Sept. 4, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
03:25:17
2787 Joining the New World Order – Wednesday Call In Show September 3rd, 2014
What can you do when you’ve completely lost the drive to achieve? What does it mean to be educated? How can we succeed as parents when there are conflicts in our romantic relationship? Includes: Waiting for a call from the New World Order, virtue as a muscle, the line down the middle of the world, freedom traded for free stuff, the parade of idiocy known as the human condition, fiercely clinging to helplessness, nobody is coming to save you, the trivium method, not using muscle or volume to gain authority, the question every parent should ask and resolving conflicts in romantic relationships.
Stefan Molyneux, Pinch Punch, third day of the month.
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Anyway, I hope you're having a great week.
I certainly am enjoying the last fading blaze of the Canadian summer.
Looks like somebody has taken a cotton candy cannon and fired it at the evening sky.
It's a beautiful night out tonight.
We've got just a little bit more of a half moon.
And I'm going to roam as I want to do before being closed into the icy boob fist of the Canadian winter.
Free range staff.
Yeah, free range staff.
It's about to come to a crashing end.
The philosophy is so much better when he can eat the bugs and just doesn't eat grain that's, you know, shuttled into his stall.
That's right.
I like my protein crunchy and primitive.
I mean, who doesn't?
It's either a turtle or a cricket.
One of the two.
By the way, Mike, have you ever been close to a snapping turtle?
I don't believe I have.
And listen, the way to figure out is, can you count to ten using fingers and thumbs?
Either that or I've been involved in a horrible saw accident, but I don't think I've been close to a snapping turtle.
Yeah, so, snapping turtle, the other day, I'm like, hey, Izzy, let's pick up the turtle.
Hey, Izzy, let's not pick up the turtle, because they are fast.
I'm just used to all this sort of slow-moving, like, you know, boulder with legs.
But man, those snapping turtles, they're like the cobras of the dinosaur kingdom.
At least that's how I explained it to Isabella so that other people can eventually correct all of the horrible misinformation I'm giving to her as far as science and biology goes.
But yeah, they are fast.
They are some fast wee critters.
So I just wanted to mention that.
Do not assume that they're slow.
That's important.
All right.
Anything else we wanted to talk about before?
I think the reason turtles being fast, of course, is why Shredder and Krang are so upset with them, but I think we can move on to the callers at this point.
Why?
Who and what?
What?
Shredder and Krang?
I'm dropping Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle knowledge on you, Steph.
Someone out there in the listenership will get it.
Your use of the word knowledge and my use of the word knowledge may not be exactly a photocopy silhouette, but anyway.
Before I start talking about the Technodrome, we should probably go to callers.
There's a movie out, right?
Yeah.
Apparently it's ungodly terrible.
I didn't go to it because I saw the reviews were like single digits.
Wait, are you saying it's ungodly terrible relative to people's expectations of a mutant Ninja Turtle movie?
They've all been pretty bad, but I think everyone has hopes.
I know I did.
You know, hey, maybe my child won't be completely raked over the coals, you know, the positive aspects of the cartoon that I remember and everything, but apparently it's terrible, so I'll wait for the DVD. I'm sure I'll still be able to get 90 minutes of women hating out of it, right?
I mean, that's the standard theory as to all of my movie reviews.
Someone did spoil it to me, and apparently, spoiler alert, spoiler alert, spoiler alert to everyone, this may be wrong, I just heard this from somebody, but apparently the four Ninja Turtles are unable to take down Shredder.
But at the end, there is a female character, who I don't even know who it is, that is able to take him down in some way, shape, or form, even though she's not trained.
That could be completely wrong, but someone told me that, and I kind of chuckled.
Yeah, I assume that they're armored ovaries and somehow parasitical upon virtuous men, as usual.
So we'll be working on this as we move forward.
All right.
Enough of our rambles.
Who do we have on first?
All right.
Paul is up first.
And Paul wrote in and said, At one point in my life, I had the will and drive to achieve, but I've since lost it.
I don't think it's a problem with procrastination, but more of a question about why I should even bother doing anything.
I want to do great things in my life, but I don't know why I should.
Do you have suggestions?
Mm-hmm.
Interesting.
Interesting!
All right.
What are the great things you want to do?
Well, at this point in my life, I really don't know.
Okay.
That doesn't sound like a recipe for disaster at all.
I want to do great things.
What are they?
I don't know.
But I'm sure you're going to succeed at them.
As a child, back in the day, I had ambitions to be a scientist, mostly.
That was my idea of achieving success.
I wanted to be a scientist.
Mainly in the field of physics or biology or something like that.
But science was always my thing.
I felt this kind of draw towards the scientific field.
Oh, sorry.
I thought you were about to say something else.
All right.
And what happened to that dream?
Well...
I would say in the following years of my life, I learned that no matter what I do and no matter how hard I work at something, I'll never achieve a level of satisfaction where I could say, I'm happy now.
Wait, hang on.
Are you trying to tell me that you wanted to achieve greatness and you thought that you'd be satisfied with something you achieved?
That's not how greatness works, right?
You know that.
Greatness doesn't work at all with satisfaction.
Greatness arises out of extreme dissatisfaction, and the greater you are, the more dissatisfied you are with what is.
So satisfaction and greatness are antithetical.
The moment somebody is satisfied, they have failed in the pursuit of greatness.
Now this doesn't mean that you If you wish to pursue greatness, you can never be satisfied in your life.
You know, like I write a book.
I'm happy with it.
I'm satisfied with it, but I'm dissatisfied all the way through.
I'm satisfied that I can't do any better, at least in the timeframe or with the skills that I have, and then I sort of move on to something else.
But the idea that there's any kind of permanent satisfaction in the pursuit of greatness, I think, is not the case.
So...
Sorry to interrupt.
So, Socrates, was he satisfied or dissatisfied with the quality of people's thinking in ancient Athens?
Well, he was obviously dissatisfied.
Otherwise, he wouldn't have done his works.
Right.
So, it's extreme dissatisfaction.
And the greater the level of correction, the greater the dissatisfaction with the existing world.
Am I happy with the way?
Am I satisfied with the way people treat their children in the world?
Of course not.
Right.
And the degree to which I wish things to change is the degree to which I am dissatisfied with the current state of humanity.
I mean, were people satisfied with slavery?
No.
Hell to the no.
Were they satisfied with mercantilism?
No.
Were they satisfied with empire?
No.
Were they satisfied with the medieval guild protections, the lack of free trade, the lack of social mobility?
No, no, no.
So, everyone who tells you to be content is telling you to sink like a stunned viper into the squalid moral soup of the present.
And so, the fact that you wanted to achieve great things, or want to achieve great things, and you have trouble being satisfied, like, I am going to die.
I could live for another 50 years.
And I tell you, Paul, I am going to die.
I'm incredibly dissatisfied with the way that people treat their children.
Well, so, in your opinion, what is the way to achieve happiness if it is not being, you know...
Man, my English is failing me hard right now.
So what is the way to achieve happiness if it is not derived from essentially being satisfied with your own actions and essentially your effect on the world?
Well, no, I didn't say my effect on the world, although obviously since I'm going to die dissatisfied with the way people treat their children, I'm not going to eliminate spanking through my actions, obviously, right?
But...
The best way to achieve happiness is through combat, I would argue.
I mean there's no end of evils in the world and evil people in the world against whom to match your wits and your intelligence and your ferocity and your creativity and your virtue.
And I mean I come from old warrior genes, both on my British Well, Irish and my German side.
And I take happiness, I think, as Nietzsche has explained quite well.
I take happiness, I take great joy in combating evil.
Now, is that satisfying?
Sure is.
Sure is.
To do harm to the interests of evil people and to help the interests of good people is satisfying.
But the satisfaction never lasts because there's always more evil coming into the world than is going out of it, right?
Because so many people are being born into dysfunctional, hyper-religious, hyper-statist households.
So for me, and I think more than just – we want contentment and we want peace and ease, right?
Why on earth would Brad Pitt...
I mean, think about it.
Why would Brad Pitt make another movie?
He doesn't need the money.
I mean, he could spend the rest of his life doing sit-ups at Cocoa Beach or something, right?
Or being home with his kids or whatever.
But he's doing it.
And so is his wife, and so Jack Nicholson is still doing movies.
The guy's worth Lord knows how much.
And...
So we have within us a desire for peace and for contentment and for relaxation and for resting the salty wounds of pitched battle.
But we also need, I believe, resistance.
Virtue is like a muscle.
It needs resistance in order to strengthen.
And I have generally found in my life and in the lives of the people I know who have the greatest satisfaction, and satisfaction is a little bit different from contentment.
Contentment usually is the solve of cowardice, and satisfaction is, you know, when you go hilt deep into the heart of an evil idea, there is great satisfaction in having it squirm and And twist and, you know, with any luck, expire from the minds of the planet.
So we do have a desire for ease and rest, but we are, like all animals, like all living beings, we strive to conquer, we strive to win, we strive to expand, we strive for control and mastery over our environment.
In the moment we have mastered our environment, we strive for a new and expanded environment with which to master it.
And a lot of people who have really difficult childhoods and people who have harsh, embattled, stressful, difficult childhoods, they feel an aversion to combat because their childhood was combat.
And so they kind of wish to shy away from that situation.
But in many ways—so let me just finish, and then I'll be quiet.
Yeah, sure.
But in many ways, who is better trained for moral combat than victims of child abuse?
I mean, who else is—in particular, who else is going to stand up for victims of abuse other than those who know what it's like?
I mean, sure as shit, the general— Population isn't going to do it.
We've been waiting for thousands of years for the general population to stand up and shield the victims of child abuse.
It's not going to come from them.
It's going to come from us.
We are the ones who are going to end up standing up for the victims of child abuse and standing tall and firm against the abusers, whatever the cost.
And what better training Do you have for a life of moral combat than surviving evil and abusive caregivers as a child?
Anyway, you were going to say, please go ahead.
Yeah, I was going to say, when you said people that have been abused shy away from combat, this is a thing that has been going through my mind in the last few weeks.
You know, I waited like a month for this call.
A lot can happen in a month.
I mean, this is one of these thoughts that I also had.
The thing is this, I kind of feel like I should be essentially fighting to better the world.
And that is also what I wanted to do when I was like a little child.
I always aspired to better the world in some way, shape or form.
And my idea was I could do it through the pursuit of science.
Be the person who could cure some disease or make life for people so much easier.
I do one of these things, but I feel today that no matter what I do, at a basic level, the world is still sick.
It doesn't matter what I do, in a way.
When you said people that are Victims of child abuse, essentially.
I have problems with that because at some point I feel that my childhood was really, really bad.
But then at another point I'm like, no, it's not actually...
I don't know how I should look at the events that happened in my past and how severe they actually are.
And...
I mean, it is strange because...
I know that some of the things that happened back in my early childhood influenced my actions today quite a bit, but I feel like they actually shouldn't.
Can you understand that in any way, shape, or form?
I think you're raising a whole bunch of noise, if you don't mind me saying so.
I think you're raising a whole bunch of noise to avoid the basic issues.
Okay, so what are the basic issues you're saying?
I don't know if you know the old Bob Dylan song.
You've got to serve somebody.
Got to serve somebody.
I won't sing it, but it says, you may be an ambassador to England or France.
You may like to gamble.
You might like to dance.
You may be the heavyweight champion of the world.
You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls, but you're going to have to serve somebody.
Yes, indeed.
You're going to have to serve somebody.
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you're going to have to serve somebody.
You might be a rock and roll addict prancing on the stage.
You might have drugs at your command, women in a cage.
You may be a businessman or some high-degree thief.
They may call you doctor.
They may call you chief.
You may be a state trooper.
You might be a young Turk.
You may be the head of some big TV network.
You may be rich or poor.
You may be blind or lame.
You may be living in another country under another name, but you're going to have to serve somebody.
Yes, indeed, you're going to have to serve somebody.
And the song goes on.
I think Mavis Staples is a great version.
Of this.
But yeah, we do.
We have to serve.
And there's a line right down the middle of the world, and there's a virtuous side, and there's an evil side.
And the reason that I'm saying you're making a lot of noise to avoid the basic issue is that part of you wants to fight evil and part of you wants to give up, right?
Mm-hmm.
So...
The part of you that wants to fight evil is the virtuous part.
And the part of you that wants to give up is the part that wishes to serve evil.
Right?
Because if you give up, well, then evil wins, right?
The only thing that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
right I think it's actually even a bit worse than that All right.
Then I'm willing to hear how it's worse than that.
Yeah, a part of me is actually saying, like the old saying goes, if you can't beat him, join him.
Oh yeah, of course.
Of course.
I mean, I will tell you.
Can I tell you something, Paul, just between you and me?
Sure.
Sometimes.
Not often, but sometimes.
I would not mind a call from the Bilderbergers.
I would not mind a call from the New World Order.
Come on, I've got lots of skills!
Listen to me preach, listen to my verbal skills, listen to my intelligence, listen to my metaphors.
Oh, come on, Darth Vader, pick up the phone!
I bring my own two Death Stars swinging like castanets between my Julius Caesar-style thighs.
Yeah, of course there is that temptation.
Of course there is that temptation.
Evil has the upper hand, right?
Evil had the upper hand in your childhood, right?
I've read your...
Adverse childhood experience.
Evil has the upper hand and evil makes a shit ton of money.
Evil gets the girls.
Evil gets the money.
Evil gets the power.
Evil kind of runs the world at the moment, right?
Less so than in the past, but only because we've got the drug of fiat currency and all that kind of stuff to take away the immediate pain of domination.
But, oh yeah, no, I get it.
If you can't beat him, join him.
Oh yeah, you don't think it's crossed my mind from time to time?
Oh yeah, no, I'd like to get that red phone installed and wait for the call from the powers that be and say, yeah, you know, I think I get it.
I think I get where you guys are coming from.
Because sometimes it feels like it's just a feeling and it's just a temptation.
But I will tell you, Paul, isn't it hard To look at humanity sometimes and not just think, what are you people fit for except being ruled?
Exactly.
Why should you have any freedom?
Great men and women fought and bled and thought and died to give you freedoms that you are willing to turn in for your fucking food stamps.
For a little welfare, Jack.
For a big screen TV. I mean, what is humanity fit for except being ruled?
On what possible grounds should we fight and bleed and die for people who simply will clamor for another master?
them an inch of freedom strike at you like vipers who, if you give them an ounce of responsibility, call you a man-hater and a woman-hater and all the terrible words at their command.
Here, here's a little responsibility.
And then their shoulders turn into vipers that strike at you because all they say is, oh, yes, I'm a big adult.
I want responsibility.
I want to vote.
No, they don't want to vote.
They don't want to vote.
They want to be flattered by politicians.
They don't want to vote and actually have responsibility.
They want to exchange their freedom for free stuff.
Thank you.
I mean, the devil walks the world in the shape of a flag.
And people get so little for their souls, it's pitiful.
Oh, you can have freedom, you can have responsibility.
No!
No!
I want flattery.
And I want a government contract.
I want union protection.
I want to be a professor.
I mean, what are they fit for?
Except being ruled.
Look at everything they give up.
The generations of heroes and heroines fought and died to provide them.
And they give it up for nothing.
For whoever gets to call them the chosen people and God's people and the indispensable nation.
And heroes for being born in a square squirt of sanctified dirt.
What are they willing to fight for?
What are they willing to defy anything for?
Fight for state?
People can't even take a walk after dinner.
A third of Canadians don't follow their doctor's orders.
Even if they have things like diabetes where failing to follow your doctor's orders causes amputation, blindness and death.
So I get it.
I understand the degree to which sometimes we look at the current clay of humanity and say, how on earth are we supposed to build the cathedrals of the future on the soft and buttery soulless clay of the present?
Where people will rush to look at nude pictures of Jennifer Lawrence And studiously avoid philosophy because it is the curse of their very existence that they know deep down their current identities cannot survive.
So, I understand.
I understand the temptation.
I mean, the only way I avoid it is to look to the future rather than the present, but that's perhaps a story for another time.
Does that help at all?
Yeah, that just illustrates my point of view very well.
This is probably one of the two main reasons why every time I'm like, okay, and now I'm going to take my life in my own hands again.
And now I'm going to achieve.
And now I'm going to make the start.
Then after a while, it always comes back to this.
What are you doing this for?
Because it's like, you know, pearls before the swines.
Exactly.
I get it.
Listen, go to any of my videos and I don't do this.
I haven't done it in a while.
But just go to my videos and scroll down the YouTube comments.
No, I haven't actually read the comments on any of your videos.
No, listen.
Just give it a shot.
Do you know what it's like?
It's like a beautiful orchestra playing.
People shoveling as many beans into their mouth as they can so they can fart along with the orchestra and think that they're adding to the music.
I have only read the comments on the one that was published today.
They're called The Antidote for Cruelty.
And, like, the people commenting there, it's absolutely horrifying.
Like, they're calling...
Like, what was his name?
Attila?
He was...
I mean, when I heard that, I was, like, devastated.
And they're calling him, like, a serial killer in the making or something like that.
And, my God.
I mean, the hell.
I mean, it's not quite about, you know, the issues that...
We just talked about, but I can't imagine.
And that level of verbal abuse is merely the projection of their own murderous impulses onto other people, right?
This guy has the courage to talk about some very dark stuff in his history, and I think he had some real emotional connection at the end.
But, no, this is a planet that worships football.
