficult and basically all they gave me was some creative writing piece on my social history which gave me absolutely
	no information at all and Obtaining the information from my adoptive mother is not likely ever going to happen.
	She's withholding it on purpose, as far as I'm concerned, as far as I believe, but...
	So in order to actually go to the police to find out what actually happened, I would have to know who he is in the first place, which would involve a lengthy process with the child services.
	And they're not willing to give out the information so easily.
	Right.
	Yeah, unless there was a court order or whatever.
	I don't know how any of that works, but there could be ways in which they'd be compelled.
	So, I mean, let's just assume that you won't know for now.
	I mean, if you know that's right where he is or who he is or whatever, then that will be one situation.
	Let's just assume for the moment that you won't know.
	Let's assume that you'll never know.
	Which is likely.
	Which is likely.
	Okay, okay.
	Right, so...
	More possible, yeah.
	I understand that part of this is the autonomous nervous system.
	Like, you're just on fight or flight.
	You can't necessarily will it away.
	And it's breaking my body down.
	Like, I'm only 27, and I feel like I am in my mid-40s, so I am constantly in pain.
	Uh...
	I'm always anxious.
	I can't seem to relax ever.
	Like, quick movements around me.
	It's just, it's hell.
	Like, it's hell.
	I can't seem to break out of it.
	And I'm afraid that it's going to transfer onto my children.
	I don't want them to have that kind of Baggage, I guess.
	Well, and of course, I mean, excessive stress can be fatal, right?
	You wouldn't want the murder to be 30 years later, right?
	The attempted murder to succeed over a span of decades, right?
	Exactly.
	Yeah.
	So...
	I've had what I believe are several nervous breakdowns.
	Um...
	I re-victimized myself before we had children.
	I was attracting the most predatory people I could ever imagine and just going in these crazy cycles where I could have been in extremely dangerous situations.
	I'm surprised that I wasn't and Could seriously still be.
	It's just...
	I'm constantly...
	Like, it's always a cloud.
	Since I had children, I'm not out and about, so I'm not meeting people.
	But that's also not a good thing, either.
	So...
	I mean, having the predators come into my life is not an issue anymore, but instead, I'm just in this constant, like, rollercoaster.
	Right.
	Psychologically and, like, physiologically, so...
	And I'm finding it difficult to actually do anything.
	It's paralyzing.
	I can't move forward.
	I want to take care of my children the best I can, and I have dreams of accomplishing some schooling.
	I can't seem to actually do anything.
	It's just paralyzing.
	Some days, I can't function.
	I'll just walk around my house.
	I pace.
	I'll pace around my house.
	I'm constantly in this state of terror.
	It must be horrible for my children to see me like that.
	It must be so confusing.
	So in one way, it's just like I feel as though I need some answers and some truth in order to move on.
	But as it is, I need to figure out how to cope and just kind of cut it off and not be so afraid that somebody's going to knock on my door one day and Have
	you thought about taking any kind of firearm training, self-defense courses, that kind of stuff?
	I have, actually.
	Thought about getting into some self-defense and getting firearms, actually.
	Both of them.
	I've just been talking about it in the last couple months with my husband.
	But I get to that point, and it's very empowering.
	But then I feel crazy.
	Like, I feel paranoid.
	Paranoia.
	It's like...
	Is this just taking things too far?
	Am I over protecting?
	So, I mean, there's an old saying, right?
	It says, God made men and women, but Smith and Wesson make him equal, right?
	Which is, you can take self-defense courses.
	It'd be great for health, right?
	It'd be great for exercise and to some degree stress relief.
	Sounds like you've got a few punching bags to hit.
	You can take firearms training just to see how comfortable you are with a gun, right, assuming the legality of wherever you are.
	You can take the firearms training to see how comfortable you could end up feeling with a gun, but if you are concerned about physical danger, then a gun is, assuming the legality of it, a gun is a sensible precaution, right?
	I mean, it will give you some sense of preparation.
	Because it's the helplessness that is so frustrating.
