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Aug. 1, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

03:04:29

2763 Dick Punching 101 - Wednesday Call In Show July 30th, 2014

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	Good evening, everybody.
	Stefan Molyne from Freedom Main Radio.
	I am in the Batcave, or as we call it, the White Cave, for a Saturday night chat with the greatest listeners in the known universe and for agnostics who are procrastinating in the unknowable universe as well.
	So, Mike, who do we have up first?
	Up first today is Adam.
	Adam wrote in and said, After leaving a codependent romantic relationship, I am fearful if I don't see the problems that caused it.
	Then I could be missing some important information that is vital to healthily moving forward with my life.
	How can I be sure that I've seen all the flaws in her and myself that cause this toxic combination?
	Hey there, Steph.
	Hey.
	You know, well first I just wanted to say thank you for all the work you do because Freedomain Radio has really changed my life a lot and It's just, it really has given me insight, and it's just good to hear people talk sanely.
	I've just been surrounded by dysfunction my whole life, so getting some actual, I don't know, just hearing some real people talk really helps me.
	So anyways, thank you for all the work you do, but I kind of realized I answered my own question there.
	I feel like I've kind of Sorry, by the way, I'm really nervous getting my personal stuff all public, but I feel like I've kind of answered my own question there.
	I feel I have a basic understanding of kind of what went wrong.
	As I said in the question, it was a codependent relationship, and I've kind of realized I chose to go into it.
	The confusing thing about it was And she was kind of my first real relationship back in high school when I was 15.
	And then this happened when I was 20.
	So, you know, I hadn't talked to her for a few years and then started hanging out with her again.
	So I kind of knew what I was getting into because she had cheated on me in high school and stuff.
	But the only reason I was in the relationship was because I was emotionally dependent on her.
	And I've just been alone in my life for a long time, had no one to really talk to.
	And Share my feelings with and stuff and of course I got this from you and of course she was Preying on me because I was you know able to be manipulated and vulnerable So that leads me to kind of why I called in I I don't know if I called in to to actually get a better understanding if it was just to have someone to I actually listen for once,
	so I hope I'm not wasting your time and the listeners' time by just trying to get someone to listen to my problems for once.
	What do you mean by codependent?
	I was concerned about the sort of vaguely technical terms because they mean a lot of different things to different people, so I just wonder what you mean by that.
	I guess what I mean is I was dependent on her as someone to talk to and to listen to me, or at least I thought so there in the beginning.
	And she was dependent on me as someone that she could exploit and manipulate and have there for her, I guess.
	That's all very vague.
	I don't know.
	Did you pay for her?
	Is that what you mean?
	No, no, no.
	I mean...
	I guess I don't know why she was...
	I mean, I guess I don't know why she was in the relationship.
	Sorry, so you didn't...
	Hang on.
	So you're saying you didn't pay for dates or anything like that?
	No, no, no, no.
	I've known her...
	So you went 50-50?
	Yeah, yeah.
	She had her own job and stuff like that.
	Neither of us are really...
	Financially struggling.
	Okay.
	And you don't know why she was in a relationship with you?
	Yeah, I guess not.
	I think it was because I have trouble.
	I meant to prepare a lot more for this call.
	I had a lot of this stuff down.
	I've kind of fallen off my path to self-knowledge past few months.
	Disappointed in that.
	But I think she wanted to be in the relationship because I was available for exploitation and being lied to and stuff.
	I don't know what you mean by exploitation.
	I don't know what you mean by exploitation.
	Well, she was never...
	She's not at a point of self-knowledge where she was...
	She wasn't able to respect herself.
	Oh my gosh.
	I'm sorry.
	I've got to interrupt you.
	How did she exploit you?
	Give me something tangible here.
	Don't give me any adjectives.
	Give me some nouns.
	What did she do to exploit you?
	I feel like she didn't really care about me and that everything she was doing was deceitful and lying.
	She's one of these people that would...
	She wouldn't directly lie, but she would tell not full truth all the time.
	I was always having to kind of keep one eye open and make sure...
	Okay, okay.
	Hang on, hang on.
	Okay, so she's lying to you.
	You can tell me that ten more times.
	I still don't know what that means in terms of exploitation, right?
	Yeah.
	Like someone can say to me, do I look good today?
	And maybe I lie to them and say, yeah, even though they don't.
	Have I exploited them?
	If you're going to use exploitation, either drop it or tell me what it means, because I don't know what it means.
	Absolutely.
	She...
	I guess I don't know either.
	I guess I don't know either.
	Well, okay, so it wasn't financial because she didn't pay.
	Did you give her a place to live?
	So it wasn't financial, right?
	No.
	So then was it not exploitive in that sense?
	Then she just lied to you, which I'm not saying is good, but it wasn't exploitation in the same way, right?
	Yeah, I guess not.
	And then how long were you together before she cheated on you the second time?
	She never actually cheated on me in this past relationship.
	She, or at least that I know of, when I was referring to the cheating, that was back in high school.
	Okay, and how long did you go out?
	How long did you go out in the current relationship?
	Um...
	Um...
	About nine months.
	Nine months to a year, I think.
	I'd say about nine months.
	You don't know how long you've been out for?
	I'm sorry.
	This is confusing to me.
	I'm sorry.
	I just don't have all my information straight.
	Okay.
	We'll talk for a few more minutes.
	Otherwise, I'm going to just have to inflict a monologue on you because we're not getting anywhere yet so far.
	Okay.
	Absolutely.
	So, why did you break up?
	Um...
	Because I felt like...
	Because I was...
	Right when we got back together for the first...
	When I was 20, we hadn't talked for a few years.
	And that's when I found out about Freedom Maine Radio and started the path of self-knowledge.
	And started to become a better person and revised a lot of things.
	She wasn't interested in it.
	I'm sorry, could you ask the question one more time?
	I lose my train of thought a lot.
	Why did you break up?
	Because I felt like she was...
	I felt like she didn't truly care about me or care for my well-being because she could...
	I guess I just didn't...
	She genuinely cared about me because she didn't care about herself, it seemed.
	Like, she couldn't respect herself or love herself, so how could she do that for me?
	How do you know she didn't care about herself?
	She had self-esteem problems and...
	No, no.
	No more synonyms.
	Self-esteem problems is just another way of saying she didn't care about herself.
	How specifically was she 300 pounds?
	Did she put her head through a brick wall repeatedly?
	Did she bite her nails until bone was exposed?
	How do you know she didn't care about herself?
	She didn't take care of her health.
	Her sexual life, she didn't take care of her health, that goes with that.
	She lied to her parents and to her other friends, so she wasn't honest.
	She didn't have any real relationships, I guess I felt.
	And so why was she attractive to you?
	Why were you in the relationship with her?
	I mean, she cheated on you before.
	I assume you knew she was a liar, and you knew she didn't take care of her health.
	So why were you interested in her?
	Um...
	I guess I figured that out more.
	Like I said, I discovered freedom.
	No, no, no.
	At the beginning.
	At the beginning.
	Did you say, let's go out, or did she say, let's go out?
	Um...
	I'm not sure.
	I'm not sure.
	Okay, so why did you go out with her?
	Right when we started talking again, I'd just gone through this weird medical thing where it was basically an anxiety attack.
	I'd called her to talk to her, and she was being...
	She was there for me in that time, and I guess I felt that she actually did care about me then.
	Yeah, but she can care about you without you having sex with her, right?
	Yes.
	Oh yeah, that was definitely part of it too.
	So you were sexually attracted to her?
	Yes.
	Yes.
	Okay, well, so stop following your penis into whatever sockable hole it can attach itself to, right?
	I mean, it's trying to drag you into the blind photocopier and get your dick stuck in the...
	In the toner, right?
	So your dick is like, I want to make another dick.
	I want to make another dick.
	I'm going to make another dick.
	What do I need to do to make another dick?
	What bullshit do I need to say?
	What car do I need to...
	I need to make another dick.
	I'm a dick photocopier.
	That's what I want to do.
	I don't care about the soul of the woman.
	I just care if there are a couple of fertile eggs in there to send my squids into.
	So don't listen to that part of your anatomy.
	And I'm afraid now I must inflict a monologue on you.
	I was thinking that...
	No, no, no, no.
	I don't need more of this, what you call thinking.
	Okay.
	So, you say, how can I make sure that I see my flaws and other people's flaws before I date them?
	This is the big question, right?
	Yes.
	Here's the answer.
	You can't.
	You can't.
	You just can't.
	What you're basically saying is, how can I win World War II on my own?
	Right?
	And the answer is, you can't.
	You simply can't.
	So my question to you is, where are the people around you who are supposed to be watching your back and taking a wiffle bat to your balls if they stray close to a woman who cheated on you and who uses her tongues for two things, where are the people around you who are supposed to be watching your back
	Where is somebody with the wiffle bat saying, back in, one-eyed trouser snake, back in the hole, we're zipping that up and it's a chaffy belt if we need it, but you ain't going near that pile of skank.
	Yeah, I guess I don't have anyone to say that.
	Okay, why don't you have anyone in your life who wants to tell you the truth?
	That's a really good question.
	That's the answer, right?
	You felt something there, right?
	Yeah.
	Okay, so what did you feel there?
	Um.
	I feel.
	Because you had a panic attack.
	You had a panic attack.
	And you called a woman who cheated on you.
	That tells me you're a little shy on truth-telling relationship reflections, right?
	Yes.
	So where are your male friends who understand that the penis is trying to drag you off a cliff into the grand canyon of dysfunctional vagina from time to time?
	Who can say, dude, she cheated on you.
	Here's a penthouse and some Vaseline.
	Go get her off your mind.
	Yeah, I need to...
	I know I need to work on surrounding myself with better people.
	Well, are you surrounded with bad people or no people?
	Um...
	Um, no people pretty much.
	Okay, so my question is then, I'm sorry to laugh, why didn't you call me up and say, okay, Steph, there's this woman who cheated on me a couple of years ago.
	I called her up, I have no friends, and she wants to date me, and I'm horny.
	That would have been a smart decision.
	I keep telling people I'm about prevention, not cure, and then everyone calls me after the disaster and says, how do I fix it?
	And it's like, I don't know that you can!
	Because you didn't call first.
	It's just, everyone keeps calling me with like, well, I got this chick pregnant.
	Well, I dated this woman who cheated on me.
	Right?
	It's like, for God's sake, you know, I'm still terrified of my mother.
	My fear is not going away.
	And I'm going to go and pay for my mother.
	I don't know what's going on.
	Like, call me first.
	Call me first.
	And then...
	We can dodge some of these bullets rather than have to apply a band-aid of philosophy to a giant sucking chest wound of history.
	So why?
	You knew you knew about the show!
	I do seven or eight hours of call-ins a week.
	Call me before the disaster!
	Stop insulting philosophy by pretending it's a surgeon and not a nutritionist!
	Makes total sense.
	So you can't know all the problems in you and in other...
	When a man, let's just say as charitably as we humanly can, when a man falls in love, his brain turns into sperm.
	And it's a complete mindfuck, is what I'm telling you.
	And you can look all this stuff up.
	The physiology is pretty well known.
	That your cognitive reasoning center is shut down.
	Basically, the balls take over and you can't think.
	I think every man has been there and we all know what it's like.
	And this is why we need other guys or women around us to smack us upside the head.
	It is not a violation of the NAP to smack someone upside the head who's about to dip his wick in a deep candle of craziness.
	It's like pulling someone out of the road who's about to wander into traffic.
	They'll thank you later, right?
	There just better be some traffic, right?
	But you can't.
	You can't win the war alone.
	You can't find truth alone.
	Truth is tribal.
	Language is tribal.
	Philosophy is a conversation.
	It is not a book.
	It is not Descartes.
	I'm going to make a strong case and it's going to annoy people, but who gives a shit?
	Philosophy is not writing your meditations on first reflections or the second treatise of government in your fucking study.
	Philosophy is a conversation wherein you dig the crazy bats of ghost-like belfry insanity out of people's heads and chase them off with the exorcism of compassion, reason, and empathy.
	Philosophy is in the conversation.
	Self-knowledge is not you examining your naughty places with a mirror and writing the ball sack monologues Philosophy is communal.
	Which is why I do call-in shows, not just monologues.
	Which is why the call-in shows are by far the most popular downloads that we have.
	We do like a terabyte when a call-in show gets released of downloads in a day.
	Because people get that this is philosophy.
	Now people say, Freedom Aid Radio has changed my life.
	Great!
	I'm glad I've been a part of that.
	And now you're a part of that.
	And all the other callers, and all the people who send in questions, and all the people who criticize, and all the people who trawl, you're all part of the conversation.
	I don't care what you say about me, just spell my name right.
	And you cannot get to the truth without people around you who are willing to tell you the truth.
	Science is not an individual enterprise, it is a collective enterprise.
	And where you see people take the most pride in their individual exercises, then what happens is they tend to be the least effective in communal change.
	And the philosophers who have worked in isolation, who are not like Socrates was, like Plato was, like Aristotle was, in the marketplace talking to the people, those philosophers don't tend to change much.
	Now, they're usually well-respected in academia because academia is all about staring up your own nose and masturbating to the very grim side of your own disused cranial capacities.
	But the people who actually talk to people, they are not the people who make art house movies like John Lennon's movies of feet, but who make movies that people will go and see.
	The philosophers who are out in the marketplace talking to people are the ones promoting the idea that the truth is something we arrive at communally.
	There's no one person who figured out The heliocentric model of the solar system or the retrograde motion of Mars.
	These are all, as Newton said, if I've seen further it's because I've stood on the shoulder of giants, except there are no giants.
	It's all people adding their incremental sedimentary layers to whatever mountain climb we can hope to achieve.
	So you can't possibly see all your dysfunction and all the potential dysfunction of your partner But what you can see is what other people will reveal to you if you let them, if you inquire to them.
	You know, when I get a haircut, I have no idea if it's a good or bad haircut until they put that mirror around the back of my head, right?
	Yeah.
	Yes.
	You need the mirror.
	You need the mirror.
	You cannot see into the future without other people.
	You cannot see dysfunction nearly as clearly without other people.
	You need people to watch your back.
	You need to commit to watch other people's back.
	The degree to which you do not invite truth tellers into your life is the degree to which your life will be a disaster.
	It's true for me.
	It's true for you.
	It's true for everyone.
	This is why I keep telling people.
	Find quality people.
	I don't care if even if they're on the internet.
	They can be on Skype.
	They can be on fucking Telnet for all I care.
	It can be smoke signals, carrier pigeons.
	You can do anything.
	Butterfly patterns in the sky.
	I don't care.
	Find people who will tell you the truth.
	Get that commitment from them to tell you the truth as they see it and tell them the truth as you see it.
	Commit to watch each other's backs.
	You cannot go through a crazy world without a phalanx of sanity around you.
	You can't make it.
	You can't make it.
	It's like those dewy-eyed idiots in the First World War.
	I'll go get the Huns!
	Suddenly you're in the opening segments of Gallipoli, right?
	And you can't do it alone.
	You need A phalanx of truth-tellers around you to get from here to death without a clusterfrag of infinite catastrophes.
	This is going to happen to you again and again and again until you get people in your life who are going to tell you the truth and watch your back.
	Yeah.
	And it's like...
	I totally know what you mean.
	It's like I do that for some of my friends.
	And I don't really get it back.
	The few people I hang out with, you know, I'll tell them, you know, insight into their lives and their decisions, exactly what you're saying.
	And it's like, I definitely need some people around me that'll be willing to do that for me.
	Oh, wait, you just, you pull in the V card on me, right?
	The first card was the vagina card.
	The second card is the victim card.
	Well, I help my friends, but my friends don't help me.
	Right?
	What do you think of that?
	As far as the word friendship goes.
	Um...
	What do I think of what?
	You said, basically, well, I tell the truth to my friends, but they don't tell the truth back to me.
	I'm telling you what I would do if I was in your situation...
	I'd sit down with my friends and I'd say to them, what the fuck?