This is a planet that worships tanks.
This is a planet that worships bits of cloth.
This is a planet that worships ghosts.
Murderous ghosts.
And basically, the vampires come along and say, here, I'm going to give you four pieces of penny candy in return for all the blood in your jugular.
And people are like, four?
Shit!
That's more than I was expecting.
Here you go!
That's the planet.
That's where things are.
People cheer politicians who praise and flatter them with empty platitudes.
And then when anyone comes along and offers them the truth, they bark and snarl and slash and attack and make ridiculous noises with their breathing holes and think that they're doing something that has any intellectual content or weight whatsoever.
It's what Nietzsche wrote about.
It's the great horror of attempting to improve the moral lot of mankind is what he calls the nausea.
It's the nausea of waking up to what you think is a rave and it's just a bunch of zombies propped together without even the brains to look for brains.
And it is something that has taken down a lot of good men and good women, hardworking men and hardworking women.
It's seeing just this relentless parade of predatory idiocy Known as the current human condition and wishing to recoil from it.
It is a challenge.
I accept that.
I recognize that as the primary occupational hazard of the thinker is revulsion against the bald apes around.
So there's another thing I wanted to talk about.
Like, also related to my problem, of course.
And that is, it is not only that I see, essentially, that I have this problem where I see the world as basically unsavable sometimes.
But the thing is also this.
Every time I do another try and I try to get myself essentially into the ring again to fight for the good of the world, but I would say...
Is that I can't really do it because I feel that I would move on from something that isn't resolved yet.
And the actual thought that crosses my mind every single time is there's so many people that have harmed me and they go unchecked.
I can't let that happen.
What do you mean they go unchecked?
I'm not disagreeing with you.
I just want to make sure.
Okay, okay.
Okay, I have to be perfectly honest here.
I'll say how it crosses my mind is this.
There's so many people that have done me wrong, they still need to suffer.
It has a lot to do with aggressions that I've built up over the years.
And I don't know how I should describe this thought process.
I mean, it's vengeance, isn't it?
It is.
Yeah, revenge.
Yeah.
Right.
Right.
Well, look, I mean...
If you get stung by a wasp, do you spend a year or two hunting through the woods looking for it?
Well, probably not.
You can crush it.
Right.
Right.
And this...
I mean, I am not particularly tempted by the concept of vengeance.
Because...
On a rational level...
No, it's an insult to my capacities to hunt for worms.
Well, of course, but on a rational level, I'm completely aware that this is, first of all, it doesn't solve anything.
It's also immoral.
I know, I didn't say it's immoral.
Well, the thing is, for myself, I think it is.
Why is revenge immoral?
Yeah, because I would wish upon them things that would be completely out of proportion.
This is just essentially...
Wait, you're talking about child abuse, right?
No, yeah, pretty much.
Okay, so what is it that you wish that is out of proportion to years of beating up a child?
Well, beating up...
Well, yeah...
The thing is this.
It is not only...
The thing is...
Oh God, how should I explain this?
The people that anger me the most are strangely enough not my parents.
For some reason I am not able to feel that angry about my parents.
The people that anger me the most are the people that I met, essentially, in the public education system, and it's not even the other students.
It is how...
What angers me the most is how unprofessional the teachers were and how completely inappropriate they acted.
And the reaction I essentially have towards that...
Yeah, but tell me what in specific.
I want to understand.
That's very abstract.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm getting to that.
We'll get to it now, because...
So what in specific do I wish on them or what in specific did they do to me?
No, what was unprofessional that they did?
What was so bad that they did?
I'm not disagreeing with you again.
I'm not being skeptical.
I really want to know, but I want to make sure I know in specifics.
The thing is this.
I have a neurological disorder that causes me to tick sometimes.
Sorry, it causes you to tick.
You mean have facial tics?
Tick.
Yeah.
It is not.
I don't know.
It's not diagnosed with any specific syndrome, but it's...
I make strange sounds, pretty much.
I can't really describe them.
It's like some yelping...
Yeah.
And the thing is this.
I would probably...
I would repeatedly, for this and for other reasons, be...
The teachers would essentially claim that I would disturb them and would disturb everybody in the room.
And then they would have me write essays and stuff about how you don't do that and in general just be nasty.
Yeah, so basically their argument was that your epilepsy is rude, right?
No, it's not epilepsy, but that's similar, right?
Involuntary.
Yes.
Motor reactions.
And also, the thing is this, I am like, you know, we all know that the public school system isn't very friendly towards people that are critical of the school system or the state system in general.
The thing is, even when I just entered higher education in my country, you go four years of school, then you go four years of a higher school, and then four years of The same or a technical school.
And when I entered the higher education school, even by that time, I identified as an anarchist.
This was just my own evaluation of the world around me.
And so the thing was, I was also very verbal about that.
If someone would actually ask me about it, we've happened like two or three times in this school environment.
In my school career, then I would actually defend my position.
They don't take very kindly to that.
And the thing is, knowing that I don't necessarily agree with their positions on everything, and the state and the school system, they found it fit to pick on me and have me essentially do extra work for my grades, which they...
Luckily, they never could really hurt me there because I am exceptionally good.
I was exceptionally good in school, but the thing is this, I was in this complete and utter state of alert the whole time because I was sure that everybody was out to get me and that was probably the truth.
And the thing is, this behavior is so alien to me.
Everybody that I talked to kept telling me, no, this is only normal.
That is how people act and I should rise above it.
That was the main thing that was told to me.
I should rise above people essentially being unprofessional and being out for me and essentially trying to ruin my future.
That was how it was presented to me back there because my parents were very...
Behind the idea that I should get a higher education and everything because it was their opinion that if you're not educated, you will essentially fail in life.
And so what I was led to believe pretty much is that if these people ruin my academic career, then my life will be ruined.
And so the aggression that I have towards them is essentially I want to ruin their life as they ruined mine.
This being the teachers?
The teachers, yes.
Right.
And was it mostly the mockery that was the issue?
Well, mockery, I dealt with mockery pretty much in the beginning.
I had a real problem with mockery because in the first four years of school, in the basic school so to speak, There were not a lot of problems with the teacher.
I can only remember one occasion where the teacher accused me of something I didn't do and wouldn't back down.
And I had a good relationship to pretty much all of the students in my class.
And so it was that much more of a shock when I entered the higher education school where people were just essentially nasty without reason.
Hmm.
I was not aware that people were capable of this.
I mean, it's because I would never go up to someone and in my mind already have determined that I'm going to pick on this guy, I'm going to call him names, I'm going to make his day as bad as possible just for my personal amusement because there is no amusement for me to be derived from this.
I'm just...
I was like...
I felt and I do feel until today that I was not prepared for this world in any way, shape or form.
It was just essentially a real culture shock, pretty much.
Right.
And you're saying this was more true in higher education?
This was more true in higher education, yes.
Hmm.
Right.
So...
This is the one thing.
The other thing is, I have to tell you, I'm sorry if I'm going to talk for a while, but I have to tell you to understand this about how this whole school thing generally went.
So the thing is this, at this point, I'm seven years out of school.
No, ten years actually.
Wait, at this point?
You mean at this point in your life right now?
Right now?
Yeah, I'm 25 right now.
The thing is, I prematurely ended school.
Then I worked in the IT field for two and a half years.
And from then on out, I did nothing until now.
That's more than seven years.
What do you mean you did nothing?
Nothing.
I mean, no education, no employment, no pretty much that, yeah.
What do you mean?
I mean, how do you live?
How do you live?
I live essentially on disability.
But you don't need the disability, right?
The thing is this, at the point where everything broke down pretty much, it was the only way.
There was no way I would have carried on.
I would not be alive today if I was not on disability.
What do you mean?
Because I would have killed myself.
I would have killed myself.
As easy as that, yeah.
Why would you have killed yourself?
Because of the cruelty of the people around?
I came out of school and I was like, okay, this is a new beginning.
This is where I can finally put all this behind me.
It doesn't matter anymore.
And I will enter the work place in a way.
It's finally over, pretty much.
And then I... And the workplace, I don't know what you would call this, it's essentially an IT profession.
And so I was on apprenticeship for a few years and the same thing started to happen again because I was in a small, it's a startup company with me and two other people and it was the company owner and one of his friends essentially that They did system maintenance for mostly...
Don't get into the business details.
That's not the important part.
Okay, okay.
So what the problem was essentially is that one of these bosses started the whole process again by essentially every time he could find the opportunity, he would essentially take the chance and make it – how should I describe this?
He essentially – okay, I'll – god damn it now.
My English is failing me again.
So what he would do is he would essentially – I think he had a problem with his own maturity essentially because he tried – I'm sorry.
Give me the specifics.
What happened?
Don't keep describing it to me like an abstract thing.
What happened?
I don't know.
It is for some reason really hard to tell you this stuff.
Because it's emotional, right?
It's an emotional topic.
But that's what I want.
I mean, this description stuff, I can read that somewhere on a blog, right?
We're having a conversation.
It means I need to know who you are.
It is really hard to tell you this stuff.
You don't have to tell me anything.
That's what's necessary.
Okay, I'll give you the situation.
It is this.
He recently had the daughter with his to-be wife.
And...
So, what he did is he made some kind of ridiculous rules that I had to follow around the company.
Like, he had some kind of standard that the coffee machine needs to be refilled with fresh water every so-and-so hours.
And if I didn't do that, then what he would essentially do is he would...
He would call me out on it and he would say, I guess you're not used to doing this.
I guess your mom does that for you at home.
And he would bring these things up all the time.
Like, everything that I did wrong was somehow related to me not being mature enough.
And there came a time when I couldn't take that anymore.
Brian?
So, this is like...
And then...
I actually...
When he...
So, how should I go from here?
The thing is the situation...
Help me understand why...
No, hang on, hang on.
Help me understand why is it that you're telling me all this stuff in such detail.
I'm not saying it's not interesting or anything, but this is a philosophical show, right?
I know.
So, I'm trying to sort of figure out what...
What...
What principle?
So this guy was making fun of you at work and then you basically left that job, right?
The thing is I stopped going to work one day and then I was actually in psychiatric for some time.
So you stopped going to work and then you were institutionalized, right?
I wasn't institutionalized, but essentially I admitted myself.
And you admitted yourself because you felt you were going crazy?
Is that right?
I felt that I would not be able to do this anymore.
Yes, I felt I was going crazy.
To do what anymore?
To stand up in the morning and do anything, pretty much.
The experience that I had was pretty much one day I woke up And the prospect of going to work at that day was so horrible that I was just...
I was just...
I said, this is it.
I'm just going to lie here.
I'm not going to go.
But why not get another job?
I didn't feel that I was able to.
I don't understand.
You've got feelings, but you have thoughts too, right?
We all have feelings, right?
But you reason with your feelings, right?
Rationally, you know it's possible to get another job, right?
Yeah, the thing is this, however, at this point in time, I was still living in the same house as my parents.
And the thing is, if I had decided to get another job, they would have made my life a living hell.
I would not have been able to get through that.
Sorry, why were you still living with your parents if you had a job and you were an adult?
It was an apprenticeship.
Yeah, okay, but you were being paid, right?
Yeah, right.
I was being paid.
I mean, listen, I've been on my own since I was 15 years old, right?
So...
You certainly had it better than I was when I was 15 years old, right?
So that's sort of my question, is why were you still living at home?
If living at home was very difficult for you, and I certainly sympathize with that, why were you living at home if you had a job?
And you hated living at home, I assume, right?
To be honest, I don't know.
I really don't know why I did this.
Did what?
Why I stayed home as long as I did.
I have no idea.
I can't tell you.
Because the thing is this.
The whole involvement of my parents in the problems that I'm experiencing today is a thing that just came to mind recently.
It's not that I actually...
Actually, I actually thought for the longest time that my parents were doing everything pretty much top notch.
That was what I was thinking.
Okay.
So if I – hang on.
And the thing is, it is so recent.
Hang on.
Hang on.
Okay.
So the fact that you were kind of spiraling out of control mentally while working at this job for – I assume you were there for a couple of years.
And feeling like you were being abused and bullied or mocked or humiliated at work.
Did your parents help you with that issue?
Did they talk about it with you?
Did they help you to find options?
Did they...
whatever, right?
Did they coach you?
Did they...
No, they did not.
They actually acted like I'm creating the problem by not submitting to other people's tyranny, essentially.
And this is the...
Well, hang on, hang on, hang on.
Listen, you've got to be careful about the language that you use.
I mean, tyranny is a pretty powerful word for a boss, right?
That is pretty much how I experienced that.
I did not...
No, no, no.
Don't give me how you experience stuff.
Okay.
No, listen.
I mean, that's like saying, well, my experience is that I hate Jews.
But that doesn't mean that Jews are hate-worthy, right?
Of course you experience it that way.
But if you use words like tyranny to describe people who aren't, say, Stalin...
Yeah.
Then you're creating a whole world, a whole matrix for yourself, right?
Yeah, I'm actually aware that I'm doing that.
Yeah, let's say that your boss was a jerk.
Let's say he was mean.
Let's say he was not empathetic.
Let's say he was cruel, right?
You had a bad boss.
And that sucks.
You had a bad boss and that sucks.
And guess what?
Most times you will have a bad boss...
Unless you work really hard and you're about 30.
Because good bosses are not put in charge of people out of school, right?
Really good bosses are in charge of like the division or some big company or some big concern or whatever, right?
Like you don't get to work for Jack Welsh out of college, right?
I mean you have to...
Run the gauntlet of bad bosses in order to get to the good bosses because all the good bosses get promoted really quickly, right?
And they don't end up dealing with new hires at all, right?
So you had a bad boss, and look, I sympathize with that, and that's a tough situation to be in.
But if you start using words like tyranny, you are not giving yourself any room for choice or maneuvering.
Like now you're in an absolutist state, right?
Yeah, that is pretty much how I thought this worked.
I didn't think that I had any choice.
Listen, there are people who are real victims of tyranny, right?
Like the Cambodians who were forced out of the cities into the countryside and starved to death.
Like the millions of people currently enslaved in North Korea.
Like the people who were in the Gulag Apicalago, like the people who were in concentration camps.
Those people are the real victims of tyranny, right?
And I mean, nothing but sympathy, right?
Very, very horrible, difficult, life-threatening situation, right?
That's tyranny.
You had a bad boss.
You had a bad boss.
And it bothers me that you're trying to hook into the sympathy that we have for victims of tyranny to describe you having a bad boss.
Okay.
Okay.
I'll take it back if you...
I understand.
No, I understand.
I understand why that is inappropriate.
It's...
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay, so then you left the workplace and you went into the institution and then you're on disability, right?
Mm-hmm.
That is what happened.
Okay.
No, no, no.
That's not what happened, right?
Some of these, to some degree, are choices, right?
Yeah, well, it's the choices I made then.
Yes.
Okay.
All right.
And what are your plans for getting off disability?
Do you have any?
No, I don't.
That is exactly the problem why I'm calling in.
I don't feel fit to do this.
To do what?
To essentially get off disability, essentially take up the fight again.
Okay, so then you can stay on disability, right?
But the thing is this, I don't want to.
Why not?
Because...
I feel that it's inappropriate.
Why is it inappropriate?
Because I feel I should be able to do it.
And what's your living situation at the moment?
Like what?
Where do you live?
Do you live alone?
Do you live with your parents?
I live alone, but the property, like the house, is still owned by my parents.
That's also a thing that's bothering me.
Um...
Wait, so you don't really pay much rent or any rent?
No, I don't really pay much rent.
Right.
Right.
And so what's inappropriate about receiving disability?
The thing is, I don't feel that I'm deserving of it.
Why is that?
Why is that?
Well, the thing is...
Huh.
Well, I don't really know.
Okay, but if you had to guess, what would you say?
If I had to guess, then I would say...
You've had seven years to think about disability, right?
Yeah, of course.
The thing is this, I... At some level, I still think that the problem is in my head and there's no excuse for not conquering this.
Well, okay, but what steps have you been taking to conquer this, I guess, anxiety or fear?
I've been in therapy for two years, but the therapist was not really...
I don't think the therapist was really connecting with me at any level.
And you didn't want to change therapists?
I changed therapists two times, but one therapist told me outright that he is not specialized in these...
Essentially, he didn't feel fit to take on this case for whatever reason.
Then I had another scientist that was not...
Wait, another scientist or another therapist?
Sorry, I... No problem.
I just wanted to make sure.
So you had another therapist, and what did the other therapist say?
The other therapist, I could also not connect with that one.
It's pretty much...
The feeling that I have when I'm talking to therapists is essentially, we're going to just fix you up so that you can work for another year before you break down completely.
And that is also...
I was in therapy before this.
My parents sent me to...
Different kinds of psychologists.
And this is always the feeling I get.
We're just going to fix him up so that he's going to function for another time, for another year, for another month, for something.
And I assume that these are government-sponsored therapists?
No.
One of them I actually paid myself for.
Well, through disability, right?
Yeah.
You haven't paid for anything yourself since you were on disability, I assume, right?
Well, I paid him actually with the money that I got from the apprenticeship.
Okay, alright.
So, this is kind of the general vibe that I get there.
It is not about me feeling better about myself and about life in general.
It's more about how do we get him to function.
Okay, and what work did you do outside of the therapist's office to try and deal with these issues?
You're not overly burdened with a job or a career, right?
You don't have a lot of expensive hobbies.
So what work have you been doing outside of going to therapy, which you say hasn't been working?