	I think that's part of it.
	It's the fact that I don't know what I would do in that situation.
	I've been in other Terrible situations and I freeze.
	I completely freeze at this point.
	Hang on, hang on.
	But that's because when you were a child that was your only possible reaction.
	But the point of the self-defense training and the weapons training is to train you so that you don't freeze, right?
	It's like saying, well, I don't play the piano.
	Okay, well, now I've gone to play piano for two years.
	Now I can play piano.
	Well, in the past, I look at the piano and not know what to do.
	But the point of the training is to make you more comfortable, to make you react automatically in a proactive way and to replace the feelings of helplessness that occurred because that was your only possible response as a child.
	That's interesting.
	It's like retraining my fight or flight.
	Yeah, it is retraining your fight or flight because in this situation, you have neither.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	You can't fight because he's not there.
	And flight, I mean, you could.
	You could move to, I don't know, the South Pole and live with the penguins and he wouldn't find you, right?
	Some level of flight is possible.
	I mean, I'm not one to advise on that.
	I don't even know where you live or what your situation is and don't tell me, right?
	Flight is one possibility where you simply work to make yourself as off-the-grid and as anonymous as possible, and there will be obviously some positives in that, there'll be some negatives in that.
	Fight is not possible at the moment because he's not there.
	Yeah, and you're not trained, right?
	But if he is going to be there, Or if you're afraid, as your nervous system is afraid that he is possibly going to show up because he went to look for you once before, then weapons training and self-defense training and self-defense to disable, right?
	Not self-defense like, I don't know, maybe I'll just try and put him in a wrestling move, but like...
	Strike to disable kinds of self-defense.
	Some people say, yeah, Krav Maga is the most lethal self-defense.
	I think it's Israeli, isn't it?
	And the easiest.
	But I think that you can...
	You can begin to empower yourself physically and through weaponry that there will be people who know what you may face.
	And I believe you will never face it.
	Of course, I hope you will never face it.
	But the reality is your subconscious is like, we might.
	And so if you work to...
	It's not crazy if you were the victim of a murder attempt in the past with a guy you know has tried to find you at some point since...
	It is not crazy to become very good at extremely disabling self-defense and weaponry tactics.
	In my opinion.
	And it does give you something to do, because it's the helplessness, right?
	And the waiting.
	And that he's always in your head, right?
	Sharpening his knives or what he's doing, right?
	So would it be wise to also put my children into some form of self-defense or...
	Well, not your form of self-defense because your form of self-defense isn't going to be like kiddie karate, right?
	It's going to be how do I separate this man's nuts from his body as quickly as possible, right?
	But how much do I tell them and prepare them?
	In my opinion, again, this is just completely from the outside.
	It's all just my opinion.
	But I don't think it's a fitting topic for your kids.
	You don't have to tell them, look, mommy's learning how to shoot people, or whatever, right?
	But I think what you do have to do is say, look, mommy's got a brand new hobby.
	She's going to exercise.
	This is the boundary thing, right?
	You don't have to talk with your kids about Everything that you're doing just saying, you know, mommy's going to do exercise.
	You can say it's yoga with bruises.
	I don't know, right?
	It doesn't, right?
	But This is not like you're studying this for a hobby to play fight, right?
	I mean, this would be studying for an extremity of self-defense where you'd want to be the one alive at the end, right?
	What do you think?
	it.
	Sorry.
	Oh, Mike, is she still on?
	I can't hear her.
	Yeah, I'm sorry.
	I'm still here.
	Oh, sorry.
	Tell me what you...
	Sorry, I just wasn't sure if you dropped.
	We had to drop before.
	What's going on, sister?
	What's in your heart right now?
	Um...
	I think...
	I'm just maybe grieving a normal life with my husband and my family.
	right but this is testament Alicia to your strength in that you have a life you're scared of losing right All love is loss.
	All love is vulnerability, right?
	If you were just some drugged out, whoever, right?
	Homeless person, you wouldn't...