	I got dick blinded and you let me wander into that crazy cave of hoochiness?
	What the fuck is wrong with you?
	Help me.
	I'm your friend.
	You're supposed to watch out for me.
	You're supposed to watch out me a little bit.
	You get them to watch that scene with Marlon Brando from On the Waterfront.
	He was my brother.
	You should have watched out for me a little bit.
	Right.
	Tell your friends it's kind of their fault that you got dick-blinded and fell into a chasm of crazy horror.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	So, why didn't you help me?
	Well, we thought you had it covered.
	Clearly I didn't, so either you don't know me enough to know when I don't have it covered, in which case you ain't much of a friend, or you did know and now you're lying to me like the crazy bitch did.
	Go to your friends.
	If some disaster happens to you in your life that was visible ahead of time, go to your friends and hold them accountable.
	Yeah.
	And they can hold you accountable too.
	And this is how you help people to watch out for you.
	Yes.
	And my...
	I stay with my dad and he knew about Pretty much everything, and so I guess I feel as if he...
	I should hold him accountable for warning me, too.
	I feel like he probably should have had something to say about it.
	Yeah, Dad!
	I got cockeyed and you watched me fall off a cliff!
	I'm cockeyed!
	You've got to pull that foreskin back so I can see this cloud of crazy I'm about to jump into, thinking it's solid ground!
	So you need people and hold them to account.
	How did this happen?
	You're supposed to be my friend.
	Well, you're an adult.
	Yes, I'm an adult with a dick.
	Yes, we understand.
	I made a mistake.
	It's your job to help me not make mistakes, right?
	And you say, did you think I was going to make a mistake?
	And then they'll go, oh, right?
	Did you think I was going to make a mistake?
	No, I thought she was great.
	Then you're an idiot, and I can't have you in my life if I want to have truth tellers and people are going to watch my back.
	I thought the woman who lied to you and was still a liar and cheated you in the past and hadn't changed and had to go to therapy, I thought she'd be great for you.
	Well, take a long walk off the exit pier, my friend, because that ship is sailing.
	Or they say, oh yeah, no, I knew it was going to be a problem, but, you know, I felt you could handle it.
	Okay, I got it.
	So you see a laser on my forehead coming out of a pussy, and you don't even tell me to duck.
	That's nice.
	I got labia lasered and you didn't even hold up a mirror.
	I got labia lasered and you didn't hold up a mirror.
	Yeah, and I guess I kind of used the term friends wrong because it's like, I don't really expect it of them.
	Like, I don't think they're competent enough of it.
	They're kind of just around, like, I don't really expect much from them.
	Right, and that's why your codependent relationship with the woman is just a reflection of your shitty relationship with your friends.
	That's what I'm trying to tell you.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	I mean, if some giant spaceship...
	If you're out walking with your friends and some giant spaceship sends down this giant leathery hole to suck you up to Alpha Centauri, they'd probably make a fucking couple of phone calls, right?
	Right.
	But if it's a giant leathery tube that happens to be attached to a woman, can't they make a phone call?
	Hey man, are you in there?
	Are you in there?
	I think you may have lost a little bit of perspective.
	Also, can you find my car keys?
	I've lost them.
	Makes total sense. .
	I'm just thinking about all the conversations I can have with women, with men trapped in vaginas at the moment.
	So I'm sorry, I'm not concentrating.
	I apologize for that.
	I want to focus on the call and not have that monologue.
	But it is...
	You've got to have quality people around you.
	The quality, lack of quality in romantic relationships is just...
	They're getting through the friends filter, right?
	Right?
	If friends let crazy vagina through the filter, then your friends are not doing their good job.
	Your friend's job is to guard your heart and your job is to guard your friend's heart from being cockeyed, right?
	Yeah.
	And you need that.
	And this is equally true for women, right?
	But he had abs and a Lamborghini!
	Yes, and there's a reason why he has those things, because he's making up for the giant shitwad he actually is, right?
	So, I mean, this is true, but I'm talking to a guy now, just so you know, this is not women, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
	But get quality people around you and...
	Oh, no, we got Skyped.
	Oh, did he get dished?
	Hello.
	Hello.
	All right, we're back.
	Is he back?
	Yes.
	I don't know what happened.
	So forget the women.
	Focus on your friends.
	The friends can be men or women.
	But if they're women, then they need to be able to warn you about crazy women, right?
	Yeah.
	You know, there's an old story about Adam Smith, right?
	I think he was Scottish, the Enlightenment philosopher who wrote The Wealth of Nations and books on ethics and all that.
	And...
	A friend of one of my direct ancestors on my father's side.
	But anyway, so he's walking down.
	He's explaining some theory to a friend of his.
	And he's so distracted by explaining this theory, he falls into a giant fucking hole on the ground.
	They're doing some construction.
	He's like, ah, yes, but you have to remember that the gold standard is...
	You know?
	Now, people think, well, you know, I guess Adam Smith is kind of distracted.
	It's like, his friend was right there.
	Like, where's his friend's peripheral vision so he does not fall into a giant hole?
	You get the metaphor.
	Wasn't he looking forward?
	Well, something.
	You know, he should know Adam Smith doesn't look in front of him and falls into giant holes.
	Right?
	I mean, you want to think of a man.
	A man regularly gets picked up by giant flying tadpoles that are actually called sperm and gets picked up and hurled into bottomless holes of crazy that suck his life out of him.
	Right?
	And it's like, shoot the sperm!
	Shoot the sperm!
	They're taking me!
	Shoot them!
	Right?
	I don't want to go where they're taking me!
	Where they're taking me!
	As courts!
	And lawyers!
	I can't stop myself!
	The spirit of sperm have me!
	Ah, shoot them!
	You should burn them with fire!
	Ah!
	Yeah, at least I didn't get that far to the legal problems, anything like that.
	You've heard the people call in here, right?
	Yeah, I definitely have some perspective on how serious that can be.
	It reminds me of those movies I saw as a kid.
	What's that, Lassie?
	What?
	Timmy's fallen down the vagina?
	Oh no!
	Oh no!
	Let's get some Max and magazines and go down after it.
	It's like the beginning of Doctor Who, the old Doctor Who movie.
	It's just this kaleidoscopic vagina that you're either going into or coming out of.
	I don't know.
	Dr. Hooch.
	Yeah, you know, don't cock block me, man.
	It's like, yes!
	Cock-block me!
	Cock-block me!
	Use a decent chicken if you have to.
	I don't care.
	Call it an airstrike.
	Stop me!
	I mean, this is like...
	What was the hero?
	Was it Hercules?
	No, it wasn't Hercules.
	Odysseus.
	The guy who, he wanted to hear the sirens, right?
	The beautiful women who were so beautiful and sang these beautiful songs.
	And he had his crew lash him to the mast of the Argo, I think it was.
	And he's sailing along.
	He's like, I just want to hear these beautiful women.
	So tie me to my own giant penis stuff on the ship called my balls, right?
	And he's like, whatever you do, don't untie me because I know they'll kill me if I go onto the siren.
	I go to the sirens, they'll kill me, right?
	And he starts listening, and he's like, oh man, that's some beautiful vagina music.
	Ooh, sounds like a pan flute.
	Sounds like something Kenny G plays with great skill, despite his haircut.
	Guys, I changed my mind.
	I totally changed my mind.
	Untie me.
	I'm telling you, I gotta go.
	I mean, these chicks are so beautiful.
	This music is so good.
	I gotta go.
	I gotta go.
	I don't care if they eat me.
	I just, I gotta go.
	Guys, hey, change my mind.
	Cut me off.
	Hey, no fucking fooling around.
	Cut me down.
	I'm going.
	I'm going.
	You bastards.
	I'm gonna fucking chew through this if I have to myself.
	Fuck!
	We're getting out of the way.
	I'm missing out on the pussy.
	I mean, I'm missing out on the...
	Later, he's like, well, thank you for not...
	But at the time, they're like...
	They stuffed wax into their ears, right?
	Block the hole!
	Block the hole!
	Right?
	And this is, you know, of course we all know what kind of woman we should be having sex with, right?
	A woman who is stable, who is considerate, compassionate, nice, empathetic, curious, intelligent, wise, virtuous, right?
	Right?
	Yeah.
	We all know this.
	Except our dicks.
	Our dicks are like, hey, she's got eggs.
	She's got eggs too.
	Hey, got some eggs over there.
	Cut me loose.
	Cut me late.
	You know, you go there, I'm fucking detaching myself and going over like a little roller derby cannon machine and going to go do it myself if I have to, right?
	Absolutely.
	And we all know this.
	We all know we need to cock block each other constantly.
	Because our dicks developed a shitload before our reasoning faculties, right?
	I mean, everything's got a dick.
	Everything has a dick.
	I mean, okay, for some, the dicks are the bees, right?
	For the flowers, the dicks are the bees, right?
	Bees are dicks anyway.
	But anyway, the dick is way older than the brain.
	And it's certainly way older than this Beta monkey expansion pack buggy as shit thing we got going up in the frontal lobes, right?
	Right, so it's way, way more evolved and way smarter and way better developed and a whole lot less buggy than this slap on beta shit we got going on in the last hundred thousand years, right?
	And so we need to cock block each other constantly so that we can get to the good women.
	Right?
	I mean, it's like one of those American Gladiator TV shows, right?
	Where you've got tits slamming you off one side trying to knock you into the water.
	You've got some cleavage swinging giant nipple bombs going off and stuff like that, right?
	And then there's this giant slurpy suction furry lady garden New York pizza-sized thing that's trying to get your toe hooked and all this kind of shit.
	We've got to help each other through the obstacle course of crazy women to get to the good women.
	We all know this.
	We all know this.
	And yet...
	Don't do it, right?
	American Gladiator!
	The Vagina Eliminator!
	That's Mike's...
	I don't know what kind of fucking dog movies he watched as a kid, but so was...
	Timmy's Falling Down the Vagina.
	I mean, look, we are natural chick goblin spelunker explorers, right?
	Found a vagina!
	I'm in!
	I'm going in!
	Right?
	That's what we are down for, right?
	We want eggs and the women want resources, and that doesn't mean we can't be good people and love each other, but we gotta vault slightly above monkey brain squirting, right?
	So yeah, your penis is like vagina, fuck, yeah.
	I don't care if the eggs are good or bad.
	I mean, I care if they're not too old.
	I don't want to have some squid-headed kid coming out.
	But yeah, fuck, I'm going in.
	And whatever I have to shut down up there, I'll shut down.
	I have that power.
	Balls trump brain.
	We know that.
	It's biologically true.
	It's biologically true.
	You know, they always disable the security cameras before they rob a bank.
	Well, before they rob your future by having you screw some crazy chick who's going to come after you with lawyers, he's got a...
	now shutting down higher faculties and cranking up the penis.
	And we need this, you know, we need to cut each other's backs, you know?
	We need to be marines with each other.
	None left behind in crazy hoochie town.
	We're going back!
	He was there.
	He had his beer goggles on.
	It was two o'clock in the morning.
	She was kind of slouchy and a little skanky and I don't know what vermin is breeding down that and chasm.
	But we're not going back.
	We're leaving him.
	We're not leaving him behind.
	We're going back.
	We're dragging him out there.
	We're going in with cave helmets if we have to.
	We're going to go past the stalagmites.
	We're going to go past the stalactites.
	We're going to go past the goblins and the pools of sightless fish and we're going to go in there right before he gets to that egg.
	I'm going to shoot a grappling hook through his fucking leg and pull him out by his ass.
	None left behind!
	Remember, the whole point of Socrates' metaphor is to leave the cave.
	To leave the cave.
	I mean, that's the pickup out of stuff.
	It's just so funny, right?
	I'm going in unarmed and alone!
	I'm sure I'll win!
	Because the vagina is way older than the female brain too, right?
	Everything has a pussy.
	Hell, a cat has a pussy.
	Everything has a pussy.
	And that is really old stuff.
	That is like prior to amphibians.
	We're talking hundreds and hundreds of millions of years.
	The pussy and the cock have been working at meeting up.
	And they're like...
	Oh, do you think you can trump millions of years of evolution with your 100,000-year-old little piece of shit monkey beta expansion pack up there?
	We can pull the plug on that shit like that.
	I see your 100,000s of years of evolution and raise you 2 billion years of evolution.
	I think you'll win.
	You've been training for this fight for five minutes.
	I've been training for this fight for 20 years.
	I think I'm going to win me some pussy.
	You can't win.
	You can't win.
	You need friends to slap you in the dick when your dick is hunting crazy.
	Like, I don't want a condom.
	I want you to just fucking jam an anaconda on it.
	So I got something else to worry about.
	Oh, that feels good.
	Wait.
	Shit, it has poison sex and they're not even legal?
	Tear this thing off!
	I mean, fucking throw a nurse shock on my dick if it's pointing at something crazy.
	Put one of those, put one of those wah-wah-wah tubes that you see around the swimming pool and Just jam that shit on and pour some acid down there if you have to.
	Just don't let me deposit in crazy bank because the interest is literally going to kill me.
	Yeah, I should be in the chat room.
	I'd like to be a superhero.
	With, like, no crazy vaginas, whatever that symbol would be.
	No crazy vaginas.
	And I just come in and I just punch guys in the dick.
	That's my superhero power.
	I know when dicks are about to go into crazy hooch and I just go and poof!
	Punch it in the dick.
	I am a dick-punching, man-saving superhero of philosophy.
	Hi, Crazy Sperm Bank.
	We're a...
	Hi, Crazy Spermbank.
	We're open for deposits.
	It's a one-way door, and when you get inside, we jump on you and take your wallet out through your eyeball.
	Are you ready for a deposit?
	Hell yeah!
	I get a clock!
	Where's my cock?
	Ah.
	You know, it's not slap you in the dick when Jack is hunting crazy.
	Jack, it's punch you in the dick.
	Because if you slap a dick, it's like, ooh, yeah.
	Kind of rough.
	She must be like an Amazon.
	She must be like Lucy Lawless.
	I'm going in, baby!
	No.
	Punch it in the one eye.
	Right there.
	Blow dart to get Steph to end the rant.
	No, but I think a blow dart is fine too.
	If you need to hit your brother with some Amazon-laced poison monkey fruit shit just so he goes down before he goes down, do it.
	Just do it.
	Well, I think you're really attractive.
	I think you're a little pretty.
	Yes!
	Saved another one!
	And I guess it's more clear to me now, I guess that was my main motive to pursue the relationship because I guess I knew that she really didn't care about my well-being because of how she had treated me before.
	So it's a new perspective to focus on that.
	As being the reason to pursue the relationship with her.
	I mean, I knew that was a part of it, obviously, but...
	Just the entire thing...
	It really is a powerful force.
	Like you were saying, it's...
	Life developed way before our neofrontal cortex, right?
	Billions and billions of years, right?
	Life is like...
	Way, way, way older than our neofrontal cortex.
	It knows its shit way better than we do.
	And it will get you to breed with whatever is willing to trip, fall, and expose a rump to the sky, right?
	And basically it's like, hey...
	I don't care how well hung I am.
	You step on my dick if it's sniffing up a crazy leg.
	Just step on it.
	You know, fucking park a car in it if you have to.
	But do not let it take my swimmers into crazy town.
	Do not let my swimmer swim up the crazy river and get some nutty eggs to come after me with lawyers.
	How does the dick punching, asks Mike, fit in with the non-aggression principle?
	I assume this is for our next management meeting.
	But no, it's not.
	Listen, if I hit you in the face and there was some bug that had some horrible illness that was about to bite you, I think even if you gave me a black eye, I'd say, yep.
	Yep, thank you.
	I appreciate that.
	I have a black eye, but it's better than sleeping sickness or malaria or some, you know, face rotting God knows what, right?
	So thank you for the black eye.
	Absolutely.
	Dick punching is absolutely essential.
	If that's what keeps the tadpoles from impregnating the crazy frog lady, then yes, let her have her cats.
	she ain't getting my sperm.