What work have you been doing outside of that to try and change your situation, to try and figure out what's been going on for you?
I don't know what I should have been doing.
I don't think I did anything.
Well, no, no.
You have – hang on, hang on, hang on.
You must have some idea, right?
So to some degree, your problem has to do with a terrible childhood, which I hugely sympathize with.
But it has something to do with the way that you think about things, right?
So since you say or you talk about having problems with perspective, problems with the way you think about things – Then the pursuit of self-knowledge would be good.
So you can read up on psychology.
You can do workbooks.
You can examine your own thinking.
You can study what the therapist is doing and try and figure out how that works.
You could keep a dream journal.
You could write down thoughts and ideas.
You could try and sort of figure out when you first had these negative thoughts and where they came from and Right?
There's so much that can be done.
Like, I mean, when I was doing therapy, I was doing therapy for three hours a week, but I was doing 12 to 15 hours of work outside of therapy while having a full-time job as a software entrepreneur in order to pursue things, right?
I mean, when you go to the gym, the trainer says, do this, do that, but that's not your workout.
That's just your guidance.
Then you actually have to go and work out and do that stuff, right?
Yeah, well, the thing is this.
I've always been thinking about, you know, why am I in this situation?
What led up to me being in this situation and trying to figure that out?
But I don't know.
Do I have to keep a journal for this to count as being productive work on myself?
Well, no, but Paul, did it work?
No, it did not.
Okay, so when things don't work, what do you do?
You don't just stand there at a restaurant pulling at the door when it says push, right?
You pull and you say, oh, it doesn't open, right?
The thing is, since I don't know what else to do.
I'm not sure what you mean.
You mean you've studied a lot of psychology now?
You're quite an expert on self-knowledge?
I mean, I'm not sure what you mean when you say what else to do.
No, but the thing is this.
It's like, you know, I've tried to find the reasons for my actions.
I have, in fact, read up on psychology.
Dude, I just asked you.
I asked you a bunch of questions and you said you don't know.
I don't think you have done a huge – with all due respect, I've got to be blunt, right?
I don't think you've done a huge amount of work.
I think you may have sort of mulled it over, but I mean you use the word something like tyranny to talk about a bad boss.
And then you say, well, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what the issues are.
And it doesn't seem to me that you've even cottoned on to the degree to which your experience is shaped by the language that you use to describe that experience.
Oh, God.
And it's good news, I think.
Because if you had done everything and nothing had changed, you'd be kind of screwed, right?
I'm sorry.
I just...
One sec.
No, tell me what you're feeling because, I mean...
It is just this...
I know you didn't mean it, but for some reason I'm really, really...
I tend to interpret...
I tend to interpret...
If people say things like that, I tend to interpret that as you're essentially, it's yourself who's doing it.
You made your own problems.
It's all because you...
No, no, no, listen.
Yeah, I know you didn't mean it.
No, no, no.
I didn't even say that.
Yeah, I know.
Did you hear me have sympathy?
Hang on, Paul.
Did you hear me have sympathy for the terrible childhood you had?
Yeah, you said it three times.
Yes, at least, right?
Did I say that the language you use to some degree shapes your experience of the world?
Yes.
Okay.
Do you think that that's a false thing to say?
No, I think that's fairly accurate.
Okay, so I'm not saying that you have created your own problems at all.
No, it's just I have this weird tendency to interpret these kind of things into other people's statements.
No, let me give you an analogy.
And it's a very direct analogy, so this is pretty obvious, but it's a good way of looking at it.
So let's say that some jerk had hit your legs with a baseball bat, right?
And then, seven years later, you were still in a wheelchair, right?
Yeah.
Now, if I said, seven years after someone had hit your legs with a baseball bat...
Are you doing any of the tough rehab that's necessary to get out of the wheelchair?
And if you basically said, well, no.
Right?
Yeah, I understand.
Would I be saying that your wrecked legs are your fault?
Well, you would be saying that you still being in the wheelchair is your fault.
No.
No, the wheelchair is not your fault.
The wheelchair is the fault of the people who hit your legs, right?
Right.
Because if they had not hit your legs, you wouldn't even be in the wheelchair to begin with and facing any of those choices, right?
Yeah, indeed.
Indeed.
And that's what I mean when I say I hugely sympathize with your childhood.
A terrible beginning and the lack of support that you got from your parents and the undermining you got from your parents with regards to your apprenticeship.
It's terrible.
And the reason that your boss could be a bad boss is because you didn't have the bond with your parents and you didn't have the support of your parents.
And no one should have to invent all that stuff for themselves.
I mean, you were really let down and betrayed, in my opinion, by your parents.
Well, in this situation, yes, that is true.
Yes, but this situation arrived because of prior events.
So I'm not trying to say that your life is entirely of your own making and all the problems are in your head and there's no external cause.
I'm not even remotely trying to say that.
That would be a horrible injustice in the face of what you've suffered.
It seems for some reason that it's still what is true in my mind.
Yeah, of course.
Because when people criticize you...
You turn it all on yourself so you don't have to look at your environment, right?
You don't have to look at your childhood.
I would also say this is probably the reason why I think that I don't deserve disability and everything because I think that's all in my head and there are no external factors that cause this and I should be able to rise above myself.
I'm sure that's a phrase that you've heard, but I don't even know what that means.
Look, if somebody has shell shock, telling them to rise above themselves, what does that mean?
You're supposed to levitate your ass over your eyebrows?
I mean, that stuff doesn't mean anything.
I don't know what it means.
It's just it has been repeated to me thousands of times by my father.
And so you've inherited from your father a distinct lack of empiricism as to what works and what doesn't, right?
I mean, has your father repeating this to you thousands of times solved your problems?
No, of course not.
Of course not.
He also had terrible judgment and other things, and yeah.
Right.
Okay, so let me, I think I've got enough to give you a couple of fuselades or cannon shots of hopefully useful perspective.
Please understand that, yeah, this is all just my opinion.
As you know, I'm no professional in any of these fields, but I will tell you what I think is important.
Paul, no one is coming to fix you.
It is going to come, I would argue, from no external source.
That hits right in the center there.
Right.
This is kind of like this disbelief that someone should come save me in a way.
Yes, because someone should have come to save you.
The therapist should have done a better job.
But I don't know what your relationship was with the therapist, and I don't know what kind of therapy, so I'm sorry that that didn't take.
But I'm telling you, without significant intervention, your life in 10 years is going to be exactly like your life today.
And no one is coming to save you.
I'm not coming to save you.
I'm just coming to tell you that no one is coming to save you.
No one is coming to give you the life that you want.
No one is coming to give you the life that you feel you deserve or you feel you need.
No one is coming to love you.
Nobody is coming to help you.
No one is coming to help you.
One thing that is chillingly true about most human relations is that if you do not have utility for people, they will rarely care much about you.
Have you ever noticed that?
Yeah, I noticed that.
Now, in your current state, who do you have utility for?
Pretty much no one.
Right.
And as a result of that, as a result of that fact, because you have utility for few people or no one, no one is coming to save you.
Look, if you were about to star in a movie and you got depressed and millions of dollars were resting on whether you were not depressed, how many people do you think would be trying to help you?
Well, at least all of my fans would be sending me letters probably, and the producer would probably be behind me getting therapy so that the movie would still be going on.
So yeah, that would be quite the support network there.
Right, except it would be basically a selfish network, right?
Yeah.
Right, so unfortunately you're in a position now where you have little utility to others, and therefore...
It is a bootstrap situation.
In other words, what I mean by that is you cannot expect anyone after seven years, in seven years in one day, or seven years in two days, or seven years in 2,000 days, you cannot rationally expect anyone to come and change your life.
The government sure as shit isn't going to do it.
One thing that happens when you go on disability, one thing that happens when you go on welfare, is you get cut off From positive change in your environment, right?
I mean, who comes and really feels invested in you getting better?
Now, if you were the ward of a charity, which, given your childhood and your experiences and your neurological challenges and so on, would be fine and perfectly honorable and a decent place to be, but the charity would be highly invested in a real fix, in really helping you, right?
Because if the charity got a reputation for not helping people, fewer people would donate to that charity, right?
The moment that voluntarism is taken away from charity, change and growth and healing is also taken away.
Because the bureaucrats get paid and the government gets paid whether you get better or not, right?
The therapists get paid whether you get better or not, right?
Yeah, of course.
And so no one is emotionally or financially invested in your life changing.
Which means that if you don't change your life, Paul, it's not going to change.
And you can call back to me in 10 years and hopefully I'll answer and I'll say...
Well, what did you do?
And you'll say, well, I waited, basically, for something to change.
Right?
And what will have happened?
Well, nothing will have happened.
Nothing will have happened.
Yeah.
These things, I know them on a conscious level, but for some reason, it still doesn't really do anything for me.
I know that no one's going to come to save me, of course.
Well, then the choice is up to you, right?
You have this one precious gift of existence, and you can use it the way that you're using it right now.
Or you can say, I'm going to get up tomorrow morning, and I'm going to go get five books out of the library.
I don't know.
People who are 25 still use libraries anymore.
I don't know.
I'm going to go and get five books from somewhere.
That are to do with self-knowledge, that are to do with childhood trauma, that are to do with the challenges I faced in the workplace.
And I'm going to read through those books and I'm really going to try and figure things out.
I'm going to write out the story of my life.
I'm going to write out all the major events that happened to me and all the things that I remember because we remember everything for a reason.
Every tiny memory we have is a fable waiting for us to unlock it.
And sometimes when I wake up in the morning, if I'm not thinking about a book, I'm currently planning a book, but I sort of sit there and say, I remember this from when I was seven.
I wonder why.
And you can begin that process of pursuing self-knowledge and embracing your emotions.
Paul, what do you do when you feel something strongly at the moment?
Right now?
Or in general?
In general.
Well, the thing is, it is very dependent if other people are around.
Because even in this call, something I can't really get myself to really say the things I want to say and express them with the emotion that I have.
But in private, I... Okay, in private, when you feel something strongly, what do you do?
I guess it depends on the emotion.
Alright, because there are generally two choices when it comes to strong emotions.
We can indulge them or we can examine them.
So if you feel, let's say you feel anger or resentment, then you can let yourself swell with anger and resentment towards your boss or towards your circumstances or whatever.
And there's nothing wrong with anger and resentment.
They're both healthy emotions.
But we can also try and find out their cause, right?
You had a bad boss and you're angry and resentful towards that bad boss.
I understand that.
I sympathize with that.
That seems to me a very healthy emotion.
But the more important question is not what do I feel about my bad boss or even why am I angry at my bad boss.
The really important question is why was a bad boss in my life to begin with?
Do you understand?
Yeah.
Yeah, I understand.
Now, that last question.
Yeah.
Yeah, because we basically get hit by hailstones and we say, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow.
And we don't say to ourselves, why the hell am I standing out in a hailstorm?
Right?
Exactly.
Exactly, yeah.
Bad bosses don't just materialize out of nowhere.
Sorry.
Bad bosses don't just materialize out of nowhere.
Right?
They're part of a general ecosystem of interaction that starts very early on in our lives.
So the thing is, yeah, if I wasn't already in the mindset that this is normality pretty much, then I would have gotten another job that is pretty much debt.
Yeah, you would have said, look, I have a bad boss.
I need to figure out why this bad boss is in my life.
And then I need to figure out how not to have a bad boss in my life.
Look, I had bad bosses.
I had bad bosses because I started working when I was 11 or whatever.
And I had bad bosses.
And then one day I was like, you know what?
I'm just not doing this anymore.
I worked really hard to figure it out.
And I had a boss who was barking at me to provide something.
And he kept coming and barking at me to provide something.
And I just stood up to him and I said, Jim, let me tell you something.
When I'm finished producing this thing...
I will not go to the washroom.
I will not pass go.
I will not collect $200.
I will march straight to your office and I will tell you that I have produced this thing.
Trust me.
I'm not going to keep you in suspense.
But I will also tell you that every time you come into my office telling me to produce this thing, you're actually slowing me down.
And he looked at me kind of goggle-eyed and he left.
And we actually had a pretty good relationship.
We played squash together.
We played cards together.
And...
Now, listen, that's a glib way of putting it, and I'm not trying to say, hey, go do that, or maybe that wasn't even possible with your existing boss, right?
But there are ways of dealing with people where you don't come from a position of fear.
Because if you come from a position of fear, most people have no moral standards to guide their behavior.
Most people have about as much willpower as water being poured down a series of rocks.
All they do is find the path of least resistance.
And if you show fear to most people, you provoke sadism.
And I don't even think it's because they're like natural sadists.
It's just that they respond to fear.
With bullying.
And they respond to confidence with acquiescence, right?
Hmm.
And it's not that the people are just terrible bad or out to get you, but it's sad and it shouldn't be this way.
Well, the thing is, I am...
It shouldn't be this way.
When you just said that, I'm not quite sure if I came across as so fearful towards them.
I can't speak to that.
I mean, I don't know the details of it.
But if you ended up too anxious to go into work and ended up in an institution, then obviously it was a pretty dysfunctional situation, right?
Yeah, of course it was.
And if you felt like, I can't possibly get another job.
And again, I sympathize because you didn't have support at home and you were raised in, let's just say, extremely unproductive ways.
Yeah, extremely unproductive.
But what happens is if you approach the world with fear, it seems that you live surrounded by sadists.
And then what happens is you say, I'm afraid because people are all sadists.
They're all cruel.
They're all mean.
They're all cold.
They're all unsympathetic, right?
But the reality is that people are sadists because you're afraid.
Right?
And it shouldn't be that way.
People should have their own internal moral standards of how they deal with people.
Well, if they're sadists just because I'm afraid, doesn't that mean that they're sadists at heart anyway?
No.
No, no, because if you're confident, then they're not that way.
They can't even commit to being sadists.
That's how sad it is.
That is really sad.
It's just one of the most famous lines of one of the most famous songs, right?
Bohemian Rhapsody, right?
Anyway, the wind blows.
Right?
That's how people are.
Anyway, the wind blows.
They're weather vans.
We'll do everything we can get away with.
That's pretty much that.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
And we know this.
When people get into power, they just start lying and cheating, right?
Because they can get away with it.
Because now we have power.
We can get away with that now.
Right.
So people don't even usually have the spine to be nasty.
They just...
Do what they can get away with.
That's the great secret to life and to confidence.
People do what they can get away with.
You know, tons of people over the years have charged at me, sometimes even on this show.
Push back, push back, push back.
And the show grows.
The show continues.
The show strengthens.
The show reaches a rider audience.
We almost doubled in YouTube views last month from 1.5 to 2.7 million in one month.
That's very impressive.
Well, it is.
Now, if I was approaching things from a fearful standpoint, then people would say, oh, he's afraid.
Well, he must be afraid about something, and then they swell in power, and they swell in cruelty.
So...
Before we talk about anything else, there is really something I wanted to talk about and I would really beat myself up.
You have to be quick because we've got to get on to another caller.
I know, but this is why I said it now.
The thing is this.
I have this real problem.
I touched on that before.
My parents essentially...
I can't really feel any anger towards my parents for some reason.
Even though I know that objectively some of the situations that I remember and I remember them for a reason.
No, no, no.
Sorry to interrupt.
We already talked about this.
It's hard for you to see this because we already talked about this.
Okay, please.
So we said people get away with...
Have your parents expressed any remorse?
Yes and no.
It's always this, yeah, we did that, but...
Right.
And so, because your parents haven't expressed any genuine remorse, you don't feel like you have permission to get angry at them.
Right?
So, because they're not showing fear, you don't feel like you have to...
Neither did my teachers, though, and I am angry at them.
But you haven't done anything.
The anger is futile, right?
I'm not saying you should, right?
The anger hasn't changed anything.
Yeah, but what should I do?
If you get angry and don't do anything, all you're doing is training your anger to impotency, right?
Every time you make a wish and don't act, you make your wishes impotent.
More and more impotent.
I've definitely experienced that, yeah.
So, the reason...
If you express fear, people often become cruel.
If you do not express remorse, then people in general...
Will not be angry at you.
Because they don't want to feel like their anger is impotent.
And most people's anger has no moral basis.
All it is is like fingers trying to find a secret catch or a secret lever to open the hidden door to your regret.
And so if your parents don't express genuine sorrow and regret for how your life is turning out, which I think is appropriate for them to express that, So then you feel like, oh, I can't really get angry at them because they're not giving me the opening.
And maturity in adulthood arises when your emotions are run by principles, not permission.
Do you understand?
Yeah.
You have the right to be angry at your parents.
And you do not need their permission.
And you do not need their regret.
And you do not need their apologies.
Those things would help.
But our anger, our feelings, our passions must be run by principles, not permission.
Otherwise, we exist only because we're allowed to.
And I, for one, could not stand that.
Indeed.
Alright?
Alright.
Make a plan.
Make a plan to pursue self-knowledge.
Make a plan to examine your thoughts.
I will try.
Make a plan to find a great therapist.
Make a plan to find a great therapist.
Talk to the therapist.
Be skeptical.
I've got a whole show about this, so for whatever it's worth, my thoughts on that.
But make a plan, because if nothing, if you don't change nothing, nothing will change.
So, anyway, keep us posted if you can, and thank you for a very courageous talk.
I don't want to take up any more time, and thank you, Steph.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
All right.
Up next is Lord Jacob Rothschild.
His question is, where exactly do we send the check to?