	Don't be so scared to lose what you have.
	The fact is that you have built a life that you love with people that you love and children that you love and that makes you vulnerable, right?
	Love is always potential loss, right?
	And all love loses in the end because unless you both die in a fiery unexpected crash, one of you is going to die before the other, right?
	Your husband or your wife.
	There is always going to be horrifying loss involved in love.
	That's the price.
	If you go through life not getting involved, not caring, have a horrible life, then you don't care as much if you lose things because you have nothing to lose.
	But if you build a life that you love, well, then you have something to lose.
	But having something to lose and being afraid of losing it is the price of getting what you want, right?
	And I've worked so hard to have what I have.
	Despite everything.
	thing.
	And that's what an accomplishment you've created.
	I mean, what a world you've created.
	And fearing its loss is entirely natural.
	So I hope that you will try, just try, finding some...
	If there are people in the chatroom who've got good experiences with female self-defense, I would try that.
	If it's legal for you to carry a small knife, if it's legal for you to carry whatever weapons of self-defense you can have, then you might want to look into that.
	Do I think you're ever going to use it?
	I don't think so.
	I hope to heck not.
	But having it in your head, having it available to you and knowing that you know how to use it and you've been trained how to use it may well help.
	Because it's the helplessness and the echoes of the childhood history.
	As you say, you paralyze.
	You're afraid you're going to open the door and just freak out and he's going to do whatever, right?
	And you're just going to paralyze.
	You're unable to defend yourself, unable to protect your family, whatever it is, right?
	But if you are trained and trained and trained, you can handle...
	I mean, you can be more trained than he is.
	And you can handle almost every situation, not just with him, but with others as well.
	So that's one option.
	The other option is you can move, you can change your names, you can re-anonymize.
	You don't have to go back to your province.
	I know there's benefits, but if it's gonna overly traumatize you, then it's gonna be bad for your health, it's gonna be bad for your parenting.
	It's not the only answer.
	There is ways of building communities where you are, right?
	So that's another option.
	But the most important option In my mind, is to recognize that this rat bastard has already done enough to you.
	There's stuff that we have to surrender to immoral people.
	I don't like paying my taxes, but I give them the money.
	They take the money, right?
	And he took a lot from you for many years, right?
	I mean, you had to be basically halifact out of your criminal family.
	Dropped into another abusive family.
	You put yourself, as you said, in dangerous situation after dangerous situation.
	This guy has already put you through the goddamn ringer for decades.
	And to allow that to continue forward is really to never leave your house of horrors that you were born into.
	You kinda never get away I mean, he could be long dead, for all you know, right?
	Yeah.
	These kinds of people, he could be back in jail, he could be long dead.
	He could be some barely coherent dementia victim or a drug addict or somebody who can't get bus fare together.
	I mean, these kinds of people don't tend to have very positive life trajectories, to put it as nicely as possible, right?
	But, and I'm not trying to indicate to you in any way, shape or form, Alicia, that this is just a mental perspective.
	Like just, well, change your mind and change your, it's not, I'm not trying to diminish to even one tiny percentage point the degree to which this is an autonomous experience for you and not specifically subject to conscious control.
	Again, tell me if I'm wrong, but obviously if it was that, you'd have sorted it out.
	But to stay in a place of helplessness and terror is to allow the abuse to continue when there are things that can be done.
	You can change your name.
	You can move countries.
	You can take self-defense courses.
	You can learn how to use a weapon.
	You can have that weapon available in a legal manner in your household if that's possible.
	And Those things will jolt your system out of the helplessness.
	The helplessness was the child's response.
	I've read about...
	Let me just see if I can find it quickly.
	Mike, do you mind posting in the Skype window?
	I think it was Nathan who posted this on my Facebook wall about the woman in England who battered her son to death.
	I'm sorry to bring this up, but I just sort of wanted to point this out.
	So this is a woman, this is an Indian woman, I think.
	She was involved with drugs and bad parties, and as you can imagine, just a whole bunch of mess.