	We should all have like a small person, I don't know, dwarf midget, just a small like eye contact, right?
	Eye contact with your penis.
	If he sees stirring in the absence of virtue, poof, right there.
	Fucking tase it if you have to.
	Tase me, bro!
	Don't make me go to family court!
	Whatever you do.
	But she had a great ass down.
	That's pretty much the same as virtue, right?
	Well, I can tell you this, she's worked a lot harder on her ass than she has on being a good person.
	Anyway, so that's my, for want of a better word, those are my thoughts on the subject.
	I mean, I wish I could go back in time and just punch myself in the dick a couple of times.
	You can do better than crazy egg-hanging batshit lady.
	I'm telling you, you can!
	You can!
	But then I wouldn't have met my wife and wouldn't have my lovely daughter.
	So, I don't know.
	It's a tough call.
	But, yeah, dick-punching 101 is very, very essential to men.
	And it could be clit-punching 101 for the women, too.
	You know, men need to help with their women, too, you know.
	He's working on a screenplay, right in the clit.
	He's a drummer, right in the clit.
	He can play guitar right in the clit.
	Well, I appreciate the insight.
	He's an arts major!
	He's an actor!
	I'm sorry?
	I was going to say, I've known I need to surround myself with better people, with virtuous people, and yeah, it's really important.
	It really is.
	I just, for a moment, I'm enjoying just how many people are going to slice and dice this particular speech app.
	I'm actually quite looking forward to whatever they come up with, because no matter, it's not going to be as good as what I think, but it's still going to be pretty good.
	Alright, so listen, I think we've milked that particular analogy, and my balls are throbbing, as they usually do around this time.
	Didn't exactly need that visual stuff, but up next is Weston.
	He wrote in and said, How can I save both my siblings and my parents from the hellstorm my mother has created by not being able to substantially change my siblings' behavior?
	Hmm.
	Hmm.
	All right.
	Can you give me a little bit more detail, sir?
	Yeah.
	I have – it's nine siblings right now.
	Most of them are – all of them are younger than me.
	My mom ran a daycare when I was younger, so I've always been surrounded by all these children.
	I've seen her discipline and teach these kids when they come into the daycare and they're not so behaved.
	I've seen the way she handles it, and it's not been the same when she's dealing with my now adopted younger brother and sister.
	And at what age were they adopted?
	My brother was adopted at...
	Four or five.
	And my little sister, she was adopted at like two.
	All right.
	Yeah, if we can just hold off our names.
	And where did they come from?
	My little sister, she...
	My mom went to high school with her grandmother.
	And this is what kind of started the whole adopting thing.
	She went to high school with her grandmother.
	And then...
	That lady had a kid, and that kid had a kid, and that's my little sister.
	She ended up not being able to raise her, and so my mom adopted her.
	Sorry, she ended up not being what?
	Not being able to take care of her.
	Her biological mother was not able to take care of her in some way or fashion.
	She's a drug addict.
	All that horrible stuff.
	So having my mom as a friend, she called in a favor and said, hey, can you take care of her?
	We ended up falling in love with her and adopted her not too long after that.
	So when she was around too.
	And was the mother addicted to drugs during the pregnancy?
	Not that I'm aware of.
	I wouldn't put it past her.
	I mean, dirt of scums.
	Her mother ended up sexting my other younger brother, who's around the same age as me.
	Wait, wait, wait.
	Hang on.
	Sorry.
	This is very confusing family stuff.
	Okay.
	So, the mom of the two-year-old adoptee ended up sexting your brother?
	Correct.
	This was around the time that my little sister was 11, so it was years after we adopted.
	And how old was your brother at the time?
	My brother was 18, I'd say, yeah.
	Okay, so not the greatest wisdom and boundaries in the planet, right?
	Yeah.
	Okay, okay.
	All right, and...
	My little brother.
	How old?
	Sorry, you said that they're in their early teens now?
	Correct.
	It's like 13 going on 14.
	They're a couple months apart.
	Right, right.
	And what are they doing that's causing trouble?
	Well, I don't live with the family anymore, so most of the stuff I hear nowadays is hearsay.
	But the things from...
	She's constantly troubled with lying and stealing.
	Those are the main two things.
	No matter what they do, it always happens in one way or another.
	And was your mom's attention, I got to imagine, fairly sliced and diced with all these kids when you guys were growing up, right?
	When I think about when I was growing up and thinking about my mother's attention, no, it was not sliced and diced.
	But I imagine that it definitely is now, nowadays.
	Because instead of just running a daycare, the kids are only there from X time to X time.
	They actually run a family, and so these kids are there all the time.
	So yeah, it's definitely sliced and diced.
	Wait, sorry.
	When you were growing up, you said your mom ran a daycare?
	Correct.
	She didn't do foster care.
	She just ran a daycare.
	And that's where you went?
	That's where I was.
	I'm a biological child of my mom so I lived in her house.
	She ran an in-home daycare while I was growing up and so yeah.
	And how many kids were in the daycare?
	10.
	I think it was around her license was like 10 or 12.
	For one adult?
	Yeah.
	What ages?
	Anywhere from infant to, you know, still in middle school.
	The high schoolers would come over that used to go to her daycare and sometimes help her out and stuff.
	Well, I don't know about that.
	That doesn't seem right to me.
	I don't see how one adult can take care of 10 or 11 or 12.
	Because she was licensed for you, but then there was you and your sister.
	So that's like 12 infants to kids?
	One adult?
	And you're saying her time was not sliced up?
	I'm saying that she ran her daycare while I was growing up.
	She started foster care and canceled her daycare.
	Okay, okay, okay.
	You're not understanding my question.
	So during the day, you had to share your mom with 10 other kids, right?
	Correct.
	Okay.
	Does that not mean that her time was sliced up quite a bit?
	In other words, she didn't have much time for you because she's got 10 other kids in the house during the day on weekdays.
	I understand it's not full time.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	I guess when I think back to it, I'm thinking of relative terms.
	And I got to spend more time with my mom than other kids because their mom was at work elsewhere.
	Well, unless they had an at-home mom, right?
	Who didn't have 10 other kids.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	It's interesting that we kind of ran into a block, right?
	I think most people would say if there are 10 other kids around, then...
	Your mom's attention is pretty diverted, but you're comparing her to parents who work full-time, right?
	Right, because I think every other kid that I personally was surrounded by was parents, their parents working full-time.
	Which I guess, of course, is the case, and that's why the kids were in your daycare, right?
	Right.
	Okay, so for the first two years and four or five years of your stepsister and stepbrother's life, they were being raised by a drug addict, crazy woman, right?
	Yeah, definitely.
	I think my little brother's case is a hundred times worse than my little sister's case.
	Why?
	Yeah.
	Because we got my brother at a later date, my brother got put into the foster care system.
	My sister was adopted out of the foster care system.
	So she was never in there.
	It was between families sort of thing.
	Oh, so the boy bundled into the foster care system, stayed with God knows whom, and then was adopted into your family.
	But the girl came straight from this woman into your family.
	Is that right?
	Right.
	Right.
	Okay.
	Now, adopting kids...
	Sorry.
	What was your mother's training and parenting philosophy and what books did she read and what was her approach to parenting?
	Well, she was licensed by the state as a paralegal or She initially started her job as dealing with kids, and then she ended up getting – meeting my dad or whatever and running her own in-home daycare where there she had to get licensed and trained by the state.
	Other than that, the books that she read were – My memory recalls nothing – anything extra outside of what she's known and using her experience.
	I don't remember her ever reading up or keeping current with parenting techniques.
	Her approach was – she has a very loud and very authoritative kind of voice.
	So she would not hesitate to yell but she would never hurt a kid.
	She'd never spank a kid because she was abused and she's always brought that philosophy along so she never hit any of the kids.
	But she had always managed to help any of these kids that came into her daycare that were troubled kids with horrible parents.
	She's always been able to connect them to the right people if they were being abused or she would always be able to correct their behavior period.
	Oh, okay, so she's really good at dealing with kids who've come from abusive situations.
	Right, right.
	Now, so obviously she was trained and she knew that the first couple of years are pretty crucial for development of attachment and empathy and all this kind of stuff.
	So when she got these kids who'd been raised by a drug addict, one of whom was in the foster care system, what kind of therapy did she get them into?
	What kind of work did she do with them individually and intensively to try and undo some of the damage of the terrible upbringing that they had?
	She definitely signed them up for therapy.
	There's Boys Town where – close to where she lives and so she's definitely been in contact with them and gotten therapists from their recommendation and has them both in therapy in that sense.
	But that isn't – And when did that start?
	Yeah, that wasn't until recently.
	I would say the past three years.
	Before that, it was – it started out as just laying down the law.
	This is what's accepted.
	This isn't what – this is what's not accepted.
	And it – and nothing was respected from their end.
	Oh, you mean from when there were two and four, they didn't respect stuff?
	Right.
	It was like anything from – Why would that make no sense?
	Well, maybe it makes sense for a four-year-old to lie, but rational sense.
	You caught me red-handed, and they'd still lie.
	Well, but their mom was an addict, right?
	So they were raised with lying, right?
	I mean, that's what addicts do, is they lie, right?
	So this is the behavior that would have been modeled for them, I'm sure.
	Yeah.
	And, of course, the idea of hoarding food when you're a kid makes perfect sense if you come from a highly unstable environment where food is scarce, right?
	I mean, hoarding food makes...
	I mean, it's what animals do, right?
	I mean, they hoard food for the winter, and when you're a kid in an abusive household, you never know when winter is about to start, right?
	Do you think it makes a difference that one was two and one was five, even though they basically have the same behavior?
	Well, yeah, I mean, I think statistically it makes a difference.
	I don't know how big a difference it makes, but most of the brain's wiring is complete by the age of five.
	And a lot of it is put in place, because remember, two is almost three, right?
	Because there's the pre-natal environment, right?
	The embryonic environment, the womb environment.
	So we're talking almost three and almost six as far as from the beginning of life.
	So, yeah, I mean, I'm sure it makes a difference.
	But so basically from...
	For about, you know, correct me where my math has gone astray, but for about eight years, they didn't get any particular intervention with regards to the traumas that they experienced as infants and toddlers?
	Professional intervention, no.
	I'm sorry, what other kind?
	Well, I mean, obviously your mom tried, but she failed, right?
	Because they're now kind of off the reservation, right?
	Exactly.
	And did your mom not think that they might need some intervention?
	Or did she think that laying down the law and being authoritarian and as you say loud, which I assume means yelling, that yelling and strictness was going to fix this stuff?
	Right.
	Yeah, it started off as total confidence.
	She was confident in herself and my dad to be able to help the situation.
	And it slowly digressed.
	And now it's to a point where she cries to me on the phone.
	I don't know what to do.
	So the confidence is gone.
	It's like almost it's like on the edge of giving up.
	Yeah, I can understand that.
	You know, philosophically, I think that if you are getting a child who's gone through a lot of trauma, the first thing you want to do is get the child assessed by a mental health professional.
	And that, to me, would mean not a psychiatrist who's going to just reach for the SSRIs probably but by some competent child psychologist to get the child assessed and try you know then this can be a fairly in-depth process but get a map of where the deficiencies are that the child is experiencing and That I think is essential and then you can come up with a sort of intervention plan to try and undo the damage of the first couple of years which is Honestly,
	I don't know if it can be done.
	I don't know of anyone who can rebuild empathy if the window for empathizing has been missed.
	I don't know anyone who knows how to create empathy in adults who didn't experience that kind of empathy.
	But that would be, I think, the best way.
	If you're gonna adopt kids from some uncertain background, you really, really need to get them fully assessed.
	So, but that wasn't done.
	So eight years, your mom tried to substitute tough love for trauma, right?
	And I don't think that tough love fixes trauma, right?
	If it did, then all the kids who went to those wilderness camps and stuff like that would come back fully healed.
	And I don't really think that's the case as a whole.
	I don't think tough love deals with trauma.
	Trauma, of course, is a lack of attachment and yelling and strictness.
	Is not something that builds warmth and empathy and curiosity and love, right?
	Right.
	I don't think that...
	I think that she would tell you that there is love and there is warmth and she's always an open arm to talk to.
	But that's...
	But the second—this is me saying it—but the second that they deserve that, they'll get that.
	But if they cross the line, if they lie, they steal, they get punished.
	And I don't see a lot of that open-armness even when they've done bad.
	Is that appropriate?
	Wait, I don't—she doesn't hug them when they misbehave.
	Well, first of all, you know, children of two and five who've come from a drug addict's household, I would argue, are incapable of misbehavior.
	I mean, basically, it's like if you adopt a Chinese kid and then you punish them for speaking Mandarin, that wouldn't make any sense, right?
	But that's the environment that they grew up in, right?
	Or if you're an atheist, you adopt a Christian kid and the kid is six and he wants to say grace and you punish him for that, that wouldn't make any sense at all because that's the environment he grew up in, right?
	So, I mean, it's really important to understand, and again, I'm not telling you anything you don't know or your mom doesn't know, but just sort of to make it clear for the wider audience.
	Children, right, they live what they learn.
	And this was the environment that they were in.
	If they lie, then that's not the same as...
	I don't know, some 15-year-old kid suddenly deciding to lie for moral reasons.
	They taught a language of dysfunction, of unreliability, of scarcity, of arbitrariness, of violence, of drugged-out dissociation if the mom was still using drugs.
	Just a mess all around.
	And that's the language of interaction that they have learned.
	And so then to punish them for that which their parents taught them.
	Is not rational, right?
	I mean, you wouldn't sort of want to compare that to kids raised well and say, well, these kids are deficient and need to be punished into doing the right thing.
	They're not doing the wrong thing.
	They're just doing what they've lived, right?
	Right.
	And so my example about grabbing the handful of cheese out of the bag and shoving it in his mouth, they were never punished for that type of behavior.
	That was an instance that we got the first day that he came.
	They were punished months and months after they'd been shown, and here's the role model family.
	This is what you're supposed to act like.
	Here's your big brother.
	Aim for that.
	They were never punished initially because my mom, yeah, she was competent enough to know that this is what they were raised.
	This is what they were taught.
	This is what they mimic.
	Okay, so basically you're telling me, just to cut to the chase, you don't think your mom did anything wrong?
	I think she's doing everything wrong now.
	Not back then, but...
	Okay, so then there was no possible way to end up with a different outcome than what happened now, what's happening now, right?
	There was no possibility of better behavior or more proactive.
	Ideally, I'm not saying your mom's a bad person or anything.
	I'm just sort of saying, I sort of made the case, you know, get the kids assessed and get them a treatment plan to help deal with the first couple of years of drug addict, quote, parenting.
	But so every time I say things could be a little different, you're telling me your mom did the right thing.
	And I mean just to cut to the chase, you don't think your mom could have improved the way that she handled it in the past.
	I don't know what the solution is in the present because this is like a heart attack and I'm like a nutritionist, right?
	A nutritionist is supposed to tell you how to prevent a heart attack 10 years ago, but once you're having a heart attack, you need to call somebody else.
	So if kids are basically heading down a path towards criminality or they're lying or stealing on a consistent basis and so on, then your mom needs to get heavy professional involvement In the family.
	This is not something that philosophy...
	Philosophy could sort of say, you know, look at the development of the child and understand how much damage can be done in the first couple of years.
	And then...
	Trying to get a kid who's raised in a dysfunctional environment to not speak dysfunction is like getting a kid who's been raised speaking English to not understand and speak English.
	It's really, really...
	Kind of impossible in a way.
	Again, I don't mean it can't be changed, but you can't ever get the dysfunction out of the kid's head.
	Certainly not out of my head.
	And I was raised maybe not quite as dysfunctional as these kids, but pretty damn dysfunctional.
	So I think at this point, there's nothing philosophical that can be done.
	My guess would be that the kids need to be reparented.
	And by that, I don't mean that your mom hasn't been parenting them or anything like that.
	But they need to go back to whatever didn't happen.
	In the first couple of years, and particularly for the boy, they need to go back and be reparented.