Oh, you just dropped off the line.
Oh.
Okay.
Really?
Lord Jacob Rothschild?
What, are we auditioning for Downton Abbey now?
Okay.
Up next is Luke.
Luke wrote in and says, what does it mean to be educated?
Can the Trivium Method provide a way to get there?
Well...
Why is this an important question?
I'm not saying it's not.
I just want to know why it's important to you.
Well, I guess if you want to hear the inspiration for it was you had a show about the dangers of either dating or being a sex worker.
And you said, Mike, how often do we get someone who wants to come in and talk about an abstract philosophical concept?
I thought, well, you know, I'd like to talk about an abstract philosophical concept, so I figured I'd do you a favor and call in about it.
Yeah, you're not answering my question, though.
That's why I might want to talk about it.
My question was, why is this important to you, this particular topic?
There is an infinity of abstract topics, right?
Of course.
Well, okay, I mean, I guess it's twofold.
And, I mean, I may not answer your question on the second one, but I, long and short was, I went to see an exhibit in, when I was in Las Vegas, and I saw, it was all about Leonardo da Vinci, and I saw something, you know what, and What am I doing with my life?
He wasn't very old by the time he invented a lot of things.
What did he do that was so different?
How was he educated?
How did he train?
How did he do these things to invent a lot of things, to be so intelligent, to paint well?
What did he do that is different than I did?
I mean, of course, I went to a second-rate state college, and I got my degree in computer science.
Big surprise, libertarian computer science, but I want to ask this because not where did I go wrong, but where didn't I – I guess where did I go wrong?
What didn't I do?
What was wrong with the way I went about things other than going to a state college and things like that?
What did I do that was wrong or not the most effective or what did I do to not – I don't want to use a platitude, like reach my potential, but I want to ask you, what did I miss through college, through going through school?
Yeah, I went to public school for my high school year, but I was homeschooled before that.
And what does it mean to be educated?
and I'd like to talk about the tree of mosques because I think it's a very interesting concept I've read about on the internet and a few other places and a lot of people talk about it differently some people put a religious twist on it some don't some people try to be really try to grab onto it like it's such a strict thing but I look at it more of a very interesting way to explain critical thinking and education is that a start at least?
Sure, sure.
Okay, so, I mean, I'm no particular expert on the Trivium, but If memory serves, it's grammar, logic, and rhetoric.
Does that ring a bell?
And it comes out of...
I mean, it comes way back from medieval universities.
So you study the components of language because we are...
Our basic tribe is language, right?
That's really what distinguishes us from...
The other animals, particularly conceptual language, and to try and change people's minds in general means, as you could hear me struggling with the first caller, means to redefine their language, right?
Redefine the words that people use.
And this is why I think philosophy and self-knowledge and, dare I say, mental health are kind of close together.
The language that we use to describe ourselves, to describe our world, to describe the people around us.
is essential.
It is reality.
We live basically in language.
So, knowing the components of language is very important.
Logic, I mean, obviously, you have to challenge language with logic, right?
Because language can create alternative realities that are penetrated by logic or can be challenged by logic.
And rhetoric, of course, It is a study of debate of how to change people's minds, how to use language in order to convince or change other people's minds.
So I think all of that stuff is all very great and useful.
I mean the greatest sophistry we use is almost always on ourselves.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, something like, I'm an American.
Well, that's just sophistry.
Yeah.
What does that even mean?
Is it an idea?
Is it a place?
Is it a birthplace?
I mean, people skate over the most astonishing compactness and depth of meaning as if they're just reciting a laundry list or something.
And so I think that those things are fantastic.
Of course, there's little profit in the ruling class.
Rule is rule by language.
Language is the ultimate noose or propulsion of mankind.
And so rulers who rule by language have little – in fact, have a negative incentive to teach you about language.
I mean that's not going to do them any good at all because that's teaching you the secrets of their power, which is why when Socrates began approaching the sophists of his day – And asking them what they meant by the powerful words that they used, like justice and morality and virtue and truth and all the goodness.
And they didn't actually know.
They got very angry and ended up convincing Miletus to bring the charge of impiety against Socrates, the charge of corrupting the youth.
Well, I mean, that was the problem, right, is that he was uncorrupting the youth, which to the rulers is the same as corrupting the youth, right?
And so...
I mean, an example of at least the way I would approach these issues is let's look at the word family.
Let's look at the word family.
What does family mean?
Does family mean mere blood relation?
Okay, well, then that's a biological description with no moral content, right?
So-and-so is my brother.
So-and-so is my sister.
Well, these things have no moral basis, right?
No moral standing.
If they're merely descriptions of genetic Similarities based upon breeding, right?
It's no more – I mean my sister would have no more moral value than the sister of a pigeon, right?
I mean it's just a mere description of biological relations.
Now, if that's the case, then loyalty to family would be insane because the moment you start using loyalty, you're using about – you're bringing a moral quality in, right?
And so if it's a mere description of a biological relationship, then it has no moral content.
Now, the moment you start bringing moral content into it, then you're saying that morality is somehow related to the family.
In other words, biology is somehow intertwined with morality.
You know, the old blood is thick of the mortar or whatever people say, but they're your family, but she's your mother, right?
People put all that emphasis on it because what they want to do is in the same way that people want to conflate nationalism with virtue because that means you're a hell of a lot easier to rule and you're going to give up your life for your country and go and fight the enemies of the king and all that.
People are very interested in taking accidents and infusing them with moral significance because then they can control you with that moral significance and pretend that it's not an accident.
right?
And so with family, if people say, oh, well, no, but family is virtue.
Family Family, you get loyal to family.
Family are there for you.
Family, okay, well, now we're starting to put moral content in, right?
In which case, we should be talking about morality, not family.
You don't want to – you always want to make sure you separate your language very precisely.
If you're talking about family, you're talking about a biological relationship.
If you're talking about virtue, then you should talk about virtue and not try and somehow mix family in with virtue like it's just automatically virtuous, right?
Right.
And so the use of language is really, really important, especially when you have two overlapping circles, right?
People will always try and wedge those two things together for their own convenience, right?
So yeah, some people in families are very virtuous, and virtuous people all come from a family, and most of them still have families, but the two are not synonymous because there's lots of evil doing that occurs in families as well.
So family cannot be an automatic category of moral value, right?
Because then we would need no such thing as morality.
If it was a perfect circle, then it's called redundant, right?
Then it's just a synonym.
And so if you have a knowledge of language and what its purpose is and what it means and why we have different words for different things, then when someone says, well, basically you should be loyal to your family, then you say, okay, well, wait.
So you're talking about family as a biological construct?
You can't have moral loyalty to a biological construct.
So are you talking about virtue?
Well, then let's talk about virtue.
But then you have to say, if we should be loyal to virtue, which I think is a very defensible and reasonable thing to say, if we should be loyal to virtue, then we should say, I should be loyal to virtue, not I should be loyal to family.
Now, it is in the interests of bad families, of abusive families, to conflate virtue with family, because then they get all the benefits of the concept virtue without actually having to be virtuous, right?
Right.
And so – I mean when people talk about loyalty to the country, it always ends up meaning obedience to the death lords and paying taxes to the endlessly greedy.
And so that's sort of a basic trivium approach, I would assume, to the question of what is a family and what's its relationship to virtue and so on.
And I think that is essential information to have.
Very few people even remotely get to anything close to that level of thinking, and that's pretty elementary or basic thinking.
Somebody says, be loyal to your family.
It's like, well, wait a minute.
You're talking about blood relatives or are you talking about virtue?
Because those two things are very different.
And that's the beginning, of course, of a A very challenging conversation in society at times.
And I think it is important to be educated to that degree, to know what it is that you're actually talking about when you're using language is very important.
And for most people, language is simply a tool of...
It's like the smoke grenades that they pump in when they want to do something nefarious at wartime.
It's simply a cover for, like they say, taxes rather than theft and so on.
And...
They say loyalty to the country rather than obedience to your political overlords, which sounds a whole lot less noble and in fact is more true.
And they think that somehow virtue is in the correct folding of a flag rather than the moral principles, which most people claim the flag was founded on, which are significantly more important than the stained cloth, usually stained with the blood of millions.
So I think being educated is obviously of great value.
It's what I try and sort of bring To people who listen to this, I think the trivium is a very important and useful place to study.
But it only gives you the tools.
It doesn't build the furniture, if that makes any sense.
That makes absolute sense because I think a lot of people who read up on things, they still tend towards violence or not quite...
Exactly.
Moral behavior sort of take it out of order.
They'll put their conclusions first.
They'll put rhetoric first, and then they'll base everything off of a conclusion.
It becomes circular.
I see that a lot, especially when you're talking about government or welfare or taxes or anything.
It's always – they put their conclusion as a fact, and you're starting with facts.
You start with grammar.
If you put it in the wrong order, you can see all sorts of just mouth garbage just getting spilled out because people either willingly or they – I'll put willingly most times – deceive by playing on the idea of sounding intelligent or sounding like they know what they're talking about.
But they're just basic, simple.
You're putting conclusions first before you even put any facts out there.
Absolutely.
I see that all the time.
That's why I see most – like even it relates to how I first reped value.
Like I've seen it on different – on different people.
Like I think the one video was you were – you were at a – And Adam Kokesh asked you a question.
I'm like, wait a second, I know who that guy is.
So I looked into you a little bit more, and I looked into more of some of your positions, and I've heard things like Steph says this, Steph says that.
And it's like, well, hold on a second.
I've got some really status people saying this, so I'll dig into what he's actually saying.
Well, no, he's not saying anything outrageous about family or government or anything.
He's not inconsistent.
It's just people who say, well, he doesn't care about the poor or he doesn't care about this.
They're putting a conclusion first.
And then if you start with a conclusion like he doesn't care about the poor, that's poison.
Well, that's a big logical fallacy when you see all this stuff.
I think the Tribune has a lot of – there's a lot of parts of it that a lot of people already know about, like logical fallacies.
It's the big one that everyone – Like, it's a name off when someone's making really bad arguments.
Like, I think, you know, my Reap on the Tribune, I think there's a method to go through not only arguments and explanations, but the way you start from nothing.
You start from zero.
You know, I don't know anything.
And how do you get to something?
Like, people who use the scientific method, I think that's right on key with the Tribune.
And, like, people who do...
I've been looking into statistics and things lately how if you do it correctly, you're not looking for a conclusion.
You're just looking at numbers and whatever you draw out of it by picking them up, finding what they mean, getting rid of all the bad stuff and that's the trivium also.
Litigation in courts, that's the trivium also.
I think it's out there a lot but no one really puts it in a process to where you can think about how the process works and you can think later, am I doing this correctly?
Yeah, I mean, I've seen some of that junk out there.
Steph just doesn't care about the poor.
What would my caring have to do with anything?
I mean the idea that people can plumb my emotional relationship with the poor and think that that somehow has a bearing on my argument is – I mean it just shows you how people simply are allergic to putting two thoughts together that make any kind of sense.
I mean it's like if they've never seen the show House where this Gregory House is – he hates his patients.
They're nothing more than lab rats to him.
But where the hell do you want to go if you're sick?
You want to go to a house?
There's a great doctor.
He doesn't care about his patients.
Does he cure his patients?
I mean the idea that you can guess someone's emotional state in perpetuity – did I care about the poor when I was five?
What about 10, 20, 25, 27, two years from now, 10 years from now?
What does it mean to not care about the poor?
The fact that if someone were to try and rebut a scientific argument by saying that this guy doesn't like quiche, we would get just what a complete non sequitur that is.
That's about half the argument she gets against anybody.
I mean everyone – I mean let's say I don't care about the poor.
So what does it have to do with the quality of the arguments for universally preferable behavior or a stateless society or out of the economics or self-knowledge topic?
What bearing does that have on anything?
I mean basically that's like trying to displace Carl Sagan with a hysterical South American soap opera and think that you're still doing science.
Oh, yeah.
And people who fall for that stuff should absolutely keep doing that.
They should just continue to bounce off ad hominem and logical fallacies aplenty.
And they should – because anyone who's got any brains will look at people like that and just realize how completely ridiculous they are.
How they have no humility, how they have no knowledge, no depth, no education, no skepticism, no capacity to think.
And, you know, it's like listening to a baby fart and thinking you're hearing a tuba masterpiece.
And people should keep making that noise and keep drawing people over to the idiot children's table and leave the business of thinking to people who know what they're doing.
So I think – I mean I think those people are doing a great service, right?
I'm going to advance a completely bullshit, sophist argument and see how many people fall for it.
Good.
The more flies that stick to the flypaper, the fewer fly into my mouth.
So go over to that flypaper and stay away from real adults doing real work in the realm of human thought.
So I mean again, they serve a necessary purpose and a very helpful purpose in keeping idiots away from thinkers.
Right.
I mean, there's – you're talking about the Jennifer Lawrence thing more recently.
It's like, did anyone ever think that's like – you break into someone's private stuff and take in a picture and post it.
That's – like if you went into someone's house and took a picture of them like that, that'd be god-awful.
But because it's a celebrity, because it's all these things, it's a scandal instead of a crime.
Yes.
The hysteria around that is just – like you were talking – when you were talking about that last caller, you were in the middle of talking about how easy it might be to switch sides.
I understood this.
There's so many people out there just – there's daze.
Daze isn't even a strong enough word for it because I guess if it isn't public education, it's something else.
If it isn't their home life, it's something else.
If it isn't the television, it's something else.
But I think – I guess one thing I read about the trivium a little bit more to prep for this, but you can look at child development and education things in terms of the trivium.
Like how – when children like to learn about things and think about things, it's sort of the natural progression.
Like people – kids who are younger, they like looking through all the facts.
They like looking at things like exploring.
You get out the what and the who and the when and all those things and situations.
And when you get a little over, you start seeing how all the facts they've learned about life, they start putting them together.
They start learning things not based on actual observance but by relationships between different facts they've come across.
And by the end, by the time they get to the age, they realize they can understand a lot more.
All their experience actually amounts to something they could use and speak on.
I guess you'd call that wisdom.
I guess the one thing about the Trivium, like you said, it's the tools and you have to build the furniture.
Every once in a while I look around, I see someone who has a strictness on it.
You must do everything in this order.
You must learn things in this order.
You can't have young children thinking about logic or rhetoric at the same time.
By the time someone's in high school, they're done learning grammar.
The Trivium is a...
From everything I've read about it, it's a process.
It's almost like a checklist, like, does this make sense?
And sometimes when you just say something out loud that you've been thinking, you realize, oh my god, that is so retarded.
Oh yeah, nothing is more wearisome than just hearing people launch into the most windy, abstract topics without any definition of terms.
I mean that's just – people who refuse to define their terms are either reaching for your wallet or your heart valve.
There's not much else that they're after.
They're just hoping to baffle you with bullshit where they can't convince you with clarity.
And this happens continually.
And yeah, I mean definitely a study of language, a study of – when you study grammar, you're studying the definitions of words, the way the language is structured together, which means you know – An architect knows when a building is not hanging properly, is not working properly, just a glance.
And then that would be fantastic.
Anyway, listen, we're going to move on to the next caller.
But thank you so much for calling in.
It's a great, great question.
I will certainly mull it over some more.
And I've had lots of questions about the Trivium.
And I think that they're very useful things.
You can certainly – I mean – My daughter's saying, what's public school and why am I not going?
We sat down.
We went through the bell curve and all that about the spread of intelligence across the planet and all that.
And we talked about how it's funded and all that.
I mean, she understands.
She gets it.
She knows what's important.
So, yeah, I know.
God, I mean, I wouldn't want to teach her language later than – sorry, logic later than what I'm doing now.
All right.
Let's move on to the next call.
Thank you so much.
It was a great question.
Thank you, Steph.
All right.
Up next is Jesse and Shannon.
And some people might remember Jesse from a show a little while ago.
It was called Saving a Soldier.
No thanks for your service.
It's the one show where Steph actually told someone what to do.
For those that have been wondering what that situation was when it's been referenced, it was in that call.
And Jesse and Shannon wanted to call in and Jesse wrote, My wife and I have come from abusive homes and are trying to be less confrontational with each other and our two-year-old twin boys.
I've been working a lot on myself and since finding self-help and Freedom Aid Radio and that kind of thing, I've been trying to pass that information on to my wife and kids, but it's difficult not to be perceived as nagging or nitpicking.
When she is yelling at me or the kids laughing, like her parents always yelled at her.
I always have anger issues and more related baggage, as you know from the last call, which is only inflamed by our confrontations.
I just want to love my best friend without feeling so adversarial.
Great set of questions.
Great set of questions.
And you're both on, is that right?
Shannon just went to drop something off outside, but she'll be back in a moment.
Okay, okay.
How are you doing there, brother?
I'm doing a lot better.
You really helped focus me on a lot of my issues last time.
So what you're saying is I should issue orders more often?
Is that now the new plan?
Is that what we're all about?
Fine!
I haven't been in contact with my mom a lot lately since...
Based on my recollections and my self-thinking, most of the problems involve her dealing with her own issues and not really having time or emotional capacity to handle me and my siblings.
My dad has actually changed a lot in the last few years, especially since we had the kids.
He's drinking a lot less.
He's trying to be more of a father figure than a grandfather figure.
So I'm kind of giving him the benefit of the doubt right now, but it's definitely with a fair amount of skepticism.
And as I told you before, both my parents are very far away from where Shannon and I live, so we were more exposed to her family Which is its own set of issues that she can speak to when she gets back.