	And she googled, how do I love my son?
	She googled how to cover bruises on children.
	She googled, I love all my children except one.
	And she got angry because her son got sick at a restaurant and she dragged him home and beat him senseless.
	And then he got listless and sick and she beat him some more.
	And he basically lay in his bed, getting progressively less responsive, his voice getting weaker, and he died over the space of two days from internal injuries.
	Savage beatings.
	And then she...
	Put his body in the trunk of the car.
	She drove him, dumped him in some woods, and then she called the police and said her son is missing.
	And hundreds of officers of course come, the woods come everywhere, and she eventually confessed to this.
	And I think I've got most of that correct.
	I just read it once.
	And I can't, of course, help but think of this poor boy lying in bed for two days, dying, bleeding from the inside, spinal injuries, I assume kidney injuries, and just basically expiring in this room with his mother occasionally coming in and saying, get up, stop faking.
	Yeah, her search included, why am I so aggressive with my son?
	And...
	What could the kid do?
	He could lie in the bed, and he could hope to live, or he could hope to die.
	And I'm guessing that part of him probably was just hoping to die in that situation.
	And that's the helplessness that we have as children with abusive parents.
	Thank you.
	We can't wander off to a bus stop in the middle of the night and hope we'll find someone nicer who will take us in.
	And that's the helplessness that you had with such a violent and abusive man in the household.
	That boy had to turn his little broken face to the wall and clutch the sheets to his neck and just die.
	That is really the only choice that he had.
	and all of us who suffered to varying degrees at the hands of abusers when we were children that helplessness is carved deep into the very base of our spines and our brains and to learn to overcome that helplessness to learn to change that helplessness to learn to confront that helplessness I believe it's essential to leaving that little dark room
	room of potential death that we all got cornered in and curled up in at some point and in some way does that make sense Oh yeah.
	Perfect.
	Perfect sense.
	And what do you think?
	What do you feel?
	You've got to get out of that house.
	You gotta get out of that house in your head, right?
	Or he is going to win.
	He went to jail.
	I know.
	But he is going to win, right?
	It's exactly that helplessness that attracts these horrible people into my life as well.
	Right.
	You know, I was talking with my therapist.
	I've been talking with an old therapist.
	And she said to me, she said, you know, Alicia, I was talking with a pedophile once, and I asked him how he chose his victims, and he said I could see it in their eyes, that helplessness.
	And that's exactly what they keep preying on.
	And that's...
	That's what I feel so many people have taken so much advantage of.
	And...
	Even my adoptive mother, I feel like she took advantage of that in some way, you know?
	Because she knew I wasn't going to fight back.
	Right.
	So I absolutely agree.
	I do think that it would be empowering for me to take some self-defense and prepare myself.
	I wonder if it would probably take care of my constant anxiety that I have as well.
	Yes, we must act in the face of helplessness.
	Or the helplessness wins and we never leave the torture chamber.
	I'm just so angry.
	It's not even just the helplessness that's constant.
	I have rage that I can't let go of.
	I just...
	I'm so angry at so many people.
	I got to a point when I was 16 that I just tried to kill myself.
	I just couldn't take it anymore.
	What if I succeeded?
	Like, I just...
	Like, I don't know how to get over it.
	Past that anger and past that rage.
	And because when I come out of the helplessness, then I feel the anger.
	And then I have to get past that.
	And I don't want my self-defense to be fueled by anger.
	either you don't want your self-defense to be fueled by anger So if I were to take self-defense classes or train to use a gun, I don't want rage to be behind it.
	No, listen, but the people who teach those courses, That's part of what they do, right?
	That's part of what they do is to help.
	Look, if you are ever confronted by someone in a life-threatening situation or a threatening situation where self-defense is the option, you want to be angry.
	Anger is your friend in that.
	It's fight or flight, right?
	You want the adrenaline, you want the cortisol, you want the whole deal, right?
	I don't want to kill anybody, though.
	No, but you won't just be hitting a punching bag or something.