	That's a very specialized skill, and there are child psychologists who will be able to help with that, but I think you really need to move in towards professionals at this point because I don't think that there's anything philosophically that could be done to solve this kind of problem.
	Once the kids are teenagers, whatever problems that you run into that are significant with your kids as teenagers...
	As I've argued before, in my opinion, are most likely embedded way, way, way back early, deep in the womb, in infancy, in toddlerhood.
	And what happens is you can manage kids because they're small, right?
	So you can manage them through the terrible twos, if that's what's happening.
	You can manage them three, four, five, six.
	And then when they're sort of five or six, they go into latency, which is a period of relative calm until puberty.
	And then when puberty comes, the hormone hits the personality structure.
	The hormones hit the personality structure.
	And if that personality structure and the relationships are shaky, then they just get washed away.
	And the seeming structure that has existed for a while just gets blown away.
	Particularly if authority and top-down punishment has been used on children, then the lesson that is fundamentally What do you mean by top-down punishment?
	Well, punishment is a substitute for explanation, right?
	I don't need to punish my daughter because—and that doesn't mean she doesn't annoy me.
	It doesn't mean that she doesn't sometimes not listen to me.
	Of course she does.
	She's five, right?
	It's natural.
	But I don't need to punish my daughter because if I punish her, what I am confessing is that I have expectations for her that I cannot explain to her in a way that she understands.
	Right?
	Punishment, in my view, punishment is always inappropriate for children because children want to please their parents, children want to get along with people, in my experience, and When I say to my daughter, listen, I need you to listen to me more consistently, or I need you to not resist bedtime when it's late or whatever, right?
	And I sit down and explain why.
	Well, you know, your brain needs sleep, and I need time with Mama, and we usually have a full day of playing, and it's frustrating.
	It's not a great way for me to end the day.
	I know it's tough for you as well.
	Let's just give it a try.
	And I may have to explain this five or ten times.
	Why?
	Because she's five.
	It's not like I listen to everything the first time either, right?
	And so if I have expectations for my daughter, then they're either reasonable or they're not, right?
	If I have expectations that she learns vector calculus at the age of five, well, that's probably, you know, given that she isn't Aaron Swartz's sister, that's probably a little bit outlandish, right?
	So then I need to adjust my expectations to where my child is at.
	Now, if I have reasonable expectations for my child, reasonable means something she's able to comprehend, process, and act on.
	Then it's my job to explain that which is reasonable to my child in a way that that child understands.
	Now, if I really strive to explain something to my daughter and I fail, then what that means is my expectation is not reasonable.
	Right.
	I understand that.
	If I said, listen, Isabella, or as she likes to be known today, Jenna, listen, Jenna, you need to entertain yourself for four hours because I want to go and do some work.
	That would not be reasonable.
	Now, I could sit there and explain it and say, listen, you know, I need to do work.
	Donation's down a little bit this month.
	I need to put some good work out.
	I need to blah-de-blah-de-blah, right?
	We have, you know, money which pays for the food, right?
	So I could explain all that to her, but it still would be unreasonable to expect her to entertain herself quietly for four hours because she's only five years old, right?
	That would be tough for a 10-year-old, right?
	So if...
	If I have expectations that are reasonable, one of the ways I know that they're reasonable is I can get her to understand and agree with what I'm saying.
	Right?
	Now, what happens when people want to punish?
	What they want to do is they want to punish a child for non-compliance.
	But compliance with what?
	Compliance with rules?
	Well, if the child doesn't understand the rules and appreciate why the rules need to be there, Then the rules are either inappropriate or have been poorly explained, or not explained enough, or not explained in a way the child understands, and so on, right?
	Now, if the rules are unreasonable, then you can't punish the child for not meeting them, right?
	For not obeying them, so to speak.
	But, if the rules are reasonable, but I have not been able to explain the rules in a way that my daughter understands, then that's my failure.
	If I tell you how to get to the store from my house and you follow my directions and end up in the wrong place, then I've given you bad directions, right?
	Or if you ignore my directions and end up in the right place, I've still given you bad directions, right?
	And so either my expectations are unrealistic, in which case I can't punish the child.
	It's wrong, right?
	It's like punishing a child for being short, right?
	Get the cookies from the top jar.
	Daddy's hungry.
	Daddy, I'm only four feet tall.
	No!
	I'm punishing you for not getting me the cookies.
	Well, that's right.
	That would be inappropriate.
	Or I've failed to explain them, in which case, why do I punish the child for my failure to explain the rules?
	So once I have appropriate rules that I've explained...
	Repeatedly, and it takes time, and children are new to the planet, and they're open to adapt to anything, so it takes them a while to adapt to something you want, right?
	I mean, wet clay is tougher to mold than a rock, because you don't even bother to mold a rock.
	And so this is why, for me, when I say might makes right, punishment is to place the onus on a child for disobeying rules.
	Now, either the rules are inappropriate, or the child doesn't understand them.
	Or, the child is...
	Malicious or malevolent in the eyes, you know, you're just a dirty, no good, rotten kid.
	I'm not saying your mom said any of that.
	But if the child is malevolent or disobedient or willful or, you know, whatever language is used to describe the child in the mind of the caregiver, well, do you deal with malevolence by imposing power and punishment?
	Can you deal with ill temper by punishment?
	Well, I don't think that you can.
	I mean, I don't think anyone has ever driven along the highway in a foul mood, got a ticket for speeding a little bit, and said, wow, I feel so much better.
	Right?
	I don't think that actually happens.
	I think that punishment makes a bad mood worse.
	And so if the child has a malicious or malevolent streak in the eyes of the caregiver, then punishment is only going to exacerbate that or, as I've argued from day one, drives it underground until the size, strength, and sexual power of the teenage years allow the child to take the reins again.
	Does that make anything?
	I'm not saying you have to agree with it all.
	I'm just telling you what my perspective is.
	Right.
	So early on in the conversation, we focused on the heart attack, and I brought it to the nutritionist.
	You've almost effectively gone all the way back to where the philosophical nuclear bomb is and to why I called.
	These kids are not malevolent.
	These kids are great kids, and my brother, I have a really open connection with him.
	Hang on, hang on, hang on.
	Come on, come on, man.
	You're calling up because they're lying and stealing, right?
	No.
	I'm calling up because that's what started and now it's turned to reverse to where my mom has indicted this rule of law of horrible – like my brother will go and steal a piece of candy bar from the cabinet and he has to write 500 words down on a sheet of paper.
	He has to write.
	Be grounded to his room.
	He can't text me on his phone.
	So that's where I want the philosophy on how to talk, how to get this noticed by my parents that this is wrong.
	Okay, so she's doubling down on the strategy that got her here in the first place.
	Yeah, that's exactly it.
	Right.
	Well, you know, that, while understandable, obviously that's not rational, right?
	If you end up in a really bad place, all your rules have to be open to question.
	If you end up in a really – everything has to be open to question if you end up in a bad place, right?
	Now, when you say stealing and you say taking a piece of candy from the cabinet, is that what you mean by stealing?
	You're not saying they took 50 bucks from your mom's purse or something?
	Okay.
	Stealing, I'm saying for my little brother, it's taking a piece of candy out of the cabinet.
	For my little sister, it's stealing straight from the principal's desk right in front of her and getting away with it until my mom sees it in her backpack.
	So they're different levels, but both stealing.
	I'm not sure how a kid can steal food from his own house.
	Well, in my house now, you have to ask permission.
	When I was growing up, I don't remember ever asking permission to go and have a quick snack or really formally asking.
	Okay, but I don't understand.
	I mean, punishment and 500 lines and no texting?
	Just get the goddamn candy out of the house.
	Whatever she doesn't want them to eat, just don't have it in the house.
	I think...
	I don't know...
	That's not a fix to the problem.
	That's maybe fixing a symptom, but it's not, yeah.
	No, no, no, no.
	No, but I'm not trying to fix the problem.
	What I'm trying to do is give you alternative ways of looking at the problem so you work on prevention rather than playing whack-a-mole with infinitely resourceful, much younger and much more energetic teenagers.
	Right?
	So, instead of saying, well, the candy's gonna be there, but if you take it, I'm gonna punish you, right?
	Well, Work to prevent the problem, right?
	So don't have stuff that they can, quote, steal in the house.
	And that's one way to avoid or reduce punishment, right?
	These are just ways to avoid and reduce situations where your mom feels punishment.
	And this is one of many examples where you can say, how can we work at prevention rather than cure, right?
	So, yeah, I'm just trying to figure out ways to work on prevention rather than cure.
	A punishment, in my humble opinion, and, you know, obviously check with the experts on this, a punishment is only going to make things worse because then it becomes like a cat and mouse game.
	We're on the same page.
	Yeah, so the reason that these kids are doing all of this stuff is because they...
	Don't have any sense of a social contract.
	And this has nothing to do with your mom, right?
	I mean, I'm sure your mom's done a lot of great things, so I'm not trying to sort of bag on your mom.
	But I went through a phase of shoplifting when I was, I guess, maybe 11 or 12.
	And the reason that I did it was because I had been stolen from my early childhood and most of my childhood.
	I didn't have someone like your mom around, but my childhood was stolen from me.
	And I had no respect for the ethics of the adults around me.
	I was just telling my daughter, she loves to hear stories of boarding school, and I was telling the story of when I was...
	I guess I was seven, and I had...
	I had an earache and I went to get some drops from the nurse.
	This was at nighttime.
	And there was...
	So I was seven in 1972, 1973.
	And I guess what Vietnam was still going on, I think it was Vietnam, but there were tanks rolling through a city that was crumbling on the TV in the nurse's office.
	That was the only TV that I knew of in the whole school.
	And I just remember...
	Thinking, my God, these adults, they, you know, they cane children, they yell at children, they withhold food from children, they perceive themselves to be these infinite moral statues of high ethical perfection.
	But if this is the case, if the adults know so much about how to make a good world and how to have authority and how to be right and how to be Good and righteous and noble and heroic and brave and courageous and, you know, your whole grab bag of positive adjective ethical language.
	If they know all of this stuff about how to be so good, why am I looking at a picture of a tank on a television rolling through a crumbling city?
	And now, I'm not saying that That is necessarily what your stepsister and stepbrother is occurring for them, but they do not respect the ethics of their environment.
	They are in a state of nature with their environment, which is, well, what can I get away with?
	You know, like you throw one banana into a cage of hungry monkeys, and they're not sitting there saying, okay, well, there's 12 of us, there's one banana, let's cut it into 12 pieces, nice and equal, right?
	They just grab it and try and You throw food at chickens, they'll peck each other to get the food.
	They're in a state of nature with regards to resources.
	What can I get?
	I don't respect the moral rules of my universe, of my environment.
	And so they're in a state of, what can I get away with?
	You stole it because you had your childhood stolen from you.
	They steal because they want attention.
	Or at least that's how I perceive it.
	They want attention is – to me, that's just a big giant grab bag of nothing.
	You don't think so?
	Why?
	Well, I mean everybody wants attention from people around them.
	I mean you don't – no, I mean – You don't steal.
	Freddie Mercury wanted attention, so he wrote great songs.
	He didn't steal from people, right?
	I mean, you don't – wanting attention – we all want attention from our parents, right?
	I mean, but I don't think wanting attention is much of an answer because I don't think it differentiates anything.
	The most attention that they get is when they do something wrong.
	Like we said earlier, my mom's attention probably was divided.
	The most attention that they will get in a single day is when they do something wrong.
	Aha, okay.
	Well, so then there is something that your mom is doing wrong, but she's not giving them proactive and positive attention.
	Right.
	Because, I mean, we always have three hours to fix the fucking problem, but who has an hour to prevent it, right?
	A stitch in time saves nine, as the old saying goes.
	So does your mom do individual stuff with those kids one-on-one, eye contact, conversation, all that kind of stuff?
	Yeah.
	Through some of the talks that I've had with her, they've started where you go a week without lying or stealing and we get to go to the pool.
	Oh, no, no, no.
	Oh, no.
	That's the exact opposite.
	That is the exact opposite.
	Okay, my philosophical question is how to tell her that she's doing it all wrong.
	Because I'm not dealing with a rational person.
	I'm dealing with a children's youth minister that's all about Christianity.
	I'm dealing with...
	Oh, wait, wait, wait.
	Are you bringing the C-bomb in right now?
	Oh, yeah.
	Right at the end?
	Okay.
	Well, you kind of...
	Mommy will be nice to you if you don't steal things.
	Well, wait a minute.
	Do you want to be nice to me or not?
	Because if being nice to me...
	is a reward then you don't want to be nice to me and spend time with me already.
	These kids as all of us do have to understand and truly accept that they are valued and loved and treasured for who they are.
	But if your mom makes her time and attention with them conditional upon their obedience then she's automatically telling them that she doesn't want to spend time with them but she's willing to do it if they obey her.
	That made it way more clear.
	No, listen, if I said, hey man, listen, I will take you to that concert, but you have to pay me 200 bucks.
	You would immediately know, how much did I want to go to the concert with you?
	Well, mine is 200 bucks, right?
	So it takes 200 bucks to make me want to go to the concert with you, right?
	Right, that free concert.
	And we don't confuse prostitution with lovemaking, right?
	That makes sense.
	Yeah, it's even grown into you're good enough, you get this fake money and then you cash it in for real money at the end of the month.
	I'm sure that they're taking the money away, giving it back.
	Now listen, she also needs to read some Alfie Cohen, the degree to which… Punishments and rewards don't work in the long run.
	And I say this with the full knowledge and context of I've used a few, not punishments, but a few rewards in my day.
	Once in a while, I will use a tiny reward.
	So, but as a found, sorry, Alfie Kohn, A-L-F-I-E-K-O-H-N? I think people can remind me in the chat room if that's not right.
	But yeah, he's done a lot of experiments where if you just give a kid a toy to play with, then they'll play with it.
	But if you give exactly the same toy to a kid and say, I'm going to give you five bucks to play with it, they won't play with it at all.
	Yeah, bribery as a foundational for parenting is bad.
	Just bad, bad, bad.
	It's understandable because...
	She's Christian, which means if you do right, you go to heaven.
	If you do wrong, you go to hell, right?
	So how can she possibly detach herself from the whole metaphysical, theological basis of her belief system and say, well, bribery and punishment ain't great for kids.
	It is God's rule for mankind as a whole, but for kids, maybe not so much, right?
	I can't ask that question, though.
	That question will never be answered.
	If I ask that question in those words, it will be shut down.
	Okay.
	I know.
	I understand.
	I have to tread lightly.
	Yeah, so pick up Alfie Cohen.
	I think it's called Punished by Rewards.
	And I think it's an important book to read.
	It's important stuff to understand.
	Parent effectiveness training, I think, is very important.
	And also there's a book.
	I've not read it, but I've seen the Dr.
	Phil show.
	One of Dr.
	Phil's kids wrote a book on how to communicate with your teen.
	And basically, I think his argument is sort of get into proactive conversations.
	Right?
	Don't...
	Where were you tonight?
	And why didn't you do...
	They're all just reactive, negative conversations where everybody gets brittle and defensive and hostile.
	You want proactive, positive conversations.
	You need to know how was your day, what's going on.
	And it takes a while to turn that around if you spent a couple of years going in the wrong direction.
	But I do think that it is...
	It is important for you to get the knowledge, right?
	You get the knowledge and, you know, you can tell your mom that Jesus told you in a vision for all I care, right?
	What matters to me is that the kids get something different.
	But this, you know, I'm going to give you rewards or I'm going to give you punishments.
	That has been her focus so far and it hasn't worked.
	And she's dealing with kids whose first couple of years were probably pretty much a living hell.
	And so they're kind of immune to negative experiences because that's what they grew up with, right?
	In fact, they may be, as I talk about in real-time relationships, which is, for those who don't know, it's a free book at freedomainradio.com slash free.
	It's a philosophy, my philosophy of relationships.