But basically the purpose of my call is, like I said in my intro I gave to Mike, I've been trying to kind of impart all of the things that you talk about to her, especially about peaceful parenting and about the bomb in the brain stuff and all that material.
And, um...
She's not very interested in it, for one thing.
Um...
And, um...
And it's hard to get her to, like, sit down and pay attention and listen to the material.
And, like I said, I feel like...
Or she feels like I'm just kind of nagging her and I'm just kind of, you know, always bringing things up.
And it's...
I thought maybe you could...
Help break the wall, you know, the way you do really good getting into people's past and getting people to kind of self-revelate.
I don't know if that's a word, but...
I get what you're saying.
That's enough.
Yeah.
So this is more...
I'm actually glad she's not here because I can kind of openly say and hear this later, I'm sure, but I really want her to open up.
And I think that it might be easier for her to do it in a platform like this.
And we have been trying to get out and seek some therapy in the real world, but as you can imagine with twins and not...
Very participatory, extended family.
It's kind of hard to make that happen.
Right, right.
And is it mostly the yelling that's the issue?
Yeah, we're...
I mean, we really try not to do it in front of the kids, but I mean, it's just...
Every time we have a conversation about something that...
And it goes both ways.
It's not just me talking to her.
It's her talking to me as well.
You know, we identify things that we want to work on, and then it ends up becoming inflamed into this, like, sometimes, you know, knock-out, drag-out arguments, and, you know, it gets way out of proportion.
And she actually just came back, so she's here now.
Ah, Shannon.
Shannon, hello?
Yeah.
Can you hear me?
She's fixing the baby monitor right now.
It's one way, right?
So babies aren't going to be woken by.
Yeah, right.
Okay, good.
Say hi.
Hi.
Hi, Shannon.
How are you doing?
Good.
How are you?
I'm well.
Listen, thanks.
Does this feel completely weird or what?
How's it going?
Wait, I'm sorry?
I was just wondering, does this feel like...
Completely weird to chat like this?
Yeah, a little bit.
Yeah, I can imagine.
I appreciate that.
I mean, as you know, I'm no expert.
Hopefully I could have a couple of useful questions or whatever, but I really appreciate you taking the time.
Have you noticed a change much in Jessie over the last little while?
A little bit.
It comes and goes.
Right.
And what was your childhood like?
Oh...
Mostly, for the first part, just perfectly normal.
My brother is about nine years younger than me.
And so, I mean, for the first nine years, I was an only child.
Nice.
Once he came around, you know, basic older child jealousy, younger child gets all the preferential treatment, and he actually has a lot of issues on his own because they completely parented us differently.
Like, they just kind of gave up on him and never parented him at all, really.
And so he's like never had consequences for anything.
Whereas, you know, I never got in trouble in school.
I made good grades and everything because I was always, you know, afraid of the consequences.
And him, he...
And what were the consequences?
Oh, I don't even know.
I never...
I was just afraid of consequences.
Wait, you never experienced any negative consequences for misbehavior?
Well, I mean, I never acted out in school.
I never, you know, had detention.
I never had bad grades.
None of that, so...
No, but at home, what were the consequences for, I guess, what your parents would call bad behavior?
I don't even remember.
I mean, like, if I were to get punished and get something taken away, it would actually, like, get taken away for the whole length of time.
Whereas my brother, you know, if they told him, oh, you can't do this for two weeks, like, two days later they were giving it to him.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, I've been there.
My mom was like, you're grounded.
Let's go to a movie.
What?
Yeah.
What?
Right.
OK. OK. And today he's I mean, he he got his girlfriend pregnant at 15 and nobody really did anything about it.
And my parents actually help out with their child more than they ever have with our children.
And you would be the one with twins, which would be...
Right, okay.
But he was 15, right?
Yes.
Twins, 15.
But even now, I mean, the kid is two and a half now, and they still help out them more than they help out us.
Right, right.
And were your parents voice raisers in their communication sometimes?
Yeah.
Before I even finish that sentence, you're like, yes, yes.
What do you mean?
I don't know.
Not so much, like, yelling at me.
Just like my mom always said that my dad talks like he's got a megaphone attached to his mouth.
He just, like, basically yells in general.
Huh.
And your mom, was she a yellow match at all?
No, not really.
And spanking, was there any of that?
Not that I can remember.
That sounded a bit vague.
Well, I mean, I... I don't really know.
Like, when Jesse and I talk about it and I was answering that questionnaire thing, I was thinking about it, and I can't...
I kind of like...
I don't know.
I guess it's all kind of jumbled.
I'm not sure what you mean by it's all kind of jumbled.
Like, when I was thinking about early childhood, and I mean, I can remember bits and pieces of certain things, but I don't...
I don't really have vivid memories...
Of certain things up until about, I don't know, 10 or 11.
Really?
I mean, like, bits and pieces.
No, I mean, yeah, I mean, all memories are bits and pieces and all that, but you don't remember much before...
No.
10.
So, like, early school stuff or anything just doesn't really...
A couple of scraps here and there, but not much?
Yeah, pretty much.
I mean, I think if you weren't spanked and then maybe once you were, I think you'd remember that, right?
Because that would be a pretty shocking thing, right?
So if you don't have any memories of it, it seems unlikely that it happened, right?
Right.
And I don't remember them ever really spanking my brother or anything, so...
They didn't spank your brother?
No, I don't.
Like I said, he never got consequences for anything, so I really doubt it.
And is it just you two?
Yes.
Right.
Right.
Do you have any sense of why the nine-year gap, or was he a happy surprise?
I don't really...
Yeah.
Apparently, we both were.
My mom was a big drinker, and two of the times...
My brother was a, we just got a new house, let's celebrate.
Oops, we got pregnant.
Huh.
Well, at least you had a bigger house.
Yeah.
So, that's helpful.
So, good.
Good job.
Yeah, they bought the house in June.
He was born in March, so...
Got it.
Got it.
Now, I guess I'm going to ask a kind of abstract question.
To me, it's kind of important.
I'm sure it's for you too, right?
So how old are your twins again?
They are.
They just made it two in May.
Two.
Okay.
So obviously, you know, they're great listeners.
Tidy up after themselves.
Share nicely.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, obviously by two, I mean, all of those issues are completely squared away.
So, I mean, obviously we're parenting after the fact here because your job is almost completely and totally done.
All that's left for them is to learn how to pay their taxes.
Right, right.
And we're all set.
Definitely.
But what is the job for you of a parent?
What's your relationship?
What's your goal?
What's it all about?
Well, I actually don't work, so I'm with them all day.
Oh, hey, hey, young lady.
Do not tell me that's not work.
I am a stay-at-home dad with only one, so please don't tell me.
I'm going to cry right here on the wire if you try and tell me that's not work.
No, no, no, no, no.
Don't you pray for a day job sometimes, guys?
Sometimes, yeah.
Yeah, I do sometimes.
Okay.
Part-time something.
Get me out.
I've been completely disabused of that notion just over the last five years.
Okay, so this is your job, and of course it's, I argue, the most important job around, and it's non-stop, right?
How are they sleeping?
Pretty good, mostly.
They have a schedule.
They are currently deciding that they don't really want to stick to it, but...
I found it's very important to just tap the clock.
Bring a clock in, tap and say, sleep time, children.
No, I'm just kidding.
They sleep, you know, once they finally go to sleep, they sleep all night and they take a two-hour nap and they've always been really good sleepers.
Right.
Right.
And so, yeah, so what's the gig?
What's the, I mean...
What is your relationship with your kids and how will you know if you've been a good parent?
What's the measure?
How will I know if I've been a good parent?
How do you know at the moment?
At some point you'll know in the future.
It's a hard question.
There's an old thing for entrepreneurs, or I guess you can't manage what you can't measure.
How are sales this month?
I don't know.
Purple.
I don't know.
Is that good or bad?
For me, it's just like how do I know if I'm – I don't want to sort of find out when she's 18 that I did a shitty job.
I mean sorry, a bad job.
I mean that's too late.
So I sort of try and set up these sort of metrics for myself where I can kind of measure what – whether I'm meeting sort of my goals or my values as a parent.
So – And I know it's, you know, hopefully it's not too weird a thing to spring on you, but, you know, I sure hate for you guys to find out when they're 18 too, right?
Right.
Hey, how did we do?
So, yeah, what is, how do you know?
What's the measure?
What's the metric?
What's the goal?
I don't know.
I mean, I guess, you know, I definitely want to keep them out of jail.
That's good.
Wait, let me just make a note.
I don't think I have that on my list.
No jail.
I think that's an excellent one.
Okay, good.
No jail.
But I just, I guess I want to always have a relationship with them because, I mean, now my mother and I really don't communicate, don't talk.
We have, like, no relationship.
And I don't want that to be what happens between my children and I. Oh, God, that's tragic.
I mean, totally heartbreaking, you know, and I appreciate that more now that I'm a dad.
I mean, you put so much work in for so many years, and then to end up with, you know, two calls a year, I mean, just horrifying, right?
Right.
And I mean, it's different for Jesse because his parents live out of state, whereas my parents live, you know, the next city over.
It's a 10 or 15 minute drive there, and I see my mother hardly ever.
Huh.
I haven't forgotten the question about parenting, but why not?
Well, my mom and I haven't really gotten along since I was about, I don't know, 14, and it got progressively worse.
Well, sorry, but to be fair, it might have occurred earlier, but you've got kind of a blank before 10 in some ways, right?
Right.
Right.
But what happened when you were 14?
Shannon, what did you do to your poor mother when you were 14?
No, I'm just kidding.
What happened?
Well, I don't know exactly when it happened, but I was more aware of situations that were going on between my parents when I was about 13.
And, I mean, they've been talking about divorce forever.
Oh, no, really?
Yeah, and they've never actually done it, which I don't know that that's better.
It's pretty hard to relax in that permanent earthquake, right?
Yeah.
And so they were always at each other, and it was always kind of crazy.
And I guess...
And at each other, like yelling at each other, I assume.
Yeah, they fought all the time.
Gosh.
I mean, they still fight all the time.
And my mother is crazy.
Crazy how?
Everybody's world needs to revolve around her.
Oh, like sort of self-absorbed, kind of narcissistic kind of thing?
Yeah, pretty much.
She's always right.
Everybody has to worry about her.
Oh, so when you got to be 14, did you get kind of skeptical?
Did you get that teenage skepticism thing going?
Um...
Yeah, I mean, you know, I was a normal teenage girl.
I wanted to talk to boys on the phone and go out and stuff, and I guess she wasn't ready for that.
And, you know, keep in mind, my brother at 15 was getting girls pregnant.
A girl.
Well, a girl, yeah.
And she just, I don't know.
I always tell Jesse, I think they over-parented me and just didn't parent my brother at all.
Hmm.
Well, if your mom's crazy, then there's not going to be any balance, right?
Well, yeah.
And also the other thing, too, with people who think they're always right, they don't have any capacity usually to correct behavior.
I mean, why would they?
They're perfect, right?
You can't correct what's perfect, right?
Everything is awesome.
Yeah.
That's right.
No.
Hey, where are my pants?
Anyway.
So...
And what did your parents fight about?
Well, my dad was doing some things that he ought not to have been, and I happened to stumble across it on the computer.
You are being very vague there.
You don't have to get into specifics, but I just wanted to mention that it was extremely vague.
Well, I stumbled across things on the computer.
That I probably ought not to have seen at 13 or whatever.
And my mom found out about it.
You mean like what?
Incomplete Candy Crush levels?
Yes.
Jennifer Lawrence pictures along with her time?
Just like emails, profiles.
Oh, he was like stepping out?
I don't know.
I mean, I guess at that point I didn't know.
I just kind of stumbled across it and was like, hey, what's this?
And she found it, and I guess she thought it was me, and then found out that...
Wait, she thought what was you, that you had profiles?
I don't know, because the way that she had found out about it was, you know, I was home.
I was 13 or 14, whatever, and I was, you know, playing with the computer, and my brother was really young at the time, and he would always go on, like, Cartoon Network and play games, and he was trying to type in Cartoon Network and typed in A first, and, like, Adult Friend Finder popped up.
And so I guess she thought it was me or something.
And my dad was out of town because he used to work out of town a lot at that point.
That's not a good combo.
Adult friend finder and he's away from home a lot, right?
Yeah.
And then, you know, she called him or he called and they got into it on the phone.
And that was like the last time I remember any kind of normalcy because then it was always fighting.
Wow.
And were you 13 at that time?
I think so, yeah.
I think that was about 13.
And do you know if he had any fears?
Alright, I'm sorry?
Do I know if he had anyone?
Do you know if he had any fears?
Back then?
No.
I'm not sure.
I don't know at what point.
I know that he made commentary about how, you know, if she's gonna...
Blame me for it.
I might as well do it.
I might as well do it.
Because she was constantly nagging him about it.
Always everything led back to it, bringing it up.
She's one of those people who hold the grudge forever and doesn't ever let anything go.
And so I don't know at what point he actually did do it.
I do know that he actually did do it, but I don't know how long the gap was in between.
Right.
And do you know how old you were when he had his affair?
No, I'm not sure.
That's what I'm saying.
I'm not sure when the gap was between when it was found and when it actually happened.
Why do you think they stayed together?
Who knows?
My brother just made 18 this year and graduated from Georgia.
Do you think they were just hanging in there for the year?
Well, that was kind of the mentality that everybody in the family has had for the past couple of years because it's been, oh yeah, well, but now that he is 18 and he has graduated from high school and keeps getting fired from all of his jobs for attendance problems, And he's still living at home, and my dad now has a very important job, and so my brother is left at the house with my mother.
Right.
My dad kind of makes commentary that he keeps her around for my brother, so that he has somewhere to be, because he doesn't trust him to be in his house for four or five days a week by himself.
Oh, wow.
Okay.
Right.
Right.
Okay.
She's never going away.
Right.
Perpetual.
And she's even made the commentary that she is perfectly fine going on with the arrangement that they have now for her indefinitely, because, you know, she's living in a house with basically herself and my brother, who is never there, because he's always off with his friends or whatever, because he can't stand her either.
Wait, isn't he doing some parenting from time to time?
Well, some.
Some.
Doesn't sound like a whole lot, but...
Well, his child lives with the mother and her parents because he is on her father's health insurance, and they have to be, like, sole custody of him kind of thing.
So my brother sees the child, like, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and then weekends.
That's a bit.
Oh, okay.
But it's only, like, in the evenings, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, so all day he's just kind of doing whatever.
Okay, good job.
Wait, what did Jesse say?
Not getting a job.
Yeah, well, that's whatever, right?
Right.
All right.
So he doesn't pay, what, child support?
No.
He actually, they were paying $100 a month, but then the court, they had it court-ordered to stop because the insurance said that if they were getting any outside money, then they couldn't keep him on their insurance.
Fantastic.
Gotta love those systems.
All right.
Right.
That's not the most relevant part here, but yeah, it's just pretty heartbreaking how all this stuff is set up to the point where it's really keeping your brother out.
And also, I mean, who knows?
Maybe he got the girl pregnant partly out of a desire to keep your parents together, because it certainly worked, right?
Yeah.
Now it's going to go on forever.
All right.
And he needs probably a place where his bills are paid too, right?
So he keeps them together and he's got a place to crash and he doesn't have to grow up.
But anyway, it doesn't matter hugely.
But I mean, it does, but not at the moment to this part of the conversation.
All right.
So thank you.
I appreciate that frankness and detour.
But okay, so success, right?
I would think it's fair to say that you would not describe your parents' raving successes as parents.
No.
Well, I mean, overall with me, I think they did an okay job.
Because, I mean, like I said, I was never a troublemaker in school.
I was never, you know, failing.
I was an honor student.
Hardly missed any class.
Kind of.
Even, you know, when I went to college, I went two hours away and was totally on my own and, you know, still graduated summa cum laude and, you know.
But then my brother, yeah, they just like totally, he almost got kicked out of private school, ended up going to public school, barely made that, can't even get into college because he doesn't have the bare minimum GP. Right, right.
Okay, so, I mean, it sounds like you had, you have a kind of personality or character that's quite conscientious and concerned with consequences.
Yes.
Right.
So, I mean, some of, you know, some of who you get from your kids is just the way that God put them together, so to speak, right?
Right.
Right.
Okay.
All right.
So, you're talking a lot about sort of external standards.
Like, so every time I sort of say, you talk about your successes or you talk about how your parents may have done a good job with you, right?
You talk about...
I did well in school.
These are approval markers from outside.
And I'm not saying they're not important.
They are.
But it's sort of external markers, which is not a criticism.
I'm just sort of pointing that out.
Is that your sort of major gauge?
Like they do well in school and they go to college or get a decent job or whatever, then that's success?
No, I just – I don't know.
And I'm not trying to downgrade that.
I'm really just curious about what your metrics are.
I don't really know.
I mean, yeah, I guess so.
For me personally, for my kids, I mean, they don't have to be perfect.
Nobody's perfect.
Would I like them to, you know, stay out of trouble, not do drugs, all of that?
Yes.
Would I disown them if they did get mixed up in that?
No.
You know, everybody makes mistakes.
Everybody has to, you know, learn from their past.
Well, yeah, but I mean, putting drugs in the category of everybody makes mistakes is...
Well, I mean, I'm not talking...
You know, not everyone.
I've never done drugs.