	There are ways that you can work to harness the anger so that it keeps you safe but doesn't become a toxic powder keg in your life.
	Now, you're talking to a therapist, and if you go to people who are really good at teaching self-defense, they will teach you the emotional side is as important as the physical side.
	In other words, learning how to harness your anger in a situation of self-defense, learning how to remain focused, learning how to not feel overwhelmed, learning how not to slip into helplessness.
	Look, a lot of the women and men who go to self-defense courses go so because they've experienced a situation of physical danger, right?
	Yes.
	And so they know that helplessness and panic or rage is something that they have to teach people as part of self-defense how to use beneficially.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah.
	So they're experts.
	they will help you with that and and they will teach you the value of anger and they will teach you how to overcome helplessness through training so let trust the experts right Like get the reviews and talk to them.
	But they know what they're doing when they are helping people with that, right?
	But it will be something that you can do that is proactive.
	Thank you.
	And you've got some damn good reasons, my friend, to be very angry.
	And I know, look, I know.
	I won't claim even remotely to have had the same extremity of experience that you had, Alicia.
	But I will be very open with you and tell you that I know what it's like to live in the house of a parent you think might kill you.
	Thank you.
	Just today, I was painting with my daughter and some paint fell on the floor.
	And I remembered very vividly that I was With my brother, I've mentioned this on the show before, but you may not have heard it, and it's relevant to this situation with your father or your evil sperm donor,
	which is, I was painting a 124th model Spitfire with my brother, and we had this total 70s shag white carpet in our living room.
	We lived in a small apartment in London.
	I don't know, I was maybe 7, he was 9, something like that.
	And we spilt some silver paint on the shag carpet.
	And my mother was out.
	Her stepmother was there.
	Her real mother was killed in the war, but her stepmother was there.
	And we were beside ourselves with terror.
	Like stomach contracting, dry mouth, hands shaking, terror.
	Of my mother coming home and seeing a few spots of silver paint buried in the shag of a white carpet.
	And I really was frightened that we could be injured or killed because my mother had shown such a capacity for blind, destructive rage As I said before, when I tried to run away when I was three or four, she beat my head against a metal door until I couldn't even see straight.
	And that is the kind of thing that can kill a child.
	And we cut up little pieces of carpet and put them on top and we moved furniture and we were terrified.
	And my step...
	Grandmother was completely helpless.
	She barely spoke English and she always bought me this marzipan that I didn't like the taste of.
	but I knew she was scared of my mom too.
	And this was just one of dozens of incidents where I was terrified of my mother coming home.
	And not, oh, she's going to yell at me or she might spank me.
	But when my mom would lose it, you could lose your life.
	And I will also say that my mother was not a specifically cruel woman.
	She was not sadistic, to my memory.
	But when she raged, she was just completely abusive, destructive, and totally out of control.
	And so I do understand that feeling of fear, that feeling of anxiety.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	And that's why, you know, when people say, oh, that Steph, he has mommy issues.
	Why it's so foolish for people to say that.
	And when they know or if they do know the history of myself with my mother the idea that they would say to me well he has mommy issues when this was a rage-based random predator that I spent my childhood trying not to get killed by would be like me saying oh well you see Alicia you just have daddy issues.
	I mean, wouldn't that be an insane thing to say?
	Which I have been told.
	No.
	You do not have daddy issues.
	you have evil potential murderer stalker issues, which are not issues at all, but legitimate, terrifying, cautionary fears.
	So, how did you move past your want of revenge?
	that...
	Did you ever have feelings of needing revenge or...
	Well, yeah, of course.
	Yeah, of course.
	I mean, you can't live with people you're afraid of killing you without having revenge fantasies.
	I think that's all perfectly natural and healthy.
	It would be, I think, unhealthy to not have that.
	But...
	I mean, I think that there's two issues around the revenge question.
	The first is that philosophy is...
	It's like the physics of the mind that nobody knows until it's too late.
	Right?
	It's like I can fly and people like jump off buildings and then they realize the physics of gravity but it's too late.