	They may be doing this repetition thing where all they got from their mom was negative attention when they were babies, so they may just be repeating that.
	It's all they know as an interactive.
	But just saying they want attention and stuff is a way of kind of insulting them and They may need a lot of professional intervention and some reparenting.
	So that would be my suggestion.
	You get the knowledge and then, you know, you can figure out how to do it.
	And if you can't, just get your mom to call in here and tell her that you'll take her out for a nice dinner event.
	She calls into this show.
	Yeah, she knew I was calling in, and I asked her a little bit more info on it all before the show, and I brought it up to her.
	She told me that the kids have no moral compass, and I said, you take them to church every Sunday, you're there four days a week, and you're saying that your kids can't find morality within Jesus, or they have no compass in life?
	No, what she means is that they did not develop empathy in the first year or two of life.
	Which is not shocking.
	In fact, it would be weird if they did.
	But like me, spontaneously breakdancing, right?
	It would be weird, right?
	So they did not have empathy modeled in their environments.
	And it's now or never, right?
	I mean, once they start hitting adulthood, I mean, that's it, right?
	I mean, the possibility of change becomes infinitesimally small, in my opinion.
	So it is now or never.
	But just saying they lack a moral compass is...
	She's basically saying that they have the problem.
	It's like, no, no, no.
	You're the parent.
	It's always your problem.
	When you're the parent, it's always your problem to solve.
	And she's still the parent.
	She's still got another five or seven years to go.
	And she doesn't want it to be this constant slog and mess.
	And also, just as a family, I would sit down with these kids one-on-one or together, I guess.
	And just ask them if they have any memories.
	What are their first memories?
	What are their memories of their early childhood?
	Do they know anything about, do they remember anything about their mom?
	What was it like in these foster homes?
	You know, if you can connect with that stuff and you can get through kind of a shell, then I think that could be the beginnings of getting some empathetic conversations going.
	Anyway, listen, I've got to move on to the next caller, but I hope you'll let me know how it goes.
	And I hugely appreciate you calling in to talk about this.
	They're lucky to have you as a stepbrother, and I really hope it works out.
	Thanks, Steph.
	Thanks, man.
	All right.
	Tanya's up next, and Tanya wrote in and said, In my pursuit of self-knowledge, I have come to the realization that I lack proper communication skills, especially when it comes to confrontational styles of communication, such as debates, discussions, and arguments in general.
	I find myself quite intimidated and fearful at any form of confrontation.
	Most of the time, this discomfort and anxiety leads me to not address issues that may bother or concern me, Which leads to avoidance and further frustration and anger.
	How do I overcome this fear of confrontation?
	I don't know.
	Do you want me to confront you?
	See how that goes.
	Okay.
	Other than being a woman, which we can talk about in a sec, you know, I can explain to you what being a woman's all about.
	Not many people know about my past life as Stephanie, the exotic dancer who stood on motorcycles with zebras, but...
	Ooh la la.
	Yeah.
	Where do you think your anxiety about confrontations came from?
	Definitely my childhood.
	Definitely my mom.
	She was very aggressive, mean, and...
	I was never allowed to assert myself.
	Any time I would tell the truth or tell how I feel or trying to confront her about something that's bothering me, it would follow up with the punishment.
	So I always, like for example, one of the biggest ones was saying no.
	I was never allowed to say no.
	If I did, I would get beat or yell that or beat some more.
	And when do you say beat?
	What are you talking about?
	What do you mean?
	Definitely more than spanking.
	Hit in the face or...
	On the butt, but pretty hard.
	And was it bare butt or underclothes?
	Whichever came first.
	And I'm sorry, I know these are awkward questions to ask, but to me it's important what your experience was.
	First of all, I'm incredibly sorry for that.
	As I sort of cruise down into my second half decade as a parent, it becomes progressively...
	It's more incomprehensible that people hit children.
	It is so, you know, my daughter likes to play ball, right?
	Throwing ball up and down, throwing balls at each other, these big giant beach balls and stuff.
	And I'm like, don't fall.
	She's got summer knees, right?
	Which is the raspberry knees.
	That's just natural, right?
	But I'm just like, oh, don't get hurt.
	If I'm walking with scissors, I actually put the scissors in my hand.
	So that there's no tip sticking out in case I swing and just walk and swing in my arms and poke something.
	Like, I think it's natural for a lot of parents to be sort of, oh, don't get hurt, you know, this kind of stuff, right?
	And the idea that I would then voluntarily inflict something like that on her is...
	It's just so incomprehensible.
	I really feel that this is like an opposite species.
	And I just really wanted to express how...
	Deeply and I'm incredibly sorry I am that this happened, not just once, but the many times that it did happen.
	That is horrifying.
	It is downright evil to do that to children.
	And I just couldn't imagine it when they're babies.
	I couldn't imagine it when they're toddlers.
	I can't imagine it now that she's growing into a young woman or a young girl.
	I just can't comprehend it.
	It's like hitting your wife or hitting your husband.
	I mean, it's just like, it's so shaved ape, low brow, forehead, mouth breathing, scratching your armpit, having other human beings pick nits off your back and eat them so ape-like.
	And that's probably an insult to apes.
	I just find that so appalling.
	And I'm just so sorry that that was such a core part of your childhood.
	Thank you.
	So, for you, confrontation meant violence, right?
	Yes.
	Right.
	I mean, any time I'm faced with any sort of...
	It doesn't have to be confrontation.
	If it's some way of me needing to assert myself, I immediately recoil, panic, sometimes get hives.
	It's ridiculous.
	Well, no, it's not, though.
	It's not ridiculous.
	Because you're calling the defenses that could have saved your life ridiculous.
	And, you know, I, for one, I'm glad you're here.
	Otherwise, that'd just be a weird conversation.
	So it's not ridiculous.
	You're not afraid of confrontations.
	You're not afraid of people being aggressive.
	You're not afraid of people even raising their voice.
	What you are afraid of is being beaten up, right?
	Because those things were all a prequel to the being beaten up, right?
	Like, once I jumped out of a plane, right?
	And it took a little bit of, you know, screwing my courage to the sticking place, right?
	Because it was a plane.
	And I was pretty far up.
	I was above the clouds.
	And it's not the most naturally instinctive thing to do.
	Was I afraid of jumping out of the plane?
	Absolutely not.
	Was I afraid of falling?
	Absolutely not.
	Was I afraid of hitting the ground and becoming an idiot stain of teenage infinity of life?
	Illusions, yes.
	I was afraid not of the jumping out of the plane, not of the falling, but of the final aspect of that falling, which was if my parachute didn't open, then I would die.
	I would just fall and splat and die.
	So, you know, saying, well, I was really afraid to jump out of that plane is not accurate.
	And you're not afraid when there's confrontations.
	It's really, really important to know what you're scared of.
	Because otherwise it gets into this big mishmash.
	Now, I understood that if I didn't jump out of the plane, I wasn't going to end up as that stain on the cornfield, right?
	So, it's the things that lead up to it that we're scared of, but it's really important to be precise about what we are actually afraid of, right?
	Because then we can ask ourselves, will the steps that led up to that in the past lead up to it now?
	Does that make sense?
	Yes.
	Right?
	So if I was terrified of heights and didn't want to jump out of the plane, and let's say the plane was idling on the runway and there was a big cushion there, well, I'd probably be okay with jumping out of that, right?
	So you're not afraid of confrontation.
	You're afraid of being beaten up.
	And then I think the question to ask is, what are the odds of being beaten up as an adult?
	Now in the past, whenever you'd have a confrontation with your mom, it was highly likely, if not downright certain, that you would get beaten up, right?
	Right.
	So...
	You wouldn't have confrontations and cross your fingers, right, any more than people jump out of the planes and hope that they don't die, right?
	They fall at a haystack or I don't know what, right?
	I mean, when the odds are very high you're going to get injured, only masochists do whatever that is, right?
	Right.
	So...
	Given that you're not a child, and given that no adult...
	Parents can beat you up.
	Like just out of nowhere and without consequences.
	Parents can do that.
	Like, I've mentioned this on the show years ago.
	I used to work at Swiss Chalet as a waiter.
	And when I was in my teens, it was just one of the infinite series of jobs I had to keep body and soul together.
	And there was like a little bar at the Swiss Chalet.
	I don't know if they still have them anymore.
	This is many years ago, of course, and 30 years ago.
	And there was some guy getting rambunctious in the bar.
	And he threatened to hit the bartender.
	And the bartender said, okay, go ahead.
	I'll call the cops and you'll go to jail.
	And I was like, whoa, I guess that's kind of true.
	I guess I was, I don't know, 16 at the time.
	I remember that that sort of hit me like it's like a deep shock like Wow, I guess that's true if someone hits you when you're an adult you call the cops and that person goes to jail Whereas when I was a kid my mom would call the cops and the cops would come and lecture me about how I needed to obey my mom which didn't often happen when Women would call the cops and say my husband hit me Then they wouldn't lecture the woman and say you need to obey your husband, right?
	So As an adult, it's not going to get to a place where people are going to hit you.
	Now, I'm not saying that makes it all better, but it's important to understand that that's not the situation that you're in anymore.
	Right.
	I feel I'm having zero impact on you so far in this conversation, which is fine.
	I'm just sort of planning it out.
	I don't...
	I mean, I've thought about that before.
	And I just don't know how to turn off this anxiety.
	I don't know if there is more to it than just, you know, being hit as a child when I try to confront or I just, I can't figure it out.
	Okay, I can give you two clues.
	I've given you one, I'll repeat it and then I'll give you another one.
	Okay.
	Are you ready?
	Yeah, I am ready.
	Number one, which I've already mentioned, respect, respect, respect what your fear was trying to do.
	What was your fear trying to do?
	Protect me.
	Yeah, save your life, right?
	So, if you were being a chaste By a tiger through some abandoned zoo, and you ran like crazy, you'd say, I was chased by a tiger.
	You wouldn't say, I ran.
	I know it was ridiculous, right?
	so but you call your fears ridiculous right Yeah.
	So why did you call your fears ridiculous?
	Well, because the fear doesn't need, I don't need that fear right now, but I don't know how to turn it off.
	Or if it's even possible.
	Wait, wait, wait, wait.
	Okay, what do you mean you don't need that fear right now?
	Are you saying that never, is there going to be a dangerous person in your life again?
	Well, no, but I'm not associating myself with violent people.
	I said dangerous.
	And I have a choice of leaving.
	I said dangerous, not necessarily violent.
	Right.
	But in any given point, as a child, I had no choice.
	I was trapped and I couldn't leave.
	And it was, you know, behave and listen and conform or die, per se.
	But now I have a choice to leave.
	And I don't have to interact with people that I feel threatened by or So that's why I don't know why I'm still in such an overdrive.
	All right.
	I mean, I feel like we're not quite having a conversation as yet.
	So it is because you're calling it ridiculous.
	If you say your fears are ridiculous, then they cannot relax.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	Right?
	Your fears are there to protect you, obviously, right?
	And...
	Okay.
	Okay.
	So calling your fears ridiculous hasn't worked as yet, right?
	Right.
	But what else do I... I mean, I'm not sure how to...
	How else do I... I don't even know what to call it.
	I'm not sure what you're asking.
	How else do I... Well, you said calling them ridiculous, it's wrong.
	I don't know that...
	I'm not sure how else I should view it.
	I mean, I understand it was pretty important when I was a kid.
	But now, now it seems kind of ridiculous.
	But...
	Have you honored and respected the fears as a child?
	Well, I'm starting to go through that and I have for several months now gone through the whole process of trying to process my entire childhood and there is a lot more, a lot, lot more to it than just the confrontation stuff.
	So, a lot of it, it's not even just fear, but also anger, extreme anger.
	Sure.
	For things that happen.
	And that's another thing I don't, I seem to have a really hard time with.
	You know, I'm angry all the time, especially around my parents, which is, that's something I don't want to turn on.
	I have all the right to be angry.
	I've gotten to the point where I don't talk to my dad at all because I really don't value his opinion.
	He has been an alcoholic since I can remember.
	As to my mom, I have never confronted her with that, with anything that had happened in my childhood.
	And I seem to have a really difficult time Talking about it, or even, especially my native language, I have a really hard time connecting emotionally.
	And not being able to convey the message that I want to convey.
	Does that make any sense?
	Yeah, I think so.
	Now, are you still in contact with your mom?
	Yes.
	I'm sorry, what now?
	I am.
	And why?
	Uh, yeah, honestly, I, I don't know.
	Because you understand that the woman who beat you up, hit you in the face, hit you on the bare butt many times a week throughout your childhood?
	If you're still in contact with her, I don't know how well you're listening to your fear and anger.
	Yeah.
	I just don't...
	I almost feel guilty breaking contact with her.
	And that's something I cannot come in terms with.
	As much as I want to completely cut him off, there's this constant guilt Just even thinking about it, and I know that's not my guilt, it's her guilt, but...
	Wait, hang on, hang on.
	What do you mean it's her guilt?
	Well, I don't know if I'll be able to...
	She has changed recently.
	I would say in the past couple of years.
	If you were to ask her How her relationship is with her daughter, she would probably say, oh yeah, it's great and we're very close.
	While in reality we're not.
	I can't stand being around them for more than an hour and that's even pushing it.
	Oh, Tanya.
	But she, yes.
	How is that her having changed?
	She's still ignoring your needs.
	She's still living in delusion of intimacy when you don't like her.
	How is that?
	Oh, she's changed.
	She's still selfish.
	She still really lives in her own bubble of delusion and I can't stand her, but she tells everyone I'm close.
	So her needs mean something and my needs don't.
	How is that an example of a big change?
	What am I missing?
	Well, I guess I'm viewing it as she's being very nice to me.
	Well, in reality, she's not.
	It's just...
	How is she being nice to you if you can't stand her?
	You can't stand people who are nice to you?
	Is that what you're trying to tell me?
	No, it just seems she's really clinging on.
	I guess I'm just making excuses.
	Actually, you're just making fog, right?
	Because I'm asking you some pretty specific questions that I'm not getting any specific answers.
	And so can I ask you just to either commit to specific answers or not?
	Because we got to get to something here, right?
	Absolutely.
	Okay.
	So you said, I feel guilt, but I know that's her guilt, as if that's just a foregone conclusion, right?
	Yeah.
	I'm not entirely convinced that people who can repeatedly hit children in the face are really good at being guilty.
	I think that they may experience negative consequences, as in, well, I pounded the shit out of you, Tanya, when you were a little girl, but now you're an adult and you have choices.
	So now I have to change my strategy, right?
	If a guy comes up to me with a gun to take my wallet and I grab the gun from him, is he going to pursue the same strategy?
	Well, no.
	He's going to change his strategy.
	He's going to say, hey man, don't shoot me.
	I'm having a bad day.
	My kids are hungry.
	I just need some food.
	I'm sorry, man.
	I'll never do it again.
	Is he sorry?
	No.
	No, he's not sorry.
	The power has changed.
	He's not suddenly developed a conscience.
	He's just changing his strategy.
	Because he doesn't have the power anymore, right?
	Now, if he had the power, if he got the gun back, he'd be like, sucker, give me your wallet, Whitey, right?
	So, your mother, I'm not sure that I'd call it guilt.
	I think that she would probably have recognized that her strategy has to change because you're an adult and you don't live with her and you're not subject to her power and she can't legally beat you up at will.
	Right.
	And she also knows that she's going to be in a position of, she's going to change as she gets older from a position of imposing her will to needing resources from you, right?
	And that has definitely, I mean, I've financially supported him for two years now.
	You financially supported your parents for two years?
	Yes.
	The people who beat you up?
	Yes.
	All right.
	All right.
	What are you doing?
	What are you doing?
	No, seriously, Tanya, if I said that my wife beat the crap out of me throughout our marriage, hit me with implements while I was sleeping and stuff like that, but now I'm paying all her bills because I feel guilty that she's not happy, What would you tell me?
	I don't know.
	Oh, yes, you do.
	What would you tell me?
	Come on, don't fog on me now, sister.