Would I be like, oh my God, you're not my kids anymore?
No.
Yeah, okay.
And what do you want their relationship with authority as it currently manifests to be?
And the reason I'm asking that is that – I don't want to overly generalize, but in general, it often seems that there's one parent who is fine with the kids being pretty skeptical towards authority.
And by authority, I mean sort of currently instituted authority.
I don't mean like reason and evidence and things that we should subject ourselves to or whatever, right?
Gravity and things like that.
Speed limits, you know.
But there's usually another parent who is a bit more like, oh, they should really do, you know, what people tell them to and so on.
They kind of want kids to fit into society as it stands.
And are there other people who are more comfortable with the kids being more challenging towards that?
Do you have...
A sense where you may fall along that continuum?
Well, before I met Jesse, yes.
Now, I think I would fall kind of somewhere in the middle where I wouldn't say, you know, don't trust authority at all because they're all crazy and corrupt.
But I wouldn't say...
Do anything any member of authority tells you because that's what they're there for?
Yeah, I mean, dentistry is useful, right?
Dentist says floss, then, you know, floss.
Right.
No way, man!
You're just working for the fluoride people or something, right?
So, yeah, no, I get that.
So, yeah, I mean, where people have sort of good, legitimate reasons, it's important to...
Doctor says take the pills.
Generally, you know, it's a decent idea to at least consider it, so...
Okay, okay.
So, I mean, if you're going to give them, or if you're going to accept them having some challenges, you know, I'm not sort of going to set themselves on fire on the court steps or anything, but some challenges towards authority, then there's going to be, I would assume, some things that would be more helpful to them for that, right?
And again, blind rebellion is as stupid as blind obedience, and neither of them leads any place good, in my humble opinion.
But with your sons...
What tools do you think they're going to need to have neither a compliant nor a rebellious relationship to authority?
And I think that sort of in the middle is a useful place to be.
Wait, I'm sorry.
I think I missed the question.
I'm sorry.
Come on.
It only took me nine minutes to get the question out, Jesse.
Try and pay attention.
Sorry, Shannon.
Okay, so what tools do you think your sons are going to need to have a skeptical relationship with authority without, you know, just outwardly rejecting all kinds of authority?
What do you think they're going to need from you as a parent to have – they're probably not going to get it from their teachers, right?
The teachers are kind of into, you know, raise your hand if you need to pee kind of stuff, right?
And again, that's not necessarily the worst thing in the world, but they're probably not going to get it from their teachers.
They don't usually get it from priests or whatever, right?
So if skepticism towards authority is going to be part of what you want for your sons, then what do you need to do to bring that about or what tools do you need to give them so that they neither sort of obey nor rebel without thinking?
I guess teach them morals as I see them and as I learn them.
Because, I mean, that's a really hard question because, you know, I've rapidly watched the state of, you know, the country and authority deteriorate over the past several years.
And so it's really hard to see where it's going to be when they get older.
Hmm.
Is this just for her?
Can I answer this as well?
No.
Yes, you can.
Yes, of course, of course.
Do you want to finish?
Okay, okay.
For me, I mean, everything about the kid starts in the home, right?
So for me, Shannon and I kind of legitimizing ourselves as their parents and as their...
I guess elders or whatever, however you want to say it.
And for me, guiding them towards the knowledge versus instructing them in kind of a, you know, authoritarian teacher kind of way, which I know you've talked about a lot in the past, you know, not managing your children, but kind of them, you know, more helping them along.
Yeah, I mean, I think, I mean, we want, you know, as parents, I think we don't want our kids to blindly rebel and we don't want them to blindly obey, which means they have to think for themselves, right?
Some people in authority make really great arguments and you should do what they say.
Other people in authority make really bad arguments and you should be skeptical, right?
And the only way I think to tell the difference is really learning how to think for yourself.
Now, think for yourself is three easy words, but like the three easy words, I love you, there's a lot of complexity sort of behind that.
And for me, the challenge is that I don't want her to obey any authority because it's an authority.
At the same time, I don't want her to disobey any authority because it's an authority.
I want my daughter's relationship to be with reason...
Critical thinking, reality, skepticism.
Yeah, if people can prove it, then great.
If they can't prove it, then wait until they can kind of thing.
And so for me – and this is not any kind of final answer or whatever.
But for me, it's just really important that I do not present what my daughter needs to do or what I think she needs to do and have her do it or don't do it because I'm older.
Or because I'm bigger or because I'm stronger or because I'm the dad or anything like that, right?
I mean I am wiser hopefully than a five-year-old in some ways.
In some ways she's stronger than I am but I try not to have her accept things that I need – that I say because I'm bigger or louder or stronger because that is going to teach her that big and loud and strong wins the day, that it has weight and it has authority.
And that's going to tempt her when she wants to get her way to try those very tools called bigger and louder and stronger, right?
And that usually happens around teenage years because, you know, we get older.
And they just keep getting stronger.
And we shrink, they grow.
And so it was interesting to me, Shannon, you were talking about things hit a challenge with your mom when you were 14.
And I think, I don't know obviously the details of your family, but if I guessed, I would guess that it had something to do with the fact that teenage years tend to be the blowback of the toddler years.
Because the toddler year is two twins, you know, again, I can't even conceive, right?
But the two twins, right?
I mean, this is the no phase, right?
Don't want to, no, right?
Yeah.
And how you deal with the no, in my opinion, in the sort of 18-month to 36-month phase is how they're going to deal with you when they become teenagers.
Yeah.
I really have steadfastly resisted, although I sometimes feel occasionally really boxed in by a lot of my daughter's nose.
Do you want to do this?
Do you want to do that?
Would you like to do the other?
I'd like to do this.
No, no, no, no, no.
It feels like I just get more boxed in.
It does get frustrating.
But I have sort of gritted my teeth and steadfastly resisted reaching for the bigger, louder, stronger, older card.
Mm-hmm.
Because I just know I'm going to get older and weaker.
It's going to get bigger and stronger.
And I don't want to have that card played for later, if that makes any sense.
Yeah.
Which means, like, I can't win unless I can make the best case.
And because I won't resort, so to speak, to bigger, louder, older, stronger...
Then I have the real challenge of trying to make a case to a two-year-old, to a three-year-old, to a four-year-old, to a five-year-old now as to what she should do and why without using the bigger, louder, stronger, older card, which is a real – I don't know.
I think it's been the most excruciating intellectual challenge of my entire life trying to explain why she should do something or not do something.
Just based upon the quality of what I'm able to put across.
And that to me is my sort of gauge as a parent.
It's like having the nuclear option that I will never use, if that makes any sense.
And I'm just wondering what you guys think of that.
I mean, I'm not saying that's any sort of perfect recipe or anything, but that's sort of where I'm coming from.
I mean, it makes a lot of sense for me.
And Channon's given you the head nod, so I know she understands.
Understands is sometimes a long way from agreement, which is not necessarily bad.
Fair enough.
But, I mean, so I guess this conversation kind of segues into the other part of the purpose of the call, which was Us not falling into that between each other, the bigger, stronger, louder essence of our fighting with each other.
But you can't do it with the kids.
If you're doing it with each other, you're doing it with the kids because the kids are in the house, right?
Right.
Right.
So you can't, like, I can't sort of say, well, I'm never going to muscle my daughter and then yell at my wife.
Right.
Right.
Because then I'm giving her completely contradictory messages, right?
So if you have the – the best case wins and nobody gets to muscle each other, intimidate or yell or withdraw or withhold or whatever, the six million bag of nasty tricks that all married people have at their disposal.
If you sort of make the commitment that says, look, we don't use muscle in this family, right?
We don't raise voices.
We just don't do it.
We all get frustrated obviously, right?
And my daughter has witnessed my wife and I having conflicts, right?
I mean, and we don't yell and sometimes they're pretty, you know, I wouldn't say intense but emphatic.
I mean, we both feel very strongly about something and we have conversations about it.
We don't sort of run to another room because then it's sort of saying, well, this is something shameful and bad.
To my understanding, children are not negatively impacted by seeing conflict.
In fact, I think it's healthy for my daughter to see my wife and I have conflicts which we resolve in a positive way because I think that makes conflict less alarming, less scary.
Well, that's where the problem comes in.
You guys muscle a little bit, right?
We muscle and then don't resolve anything.
Well, because muscle doesn't resolve anything, right?
I mean that's like saying the welfare state solves poverty, right?
Muscle doesn't solve anything, right?
I mean usually these conflicts happen more or less after the kids are in bed, which I know doesn't make it any better.
A little bit.
I mean at least assuming they're asleep, right?
Then there certainly is some improvement there for sure.
But if it's not resolved, then the ground shifts overnight in terms of parental happiness and they're not sure why.
Well, I mean, there's definitely been a fluctuating rift between Shannon and I, which, I mean, yeah, part of it is just the stresses of, you know, Our life, me working a lot.
The fact that he's at work all day dealing with stupid people and the fact that I'm here all day dealing with two-year-olds.
Kind of the same thing.
I work in the IT field, so...
Oh no, I know.
I just don't know.
I know.
The support call rings and you're just like...
You want some holy water to squirt it or something.
I get it.
Okay.
Yeah, I've been in that situation.
Okay.
So – but stress is not an answer to conflict, right?
Right.
Because stress can – I mean look.
Soldiers are under a lot of stress, right?
And they end up usually being friends for life if they work it right.
So stress does not – does not – that's not explain conflict, right?
Right.
Yeah.
I mean, you could be brothers in arms, sisters in arms, and so on, right?
Mm-hmm.
So, let's try again as to why there's the conflict.
I mean, because there's some people, magic word stress, well, that explains...
I don't necessarily find that that explains it.
Yeah.
I don't...
I mean...
You know, I guess I feel like a lot of it has to do with both of our upbringings and my...
I don't know how to put it now.
I had this all mapped out.
No, but that's because you're now trying to give me some other magic word called childhood, right?
No, no, no.
It's not stress.
It's history.
But no, but these are not causal, right?
Because there are people who've had tough histories who don't end up in this situation.
Why we fight the cause of our fighting back and forth.
So one of the things that I've noticed when we're having these conversations or these fights is that I will bring something up that I don't like that Shannon is doing.
Give me an example.
Like, not...
Not folding the laundry immediately after.
Not immediately, but within a reasonable amount of time after it comes out of the machine.
Or leaving a big black trash bag in front of the stove when I come home to cook dinner and I can't get around it.
Or little things like that.
A what trap?
So what does she leave in front of the stove?
A garbage bag.
Oh, garbage bag in front of the stuff.
Okay.
Got it.
So we've got laundry not being folded in the right time frame and garbage bags.
Okay.
And in and of itself, it's nothing, right?
It's meaningless.
So I bring it up and I bring it up and I bring it up and then we fight about it and then it immediately turns into a, "Well, you don't do this, this and this." So anytime there's some kind of a criticism or some kind of a, you know, I confront her on something, it's always this bounce back of how I'm shortcoming in some kind of way.
And then it just goes back and forth and then it just rolls on into nothingness and then we just stop talking about it and go to bed and act like nothing happens.
Now, what's the ratio of compliments to criticisms in the relationship?
I don't know.
Crickets.
Yes, you do.
Oh, yes, you do.
I think the pause tells me quite a bit, right?
Right.
No, I hear you.
Okay, so what's the ratio?
Feel free to chime in here.
I don't want you to feel like I'm throwing you under the bus here.
I'm listening.
I'm sorry, what was your question?
What is the ratio, right?
So how many compliments to criticisms occur?
Is it one compliment for every criticism?
Is it ten criticisms for every compliment?
Ten compliments for every criticism?
Just roughly, what's the ratio?
I would say probably more like ten criticisms to every compliment.
Yeah.
Well, I'm sure that's not a problem.
Let's move on.
Right?
So come on.
I mean you know that's going to lead to problems, right?
Right.
Okay.
So is it because you all are doing just such an absolutely terrible job that there's just nothing to compliment?
Like are you currently living like under a bridge on a steady diet of government cheese and hunting swamp rats?
For your sustenance?
I mean, is it really that terrible that everything's like there's nothing to compliment?
Are the children, like, they're alive, right?
They're currently, right?
They get food, I assume.
You know, they don't have crap running down their legs.
And this sounds like, you know, it's hard work.
I mean, right?
So you currently have an income, right?
And so on, right?
And you're not currently being stalked by Zombies are right.
I mean there's this stuff that's going well, right?
That is not easy so so that Shannon and I got together pretty much right after she got out of college and She only had one job out of college before She got pregnant and then has been home ever since and And I'm going to assume, of course, there's a family tradition of massive amounts of alcohol involved.
Just kidding.
Well, that's on my side.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
No, didn't she say that it's a celebration drinking?
Oh, well, yeah, her extended family, but she's not a drinker.
Okay, okay.
All right.
So my point is that my, I guess, worldly experience...
Especially being in other countries and seeing truly destitute situations gives me the perspective of, like you say, we're not doing that bad.
But she has these aspirations, which are fine, of wanting better.
We want to get a house.
We live in a two-bedroom apartment right now.
All these things, which is great.
And I want more than anything in the world to give her those things.
But...
Kids are fighting sleep, sorry.
But she's, it just, you know, I come home, I cook dinner most of the time, I clean the house a lot.
I mess up the house a lot too, I'll admit.
But, I mean, it just seems like a lot of the fighting is like, Things that she's concerned about that I don't think it's a big deal.
So I end up getting more frustrated and end up getting overly angry about it because I feel like it's...
Well, hang on.
But Jesse, what you've described is laundry not folded at the right amount of time and a garbage bag in front of the stove, right?
And these are your complaints.
Those were, I guess, poor examples, but...
Well, no, they're the ones that came to mind, and that doesn't mean that you're bound by them or anything, but those are, you know, when you say, well, but she's bothered by little things and I'm not, and these are the two things that you brought up, it's a bit of a discordance from my side, right?
You bring up a valid point, as you do.
I see what you're saying.
I guess I don't know how to respond to that.
Ah, okay.
No, that's no problem.
Is Shannon still there?
Yeah, she's right there.
Okay, good.
I wasn't sure.
He keeps relocating rooms, so I'm following her around like a dog.
And Shannon, do neither of you are particularly complimentary?
Is that right?
On a whole, no.
Right.
And...
Yeah, you also, like, obviously, is your ratio the same?
I'm not sure what we landed at.
Was it 10 to 1?
I mean, maybe not 10 to 1, but closer to 10 to 1 than 1 to 10.
Okay.
And are you the same way as well?
Like, are you sort of frustrated and you get kind of nitpicky and so on?
Yeah, it's not really nitpicky.
I guess my, like, big things talking about, you know, house cleanliness and everything is, you know, I'll spend time and clean the kitchen.
And like you said, he'll come home most of the time and cook dinner.
And, you know, he's a man.
And I know it's a tendency of men to, like, totally obliterate the kitchen.
And then he just leaves it.
And so I'm stuck with cleaning the kitchen all over again the next day.
Yeah, no, male cooking styles are generally, you put a stick of dynamite in a grocery bag.
Yeah.
Call it dinner, right?
So stuff on the ceiling is like, you don't even know how it gets there, but it's there.
And I got it, yeah.
Hanging vines of salad from the lampshades and so on, right?
Okay.
Okay, and do you have any agreement on how this stuff should go?
I mean, we talk about it and we agree all the time, but then, you know, reality happens and it doesn't really happen.
No, no, no.
That's the third non-excuse you guys have had, right?
Right?
We've had stress, we've had childhoods, and now we have something called reality, right?
Well, no.
I mean, like, we talk about it, and when we talk about it, we have, like, you know, rainbows and sunshine, and then...
Okay, but what does that mean?
So, let's take the issue of cooking, right?
So, with the issue of cooking, what is the abstract agreement that has been reached?
Well, I mean, generally, he cooks.
Because, you know, I'm home with the kids.
No, I got that.
I got that.
But as far as cleaning up after himself with the cooking...
There isn't one.
I've repeatedly asked, you know...
Okay, so hang on, hang on.
See, now...
Now we have probably the source of a lot of conflict, which is you don't have an agreement over what happens with the tidying, right?
Right.
So, I mean, for us generally, it's whoever cooks doesn't tidy after, doesn't clean after, right?
Right.
Now, I mean, people do it different ways, right?
And there's lots of different ways to do it and all that.
Right.
You need to have rules and it doesn't mean that they're inflexible or dictatorial or anything but you need to have an agreement that you can refer to.
Otherwise, you have to muscle in the moment which is always – pretty much always turns out badly, right?
Yes.
Okay.
So if you were – you don't have to stick to it – but if you were to formulate a rule that you could both live with about the kitchen, could you come up with one that would be reasonable?
For both of you?
Again, that doesn't mean sort of set in stone or anything.
Right.
I think so.
And that's what I mean by, you know, we'll talk about it and we'll set up, okay, well, this is what we're going to do.
Okay, so what's the rule about cleaning the kitchen?
Well, I mean, we don't have a specific rule, but, like, for example...
Okay, let's have a rule about cleaning the kitchen.
What would it look like?
Don't be so messy.
And if you're messy, clean up as you go.
No.
Don't be so messy.
It's not a rule.
Right?
Because how are you going to judge that objectively, right?
Well, I know, but like, you know...
It's marinara kryptonite.
I'm sorry.
It leaks or whatever.
He'll spill food inside the burner of the stove and just leave it there.