	They're already falling.
	Yeah.
	And what the physics of philosophy and conscience has done to the people who've done wrong It's so malevolently horrifying that it is like if you please philosophy, there's no height you cannot see the beauty of the world from.
	There's no mountain that you cannot climb.
	If you please the physics of philosophy, like if you please the physics of the world, there's nothing you can't build.
	And if you don't please the physics of the world, there's nothing you can build.
	And if you please the physics of philosophy and of the conscience, there's nothing you can't do.
	I agree.
	But if you violate the conscience and the physics of philosophy, your life is a hell, and it's two kinds of hell.
	The first kinds of the hell is where you know that your life is a hell.
	And you just sit in your own squalor and the filth of your accumulated years and evil doings and become progressively more horrible, horrifying, ridiculous, disgusting, vile, contemptible, manipulative, empty.
	You just become a human vermin.
	And it sounds to some degree that this may be where your stepmom has gone.
	But even in that realm...
	Even in that realm, there is a worse fate.
	And the worst fate is that you don't even know how horrible your life has become.
	And that's usually because you're surrounded by people who are equally ghastly and cheer on The last three atoms of potential virtue as they escape your Kafkaesque rotting but moving corpse.
	The horrors that I could inflict in my wildest most malevolent fantasies are nothing compared to the horrors that the physics of philosophy and conscience inflict and they can't be stopped and they can't be reversed and they can't be fixed and they follow you into the grave and make your tombstone the acid tongue of a vomiting dragon over your worm-eaten corpse.
	What life does to bad people Is enough to satisfy any desire for vengeance that I might have.
	Yeah.
	I know.
	Don't need to lift a finger.
	Which doesn't mean don't feel angry, but there's nothing you need to do for bad people to suffer.
	The desire for hell is a lack of faith in the physics of philosophy and the conscience.
	You don't have to die to go to hell.
	You just have to do wrong and continue to draw breath.
	I don't even know what to say.
	I am so grateful to you, Stefan, because the last few months for me has been so validating.
	You've been so validating.
	And I don't even know if I'd be at this place to be able to talk about Will you think about the self-defense and weapons training?
	Yes.
	Oh, yeah.
	I've already been looking into it.
	A few different things.
	I was thinking about kickboxing.
	There's another kind of martial art.
	Yeah, I mean, I think kickboxing is fine if you feel you're in imminent danger of being attacked by Richard Simmons, but I think that you might want to go with something a tad more robust, although your biological father is probably a pretty old guy by this point,
	so he may not have much wind left in his sail, so to speak, but And also, you know, the thing to remember, too, about, right, there's no cure for evil, but for a lot of people, when they sort of pass 45 or 50, they tend to wear out, right?
	So, as you know, the majority of crimes are committed by young men, and in particular, young blacks, and, I mean, proportionate to population, at least in America, and then what happens is the criminality...
	It diminishes as people get into middle age, as men get into middle age.
	And so your father, who probably has lived a pretty rough life, a hard life, I don't think he probably went to a lot of Pilates and nutrition classes.
	So he's probably old, probably pretty decrepit.
	I don't know if he had any...
	Did he have any substance abuse problems?
	Him and my mother, I believe they did.
	Okay, so some sort of addict, you know, he's probably either dead or so decrepit that he's of no threat to anyone except somebody he might fall on.
	And so the stronger you get, the weaker he's getting over time.
	And so...
	The less criminally motivated he's going to be as well as he gets older, and he's certainly past that window, like way past that window.
	You know, there's not a lot of 70-year-olds who go up to the Bloods and the Crips and want to join up, you know?
	It's like picking up smoking when you're 60.
	I mean, nobody does that, right?
	And so...
	Biology is on your side.
	Age is on your side.
	Hormones and the diminishment of testosterone is on your side.
	The fact that he was a substance abuser is on your side.
	I'm not trying to talk you out of any concerns you might have, because I don't want to invalidate your experience, but he's not the giant he was when you were a child, right?