	What would you tell me?
	Can you repeat that?
	Tanya, I wonder if you could help me with the personal problem I'm having.
	So I was married for about 15 years to this woman and she beat me up several times a week.
	And, you know, she was really violent, really critical, verbally abusive, physically abusive, and then I just got out.
	And now I've just decided to start paying her bills because she's just not happy.
	What do you think?
	Why would you do that?
	What would you think?
	Don't ask me questions.
	What do you think?
	That's pretty stupid.
	Why?
	But she was with me for 15 years!
	She needs me!
	That she's an abuser.
	And so what?
	What would you tell me?
	To stop, because she still has control.
	She still has her thumb down, and it's controlling everything you do, every thought, every move.
	She's still controlling every aspect of your life.
	Right.
	And so I would also add, let's sort of switch the position.
	So let me ask you this, Tanya.
	Did your mom ever punish you for doing the wrong thing?
	In other words, does she accept that doing the wrong thing results in negative consequences?
	Oh, I was punished all the time for doing wrong or right.
	Right, okay, okay.
	So your mom is 150 fucking percent on board with the proposition that if you do wrong, you should suffer negative consequences, right?
	Right.
	Right.
	To which I can only add, not to you, but your mom, hey, payback's a bitch, bitch, right?
	Right.
	So she's suffering negative consequences for beating up her child several times a day for pretty much the length of the childhood, right?
	Several times a week, pretty much for the length of the childhood, right?
	Pretty much, yes.
	Okay, so if you do wrong, then you suffer negative consequences.
	All abusers inflict that rule on children.
	When the children grow up, it is eminently just and fair to apply authority's rules to authority.
	Because if the authority was acting on good faith, on acting on good principles, not that I'm saying that they ever are, but if they believe that, then they'd say, hey, you know what?
	I punished you for doing wrong things as a child.
	I understand why you don't want to see me as an adult, because I accept that if you do something wrong, you should be punished for it.
	And I certainly hit you a hell of a lot as a child.
	So yes, that's all fair.
	All's fair, right?
	Do they ever do that?
	No, they don't do it.
	No, they don't do it.
	So then it had nothing to do with principles.
	She just really fucking liked hitting children.
	Bam!
	Ooh, that feels good!
	I love it!
	The little crack, the bone, the smash, the bruise, I love it!
	It makes me feel good!
	You know, there are sadists who get little orgasm light-ups when they hurt people.
	You show them pictures of people being intentionally hurt, and the same happy center lights up when a normal human being sees a pretty sunset or a butterfly or gets a hug from a loved one.
	So she might just be a garden-variety, asshole, estrogen-based sadist who got off on hitting innocent, helpless, dependent you.
	Can I interrupt you for a second?
	Please do.
	I don't know how much it was that she enjoyed it, but I believe that she knew she made a mistake.
	Wait, wait, wait.
	Okay, now you're fogging me up here because you're jumping around in time.
	You're jumping around in time.
	When did she know she made a mistake?
	When she was...
	That's what I'm kind of trying to lead up to.
	The reason she was taking out all her frustration out on me is because she made bad choices in her life.
	And instead of recognizing them and owning them, she had herself a tiny little punching bag.
	I don't understand what any of that means.
	I'm sorry, I don't understand what any of that means.
	Every single human being makes bad decisions in their life.
	Not every single human being ends up punching their children in the face.
	So making bad decisions is absolutely zero causal.
	It's like saying, well, my mom had two legs and therefore she hit me.
	It's like, well, most of us have two legs.
	It doesn't mean we hit our kids, right?
	So if you want to explain to me why your mom was the way she was, I'm happy to hear, but I'd like to hear a slightly more credible story.
	Well, that's the only thing I could think of is that, you know, she married a drunken loser.
	I don't know what came from her past, but she carried it all with her and she was taking it out on me.
	Okay.
	But she must have enjoyed taking it out on you.
	That's what I'm trying to tell you.
	Yeah, don't get me wrong.
	I get that.
	No, you're explaining away.
	You're giving her cause, which is an insult to everyone who suffered.
	Look, do you hit children?
	No.
	Do I hit children?
	No.
	Mike, you're not down at the playground trying to win pickup fights, are you anymore?
	No.
	Absolutely not.
	Okay, so we've got people in the chat room, we've got people on YouTube, at least semi-people, mostly trolls.
	Welcome!
	Hi!
	But people in the chat room, if you've suffered, if you could just type yes if you've hit children.
	I don't see a lot of yeses.
	Someone's got a picture of them beating their head against the wall.
	Semi-people, I guess that's trolls.
	Um...
	Okay, so we've got a lot of people who suffered in the chat room.
	You suffered.
	I suffered.
	We all made bad decisions, right?
	But none of us have hit children.
	So, everything that you're explaining about is in no way causal to your mother hitting children.
	To your mother hitting you.
	Right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Oh, we have a fuck no.
	Nope, never hit one.
	No, OMG. No, no, no, never.
	Okay, so there is no causal explanation as to why your mother hit you.
	No, nor did I ever ask.
	But you have a story.
	I was afraid to.
	You were what?
	I was always afraid to ask.
	Of course you were.
	I understand that.
	I don't like to ask people why they're evil when they have power over me either.
	Right?
	I've watched Schindler's List.
	It's not a good idea.
	Right?
	Right.
	Okay.
	So...
	Why did your mother hit you?
	Because she liked it.
	She certainly preferred it to whatever the alternative was, right?
	Yeah.
	Because she liked it.
	Relative to every other choice and every other option, that's what she wanted to do.
	Why do I rob a bank?
	Because that's what I want to do rather than get a job or ask someone for money, right?
	Yeah.
	So would you say it was power lust?
	What does power lust mean?
	Well, being able to assert power over somebody innocent and defenseless.
	But what you're doing is you're saying, this is what hitting is.
	As an analogy, or this is another way of saying hitting, I'm saying she liked to hit you, and you're saying, well, hitting is having power over someone else, so she must have preferred or liked to have power over someone else.
	Yes!
	Hitting is a way of having power over someone else.
	It's not the only way to have power or influence over someone else.
	You can reason with them, you can engage them, you can pay them to do something.
	You can have influence or power over other people through voluntary means, though, I mean, voluntary doesn't really mean power.
	But she hit you because she felt better after hitting you than not hitting you.
	Like, why does somebody do heroin?
	Because they feel better doing heroin than not doing heroin, right?
	I mean, it's a simple, right, equation.
	Yeah.
	So she preferred hitting you.
	Anything which people do repetitively, they prefer to do.
	I mean, that's praxeological.
	There's no way to not argue that, right?
	Now, in the past, we used to have this thing called demonic possession.
	Why did people do evil things?
	Because they listened to Satan, right?
	And now the new Satan, the new demonic possession is determinism.
	Well, she made bad choices and she took it out on me and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, which explains nothing.
	Because it doesn't explain why lots of people who make bad decisions and feel frustrated don't hit their kids.
	I mean, if I can get through the day without making a bad decision, I think that's a great day.
	I'm still not hitting my daughter.
	So it explains nothing to say, my mother had a bad childhood.
	Lots of people have bad childhoods.
	Only 30% of people who have bad childhoods go on to be abusers.
	Well, my mother took drugs because she had a bad childhood.
	Well, lots of people have bad childhoods and don't take drugs.
	Well, my mother...
	Right?
	It doesn't explain anything.
	But what it does is it makes you feel guilty as fuck, Tanya, right?
	Yes.
	Absolutely.
	Right?
	So this...
	This bullshit...
	And I'm not saying that you're saying bullshit, but the bullshit stories you have about your mom, they are your mom.
	This is your mom's story.
	I hit you because I was sad and frustrated, right?
	Yeah.
	Well, bullshit.
	You hit me because you wanted to, because you liked it.
	It's like saying the economy crashes because people are greedy.
	People are always greedy.
	It'll happen one day and then not the next.
	Right?
	We always want a way...
	Hmm.
	Let me rephrase that.
	That was the wrong way of putting it.
	Evil always wants forgiveness without confession.
	Because that's the final nail in the coffin of the conscience of their victims.
	Evil people always want forgiveness without confession.
	Without an admittance of wrong and a genuine seeking of restitution.
	And so there's this giant evil monolith in the world called, you better forgive.
	You ought to forgive.
	Forgiveness is good.
	You gotta forgive.
	If you don't forgive, well, you'll suffer.
	If you don't forgive, you'll just hang on to it.
	You gotta let go of the past.
	You gotta forgive.
	You gotta forgive.
	And generally, generally, this is the great secret.
	And this is why, Tanya, we're only talking about your mom.
	Generally, it's only women that this applies to.
	Only women have you got to forgive.
	And, and, it's mostly female therapists who are saying all this stuff.
	Forgive, forgive, forgive.
	Hey, if forgiveness is such a virtue, why the hell are people hitting their kids?
	So, forgiveness...
	Is not charity.
	To turn forgiveness into charity is to make those who confess and seek restitution the subject of infinite insult.
	It's like, hey, you quit smoking.
	Good for you, right?
	Oh, you didn't quit smoking.
	Great.
	I'm going to go and take the lungs of a homeless guy and give them to you.
	Well, where's the respect for the guy who quit smoking?
	And so forgiveness is something that has to be pulled out of you by relentlessly restitution-based behavior.
	I will forgive people who earn it.
	Absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	My wife sometimes offends me.
	I sometimes offend my wife.
	My friends sometimes offend me.
	I offend my friends and we talk about it and we figure it out and restitution is made and it all gets better and everything's fine.
	You know when people say, ooh, how sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have an ungrateful child.
	You are cold-hearted.
	You won't forgive.
	You hold grudges.
	You won't let go of the past.
	These are all just like the bizarre voodoo curses that you hurl at people who have some fucking standards in relationships.
	Oh, you know what?
	If you beat me up consistently as a child, guess what?
	You've got some work to do!
	If you want any kind of forgiveness or any kind of relationship, you have got what is colloquially known in metric as a fuckton of work to do to heal the relationship.
	I have no work to do because I was the victim!
	So if you are the abuser and you want a relationship with me, the victim, then you have a huge amount of work to do to repair things.
	And unless and until you pick your lazy fat ass off the sofa and get to work earning my forgiveness, you get none.
	Because there's none there to be gotten.
	Forgiveness is created by the restitution of the abuser, of the wrongdoer.
	It is not something to be squeezed out of the victim in a further act of conscience corrupting abuse.
	So no.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	The guilt that you feel is because you are not holding your mother responsible.
	And because you are not holding your mother responsible, you can't process your fear.
	Because I'm telling you this, Tanya, your fear and your anger absolutely holds your mother responsible.
	Well, I've always...
	I've never taken...
	My anger out on others, but always on myself.
	Alright, did you hear anything that I said?
	Now you're just going off on a monologue that has nothing to do with anything I said.
	Yes, I'm not holding a responsible.
	Do you think you'll be able to open your heart to me at all in this conversation?
	I want to.
	I really do.
	That's what I'm calling.
	Because you're giving me a monotone of tangents, which is a way of not connecting to what I'm saying.
	Connecting to what I'm saying doesn't mean you agree with me at all.
	But is what I'm saying having any impact on you?
	Yes.
	It is.
	I just don't know.
	I don't know how to hold her up responsible.
	Okay, then I don't want to talk to you.
	Then I want to talk to your mom.
	You're in a mom.
	You ready?
	Oh, my.
	Yeah, I'll try.
	We're always ready for that.
	I mean, they talk to us 24-7, whether we like it or not, right?
	Right.
	Okay, so since your mom is blocking my access to your heart, I'd like to talk to her, your inner mom.
	Not the evil mom who hit you, but the inner mom who tried to save you from the evil mom who hit you, right?
	Yeah.
	All right.
	What can I call her?
	Sue?
	Does it matter?
	Whatever you like.
	Okay, Sue.
	So, Sue, you know that...
	So, Mom, you know that you hit Tanya a lot when she was a kid, right?
	Yeah, but she deserved it.
	Every time?
	Well, maybe not every time, but most of the time she got beat because she didn't do...
	As she was told.
	She was a difficult child, you know.
	And were you hit as a child?
	Yes.
	And do you feel as a child that you deserved it as well?
	Yes.
	And do you think that hitting a child in the face is a good discipline technique?
	Do you think that that's effective?
	Is that the right thing to do in these situations?
	They get their attention.
	Well, yes, setting fire to them would get their attention, but I assume you wouldn't go that far, right?
	No.
	Okay.
	So getting their attention is not good.
	It's not a good reason to hit your child several times a week in the face, right?
	And to spank a bare bottom as well, right?
	So do you think that hitting your daughter in the face was a good idea?
	At the time...
	No.
	See, the thing about a good idea is it doesn't have anything to do with at the time, right?
	Like, if you want to see the sunrise, it's a good idea to get up before the sun gets up, right?
	That's not a good idea last year, but not this year, right?
	A good idea, kind of by definition, is something that doesn't change, right?
	So do you think now that hitting your child back then was a good idea?
	I don't know what you would say to that.
	Yes?
	She'd say yes.
	Okay, alright.
	So, she was capable, do you think she was capable of obeying you?
	No.
	So, are you saying that you hit your daughter for something she wasn't capable of achieving, which was obedience?
	Right.
	Right.
	So then that is absolutely not fair then, right?
	Right?
	Like if I speak to you in Czechoslovakian, then I can't beat you up for not understanding me, right?
	Because you're not capable of understanding Czechoslovakian, right?
	Right.
	Right?
	So if your daughter was not capable of obeying you, but you hit her in the face for not obeying you, then clearly that was not reasonable, right?
	Right?
	Yeah.
	So the analogy would be that if you get older and you get what are called senior moments where you can't remember things or you forget an appointment or you can't find your keys or whatever, right?
	Is your daughter justified in hitting you in the face because you get forgetful when you get old?
	Of course not.
	Why not?
	I'm her mother.
	No, no, no, no.
	We've got principles here.
	The principle is, if the brain is having cognitive deficiencies, you can hit it, hit the head until the brain improves, right?
	And so if you get old, and when you get old, you get forgetful, then the rule is, well, you hit the deficient brain until it improves, right?
	That was your principle with your daughter, right?
	Right.
	So, is that a principle that she can apply to you when you get old?
	Well, she won't.
	I didn't ask if she would.
	I said, is it a principle that she can apply to you when you get old?
	No.
	Because don't we understand that it is wrong to hit people for their cognitive deficiencies?
	Right?
	Yes.
	If it is wrong to hit people for their cognitive deficiencies then it was wrong to hit your daughter for being a child.
	Because being a child is relative to an adult having a cognitive deficiency, right?
	Yes.
	So if what you did to your daughter was wrong and unjust and hurt her irrevocably, she will never ever be a child who was not hit as a child.
	She will never ever have had that childhood where she wasn't hit.
	what do you owe her at this point she would storm out Right.
	She would not.
	Right.
	So she would defoo.
	Yes.
	I'm not even sure if she would go this far, but...
	She would get angry, and she would storm out.
	Yes, too bad she wasn't with you right now.
	But...
	Okay, so then when you have criticisms of her...
	She gets all hysterical and storms out, right?
	Because she's very sensitive, you see, to negative experiences.
	I mean, she's willing to hit her little girl in the face several times a week, but you see, she's exquisitely like a little hibiscus, like a delicate flower, incredibly sensitive to negative experiences, right?
	Oh, she gets angry.
	Yeah, it's very upsetting for her when she is questioned or has any kind of negative experiences or feels bad.
	She's so upsetting, she just has no choice but to get angry, right?
	Right.
	Because negative experiences are very tough.
	I'm sorry?
	Yeah.
	If anger doesn't work, then she'll go back to, okay, then my child starts crying and You know, the poor little me.
	I've been bearing the cross all my life.
	Right.
	At which point I would say, so, wait a minute.
	So when I have criticisms of you, you find that so painful that you go between anger and self-pity.
	And it's so, you have to run out of the room.
	It's so appalling.