So then the next day I go to cook and like almost set the house on fire because there's grease inside the burner that I don't know is there until I've already got it turned on.
No, no, no.
See, Shannon, you don't understand.
That's latent man spice.
That's there to add flavor to whatever you're cooking next.
Jake, Jesse, am I on the right ballpark here?
You're right on it.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay, so clearly this is just a misunderstanding of how men add flavor to the next meal.
Got it.
Sometimes this involves microscopic spores of stuff that can pretty much kill you.
But anyway.
Okay, so if you cook...
Then the other person has to tidy, is that right?
Could that be a rule?
That could be a rule, yes.
I would kind of rather us do it together, but that's just me.
You mean the cooking and the cleaning?
Well, I mean, we don't have a terribly big kitchen, but one of the things that Shannon complains about a lot is that we don't get to spend a whole lot of time together, so I think turning...
Any opportunity into a time spent together would be preferable to otherwise.
Also, to that point, though, I mean, she's with the kids all day, so maybe her taking that time to herself while I clean the kitchen might be more preferable.
I don't know.
Well, look, I think we can certainly agree that it's more fun to clean the kitchen than it is to fight, right?
Yes.
Because, you know, when you clean the kitchen, you don't end up going to bed feeling like crap, right?
Right.
And it doesn't harm the marriage, right?
And this is sort of an important standard to have, and I'm sorry to be so pedantic and annoying, but it is something that all married couples face the challenge of, right?
Which is, it's more fun to do chores than it is to fight.
Or it's less fun to fight.
It's even less fun to fight than it is to do chores.
Right.
So I think with twin two-year-olds in the house, the idea that you can do stuff together seems to me a bit of a pipe dream.
I mean maybe it can happen sometimes, but I mean I assume one of the other boys always needs you at some point at this age in particular, right?
I mean even three to four-year-olds need their parents' attention statistically every two to three minutes at a minimum.
And so the idea that you can have a chatty time tidying up the kitchen, unless you do it after the kids go to bed, it just seems that's going to seem to add to more stress, if that makes any sense.
Yeah, I see what you're saying.
And look, if you can do it together, great, right?
But you have to have guidelines about what you've agreed to.
Otherwise, you end up having to fight the same battles over and over and over again, if that makes any sense.
Like if there's no price on the menu at the restaurant, then you end up having to haggle every single time, right?
Right.
And so if you can have a way of figuring out who does what, then at least you have a place to start from, right?
And again, it's all subject to renegotiation and reexamination.
But if you have rules, then you have a place to start from, right?
And now if you both agree to the rules, then you have to – I mean that's just to grit your teeth and kind of do it thing, right?
Now obviously if it becomes like Jesse Cooks and Shannon, you clean up.
And there's like, I don't know, flaming hamster skin on the lampshade or something, then this is something that would have to be negotiated a little bit more.
Yes.
Yes.
But I think having the rules is really, really important, right?
So, you know, a lot of families do the thing where like the guy does the stuff outside and the woman does more stuff inside.
You know, you always hear these things like where women do a lot more housework.
It's like, well, yeah, if you don't count things like cleaning the gutters and mowing the lawn and like all the stuff that occurs outside the house, which generally, right?
So whatever kind of rules go on, like I mow the lawn kind of thing, whatever.
So whatever rules are going on, you have to have that kind of stuff at least verbally agreed on and then take it for a spin and find out if it works.
And again, it's subject to renegotiation and subject to review and all that.
But generally, conflicts arise in the absence of established agreements, if that makes any sense.
Yes.
Can you think of an example in your marriage where there's agreed upon rules and significant conflict?
I honestly can't really think of any, can you, that we have actually an agreement that we actually follow?
Because that's the thing, you know, we talk about having these agreements and then the agreements never actually happen.
Well, the agreements don't happen, right?
Agreements are just words.
It's like saying, my commitment to work is going to do my job for me.
It's like, nope.
That just puts you in the ballpark, right?
I mean, having the commitments and not following through on the commitments, you only do that because I don't think you've got a visceral connection between not following through on your commitments and the fights.
Like, if you knew that, look, if we don't follow through these agreements, we're going to have these endless, exhausting fights, right?
When we're trying to raise two rambunctious two-year-old Like, if you get that connection, then you will get the commitment, if that makes any sense, right?
I don't know if the connection is really clear.
So, if you knew, okay, the price of us not following this agreement is that we're going to go to bed, we're going to fight all night and go to bed angry, right?
Then you'd have a greater incentive to follow that commitment, right?
But it's the gap between breaking the commitment and then the fight, right?
If that's – like if the connection between the two is not clear, then the commitment will get thrown out because in a sense it's like no consequences, right?
It's like trying to get someone to quit smoking when they think smoking is good for them and you can't really do it, right?
Yeah, that makes sense.
So if you get that the price of not following through on your agreements is conflict, doesn't that raise the desire to follow through?
Yeah.
Yep.
She had to go take care of one of the kids that won't go to sleep, so...
No, you see, remember I was talking about, like, oh yeah, we can clean the kitchen up together, and I was like, oh yeah, we can have a Skype chat together.
It's like, well, yeah, but right.
Well, normally, unfortunately, I end up coming home between five and six when I come home on time.
Mm-hmm.
And then there's other nights like tonight where I got home just in time to sign on to the call.
So we don't end up eating normally until 7 or 8 o'clock.
So the kids are already, generally speaking, upstairs by that time.
Which is something I'd like to change because obviously I like to eat as a family at some point.
And what time do you leave in the morning?
I get up about 5 to work out and I'm at work between 7.30 and 8.
And what time do your boys get up?
They usually get up between 6.30 and 7.30.
Yeah, well I'm telling you, you know, 6.30 and 7.30 and when do they go to bed at night?
About between 6.30 and 8 depending on how their nap falls.
Yeah, listen, 12 or 13 hours with two-year-olds, that is a—you know this, right?
Because you've got weekends and obviously holidays.
But that is a long freaking day, right?
It is a very long day.
I mean, I love my daughter to death, but 12 hours with my daughter, I mean, I'm climbing the walls at the end of it because, you know, there's only so many games of Monopoly you can play, right?
Or whatever it is that we're doing, right?
I mean, it's a long, long day and a lot of work.
And, I mean, I'm not trying to diminish what you're contributing as well.
I mean, obviously there's no roof over the head without you bringing home the bacon and all that.
But, yeah, that is a long day.
And what time do you go to bed if you get up at 5?
Between 10 and midnight usually.
Oh, so you're one of these, like, Clinton hyperbots, less sleep is fine with me kind of thing?
Yeah.
Well, I don't generally sleep very well.
Oh, right.
It's never really been an issue for me.
Okay.
Well, I mean, it is, but it's not anything that seems to be going away.
And the Army's answer was Ambien, which, you know, doesn't really do much.
Right.
Good.
So...
I still am struggling, though not nearly as bad as before, with the drinking.
I've never gotten as bad as the last time we talked.
Yeah, that was very dangerous as I remember.
Not a good situation.
It's never gotten to that level and we fought pretty hard last night and I don't know.
I mean, I had been drinking, but I don't, myself, don't think I was, it was like a drunk-derived anger.
But it's a concern of Shannon's, and that is motivation enough for me to try and curb it.
But it's, I mean...
It's really hard when we're constantly fighting and we're constantly like she's constantly pushing my buttons that I know she knows and it's like it almost feels at times like it's deliberate because I've tried to explain to her when I'm asking you to leave me alone I really need you to leave me alone and she's like that almost like motivates her to Push
harder.
And then that causes these escalations and it causes these like, you know, near rage level arguments and fights with her.
And it scares me.
I mean, I don't want to be that angry with my kids, like around the kids.
And I don't want to be that angry with her.
I don't want to be that angry, period.
And I don't like the way it makes me feel.
I don't like the way it makes me act.
And, I mean, I'm just...
That's, you know, the whole reason I've kind of been devouring all your material and some of the other material that you promote because it's giving me focus on that and it's giving me ways to, you know, work through it.
What are your buttons that she pushes?
I mean...
Just the way she'll bring up...
Do you remember when she talked about how her mom always clung on to things and never let anything go?
Mm-hmm.
That, among with pretty much every other feature of her mom, she has.
And I'll point it out to her, and she thinks I'm doing it in a way that's malicious, but she vehemently denies that she's anything like her mom and that I couldn't possibly know how her mom is.
And I know this isn't answering her question, but it's something that I need to say.
And I just point it out to her because she keeps denying that it happens, and I don't know how else to show her that it's happening but to point it out when it does.
But I mean, so she'll constantly bring up past arguments that didn't get resolved and use them as if we weren't already arguing about something.
Let's bring up this thing from 2008 or whatever it is.
Well, we weren't together in 2008, but some other time.
And then she just piles on and piles on and I ask her to leave me alone.
We get to the point where I know that nothing is going to get resolved.
We've gotten over the hump of way too angry over something that doesn't mean anything.
And then she just won't leave me alone.
And then, I mean, I... You know, it's like you said in the...
I think in the Bomb and the Brain pieces, you talk about how you get to a certain point in anger where you just can't come back from it.
Or it's really hard to come back from it.
And it's like we constantly get to that point, or at least I get to that point, and then she doesn't understand.
And she's like, I don't understand why you get so angry.
I mean, I don't understand it, but...
But do you talk about these kinds of things when you're not in a conflict already?
Not to where it doesn't ultimately lead into further conflict.
Right.
Right.
Yeah, I mean, so, you know, you can't learn to fly when you're flying.
Like, you can't learn to fly when you're already behind the seat of a plane.
You have to do that beforehand.
And generally, if there's repetitive conflict in a relationship, you have to talk about it when you're both calm and mellow.
Because once you're already in fight or flight...
Particularly with your history, which I remember quite well.
It's really, really tough to undo that, right?
Once you're already going down that path.
Well, I mean, I've already quite nearly left many times.
But for the kids and for the fact that I'm concerned that her, the way she gets angry with them sometimes...
I don't want to leave her here with them and then, like, taking out whatever anger she has about me leaving on them.
And I don't want to leave at all because that's something...
Even when I was a Christian, I said, you know, divorce is never going to happen for me because my parents divorced four times each.
Yeah.
And it's...
I've seen that.
And I'm not doing that.
And I don't want to put my kids through that.
And me and my wife are...
I mean, we are...
You know, I always said the reason we had twins is because we were so much alike, that that was the only logical, biological path our reproduction could do.
Yeah, and from what I can hear, Jesse, I mean, the one thing that marriages do not seem to be able to survive is contempt, and I certainly don't hear that in what—in listening to you guys talk about these issues with me and back and forth a little bit.
I mean, frustration, upset, anger— Maybe some despair, but not contempt.
Contempt is when you just really, really just have no respect for and loathe the other person.
I don't get that sense.
I get there.
I get there, and I think she does too when we get into the heat of the argument.
But this is what I'm saying, right?
I mean, you know, if your kids pick up something, like let's say they pick up a stone that's been sitting in the sun and the stone is hot, what do they do?
Put it down.
They put it down.
They drop it right away.
Right?
And when you guys get into that, into those situations, you are driving yourself towards a split.
And it's almost like you have to grit your teeth, count to ten, go for a walk, read books on anger management, all the kind of stuff to just try and de-escalate that.
Because you know what happens if you keep hitting the baseline.
Of a pillar, right?
Eventually, it's just going to come down.
It almost doesn't matter how strong the pillar is to begin with.
You keep whacking that base, it's going to come down, right?
Right.
And I think I make a very strong effort, and it's not even that strong an effort, but I just remember that human nature is to complain, right?
Because we focus on what's not working, right?
Yep.
And there's that great bit by Louis C.K., you know, everything's amazing.
And nobody's happy, you know, which is like the Wi-Fi on the airplane, it's too slow.
And it's like, are you kidding me?
You can check email at 30,000 feet and you're frustrated that it's too slow.
Like, because these amazing capacities are there and we generally, and it's not any kind of huge problem.
I mean, if you stub your toe, you notice your toe.
You don't sort of sit there and say, well, every other part of my body is not in pain.
Right?
You say, damn, that hurts, right?
So we focus on problems.
That's how we are not in the caves and we're having this conversation over this amazing technology, right?
So we do all of that stuff and that's natural.
But in a marriage, and I think it's true in all of our close relationships, in a marriage, in close relationships, we thirst for praise, right?
I mean, we need praise and we get worn down by negativity when we're very close to people, right?
It just, it wears us right down.
It's like taking a blackened deck of sandpaper drilled to a candle, right?
It just wears us down.
And I think, I mean, I know this sounds all kinds of cheesy, Jesse, but I really think, you know, focus on the positives, on the things that are working well.
You know, you have A committed mom for your sons.
You know, she's college educated and she's staying home and she's, you know, cleaning poop and wiping stuff off walls and doing some pretty brain dead stuff for a long day, right?
And I assume that there's still physical attraction.
I assume that there's still times when you guys are having fun and all that.
But if you focus on the stuff that is positive, you'd be amazed at how I said to the first caller, we create the world we live in through the language that we use to describe it.
I'm not as far as what Hamlet says to one of his friends.
He says, there's nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
And I don't think that's true.
You can't sort of say, yay, I stubbed my toe.
But so much of our life, so much of your relationship with your wife is defined through language, through the language of praise, Through the language of rules, through the language of defiance, through the language of criticism.
And if you change the words, you change the marriage.
I mean, it doesn't magically change the other person's personality, but if you change the words, it has a huge impact on the marriage.
I don't know if you've ever had something in your life where you think, this is a complete disaster, and then you think about it a different way and it actually becomes a pretty positive thing.
Just the way that we approach things mentally has a massive impact On how we experience our life as a whole.
Now, you and your wife or your partner have this amazing opportunity to break the cycle of some pretty dysfunctional households, right?
I mean, I'm just finding out about hers on this call, but that's a pretty significant amount of dysfunction.
And of course, her challenge is her lack of memory of the first nine or ten years.
That's a challenge.
She's back.
Oh, she's back.
Yeah.
So, Shannon, can you hear me?
Yes.
I'm sorry that you had to leave the room.
We just spent the last ten minutes figuring out that it's all your fault.
Yeah, well, my kids seem to think it's my fault too.
They're crying.
No, it's a real shame because clearly if Jesse had left the room, I'd have totally sided with you.
So that really was...
Some significant bad luck on your part.
I'm very sorry about that.
Obviously, you can play this back and just realize how much of a fault you already are.
No, I'm just kidding.
But how are the kids?
How are they?
How are the kids?
Well, they're having a mental breakdown because they can't have duct tape, but he seems to have calmed down now.
Can't have duct tape.
Okay, I'll ask another time.
They have to get duct taped into their shorts and diapers or else it's a streak party all night.
Oh, right.
You know, I totally miss that phase of life.
Yeah, it's a hoot.
So many laws these days.
So, yeah, so we were just talking about that sort of Jesse feels that – he calls it button pushing, which I find a challenging phrase because it seems kind of confrontational or like you're trying to do something.
But what does he mean by that for you?
Well – I'm gonna tell you what he means and then I'm gonna tell you my biggest problem with that whole notion.
He means that I kind of find a chink in his armor and just keep digging at it and digging at it and digging at it until it pisses him off enough that he blows up.
Yeah.
And my biggest issue with it is that it seems like his chink moves and I'm supposed to know because I'm a mind reader where And what I mean by that is like one day, you know, he'll say something and he'll mean something or he won't want me to do something.
But then another time, a couple days later, or at some point down the line, the same situation may arise or something.
And I'm supposed to react differently than I did the last time.
And because I don't, he gets angry with me.
Because in that specific situation, he wanted me to act the way that I didn't act last time.
If that makes any sense.
Right.
Right.
Now, Jessie, you know that you don't actually have any right to expect her to act in any particular way, right?
Right.
Right.
I mean, she's not there for your convenience and you're not there for her convenience.
And you certainly aren't there to stuff up each other's prior unhappiness and traumas and difficult childhood stuff and all that, right?
You know, that can't work, right?
I mean, they can't be like eternal Band-Aids for our chest wounds, so to speak, right?
And the degree to which we – if you feel hurt, right?
I mean when we're really close and I think people who aren't – you guys are married.
Are you married?
Yeah, we are.
Okay, good.
So when you're husband and wife, you're literally nose to nose, right?
I mean, especially in a two-bedroom apartment.
I mean, he craps and you flinch, right?
I mean, he flushes and you're like, don't overflow, right?
I mean, you're nose to nose, right?
And now my experience has been that when you're nose to nose, you need a very light touch, right?
Like when you're that close to each other, you need a very light touch because it's so big.
Everything you do is so big for each other, particularly if you don't have a lot of extended family and, you know, Kids just isolate you in general because you just spend all your time catering and dealing and all that kind of stuff, right?
So when you're that close, what Especially if there's noise, right?
If you're muscle or loud or accusatory or critical or whatever, right?
So I was saying to Jesse while you're gone, Shannon, if you change the language, you change the marriage.
And it's not like a magic healing thing.
It doesn't change personality in any fundamental way.
But if you change the language, you change the marriage.
There's lots of things that you guys do that are very admirable and praiseworthy.
And you need to be honest about your admiration and praise for that, right?
I mean, the guy works all day, comes home and cooks, right?
That's pretty good, right, Shannon?
Right.
I was saying to Jesse that if you're spending 12 hours straight, right, if they're getting up at 7 and he's working out and heading off to work and then they're not going to bed until 7 or 8, that's 12 or 13 hours with two-year-olds.