	He's old.
	If he's even still alive, he's run down as hell.
	He could be on dialysis, in which case he ain't roaming the streets causing a whole lot of trouble, right?
	He could be back in jail for all you know.
	I mean, I'm sure these are all things that you've thought of, but I guarantee you he's not the giant he was.
	And I also guarantee you that age has diminished his capacity for evil simply because they just get worn out usually in middle age, which is long past for him, right?
	Likely, yeah.
	I'm going to go ahead and see you next time.
	And that's what you have to remind your unconscious as well.
	I mean, the tiger, if he's even still alive, is like months from death, can barely lift two paws at the same time and has no teeth.
	Wow.
	There's the other...
	People as well.
	I think it would be beneficial to be prepared.
	Right.
	Right.
	No, I think it's beneficial to be prepared.
	Absolutely.
	And in that preparation, you will keep people at bay just by the way you carry yourself, right?
	True.
	- Yeah. - I mean, we openly invite all the trolls and critics of this show to come on.
	They always get first of the line.
	They always, you know, people who just bitch and moan about what it is that I do.
	It's like, hey, come on.
	You get right to the front of the queue no matter what.
	I don't care if somebody's been booked for six months.
	You go right to the front of the queue and you get to speak to a million people a month if you want.
	And, you know, who shows up?
	Because they know that I'm not just going to be intimidated by aggression, but I'm actually going to ask them for reason and evidence.
	So they, you know, people bitch and moan on the internet, but they don't actually come and talk to me, right?
	And that's what confidence does in the world.
	It just keeps liars, cheats, and vermin at bay.
	Will you keep us posted about what happens?
	Yeah.
	I can do that.
	I hope so.
	And your daughters are very lucky at the work that you've done and good for you.
	Good for you.
	I mean, it could have got a whole lot worse, right?
	Yeah, it could have.
	I could have met a different person instead of Running into my beloved husband.
	I was very lucky and smart enough.
	Well, good for you.
	And thank you a lot.
	Thank you so much for calling in.
	And talking about this stuff, it is very difficult.
	But you can find peace.
	You can find peace.
	It's out there for you.
	You can work to achieve it, to feel confidence in your capacity to defend yourself against a guy who's probably 70 now.
	And 70 with a lot of extra years biologically under his belt from his addictions and prison time and bad health and all that, right?
	So you can...
	Gain the capacity to feel secure and to feel strong and to feel confident in the future.
	It doesn't have to be a sentence forever.
	But again, I think that there's body work, physical work, self-defense work, maybe weapons training, whatever it is that is going to be necessary.
	Learning how to channel your anger and your sadness at this seemingly never-ending but soon-to-end, I hope, tragedy.
	There's lots that you can do, but the helplessness has got to go, right?
	Yeah.
	Yes.
	Is there anything else you wanted to add?
	No.
	You know what?
	You absolutely answered my question.
	So I am very grateful.
	For my chat with you.
	Well, thank you.
	I'm grateful too for your call.
	Thank you, everyone.
	Please help this.
	I hate to put a donation pitch at the end of such a brave conversation.
	I'm going to anyway because I'm responsible for helping the conversation grow.
	FDRURL.com slash donate to help us help the world.
	We really appreciate your time in all of this.
	We have a $7,000 bill next month.
	For...
	Bandwidth, because the show...
	And yes, we do torrents, and we've seeded, and yes, we have YouTube, which consumes half of our views, the 2 million.
	$5 subscription, 16 cents a day.
	$10 subscription, 32 cents a day.
	Come on, for the work that we're doing, the help that we're giving.
	$20 subscription is 64 cents a day.
	$50 is $1.61 a day.
	It's a medium coffee a day.
	$100 subscription, $3.22 a day.
	I got to really think that conversations like this are worth it for that.
	So thank you, everyone.
	Thanks, Mike, again.
	And I'm glad that the new YouTube technology for sharing the call is going to work.
	And we are going to work on trying to get video as well, if that's of value to people.

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