	Right?
	Right.
	But wait a second.
	Is it more difficult objectively to be criticized or to be punched in the goddamn face several times a week?
	Well, criticism, you see, cuts to the soul, as they like to say.
	But no.
	Okay.
	So would you rather I criticize you or punch you in the face right now, Mom?
	Because I'm ready.
	You know, I owe you a few, right?
	So would you rather I criticize you or punch you in the fucking face?
	Punch me in the face.
	Is that what she would say?
	Yeah.
	Okay, I'd get that in writing first.
	Because then it's like boxing, right?
	She can't charge you.
	Well, here's the problem that I'm having.
	I would like to do that.
	I would like to have that dialogue with her.
	But she doesn't speak English very well.
	And I don't know how to...
	I have no emotional connection to my native language.
	I know how to speak it in basic, you know, but I have no...
	I wouldn't know how to...
	It's hard for me to explain it.
	No, it's not.
	Oh, come on.
	Oh, Tanya.
	You have, like, Tanya's book of infinitely implausible excuses.
	Now there's a language barrier.
	Mom, you hit me when I'm a child.
	I'm scared and angry.
	Is that tough?
	Bring a translator.
	Okay, that just provoked anxiety.
	I know.
	So you're showing language barrier because you're terrified of bringing this conversation up with your abuser.
	Yeah.
	Yes, absolutely.
	Okay, so that's why I'm blowing past all these defenses, because there's an emotion in there, which is terror of someone who punched you repeatedly as a child, right?
	Three times a week, 150 times a year, right?
	By the time you're 10, 1500 times.
	Anyone who beat the shit out of me or punched me in the face 1,500 times, I would be terrified of as well, right?
	Yes.
	Thank you.
	And it probably was more.
	And this doesn't count the times that she yelled at you or spanked you or punished you in other ways.
	Right?
	Mm-hmm.
	Oh, Tanya.
	We are not having any luck prying open that heart of yours, are you?
	I don't know what to do.
	I don't know how to open up or what to...
	Yeah, I'm just kind of stuck.
	Well, me too.
	Okay.
	Coincidentally enough.
	Yeah.
	So listen, I mean, I can give you more thoughts, but I think we've run the course of what we can talk about without any emotional response as yet.
	So have a listen to this again, mull things over.
	The facts are you don't have to talk to your mom.
	You're not obligated to try and fix your abuser.
	You're not obligated to try and have a great relationship with someone who repeatedly abused you as a child.
	You sure as fuck are not obligated to pay their bills, right?
	Yeah.
	And so think about this stuff.
	But if you're still in her life, despite being terrified of her, then you are not listening to your fear.
	And if you're not listening to your fear and you're still putting yourself in a dangerous situation emotionally, then your fear is not going to go away, right?
	Right?
	The fear goes when the tiger's back in the cage.
	You go in the cage with the tiger, you ain't getting much sleep, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, you're right.
	So if you feel like, well, I'm stuck because I have to talk to my mom, but I really don't want to talk to my mom.
	No, you're not stuck.
	You can choose not to talk to your mom.
	You can choose to go.
	I would certainly go and see a therapist about these issues.
	Somebody who's not some...
	Forgiveness crack dealer, which is just relief for everyone in the short run, the destruction of the human race in the long run.
	I think I found one.
	What's that?
	Oh, you have.
	Okay, good.
	Well, yeah, talk to the therapist.
	But, you know, if it's like, well, I'm stuck because I have to get my mom to understand these things, you don't.
	You absolutely do not.
	You don't have to get your mom to understand anything.
	I'm sorry?
	She wouldn't understand it at all.
	She would, I mean, it would be a dead, it would be like talking to a Oh my god, you just did it again.
	You're killing me.
	She just wouldn't understand it.
	Not even a bit.
	Bullshit.
	She wouldn't listen.
	Oh, she wouldn't listen is very different from she wouldn't understand.
	And she wouldn't listen because she exactly understands it.
	She exactly understands what you would be bringing up.
	She understands it probably even better than you do.
	I wouldn't be surprised.
	Yeah, me neither.
	All right, but let's move on to the next caller.
	Thank you, and I hope you'll call in, or at least drop us an email and let us know how it goes, but I really appreciate the call.
	Sorry, it was such a dead end.
	It wasn't a dead end as far as getting information across.
	I wish we'd had the connection, but sometimes we have to move on to the next caller without that.
	I'm sorry that that didn't happen, but...
	I understand with the trauma of your childhood that that's tough.
	But yeah, drop us a line.
	Do let us know how it goes.
	And I do thank you for calling it.
	Thank you very much.
	You're welcome.
	Mike, is the next call going to be relatively short?
	Do you think?
	It's hard to say.
	It's hard to say.
	Is it a philosophical question?
	It is not.
	It's about fight or flight response.
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	What do you think?
	I don't want to do someone a disservice by making it a short call, but I also don't have a lot of juice for a long one.
	Your call, Sam.
	Your call.
	What do you want to do?
	I'd be happy to do it now.
	Alright.
	Do you want bad sex or no sex?
	We're almost done milking stuff on the show here, so...
	Look, I can give you like 20 minutes, but I'm...
	Running out of steam.
	If you want to wait, we can do it longer next time.
	But if you want to do it now, it's just going to be shorter.
	I just want to give you fair warning.
	I think 20 minutes would be long enough for you to cut through any bullshit left in my thinking so that I don't make the same mistakes my parents made with me.
	Wow, a human being who's satisfied with 20 minutes.
	You're my kind of gal.
	Wait!
	I'm that kind of guy.
	All right.
	Sam wrote in and said, in the past, interactions with most people, especially when they ask about my life, it triggered my fight-or-flight response.
	I've also blamed myself for everyone's problems and never felt that I was good enough.
	This has negatively impacted my employment opportunities and my ability to connect with other people.
	Do you have any suggestions to help me think through my fear?
	What employment opportunities has it messed up?
	Well, whenever somebody's tried to, I've been able to get pretty good jobs and keep them for a few months.
	About the time where I'm done proving myself and people just start asking me questions about my life, getting to know me, that's That's when my fight-or-flight response really kicked in.
	I didn't know it was fight-or-flight until a few months ago.
	I started going to counseling, started really thinking about what this is, and I just leave quick jobs, don't talk to the people I used to work with, and haven't managed to put together a consistent life that isn't I should say,
	I just feel terrified after a while, and I haven't been able to cope with it in any way.
	It was Sam, right?
	Yeah.
	Okay, Sam.
	Now, you know we have 20 minutes, and you're asking for a whole lot of foreplay for 20 minutes, right?
	Yeah.
	Because I asked you what employment opportunities has messed up for you because of this.
	Okay, all of them.
	Okay, but what does that mean specifically?
	How does it happen?
	Okay.
	I pass all the interviews I can to multiple jobs.
	You'll hate this, but some of them have been government jobs.
	I end up feeling terrified when people start asking me about my personal life or Try to judge the quality of my work or the quality of how I'm acting or try to get more out of me than just a facade.
	So you mean like in the interview or in the job?
	In the job, no.
	In the interview I've been able to BS my way through things pretty well.
	Or at least keep a straight face.
	And do you like the jobs?
	people ask you, but no.
	Okay, so what you're saying is that being authentic to yourself has caused problems with jobs you don't want.
	Yes.
	How is that a problem exactly?
	I'm not convinced it's just that.
	it's uh... you know No, no, no, but sorry, Tindra, but technically, if you being authentic and honest or having that potential, or at least being connected to yourself, is causing problems with the people around you, what is philosophy kind of encouraging you to do?
	To not be around those people, to be authentic to myself, to find a path and a means of providing for myself in life that does not have me Yeah.
	I mean, philosophy will lead you to, let's just say charitably, dislike a few people.
	All except Mike, who is retaining his sunny disposition no matter what slings and outrageous internet fortunes have slung his way.
	Is that right?
	The constant beam of sunlight and happiness and joy and positivity, Mike?
	Is that...
	24-7, 365.
	Nothing but sunshine lollipops, rainbows, and the occasional fluffy bunny.
	Absolutely.
	And this will be what they play back right before he goes postal.
	And they'll say, well, isn't that ironic?
	But, yeah, so look, if you get into the truth, then you wake up to the world.
	And when you wake up to the world, there's not a lot of people you can talk with.
	When you start talking about anything important, right?
	If people start talking about things important, they'll just burst into tears.
	Like, they'll just sob and cry and wail and gnash their teeth.
	And so there's this massive hollowing out of human communication that needs to occur because everybody is hanging by a thread.
	Everybody is hanging over a chasm of their own intensity.
	And we need to hollow out communications because People don't think there's enough copper wiring in the world for the connections that they need, so they just sever the whole damn thing.
	They think that there's no chance to plug anything in without getting killed by some vast electrical surge, so everybody just dances around.
	So there's a huge hollowing and emptying out of human communications, and it happens pretty early.
	I went once to a sort of more formal thing that my daughter was involved in, and she wanted me to come up before the day started.
	And there were a bunch of kids, and they were all sitting around drawing, and they were a bunch of adults.
	And none of the kids were talking to each other, and the adults weren't talking to the kids.
	And it's something that I've talked about for years and years and years.
	How, you know, one of the main reasons I didn't want to have kids was because I just found kids to be so terrible at conversations.
	So terrible at conversations.
	And seeing my daughter in sort of more formal settings, I just sort of mean sort of more structured settings for a day, I just see the degree to which conversation is avoided even among and between kids.
	You know, here's an activity.
	Here's a movie.
	Here's something.
	You don't have to talk to each other.
	You don't have to ask questions.
	And nobody's teaching these kids how to have a conversation with someone.
	And so kids grow up being able to program iOS games but not connect to a person three feet away with some questions, right?
	And kids need coaching on this, particularly when other kids are pretty bad, usually at making conversation.
	You know, they can exchange information, they can be competitive, and they can talk about, you know, but they can't really express anything of any importance.
	And...
	I have found this to be the case consistently.
	You know, I worked in a daycare and nieces and my own kids and my own daughter.
	And it's just something like I need to sort of sit down and say, when I'm around a bunch of kids, you know, I get them started.
	You know, what games do you like?
	Or what video games do you like?
	Or, you know, what's your favorite song?
	Or, you know, what are you in?
	Just something.
	Just get the conversation going at some point.
	And I can usually get a...
	A good conversation going.
	And the kids are so enthusiastic when that happens.
	And when you get conversations going among a bunch of kids, it's fantastic.
	As I mentioned, my daughter's last birthday party, we had a power outage.
	It was fantastic.
	It was fantastic.
	We had the best time.
	Because we actually sit there.
	We played some charades.
	We chatted.
	We actually ended up playing.
	We had some light-up balloons.
	We played volleyball in the dark with light-up balloons outside.
	I mean, it was so much fun.
	I'm so glad.
	And then next, I'm just pulling the power.
	I'm going, it's a kid's party.
	They loved it.
	And we finished the face painting by the light of a cell phone and all that.
	It was cool.
	It was really cool.
	Very memorable.
	And so when you actually start deepening to any degree, then what happens is you recognize just how shallow and empty...
	People's lives are.
	Somebody wrote me a YouTube comment the other day.
	It didn't write it to me.
	It was about how he was working in an office.
	In 1995, he's working in an office, and a woman was retiring, and they gave her a computer.
	And because of licensing issues, it could only be an MS-DOS computer.
	And...
	She was fat, depressed, had lots of health issues, and she was leaving.
	And all the other women were like, oh, I'm so envious of her.
	She gets to get out of here.
	I'm so envious of her.
	And this was a young guy, and he was like, that just terrified me.
	And it turned out that the woman who retired only lived for two years before she died of her various health ailments.
	So it was just terrifying.
	And that's why he went out to sort of become an entrepreneur and so on.
	But how are you going to have conversations with people who are just like prisoners ticking off the days to get to retirement thinking they're going to have, what, some relaxation?
	And then they're retired, they're old, they're sick, they're depressed, they're lonely, and then they're dead.
	And how are you going to have conversations with people about that, about anything?
	Sorry, go ahead.
	What if I run away from even those shallow conversations though?
	I have in the past.
	Can I run something by you and you can cut through it if I'm lying to myself?
	Because I've fallen for a lot of lies in my life.
	Okay, can I go ahead?
	Yeah.
	Nope.
	Okay.
	So, I grew up with, both my mother and father were physically abusive to each other, and verbally, and to me.
	A lot, a lot.
	My ATE sword was six.
	I'm sorry.
	And I got sucked back in as an adult to taking care of Of my alcoholic father, because now instead of just being an alcoholic and an asshole, as my mother called him, he had a mental illness.
	Okay, so now everything changed.
	He's the victim.
	He didn't want kids anyway.
	So, from going to counseling, from thinking about it, just putting the pieces together, the beginning of criticism or of asking me, oh, what do you think about this?
	What do you think of that?
	And, you know, from adults, from people not my own age or not younger than me, it triggered my fight or flight.
	Just, I mean, sweating, shaking, just wanting to get away.
	Because I knew, because, just like I think Tanya's call was just, hey, whenever I spoke my mind when I was a kid, I got my ass kicked.
	And I've been, since I was 11, 12, I just couldn't wait to just never speak to my parents again, to just get away.
	I used to pray that they died in a car crash.
	I was so just terrified.
	And I realized I still carried that with me today, just afraid of anyone and everyone.
	Of course, not 100% of the time, or else I think I'd be dead or I don't think I'm ever going to be able to trust or connect with anyone until I don't see them again.
	I don't interact with them.
	I don't take care of my dad.
	I don't go and prop them up and put up with the verbal abuse that continues to this day.
	Sorry if that was not clear.
	I thought I'd be much more eloquent.
	I'll try to sum it down.
	No, no.
	Look, I mean, human beings...
	Yeah, human beings...
	I mean, so...
	Why?
	I mean, the question, why do people have kids when they don't seem to like kids?
	It's because human beings currently are addicted to having power.
	All animals are kind of addicted to power over their environment.
	There's nothing wrong with that.
	But human beings are addicted to having power.
	And having children is the...
	Best chance losers have for feeling like a politician, right?
	You just have someone dependent on you, you have power over them, they have to obey you, and this is what everyone wants.
	But rather than create leadership, you just breed helpless followers, right?
	This is how people feel big who are small.
	They just breed people who are dependent on them and can't escape, exercise power, and get the dopamine jolt of people.
	Exercising power, which is what human beings get.
	They get a massive kick of happy hoofs to the brain when they exercise power over dependence.
	It's why we have rulers, and it's why people have kids.
	Hey, I can't get anyone to follow in my real life, so let me create some biological dependence, and now I have the closest thing I can have to an army in a jail system where I can write something down and make it the law of the land.
	land, I can't achieve political power, but I can invent some serfs for myself by fucking.
	And so I'm sorry that that happened to you.
	It's a pitiful, pitiful way to get a sense of power over other people, which we have addictions to, and it's one of these cyclical addictions that's hard to break for people.
	But you don't want to talk about your history with people at work, right?
	I mean, it's in your mind, but you don't want to talk about it, right?
	No, I always felt that to mention it would put me as, oh, you're just a problem.
	You're going to be one of those guys who turns into a serial killer.
	You're going to wind up doing the same thing to your kids.
	You know, that was it.
	I was told that as a kid.
	My mother told me, oh, well, you can't complain about your dad.
	You're going to be just like him.
	You know, you will be just like your dad.
	You look like him.
	You'll act like him.
	Yeah.
	So, even though I had all the evidence around me that that's not true, you know, kids are clones of their parents.
	Your daughter's not a clone of her mother, son's not a clone of her father.
	I was terrified to contradict that because it was repeated to me so many times and contradicting anything she said might get my ass kicked or abandoned, which she threatened a lot to just say, you know, whatever.
	No, what does the whatever mean?
	What?
	Abandonment?
	Threats?
	Oh, well, my father told us from an early age that the police where we lived used to just shoot people in the back of the head and that, you know, people could pick us up and sell us into sex slavery or rape us.