That is a long day sometimes, right?
Yes.
In fact, I can't think of any day where that's not a super long day, right?
Right.
And Jesse, have you done a day with the boys recently?
Like just you, no Shannon?
Yeah.
A whole day?
Not a whole day.
A whole day.
She gets to work out, she gets to go to the spa, or whatever, right?
But she's gone for the day?
No, I... He's actually about to do a half a day on Friday because I have two doctor's appointments and something else that I have to do.
So he's taking off of work.
And so he's going to be with them without me from eight to like three or four.
Okay.
So, I mean, this can be helpful, right?
Right.
This can be helpful because, you know, walk a mile in the other person's shoes.
Sometimes it only takes two feet, right, in the other person's shoes.
And it can be really helpful.
It's hard to, you know...
I hate to be an annoying stay-at-home dad guy, but it's hard for people who work to get what it's like all day with the kids.
And that doesn't mean it's harder or better or worse, but it's pretty different, right?
Yes.
And so I think that's really, really important to sort of get.
Like, you know, my suggestion, Jesse, is like every day you get home, it's like, Thank you for keeping the boys alive.
Thank you that they're happy.
Thank you.
Like, that is a huge amount of work.
I mean, it's, you know, I've got one, right?
And two twins.
I mean, that's just, right?
She's pouring heart, body, and soul into this venture, right?
I mean, have you ever done anything this intense, Janet?
No.
No.
No, maybe like an IMAX movie on acid, but that doesn't last for 13 hours.
Maybe it just feels that way or something, right?
But it's pretty intense, right?
Yes.
Now, so I think appreciation for the amount of work that's being poured into parenting I think is essential, and you'd be amazed at how many criticisms dry up when you apply more praise.
And Shannon, do you compliment Jessie on the paycheck?
Yeah.
Do I compliment you on your paycheck?
I mean, he's going out and working for the family, right?
You mean the fact that he goes to work all day and deals with certain people?
Yes.
And the fact that he's bringing home the money that's the roof over the head and the food in your mouth, right?
Yes.
Okay.
Yeah, and I have my own history with this, so just to be upfront, it's just that when I lived with a woman, she's like...
Well, I cooked.
It's like, yeah, I went to work all day.
Why does that not, right?
That sometimes, and from men that I've talked to, that sometimes seems to vanish.
That the money coming in is just something you take for granted.
But I wouldn't want Jesse's financial contributions to be any more lost in the mix than, Shannon, your amazing parenting contributions, right?
Right.
And I think if you were to switch days with each other, It would be pretty instructive and I think you'd be pretty appreciative of what the other person is doing.
And I think that level of appreciation can go a long way.
We generally need at least 10 positive experiences for every negative just to balance out.
And I think if you could really work...
To be positive and appreciate what the other person is doing.
Appreciation is really an amazing thing and it's so motivating.
It's so motivating.
I mean, I can think of times where we got a good donation right before a show and it's like, wow, I'm ripping into this.
This is great.
And I think we all know this.
Appreciation is so amazingly motivated.
And when we feel appreciated...
It's pretty hard to feel critical, like when we feel genuinely treasured and appreciated for our contributions.
And I mean, you guys with two twin boys and not a lot of extended family, I mean, you guys are both peddling like mad, right?
I mean, it's a lot of...
It's a lot of work.
And I think that the appreciation is pretty important for that stuff because it does get lost in the mix.
And I said to Jesse while you were gone, Shannon, we just generally notice the things that are going wrong.
That's just natural.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
It's just if you stub your toe, you don't sit there and say, hey, look, the rest of my body doesn't hurt at all, right?
You say, damn, that toe is killing me, right?
And so we do tend to gravitate towards the things that are problems.
And it's a very, very important tendency to resist in marriage, particularly when there are kids around, because there's so much that's going right that is not, I think, being discussed very much.
And then what happens is, you know, all you see are the problems, and then everything feels like unsolvable, if that makes sense.
Mm-hmm.
Now, yeah, so as far as...
If you do – Shannon, if you do something to upset Jesse, then Jesse's natural reaction, as I think is the case for all of us, is to make you want to change your behavior, right?
Yes.
That's completely unfair, right?
I mean unless you're actually sticking a fork in his side or something, right?
In which case you probably should change your reactions.
But if I do something to upset people, They can certainly tell me that they're upset, but they don't have the right to demand that I change my behavior.
Because what happens is you get – don't you get progressively more claustrophobic, right?
Because after a while, you don't know what to do anymore, right?
That's not going to cause a problem.
Right.
Because I can't see you guys.
I'm not sure if – It sounds like a lot of eye-rolling in the voice, but I'm not entirely positive.
No, I had a bug flying around me.
Okay, okay.
So, Jesse, I think that's important.
If Shannon does something that makes you upset, tell her by all means, but it is not her job to change her behavior.
Right.
Your emotional – because your emotional upsets could come from your history.
It could come from a wide variety of things.
It could come from your service.
It could come – right?
And if every time you're upset, she has to change her behavior, you're basically going to end up binding her up in endless spiderwebs and to the point where she just is going to get so frustrated and upset and feel so hyper-controlled that you don't want that to be the outcome, right?
Because there's a never-ending process, right?
Because things are going to upset you, they're going to upset me, they're going to upset Shannon.
Stuff happens that's upsetting.
And if we're upset and then we say, you have to change your behavior so I'm no longer upset, well, you're always going to be upset at some point during the day about something.
And if the rule is, well, now Shannon has to change her behavior, or as you say, not push your buttons, then she eventually is going to be just paralyzed and frustrated, right?
And then you're going to feel like, well, why are you still pushing my buttons?
Well, it's because you've got this idea that her actions determine your emotional state.
But that's not true, right?
Because you have the interpretation capacity in your mind to think about what she's doing and you have history, you have prior trauma and all that, right?
She cannot be responsible for your emotional state.
You are responsible for your emotional state.
Again, it doesn't mean she has no bearing and no impact.
I'm not trying to say that you're a Zen guy, nothing touches you or anything like that.
But if you make it a rule that she is responsible for not upsetting you, given your history, I don't see how that's ever achievable.
But it is going to create unrealistic expectations and I think an endless amount of frustration, right?
Yeah, and I think a lot of that...
I know I was talking about my dad in the beginning, but a lot of that stems from my father.
I remember very clearly in my childhood, his instruction, his wisdom to me was, you know, I make unilateral decisions and anyone that wants to be in my life that can't respect that, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Right.
This is why I wanted to call you because I needed to see this externally.
Sure.
And I think we're such an asshole.
No, but it's a natural reaction, right?
If something upsets us, then we want whatever that is, right?
I mean if you step on a thorn, you want to move your foot and take the thorn out and you change, right?
But in a marriage, I just – I can't imagine how it works that if every time I'm upset, my wife has to change her behavior.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And as you say, especially if it's tangential or it's something from my past or I had a bad day, I mean, if I had a bad day and I'm upset because the work was difficult, how is my wife's behavior supposed to change that?
I still had a bad day, but now I just get to blame my wife and tell her to change, right?
Right.
So I think that's an important habit to break.
I have buttons.
Everyone has buttons.
But they're my buttons.
They're my responsibility.
Are you alright?
What do you think, Shannon?
No, I agree.
Actually, it was...
Kind of thinking, reflecting as you guys were talking because I had actually asked him to do something last night and it kind of meshes with that.
I mean, there's outside factors as well.
I had asked him Or told him, really, that I think that he needs to stop drinking.
Just flat out stop drinking.
Not try to, you know, handle himself and whatever.
I told him that I think he just needs to stop drinking.
And I don't know that it's my place to tell him that.
I mean, his drinking worries me.
Yeah.
Yeah, look, I mean, Jesse, I think it's fair to say that if you could snap your fingers and not drink, you'd do that, right?
Yes, and I've tried.
It costs money, and it distances you emotionally from your family, and you know that if you could turn that switch, right?
I mean, it's like every smoker, right?
I mean, if you go to a smoker and you say – I'm not equating smoking to drinking or whatever, but if you – every smoker, you'd say, listen, if you could push a switch and never have smoked, what would they say?
Yeah, right?
Well, in all fairness, I used to smoke pot and cigarettes, and she helped me break both of those habits.
Well, I'm not saying that I miraculously expect him to just decide one day that he's not going to drink and never pick up alcohol again.
No, but it's the question of the goal, right?
What's the goal, right?
I mean, and he did.
He, for, I don't know, three or four months, he just didn't drink.
And then it just progressively, he just fell back into it.
And I mean, now, like, in one sitting in three or four hours, he'll knock back an entire six pack.
Right.
And you don't, you guys don't have enough quality time together that you can sponge it up with drinking, right?
Right.
If you were both retired and it's like, well, I'm tired of talking to you for the last seven hours straight, so I'm going to have a beer, right?
But that's not the situation, right?
The amount of quality time that you guys can have together is extremely limited, right?
Yes.
And you don't want to be clouding that up with alcohol, right?
And also, of course, you don't want alcohol to be clouding your emotional judgment, which is something that contributes to – can really contribute to – Two conflicts, right?
Yes.
And he is an angry drunk.
Right.
So, you know, not finding a lot of love for the alcohol here in my heart.
And it doesn't sound like in the marriage either.
Again, how that is solved, I don't know.
I certainly don't really have anything in particular to say about how people kick drinking.
I don't know.
But again, it's all about the goal, right?
Is that a goal?
Ideally, it would save money.
It would reduce conflict.
It would do lots of useful things, right, Jesse, if you just didn't drink.
But, you know, easier said than done, right?
Yeah, it's better for your health.
It's better for your weight.
It's better for your marriage.
It's better for your Money.
It's better for your kids.
I mean, right?
I mean, so as far as it being a goal, I could certainly see it being an admirable goal.
And as you say, you've kicked pot and nicotine.
Again, I've never been much of a drinker, so I don't really get the drinking thing too well.
But I will say that if it's something ideally you would do, then I think it needs to be put on the table as a goal, if that makes any sense.
I understand what you mean.
On the other hand, it can become a significant source of conflict because addictions are...
How long have you been drinking for, Jesse?
How long have I been drinking?
I don't even know.
I mean, I didn't really start drinking until after my first deployment.
And I was only 18 or 19, I guess, when I got back from Afghanistan.
And not that that mattered.
You know, you have a uniform, you're in a military town.
Most bars have that, you're old enough to fight, you're old enough to drink mentality.
Oh, sure, yeah.
Yeah, and I mean, it's a pretty potent depressant for an overstimulated nervous system, right?
Which is a lot of what combat and deployments are, right?
Right.
So, it's been a while, right?
Yeah.
Personally, in my opinion, I think it's something that would be useful to have on the table as a goal.
What do you guys think?
On the table, explain that.
I'm not sure if I'll...
Sorry.
What I mean is that there are a lot of upsides to not drinking.
And other than it being an addiction, there's not a lot of downsides, right?
Like, let's say you were able to snap your fingers and just not drink.
What would be the downside, Jesse?
I mean, like she said, there are times when I can snap my fingers and not drink.
And it's just progressive stress and just, you know...
I don't know.
I mean, I look at it as a tool to kind of get the edge off after work, but...
But it doesn't because, you know, it involves you in conflict with your wife, right?
And it will involve you in conflict with your kids, right?
Inevitably, yes.
Yeah, in fact, I mean, probably has already had some effect, right?
Yes.
So there's no particular downside, I mean, other than you'll have to find a way to take the edge off from work?
But there's other ways to do it than drinking, right?
That aren't as destructive to health and happiness and intimacy and all that, right?
I've been trying to get back on a steady workout routine.
The owner of the company I work for is pretty into CrossFit and stuff like that.
I'm trying to get into a program like that so that I can have...
Kind of an outlet that will help curb the alcohol.
Right.
So the reason that I say it should be on the table as a goal is that we do have to try and make – this is again a show about philosophy.
So we do have to try and make things – make decisions as rationally as possible, right?
And so you put in the plus and the minus in the columns and – If you really can't find that many pluses and there are a huge number of minuses, then you just have to change your behavior, right?
I mean, how do you know that smokers should quit?
Because if you say to smokers, what are the upsides of smoking?
They'll say, well, it's kind of relaxing and, you know, it gives me something to do with my hands.
And they say, well, it's the downsides of smoking.
Well, you know, my clothes stink.
My house stinks.
My body stinks.
I could die, you know?
I mean, it prevents me from exercising, you know, whatever, right?
I mean, the number of downsides to smoking is far greater than the number of upsides for smoking, and I think this is the case.
Now, it's not the case with alcohol for everyone, right?
I mean, I had a light beer at dinner, and, you know, whatever, right?
So every now and then, particularly on a hot day, it's nothing better than a cold beer.
Anyway, but for people who have...
A problem with it, then it's not a good thing to have around, right?
I understand.
Yeah.
So on the table as a goal means that you have to try and rationally figure out whether you should be drinking, right?
Now, what's the rational answer to that?
No.
No.
Right.
So what that means is that the goal then has to be, look, we as a couple, and it is a couple, right?
I mean, Shannon, you knew he drank when you met him, right?
Yes.
Right.
So you chose him as a drinker, and now you want him to change, which means you cannot just lob that basketball over to him and say, good luck, right?
Right.
Because, you know, you're both part of the drinking.
Because if you choose someone who's got a particular habit, you can't then say, well, go fix that habit and back off, right?
Which means that it on the table as a goal means there's a goal for you as a couple, right?
Right.
And...
So again, and I can't give you – I try not to give much advice anyway, but I certainly can't give you any advice on how to achieve that.
That's the job for, I don't know, whatever experts there are in the field or whatever books you can read or whatever approach you need to take.
I've generally found that I diminish bad habits by simply continuing to aim at self-knowledge.
It just seems to be that one big boom device that scares away all the crows.
So that would be my suggestion.
I think it's worth – It's worth exploring the no drinking thing and how that's achieved and how you do it and all that I think is important.
I do know that I think with the white knuckle stuff, you grit your teeth and you just don't buy any beer and whatever.
I mean it's not – I don't know.
It works for some people I guess but it seems like a pretty challenging thing to go through.
Do you taper off?
I don't know, right?
But I certainly think that it's a significant complaint and I think it's something that's going to get – We get worse, not better over time if it becomes a cycle, right, where stress of the marriage drives to drink.
More drink means more conflict in the marriage, which drives – it just seems like something that there's not a lot of – there's not a lot of exits out of that roundabout, right?
Right.
So, yeah.
So, I mean, that's sort of my major sort of thoughts.
I think – You know, if you don't muscle it with the kids and just try and avoid muscling it with each other, really positively praise the things that are going well, which there's a lot.
And man, that's a huge job that you guys have.
I mean, twins in a pretty isolated environment is huge, huge, huge job.
And there's a lot that's working really well that I think you should really appreciate and so on, right?
It's like there's nothing that helps you appreciate your health like a brush with death or anything, right?
There is a lot to be grateful and happy about, and I think working on the praise stuff is great.
I think definitely talking about not drinking for Jesse would be a fantastic goal or approach, and I think that's most of what I had to say, at least at this particular time.
How was the conversation for you guys?
Good.
Yeah.
I mean, I missed parts of it, but...
Well, we're definitely...
I mean, we're definitely going to have to sit down and re-listen to everything.
But, like I said, it was really helpful to externalize everything and see it, you know, hear it, I guess, from you.
Somebody who wasn't me.
Yeah.
Yeah, and listen, I mean, I... I really admire both of you.
I think what a brave thing to do to talk about things this personal in this kind of venue.
What a courageous thing to do.
And I was saying, Shoshan, while you were out, the one thing I think that marriages can't survive is contempt, which is when you just lose all respect for and just loathe the person.
Obviously, you guys have your conflicts.
I'm not trying to brush that over.
I didn't hear contempt.
I certainly...
I've heard some despair, some desperation, some significant frustration, but I did not hear contempt, which is, yay, right?
Which is, I think, a really good sign as far as that goes.
And I just want to tell you, I mean, given what you guys are handling at a familial level, at a parental level, at a career level for you, Jesse, and for you, Shannon, too, right?
It's a big change in sort of where you were aiming, right?
Nobody goes to college so they could raise twins, right?
And, I mean, I think you guys are doing a pretty amazing job.
In fact, an amazing job.
And I just wanted to just tell you just how much I really admire the honesty and forthrightness and courage that you brought to this conversation.
It's, you know, I have the goosebumps for what that's worth.
Well, we really appreciate you taking the time.
And I want to thank everybody in the room, too.
I've been following the chatter in the room, so they've helped in their own way.
And I don't want to tell you just how far you've raised the bar, but for me, conversations where we're not actively talking about animal torture, fantastic.
You know, I haven't finished.
I actually had to stop.
Listening to that right when he started talking about the animal stuff.
So I've got to finish that.
Don't spoiler alert.
No, I won't spoil it.
Will you guys keep me posted?
Absolutely.
And let me know how things are going.
And thanks again for calling in, guys.
It's fantastic what you're doing.
We appreciate that.
Okay.
Hugs and kisses to everyone.
Lots of praise.
Thank you.
Thanks, everyone, and thanks, of course, for the listeners, the chatroom participants, Mike and the Stoyan.
Sorry, I don't know why I have to say that with such attitude, but it just seems to be de rigueur.
But, yeah, fdrurl.com slash donate if you'd like to help out the show.
All is muchly and gratefully and, I dare say, occasionally graciously appreciated.