	Yeah, which I know is...
	I think, sorry, I think...
	Either he just made it up...
	Either he just made it up because he likes lying, or he made it up because it was just, well, justifying it to himself.
	Well, I can do whatever I want to these kids because other people would do worse.
	And I really...
	No, no, he...
	I'm sorry.
	Maybe you didn't listen to earlier part of the show, but I don't know.
	It has to be that complicated.
	He did it because...
	He enjoyed scaring the living shit out of children.
	It was fun for him.
	It's sadistical pleasure, right?
	It gives him that giggly kind of fun to destroy minds.
	I mean, it's just basic sadism as far as I understand it.
	Which doesn't make it any easier, but I think just understanding the complete alien nature of that kind of brain wiring, that not only does he take pleasure In torturing children, but he's not disturbed by the fact that he takes pleasure in torturing children.
	Like, if I woke up tomorrow and I thought, you know, I could really, really get off on strangling some kittens, I'd be like, whoa!
	The fuck did that come from?
	Oh my, what the hell?
	I've got to go and, oh my god, I've got to talk to my friend.
	I've got to go see someone.
	What am I, right?
	If I had any kind of urge or any kind of, wow, it'd be really great to tell my daughter about these terrible things that could happen to her and really grind in how horrible things are and so on.
	I mean, I'd be like, what the fuck?
	I'd really, like, so not only did he have these urges, but he was not even remotely disturbed by these urges, right?
	Seems like a good idea to me!
	Yeah, when he was sober.
	He was an alcoholic, too, and he drank, I think.
	That's his way of escaping.
	I don't know if he's guilty or not.
	I think it's sadistic behavior in the moment.
	At least.
	Which means he's a sadist.
	Yeah, you're right.
	Can I run one more thing by you?
	I know we're getting short on time.
	Uh-huh.
	I can't think of any way to have a relationship with my father or mother that doesn't just turn the tables around.
	I've spoken.
	I tried the RTR stuff.
	No way.
	That did not go well at all.
	Well, I wouldn't be sure about that.
	It may have gone very well.
	In terms of giving you resolution, right?
	Yes.
	Yes, absolutely.
	I'm judging it in the moment.
	I can't think of any way...
	This is where I'm at.
	I can't think of any way to have a relationship with them that...
	Yeah, that's not going to land me in jail.
	And that's what I thought for the longest time.
	I just said, hey, they'd be better off if they're dead.
	And I really thought, at least in my life, I think I'm really happy I found your show.
	Okay, dude, dude, get to the point.
	Get to the point.
	Not because we're running low on time, but just because there's something.
	Look, you are in a safe zone here, right?
	I don't think I've ever gotten angry at someone for speaking honestly.
	And I don't think I ever will.
	Right?
	So there's something that you're skirting around here.
	Which you're afraid to state openly.
	You can do that here.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	In fact, you must do that here.
	I mean, that's the deal, right?
	Yeah.
	I used to think it would...
	I might still...
	Okay.
	It seems completely unacceptable.
	If you start with it seems, then you're not being as honest as you could be.
	Yeah, okay.
	Do you want me to tell you what you're not telling me?
	That I just wanted them to die for what they did to me.
	No, no, you've told me that.
	No, you've told me that already, two times.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	You don't...
	You don't want to see the world That damns you for getting away from such horrific people.
	Yes.
	Because you and I know what's going to happen with the vast majority of people if you say, I don't see my parents, right?
	What are they going to say?
	Well, I either wouldn't tell them or I really won't care at this point.
	But I think that's it.
	That's been my fear for 10 years.
	What do you mean?
	Wait, wait, wait, wait.
	Hang on.
	Don't give me this I don't care bullshit.
	Because if you've just spent 20 minutes of my life talking up about an issue you don't really care about, then that would be a very, very big shame, right?
	Yes.
	So you grew up as a child in a world that did not call your parents out on what they were doing, right?
	Absolutely not.
	Right.
	Teachers didn't.
	Extended family didn't.
	Friends didn't.
	Everyone was like, yeah, seems legit to me, right?
	Yeah.
	Or they didn't care.
	Yeah.
	Either way, your parents got away with it, right?
	Yes.
	Yes, they did.
	At least, yeah, they have.
	And there was no one you could talk to about, my parents are talking about how easy it is to sell me into sex slavery, right?
	Or that if, yeah, you have to put up with us because if you leave the house, you'll get sold into sex slavery or something like that.
	So you weren't, there was no one you could talk to about that, Sam.
	And let me tell you something, that world is still all around you.
	Nothing has changed in any fundamental way as yet.
	That world is still all around you.
	If you say, if you were a woman and you said, I left my husband who beat me for 10 years, people would be like, you go, girl.
	Good for you.
	I hope you took him for everything, right?
	And that's a chosen relationship among adults.
	But if you happen to be born into some crazy-ass, abusive, sadistic motherfucker of a family, and you get out, Leaving no trail of bodies behind.
	Good for you.
	People are like, you're terrible.
	But they're your parents.
	You know, I mentioned this recently.
	Erin Pitsy, the famous anti-feminist and the founder of the first women's shelters and, as it turns out, men's shelters in England, when the women would get beaten up, They'd come to her shelter and then the rabbis and the priests and they'd all come over and say, but you made a vow before God.
	You have to go back to your husband.
	You have to go back.
	You have to go back.
	Go breed me some more victims for my cult, right?
	And now...
	And everyone in the audience when she said this was like, oh, that's shocking.
	That's terrible.
	How could these people have told these women that they needed to forgive their husbands and go back to their abusers because they were just their husbands, right?
	And they owe them that allegiance and blah-de-blah-de-blah, right?
	And everyone's shocked.
	At those priests, at least any halfway decent human being is shocked at those priests trying to convince these women to go back to their abusers and forgive them and honor the vow they made and blah, blah, blah, right?
	And she had to drive these priests and rabbis out of the house.
	And yet everyone who's shocked and appalled at the priests and the rabbis who were trying to drive with guilt and manipulation these women back into We'll turn around to someone who's left abusive parents and say, that's terrible.
	I don't even know what to say.
	They're your parents.
	You have to forgive them.
	You have to go back.
	Or if they don't just, oh, I can't talk to you, or they get really uncomfortable.
	But you won't get a single shred of sympathy from most of the people in the world.
	In fact, you will be condemned for acting in your own psychological salvation for breaking the cycle of abuse by refusing to associate with unrepentant criminal child abusers.
	You will be condemned, you will be ostracized, you will be put down on for working to break the cycle of abuse.
	And this tells you only one thing, how fucking guilty the world is for not intervening.
	All the times that you were a child.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	She spoke about it.
	Somebody's asking at the Toronto Domestic Violence Conference.
	You can do a search for it on YouTube.
	It's on Sandman's channel, S-A-N-D-M-A-N. I think she gave a similar speech at the Detroit International Men's Rights Conference in Detroit.
	You will see how much sympathy people have for adults who have taken the measure of their parents and found them seriously wanting ethically and who have stood up to end the cycle of their own abuse at the hands of their parents and who have decided not to expose their children to unrepentant child abusers.
	People who are taking the single greatest and biggest moral stand to end the cycle of abuse.
	If everyone were to not...
	And I'm just talking people who broke the law, who hit children in the face, which is illegal, who hit children with implements, which is most places illegal.
	People who actually are unrepentant criminal child abusers.
	If people did not expose their children to unrepentant child abusers, the amount of child abuse in society would go down exponentially in a single generation.
	In a single generation.
	It would be the greatest leap forward of the human condition known to mankind, far exceeding anything else that ever came before.
	And I'm including in that philosophy the Enlightenment, the scientific method, the Renaissance, the Age of Reason, the Industrial Revolution, the invention of computers.
	It would be the single greatest leap forward.
	And people resolutely oppose and undermine it in this underhanded, ostracizing kind of way.
	And...
	So damn them, they will reap the hell that they sow in one form or another.
	So I think that may be what you're talking about.
	about i don't mean to project but that's what i think um yeah it's definitely part of it um um I think I told you I don't care.
	That's a lie that I'm telling myself to...
	Because I want to go through with it.
	I want to get out.
	And with what privacy that's left, I don't know if I had to tell everybody that, no, I don't talk to my parents because they physically abused me and because they're horrible people.
	I think...
	And they're unrepentant.
	I mean, even God Himself does not forgive unrepentant sinners.
	To gain absolution from Lord God Almighty Himself, you must accept responsibility for your sins and confess your wrongdoing.
	And I try not to have higher standards for mankind than God Himself cannot achieve.
	God Himself will send you to hell If you have harmed children and do not repent.
	And I don't know how we can have a higher standard for victims of child abuse than the almighty, all-powerful, all-knowing creator of the entire universe and everything in it.
	I just don't think we can really have higher standards for the victims of child abuse than the almighty God himself.
	I think that might be a bit grandiose.
	So I'll take...
	I'll take a page from the Sky Ghost.
	I'll take a page from the guy with clouds for an ass.
	Yes, absolutely.
	To gain entrance to the heaven of my heart, repentance is required for me because I follow God in this.
	And just, I haven't heard it on the show before.
	I haven't listened to all of the books.
	But one excuse at first, years ago, was, oh, we don't remember that, or I forget because I drank too much.
	And if it happened, well, I don't remember it, so why not talk about it?
	And that's a fine starting point.
	And then the question is, were you allowed to use the same excuse as a child?
	Absolutely not.
	Absolutely not.
	Well, then fuck you.
	It doesn't work for the parents, right?
	I'm sorry, I can't have higher standards for six-year-olds than I do for 40-year-olds.
	So if you weren't allowed to say, well, I forgot, and then everyone say, well, that's okay.
	Kids, you know, you're young, you forget stuff and all that, right?
	Then adults don't get to choose that, right?
	And the I was drunk argument makes it worse.
	I mean, people think, well...
	I was drunk throughout a lot of your childhood, so I don't remember that stuff.
	It's like, well, I was drunk when I plowed into your kid in the car, so I don't have to go to jail or anything, right?
	It's like, no, that's worse than if you plowed into the kid sober, right?
	Because you drank and drove.
	And if you drink and parent, that's even worse.
	If you can't even remember your parenting, that's even worse.
	That's not a get-out-of-jail-free card.
	That's a fucking lock the door and throw away the key card.
	Yeah.
	I think I beat around the bush and, you know, I called in with lots of questions in my head and all these things I wanted to say, but I think it's just, you know, I don't want, I want, I know I can't have this, but I don't want this world for my children.
	I'm not going to repeat the same mistakes my parents made.
	And, you know, even if it's just Freedom in Radio, even if it's just a few other groups, that there are some people on this planet who, you know, I can talk to some community of people.
	Doesn't matter how little of the population it is.
	That gives me hope.
	Oh, yeah.
	God, no.
	Your children need quality, not quantity.
	And from any clear and rational view of the world, the world is inhabited by highly toxic zombies coughing up the bacilli of abuse and statism and violence and corruption.
	And to expose your children...
	To these kinds of people is highly irresponsible and highly destructive.
	Look, if there's someone coughing up blood into their hand, do you let your children hug them?
	No, because this is highly irresponsible.
	You must keep your children safe from all pathogens.
	And abuse, corruption, evil is a pathogen and you must keep your children safe from those pathogens.
	It is far more destructive than most physical illnesses.
	And violence, abuse, degradation, the avoidance of responsibility, the avoidance of ethics, shallowness, relentless shallowness, I don't mean the occasional small talk.
	This is a soul-eating Parasite.
	That most people are constantly coughing up and it's leaping off their skin and swimming through the air like the aforementioned sperm squid.
	And I cannot, I do not have the right to expose my child's beautiful, clean, whole and healthy personhood to the bacilli of the majority personality.
	I just, I don't have that right.
	I can't.
	I don't have the right to expose her to people who are sick.
	Whether spiritually or physically.
	So anyway, I hope that that's helpful.
	And yeah, Mike's right.
	I'm sorry, I'm gonna move on.
	Mike is right.
	Please watch, so that we don't spend all day crying, The Truth About Immigration and The Truth About Net Neutrality.
	Huge amounts of work went into them.
	I think they're very good presentations.
	I hope that you will watch them and share them.
	It's very important.
	And it gets a useful philosophical message across to a lot of people who aren't that interested in philosophy.
	So please, please, please go to YouTube and share those presentations.
	Saturday night, we are doing a show and...
	It is Mike's birthday.
	Mike's birthday.
	He is going to be 12.
	You've obviously heard his voice.
	We're still waiting for it to break.
	And we, of course, are mostly bypassing all of the labor laws that have come in since at least I was a kid.
	So I believe you wanted something to do with Ninja Turtles.
	What was that, Mike?
	Ninja Turtles are my favorite.
	Ninja Turtles are wrestling action figures, preferably if people want to send them.
	I can give you a P.O. box or something.
	I also believe, and this will be very exciting for most Free Domain Radio listeners, Mike will also take a fistful of either armpit, chest, or pubic hair from any WWF wrestler that you can find passed out in a bar.
	Obviously, you're going to need to strike like a cobra and run like the wind, but that is very important.
	If you would like to send a donation, we would, of course, hugely appreciate it.
	And Mike, since Mike has...
	I do get money from donations that is much, much, muchly appreciated.
	And I just want to clear something up because a couple of comments floating around like, you know, well, it's a charity and stuff begging for money and stuff like that.
	No, no, no.
	This is a service that is provided.
	And If you're not contributing to what you consume, which is provided to you on the honor system, we ask for 50 cents a show, which this is what?
	Three and a half hours for 50 cents?
	Come on.
	This is not exactly like a 3D IMAX movie made by some crap artist.
	50 cents a show, you consume 50 shows, send us 25 bucks.
	Consume 100 shows, send us 50 bucks.
	It's not really...
	And more, I think, is fair, but that's at least sort of the bare minimum.
	That's your like 5% tip.
	If you're not...
	Paying for it, other people are paying for it.
	And then you're privatizing the value of philosophy and socializing the costs, which means that you're basically having other people pay for that which you're consuming.
	I've got 35,000 hours of philosophy.
	Mike works like crazy hours.
	We've got a new employee who's just doing fantastic and excellent work on a variety of presentations, including the one coming up about Israel versus Palestine.
	So, it's not a charity.
	It's not a charity.
	I've never referred to it as a charity.
	It's certainly not registered as a charity.
	This is philosophy shows paid for by the honor system.
	And since we are about honor and integrity, you know you need to do the right thing and pay for what you consume.
	Do the honorable thing.
	You will feel better for it, I guarantee you.
	And it will do surprising amounts of good in your life because our unconscious watches where our resources go and that's how seriously it takes what a commitment is.
	So, FTRURL.com And help out the show.
	Come on.
	50 bucks a month, it's 161 pennies a day.
	Just one less coffee.
	20 bucks a subscription, 64 cents a day to get philosophy growing.
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	That is incredible.
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	So we're closing on 4 to 5 million.
	Philosophy injections into the brain of the planet every single 30-day cycle.
	That is incredible, unprecedented.
	We do not know where this is going to lead, but I truly believe that this is the future's best hope for a truly free world.
	So, you know, for 10 bucks a month, 30 cents a day, 32 cents a day.
	I'm sure you can manage that.
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	Please then just share the shows, post stuff, and write positive reviews wherever you can.
	Just help us out.
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	It's literally true and factually accurate.
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	So, FDRURL.com slash donate.
	You know you need to do it if you've been listening for a while.
	And we need it to help build the show.
	We've got lots of plans, maybe even more than the ping pong bubble I currently inhabit.
	But...
	That's what we need.
	So if you can help out, please do.
	If you can't help out financially, please help out in terms of time.
	Help share the show, write positive reviews, do all the things that you can to help promote what we're doing here.
	It is essential and it's a little bit more important than Minecraft videos.
	So have yourselves a great, great week, everyone.
	We will see you on Saturday night.
	Please remember to send Mike his happy birthday wishes on the 2nd of August.
	And thanks again to all the callers tonight.

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